[Log] We went from perfect strangers to less-than-perfect friends [Ino, Kiba] [Closed]
Who: Kiba & Ino
What: Ino stops by to say sorry for being weird. Is more weird. Kiba goes ....o.O
When: Before this entry~
Where: Kiba's room
Notes: Slight tinge of emoness, language warnings~
This wasn't going as easily as Kiba had planned.
He'd expected to just drop the damn thing off, do the bolt, and never have to think of it again. But, no, Ino had decided to accuse him of being some big sappy soft guy (which wouldn't be so bad if she wasn't actually RIGHT in this case) and now he was sort of smarting from it. His reputation could be ruined over this. But, nooooo. Ino had seen fit to accuse him of actually caring in what amounted to public amongst the Nevada Facility.
Bitch.
Kiba frowned at his computer monitor and tried to come up with a logical excuse for buying his teammate chocolate to make her feel better. Well. Other than that, anyway. He just didn't...do the 'Nice Guy' thing, it wasn't his style. 'Wham,Bam, Thank You Ma'am', that was about the extent he wanted to involve himself in, except...
...well, except for that fact that he hated to see people feeling down. And Ino was pretty tough, really, so if she was in need of a 'mental health day' or whatever she'd called it, he tended to think it was with damn good reason. Which worried him. Sure, he knew that not everybody thought of this programme as the life-saver it had been for him. And the girls often had it worse - had to do things by far nastier than he'd ever have to do. But for someone who'd been in it (at least) from their teens, whatever was bothering Ino must be pretty bad for her to call a day-long time out.
And while Kiba freely admitted to being bastard, he wasn't an asshole. That was important difference. Bastards did whatever it took to get the job done, but at least they had some principles. Assholes weren't distracted by such petty morals. He hoped he never turned into the latter, no matter how much he wanted to repay all the good that had been done for him. It wasn't worth that.
Akamaru whined enquiringly from his comfortable perch on their bed, and Kiba gave him a reassuring grin (albeit slightly upside-down as he leaned back in his chair). "Da. Strange world we're living in, huh?"
Time for another vodka, he felt...
She had gone through the chocolate easily, despite Iruka telling her to rest her stomach. After the wave of nausea hit, she wanted to eat something sugary and eat it fast. The chocolate had just been sitting there, possibly poisoned, but Ino thought fuck it all, and just downed it while reading a bodice ripper novel with Fabio on the cover. Ino knew she couldn't hide forever, wouldn't hide forever. TheYamanaka were a brave stock. Nothing got them down for long. It was just the memories of everything rushing back into her mind all at once. The kidnapping, the death of her father, the violations-- it hit her so hard she didn't even have time to catch her breath. But Ino knew she couldn't do this anymore. People would wonder, her teammates would worry. She didn't want to do that to them.
Luckily, one of the girls on another team had a bottle of rum that she wanted to share with Ino. Although Ino drank a bit in Germany, she was very much a lightweight. After two shots, Ino was tipsy and happy and making her way to Kiba's room to thank him for the chocolate. It had to be him, as much as he denied it. It HAD to.
She liked Kiba, he was a good guy despite his rough exterior. He pretended to be a bad ass but underneath he was kind and mooshy. Not that he would want anyone to know that, of course. He was one of the guys she felt most comfortable around. Safe around, even. "Hey, Champ~" Ino knocked on his open door and leaned in the doorway. "What's up?"
Alcohol + Ino = not good idea.
Boze moi, here came trouble. Kiba leaned back further in his chair and raised (lowered?) an eyebrow. "Yo, dushka. You smell like...rum. Captain Morgan," he stated bluntly, and frowned a little. "Aren't you supposed to be 'sick'? Because drunk isn't sick. That, I believe, is cheating."
This was a worrying development, he sighed to himself, waving Akamaru down as the Malamute instinctively went on guard. Kiba swivelled and swung himself out of his chair, waving Ino grudgingly in and hooking two fingers around his open vodka bottle. He hadn't actually drunk any, but he was sort of fond of the smell. Reminded him of the good old days....or the bad old days. Whatever, they'd seemed relatively good at the time.
Cocking another look at his blonde teammate, he screwed the cap firmly on and stashed it in the bottom drawer of his bedside cabinet, sprawling onto the bed. One arm propped him up; the other was preoccupied turning Akamaru back into a gleefully wriggling puppy by expedient of scratching in just the right places. "What brings you out of your 'mental health day' to come annoy me,hmm?" he drawled, accent thickening the glottals into aural molasses. Honestly, what the shit was this girl up to?!
