Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.
Pairings: Shino/Shikamaru, Sasuke/Sakura, more undecided.
Chapter 1: Reality
They stood there, motionless, in a desolate valley, grass stained with the blood of their comrades.
Weary eyes set straight ahead of them, unable to look away from the bodies of those who were standing the very day before, both friend, foe, and villager, living a life that was no longer there.
Everyone they had ever known and loved, gone, whether it happened seven years ago, or that very day. They were alone in a world that had no place for them, left to wait, wait until they could leave as well, and reunite with them in a world of neverending dreams.
There was no hope of winning the war from the very beginning, he knew that. And now, with only two people left on their side of the fight, the chances had just dispersed from existence.
Yet they were still at it, though neither he nor his dear brother, Shikamaru, could see why.
They were much too weak to defeat him
They were just small ants against him.
But both of them were feared shinobi, their names written in every bingo book.
And Madara stomped over them with little to no effort.
They had not spoken, not uttered the smallest word since it had ended, since that dreadful war was finally over. They could not speak because there was nothing that could be said, nothing to take away the pain they were feeling that ripped away at the last bits of their hearts.
He could hear himself. He was screaming, not physically, but he could hear his voice in his head, yelling, almost crying. So loud he was lightheaded. He could hear the calls for the dead, and the pleas to just let him die, instead of making him suffer like this.
But all the world ever gave him was suffering, hardships that took all his willpower to sweep under the rug and pretend that he didn't care, that he was okay.
That stopped three years before, when he gave up, more aggravated than tired of his facade. He couldn't stand to see that goddamned smile on his face. He despised his audacity to smile in that world.
He remembered all those times as a kid, overly confident in his skills, and believing that he could protect the people around him. He was ignorant to the reality of life back then.
He learned the truth the hard way.
The corpses were laid neatly side-by-side, every one of their bodies moved with careful respect for their lost lives.
But that meant by no means that they cared for their enemies. No, the only reason they were there as well, was because they wanted to clean see the calm hill that they used to spent so much time on. They wanted to clear in of those disgusting traitors.
There was hardly time to build a proper pyre, forcing them to make one large bed of flammable things.
He moved his shaky legs, injured from the last battle, walking to one end of the makeshift pyre, letting himself see the faces of everyone there.
The first many were people he didn't know, starting with enemies, and then civilians he had not met personally.
He stopped at the very first body, the only person on they pyre he was close to. Shino.
He was their closest friend, his second brother. They had always been together, him and his brothers. They weren't caught without each other's company once unless they were in the middle of a battle.
He was with them until the very end of his life.
His body was covered in cuts, dried blood caked all over him. The most noticeable wound was the wide slash running from his left shoulder to his right hip, deep enough to see his blemished organs. The whole right side of his face was covered in a third-degree burn, his skin peeled off, allowing him to see his cheekbone, scorched and covered in blood.
The three of them weren't just brothers, though they called themselves that. They were closer than family.
He walked away.
The many were people he didn't know, starting with civilians he had not meet personally, and then the enemies they had purposely placed the furthest away from Shino.
He stopped again at two familiar people, laying next to each other. His expression turned to a sneer.
Haruno Sakura.
Uchiha Sasuke.
The names of the two who betrayed Konoha. One for revenge, and the other, for love.
Sasuke, someone he once thought of as a best friend, defected from his home village. To think that once, so many years ago, he thought of that man as a friend, someone he could lean on in times of need. To think that he believed he could bring that man back, or that she would abandon her home for nothing but being close to him.
Oh, how ignorant he once was.
Sakura, the very one who placed the burden of that god forsaken promise on his shoulders, also abandoned them.
The pain, the torture that woman caused the three of them when she killed Chouji, it was still there, a wound never to be healed.
He could still see her grin as the kunai plunged into chouji's neck, the glazing of his eyes as his life was lost, Sasuke clapping, telling Sakura that she did great and if she killed Kiba as well, he would let her come with him.
