A Bali Ha'i Beach, Wednesday Afternoon

[intraspective]

Ino had a ball, and a bathing suit, and was in generally a really great mood.

And why not?

They were in a totally beautiful place and she'd skipped out of work.

"Lana!" Ino chirped, spinning lightly and laughingly tossing the ball. "Catch!"

[For the one that convinced her to cut work!]

Comments

[lovelylana.livejournal.com]

Lana caught the ball. "You didn't tell me I'd have to work still here," she said with a grin.

[intraspective]

Ino laughed, spinning a bit. "Catching a ball isn't work!"

[lovelylana.livejournal.com]

"Not for you, maybe!" Lana said with a laugh and tossed the ball back.

[intraspective]

"Oh come on!" Ino protested, catching it easily. "Don't tell me that this is seriously work for you!"

[lovelylana.livejournal.com]

"More for me than you!" Lana said with a grin.

[intraspective]

"You need to work out more if this poor little ball is work!" Ino laughed, and tossed it back at Lana.

[lovelylana.livejournal.com]

"Well, it's not stretching out and dozing in the sun, that's for sure!" Lana shot back with a smile.

[intraspective]

That got a... well, that got a stare.

Then a laugh.

"I'm not sleeping on a beach!" Ino crowed. "I'd never even been to a beach before coming to Fandom! No way am I sleeping!"

[lovelylana.livejournal.com]

"Sunning and chatting?" Lana suggested.

[intraspective]

...

"...that works," Ino conceded.

[lovelylana.livejournal.com]

"Excellent!" Lana said and flopped down on her blanket. "So... how's it going?"

[intraspective]

Ino took her time wandering over to her blanket and flopping down.

"Everything's a mess," she said, leaning back. "And I can't tell if it's in my own head, or what."

[lovelylana.livejournal.com]

"Anything I can do to help?" Lana asked quietly.

[intraspective]

"I just keep messing up," Ino said, playing with the sand close to her. "But I can't tell if the mess up is all in my head, or if I'm actually doing things wrong. Or what. I don't know what's wrong with me."

[lovelylana.livejournal.com]

"What do you think you're messing up?" Lana asked gently.

[intraspective]

"Everything?" Ino tried half-heartedly.

[lovelylana.livejournal.com]

"Let's start with one thing then," Lana suggested.

[intraspective]

“I don’t know where to start,” she said, trickling sand out of her hands. “I keep thinking if I could find what started all of my mess-ups then I could, you know, stop messing up. But then things get complicated. Is there any real point in treating the little issues if I can’t even figure out what the biggest one is?”

[lovelylana.livejournal.com]

"Of course there's a point," Lana said gently, but firmly. "In training you don't try to fix everything at once, you start with the small things and that can help you first feel a little success and then also help you figure out what the bigger problem is."

[intraspective]

"I guess..." Ino said, sighing. "Nothing I've tried though makes anything seem different."

[lovelylana.livejournal.com]

"Then let's start with something small," Lana suggested.

[intraspective]

Small? What was a small problem?

Ino spent a good while, hoping Lana didn't mind, trying to decide on that.

"...Michael's ignoring me. Like, actively avoiding me."

Which bugged her, but was probably the most minor issue at hand really.

[lovelylana.livejournal.com]

"Do you know why?" Lana asked.

[intraspective]

She shrugged. "I think he's still mad about me staying out all those nights, when I was training? We had an argument about that, but I haven't talked to him since."

[lovelylana.livejournal.com]

"You think he's really mad at you or that he was worried about you and you kind of blew off his concern?" Lana asked.

[intraspective]

"I don't know?" Ino admitted. "Isabel thinks it's the second one for sure, but Isabel and I... don't always see eye to eye about Michael."

[lovelylana.livejournal.com]

Lana nodded. "I'd guess it's the second, too," she said. "I know how frustrating it is to see someone you care about hurting themselves and feel like you can't help them."

She smiled a little ruefully. "I've had enough people tell me that themselves."

[intraspective]

She shrugged. "I wasn't hurting myself though. I was out training and I told Cassandra where I was, so I wasn't even being stupid that way."

[lovelylana.livejournal.com]

"Punishing yourself?" Lana suggested softly.

[intraspective]

"I was training," Ino insisted. "Not punishing myself. Just thinking."

[lovelylana.livejournal.com]

Lana shrugged. "Didn't look that way to me, so I bet it didn't to him either."

[intraspective]

"What did it look like to you then?" Ino asked crossly.

[lovelylana.livejournal.com]

Lana thought carefully about how to say what she wanted to.

"It looked like you were hurting inside and using extreme training to either make your body hurt as much as the rest of you or punish yourself for something you had or hadn't done. And to kind of keep yourself from thinking and being near anyone."

She shrugged. "It was a good excuse. You could stay out all night and not have to deal with your own demons when you tried to sleep, get yourself cut up and bruised, and blame it all on something you do - to a much lesser extent - anyway."

[intraspective]

...

...

Ino was not going to answer that. Because that seriously wasn't true. Right? Right.

Totally not.

Training was good for you! So was thinking! And if she happened to think best while training that was her business and it was totally not, not anything like Lana had said.

Totally totally not. She was fine.

Ino stared up that the sky and wondered if she could get away with silence.

[lovelylana.livejournal.com]

Lana sat quietly, knowing how hard it was to look at stuff like that about yourself. She figured she'd said what she wanted to and she wasn't about to push Ino.