Cheating? How could they even define "cheating"? Everything they did was cheating or a lie. "The mental health day is over. I'll be working eight times as hard tomorrow to make up for it," Ino sat down on his bed, leaning back on her hands with a smile. She would probably lock herself up in one of the training rooms after the group training was over and run for hours on the treadmill. The one thing that depressed her it was that she never got anywhere. That sucked. "I'm sorry."
She felt like apologizing to everyone for her fucked up nature. For being so afraid that she couldn't get out of bed. For masking her problems with alcohol. For not being brave enough to face her problems head on.
Damn. This is why she didn't drink. It always made her more depressed.
"I guess that was all I really wanted to say."
Kiba regarded her steadily, wondering what Ino thought she was apologising for. Taking a day out? Like that was such a huge deal. Happened to the best of them. Some of the stuff they saw, the stuff they had to do...it was pretty horrific. They all knew it. Killing for a living was messy business, and if anything being conditioned to do it from childhood just made it all worse. It became some sort of grisly routine, a horror-movie natural reaction. It wasn't easy on the psyche, that was for sure, but they all found their own ways of escaping it.
This was what they'd been made to be, after all. It was too late to escape, even if they'd wanted to.
He sighed, a long exhale through his nose in an effort to clear it of the spicy tang of the Captain Morgan, of all the myriad scents that told him far more about his teammate than Kiba really wanted to know. "Why the rum?" he asked, bringing a bare foot up absently to help scratch Akamaru's spine. "Always a bad idea on a health day, you know. Even if it's over now."
"It was just stupid," Ino laughed again, semi-sauced but mostly coherent. "And not great for my stomach, either. Dr. Iruka is going to really yell at me if he finds out. But what can you do, right? I'm a teenager, teenagers do this sort of stuff from time to time." Normal teenagers, sure. Not them, never them. All of this emotional crap had just hit her at a bad time and gave her a tiny weak moment. Surely people had to understand.
Then again, she couldn't ever imagine Kiba having a weak moment.
"I saw someone I used to know, things happened, it was just screwed up. But I'm over it now."
"Mmm." Maybe he was just a little too leery of other people drinking: Kiba had been a reasonably heavy drinker before he was ten, not an unusual circumstance for a street urchin smart enough to steal the water that made him warm, and by now he knew how to handle himself with it. He didn't even drink a lot, not considering his tolerance for the stuff, and it was sort of...a test. Or a competition. He'd spent years shoring up his willpower - really, it was his greatest strength - and now every drink was a challenge. I can do this without going overboard. He could be normal with it. I can do this without needing it. Ah, yes, the little lies they told themselves were always the most believable, right?
Kiba smirked slightly and turned his attention outward again. "Someone you used to know? Another recruit?" he asked, more for the sake of it than any real curiosity. If he had to guess, he'd pick the 'ex-boyfriend' card, or maybe 'ex-best friend', just from the way she'd phrased it.
And he didn't bother to point out that if she was 'over it now', she wouldn't be this twisted up over it. That probably went without saying.
Ino hesitated for a moment. He would probably make fun of her, anyway, so what was the point in hiding it, right? He would probably say something like women were so sensitive and shouldn't she be over this kind of thing by now? He was probably right. It was hindering her from ever being with anyone. Not that she would ever have a normal life with two kids and a dog but it was nice to dream.
"A scientist who used to train me in Germany. He came here and I saw him. You know, training. Girl training. When I was thirteen," her throat was dry again. She could see why people turned to alcohol to make things easier to say. "I was just unprepared to see him. That's all."
Was it being forced to have sex that bothered her so much? Or was it her father willingly letting her go? He had to know what kind of place it was, he worked there for... forever. But he couldn't have known. Couldn't have.
After a silent moment, Kiba eased off the bed and shut the door, then opened his window, nose into the breeze. Normally he liked to shut the greater world of the compound out; it got overwhelming, his ears and nose were so sensitive these days and there were things he really didn't need to know. But being alone in a room with a girl that smelled increasingly like old fear and bitterness drove him half-nuts, like having an itch he couldn't scratch or a mosquito buzzing around his head. He needed the distraction.
He gave a low rumble, probably inaudible to Ino but enough of a signal to 'Maru that the Malamute wagged his tail and nudged his blunt nose against the girl's leg hopefully. No matter how smart and well-trained he was - which was extremely - he was still a dog and Ino was part of his pack. That meant scratches, please. Kiba pursed his lips and leaned against his desk, watching them blandly. "Mmm. I don't think I could have handled being a girl in this programme," he said thoughtfully, rubbing a thumb over forefinger in absent habit. It was true, too, not an idle confidence-boost. The slum streets of StPetersburg weren't exactly paved with happiness, and if he'd been a less wild child, a little prettier, he might have been in for even more of a hell than his female compatriots had to deal with. He'd escaped that with a combination of luck and skill, and now it wasn't something he'd likely ever been called on to do.
