Title: Silence In Sound
Author: Pickled Death
Genre: Angst
Rating: PG-13
Summary: one-shot; it's a nice day. Shikamaru is dead. It's a nice day.
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The world didn't end today.
Chill autumn day, graying skies with misted clouds, and she thought it was going to rain.
It should've.
Godaime-sama had etched the name with utmost care on the headstone, a morbid expression written on her lovely (if illusory) features.
An ANBU squad needed a new captain.
The world didn't end today.
It should've.
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Cobalt eyes flashed with righteous fury and…
Regret.
That smile haunted both of them forever, after all.
Temari's fist smashed into the hospital chair, effectively breaking the armrest in neat halves. "Liar," she hissed.
Who would lie about a thing like that?
Shikamaru would.
Because he was mean like that.
"I'm sorry, Temari-san," Sakura whispered, her ANBU mask strapped to her inner thigh, her tears glimmering in her coral green eyes. "I'm…so…sorry." And she was, and her wounds oozed blood and her bruises sang a swirl of yellow and purple and blue, her healing touch gently, absently soothing the wounds, and the suspicion in her eyes upon seeing Temari had vanished in favor of sadness. "Ino-chan, we did everything we could for him; his condition, it just wouldn't…"
But that didn't make sense to her. She'd…she'd wanted to save him, afraid he'd stumble into the same traps as Sasuke-kun, afraid for his coldness and his cruelness and everything that made him a good, great, bloody fucking well perfect ninja because she was just like that, seeing the beauty in anything and everything and anyone with sharp, vain eyes.
"Don't be sorry."
Because you wanted to melt glaciers and move boulders, right?
"Don't be sorry."
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Chill autumn day. The mission had been announced to him in cold, concise tones, and he'd listened and grinned a wicked grin.
"You knew he wouldn't come home one day, didn't you?" Temari asked, quietly, eyes clenched shut as she clutched a wilting juniper to her chest. "He knew what he was getting himself into when he put on that goddamn ANBU mask."
Ribbons. Black silk ribbons strewn across solemn sprays. She double-knotted a bow and let that wilt, too.
"We didn't," she said, quietly.
Temari looked at her without malice, only rue, and she hated Temari because life would be that much easier if they hated one another. "Did he do it for you?" she asked, a wan smile twitching her pallid lips.
"No." Bind the stems in bandages to sustain the water, the lifeblood of these fucking funeral flowers. "He wasn't… He wasn't like that! H-he knew and didn't think, that's—that's all. That amazing intelligence of his failed when we needed it most!" Thrusting the spray onto the counter causes naught but silence and a whirlwind of wrinkled petals.
Was he? Like that? The man who'd dutifully accepted he was the only chuunin in town, who'd pulled on the vest without ceremony or thought and then unblinkingly wore that porcelain mask only a year and four months after, shunning the ever-possible and dreamt only of being faceless and forgotten, saving the life of a man he disliked and respected and didn't care for, aware of all but himself, who never ever screamed. When had he ever been like that, a martyr?
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It was a chill autumn day when he died. Restless winds tugged ruthlessly at brittle leaves, and dampened woodchips gathered by her feet.
Two hours to cross the border, from the Fire Country to Otogakure. One hour to kill Yakuushi Kabuto, the plan: six needles in the neck, one between the eyes, a katana through the right lung. Fifteen minutes, mission failure.
An ANBU squad needed a new captain.
She recognized rage. Gripping rage and gripping horror, tugging at her heartstrings like a puppeteer maneuvers a twitchy marionette, masking her sorrow because he'd promised, two years ago for her and ten years ago for Temari—
(promiseme)
(Promise you what?)
(that you'll…)
(Always come home. Right… Whatever. I shouldn't be making promiseslikethat, but if it'll make you feel better)
Because he never broke a promise, even if he griped about it for eternity and a half he just didn't.
That ass had no right to smile!!
Lines crossed, the overbearing burden of mortality and he smiled because he was dying and overstepped his boundaries, the high-wire fences she'd strewn for him in her reluctance to let him be the cloud he wanted to be, in her reluctance to let him fly free—
He's never smiled like that. Not for me, not for Temari, not for Chouji—oh god—I think I'm going to be sick—
"God, that grin," Temari said quietly, weaving her calloused fingers through her thick, lightly bushy mane of gold hair. "That bastard could've just—just smirked or something, that same god-awful smirk but—no, I've never seen that, he couldn't have been happy knowing…"
Because he wasn't like that!!
Death doesn't deserve a special smile, doesn't deserve any smile at all—
He'd looked like a demon.
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It was a chill autumn day when Godaime-sama solemnly discussed the mission in private with ANBU squad leader Nara Shikamaru. Rain clouds came and went, drifted past without a second thought, the air bitter and dry, and frigidity lashing at those sensitive to it. The spare bandages on her thighs coated black leggings, and Sasuke-kun muttered something vague about the scent of impending death, which she thought was pretty dumb because fall was a season that treasured life and rebirth and stuff like that.
Technically, there had been a folder. Plain manila with the Leaf insignia sealing the envelope in hot, red wax that required a special sort of chakra application to open—security was security, after all. His eyes calmly scanned the mission details, the diagram of one of Orochimaru's most dangerous servants, thick brush strokes indicating points of attack, calmly describing the dangerous Sound-nins they'd have to plow through in order to reach Yakuushi himself.
He'd asked the probability of actually accomplishing the mission, and Godaime-sama had morbidly given him a very correct answer.
"How troublesome," he'd muttered.
He'd grinned.
Then he'd put on his ANBU mask with deliberate slowness and vanished, and in his quiet wake arose the scent of impending death.