stones for bridges, a naruto fanfic

stones for bridges

Summary: Shikamaru always knew when to let go. OneShot- Yamanaka Ino, Nara Shikamaru. (He always has to pick up the pieces. And Ino is sorry; but he can't ever blame her more than she already blames herself.) Future AU, dystopic setting. Features most of the Konoha Twelve at some point. Rated M for angst and character death.

Warning: Future-fic, AU, rated for angst and character death. OneShot. Fractured, confusing chronology.

Set: Future-fic.

Disclaimer: Standards apply.

A/N: This story is set during a war and in its aftermath and deals with character death, survivors' guilt and broken people. I, having grown up in peaceful times, will never be able to understand what it is like to live such a life. This is my version of people having to deal with such things, I don't claim my account to be accurate or even complete and am hoping it won't offend anyone. Also, the war is not the focus of this story; the people (and them changing over time) are. As such, I apologize if fights, strategy and other aspects are not mentioned with the detailed accounts some might wish for.

Three people were blocking their path in front of them, two were behind them, and ten more were spread out in the tops of the trees surrounding them.

Their presences echoed within her quietly as she stretched out her senses: two of the ones up front definitely were shinobi; their calm, controlled minds tightly strung. The presences of the ones in the surrounding trees were more agitated, their mindscapes a murky depth stirred by the sudden, unanticipated presence of two masked strangers. Civilians mixed with young shinobi, inexperienced, too-nervous and too-vulnerable, probably some genin were among them. And then, in the background: dozens of other human beings, of all ages and in various states of alarm. But all of them had some things in common: the deep, suffocating grief that hung over the clearing was almost physically painful.

As she did every time she returned, Yamanaka Ino choked on the hopelessness that surrounded her.

Next to her, her companion didn't even cast a look in her direction. He stepped forward, instead, directing his voice towards who obviously were the leaders of the people they had found hidden away in the forests of the Fire Country.

"I'm not your enemy."

His voice was listless and flat under the mask. Chouji would have spoken kindly, giving the people hope, Naruto would have greeted them with enthusiasm and strength. Hinata would have used her quiet voice that carried the edge of calm authority, Shino would have made clear that he was no threat using few words and more expressive gestures. Sasuke would have used his brusque manner and the authority and standing his clan had developed over decades of faithful service to the people. But the man standing in front of her right now had neither the charisma of his friends nor their character. He didn't have their trust, or even their objective regard. He hadn't fought at their side for the past five years, hadn't bled like them, hadn't suffered the same losses. He wasn't any of the things the aforementioned people had been, but he was alive.

When he finally took off his mask and told them his name and she had signaled the right code words, not unnoticed but quietly tolerated by her companion's detached disinterest, the shinobi surrounded both him and Ino in an escort-formation so familiar and futile she wanted to scream and took them to their leader.

Kakashi's face was still covered by the thin mask that hid his nose and lips.

It was the only thing the man in Ino's memories and the man in front of them now had in common. The leader of what was left of Hidden Leaf's civilian population was a broken man, both his eyes white and milky in their blindness. But his mind was sharp and painful, like the broken pieces of a katana. It could still kill.

"Nara Shikamaru."

Shikamaru inclined his head slightly. Ino doubted Kakashi could feel it, but the outer layers of both men's mindscapes carried similar emotions: weariness, grief. Sorrow, spiked with the nauseating, poisoning sense of hate every descendant from Hidden Leaf had in common these days, and also: overwhelming, all-consuming, never-ending guilt. The familiarity of Kakashi's mind and the utter darkness of Shikamaru's: it made her hands shake and her head spin.

"Kakashi."

This would have been the point, Ino supposed, that Sakura, Kiba, Tenten and Naruto would have screamed at Shikamaru, questioned him as to where he had been for the past years and would have accused him of being a coward. Would have raged and shouted and perhaps even attacked him. Traitor. Lee would have welcomed him back enthusiastically, calling him their Last Hope and Youthful Savior, because Lee was like that: he'd been unable to hold a grudge up until the moment he'd died. Hinata and Sasuke would have wearily welcomed him back and asked for his motives, thinking of families that had been decimated, clans that had no power anymore to protect their people and duties to a village that didn't exist any longer. Chouji would have smiled. Because he was Chouji, because he, too, had waited all these years for Shikamaru to return and had never in his life even uttered one single angry word. Ino couldn't do either of it: couldn't scream, couldn't blame, couldn't smile, couldn't hate. In her mind, the fractured pieces of the people who had been her friends swirled and stilled, expanded and shrunk and screamed, screamed, screamed.

"Ino." Kakashi turned towards her, completely conscious of his surroundings despite his blindness. He'd learned to cope. On the other hand, he'd always had a crazily accurate sense of his atmosphere – but who was she to judge? "I trust everything went well."

"Yes, Sir." Ino swallowed the nausea and forced herself to stand completely still. "We encountered a platoon of Kumo-nin, but there were no other obstacles."

Seven shinobi: Ino had mind-crippled their leader, then caused confusion with a genjutsu and killed five of them. The seventh one had killed himself, faced with the prospect of being taken prisoner by Konoha's Silver Shadow. Strange. She'd never thought she'd ever be nicknamed for the Bingo Books. Ino wasn't remotely special, and only averagely strong. If all her friends still were alive she'd merely be one well-trained, effective shinobi among others. Now, she was one of the best killers the tattered, nomadic remnants of Leaf had left.

The man who had been selected as interim leader of their people focused back on the man in front of him without further questions.

"Why are you here?"

Shikamaru didn't move, didn't even seem to breathe. His mind, as usual, was a drift sand pit to her. He radiated nothingness like other people radiated hate and hopelessness. His mindscape was like a black hole sucking in her ability and returning nothing, draining her of her strength again and again until she couldn't stand anymore. This, she realized for the seventh time since she had walked onto the clearing in front of the small, wooden hut and had knowingly risked death by his shadow traps, was probably what people without her family's bloodline always felt like.

Shikamaru hadn't wanted to be found, and, much less, to be asked for his help. He'd made it abundantly clear – both through his actions and through the precautions he had taken to stop anyone from approaching his hideout. She could have died that day. But Ino had learned the art of gambling from Sakura, and Sakura had learned from the best. (Tsunade-sama had smiled on her death bed, bleeding out internally and still trying to keep the darkness away from her beloved village with the last, pitiful strength her failing body would grant her. It won't last much longer. I'm betting on it. It hadn't worked. What had the last of the Sannin expected?) To Ino's great surprise, however, Shikamaru hadn't let her die in his shadow landscape. How could he? Despite his propensity to rebuff her mind powers, Ino knew him in a way one only knew another person when one had been growing up together from the day they had been born. She'd watched him learn. She'd watched him change. She'd watched him start to break after their teacher's death, and when his father and Chouji died a few years later, he'd fallen apart completely.

And now he stood in the Interim-Hokage's tent, hands hanging loosely at his sides, and lifted one brow inquiringly. "Didn't you want me to come?"

At the shadow binder's response, Kakashi huffed a laugh. "Did I want you to come? Do I want a broken, listless man to be in charge of the last remnants of what once was the largest shinobi village of the Fire country? Do I want you, who hasn't done anything for Leaf when it needed you most, to be the one these people – my people, Naruto's people – should place their last hope in?"

At his own words, Kakashi's dark mind cringed in pain. It was still strange, had taken Ino years to come to terms with: the difference in what the people said, and what they felt. So similar, and yet so seldom the same. The echo of all the many white lies, however well-intended, still sent her mind reeling. Kakashi was blaming himself as much as he was blaming Shikamaru, but that didn't change anything. This, she knew, was Naruto's last wish. Kakashi had loved his adoptive son, had loved the noisy, over-enthusiastic, loud brat the day his own teacher had put him into his arms for the first time. Ino never had had children of her own but in Kakashi's mind she could feel a loss so profound and earth-shattering that she broke at it, bit by bit, as well. Sometimes she wondered how much pain a human being could stand until it stopped functioning.

Shikamaru didn't move. The silence was thick enough to suffocate them, but nobody tried to break it.