He knew damn well that the girls did it on horrifyingly regular basis, though. And from far younger than they ought. He could smell it when they returned to base, reeking of exhaustion and sweat and horror and shame. It was one of the reasons he tried to keep himself so distant, though Kiba freely admitted that he sort of sucked at that. But it was hard, knowing all this shit about people without even wanting to. And if they knew what he knew...well, they probably wouldn't like it, would they? "How old were you when they got you in?" he asked suddenly, a vain attempt to rid himself of this damned itch that crept up every time he caught a whiff of the darker side of humanity. Or the lack of it. "I hear they got some kids in from birth. Can you imagine that?"
Well, that was probably just a story. Who could grow up in something like this?
Ino scratched behind one of Akamaru's ears absently, wondering why she was talking to Kiba, of all people, about this. He wasn't exactly Mr. Sensitive but he wasn't the type to go blab to others, either. It wasn't something she wanted to remember but she remembered it as thought it had happened yesterday instead of ten years ago. Had it really been that long? That was also the last time she saw her father before they had told her that he was dead and to stop hoping that he'd ever save her. Wasn't he the one who sold her to them to make sure that they didn't kill him?
And yet, they killed him anyway. That was just their style, she supposed.
"I was eight. My father... got involved with them and things happened and so I was here at eight." Ino didn't want Kiba to think badly of her father, despite the fact he SOLD her to them for his own benefit. Or so they told her, anyway. She still loved her father despite everything. Ino would have given anything to have him here with her. "So it's been ten years since I started.
"Maybe it would have been better to come in from birth. Then you never know what you're missing by being locked up here."
Eight, huh? "Same. So they tell me, anyway." Kiba didn't actually know his age - not really know, all by himself. They'd just put his DNA in the cooker and pronounced his chronological age from it.
For some reason, though, he'd always known his birthday...He pressed his thumb into his lip briefly and nibbled at a hangnail. "You think it'd be better? Huh. I guess. Maybe it depends on where you came from. For me it was sort of an improvement." Oh, yes, a major improvement. Three meals a day? A warm place to sleep? Heaven. That was half the reason Kiba was so loyal to Mist Sector in the first place.
Well, that, and his little 'family'. It was strange, really, how he seemed to be the luckiest out of everybody in this hellishly hot compound. Maybe it was to make up for all the super-cool shit he couldn't do and everybody else could. Kiba rather thought he'd gotten the better bargain, if that was the case. "Like I said, though, couldn't do it as a girl. I'd end up killing too many of them." Ugh, that was true, too. He was violent enough as a guy; if he was a woman pandering to some lecher he'd probably be downright tempestuous. And cut their sleazy hands off. Hell, half the time he wanted to do it anyway.
He slouched back over to the bed, not meeting Ino's gaze, not wanting to know what he'd find there. Did anybody realise that they were open books for someone who spoke fluent body language? The way she slouched, the way she fidgeted, the angle she had her head at...it'd all tell him too much. Kiba almost felt like a voyeur half the time. And this was around people trained to hide their thoughts and feelings. Did his head in. He played with Akamaru's paws instead, trading a sober look with him. People discounted the dog half the time, not realising exactly how well they communicated, or how much he understood.
Oh, well. That was the way things worked best, really.
"Before eight, everything was pretty nice. But it's fine. I think I just overreacted a little. Who cares about that stuff anymore?" She did. She really did. If she saw that scientist again there was no doubt that she would punch him right in his pretty face. Guys like that made her sick. Using and abusing their power over children and called it "tactics". It didn't make her stronger, though she supposed making her not ever want to be intimate with a man unless she had to made for a good spy. She supposed she was okay with this, though it made for uncomfortable situations when men wanted to, you know, DO it.
They would just have to get used to being disappointed. "Anyway, sorry and all that. I didn't mean to fuck up and I'm sure it won't happen again."
It was easier to brush it off and pretend like it didn't matter, at least in front of other people.
"A day off isn't 'fucking up'," Kiba informed her neutrally. There was a hunch to her shoulders - more a mere tightening of key muscles, invisible under her shirt but decipherable from the way it flowed through her arms and affected her posture, no more than a few millimeters out of line - that told him there was more to this story, or this hurt, than she was willing to show. That was fine with him. He had no desire to be trapped inside Ino's head; bad enough being in his at times.
