Spoilers for chap 328. I do not own naruto.
Requiem
The corpse had been wrapped in a tight, filmy black shroud. The soft pearlescent light of the moon shown lightly upon Asuma's body, filling it with a low luminescent glow.
A posthumous glow.
Dead. Not alive. Not breathing, not existing. Shikamaru's mind had always functioned on logic and reason, but this time, he couldn't seem to make it click in his head. That black, shining shrouded body wasn't Asuma. At least, it wasn't anymore.
Ino and Chouji, along with everyone else, had gone to sleep, they would head for Konoha in the morning, and Shikamaru knew that by daylight everything might seem realer to him. By the light of the sun, the shadows would grow deeper and the truths become more defined; Asuma would be dead and the man who killed him would still be alive. And Shikamaru would know this.
But now, as he walked towards his mentor's body, toting his last pack of cigarettes, Asuma wasn't dead. The soft light of the moon made everything one color, and blurred the lines between dead and alive sufficiently for Shikamaru to let himself believe whatever he wanted. That Asuma was alive, that he would wake up any second and ask for another cigarette, yeah? Lazy as you are, could you spare a second to light me one more?
Sure, Asuma. One more light.
He set the body aflame.
Ino, Chouji woke up to the sickly sweet smell of Asuma's ashes. Shikamaru just stood there, watching the smoke billow up to the sky. That body wasn't Asuma. It never was. What made Asuma himself was rising up to the heavens right now, along with the smoke he always cherished so dearly.
Why would you do that Shikamaru?
He doesn't answer, and puts the last unlit cig in his mouth.
We could have buried him. Its what he deserved. Whats wrong with you?
The silence continues as he leans over and lights the stick in his mouth with Asuma's body.
Its better this way, he says.
He wanted one last smoke….just one more.
As Shikamaru exhales a could of sickly sweet smelling smoke, smoke lit with the burning vessel of his mentor, with the soul of his teacher, while the essence of Asuma slowly caking his lungs with a blackness as deep as the one layering his heart now, he adds,
Besides, it would have been troublesome to carry the body all the way back.
This was my first fanfic, courtesy of my morbid mind, obsession with a smoking shikamaru, and writers block for a long winded English assignment on a book by Tim O brien, "the things they carried." Read it sometime. Its pretty good.
I would have written something better, but I've literally had this account for years and done nothing with it, so I thought if I didn't submit something I never would. So heres some crap Im posting just for the heck of it. Flame away ill make waffles with them. I is my first fic, but you don't have to be gentle, I lieks it rough.