Finally, the shadow binder shrugged. In the careless gesture, Ino read everything and nothing he had to say. When it became clear that nobody would add anything else Kakashi nodded, minutely.

"Naruto left you this. He was convinced, right until the end, that you would return one day." Something dropped onto the table between the two men. Shikamaru hesitated almost visibly before he took the scroll. Kakashi didn't look back at him again but turned away, his shoulders sinking in exhaustion. "Ino will show you a place to stay. I'd be sorry to tell you we don't exactly live in luxurious conditions, but I am sure you know about that. Take some time to familiarize yourself with the camp and the people. When you think you're ready to take up your duty, come back and I will explain our current situation in detail."

They were dismissed. Ino followed Shikamaru out of the tent, and, because her Hokage had told her to do so, made for the place he'd be able to stay at overnight.

On their quiet way through the camp, two children caught Shikamaru's attention. He looked like he wanted to say something: one of them had no arm, the other one had been visibly ill. Instead of saying a word, he just bent down and offered both of them a handful of dried berries. The children's eyes went wide with wonder when they tasted the wild sweetness of the fruit and one of them threw its arms around the shadow binder's shoulders before it took the other one by its only remaining hand and ran off, probably to share the snacks with their friends. Another group of young girls followed him with their eyes, two of them too shy to approach, one of them giving him desperate, unveiled glances which he responded without any inflection in his face. Ino shuddered at the sudden flare of the darkness already surrounding him. Turning away from him, she tried to see their fugitive camp as he saw it: dirty, lost and desperate.

Proud village behind the leaves, how beautiful thy face–

The realization that she barely noticed anymore only proved how used she had become to the sight, and the knowledge buried in her heart like barbed thorns and twisted.

"Nara? Nara Shikamaru?"

An old woman had stepped in front of her tent and had watched them approach. At Shikamaru's sight, she moved forward. Her shoulders were bent, her hair white and bulled back into a tight braid.

Shikamaru's step faltered.

"Yes, it's you. Shikaku's son." The woman blinked at him with watery eyes. "You're still alive."

Ino felt the sudden surge of weariness that shattered his armor of detachedness into a myriad of tiny pieces.

"Tanaka-san."

Of course he would remember the woman's name.

Her voice was nothing more than a hushed whisper. "You came back."

Shikamaru didn't answer.

The woman leaned forward as if to touch his face. Ino stepped in between them just in time: the ball of saliva the woman spat at Shikamaru splattered against her own cheek.

"Traitor."

Shikamaru's mind curled in on itself, crumbled and vanished, leaving a sickening taste in the back of her throat and a stinging sensation in her eyes.

Back in the desolate small tent she shared with Kurenai-san and her baby daughter, both of them asleep and curled into each other in a way that made them seem like one person only, she could still feel the single word echoing within him despite the distance.

Shikamaru had always known when to let go.

He always knew when to give up, and when to stand tall and persevere. Maybe that was the reason everything turned out the way it had turned out, and the reason he would save them, in the end.

Shikamaru had let Sasuke go, and in the end, Sasuke had returned to them. Shikamaru had not pursued the diplomatic relations with Suna, opting for simply giving them a few months of quiet internal discussion. Suna had then approached Hidden Leaf by herself and had proposed a treaty, and the situation had turned out just fine. Shikamaru had counseled the Fifth Fire Shadow to not send Naruto when the bijuu all over the country were being attacked by Akatsuki, and to offer a safe place to Sabaku no Gaara. Fortunately (or tragivally), the two boys had survived when all other bijuu had been slaughtered. And finally, he had demanded that Konoha's defenses were strengthened in the North after Madara had plunged the Five Continents into a civil war, and thus had thrown the only thing that could have stopped Kumo's invasion at least for a short period of time right in Kumo's path.

It hadn't lasted.

Madara had seven of the nine bijuu assassinated, had planted his spies and puppets carefully, and had taken control of two Kages and their villages. The following civil war was brutal, raging back and forth for years. Maybe people had foreseen it, Shikamaru among them. Not many survived the first year and when the second year went by Nara Shikamaru of Hidden Leaf was officially labelled a missing-nin and traitor. In the end, it hardly mattered anymore. After six years most of Konoha's forces were dead or imprisoned, their village had been reduced to rubble and ashes, and the last of its people were fugitives. In the end, nobody thought about what he had done, hadn't done or would have done: if anything, they forgot about him. He was a traitor. He wasn't worth even the smallest of fleeting thoughts.

But Naruto had always been far cleverer than anyone, except for Kakashi, perhaps, had given him credit for. Ino had realized this far later, but, thankfully, not too late. She had been present when Naruto had officially, and in Shikamaru's absence, stripped him of his position and privileges of a Konoha shinobi. He'd declared him a missing-nin in the middle of a war-torn and grief-stricken country. That day, Ino had refused to go near him; friends or not, she didn't want to see Naruto renounce the man who had given so much for his village and now refused to give more. She would have liked to hate him right there – but it was impossible to hate Naruto; Naruto with his bright, sunny smile, his calm determination and his propensity for silly outbursts. But wasn't she projecting, here? The Naruto she had known had been a child. This Naruto now was her long-year Anbu partner, a trained shinobi and chosen successor of the Fifth Fire Shadow, and the only hope Ino could see that might grant Hidden Leaf a chance of survival against the overwhelming strength of Kiri, Iwa and Kumo combined.

(And Madara, of course, always Madara.)

It was impossible to hate Naruto for doing what had to be done, as it was impossible to hate Shikamaru for leaving them. The day Ino's childhood friend had been excluded from his village of birth Ino had hidden away in the ruins of her late parents' flower shop. When she heard glass crunching under a person's footsteps she froze, irrationally thinking, hoping, praying, for just that one second, that one heartbeat, Shikamaru might have come back. But it was Naruto. Naruto, who quietly cowered down next to her, in the corner under what had used to be a cashier table, and who had sat with her without a word for hours. The Elders had to be looking for him, there had to be work he had to attend to – but still, he just sat with her. And then:

"He'll come back. I'm sure of it."

Naruto had always been able to read the hearts of the people far better than Ino was able to, and Ino had the additional advantage that she could feel their minds. It seemed there was a difference between seeing and knowing. As the years passed by, Ino learned it as well, but it didn't make things easier.

Never as easy as it seemed to be for Naruto, at least.

"I don't need a bodyguard," Shikamaru told Kakashi coolly after she had followed him around through the entire camp for two entire days straight. "I am perfectly capable of protecting myself."

The black hole that was his mind expanded and contracted again, but she focused on Kakashi's familiar mindscape so hard her hands began to shake. She balled them into fists at her sides.

Kakashi just shrugged. "Tell her so yourself."

Shikamaru clenched his jaw in anger but didn't even look at her.

Instead, he threw himself head-first into the problems that had become part of their situation so much none of them even noticed them anymore. He reorganized the defenses. He developed new strategies. Naruto would have made his shinobi smile while doing so. His chosen successor, the man he had put all his trust in, barely even smiled himself, and the trust the people put in him was thin and accompanied by barely unveiled suspicion. But Shikamaru went, ignoring all the hate-filled glances and ugly whispers, and got the job done nonetheless. It was strange, feeling the difference in character of the man who had been her childhood friend once and Naruto, the man who had been her best friend for the past six years. It was painful. They were so different. It was impossible, really, it couldn't be more than a temporary reprieve until the enemy rallied again and finally got down to wiping the last Konoha forces off the face of the world. One more person, genius and genius strategist or not, would not be able to change that. And still. Naruto had been so sure–

Ino clenched her teeth and continued to follow Shikamaru around.

If Naruto had been a warm haven that had encompassed all of his friends, family and people under the shield of his kindness and protection, Shikamaru was a cold, unapproachable wall between their enemies and them. The only kindness he showed was to the children of the camp. He kept them alive: it was enough for her. In response, Ino killed two assassins that managed to slip through the filthy, muddy camp full of sorrow-blind and grief-deafened civilians and made it as far as to his tent. She temporarily mind-blinded eleven shinobi attacking him at the frontier and killed even more enemies on their way there and back. When Kiba and Akamaru, commanding force at the border, tears streaming down their faces and their lips drawn into a snarl, accused him of having left Naruto, Shino and Hinata to die, she stepped in between them wordlessly.

