Chapter 20 – Final Chapter

She was cremated quietly, with only a few loved ones present, as per her wishes. He and Ino had buried her ashes in the glade Naruto had directed them to, the sakura trees blooming there a subtle reminder of how their namesake was not.

No one cried. No one dared to.

Shikamaru left Ino at her mother's flower shop, trying hard to ignore the shellshocked and gaunt quality of her face. Then again, he supposed she was doing the same for him. At the moment, the only way to deal with what had happened was to not acknowledge it. They'd procrastinate for as long as they could. And even then, there was sake. Copious, copious amounts of sake.

He waited until he couldn't see her through the glass anymore before turning and heading down a path he'd taken so many times prior, he didn't have to think about where he was going anymore. By the time he reached her apartment, he was more tired than he'd ever been, his footfalls echoing his exhaustion as he plodded up the stairs.

He hadn't been drinking, but he hadn't been sleeping either.

Resting for a moment against the balcony, he took the time to look down at the village. His village. The markets were closing. Children were being called home. Shinobi were moving for various parts of the village at various speeds. It was untouched, unchanged, unbroken. Those who had an affinity for earth ninjutsu had taken care of the wreckage Sakura, Sasuke and Naruto had left behind outside the walls. Tenzo had prettied it.

It was as if nothing had happened. For some reason, irritation crawled around his insides like some parasitic worm, quelled only by the simple knowledge that this was exactly what she had wanted, that this was exactly what she had died for... He tasted bile.

He hated being right.

Turning slowly, he knocked on the door next to hers. Unlocked, it opened towards the second knock. The mustiness and darkness of the air that reached out to suffocate him was to be expected. Regardless, Shikamaru took a deep breath, held it, and entered, not bothering to close the door behind him. The room needed all the fresh air it could get.

Striding quickly for the window, he yanked open the curtains, ignoring the responding grumble coming from the lump on the bed. The damn window finally opened after three frantic hard tugs and Shikamaru allowed himself to breathe again, the moment he shoved his face beyond the glass pane, trying not to gasp for air purely out of politeness. He took his time facing the wreckage behind him. The lump on the bed didn't move after it inched away from the intrusive sunlight. Ignoring said lump, Shikamaru took his time to scan the contents of the room with a critical eye.

However much the sunlight now entering the room was dimming, it still revealed a conspicuous slew of sorrow at its worst. Empty sake bottles had become a second floor. At the utter lack of usual laundry and ramen cartons, his grey eyes narrowed.

Striding the two steps towards the bed, he unsympathetically ripped off the covers from Naruto's curled form. Naruto's eyes were open, unseeing, and unresponsive to the sudden rush of cool air and light into the little hovel he'd stayed in for Kami-sama knows how long.

"Get up."

Shikamaru wasn't expecting a response, and he didn't get one.

"You missed her funeral."

Nothing.

"She kept this room spotless. This is what you do to it in a week?"

Still nothing, although Naruto's eyes slowly closed.

Sighing, Shikamaru sat down on the bed, too tired to stand or to care about the filth he was allowing his pants to touch. He allowed himself to pull his hands from his pants pockets, only to provide much needed support to his suddenly very heavy head. His palm felt warm against his forehead.

"…She replaced the glass."

Shikamaru didn't move, though he was startled by the hollow rasping of Naruto's usually full, rich, and boisterous voice… Or at least, that's how he remembered it. He kept his head on his hand as he asked, "What?"

The glass, Naruto wanted to say out loud. The glass—she replaced it. The one I broke.

The only person who could've heard his thoughts was actually gone. She was really gone.

Shikamaru looked behind him at Naruto's still form, at then at the nightstand by his bed, where a happy picture from years ago smiled back at him. They were both laughing in it.

"Did you talk to Hinata?" Shikamaru allowed himself to ask abruptly.

Naruto shifted, and Shikamaru tried not to wince at the sound of this 21-year-old's joints creaking. Now as he was staring up at the ceiling, Shikamaru was allowed a good look of Naruto's face. The condition of it was not shocking only because he'd had experience with it before, when his and Sakura's places were exchanged.

He'd clearly not eaten for days. The alcohol had made his eyes bleary, dry, and bloodshot. The circles under his eyes were tremendous and there was a corpse-like pallor to his usually deeply tanned complexion. He also desperately needed a haircut.

Parched lips moved, saying, "I remember everything. Although, at the same time it feels like I don't…" He was struggling. So, Shikamaru allowed him some more time. Just a few more minutes. Max.

"I told her I'd go through with the marriage, because I'd promised her and I'd made her believe—," he faltered, "She said no. She didn't want to do that to me, because she loved me too much to not let me go." His voice was dry, as was his parched throat. It faded intermittently, and it seemed to take all of Naruto's energy to push through a few more syllables.

