Epiphany

"Wake up, Ino."

One of the girls from her class was shaking her, pulling her out of a very lucid daydream invovling a perfect summer day, a cold river, and all of the sweets her parents wont let her eat. Two other girls are standing around her, faces alight with excitement. Really, she'd rather settle back into her reverie, but being popular has its obligations and she must comply if she wants to stay popular.

She stretches the laziness out of her muscles and stands up, much to their delight. They beckon her to come with them, they've spotted something "totally cool!" somewhere on the other side of the playground, but something else has already caught her interest. Just a few feet away from their little group, another group is picking on a pink-haired girl with a wide forehead. It's four against one and the poor little forehead-girl isn't even making comebacks to their cruel taunts, she's just standing there, crying and looking at the ground in shame. The injustice of it all is rubbing Ino the wrong way, and she's already marching over to defend the helpless stranger before she even knows her feet are moving. Her friends call to her back.

"Ino-chan, where are you going?"

"Don't worry about the forehead-girl. She's not your friend."

"Yeah, we're your friends, Ino."

Ino stops in her tracks, feeling slightly torn. The pink haired girl makes eye contact with her and Ino feels like she is silently begging for her help. The girl needs her. Ino isn't sure if she should try and convince her friends that intervening is the right thing to do, or to risk hurting her popularity status and charge in alone, without their support. It takes another comment from her 'friends' for her to make up her mind.

"You don't need to make friends with her, she's not cute."

With all of the ire a six year old can muster, she stomps defiantly toward the forehead girl, much to the chagrin of her 'friends'. When she shoos away the kids harassing the shy girl, green eyes look up at her with pure gratitude.

"...thank you!"

Her own blue orbs turn kind as she shifts from out of guardian-mode and into friend-mode and she sweeps back the girl's bangs, exposing the object of ridicule.

"Ah, you really are a forehead-girl, huh?"

She softens her remark with a smile, and the girl finds herself weakly smiling back in return.

"It's okay though, you've got me now. I'll teach you how to make a wide forehead look cute! I'll teach you everything I know, all you have to do is one thing."

"One thing?"

Apprehension creeps into her new friend's eyes and Ino ruffles her pink hair reassuringly.

"Pay attention."

"Pay attention!"

Shikamaru's voice sounds louder and stronger than she's ever heard it before, and it's enough to snap Ino out of her fear and leap out of the path of a charging...something. Ino isn't even sure what it is, the Forest of Death is filled with the strangest, most gigantic creatures she's ever seen. This counts as the second time she's been almost-mauled by an unidentified monster, and now Chouji's looking at her like she's a glass figurine that might get broken and Shikamaru's looking at her like she left her brain at home. She feels both sheepish for spacing out and apologetic for making them worry, but she covers it up well with bravado. She is the leader of this team, and she will not have them see her as weak.

"I was paying attention. I was just making sure you two were."

Not five minutes later, her false confidence is nowhere to be found. Her team already has their scrolls thanks to their unparalleled teamwork, but a scene in a small clearing has her putting an abrupt hold on their victorious journey to the checkpoint.

An unusual boy dressed in green spandex is out cold on the ground and again - again! - Sakura is being bullied.

She has spent years already trying to forget the bond they forged as playground buddies, but not a day has passed where their friendship hasn't crossed her mind, and this moment of deja vu is making emotions stir painfully in her heart. She hasn't forgiven her yet, not entirely. She's learned to accept the fact that they both love the same boy, what she hasn't accepted is that Sakura made a choice; chose him over her.

Ino still didn't understand why it had to be one or the other.

Her knees begin to shake in panic. For once, Chouji stops crunching on chips and Shikamaru looks at her seriously.

"Well, Ino? What are we going to do?"

She isn't sure. She wants to jump in and help so badly it hurts. She wants to make the Sound-nin stop hitting her. She wants to apologize for telling Sakura to give up right before the exam started. She wants to check on Sasuke, who's looking alarmingly still on the ground (because he can't be dead, he just can't be because she's in love with him, and this stupid thing called love makes her need him)

She isn't sure, and for the first time ever, she asks her teammates' opinion because she hasn't a clue if she should act or not.

Shikamaru exhales deeply and mutters something along the lines of Troublesome before he offers his sole piece of advice.

"Follow your heart."

"Follow your heart."

It's the response her father gives her when she asks whether or not she should go with the rest of the Konoha Eleven on their mission to assassinate Sasuke, the only boy she'd ever loved. It's an echo of an earlier moral dilemma and somehow, she's not surprised to hear it. And somehow, it manages to help her decide again, just like she did back then.

She will go with them.

It seems a bit hypocritical to love someone in your heart while trying to kill them with your hands, but Ino's willing to do it because that's what's in Konohagakure's best interests. She has always been a passionate person (and has never done anything halfway because of that. When she loves, she loves wholeheartedly) but now she will become a kunoichi for real because now she's going to do something that will kill her - whether that means that she dies by his hand or that he dies by hers (theirs), the outcome is virtually the same.

At the end of this, her heart will be broken.

And still she goes.

It's high noon when they catch up to the Uchiha, and four hours later only Ino, Naruto, and Sakura are still conscious and able to fight. Naruto is fighting stronger than anyone Ino's ever seen, but she can still tell he's holding back. Out of the three of them, it's shocking to her that it's Naruto who has tears streaming down his face as they all break contact and stand at four seperate locations, catching their breath.

"It's not too late, teme! It's not too late. Just stop this, right here. Right now. We'll work something out - you'll get your justice, we'll make it right somehow, I swear! Just come back."

Sakura looks pained. Sasuke looks as irate as ever with, perhaps, a tinge of exhaustion.

"Come back? What don't you understand, dobe? I don't want to come back to Konoha. I want to erase it from the face of this planet."

"Sasuke..." Sakura starts. He looks her directly in the eye and she is brave enough not to avert her eyes.

Quicker than anyone can blink, there are black flames igniting all over the pinkette and Naruto's screaming and his chakra's flaring so impossibly strongly that Ino can see it and chakra isn't supposed to be visible, not to normal eyes, anyway. The second wave of Naruto's chakra is so strong it literally blows Ino hundreds of feet away and knocks her out cold.

She wakes minutes later, head pounding so painfully that her vision is blurred and yet she can still make out the bright mass of red that is Naruto. There seem to be tails at his backside and he's yelling so loudly (any normal person would be hoarse) that even at such a distance, Ino can still hear every word clearly.

"We had a bond, Sasuke! You're like a brother to me. You were the first person that ever mattered to me."

It takes Ino considerably more effort to hear Sasuke's response.

"You and your bonds mean nothing to me."

And at that moment, she realizes that maybe her heart won't break, maybe he wasn't who she thought he was. Maybe she was wrong about him all these years.

Maybe her Sasuke-kun never really existed to begin with.

...

Wake up, Ino.

A / N : I've never responded to open challenges before, but I saw one and I just had to do it. The challenge was to "Write three scenes, one in the past, one in the present, and one in the future. Trick is the last line from the first scene has to be the first line in the second and the last line of the second must be the first line of the third, and the last line of the third has to be the first line of the first." It's a very old challenge, I found it by reading a response to it named Fledgling by Moonsheen. So anyway, this was highly experimental blahblahblah... Tell me your thoughts?