Kiba glared at her in disgust, but he didn't attack her. He also came to her, one day later.

"I'm not sorry," he said, though there was an apology – to her – in his eyes. "But I shouldn't have dumped it on you. I guess he might as well have his chance." And besides, his mind said, there's not much hope we've got left. Might as well try.

They'd already fallen that low.

Akamaru stubbed his nose into her ribs and Ino felt something like a smile on her lips when Kiba threw his arms around his huge dog's neck, letting him carry him up, and settled onto Akamaru's back elegantly.

"Fancy a ride?"

"No, thanks," Ino declined. She would have enjoyed it – they had travelled on Akamaru's back often in the past, Kiba, Naruto and her – but she could feel the dark absence of anything that was Shikamaru's landscape step out of the tent behind her.

And Ino had a job that had everything to do with a wordless promise to Chouji and a vocal one to Naruto and her own vow made a long, long time ago, and nothing to do with the silence of the man standing there who hadn't looked at her once since he had dragged her out of one of his shadow traps and, wordlessly, had listened to her pleading him to come back.

His unwilling acceptance of the fact that she'd be wherever he went felt like chewing on glass shards, but at least he let her.

Three years ago they had leaned against a tree, tired and worn. All around them, the last remnants of what one had been Hidden Leaf's shinobi were spread out, more than half of them injured and exhausted. Whoever could walk was taking care of those who couldn't. Moans and the stench of blood and vomit permeated the air, suffocating her, crushing her. Not even Naruto could see a silver line on the horizon anymore after the last years of fighting and retreating, of hiding in the shadows and losing more and more and more of their own. He just couldn't. Or could he?

"He'll come back, and he'll help us save Leaf."

Ino had laughed in surprise, despite the ache in her throat and the pounding pain in her side. The gauze wrapped around her arm was slowly bleeding through. It sounded like a gargling cough, but it was a laugh nevertheless. Tired, exhausted, and without any hope.

"Shikamaru's gone, Naruto."

"Yes, he is." The Sixth Fire Shadow's gaze was fixed on something only he could see, far, far in the distance. "But he'll come back. And he'll know what to do."

She was tired. So, so tired. She couldn't even protest that he'd come back by now, seeing as how Leaf's defeat was being shouted from the roofs of any decently-sized shinobi village.

"What more could he do than what you have already done?"

It was strange how Naruto, this inherently positive and enthusiastic person, could be so unaware of his own achievements these days. The war had changed them all, it seemed. Sometimes Ino wondered what she had lost.

"I never was a strategist." Naruto's voice was quiet, matter-of-fact. "What we need right now is not a figurehead that can rally the people but a strategist who can come up with the best scenarios to bring our people safely through this war."

"You still have Kakashi, Yamato, Kurenai, Anko and Ibiki," Ino countered, naming some of the remaining jounin of Leaf's and, in the process, exhausting almost all of her possible options already. There really weren't many of them left.

"Indeed, they are a great help." Naruto sighed. "But they're not Shikamaru."

"We don't need him." She was aware her voice was sounding more and more desperate, but she didn't care. "You'll come up with something, Naruto. You always do."

He'd only smiled. For the first time, it seemed brittle to Ino. It hit her with the force of a lightning-based jutsu striking a target within the ocean: Naruto was tired, too.

Shikamaru seemed determined to be everywhere at once, at every time of the day. Sometimes Ino thought that he was trying to repent for the time he hadn't been there, for everything that might have not happened had he stayed with them instead of leaving. Sometimes she thought that he didn't care, actually, and was just fulfilling a promise to a man both of them had held dear (she didn't know whom exactly, though, and she didn't dare ponder the thought). Sometimes…

Sometimes, Ino didn't know why he was doing what he was doing at all.

"You are killing yourself," Sakura mumbled, tired and worn, thinner than Ino had ever seen her before and, for a second, so fragile she was afraid her friend would break any second. Did she look similar? Perhaps, but then it couldn't be as bad as it was for the children. Ino couldn't even stand to look at them, how did Shikamaru even do it? At the same time, Sakura was strong. Perhaps stronger than Ino herself. "You can't protect him like that forever, Ino. Stones for bridges."

Deep within her, something rang at the words her friend was quoting, but she couldn't draw a connection.

"I'll do it as long as I have to," she just said and shrugged.

Her friend's gaze never wavered and Ino remembered the night Sasuke and Sakura had announced their engagement: the helpless, twisting paradox between the pain and the happiness that ran through Naruto's mindscape, the fondness in Chouji's, Tenten's, Hinata's, Shino's and Kiba's minds, the burbling enthusiasm of Lee's joy and even Neji's silent approval. Sakura had burned so brightly, so, so beautiful. Sasuke had looked… centered. He'd felt centered, too, and only then Ino realized how unbalanced he'd been all those years, how desperately he had been searching something he hadn't even known he was looking for. Sakura's strength had never wavered, not even when they lost Naruto. Sasuke had been wracked by grief and guilt; but Sakura had always been the strongest one of Team Seven, hadn't she? Sakura, of all, had to know what Ino felt in regard to Shikamaru.

I don't have to do this forever, she thought, glad she was the only mind reader her family had produced in ages. Just until. Just long enough.

And Sakura, blessedly unaware of her friend's thoughts, sighed and bandaged the gash in Ino's side, carefully wiped the blood from her face, helped her wash the flaky, red substance from her hair and re-braided it. Finally, she bound it with her own, simple leather strip. Sakura's hair was pretty: like cherry blossoms on a beautiful day. There were so few things in their world nowadays that still were beautiful.

Ino smiled. "Thank you."

Sakura held her hand a bit longer than necessary before letting her go.

"Give my regards to Sasuke."

The medic nodded, her lips twisting upward a fraction.

"Take care, Ino. It won't be long from here, or so they say."

Sakura was right. Half a year since Shikamaru had taken over the command of the Leaf forces and already the tides of war had turned. Luck was a fickle lady. Sometimes, however, Ino thought that luck had very little to do with what Shikamaru could do. With the way he could plan strategies and plot traps and setups and put himself into their enemy's shoes in order to develop strategies to counter their plots. The first month, they had strengthened their fortifications and had secured their supply line. The next, they had changed their routines, had managed to surprise some of the enemies and some not, and had slowly, slowly, expanded on the plans Shikamaru had brought into their circle so easily that Ino suspected he had been working on them for a long, long time already. (Only this was Shikamaru they were talking about, so if he made up his plans before acting or just as he went along didn't really make a difference.) It wasn't as if he changed much regarding their strategy. It was just that the small changes he applied turned out to be breathtakingly effective. And now, half a year later, they had reached a point none of them would ever have thought of reaching again: Konoha's forces were slowly gaining strength.

Even more: they were defeating the enemy.

Shikamaru had done everything in his power to push back the attacking Kumo and Iwa nin, he had rallied the remaining Konoha shinobi and given them a reason to fight. They were few, they were poor, starved, injured and desperate, but Shikamaru had given them something they could cling to. They would make it.

They would make it.

They were winning, but Ino had no idea what there was left to win.

"Just hold on," Shikamaru whispered to the girl bleeding out in his arms. "Hold on. We're going home."

Ino could sense the pain in him – close to the surface, it always had been like that with him – and also: the achingly familiar distance that made his mind impossible to read for her. She'd thought she had forgotten the way his voice could be calm and soothing like that, but her body remembered.

The child in his arms smiled at him a last time: a woman smiling at her lover, a mother smiling at her child, a daughter smiling at her father all at the same time. Ino felt her mind slip away like a robin soaring towards the endless skies. Shikamaru's mindscape shifted, twisted and settled again and suddenly, she felt like crying. Right on cue, the sky released the rain that had been threatening to fall for weeks now. Fall was coming.

Shikamaru didn't move, carefully holding the girl's body in his arms. Carefully, she shifted to shield him from the worst of the wind's gusts and prepared to keep watch with him.

Ino had seen so many people die. Six – almost seven – years into the war, and it didn't get better. She prayed it never would, in the beginning. Now she hoped, tiredly, that she could forget them.