She did.
They had been too shocked to move, their heads still trying to process what happened, why she would do that. And because of that, they watched Kiba's head roll, his blood splattering on their faces, their hands, until it changed into a river, no longer squirting.
Blood they never managed to wash from themselves, even when they were clean.
It stayed, reminding them of their failure.
After their death, they had never been the same, Shino and Shikamaru especially.
They vowed later, that they would never allow themselves to be caught off guard like that again. They didn't.
But that didn't stop them from getting stuck, unable to move as they watched others die.
They would have been able to save them if they weren't so weak.
And now it was too late…
He moved away, heading back to Shikamaru. The man was unmoving, staring at their dead brother without so much as blinking. His eyes were dark, all faith that they could win fully diminished, leaving regret and agony behind.
The same eyes he had.
"Shikamaru…" he said, calling the man's attention to him.
"Yes, Hokage-sama?" Shikamaru didn't turn, still watching Shino.
His heart clenched seeing his brothers like this, one dead, while the other was mourning the death.
He steeled his heart. There was no room for showing emotion as a shinobi, much less Hokage. It would lead much more to their deaths if he wasted his time lamenting, just like so many others did.
With both an emotionless expression and voice, he continued. "It's time."
The man flinched, though the reason, he wasn't sure.
With a nod, they walked to the pyre. He crouched down, placing a seal on it. He gave a quick look to Shikamaru, seeing him looking back at him. A bitter smile made it's way to his face as he activated the seal, starting a fire that spread quickly over every body.
They only moved far enough away that they wouldn't get too burnt by the inferno.
Both their eyes were on their deceased brother as the flame nipped away at his skin, slowly peeling it off. Neither bothered to watch the two traitors burn to their own hell, only wanting to get their last looks at their brother.
The smell of burning flesh didn't bother them, only added to the picture.
Eventually, the meat and blood of the dead had fully incinerated, leaving blackened bones behind the fire.
They didn't bother to set the fire out as it spread to the ground.
"Hokage-sama…" Shikamaru started.
He looked over to the man, his comrade in arms.
"I… I'm not... " he tried again.
Before he could finish, Naruto had already pieced together what his subordinate was trying to say and answered. "We're done," he said. "There isn't anymore meaning to this war," he said, voice giving away not the slightest emotion.
His brother looked at him, a thin frown plastered on his lips as he nodded.
There was a sudden pain in his left hand, causing him to lift it to his face to find the problem. He absently noted Shikamaru doing the same with his own hand.
He squinted, the fire and the now darkened sky mixing to make it all the harder to see his hand. Soon he noticed the slight glowing of a seal they had engraved into their hands. Circular, many small pentagrams lining the outside of it, while the inside was lined with many words, too small to read. The center had a lotus flower resting inside.
He had to say, he really forgot about that seal for a few years. He remembered he used to call it a 'new hope'. Wasn't it the result of some kind of time travel delusion he had? Honestly, he didn't really remember.
Sighing, he lowered his hand, ignoring the river of pain that was flowing into his senses.
Strange enough, as the fire grew closer to them, he was getting colder, like he was covered in snow.
He raised an eyebrow at this, turning to see if Shikamaru was feeling it as well. Judging by the look from him, he assumed that he was.
Then, as quick as it came, it was gone, and before he knew it he had passed out.
Black…
It was all black.
He gazed around the strange space again, reminding himself that his eyes were, in fact, open.
All around him was pitch black, not anything being seen. Strange enough, he didn't mind. It was calm, he was calm, his whole body was calm, as if it were perfectly relaxed.
It was different, soothing to rest himself, who trained himself to be battle ready at a very moment's notice, even while sleeping.
He leaned his head back into the luke-warm ground, absently noting that he was laying down.
He then observed that smallest streak of light (that he was sure wasn't there earlier) above him, gradually growing longer and wider, as if it were a door.