He sighed again, sprawling out over his pillows with his hands linked behind his head and looking up at the ceiling. "Letting it get to you in the middle of a mission...that would be 'fucking up'. Letting someone use it against you, too." There was a tacit warning in there, if she looked for it: 'Not everybody is trustworthy. And no doubt Ino knew this - probably better than he did, for that matter - but what was to stop him from going to their superiors and telling them thatYamanaka was unhinged around the edges about one of her 'duties'? What in hell made her think that Kiba was so trustworthy with this?
Not that he would do any of that, of course. They were all a little off the wall in one way or another, Ino's flakiness made more sense than most.
"I've never let anyone get to me before," she snapped at him. Ino was good at what she did-- being an actress, that is. It wasn't so much that sex scared her. She could perform, and well, to boot, but just seeing that man made her flip. Sex was like a job to her. She got paid to do it, if the job called for it. That just meant she didn't feel like doing it for fun. Men were assholes that only cared about getting off. She had yet to meet a man who actually cared about her. "Just forget it. I came to say sorry and I did."
Ino stood up and brushed herself off, giving Akamaru another pat on the head. What had she been expecting? A pat on the head herself? "I'm going. See you tomorrow."
Had she actually thought Kiba was concerned for her well being? Kiba didn't care about anyone, why would she even think that?
"Ino..." Kiba trailed off, expression now tinged with what could almost pass for concern. He didn't like the way her expression was shifting, the way her nostrils flared a little, the slightly irregular rhythm of her heartbeat. She was turning from hot to cold, metaphorically speaking. He could see it in her movements and hear it in the strain tainting her voice. Part of him wanted to knock her down and sit on her, but the other half pointed out that A) she was as well-trained as he was and could quite possibly kick his ass and B) even if she couldn't do so PHYSICALLY she could just possess him. A tipsy Ino in his body sounded like a disaster waiting to happen.
Kiba scratched at his head and sat up, soles of his feet brushing against the plush carpet. "C'mere," he ordered her with a vague gesture at the area before him. "I want you to promise me that you're not going to go and do something stupid. Like, for example, having another drink or seven." He didn't exactly glare at her, but there was definite 'I know what you're thinking,missy' quality that lent steel to his gaze. "'Coz if you vomit, it'll take me a good week to get rid of that from my nostrils. Not to mention the fact that I'll probably have to come and save you from drowning in it. And while I like you, I don't like you enough to want to sit in your ejected stomach fluids with you. 'Kay, dushka?"
She turned to him, moving a bit too fast and winding up steadying her hands on her shoulders so as not to faceplant in his crotch. That would not have made for a very good exit. She could feel her face turn red from embarrassment, alcohol, and anger though the latter wasn't directed at him. "I'll be fine," Ino enunciated each word, trying to make him understand. Maybe there was that language barrier thing. Maybe he didn't really understand. But he should.
He was a nice guy, in secret. For that, Ino gave him a hug.
But she wasn't promising that she wasn't drinking more alcohol. Who knew what could happen between now and later?
"Hey, I--" Kiba began to protest, then rolled his eyes and gently patted her back. It didn't escape his notice that she was sort of leaning, sort of pink around the edges, and sort of avoiding the promise, but he didn't push it. In the state she was in, she'd only get pettish and pouty and he really couldn't be bothered with that. Women. So much damn work.
Akamaru licked Ino's hand soothingly and his partner stopped glaring into the ceiling. Oh, well... "There now, dushka. What's all this for, huh?" He wasn't used to hugs. Not the sort of physicality he generally went in for. Hell, his personal room policy was 'Fight, fuck, or get out', right? Except for right now, when Ino was doing none of the above. Well, he could make an exception, he supposed. At least she smelled nice, and he didn't mind the scent of spiced rum, either. Even if there was more of it on her breath than he might have liked. "You should go get some water. And sleep this off."
She wasn't going to take his advice. He knew that even as he said it, but posterity demanded he should go through with it anyway. Kiba stroked her hair softly, if a little awkwardly, vaguely aware that you were supposed to do that in this sort of situation. Maybe. Not that he'd ever been in it before. "Mmm?"
Now that Ino was more leaning on him than hugging him, she knew it was time to go before he picked her up and took her back. Kankurou had already done that; it had hurt her pride enough the first time. People had been quite amused to see her being dragged around by him. Ino, on the other hand, was not quite so amused. "Mmm, okay," she leaned in and pressed a kiss to his cheek, enough to show her appreciation for his concern for his well being, as rough around the edges as it was. "I'll go to sleep."
After drinking some more alcohol. It was funny how alcohol seemed to take the edge off things, made everything comfortable and blurry...