Ino had felt so many people die. So many of them died by her own hand, or she was sharing their mind when they did. She prayed she wouldn't get used to it, in the beginning. Now she only was tired.

Ino had watched her teacher and her childhood friend and higher-ranked and lower-ranked shinobi and civilians and children all die. She prayed–

Ino felt Naruto die.

They had told him. They had pleaded with him that he, as the Fire Shadow, he had the duty to stay behind and stay alive for his people. Ino, Sasuke, Kiba, Sakura, even Kakashi: all had tried to talk reason into him. But Naruto – stupid, strong, kind, wonderful Naruto – had steadfastly refused to hide away behind the makeshift walls of their camp. So silly, stubborn, and obstinate right up to the end when he had ordered Ino to stop meddling with his mind and just let him die in order to save herself and the rest of their platoon. Naruto's death had been the last, most devastating loss they had suffered. Genma had died with his Fire Shadow, his mind whispering This time, for sure, and Ino and Kiba had been left to deal with the by-now familiar guilt that the man under their protection had died without them being able to do anything. Useless. Can't even die right. Kiba's mindscape was a dog-fight arena, thoughts screaming and barking and clawing at each other relentlessly and so wildly sometimes she wondered how he could stand it in his own head. She'd never understood how he, Shino and Hinata had been able to blend into such a calm, harmonious team: Shino was leaf-dappled shadow over sunny meadows and the soft humming of bees, all calm and open depth and rationality. Hinata, on the other hand, was the sheen of ice on a lake in winter: beautiful, cool and deceptively easy to read. Her depths were hidden, both beautiful, mild and dangerous. Ino had seen her fight like a lioness, protecting her home and her heart. She hadn't been able to save Neji, but Ino was sure she'd done that deed years before. She had offered him her gentleness, her hand and her heart when nobody else had. After his death, Hinata had needed to take care of the kids: it probably had been something that kept her alive, and Ino was thankful. She'd grown to love the small, shy and yet so determined woman – like everyone who knew Hinata had.

But they'd been decimated, one by one.

Chouji.

Shikamaru, who had left them behind.

Neji and Tenten.

Lee, as if unwilling to remain without his team mates.

Naruto.

No blow like the other. Always a similar pain. Each one more severe than the last, yet all of them unbearably painful. A friend lost, another piece of Leaf broken. Ino suspected her heart was beginning to look like the torn, dark cloth she still used to cover herself and that once had been her ANBU cloak.

And when it became unbearable, when Ino couldn't look into the mirror for fear of seeing her own failures written clearly in her own eyes, she'd broken and given in. After Naruto's death – their failure to protect him, her failure, hers – she had torn down her mental barriers. From that moment on, she had expanded her mind to consciously encompass the mindscapes of the people around her rather than closing herself off, as her father had taught her in the past. It was simpler that way. She couldn't remember when she had last been alone in her own head but the silence within her was deafening, the darkness so pitch-black she didn't dare to look at it even from the corners of her eyes.

It was so much easier to deal with other peoples' mindscapes instead.

The peoples' attitude towards Shikamaru didn't change suddenly, but that was the way it felt like for Ino. One day, she was putting herself between grieving widows, mothers and grandmothers who hated him because he had left. The next, suddenly, she was getting pushed aside by people eager to talk to him no matter how trivial the topic and how short the encounter. People stopped to talk to him, to shake his hand and to express their gratitude. The sliver of hope that had burned so low the embers had been barely visible in the darkening world around them suddenly had begun to glow again, softly and warmly. They didn't burn – they'd lost too much for that, too many – but they were there.

Shikamaru's mind shifted again and settled into something that hurt even looking at it, and Ino didn't dare probe deeper.

Kiba and Sasuke were the only ones she would share her bodyguard duties with, and they had only managed to convince her by faking an assassination attempt on Shikamaru – with his consent, no doubt, because the fucking idiot hadn't even batted an eyelash when it happened – and by dragging him away while she was occupied. Ino had been close to losing all reason after that, but she'd realized they were right. Sakura had said it before: she couldn't do this all by herself. And she could understand them: both Kiba and Sasuke had failed Naruto, after all, just like Ino had. And for that reason they wouldn't fail Shikamaru.

It was a small similarity, but it bound them together more strongly than any promise could have.

So when Sasuke began to spell out a duty roster for them in which Ino actually was assigned time to rest and recuperate, and when the first attack since long on the Eight Fire Shadow was rebuked by Kiba rather than by her without any losses on their side, when Sakura gave a look at her and (deliberately, no doubt) said she did look better and none of the others even batted an eye when they saw her without their Hokage, she grudgingly accepted that it was better that way. Shikamaru didn't say anything, of course, but he hadn't spoken to her for years anyway.

But Ino wasn't really prepared for the backlash Kiba and Sasuke's insistence, no matter how well-intended it was, would create.

The brightly orange flowers had to be a gift from Hinata. The florist's daughter in Ino immediately recognized and categorized the bright gerbera and she was sure Naruto would have loved them. When the refugees has returned to the ruins of their former home a few months ago, there had been too much work for the people to care for something as trivial as flowers. There still was. Ino, however, was pretty sure the remote areas of the Hyuuga compounds still held some of their past beauty. Nature had a way of living through times that killed even the most resourceful human beings.

Naruto's memorial was simple and inelegant, just the way he would have liked it, but it didn't hold his body. (He'd been burned, the glowing flakes of sparks and ashes taking off into the black night sky: she'd loved the symbolism but loathed the meaning with every fiber of her broken, shattered being.) Once they'd returned to Leaf Shikamaru had made sure there was a memorial site, rather unsurprisingly, the Cenotaph had survived the destruction of their homes. A second, blank and unhewn stone had been placed next to it. It carried a name and an inscription, nothing more. Ino suspected three more faces would be added to the carvings on the Hokage Monument as soon as they would be able to take care of it but beforehand, there was a certain amount of repairs and restorations to make. The five proud stone carvings of the Fire Shadows of Old had not survived the destruction of their beloved home without damage.

Ino wasn't the first when she approached the clearing on a cloudy, overcast late-summer morning. Kakashi was there already, old and bent and radiating the same calm he had worn from the moment Shikamaru had stepped forward to take his place and had proven Naruto right.

"Five years."

The former Hokage's voice was still strong, belying the tired tilt to his shoulders.

"Naruto probably would have dressed the Hokage Monument with party hats and lit fire crackers."

The sudden twist of her lips was surprising, the pain in her heart was not. Naruto's death still was like an open wound, raw, bleeding and infected, and the pain would crash over her any second of a day, unexpected and yet never surprising. Usually, it was kept at bay somehow: here, in front of the reminder that her friend and Hokage was gone, there was no way to hide. There had been a lightness to Kakashi's voice, a weary sort of fond remembrance buried underneath his pain, and Ino wondered whether people could recover from losses just like that. Time and wounds and healing, and all that bullshit the people talked about. But the ones who said that money wasn't important usually never had been in need of it, those who said love didn't hurt probably never had been truly in love, and those who said wounds like that healed probably never had lost someone so dear to them living without that person felt like trying to breathe in hot, acid-saturated air. How could Kakashi, who had loved Naruto like his own son, who had raised him and taught him and trained him and who had watched him die, who had seen all the horrors and the terror their people had gone through, who had watched children starve and shinobi bleed to death and civilians just let go and die, actually get over a loss that devastating? Desperate, she stretched out her mind – it was so much easier now, as simple as breathing, when had it become a second nature to her just like that? Her father had warned her – and probed Kakashi's mindscape.

The sorrow was all-consuming, earth-shattering and painfully familiar.

Ino allowed his grief to wrap around her own, to double and to swell like a rising tide. The memories that came flooding back weren't only hers.

