His downcast eyes followed her as she walked around his chair.

"I… I'd rather not." She paused, hands behind back. He stared motionless at the mission description in his loose grip. "I-I know you requested-"

"This mission's perfect for you." His slumped shoulders shook as the muscles tensed. The power in her quiet voice was equally as threatening as a tap from any of her one fingers. The silence moaned for a response. He vocalized none.

I can't. I can't. I can't. I can't do this.

"I selected you two specifically due to your skills." She stared at him intensely, waiting for eye contact he refused to reciprocate. They both knew her words to be true; just as they knew no more than two lives could be risked and that sending a mission leader other than himself was practically homicide to whoever the supporting shinobi was. They needed his strategy. Her infiltration and healing skills. Their teamwork. And this logic made it pointless to argue with her. Stupid to say he couldn't do it. Selfish to say he wouldn't take the mission. Murder to say he would.

"Lady Tsunade," he kept his eyes focused down, not seeing the black on white he'd already read three times. "I… I can't. I…" he swallowed hard and shut his eyes, mentally running through the list of reasons he couldn't accept this mission, couldn't lead this support shinobi, couldn't be potentially responsible for the death of this woman. "I accept. I'll tell-"

"She's already accepted." The hokage put a hand on his shoulder. "That's all I need from you, thanks. And good luck." The exchange was brief, but the prolonged touch to his shoulder told the unspoken message that she understood the emotional sacrifice he was making for the village. And that she was wholly sorry.

Nara Shikamaru rose from his seat across from the hokage's desk and walked to the door with the confident stride of any good shinobi, head up and face blank, in a manner that did not hint at the numb feeling throughout his body or the painful throbbing of his hyperactive heart or the tears burning their way up his throat. He'd always had trouble with this; leading friends into combat. But this situation, he had carefully avoided for the entirety of his time as a chunnin and jonin and for it to finally come with this mission seemed nearly unbearable.

The bell rang with the swing of the glass door and she looked up from the potted flower she was transplanting, grinning and tucking loose yellow hair behind her ears with soil covered gloves.

"You again? What, newly discovered passion to be a botanist?"

He leaned across the counter to fiddle with order forms. "Eh…"

"You know what people are saying," blue eyes flicked up to him, "about us." He transferred his idle fingers to the task of arranging paper clips in abstract patterns. "I'm not even sure…" she turned her face up to him, asking if they were more, what they had become, what he wanted to be.

"Well, you know, Ino… I don't come here to look at flowers." …

He stopped his blind walk as he realized he was making the same bell ring with the opening glass door. He let the door fall back, glaring at the hand still pressed to the pane that separated him from comfort. He glimpsed the door of the back room opening as he reluctantly pried himself from the shop. Now was not the time for condolence or reassurance. They were shinobi now and whatever else was between them

It was like a bruise, the spreading purple leaking into all corners of the sky. He felt her nose rub into his shoulder as she pressed herself against him to dull the growing cold of evening.

"That one looks like a bird," she pointed, face still half buried. He could feel her lips move as she spoke and squeezed the hand on his chest in his own. The bird cloud dissipated and was swallowed in the darkness. "They're so brief." She tilted her head up towards him. "One second they're there and one second… they…"

"They don't die, Ino." She was crying now and her hand slid to the pocket where he carried a pack of cigarettes. "They're always there, I've told you. They just need the right conditions to solidify from water vapor into droplets and back to water vapor. The right conditions."…

whatever else was between them, they had to put on brave faces and ignore. The war had to be stopped and they had to do it, for everyone else, had to forget this part of them that was part of the other. But these were not the right conditions, he thought, him leading her into a fairly probable death, treating her as a shinobi. He ignored the falling droplets as his fingers crumpled the red 'S' on the paper and the characters spelling 'Yamanaka Ino'. Perhaps it was brief, he realized, glancing up at menacing storm clouds, perhaps without the right conditions, they would die.