Absence Of
Summary: Like she never was there in the first place. OneShot- Ino, Shikamaru. AU.
Warning: Ridiculously AU. Everyday setting. Complete.
Set: Story-unrelated. Somewhat part of my "Life is what happens"-head-canon.
Disclaimer: Standards apply.
She returns from six weeks of studying abroad and is full of tales of the south, of beaches and Mediterranean villages and exotic food. Her hair is almost colorless, bleached from sun and wind, but her skin is porcelain as always. Her eyes bluer than blue. Shikamaru notices, because it is what he does: he watches people.
He has watched Ino for their whole life, and he can see the changes. He also sees that, despite her tales of fun and travels, she has worked hard. Her final presentation of her collected data spans forty slides of graphs, explanations and comparisons. She is rewarded a commendation and silent approval from her direct supervisor, and a few comments from their boss on her return and on the fact that the institute spent money on her trip ("I should have told him, Professor, you paid two hundred euro for my flight, I paid six hundred euro for the accommodation…" But she never did, only ever laughed about it). Six weeks of lab practice are obligatory for the two years of studying for their Master of Sciences, but they can be served at their home university in three different labs. The fact that Ino went abroad to serve her lab time was surprising. And it was not. It was Ino. So Shikamaru thinks about her from time to time while she is gone and reads along when she chats with Chouji.
She returns, and everything goes back to normal.
Shikamaru is almost completely used to her presence again – fall and lectures and dinners together and lab practice and reports and winter and weekends and work and it is the three of them, Ino, Shikamaru and Chouji, always and every time. It's Ino's stuff in the bathroom and Ino's voice in the kitchen and Ino's laughter in the living-room. And then it's the decision where to perform their Master Thesis studies, and under whose supervision. Shikamaru returns to his primary interests – surfaces and electrochemistry and battery research – and Ino's supervisor asks her whether, for her actual Master Thesis, she would like to return to the partner university abroad. Shikamaru never pictured the place but if he did it would be something like palms and exotic flowers and sand-colored, wind-swept buildings. Hot sun and dry air. Ino re-enacts the meeting with her supervisor for Chouji, as she always does. Shikamaru listens, as he always does.
"He was like, I have a topic for your Master Thesis, I already talked to your supervisor at our partner university and if you would like to go you could spend half of your Thesis research over there again. He sounded very happy to get you back. And I told him that was probably because I cleaned up the lab first thing before I started the experiments last year. And Asuma laughed, I mean, if there is a reason whatsoever that you don't want to go back there – I can't imagine one, but there might just be – then tell me. Because I also have another project you could work on here. You just have to tell me. And I was like: Is there a way to say no when he phrases it like that?"
And Ino laughs, and throws her hair back in a gesture so like her that Chouji chuckles and Shikamaru sighs and nobody mentions that their boss has long ago taken a liking to Ino and that she would probably get whatever she wants if she only asked. Because they also know that Ino doesn't like that, and that she will get angry if they tell her the same. Because Ino knows that she is good. But she also knows she is good because she is a hard worker, not because she is a genius like Shikamaru or an intuitive learner who always grasps the basic concepts immediately like Chouji.
Ino does not like to be singled out.
Christmas passes, and New Year, and the last weeks of their last semester before the beginning of their Master Thesis time. Two last exams – one oral, one written – and the submittal of the last lab reports, and one last lab week, and a lot of planning and organizing (Shikamaru is amazed at how much paperwork it actually costs until one can start something as simple as six months of lab work in an institute). Ino complains about having to renew her passport, of having to find an insurance, of wanting to find a scholarship and of not finding one. She complains about mosquitoes (Chouji buys her gauze for her window) and about food (Kiba demands that she takes photos of her lunch in the cafeteria every day) and about luggage sizes (Sakura advises her to take the big suitcase) and Hinata brings her a tube of sunscreen. And then the Easter holidays approach and pass and suddenly their Master Thesis time has officially begun, the introductory talks are given and Ino is all packed and settled and on her way to the airport.
"Damn," Chouji says and shoves his hands in his pockets. It is cool for May, cool even for their region, but the sun makes shy attempts to peek out between the morning's last fogs. "That went too fast. You'll take care, Ino, won't you?"
"Of course," Ino says, smiling, and hugs him. Her suitcase is already on the train, safely stored in a corner, she's seen to it herself because Ino is like that. "I'll write, don't worry."
"Pick up a good-looking foreign guy." Sakura holds on to her friend's hand. "You can't stay single forever."
"Watch me," Ino jokes. "No, seriously, three months for the synthesis and characterization of those nanoparticles and I'll be back. I don't have time for a boyfriend. Or a fling. And besides, you won't miss me."
"Of course we will," Hinata protests vehemently. "You got everything, right?"
Ino pushes her hair back with one hand and points towards the train. "I hope my luggage does not exceed the allotted weight. I think the scale was broken. It said I had gained ten kilos in the last two months."
"That's because it was a cheap one," Shikamaru mumbles and catches her smile. She hugs him, too, quick and warm and gone again in a heartbeat.
The conductor blows his whistle. Doors begin to close. Ino skips up the two steps and turns to look at them, her blue eyes wide.
"Guys. I'll see you in summer!"