Naruto, smiling and laughing, taking his first steps, saying his first words. Naruto in Rin's arms, asleep and peaceful; Naruto, grinning up at them the day he entered the Academy; Naruto's brave face when he fell down a tree and broke his leg; Naruto moaning over his vegetables and how he hated carrots. Naruto, pranking Iruka-Sensei to Heaven Come and suffering his teacher's and parents' wrath; Naruto playing hooky with Shikamaru and Kiba; Naruto and Sasuke, competing during the lessons. Naruto's proud smile when he was accepted as a genin, after his first mission, after the first round of the Chuunin exams. Naruto, shouting at Neji to open his eyes; Naruto, telling them he would leave the village with Jiraiya-Sama to find the Snake Princess and his proud beam when he returned from his one year of travels stronger than ever. Naruto, arguing with Tsunade-Sama, teasing Shizune, running from Anko. Naruto, discussing with Neji and Shikamaru, intent, concentrated. Naruto in a dark cloak, his face hidden by the white porcelain mask with the stark contrast of the red lines of his fox totem.

Naruto, fighting Madara.

Naruto, in the wreckage of what once had been Hidden Leaf; Naruto pulling together their forces, rallying them, taking them away to help them re-group. Naruto, giving his best and more, every second of every hour of every day just for them because he loved his village and his people and his friends. Naruto, who never gave up once, even in the darkest of times: Naruto, mock-flirting with Sakura after her wedding. Naruto, holding Hinata's firstborn in his arms, his face full of reverent awe at the sight of something so pure and tiny. Naruto, Naruto, Naruto. When had been the last time Ino had seen him in her mind? She had shut out all the memories of him, had blocked her own mind when it came to him, because the memories were just too much. She had to protect Shikamaru, had to help him, and there had been no time to do anything more than try and keep it together. But now they were back, and Hidden Leaf was being rebuilt, and Kiba and Sasuke were helping her guard Shikamaru. It seemed like now, finally, all the grief and pain and guilt she'd sensed in others but never had allowed herself to feel came flooding in like a spring tide.

Ino collapsed onto her knees, wrapped her arms around herself and sobbed, helplessly.

Only after a long time, she became aware of Kakashi's arms around her. The man had to be uncomfortable, kneeling on the cold earth like that, and yet he held on to her. His arms were still strong.

"I'm sorry," she said, when she finally was able to pull herself together enough to blow her nose and wipe the tears from her face with her sleeves. There were still more tears waiting, tears for her father and Chouji and Tenten and Neji and Lee, for Asuma-Sensei and Tsunade-Sama and all the ones they had lost. She could feel them behind her closed eye-lids, a river of grief and sadness she'd carried around with herself like a remainder of her own failures. Her breakdown hadn't made it easier, hadn't lifted a load, if anything, she felt even more guilty and weak. Why did people say breaking down would ease one's mind? She couldn't understand it. "I don't know…"

But Kakashi only smiled from the corners of his eyes, his mind a soothing, warm presence next to her, and wiped some more tears off her cheek. "You loved him," he said, in his quiet, soothing way, and Ino blinked back the next tears almost angrily.

"Of course I did," she replied, heated. "He was…" There she stopped, because there were a million ways to describe Naruto and none of them would have done him justice. "He was Naruto," she finished quietly, and more felt than saw Kakashi's quiet nod of agreement.

"He would have loved to see this," Kakashi said. "He'd be so happy to be back."

In his mind, soft colors were swirling, forming something like a flame. Ino looked at the village with his blind eyes and knew what he meant. Rebuilding Konoha would take another lifetime, she supposed, but being back already meant the world.

Kakashi straightened. "Good morning, Hokage-Sama."

"Don't call me that."

Shikamaru's gruff voice shattered something within Ino and she whirled around, her heart slamming against her rib cage painfully: from the sight of it, Shikamaru had been there for quite a while already.

And she hadn't sensed him at all.

Chouji, before he died, smiled at her so widely her heart would have broken had she still had something left that could have shattered.

"Shikamaru would have planned this better." His voice was hoarse, quiet, but his mindscape was peaceful and that was everything she needed to know. "Shikamaru would have…" He coughed. "He would have succeeded."

"Shikamaru's not here," She had objected, her voice breaking. "And you did succeed. You did it, Chouji, you saved us, please, don't…"

Ino had no idea what she was begging him for. But Chouji – sweet, kind Chouji who had never taken any of her mean words to heart and always forgave her easily – simply smiled.

"Take care of him, Ino. He needs–"

And then he died, and Ino never knew what Chouji thought Shikamaru needed.

When Shikamaru returned from his diplomatic mission to Kumo weary and full of foreboding news and learned that a group of unmarked shinobi (who were thought to be Kumo nin, but that never was proven) had killed his best friend, he locked himself in his apartment for two weeks and then left Hidden Leaf without ever once talking to her.

The boy Ino had known so well had disappeared, just like that. When she found him again years later, a stranger with an alien mindscape and a face she couldn't read anymore had replaced him. And Ino didn't know what hurt more: the fact that he was so far away, or the fact that he was there. But that didn't change that, even though he hadn't tried to, probably hadn't even meant to, Shikamaru was giving the people of Hidden Leaf something they had thought they had lost forever: hope. How strange that a man who had regarded himself as a person standing in the shadows of other, more prominent people, and who had used shadows to fight, suddenly would be responsible for the light they could see after years of desperate flight.

Hidden Leaf lifted her head, slowly, like after a long, deep sleep, and opened her eyes towards the sky again.

"The three of you are the only team left that is still complete, do you realize?"

Hinata, Kiba and Shino exchanged quick glances which told Ino exactly what she was sensing from their mindscapes already. Kiba shrugged, uncomfortably. Akamaru growled, low in his throat.

"Well… Yeah."

Hinata's eyes were tired but her shoulders were unbent, her mind unbroken. Ino liked the way she seemed to lean towards her team mates, liked the quiet resolution between the three of them. It was something Team Ten might have had, as well, hadn't it met an untimely end. Or maybe they already had had it before everything went to hell in a hand basket: before Asuma-Sensei sacrificed himself for them, before Madara's and Orochimaru's alliance and the resulting civil war, before their father's death, before Shikamaru started to slip away. Before Chouji's death. Without Chouji, there was no us, without Chouji, they couldn't be a team anymore. Even if Shikamaru had stayed – Ino didn't think they could have been able to build up something remotely as strong as Hinata, Kiba and Shino had. She liked to think Team Ten had been as close, as co-dependent, as Team Four. But they'd never had had the chance to grow beyond what they had been in the beginning, and the point was moot, either way.

"I did think of leaving, sometimes." Hinata's quiet voice carried old, weathered and nevertheless still fresh anguish and startled Ino out of the depths of her thoughts. "After what my family had planned… The betrayal… I could never understand why Naruto let us stay. I still can't. I know we were on the run, and maybe he even needed us, but it never changed the fact that the Hyuuga betrayed Hidden Leaf."

Ino couldn't help herself: she just blinked in surprise.

This was Hinata. Hyuuga Hinata, the woman who, after learning what her clan elders were planning, had informed Naruto about their betrayal, the woman who had, on his bidding, spied on her own people for Leaf and who had played a vital role in putting down a coup staged by her family. Hyuuga Hinata who, almost single-handedly, had taken the reigns over her shattered and broken family, had abandoned the concept of the branch clans, had cast aside the discrimination among her family and had helped to restructure the entire clan politics. Granted, Neji had been at her side for the entire time, but Ino knew Hinata had been bearing the greatest part of the load all by herself. Small, kind, brave Hinata had torn down the ancient, dusty traditions her clan had still harbored and had led them into a new age. Bolstered by her team mates, her fiancée and her Hokage – but still, Ino was pretty sure nothing of it could have happened had it been anyone else than her. Especially the younger Hyuuga almost collectively seemed to regard her as a kind of goddess among mere mortals. And while Hinata blushed fiercely at the mere implication that she should be treated like a heroine and denied any influence on her side, Ino, Kiba, Shino and many others knew far better than that.

But she'd never known how close Hinata had come to giving up.

Neither Shino nor Kiba seemed surprised at her revelation, something that cemented Ino's suspicions that the two of them had known. Suddenly, Kiba's accusations all those years ago made sense. They had known Hinata had planned on moving the entire Hyuuga clan – or, what remained of it after the elders and the inner circle had tried to stage a coup and had been mostly killed or exiled – away from what had been the refugee camp at that time. And they hadn't said anything. A sudden thought crashed into her, reinforced by what she could feel coming off both Kiba's and Shino's mindscapes in waves: they wouldn't have let Hinata leave. Or, rather, they would have left with her. Seeing as the conflict had taken place in the middle of a war which hadn't bode well for their village, Ino could only imagine what might have happened if three of Naruto's most loyal followers had left him at that time. She shuddered only thinking of it.