Not that she would get into the habit. Never that.
What: Ino stops by to say sorry for being weird. Is more weird. Kiba goes ....o.O
When: Before this entry~
Where: Kiba's room
Notes: Slight tinge of emoness, language warnings~
This wasn't going as easily as Kiba had planned.
He'd expected to just drop the damn thing off, do the bolt, and never have to think of it again. But, no, Ino had decided to accuse him of being some big sappy soft guy (which wouldn't be so bad if she wasn't actually RIGHT in this case) and now he was sort of smarting from it. His reputation could be ruined over this. But, nooooo. Ino had seen fit to accuse him of actually caring in what amounted to public amongst the Nevada Facility.
Bitch.
Kiba frowned at his computer monitor and tried to come up with a logical excuse for buying his teammate chocolate to make her feel better. Well. Other than that, anyway. He just didn't...do the 'Nice Guy' thing, it wasn't his style. 'Wham,Bam, Thank You Ma'am', that was about the extent he wanted to involve himself in, except...
...well, except for that fact that he hated to see people feeling down. And Ino was pretty tough, really, so if she was in need of a 'mental health day' or whatever she'd called it, he tended to think it was with damn good reason. Which worried him. Sure, he knew that not everybody thought of this programme as the life-saver it had been for him. And the girls often had it worse - had to do things by far nastier than he'd ever have to do. But for someone who'd been in it (at least) from their teens, whatever was bothering Ino must be pretty bad for her to call a day-long time out.
And while Kiba freely admitted to being bastard, he wasn't an asshole. That was important difference. Bastards did whatever it took to get the job done, but at least they had some principles. Assholes weren't distracted by such petty morals. He hoped he never turned into the latter, no matter how much he wanted to repay all the good that had been done for him. It wasn't worth that.
Akamaru whined enquiringly from his comfortable perch on their bed, and Kiba gave him a reassuring grin (albeit slightly upside-down as he leaned back in his chair). "Da. Strange world we're living in, huh?"
Time for another vodka, he felt...
She had gone through the chocolate easily, despite Iruka telling her to rest her stomach. After the wave of nausea hit, she wanted to eat something sugary and eat it fast. The chocolate had just been sitting there, possibly poisoned, but Ino thought fuck it all, and just downed it while reading a bodice ripper novel with Fabio on the cover. Ino knew she couldn't hide forever, wouldn't hide forever. TheYamanaka were a brave stock. Nothing got them down for long. It was just the memories of everything rushing back into her mind all at once. The kidnapping, the death of her father, the violations-- it hit her so hard she didn't even have time to catch her breath. But Ino knew she couldn't do this anymore. People would wonder, her teammates would worry. She didn't want to do that to them.
Luckily, one of the girls on another team had a bottle of rum that she wanted to share with Ino. Although Ino drank a bit in Germany, she was very much a lightweight. After two shots, Ino was tipsy and happy and making her way to Kiba's room to thank him for the chocolate. It had to be him, as much as he denied it. It HAD to.
She liked Kiba, he was a good guy despite his rough exterior. He pretended to be a bad ass but underneath he was kind and mooshy. Not that he would want anyone to know that, of course. He was one of the guys she felt most comfortable around. Safe around, even. "Hey, Champ~" Ino knocked on his open door and leaned in the doorway. "What's up?"
Alcohol + Ino = not good idea.
Boze moi, here came trouble. Kiba leaned back further in his chair and raised (lowered?) an eyebrow. "Yo, dushka. You smell like...rum. Captain Morgan," he stated bluntly, and frowned a little. "Aren't you supposed to be 'sick'? Because drunk isn't sick. That, I believe, is cheating."
This was a worrying development, he sighed to himself, waving Akamaru down as the Malamute instinctively went on guard. Kiba swivelled and swung himself out of his chair, waving Ino grudgingly in and hooking two fingers around his open vodka bottle. He hadn't actually drunk any, but he was sort of fond of the smell. Reminded him of the good old days....or the bad old days. Whatever, they'd seemed relatively good at the time.
Cocking another look at his blonde teammate, he screwed the cap firmly on and stashed it in the bottom drawer of his bedside cabinet, sprawling onto the bed. One arm propped him up; the other was preoccupied turning Akamaru back into a gleefully wriggling puppy by expedient of scratching in just the right places. "What brings you out of your 'mental health day' to come annoy me,hmm?" he drawled, accent thickening the glottals into aural molasses. Honestly, what the shit was this girl up to?!