He shut his eyes quickly, the sudden light shooting into his eyes uncomfortably. Moments later, he willed himself to open them again. Had that been an attack, he would have been dead already.
Focusing, he saw two sides, split apart in the middle, one pure white while the other, the one he was in, pitch black. There was no light streaming into the dark side and no shadow of the light.
Seeming to defy gravity, there was another figure on the white side, as if lying on its upside, though facing down.
As he studied the figure, he noticed the mistaking similarities of the person -boy to his own self, though younger, and wearing the same clothes he did when he was twelve.
A line of green, glowing and traveling out from inside him, caught his eyes. He looked down at himself, seeing that green light seeping from his body and floating away in strings. Looking up, he noticed the same thing happening from the boy.
Strangely enough, the streams did not meet each other in the center like he had expected, no, they met further on the black side, the many strands swirling around each other before mixing into a small circle growing as more entered and eventually shaping into a lotus flower.
It was green and pulsing but seemed to be dim, even as more joined.
He watched it, the constant fluctuation of the lotus hypnotizing him into a deep slumber.
Naruto heaved a long, though silent, sigh, lowering his head into one hand as the words replayed in his head, again and again, trying to fully comprehend it.
"You're telling me…" he said, looking back up at Shikamaru. "That we, in some way or another, traveled back in time..?"
Shikamaru gave him a bland look. "Yes, exactly," the man, now in the body of a twelve-year-old, replied. "It seems that your seal really worked. It's the only real explanation for the weird dream that we both had, our younger bodies, the burning we felt on our hand's earlier, and the… missing name's."
He glared at the ground. "So it doesn't work when I supposedly 'activated' it, and then, suddenly, years after I got over that ridiculous fantasy, not to mention forgot about it, it brought us back to the past." A bitter smile graced his face. "It's laughable, really."
He stood from his previous cross-legged position on the ground, not the slightest slouch in his form. Shikamaru did the same, moving to stand just a bit behind his Hokage.
"No," Naruto started again. "it's goddamned troublesome," he growled out, cursing himself for making that seal. He had no desire to keep living, nor fight anymore. Not to mention that, but he knew exactly what it meant to go back, it meant they were going to see people that were long dead without freaking out.
And he would have to be on the same team as them.
Acting like there was nothing wrong and that they were innocent children, would be, without a doubt, impossible, even for him, who had acted his whole life.
"Exactly," Shikamaru said, thinking the same as him.
Sighing again, he read the name's on the stone they had woken up beside, feeling it much too empty without the name's that had been added during the war.
"Damn it." He clenched his fists, nails digging into his skin. "Goddamnit. I fucked this up."
Sighing, Shikamaru looked at him, placing a hand on his shoulder. "At least we might be able to save some of them," the man/boy tried to comfort.
He didn't look back. "You may be right about that, but… Truthfully, I'm -no, we're tired of fighting. I know you feel the same as I do. You don't want to see people close to you die again…"
There was no reaction from Shikamaru, only a darkening of the eyes.
"We both know that neither of us wants to be here. You're done, you're tired of all this, having to live the way you did." He paused. "You have no point to life anymore."
The hand on his shoulder tightened as the man/boy protested. "No! You're still here."
"But really, what does that help?"
"You're still here," Shikamaru growled.
He ignored him. "And now, when you thought it would be over, I fucking slammed you into the goddamned past."
"Fucking listen to me," Shikamaru snarled, letting his, what he called, 'inner anger' out. "You are my brother. I'll follow you anywhere. And you didn't shove us here on purpose, so get your head out of the gutter and get over it."
Naruto glared at him. "Stop acting like me."
"Stop forgetting that you exist," Shikamaru accused back.
"Drop the damn act," he continued.
"Only when you acknowledge that people care about you."
Naruto turned away, walking to the forest close by. "Fuck off."
Shikamaru followed. "No," he snapped, clenched fists at his sides.