And, at the same time, envied them for the strength of their friendship.

Outside, on the porch, Hinata's two children were playing, both equally dark-haired and silver-eyed as their mother was and their father had been. Ino, trying to distract herself, watched them and felt a strange mixture of protectiveness and pride well up within her. Children were their future, but she'd never have them herself. She couldn't understand how Hinata had born it so stoically: giving birth to children in a world that was war-torn, broken and dangerous. At the same time, her sense of the Hyuuga clan leader told her that Hinata had done it for exactly that reason: children were their future. Their greatest hope.

"It's all thanks to Naruto. He didn't give up on us, not ever."

Hinata's voice was quiet, but her smile was true. Ino felt her gratefulness like the warmth of flames. Shino's satisfaction was equally vivid, a stark contrast to his calm exterior. Kiba grinned.

"Naruto was literally incapable of letting go of anything and anyone."

The memory hurt but Ino smiled, nevertheless.

"Hokage-Sama!"

Ino knew how much Shikamaru hated his title, but an inhabitant of Hidden Leaf yet had to be found that would ever address him without his proper title and the breathless reverence he had earned by saving them.

On his way to the Memorial, Shikamaru stopped to greet a group of women who displayed all the attributes of war widows: gaunt, hollow faces, tired eyes and bent shoulders. Of course, he had both their names and their stories memorized, when he politely asked his short questions the women's mindscapes changed drastically. It wasn't exactly blind adoration but something dangerously close. Ino still couldn't understand how the same women who had, a few years ago, spit into his face and called him traitor were able to now praise him for his work and discuss the upcoming celebration of Hidden Leaf's somewhat-restoration. Those were human minds for you, she suspected: easily changed with the tides of life. They chatted for a while, talking about provisions, reconstruction and everyday life, and Ino listened while, at the same time, scanning the area attentively. Shikamaru listened, nodded politely and added a few words. Compared to previous Fire Shadows he would have seemed outright rude, still, nobody even thought of criticizing him. It was Shikamaru, after all.

However, they soon continued on to the Memorial ground. Shikamaru had made a habit of visiting it once a week, and usually Ino accompanied him. She enjoyed the walk and the silence of the field. Sometimes, when they were very early, they could see a small herd of wild deer cross the meadow on their way to the shallow river beds in the forest. The seconds they stood there, not breathing as to not alert the game to their presence, were precious: it was the only time when Shikamaru's mindscape almost felt familiar to her again. But the seconds quickly passed and he became the same distant, unapproachable Shikamaru again he'd been for the past years, and Ino withdrew as far as possible without actually leaving him physically.

Circumstances changed, but this still was Shikamaru.

"Ino."

He hadn't talked to her in years. Ino froze, the sound of her name falling from his lips like pebbles into a small, clear pond, its clear sound echoing within her mind heart-breakingly unfamiliar. His mindscape was drift sand and darkness, as usual, but his eyes were looking at her. Something within her mind shattered.

"You can stop now."

Ino didn't move.

"From tomorrow on, you don't have to be my bodyguard anymore."

There was no Hokage's Tower, no flame-embroidered cloak, no wide hat. No sign of his office except for the authority with which he carried himself. Ino had seen people grow into what they had been meant to be: this was especially true for Shikamaru. Kakashi never had been meant to be the Fire Shadow, had just substituted for Shikamaru after Naruto's death. Naruto – Naruto had been born to be the Hokage, had known for his whole life and had lived it. There had been no question as to his authority and now there wasn't any regarding Shikamaru's, either. What Ino read in the peoples' mindscapes wasn't tinged by mistrust and resentment anymore. Two years and Shikamaru had, albeit ungentle and harsh, formed the broken and lost last people of Hidden Leaf into a united line, had led them from their misery and had given them the strength necessary to start again.

Many more had died on their way to where they stood now.

They would grow again, Ino knew.

"Why do you think," she asked him and was surprised at the levelness of her voice, "I'd give up my task this easily?"

He didn't have the grace to react, but something in his eyes flickered. "Kiba and Sasuke are already recruiting new guards."

"So what?"

How long had it been since they'd actually had talked? Ino wanted to cry. Lately, the tears had been close to the surface at any time, she hated it but didn't really know how to change the fact. It was like she'd been under a thick layer of ice for such a long time that she had frozen up completely, and then the ice had begun to melt. It brought the world closer, in stronger, warmer colors, but it also brought other peoples' emotions into a focus so clear she shied away from them instinctively.

And, at the same time, they drew her closer. It was a terrifying sensation.

Shikamaru shrugged. This would have been the moment for him to focus on his paperwork once again, it would have given him an easy out of their discussion and a few months ago he would have done it as surely as Ino could read other peoples' minds. But now he answered her gaze, his face expressionless but his emotions…

There was something in his mindscape, alien and tiny and there.

"The Hokage's Guard shouldn't serve out of loyalty to someone else," he said.

Ino blinked. "What do you mean?"

Her confusion seemed to nag him; Shikamaru's eyes narrowed. "I don't want you to be here because you promised Naruto to guard me," he said, without inflection.

She stared at him, went over his words a second time in her head, and still couldn't understand what he was implying.

"I did promise Naruto," and even the sound of his name in her ears hurt, "But that has nothing to do with-"

"You were in love with him." Black, dark: a spinning, black hole sucking in every emotion of his and leaving his mindscape blank, and she felt the beginning of a long-forgotten illness creep up in her.

"How did you come to that conclusion?" Ino was surprised at the steadiness in her voice. She could feel the tremor in her hands and dug her nails into her palms to keep it hidden.

"I heard you and Kakashi."

Something in his mindscape flickered and disappeared again, so quickly she wondered whether she had imagined it. Torn between anger and the urge to laugh – oh, Naruto would have loved this! – Ino just blinked, and her hands relaxed.

"If I ever," she said, calmly, "was in love with Naruto, that would be none of your business." Ino met Shikamaru's eyes, slowly and deliberately, and Shikamaru was the first to avert his gaze.

It didn't feel like a victory.

"This is not the argument that will make me back down, Shikamaru, and you know that."

It felt alien to say his name out loud, the sound so familiar and so unfamiliar on her tongue, at the same time.

Use it, she dared him, inwardly. If he really didn't want her to be around him day and night, he just had to say one thing… But both of them knew he'd never say it loud.

It was hard to say whether Shikamaru still blamed her, for whatever reason and whatever excuse, and, if, how much so. But perhaps that didn't even matter, because nobody could blame Ino worse than she herself did.

Will you ever forgive me?

Ino sent the thought into the darkness that surrounded him. It was just as well he couldn't hear her, because she feared the answer more than she feared being left behind.

She doubted Shikamaru had forgotten the fact, but her father had died protecting his.

After the failed coup the Hyuuga clan elders had staged, Madara's involvement into the affair hadn't immediately become clear. Instead, everyone had suspected Orochimaru: the traitorous Sannin had tried to obtain the Hyuuga's Byakugan for himself for a long, long time. His collaboration with Danzou had only been the beginning of his scheme. Implanting stolen Byakugan eyes into his own body had always been his initial goal, but the body of Root's highest-ranking member had demonstrated that it wasn't wise to try and control so many different things at the same time. So Orochimaru – Madara, ultimately, but they hadn't known just then – had hatched a plan to pull a strong, young Hyuuga onto his side to not only take his eyes but his body, as well.

Hyuuga Hanabi hadn't survived the encounter with Konoha's most notorious missing nin.