Cheating? How could they even define "cheating"? Everything they did was cheating or a lie. "The mental health day is over. I'll be working eight times as hard tomorrow to make up for it," Ino sat down on his bed, leaning back on her hands with a smile. She would probably lock herself up in one of the training rooms after the group training was over and run for hours on the treadmill. The one thing that depressed her it was that she never got anywhere. That sucked. "I'm sorry."
She felt like apologizing to everyone for her fucked up nature. For being so afraid that she couldn't get out of bed. For masking her problems with alcohol. For not being brave enough to face her problems head on.
Damn. This is why she didn't drink. It always made her more depressed.
"I guess that was all I really wanted to say."
Kiba regarded her steadily, wondering what Ino thought she was apologising for. Taking a day out? Like that was such a huge deal. Happened to the best of them. Some of the stuff they saw, the stuff they had to do...it was pretty horrific. They all knew it. Killing for a living was messy business, and if anything being conditioned to do it from childhood just made it all worse. It became some sort of grisly routine, a horror-movie natural reaction. It wasn't easy on the psyche, that was for sure, but they all found their own ways of escaping it.
This was what they'd been made to be, after all. It was too late to escape, even if they'd wanted to.
He sighed, a long exhale through his nose in an effort to clear it of the spicy tang of the Captain Morgan, of all the myriad scents that told him far more about his teammate than Kiba really wanted to know. "Why the rum?" he asked, bringing a bare foot up absently to help scratch Akamaru's spine. "Always a bad idea on a health day, you know. Even if it's over now."
"It was just stupid," Ino laughed again, semi-sauced but mostly coherent. "And not great for my stomach, either. Dr. Iruka is going to really yell at me if he finds out. But what can you do, right? I'm a teenager, teenagers do this sort of stuff from time to time." Normal teenagers, sure. Not them, never them. All of this emotional crap had just hit her at a bad time and gave her a tiny weak moment. Surely people had to understand.
Then again, she couldn't ever imagine Kiba having a weak moment.
"I saw someone I used to know, things happened, it was just screwed up. But I'm over it now."
"Mmm." Maybe he was just a little too leery of other people drinking: Kiba had been a reasonably heavy drinker before he was ten, not an unusual circumstance for a street urchin smart enough to steal the water that made him warm, and by now he knew how to handle himself with it. He didn't even drink a lot, not considering his tolerance for the stuff, and it was sort of...a test. Or a competition. He'd spent years shoring up his willpower - really, it was his greatest strength - and now every drink was a challenge. I can do this without going overboard. He could be normal with it. I can do this without needing it. Ah, yes, the little lies they told themselves were always the most believable, right?
Kiba smirked slightly and turned his attention outward again. "Someone you used to know? Another recruit?" he asked, more for the sake of it than any real curiosity. If he had to guess, he'd pick the 'ex-boyfriend' card, or maybe 'ex-best friend', just from the way she'd phrased it.
And he didn't bother to point out that if she was 'over it now', she wouldn't be this twisted up over it. That probably went without saying.
Ino hesitated for a moment. He would probably make fun of her, anyway, so what was the point in hiding it, right? He would probably say something like women were so sensitive and shouldn't she be over this kind of thing by now? He was probably right. It was hindering her from ever being with anyone. Not that she would ever have a normal life with two kids and a dog but it was nice to dream.
"A scientist who used to train me in Germany. He came here and I saw him. You know, training. Girl training. When I was thirteen," her throat was dry again. She could see why people turned to alcohol to make things easier to say. "I was just unprepared to see him. That's all."
Was it being forced to have sex that bothered her so much? Or was it her father willingly letting her go? He had to know what kind of place it was, he worked there for... forever. But he couldn't have known. Couldn't have.
After a silent moment, Kiba eased off the bed and shut the door, then opened his window, nose into the breeze. Normally he liked to shut the greater world of the compound out; it got overwhelming, his ears and nose were so sensitive these days and there were things he really didn't need to know. But being alone in a room with a girl that smelled increasingly like old fear and bitterness drove him half-nuts, like having an itch he couldn't scratch or a mosquito buzzing around his head. He needed the distraction.
He gave a low rumble, probably inaudible to Ino but enough of a signal to 'Maru that the Malamute wagged his tail and nudged his blunt nose against the girl's leg hopefully. No matter how smart and well-trained he was - which was extremely - he was still a dog and Ino was part of his pack. That meant scratches, please. Kiba pursed his lips and leaned against his desk, watching them blandly. "Mmm. I don't think I could have handled being a girl in this programme," he said thoughtfully, rubbing a thumb over forefinger in absent habit. It was true, too, not an idle confidence-boost. The slum streets of StPetersburg weren't exactly paved with happiness, and if he'd been a less wild child, a little prettier, he might have been in for even more of a hell than his female compatriots had to deal with. He'd escaped that with a combination of luck and skill, and now it wasn't something he'd likely ever been called on to do.