"Remember to mail!" Sakura calls. Chouji waves. "Skype, Ino!"
"Yeah, yeah!"
The doors of the train slam shut. Shikamaru watches Ino disappear quickly and then appear again behind the next window. Everyone waves. Ino smiles, one last time, and then her eyes catch his. Her lips move, but no sound is heard above the dim of the starting train engines. Sakura, Kiba, Hinata and Chouji are waving furiously, calling good-byes that can't be heard. Shikamaru watches as Ino disappears with the train, watches until the sounds recedes and the red wagons disappear behind the bend of the rails, and pushes his hands into his pockets.
"There she goes," Chouji says, wistfully.
Sakura smiles and takes Hinata's arm, but her eyes are watery. Ino's their best friend, after all. "She'll be back in no time."
Shikamaru takes the bus to the university, along with Chouji and the others. They split up slowly. Hinata heads towards the business administration building, Sakura gets of the bus at the library to study for her medical exams, Kiba drops out at the biology department. Chouji and Shikamaru get off at the last stop, the furthest part of the university that houses the chemistry labs, and start their daily routine. They meet up for lunch again (strangely, it's much quicker than usual) and the day passes.
Nothing out of the ordinary.
Chouji has left a message on the table when Shikamaru returns home. He is spending the night at his girlfriend's. Shikamaru puts his bag on his desk and shrugs out of his jacket. He makes himself a quick dinner – bread and cheese and a stale piece of cake, leftover of the last package sent by Chouji's mother – and then brushes his teeth in the small, crowded bathroom the three of them share. After a few seconds of determined scrubbing, he notices something. He needs a few more heart-beats to realize what has caught his attention: the window sill, somehow, looks oddly empty. Shikamaru frowns: usually, it is packed with – oh yeah.
Ino's stuff is missing.
The ridiculous amount of make-up and other cosmetics, the cup with her tooth brush, her hair brush and her lotion are gone. There is no blue towel on the towel rack and the assembly of knick-knack on the shelf in the shower is missing, as well. Shikamaru opens the cabinet and sees the neat arrangement of perfumes, cotton pads and Q-tips hidden away in the lowest shelf. Here, at least, nothing has changed but when he closes the door again slowly he again is met with the odd emptiness. He walks into the corridor: the shoe shelf is almost empty without the colorful and embarrassingly wide assortment of shoes Ino possesses. He hasn't noticed it before. The corridor is neat and clean, obviously she vacuumed and cleaned up before she left. The bag of old newspapers is gone from the corridor cupboard when he opens it, his heart lurching strangely, as well as the bag of empty glass jars that has to be brought to the recycling containers. Continuing his inspection, Shikamaru finds that Ino's vitamin pills have been removed from their place on the kitchen table. Her bred basket, which usually contains sweets for Chouji, is still half-filled but sits in the middle of the table rather lonely. No vegetables are clustered around it, no apples, no other fruit. Her salt-and-pepper dredger is gone. Shikamaru returns into the corridor again, his heart beating furiously now without any apparent reason, and checks again: It is as if every trace of Ino has disappeared from the apartment the three of them have shared for the past one-and-a-half years, since she had rented it and had told Chouji and him that they were rooming in together from that day on. Clearly, she has taken pains to remove all her belongings from where they clustered in their shared space. Jackets. Shoes. Irrationally, Shikamaru checks the bathroom again – toothbrush, shampoo, lotion, make-up – and the kitchen – apples, tomatoes, bred – and the corridor. Stopping dead in front of the door to her room, he pauses, feeling close to panic and not knowing why. She isn't even there, she can't scream at him, what is his problem-
Shikamaru pushes the door open.
Ino's room hasn't changed. Her desk, granted, is meticulously clean and looks as if nobody has worked at it for weeks. (It's not true, he saw her here just the weekend before, blonde head bent over some papers or others. He could swear she has crammed all the papers that should usually litter a desk into one of the drawers randomly but he knows Ino is anal when it comes to keeping her desk clean and her papers filed.) Her bed is made and covered by the well-known colorful quilt. The pillows are fluffed up and carefully arranged. Not a mote of dust is in sight. Through the closed windows, the last rays of daylight peek into the room that still smells like her. Staring at the room Ino had lived in for the past year, Shikamaru stands in the door, frozen in something he just cannot place.
The ghost of a memory floated by: Sakura. "You'll have a great time over there." And Ino, smiling. "Of course."
Ino's face from the train: smiling brightly from the open door, then from the window. The train, slowly starting to take off. Her moving lips, and a flash of blue as her gaze locked with his.
Her arms had felt so thin when she had hugged him.
Shikamaru stared at the violet and pink pillows on the bed and the clean desk and the neat dresser. Ino had so carefully purged her essence from their apartment that the only thing left that was her was her room. Suddenly he ached to trash it: the bookshelf, the desk, the pretty lamps and the picture frame on the dresser. The calendar on the wall. Her stack of lab books and chemistry literature in one corner. The printer on the small table next to the desk. His fingers itched to throw something – anything – and to destroy it, to shatter it completely and watch it fall apart into a million tiny, irreparable pieces. With a tremendous effort he pulled himself together and closed the door again. It was like locking out something essential he knew he needed but had no words to describe.
I am scared, Shikamaru.
Three months.