Until that day, nobody had been able to tell Ino why exactly Uchiha Madara had used the Hyuuga clan for his plans. Perhaps it had been his obsession for purity and nobility that had him put his own clan aside, or perhaps he'd seen no way to break the loyalty between Uchiha and Senju. (The people had always smiled at how close Naruto and Sasuke had been. In a way, they had led the village together: one in the light, one in the shadows, but side by side. Always together.) Maybe Madara just had wanted to confuse them. Or he had wanted to gain the power of the byakugan in addition to his Mangekyou sharingan. Or the last shard of what once had been Senju Hashirama's fellow warrior and friend had remembered his family, and refused to pick them out for his plans. There were many possibilities, and no explanation was something even close to satisfactorily. No reason could excuse the loss of lives that occurred in the wake of Hanabi's abduction. Perhaps the death of the Hyuuga clan head's chosen successor – Hyuuga Hizashi had elected his younger daughter instead of Hinata – had been the last droplet that caused the already full bowl of anger and resentment the Hyuuga elders harbored towards Hidden Leaf and its council to overflow. Only Hinata's loyalty and determination had stopped what might have become a full-blown civil war within Hidden Leaf. In the wake of the Hyuuga betrayal in the village, Orochimaru's complot and his alliance with Akatsuki was revealed, as well as the fact that there was something more behind his plans. Someone ruthless and cunning, experienced and exceptionally intelligent. Someone who knew the workings of the village of Hidden Leaf and the Will of the Fire as well as its darkest, deepest secrets. But nobody had expected the enemy to be an ancient, dark spirit of a goddess housed in the body of one of the three Founders.

Yamanaka Inoichi, Akimichi Chouza and Nara Shikaku had been an integral part of Tsunade-Sama's inner circle. Ino, Shikamaru and Chouji's parents, like them, had been together since they had been born. Ino could still recall her father's rants about Shikaku's laziness, the way Shikamaru's father would just shrug and ignore his best friend and the way Chouji's father would laugh and defuse the situation. The irony was there, clear for everyone to see: the three of them were just another mirror image of their parents. It was always the same. History would stretch out and curve and loop and curl back into itself until it formed another, flawless circle, and human beings were caught in it like helpless deer were caught in bear traps.

When Madara's – or, rather, Kaguya's – men overran the defending Leaf and Sand nin and burned down the allied headquarters, three men helped to organize the evacuation while the Sannin fought their last battle: Shikaku coordinated the escape, Inoichi relied the information and Chouza cleared the path. The gentle giant was the first to die, bleeding out internally. Inoichi was next, refusing to leave behind his last friend. Instead, he put himself in between the attackers and the head strategist to allow him to trap the enemy in a shadow jutsu and thus stopping them from pursuing the fleeing shinobi from Konoha and Suna. Shikaku died last, smiling until his last breath. It had been the end of Ino-Shika-Chou.

After her death, Naruto had followed in Tsunade-Sama's foot-steps. With Orochimaru's defeat, Otogakure had lost its leader, driving force and mastermind. Suna and Konoha had started one last, desperate attempt to negotiate with Kumo. From thereon, it went downhill: during the talks Madara, now almost completely possessed by the ancient goddess Kaguya, and his followers attacked Hidden Sand. The attack was lightning-quick and vicious, well-coordinated and tailored exactly to the types of attacks and defenses the shinobi of the sand were famous for. In fact, it seemed to have been put together by the same mind that, two decades ago, had orchestrated the attack on a small, peaceful village at the Northern coast of the Country of Fire. The result was similarly devastating: Hidden Sand was razed, and its forces either died defending the civilians or were scattered through the lands. Not few came to Hidden Leaf, where Naruto, stone-faced, made sure they had a place to stay. Nevertheless, many, many good Suna nin died these days. As did a number of Konoha nin that were quickly dispatched to Hidden Sand in response to Sabaku no Gaara's request for help. Ino and Chouji had been among those sent to evacuate Suna's last inhabitants because Ino had wanted to help. Chouji had always gone where either she or Shikamaru had gone, and he hadn't been able to follow Shikamaru to Kumo. Accompanying the last refugees, they had run into Akatsuki. The missing nin seemed almost as surprised as the Konoha nin seemed. But that didn't change the fact that after the desperate battle, Sabaku no Temari and Akimichi Chouji were dead.

When Shikamaru returned from Kumo, haunted and exhausted, Leaf had already hunted down Hidan (Kiba and Akamaru found him, Sasuke disabled him and Ino destroyed his mind, and then they watched without any emotion as he tore at his face with his own hands trying to claw at the shredded pieces of his mind). Nagato, Konan and Yahiko and their people took care of Hidan's Akatsuki partner, but at that point Ino didn't really care anymore.

Shikamaru didn't say a word. His silence was accusation in its purest form. And Ino hated him, hated his silence, hated how he could grieve so wholly for his father and for Chouji but not for them – but she hated herself even more for having been unable to protect Chouji, and for being able to make a man loose his mind so completely that he couldn't even kill himself in order to escape. She'd never known herself to be cruel. But perhaps Shikamaru had sensed cruelty in her long ago, and that was part of his reason.

The next thing that happened was that Hidden Leaf fell and its inhabitants were forced to flee. And they fought a losing battle and then Naruto died, and life really, truly was fucking with her because Ino couldn't see a way she could have saved both Chouji and Naruto but she knew she damn well should have.

Shikamaru had to pick up the pieces, as usual, and, as usual, he excelled.

"Look, over there! Look!"

The kids charged down the street with the reckless abandon of the young, without any regard for other passers-by and their own Hokage briskly walking towards the new Hokage's Tower.

The leader of the fray almost ran smack into Shikamaru's legs, stopped at the last possible second and doubled back at the sight of the leader of his village.

"Ho-Hokage-Sama!"

The throng of children behind him came to a sudden halt and the shouts died down. All of them stared. Ino couldn't fathom why – it was Shikamaru, no one special – so she sampled the kid's mindscapes more closely. It wasn't that she was reading their minds, not really, even if some people (some of the few that knew of her ability, at least) thought of it as exactly this. She couldn't deny that her ability to feel part of their emotions and thoughts were dangerously close to mind reading, though. But it wasn't as if she had chosen to learn to do exactly this; it was just the way her abilities worked. And, as Sasuke had pointed out at different times already, though not especially regarding her own doubts but regarding similar hesitations: it was a bit late to worry about that now, wasn't it?

But the kids.

The kid's minds radiated off respect, awe and a hero worship so enthusiastic it almost brought tears to her eyes because of how strongly it reminded her of Naruto. Only it wasn't directed towards the Third, or Tsunade-Sama or Naruto or even Kakashi. This was directed towards Shikamaru.

"Go on," Shikamaru said, and his voice was inexplicably gentle. As if he was able to read the kids, too, and was trying hard not to disappoint them. Trying hard to be nice. Ino almost smiled at the thought, because Shikamaru was a lot – but he wasn't nice. What had happened? Had someone clubbed him over the head with the Complete Annals of the History of the Fire Country? Or was it possible that he had mellowed in the past years? It was hard to believe, but the proof was right there in front of her eyes. Too confused to be really surprised, Ino distinctly wondered whether she had changed, too.

"Yes, Hokage-Sama," they chorused. "Thank you! Have a nice evening!"

The kids took off. Hidden Leaf still was small, so these seven probably were the only ones roaming the streets. But it didn't matter. There were children playing on the streets again, that was what mattered, and there were civilians looking after them and grandmothers fussing and scolding and parents returning home in the evening. All of this on a small, small scale – most of the outskirts of the village hadn't even been touched by clean-up and reconstruction since there had been so much to do in the village center – but they were getting there. Hidden Leaf was getting somewhere, and Ino couldn't describe how wonderful that feeling felt. Her happiness still was tempered by the endless list of losses they had suffered for the past nine years. But that was the way she liked it, and –

Recalling her concentration, Ino focused back on her duties and found Shikamaru looking after the children with an almost fond look in his eyes. Then he turned his head and looked at her and held her gaze for two, five, nine heart-beats, and then he continued on his way towards his new office building. Ino fell into step slightly behind him, trying to calm her hammering heart and wondering what he had been thinking just now.

That night, Hidden Leaf celebrated the return of her people to the village: with festivities, food and fireworks in the night sky. Kiba, Hinata and Shino had made plans for a dinner together. Sasuke had offered Ino to take her shift that evening, but Sakura was waiting for him. Nobody was waiting for Ino and besides, she had spent so much time with Shikamaru he barely even noticed her anymore. Or: if he still noticed her, he had managed to push her presence into the background of his mind.