He knew damn well that the girls did it on horrifyingly regular basis, though. And from far younger than they ought. He could smell it when they returned to base, reeking of exhaustion and sweat and horror and shame. It was one of the reasons he tried to keep himself so distant, though Kiba freely admitted that he sort of sucked at that. But it was hard, knowing all this shit about people without even wanting to. And if they knew what he knew...well, they probably wouldn't like it, would they? "How old were you when they got you in?" he asked suddenly, a vain attempt to rid himself of this damned itch that crept up every time he caught a whiff of the darker side of humanity. Or the lack of it. "I hear they got some kids in from birth. Can you imagine that?"
Well, that was probably just a story. Who could grow up in something like this?
Ino scratched behind one of Akamaru's ears absently, wondering why she was talking to Kiba, of all people, about this. He wasn't exactly Mr. Sensitive but he wasn't the type to go blab to others, either. It wasn't something she wanted to remember but she remembered it as thought it had happened yesterday instead of ten years ago. Had it really been that long? That was also the last time she saw her father before they had told her that he was dead and to stop hoping that he'd ever save her. Wasn't he the one who sold her to them to make sure that they didn't kill him?
And yet, they killed him anyway. That was just their style, she supposed.
"I was eight. My father... got involved with them and things happened and so I was here at eight." Ino didn't want Kiba to think badly of her father, despite the fact he SOLD her to them for his own benefit. Or so they told her, anyway. She still loved her father despite everything. Ino would have given anything to have him here with her. "So it's been ten years since I started.
"Maybe it would have been better to come in from birth. Then you never know what you're missing by being locked up here."
Eight, huh? "Same. So they tell me, anyway." Kiba didn't actually know his age - not really know, all by himself. They'd just put his DNA in the cooker and pronounced his chronological age from it.
For some reason, though, he'd always known his birthday...He pressed his thumb into his lip briefly and nibbled at a hangnail. "You think it'd be better? Huh. I guess. Maybe it depends on where you came from. For me it was sort of an improvement." Oh, yes, a major improvement. Three meals a day? A warm place to sleep? Heaven. That was half the reason Kiba was so loyal to Mist Sector in the first place.
Well, that, and his little 'family'. It was strange, really, how he seemed to be the luckiest out of everybody in this hellishly hot compound. Maybe it was to make up for all the super-cool shit he couldn't do and everybody else could. Kiba rather thought he'd gotten the better bargain, if that was the case. "Like I said, though, couldn't do it as a girl. I'd end up killing too many of them." Ugh, that was true, too. He was violent enough as a guy; if he was a woman pandering to some lecher he'd probably be downright tempestuous. And cut their sleazy hands off. Hell, half the time he wanted to do it anyway.
He slouched back over to the bed, not meeting Ino's gaze, not wanting to know what he'd find there. Did anybody realise that they were open books for someone who spoke fluent body language? The way she slouched, the way she fidgeted, the angle she had her head at...it'd all tell him too much. Kiba almost felt like a voyeur half the time. And this was around people trained to hide their thoughts and feelings. Did his head in. He played with Akamaru's paws instead, trading a sober look with him. People discounted the dog half the time, not realising exactly how well they communicated, or how much he understood.
Oh, well. That was the way things worked best, really.
"Before eight, everything was pretty nice. But it's fine. I think I just overreacted a little. Who cares about that stuff anymore?" She did. She really did. If she saw that scientist again there was no doubt that she would punch him right in his pretty face. Guys like that made her sick. Using and abusing their power over children and called it "tactics". It didn't make her stronger, though she supposed making her not ever want to be intimate with a man unless she had to made for a good spy. She supposed she was okay with this, though it made for uncomfortable situations when men wanted to, you know, DO it.
They would just have to get used to being disappointed. "Anyway, sorry and all that. I didn't mean to fuck up and I'm sure it won't happen again."
It was easier to brush it off and pretend like it didn't matter, at least in front of other people.
"A day off isn't 'fucking up'," Kiba informed her neutrally. There was a hunch to her shoulders - more a mere tightening of key muscles, invisible under her shirt but decipherable from the way it flowed through her arms and affected her posture, no more than a few millimeters out of line - that told him there was more to this story, or this hurt, than she was willing to show. That was fine with him. He had no desire to be trapped inside Ino's head; bad enough being in his at times.
