AN: Another byproduct of a particularly overenthusiastic bunny-ambush. Team ten, a few years down the road. Mostly Ino and Shikamaru (because I am a fangirl, yes I am). Warning for depressing-ness and off-screen character death. Kinda sorta. You'll see, just read the fic.
It's funny, how things work out.
Shikamaru sits in the chair next to Ino's hospital bed, watching her—well, 'sleep' isn't the right word, according to the med-nins. He watches her, though, her too-pale, too-still face. It's not right that Ino is so quiet. Not right that she's so still.
When he's thought about it (and he has, because at some point or other, Shikamaru thinks about almost everything), he never thought that Ino would be the first of them to go. It's always been a toss-up between Chouji (too damn goodhearted for this job) and himself.
But they're both fine and Ino's lying insensible in a hospital bed.
Funny. Yeah, something like that.
It's not like she's dead, he has to keep telling himself, though it's hard to remember that sometimes when there's a gaping hole in InoShikaChou. There's always the outside chance that she'll wake up one day.
He and Chouji alternate visiting days. It's too awkward with both—all three, Shikamaru amends mentally—of them in the room. Too quiet.
Of course, they're both out on missions pretty often these days, but they usually manage to have at least one of them in every day or so to see her. Chouji's genin team are always happy to have training start an hour or two late, and Shikamaru's ANBU captain is Kakashi, so he understands when Shikamaru puts off his reports to stop by the hospital.
It's been almost a year. Ino had been planning to get herself sponsored up to jounin rank. She'd probably have a genin team of her own by now if she weren't in front of him, lying in a hospital bed. Shikamaru almost pities the hypothetical genin.
He wonders sometimes what would have happened if it had been him instead of her who'd encountered Uchiha Itachi first that day.
He wouldn't have wound up in a hospital bed, that's for sure. He'd probably have died. He likes to think he'd have managed to bring the renegade down with him, but that's probably wishful thinking. He doesn't have that many illusions about his abilities.
But Ino reached him first. Shintenshined her way into his mind before he could hit her with the sharingan. Held him where he was long enough for Naruto to shove a rasengan through his face.
Shikamaru had tried to get her back. He'd yelled at her, which usually works, because Shikamaru doesn't usually raise his voice. He'd shaken her, slapped her face even.
But Ino never came back.
Her body is still alive. Her heart beats, her lungs still take in air. But Ino isn't in there. No one knows where Ino is.
Shikamaru thinks it's one of two things. Either Itachi managed to tangle her up in genjustu while she was in his mind, and she's simply too deeply buried to find, or she couldn't get out quick enough when Naruto killed Itachi, and died with him.
He tries not to think about the second option too much.
With a sigh, he glances out the window. The angle of the light is shading rapidly towards dusk, and he's supposed to meet Hawk and Dog for a mission at moonrise.
He gets up, squeezes Ino's hand briefly, and then heads for the door. It slides open under his hands and he jerks back to avoid getting run over by Haruno Sakura.
"Ah!" she says, stopping short. "Sorry. I didn't realize you were visiting."
He makes a vague motion at the door. "Just on my way out, don't mind me."
She nods, scrubbing her hands absently on a scrap of bandage. "Mission tonight?"
"Routine stuff." He shrugs.
"Say hello to Kakashi-sensei for me?" she says, sounding a bit wistful. They all sort of miss their genin days.
"Yeah," he replies, edging past her. "Sorry. I still have to drop off a report and change."
"Bye," says Sakura absently, attention already on the girl in the bed. As Shikamaru leaves, he can feel her focusing chakra, running basic diagnostics. It's good to know Ino's in the right hands.
He makes a quick detour to drop off an overdue mission report. Usually, he can push that dubious honor off on Neji—Hawk, that is—but this one was a solo mission so he's stuck dealing with the paperwork himself. He drops the report off with an unfamiliar woman in a chuunin's vest—he doesn't know a lot of the newer slew of kids, hasn't bothered keeping up with the exams or anything—and heads home.
The apartment is dark and empty. He doesn't bother to turn on any lights as he heads for the bathroom, shucking clothing as he goes. A brief shower, cold to wake him up a bit more, and then he hunts down his other uniform.
It's funny. A few years ago, he'd never have thought to find himself as an ANBU. Far too much work. Too much responsibility. Too much danger. But there's a gap in Konoha's forces still, even now, and as usual, he stepped up to fill it.
That's all there is to it, really.
He tugs on the clothing, the lightly armored vest, the arm-guards, the katana he never uses and the porcelain mask. Nara Shikamaru is subsumed by the ANBU Cat.
He always used to think about the future. Then he realized this is the future, here, in the present.
He decides he doesn't like it very much.
Endnotes: I never know where/how to end these things. Gaah.