Author: hungrytiger11
Title: Taste
Summary: You can taste blood, but you can't taste much else. And blood? Is pretty sick to taste. Vampire story with Shika/Ino leanings.
It's something they don't tell you about in the stories, or in their advertising little spiels, if the one who turned you was so nice as to wait for your consent. You can taste blood, but you can't taste much else. And blood? Is pretty sick to taste.
So, when Shikaramu has his mouth around her neck, he isn't enjoying it at all. But she starts- not breathing. She, like him is no longer alive quite- but, moving, heart beating, some indefinable something, tells him this person is still there, and he is relieved. Someone is not leaving him before their time.
He drags her out of the fighting by her arms, careful to keep his head ducked low. Damned miscalculation, that's all the whole fucked up mission was, and it had cost Konoha two of his genin, and one of hers and for Ino… He glanced over the face, noting the fading bruise that might have become a shattered cheekbone in better circumstances and the now scar less chin that showed no memory of their six year old misadventure with a kunai. For Ino, this battle had cost her her life.
Above him a horse voice calls out, sounding young and scared, too young and too scared to have possibly been the victor of a ninja battle. Yet that was what it was.
"Sensei? Sensei!"
"Here, Eji-kun," he calls back, picking out his student's Hyuuga-white eyes easily amongst the dark shadows of leaves. "Where are the others?"
Eji drops to the forest floor and takes a few cautious steps towards him, but with eyes on the prone figure behind him.
"Yamanaka-sensei? I-is that-? Does she need a m-medic? She's not…"
"No," he says, "She'll be fine. The others?"
"S-settng the bodies on fire. N-no trace, right?"
He could count the bodies as disposed of then, and assume the rest of their teams were realatively unharmed. On the one hand, their efficiency was really too bad. The corpses would have been easy feeding. If she needed feeding. He didn't remember exactly when he grew so hungry he had been desperate enough to try. But then, he didn't have anyone to guide his way through this changed existence and Ino would have him. There was other ways to get feed the hungry and it at least showed their students listened to them everyone in awhile. From the back of his numbed mind a voice whispers this is a good thing, something to celebrate in different circumstances other than these.
There is nothing to celebrate in this circumstance.
"Can you carry your teammates? Their…bodies, I mean," he asks his student. Really he should be the one carrying any dead students, but there's too many and he can't leave yet, not when she had to be his main concern.
Eji-kun nods unhappily and asks for further instructions. He tells him to take the teams back to Konoha. Those alive and dead alike must go back. Something in these instructions is enough to set Eji-kun off, and he starts crying. Shikaramu is forced to threaten with a formal reprimand before the boy stops. But he doesn't stop for long because then Shikamaru asks who were the students who died and that sets Eji-kun off all over again.
"Asuma."
This time Shikamaru doesn't ask the boy to stop. Asuma was Eji's Chouji, and Asuma is one more dead he must bring back to Kurenai, who has just now outlived both husband and son. Eji-kun manages to stutter out the other expected names of their dead and raises a sleeve to wipe at his eyes.
"Go," Shikamaru tells him and settles down to wait for Ino. Not long now, an hour, maybe two, and she can thank him for saving her-or, more probably, scream at him for ruining her life. He isn't even sure which he would prefer.
He listens to the rustle of genins' not-quite-silent footfalls across forest ground, coming from a little northeast of him, and then to animals and to the wind and then finally, to the smallest sound of all: Ino gasps.
He reaches out a hand to grip her shoulder, and pushes her back down.
"Ino."
Her name is all he manages to choke out. He hadn't- hadn't been sure that this would work. Turning a person was something he'd never done before. A first time for everything then. But she doesn't seem to need any more words because she reaches up to touch his face above hers.
Her touch is gentle, careful as it traces down his check and across his smile. It is not, he quickly discovers though, an affectionate touch.
"Shikamaru. Shikamaru, you're injured. I-I think you might be bleeding internally."
His hand finds hers and stills its passage across his face. When he moves his lips, he can feel the pads of her fingers brush against them. It occurs to him that this is rather intimate. The world has gone very still.
"Why do you say that?"
"Th-there's blood stained on your teeth. Are your gums bleeding? Or-"
Or has he been drinking blood? iWhy, yes, Ino. Yours,/i he thinks. He doesn't say that though, doesn't say anything at all, unsure of how to explain. It's not like Hidan (if it iwas/i Hidan. That's just his working theory for how the hell he ended up like this.) or anybody, really, explained to him. How do you tell someone they've joined the ranks of the not-dead? (The undead? Did that sound better?)
"Troublesome," he mutters to himself, and Ino stills at his all-too-common response.
"You aren't…hurt, then?" she asks.
"No."
She grimaces at him and makes a show of running her tongue over her teeth. Obediently, he runs his own tongue along the edge of his teeth, tastes blood, and makes a grab for their water canteen. He swish-and-spits; the water comes out pink. Hopefully, his mouth is cleaner because somehow he thinks the truth is going to be hard enough to take without evidence staring Ino in the face like that. And speaking of the truth…
"Ino," he says. "I did something. Something you may not like."
"Shikamaru," she says slowly, looking around. "Where are my students? Where are yours?"
He sighs. " Ino-"
"They aren't dead, are they?" She jerks up into a seated position, eyes wild. "Tell me they aren't!"
"No. Well, some, but Ino-"
She crumples forward, collapsing in on herself, clenching fists tight enough to draw blood. He can smell it in the air, metallic and sharp. The only sound is her sucking on air.
"Ino-"
Nothing.
"Ino. They aren't the only ones who died."
This gets her attention, drawing up her eyes, wet and large and fearful.
"Who?"
Her voice is horse as if she has been crying for hours instead of not at all. His hand brushes back hair to cradle her head against his palm. He could feel blood pounding through, under the skin, right where the skull joined the neck. Not dead, not dead, not dead every pulse beat seemed to sing. She was not leaving him yet.
"You."
A/N: I don't even know how this happened. Vampires and Naruto? Well, here is is, how ever it came about. There might even be more. Who knows...