Disclaimage: I don't own Naruto, of course. And now that I have already embarrassingly admitted it, I shouldn't have to do so for the whole rest of the story.

keep the fire silent
-an Shikamaru and Ino story-

-prologue-

Shikamaru smelled smoke.

His eyes opened but he was still blind. His vision slowly adjusted to his dark, dark room. There was that smoke smell again. It was everywhere. There was lots of it.

Grumbling, he swung himself out of bed with an effort, bracing himself for feet hitting a cold, cold floor. Except the floor wasn't as cold as he thought it would be. It was actually kind of warm.

Shikamaru padded over barefoot to his closed bedroom door. His arm and hand reached out in the dark toward the doorknob. And then the door flew open from the other side, almost whacking him backward across his room.

That certainly woke him up. "Shit! What the hell?" he yelled. He found that he was trembling all over. Something was not right in the world. The smell of smoke was over-powering.

"Shikamaru, Shikamaru!" Someone was screaming. Someone with a familiar voice. Shikamaru stumbled forward and then suddenly got seized by the shoulders and shaken violently. It was his father and his father was screaming.

"What? What?" Shikamaru felt annoyance. Annoyance at his hysterical father and at the stifling smoke. "What the hell is all this—"

"We have to get out! The house is on fire!"

Then Shikamaru heard it. The crackling and the roaring, the flames eating his house even though he couldn't even see them yet. He could feel it. The heat and the fear and the panic. He could see it. The flickering shadows and the orange against the walls of the hallway. The walls of the hallway, Shikamaru remembered, were usually white.

Everything else that night was hazy just like the smoke that tried to swallow him whole. Somehow he had put on his shoes, thrown on a jacket, and grabbed his regular clothes. Then he was charging through his house that was slowly becoming a large furnace. He got out, then his dad got out and in a couple of hours, their house had burned to the ground.

Shikamaru watched as firefighters hosed and hosed and hosed. He sighed.

Good night.

--

"That's awful," Ino's father was saying as he finished off his tea in one gulp. Then, his big hands reached out to the carton of wooden chopsticks between him and Shikamaru's father, selected one, and broke it crisply into two.

"Tell me about it. This is such a drag." After finished his sentence, Shikamaru's father stuffed his mouth full of ramen.

Shikamaru stood just inside the circle of light made by the open-late ramen shop. He didn't know how the two men could still eat a hearty meal at this time of night, but they were and he had decided not to join them.

The night was eerily quiet. After his house had made a considerable ruckus and his neighbors had all woken up to look at the scene, the silence had come back thicker than ever. But the silence was comforting. Shikamaru liked silence.

Maybe it was because he liked it so much that he heard the passing footfalls. He could tell by the sound that the passing person was making an effort to be silent, but was doing a really bad job. Usually, Shikamaru would have just let the individual pass, but tonight he felt mischievousness creeping into his late night spirit.

"Hey. Hey you, out there," he said. The footfalls stopped and there was a scraping sound as a foot was probably pivoted on the ground to face his voice. "Yeah, that's right. You there. Show yourself."

He knew that he was just asking for trouble. And with his luck so far tonight, he might just get it. But on the other hand, the poor guy's house had just burned down. Shikamaru figured he had a right to find somebody—a stranger, no less—to vent all his controlled anger on. He wasn't worried about the danger. In his current extremely pissed off at the world state, he could have taken on the Hokage.

And won.

Shikamaru was just tossing around the idea of saying something mean and biting to provoke the hidden guy when the guy himself ran into full view. Shikamaru saw a glimpse of orange clothing and blonde spiky hair, and he knew immediately that this individual was not, unfortunately, somebody he could vent on.

"Hey, Shikamaru! Boy, am I glad to see you. Do you have any idea what kind of creeps wander the streets at this time of night? Geez…"

"Yeah, you're one of them. Why the hell are you up and out so late, Naruto?"

The boy in the vibrant orange jacket and pants came to a complete standstill in front of Shikamaru and scratched the back of his head. "Hehe, that's a funny story. I couldn't sleep, I guess. I was getting restless."