They walked deep into the forest, stopping by a large tree, roots creating a sort of shelter. They both crawled in it, still having much space, taking their respective spots beside each other, both lying down to try and realize that they really were back.
They had gotten over their little 'spat' only a minute after leaving into the forest, back to their closeness. Their fights never lasted more than an hour.
They both closed their eyes, neither planning on returning to their homes until they were more prepared.
Yoshino sat nervously at the table, fighting uncontrollably as she sent worried glances towards the door every five seconds without fail.
Her head fell in despair every time the door was left unopened, her eyes glistening with a familiar wetness.
On the other side of the table sat her husband, Shikaku, not showing his anxiety nearly as much as her, though still noticeably so, much unlike his usual self.
Shikamaru had usually come home before the sun was down, so when he wasn't there by night, they had been worried. They both went out, searching for their son, asking friends of his if they'd seen him, then his teacher, and eventually, random people. When they found not a trace of him, they were scared out of their wits, her especially.
They had later returned home, waiting another hour, then searched around the village a second time. The both of them had repeated that process two more times, then decided they would wait for the rest of the night.
He never came.
It was an early seven in the morning, just an hour before the academy would start. They were planning to go there, see if their son would show, and ask Iruka again if not.
Yoshino was on the verge of crying. Never had her son been so late to come home, and he always told them if he was going somewhere. But now, he was gone. Nowhere to be found. She hadn't the smallest idea where he was. For all she knew he could have been kidnaped, or even dead.
He was a bright kid, a very smart child. He was a Nara after all. He knew not to approach anyone dangerous until he had real training as a shinobi, she drilled that into his head. But even then, he was still strong enough to take on someone.
That only made it worse for her. To know that, supposing he'd encountered someone bad, they were powerful. Otherwise, her baby would be home.
She knew that there was no chance that Shikamaru was out doing something 'bad'. He had never been the type, usually dubbing all that stuff 'troublesome'. And even if that was what was going on, people would have seen him walking around the village, going into a shop, or someone's house.
But there was nothing.
He may not have been missing for long, though still a long while, but both she and Shikaku knew that something must have happened to him, especially since nobody had seen him. It was a parent's intuition.
The clock struck eight and the two of them were up in an instant, their eyes holding a small bit of hope that their child would be at the academy, and might have spent the night at a friends house and forgot to tell them, though they did ask every one of his friends (which were few, because it was 'troublesome to make friends' as he once stated to them)
They arrived at the academy in a quick ten minutes, holding each other's hands as a sign of reassurance.
Walking inside, they were meet with a woman sitting behind a desk. She smiled softly at them. "How may I help you?" she asked.
Yoshino bit her lip, letting Shikaku answer for her. "We need to talk to Iruka."
The woman nodded. "Do you know where his classroom is?"
"Yes," he answered.
"Alright then. Just go on ahead."
They nodded to her before continuing their walk in an anxious silence. They stopped at the door they knew Iruka would be teaching behind.
Shikaku opened the door, neither caring that they were interrupting class. They both peered into the room, catching the confused stares of many children and a teacher.
Their search for their child ended as a failure.
"Can I help you?" and Iruka, a worried smile on his face.
"May we speak with you."
"Of course." Iruka turned to the class. "Alright, why don't you study for your upcoming test while I'm busy." The kids groaned though went to work.
Yoshino walked out of the room, both men following.
Iruka had been earlier informed that Shikamaru was missing, and, being the worrying teacher he was, he had searched for the boy as well. He wasted hours asking around, jumping roof to roof to search for him.
There was no sign of the boy.
When he had collapsed back in his house, not even a wink of sleep blessed him, keeping him up the whole night worrying. He had lied in his bed, staring at the ceiling for hours, thinking of just where his student would be.
When class started the next day, he had hoped that his parents had found him, and he would be there. But, seeing the empty seat where the boy always sat, he knew that he wasn't. Shikamaru was always early, though it seemed out of character for him, and if he wasn't there by the time he was, then he wasn't coming at all. The only students that were not there were him, and Naruto.
