"Peace of mind is a priceless medication, with the lack thereof being the fiercest infection." -Godaime Hokage, on Nara Shikamaru's medical prescription.
Shikamaru's eyes are rimmed in pink and sparsely cracked by red, red blood vessels these days, but it has little to do with any malady. Or an addiction, for that matter.
"You don't smell of nicotine." Chouji deftly swipes the last potato chip from the bag they are sharing. There are equal parts of concern and assurance in his voice.
"I have no reason to".
Shikamaru hears the relief, and is little inclined to disturb it: Chouji has effectively narrowed out the one item on his list of "Possible Things Making Shikamaru Look Like Akamaru's Chew Toy" that made him lose sleep.
He lost it in vain. Nicotine is not the reason for the cracks in his character.
During the first days after the funeral, his vest was infused with the sharp, almost saccharine odour (one that made Chouji uneasy and Ino outright furious when they first caught a whiff of it, melancholy and distant the second time, and frighteningly serene the third) to tactically improper extremes, and he never denied it (neither shall he now). But when the chuunin and jounin began heralding the appearance of the next great chain-smoker, he begged to differ.
Shikamaru boasts quite little, but he knows his agile, flexible mind can find holes in even the densest of defenses, his own included, and hence it is only too easy to call the cigarette he used to set off the chain of exploding tags his last.
As a pragmatist, he has found the pros of this situation marginally better that the former. As a shinobi, he finds it only too easy to make his body comply with his logic. As Shikamaru, he refuses to use Asuma-sensei as a crutch.
Even though his ailing subconscious has found itself reaching for one.
The nightmares could be worse, he knows. They could feature his hands, sullied by a crime he couldn't stop and yet had to suffer through, of death to friends and family and chaos upon the world. His current ones, however, are far from gentle.
His dreamscape churns out images of charred trees twisted by flames (long extinguished), reaching up to a sky that seems to have become stone. They radiate melancholy and regret that will never reach kind ears, not even his own, pressing their emotions on to him his body fails him, and he can only crawl forward.
A sudden wind brings them to life, limbs turned to writhing hand, chastised spirits that moan and beg for an aid he cannot give them, brandishing rattling bones and black candles that he knows he must not touch.
They screech and beg for a god in black and red that shall come to deliver justice with his triple-bladed scythe, one that laughs as the dream shifts to include pain. His lower back is sliced open and the treacherous demon-trees lean forward to drink (this is their atonement, it seems).
I will deliver your judgment to you.
He wakes with a small jolt, a flurry of perspiration and slick hair contrasting with a blank face. Shikamaru only takes one steadying breath and brushes a hand to sweep his hair back before heading to the kitchen, extra care put into stealth.
The overturned land of his dreamscape is drawing at his strength, but Shikamaru is, for once, stubborn: A burden rests upon his shoulders, and he shall not recoil before it. He will not lay it upon those who surround him. Green tea and shadows are all the company his torturous nights require.
But no matter how well he hides his exhaustion, his affliction has tentacles he cannot hide. A sudden rise in the deer's mortality rate ("Cardiac arrest", declares Inuzuka Hana upon concluding the necropsies) forewarns it. The unwholesome atmosphere at the western edge of the Nara woods ultimately proves it.
Not too long afterwards, the entire Nara clan is summoned to Yoshino and Shikaku's household. Though there are a few disgruntled looks, the situation is taken on with stolid resignation, with every feasible solution taken on with a cool mind.
"The forest can be moved. A proper replanting of the trees and relocating of the animals will leave the area empty."
"If the woodland's ailment is of the supernatural nature, maybe a supernatural cure will do. The monks of the Water Temple in the Kiri area are neutral to villages, and apt at cleansings. They may aid us if the situation is explained."
"These are all quite valid opinions concerning the welfare of the grounds, but we have not considered the reason for this assembly. There is a creature imprisoned in our woods, and it is our duty to make sure it remains imprisoned." Shikamaru's voice has an edge of determination that is not often heard. And his voice is a sound rarely heard during a clan council. Shadows, sleep-deprived inflammation, and the new lilt of his voice, the mark of the careworn fighter that has found a match to his might are about him. The debate continues, and yet his words remain. At the end, there is no choice but to appoint to him the overseeing and the safeguarding of Hidan's prison-tomb.
Shikaku is stoically quiet. Yoshino moves to put a hand to her son's tense arm, and replenishes the swiftly dwindling supply of tealeaves early next day.
The winds caress the increasingly skeletal trees around the stone monument, the plaster fresh around its cracks, the newly carved symbols and kanji gaping like wounds. He studiously leads his mind away from the metaphor. Dwindling yellow grass surrounds it. And the setting sun paints the landscape red. This is its favorite time, and he ponders on it, one hand on the stones, just as a dim whisper reaches his ear. He'd dismiss it as the sighing wind, if it weren't the same he hears at night when he's trapped within his mind. Or is it his?
See your land as it wilts. You will be wilting with it. You'll be paying your dues.
The slack hand upon the rock goes tense.
Shikamaru's eyes are swollen and irritated. His muscles are learning to withstand the unfamiliar, prolonged tension of stress, even as his sharp mind feels gradually more ill. He is a former-child having his body pulled this way and that. But he will not desist.
Shikamaru is ill from the weight of a burden that he will carry for as long as he must, and he will not desist. Whole, weak, or even in pieces, he will stand against it, the bloodied terror of the Nara woods, Asuma-sensei's murderer, the monster that resides in landscape and dreamscape.
His burden is dashing him to pieces, and he won't stop it. His eyes betray the strain, but the relaxed fall of his lips, his level cheeks and clear brow are the same. Nobody has told him so, but he can see it. He can see it upon a mirror of warm water and leaves.
It waits for him, every night, even as his brow is still bathed in sweat, hair a flurry of brown tendrils across his face, down his neck. The shadows give before his sable eyes, and though in truth the liquid barely returns a reflection, he picks through the smudges and blurred lines, piecing together the face he knows he would see.
He sews together the pieces, scrap by scrap, with threads the nicotine reminded him of, but could not supply him with. Silence. Contemplation. Clouds. Akimichi Chouji. Yamanaka Ino. His parents. Sarutobi Asuma. Yuuhi Kurenai. Sarutobi Kimji.
Shikamaru has given up smoking, revenge, and peace of mind. He has given up sleep and rest, his voice and his clouds. But the gaping hole in his psyche, the crevasse made by his burden, his cancer of the mind, it's a challenge he cannot forfeit.
And perhaps the hole is growing; seeping up his intellect, driving him closer and closer to the scythe-wielder under the sealed monument because, for once, he does not feel inclined to.
A/N: I may be one of the few who maintain this line of thinking, but I really believe Shikamaru only smoked until he defeated Hidan. It doesn't seem to go with his character to give in to an addiction just for the sake of remembering Asuma (that, and his mother, Ino and perhaps Temari would bully him until he dropped the habit.)
I also say this because we haven't seen him smoking after Hidan was buried. Unless he's shown smoking later, I won't believe he's taken up the habit permanently. Yes, it's a hard habit to drop, but I like to think his 200+ I.Q points, and (rarely displayed, yet present) strong will in what he deems important helped him along.