Shikamaru raised an eyebrow. "And what's so funny about those two sentences? I would hardly qualify them as a 'story.'"

Naruto was shaking. But it was barely detectable. So undetectable, in fact, that Shikamaru missed it completely in the dim light. But if he had seen it, he would have realized that Naruto was awfully nervous at the moment and getting more anxious by the second. "Well," Naruto started, thinking on his feet, "I guess I find it funny because I have a big day of training ahead of me tomorrow and I can't sleep or rest for it at all, even though I should. Haha, isn't that ironic?"

Silence.

Shikamaru gave Naruto an almost pitiful look. "No."

"Oh," Naruto said, seeming to take it in stride. "Oh well. What are you doing out here at the this time of night?"

"Oh, I'm just with the parental unit. My dad wanted to come outside and have a late night…snack." Shikamaru gestured to the ramen shop behind him.

"Hee hee hee, sounds like a good idea!" Naruto cackled, rubbing his hands in front of him in a way that even made Shikamaru believe that a huge bowl of ramen was sitting in front of him, waiting to be devoured by the hyper one. But then Naruto's face changed from laughter to seriousness in a blink of an eye. "But no, really, what are you doing out here so late?"

"Whoa…" Shikamaru couldn't help but utter, taken aback by the abruptness. Naruto was certainly an interesting character. "My house burned down, okay? Don't get a heart attack."

"WHA? YOUR HOUSE BURNED DOWN!"

Shikamaru rolled his eyes and sighed. "I told you not to get a heart attack."

"IT BURNED DOWN?!?!"

"Yeah…"

"You mean ALL OF IT is GONE?"

"That's the general deal, yea—"

"Oh my gosh, I am SO SORRY!"

Shikamaru found that odd. He tilted his head at the ninja in front of him. Naruto looked back with a sympathy stricken face. "Yeah, I'm sure you are," Shikamaru said slowly, trying to find something hidden in Naruto's facial expression, but he gave up after a couple seconds of hard concentration. "Well, listen, you better go and sleep and I'll go and try to sleep as well. Train hard tomorrow, okay?"

"All righty!" Naruto said, snapping into his peppy self again. "You bet I will!"

There was a whoosh of air and Naruto was gone. Shikamaru sighed and shook his head. It was when he was shaking his head that he realized that he really was sleepy. As he walked back to the ramen shop, he could feel himself dozing off on his feet.

"Come on, dad," he said as soon as he pushed apart the cloth curtain. "Hurry up and finish so we can find somewhere to sleep…on the street."

"I'm trying to enjoy my meal here. Could you try to not make me so depressed over ramen?"

Shikamaru rolled his eyes at his father's back. "Terribly sorry to ruin happy hour, but I'm just trying to be realistic."

"Well, how about you—"

"Why don't you both stay at my house for a while? You know, until things get settled and you find someplace else to live."

"Your house?" Shikamaru and his father asked at the same time in amazement.

--

Ino was having a very nice sleep. Her bed was soft. Her pillow was plumped. Her hair was out of its usual restraints and made almost a blonde halo around her head. She slid one of her hands underneath the pillow and then turned to her left, sighing a little in her sleep.

Through her hazy consciousness came sound. Thumping. Small scuffing on wooden floor. Her eyebrows furrowed slightly. The thumping was quite incessant. But it probably was just her father, coming back home from having a late night walk or snack. Yeah, that was it. She had heard him leave.

Ino turned back the other way, onto her other side, and slid pleasantly back to dreamland.

A/N: This, of course, is just the prologue. So hopefully I'll be able to get the next chapter up soon. I know it's kind of all mysterious and vague right now, but it'll get better, I promise.

Now, this story will have HEAVY stuff, hence the T rating. And the rating might even go up later, if I think it is too much. So, just be sure that you're okay with reading that kind of stuff. I know you might be thinking, "Whatever. Why is she even worrying over that?" But, you know, I can never be sure. Better safe than sorry. That kind of thing.

Anyway, I hope it has caught your attention. I hope you enjoyed it. c:

Feedback is appreciated.

And until next time...!