He had made a mental note to visit Naruto later that day, knowing that the only times he was gone, was when he got a pretty bad beating from the villagers.
He couldn't do anything but visit him...
He started teaching the class as usual, but his thoughts were nowhere near what he was teaching.
Sakura raised her hand, calling his attention.
"Yes, Sakura?"
She lowered her hand. frowning. "Is something wrong, Iruka-sensei? You look really worried."
He smiled at her. "It's nothing you need to concern yourself with," he answered. He wasn't going to tell them until later, either when Shikamaru was back, or if he'd been gone too long. But right now, there was no real point to informing them.
Sakura continued staring at him, joined with most of the other children, clearly unhappy with his answer.
They'd be more unhappy if he told them.
His heart dropped when Shikamaru's parents appeared, an open door behind them. There would only be two reasons that they were here, and he didn't like either of them.
One, Shikamaru wasn't found, and they were searching for him here.
Two, they found the boy, but he was in no condition to come to class, whether it was physical, mentally, or emotionally.
He prayed that that wasn't it.
He could see the dread in Yoshino's eyes when she didn't see her son and the troubled look on Shikaku's face. So he could assume that he was still gone, but he didn't know anything until they answered.
"Can I help you?" he asked, trying his best to make his smile look normal and not panicked.
Shikaku was the one that answered, his voice sounding unnaturally hoarse and so much unlike his usual 'lazy' personality. "May we speak with you?"
He bit his lip. "Of course." Turning to the class, he was a variation of emotions running through their faces, mostly confusion and concern. "Alright, why don't you study for your upcoming test while I'm busy." He ignored the wines, leaving the room with the two so they could get some privacy, closing the door softly behind them.
"Did…" he paused. "Did you find him?"
They shook their heads.
He dropped his head, a silence fitting in for a few agonizingly long minutes.
He felt like such a failure, not being to find one child. Not only that, but his student. As his sensei, it was his job to protect the boy, but he wasn't helping, only hoping.
"If he doesn't show today…" he said. "You should go to Hokage-sama, set a mission…" It would be much easier to have the help of some other shinobi, than just them alone.
They nodded. "Yes…"
He clenched his fists. "I'll keep my eyes out for him…"
"Thank you," Yoshino spoke for the first time, her voice cracking as she covered her eyes with her hands.
"Good luck…"
Shino watched curiously as his sensei exited the room, a frown hidden behind his collar.
Something was wrong, even an idiot could tell that much.
He saw the glances Iruka kept sending to the empty seat Shikamaru usually sat in, and the same thing with the Nara's parents when they arrived.
He could only assume that something had happened to the boy.
"I wonder what's wrong," he heard a voice say. Looking over, he saw Kiba and Ino whispering to each other.
"Yeah… Shikamaru's parents seemed really troubled. Maybe he's sick or something."
He raised an eyebrow. Nobody would be that worried if he was sick, unless he had something life threatening. But it didn't feel like that was what was going on.
He could have been injured, possibly.
He wasn't sure… He would find out eventually anyway. He just hoped it wasn't too serious.
Shikamaru was… interesting. Most saw him as a lazy kid, but he could see the hidden fire in his eyes, the way he lifted one side of his head when it was on the table to hear the lesson better. He saw how the Nara watched other spars intently, grasping the technique the best he could. There was no better was than to say the Shikamaru was, in fact, a prodigy in the making, if not one already.
He was amazing, really. Someone intent on learning, becoming a shinobi, while making just about everybody underestimate him. It was truly an astounding scheme.
His musings were cut short when Iruka returned, the man's head hanging low as he walked back.
And now he was more curious.
Cool, first chapter over.
So, as you probably saw above, I'm pairing Shino and Shikamaru, and I'm also going to give Naruto one, but I'm not really sure, so please tell me who you'd like him to be with!