Finally, tone so empty it was clearly close to breaking, he announced quietly, "She asked me to stay her friend."

Shikamaru didn't respond, nor did he turn to look at him. The chill of Naruto's voice was enough of a representation of the deadness on his face. There was only so much Shikamaru could take at once.

He looked towards the door that had connected Naruto's and Sakura's apartments. It was rubble, the surrounding walls entirely collapsed in. Getting up off the bed, he walked towards the wreckage.

"Slam the door too hard?" he tried asking nonchalantly, although that same irritation he felt outside was pulsating ever so much more intensely in his gut. It was getting increasingly more difficult to keep it out of his voice.

'He never believed in balance—that peace couldn't be without chaos. He refused to.'

He just watched her as she slowly made her way towards the window. Her voice became steadily more absentminded as she stared out across Konoha's rooftops, the grimness edging her face only emphasizing the intangibility of what she was remembering.

'He thought everyone could be happy,' she could've possibly been saying nostalgically if the look in her eyes wasn't so dead.

He felt himself retreat inwards, to still feel his breathing, as he watched her say, 'I begged—,' she faltered, 'for the strength to help him keep believing that,' in a voice so quiet and quick, he knew he wasn't supposed to catch the way it broke towards the end.

He kept facing the wreckage as the words he was trying not to say peeled out of his throat harshly, "Why did you tell me not to tell her?"

Naruto's response came from some distance behind his shoulder, too far to tell whether or not he was still comatose on the bed—though the mattress hadn't creaked any indication of movement, "I don't know. I… I had thought I shouldn't be forgiven, I guess. I didn't want her to have to forgive me."

Shikamaru's nose wrinkled in disgust, although this time it wasn't from the smell. Whirling towards Naruto's closet door, he ripped it open, grabbing the coat that he knew Sakura had ordered the moment after she'd confirmed Naruto was alive. With one heavily restrained toss, hanger and all, the coat landed on Naruto's neck in a whirl of while silk—a replica of the Yondaime's, but for its structured high collar and gold-weighted flame border. Shikamaru watched impatiently with blatantly angry eyes as Naruto moved to sit up, his hollow gaze staring forlornly at the coat. Hands moving slow as he traced over the orange-thread-emblazoned 'believe' kanji on its back, he didn't lift his head as his long bangs shadowed his down turned face. His hands lingered over the space where he was expecting 'courage' to be written, his fingers smoothing over empty white cloth.

Naruto's voice shuddered, pleaded, and whispered like a dead man's, as he mumbled, "There wasn't any time," while repeating the phrase over and over like an insane one grasping at air for comfort and support. The voice disappeared completely once Naruto buried his head into the coat, fists straining, but not at the fabric, possibly in an attempt to not tear it to shreds.

Another time. He'd deal with this shit another time.

With one abrupt turn, Shikamaru made for the door, knowing that he wasn't really leaving behind anything, wasn't saying anything of much help either… Wasn't or couldn't, he'd answer to later.

He stopped, though, when he saw her smile—the ghost of a dimple shadowing the right corner of her lip. It had a way of not stopping once it started, however little it gave against the heavy weight of the hollows too noticeable in her cheeks.

One quick motion into his pants pocket, next to the cool sting of his lighter, the tips of his fingers segued from rough stone to polished, cut crystal. He ensnared his fingers in the cord, two bells chiming almost imperceptibly as he yanked it away from himself and tossed the offending object to a place somewhere beside Naruto. He would've tossed it on the floor, only the resulting thud would've been too much for his already irritated patience.

He left without another word, unaware of the echoes his footfalls were making, the reverberations of every movement lost against this constraining, altruistic comprehension that it was wrong to kick a wounded animal.

They'd deal. They'd all learned to deal with it somehow, someday…

Or they wouldn't.

OOO

12 YEARS LATER

It was strange, that after all this time, he'd find himself kneeling beside a fatally wounded Naruto again. It was just as muddy, just as bloody, but fifty thousand times more uncomfortable, as rain pelted against their heads, taunting him and his task force with the threat of becoming hail very soon.

His ANBU gear was broken beyond repair, useless pieces hanging off his body, more trouble than they were worth to wear. His favorite mesh shirt was the only thing between him and freezing to death, and he regretted ever preferring to wear the flimsy garment.

Naruto didn't seem to mind the weather. His white coat was spread around him where he'd fallen, a spreading stain of blood substituting the left leg and lower torso that had been torn from his body and now thrown somewhere across the field.

Their med-nins had been taken out first. He himself had no chakra left—none of his surviving platoon did. With the rook, bishop, generals, knights, lances and pawns flung off the shogi board, or rendered useless in some insignificant configuration, his Hokage was dying in front of him once more. This time, for real, for good.