He sighed again, sprawling out over his pillows with his hands linked behind his head and looking up at the ceiling. "Letting it get to you in the middle of a mission...that would be 'fucking up'. Letting someone use it against you, too." There was a tacit warning in there, if she looked for it: 'Not everybody is trustworthy. And no doubt Ino knew this - probably better than he did, for that matter - but what was to stop him from going to their superiors and telling them thatYamanaka was unhinged around the edges about one of her 'duties'? What in hell made her think that Kiba was so trustworthy with this?
Not that he would do any of that, of course. They were all a little off the wall in one way or another, Ino's flakiness made more sense than most.
"I've never let anyone get to me before," she snapped at him. Ino was good at what she did-- being an actress, that is. It wasn't so much that sex scared her. She could perform, and well, to boot, but just seeing that man made her flip. Sex was like a job to her. She got paid to do it, if the job called for it. That just meant she didn't feel like doing it for fun. Men were assholes that only cared about getting off. She had yet to meet a man who actually cared about her. "Just forget it. I came to say sorry and I did."
Ino stood up and brushed herself off, giving Akamaru another pat on the head. What had she been expecting? A pat on the head herself? "I'm going. See you tomorrow."
Had she actually thought Kiba was concerned for her well being? Kiba didn't care about anyone, why would she even think that?
"Ino..." Kiba trailed off, expression now tinged with what could almost pass for concern. He didn't like the way her expression was shifting, the way her nostrils flared a little, the slightly irregular rhythm of her heartbeat. She was turning from hot to cold, metaphorically speaking. He could see it in her movements and hear it in the strain tainting her voice. Part of him wanted to knock her down and sit on her, but the other half pointed out that A) she was as well-trained as he was and could quite possibly kick his ass and B) even if she couldn't do so PHYSICALLY she could just possess him. A tipsy Ino in his body sounded like a disaster waiting to happen.
Kiba scratched at his head and sat up, soles of his feet brushing against the plush carpet. "C'mere," he ordered her with a vague gesture at the area before him. "I want you to promise me that you're not going to go and do something stupid. Like, for example, having another drink or seven." He didn't exactly glare at her, but there was definite 'I know what you're thinking,missy' quality that lent steel to his gaze. "'Coz if you vomit, it'll take me a good week to get rid of that from my nostrils. Not to mention the fact that I'll probably have to come and save you from drowning in it. And while I like you, I don't like you enough to want to sit in your ejected stomach fluids with you. 'Kay, dushka?"
She turned to him, moving a bit too fast and winding up steadying her hands on her shoulders so as not to faceplant in his crotch. That would not have made for a very good exit. She could feel her face turn red from embarrassment, alcohol, and anger though the latter wasn't directed at him. "I'll be fine," Ino enunciated each word, trying to make him understand. Maybe there was that language barrier thing. Maybe he didn't really understand. But he should.
He was a nice guy, in secret. For that, Ino gave him a hug.
But she wasn't promising that she wasn't drinking more alcohol. Who knew what could happen between now and later?
"Hey, I--" Kiba began to protest, then rolled his eyes and gently patted her back. It didn't escape his notice that she was sort of leaning, sort of pink around the edges, and sort of avoiding the promise, but he didn't push it. In the state she was in, she'd only get pettish and pouty and he really couldn't be bothered with that. Women. So much damn work.
Akamaru licked Ino's hand soothingly and his partner stopped glaring into the ceiling. Oh, well... "There now, dushka. What's all this for, huh?" He wasn't used to hugs. Not the sort of physicality he generally went in for. Hell, his personal room policy was 'Fight, fuck, or get out', right? Except for right now, when Ino was doing none of the above. Well, he could make an exception, he supposed. At least she smelled nice, and he didn't mind the scent of spiced rum, either. Even if there was more of it on her breath than he might have liked. "You should go get some water. And sleep this off."
She wasn't going to take his advice. He knew that even as he said it, but posterity demanded he should go through with it anyway. Kiba stroked her hair softly, if a little awkwardly, vaguely aware that you were supposed to do that in this sort of situation. Maybe. Not that he'd ever been in it before. "Mmm?"
Now that Ino was more leaning on him than hugging him, she knew it was time to go before he picked her up and took her back. Kankurou had already done that; it had hurt her pride enough the first time. People had been quite amused to see her being dragged around by him. Ino, on the other hand, was not quite so amused. "Mmm, okay," she leaned in and pressed a kiss to his cheek, enough to show her appreciation for his concern for his well being, as rough around the edges as it was. "I'll go to sleep."
After drinking some more alcohol. It was funny how alcohol seemed to take the edge off things, made everything comfortable and blurry...
Not that she would get into the habit. Never that.