Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto, Kishimoto Masashi does.
Summary: Shikamaru muses on his life, the lives of his friends, and ninjas in general.
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Team Leader
The line was pretty long today, Shikamaru thought as he and his team walked into the mission report center. Iruka-sensei, Hokage-sama, and other were busy at work as he, Ino, and Chouji got in the back of the long line for handing in mission statements. They had just gone through a C-ranked mission for two weeks, guarding a passing caravan from bandits.
Behind him, Chouji and Ino started yapping about something back and forth. Shikamaru listened with half an ear, hearing nothing at all. Shikamaru didn't like this room. The fact that the line looked like it wasn't moving at all certainly didn't help. It wasn't the endless chitchatting that droned on and on, or the endlessly long lines, which usually produced more troublesome missions. Shikamaru didn't like this room because he just hated having to stare at the wooden floor and ceiling.
Shikamaru was too lazy to have strong opinions on most things, but if there was one thing he hated, it was repetition. He hated staring at kitchen counters and walls, the linoleum and wood cut into those sickeningly perfect and angular patterns. It pissed him off, the way the wooden boards in this room pissed him off.
This dislike was something new that he had acquired, after the failure of his first mission as Chuunin to retrieve Sasuke. His parents didn't know what to make of it at first. Shikamaru spent more and more time away from his home and looking at the clouds when he wasn't training or doing missions. He even started losing interest in board games. It wasn't until his father finally talked to him one day that things started going back to normal, though Shikamaru's newfound distaste never went away.
Still, he had to admit that it was perfect for a room where ninja were sent into missions. A place where ninjas, in identical uniforms, stood in neat queues, and awaited whatever fate was assigned for them.
In some ways, life was a lot like a wooden wall, the wood cut into perfect rectangular boards and nailed into neat rows, regardless of what they felt about it. Shikamaru knew the average statistics, the cold inescapable numbers that decided who came home from missions and who didn't. That small number of improbability, one repeated and multiplied over and over and over again. It was like a clock in a way, yes?
Tick-tock, tick-tock. One more second, and the minute was up; the hour was up; the day was up. There was no use arguing against it. You started at the beginning of a row of boards, and you moved your eyes until you were at the end of it. Shikamaru wasn't called a genius for nothing. He could see that for him and his team, the days of gardening lawns in the morning and going home before the sunset were long past. All their missions were outside the village walls now, in their three-man group, with or without their Jounin teacher. None of them could be called rookies anymore. Life had been and was pushing them along this fixed path of the ninja.
Shikamaru didn't like to think of himself as another face on a wall. He liked to think of himself as Shikamaru, the same way that Chouji would always be kind and friendly, like Chouji, and the same way that Ino would always be bossy and bitchy, like Ino. Shikamaru wondered sometimes, whether the Chuunin vest was too big for him. He started wondering that after the failure of his first mission as leader. He still wondered about it, five successful missions later.
Oh, he wasn't going to quit and run. His father's words to him at the hospital had beaten that truth into him. Later, Asuma-sensei's gentler words only reinforced Pops' message. Whether he ran or not, he was still going to be staring at the wall, moving his eyes along the rows of wooden boards, known as Ino and Chouji, his father and his teacher, from the beginning to the end. Shikamaru wanted to make a difference for his friends. To do that, he could live with the truth, but how could he accept it? He wondered how many people in this line thought about that.
They were after all, much more experienced than he was. Did they think of themselves as pieces to be moved on a board? Did they think of their subordinates as the same? Or did they think that they would make a difference, that despite whichever way life carried them, if they stayed with the people they cared about, it would make all the difference?
His father wasn't just another face on a wall, neither was Asuma-sensei. What worried Shikamaru when he first stepped into the room was that he hadn't seen them in two weeks, and that they weren't in this line, or in this room.
Damn them both. Asuma-sensei was probably fraternizing with Kurenai-san, and Pops was probably busy drinking with his buddies. Damn them both for making him think these thoughts all the time. Damn them for making him care, because no matter what he wanted to believe, or what they wanted him to believe, there was that small number of improbability, one that multiplied itself everyday he lived, one that was useless to argue against.
On the other hand, there was Ino and Chouji. Shikamaru's pencil filled out the last of his mission statement, telling how he and his team had carried out their duties, how they had defeated the bandits on the road that had ambushed the caravan, how none of his team was injured or dead. Five successful missions didn't make up for one unsuccessful one, didn't make all his doubts and fears go away. However, watching the two of them chatting away, he felt like he had accomplished enough that he could leave those things alone.
The damned line was finally moving. One by one, ninjas moved forward. Shikamaru and his team did the same.
Author's Notes: I wrote this because I felt that Naruto hasn't explored the lives of ninjas since the Wave Arc. Instead, it focuses on the lives and relationships of Team 7. I hope you liked it. Special thanks to Spectrum, who beta read this. Please review.