Naruto coughed suddenly, breaking movement into his frozen face, that had only shortly before been blinking slowly and steadily, coming to terms with his impending passing with some peaceful familiarity—possibly, with too much familiarity.

With some effort, he shifted his head slightly, blond hair stained brown and black with dirt and blood, now trapped by unforgiving mud. Shikamaru bent lower as Naruto's lips moved weakly, his voice rasping quietly, "Sorry, Shikamaru—for making you Hokage again… No one better."

Despite the significant burns on the right side of his face, he unwittingly, but uncaringly, chose that side to grin with, "Troublesome."

Naruto seemed to want to laugh in response, but suddenly was aware of how limited in time he was again, to convey what he wanted to as thoroughly as possible. Slightly more rushed, thus slightly raspier, he whispered earnestly, voice fading faster than he was capable of maintaining, "I never thanked you enough—for keeping your promise, to take care of her…" He abruptly trailed off, as he blearily focused on some spot above Shikamaru's left shoulder. Shikamaru didn't turn to look, because logically he knew that no one was there. Realistically, no one could be there. Yet, he felt his chest constrict painfully as he watched Naruto smile a smile he hadn't in fifteen years.

It took a few moments for Shikamaru to move. He lifted a heavy arm to place one hand over Naruto's cracked chest armor, now still.

At least—

… At least.

OOO

EPILOGUE

He was in a gray kimono—the only thing between him and the gusts of wind now so noticeable through his bones. The change in regular outfit began when he'd stopped wearing his mesh shirts on his forty-eighth birthday, when he realized he was more uncomfortable than usual in the fall and winter, and then gradually in the spring and summer. He was still young but years of shoddy healings, useless protective gear, and countless near-death situations meant that his life span was pre-constricted considerably the second he'd walked through the doors of the Ninja Academy as a child. Or more accurately, punted in by his mother.

Another gust of wind almost made his form disappear in a flurry of loose sakura petals. Their few days of glory were almost through. He didn't wait for it to settle, or to clear. Striding forward, he vaguely imagined he felt a couple of mischievous petals lodge themselves into the small ponytail at his neck, and brush against the thick gray streak of hair pulled back from his right temple.

A small white tombstone materialized suddenly—almost too suddenly—as the gale died down, instantly noticeable beside the dark trunks it tried to blend against. Weather and time had trailed brown veins through the cracks in the marble, but in the dark it didn't matter.

Granted, the little memorial was cleaner than one would've expected, hiding in a place so discreet and removed from the main village. Sasuke and his irritatingly meticulous cleaning habits had kept the tomb spotless while he'd been alive and wandering aimlessly, hunted by all but hiding from none. Ripening age found that that last bit made the first bit increasingly more problematic, though one couldn't blame him for actively trying to avoid being seen as emulating Madara. Nowadays, it would just be himself, Ino, and Kakashi visiting regularly. None of them were nearly as nitpicky as the last Uchiha had been.

Shikamaru took a moment to look around… He'd tried to avoid bumping into Kakashi here, as the retired nin was well aware that his punishment for the way he'd lived was life itself. Shikamaru supposed that was the same for all who survived longer than the others, including him. He returned his attention to the stone in front of him, once he was sure he was alone.

Naruto had ordered the stone made and placed exactly so after she'd died. Eventually, his remains came to rest here with her, side by side.

Kneeling, Shikamaru reached out a hand from the warmth of its sleeve to trace the barely visible Haruno and Uzumaki symbols lightly chiseled into the front of the stone.

He hadn't visited for some time, due to tedious overseas diplomatic business or whatever. When he'd come back home that afternoon, he all of a sudden, randomly, strangely, realized he didn't remember where he'd put Asuma's lighter, given that he hadn't used it since the day she'd died.

It took tearing around the house for hours for him to finally find it in the basement, in some random box shoved into and within more random boxes from the past. He didn't expect the deer that usually inhabited his backyard to return for some time, as the stupid skittish creatures were notoriously intolerant of commotion, and especially sudden commotions. Regardless, he found it, albeit rusted, fluid dried, and flint obsolete—though this was to be expected.

He now produced it from the pocket inside his other sleeve, the brass glinting and extremely out of place… She wouldn't mind. It made a soft clink as he placed it upright on the top of the marble slab, like some flag in a sand castle.

Victory was peace, but those idiots better be waiting for me on the other side.

An inevitable sigh escaped as he pulled himself up. He wasn't dreading getting older, but being young was proving to be increasingly less troublesome than he'd initially thought. It wasn't until he was about a meter away from the memorial stone when he stopped doubting what he thought he wasn't smelling.

A faint breeze carrying the slightest strain of lavender and mint…

He turned to look back at the stone, where his lighter had been flicked open and on, the tiny flame burning resiliently against the coldness of wind and stone.