The fireworks exploded in the sky like colorful stars. From his perch on top of the Hokage's Mountain, Shikamaru watched his people. And from behind him, to his right hand side, Ino watched, as well, and felt pride well up in her; warm and overwhelming.

Only later, much later that night she realized the feeling hadn't been hers to begin with.

"What do you see?"

Ino started from her thoughts, whirling around to face Shikamaru. The last time she had checked he had been seated behind his desk. The new office for the head of the village bore remarkable similarities to the old office: the wide windows, the large, simple desk and the high bookshelves covering the entire walls of the room could have fit into another time entirely. The portraits of the former Fire Shadows looked down from the wall over the door: all of them serious, all of them honorable and strong. Each single one deceased, fighting for the village and the people to their last second.

Now, Shikamaru stood behind her.

Not too close, but not as far as he would have stayed away from her a few years ago. He had moved without her noticing it and Ino berated herself for her inattention.

"I apologize, Hokage-Sama."

"Stop that," Shikamaru said, his face not changing a fraction and yet she flinched involuntarily. She'd heard that particular tone of his before, usually shortly before he took someone down a few notches-

"Everyone calls me that. They don't see me – only the Hokage. You knew me before I became the Fire Shadow."

His expression didn't change, but Ino felt herself soften. She lowered her head a fraction, a gesture that could both be interpreted as consent and submission.

"Shikamaru."

He didn't say anything, but the air around him seemed lighter, suddenly.

"What do you see?" He repeated his earlier question.

Ino let her eyes return to the snow-covered tree-tops and the winter-drowned village. "I didn't dare to believe," she finally said, so quietly Shikamaru had to strain his ears to catch her words. "But I shouldn't have doubted. Konoha always picks herself up again. Like evergreen."

She stopped, surprised and appalled she had used a flower comparison. When had it been the last time she had looked at the world and seen beauty in it? When had she compared something to the delicacy and strength of nature the last time? It didn't feel right. Those memories belonged to another Ino, a young, unbroken girl: a girl that hadn't witnessed her teacher's, her father's and her friend's death.

"True." Shikamaru's gaze was fixed on her, but she didn't look back. "You haven't done that for a long time."

"Done what?" Suddenly, her heart beat thundered in her ears.

"Used flower comparisons."

She laughed, weakly. "It doesn't feel right. I won't–"

"No." Shikamaru's voice was calm and determined. "Don't stop. I like it." He said it so matter-of-fact, so truthfully, that Ino couldn't answer. She kept quiet, instead, and Shikamaru made a step forward and suddenly was leaning onto the window sill, right next to her.

"Sometimes I think I can hear them." His voice still was matter-of-fact, but his tone was soft. Something inside Ino strained, painfully. "My father. Asuma-Sensei. Chouji. They're still everywhere."

He didn't mention Naruto. It reminded her that Shikamaru hadn't known Naruto the same way she had: hadn't known the Anbu partner who had risked his life for her more than once and whose life she had, in return, protected again and again. The troublesome successor of the Fifth, always full of enthusiasm for the good of the people and of scathing disdain for politicians and their schemes. The warrior who had led them into battle even when there was no silver line visible on the horizon. Naruto, who had teased his friends and had become angry for their sake and who had laughed and smiled even in the darkest of times.

But that was fine. Shikamaru didn't mean any disrespect. He remembered their teacher, their parents and their childhood friend: Ino would remember all those lost in the beginning of the war.

Ino didn't think; just blurted out the next thing on her mind. When she realized what she had said, she froze in terror.

"They would be so proud of you."

His dark eyes regarded her, calmly, and then he opened a channel to her.

It was the only way she could describe it: Shikamaru constructed a bridge between his mind and hers, extended his thoughts into her direction willingly, and waited. The only thing that remained for her to do was to move towards him, which she did, hesitantly, suddenly afraid. He waited patiently, as if she was a wild animal that had to be tamed. She almost laughed at the analogy: if anyone of them was the wild, unapproachable one, it surely was Shikamaru and not her. So she stretched out her mind endlessly carefully, terrified of what might happen and also, perhaps, terrified of what she would see. There was a breathless, infinite second of time, she could feel it expanding and wrapping around her, almost tenderly, like the first breath of spring after winter. And then Shikamaru nudged her forward gently – or tugged her towards him, depending on how one saw it – and she could feel his mindscape.

It was… frightening.

He didn't show her everything. In a small, detached part of her mind Ino wondered when he had learned to shield his own mind like that, and whether someone had taught him or whether he had developed the technique himself. It wasn't anything like the Yamanaka techniques for shielding she had been taught by her father and it felt too foreign to just be another adjusted one of theirs. It carried the soft tone of mastery, but that didn't mean much. If Shikamaru had developed these shields, he had surely done it in a way that would leave little space for bettering. As it was, the only thing Ino could sense was a certain regret, tempered by years and experience and loss. It felt achingly familiar, though it wasn't her own sentiment. Together with the ungraspable fogginess that had become almost familiar to her, the guarded sense that was Shikamaru's mind but not his mindscape, the grief was wrapped into something. It carried the voice of children playing, the scent of dinner wafting through the window of a brightly lit home in the evening times and the calm silence of a place in which work was being done. It mingled with the rustling of sheets of paper and the scratching sound of pens on parchment, the serenity of watching a herd of grazing deer, the quietness of the sleeping village stretched out underneath a window and the quick movement of clouds in the sky. The utter peace that shone from the sentiments he sent her was astounding.

As was the beauty of his mind.

Ino swallowed and closed her eyes, her hand scrambling for something to hold on to. The stone window sill was cold and oddly soothing in its immobile stability. When she opened her eyes again, she was looking directly in Shikamaru's. He was so close she couldn't help it: she reached out and touched his face, trying to ascertain herself that he was still there, still warm and solid and alive. He let her cradle his face with both hands and just looked at her: calm, steadiness and strength shone from his dark eyes. He didn't break the gaze so at one point Ino had to drop her hands and turn away, closing her eyes against the onslaught of memories and emotions, swallowing hard. When she looked up again, Shikamaru was half a room away again. With the distance between them, his mind had closed up. The barrier he had set up was in place once more, impenetrable and strong.

Still, Ino felt like his defenses weren't as determined as they had been before.

Suddenly, she could recall Chouji's smile in perfect detail again.

Hidden Leaf always had had enemies. Times and times would not change this. They had been after their clans, after their lands and after their blood inheritances, after their tailed beasts, their strength (sometimes even after their weaknesses) and their political power. Times and times again, other shinobi villages had tried to focus their attacks on the most valuable, most beloved heart of the village: the Fire Shadow. Times and times again, shinobi, Anbu and even civilians - and the Hokage themselves – had rebuffed the attacks. There was no way to predict them, no pattern to be found. Especially the Hokage's guard, in this generation consisting of Sasuke as their commander, Kiba and Ino as his joint second-in-command and a number of rookies, could only remain the highest level of alertness and react accordingly to the type and manner of threat they were faced with. The amount of unpredictable threats was nerve-wracking, but they'd learned to cope, as no doubt generations before them had, as well. There was nothing to be prepared for, except when it came. They had no choice than to keep their minds together and to watch out for assassins, missing-nin, poisoned throwing knifes, exploding letters and missives and hidden assailants. Over the years, first as Naruto's guard, then as Kakashi's and finally as Shikamaru's, Ino had gotten pretty good at her job. It helped that she often was able to detect threats before they even got close. But it wasn't as if she could rely on her mind reading ability, either. As Naruto always had said, belying the rumor that he didn't have even two brain cells to rub together and generally consisted of 98 % of enthusiasm and 12 % of luck (yes, this added up to 110 %, Ino was well aware of it): In the end, only the patient man would be wiser.

As Naruto also had been very fond of saying, especially when referring to Sasuke and the way he had slowly and very, very unwillingly fallen in love with Sakura: accidents happened.

The afternoon sun was bright and warm and fell into the new Academy's courtyard almost horizontally. Ino blinked at it, momentarily blinded, and stretched out her senses to compensate for the loss of sight. Shikamaru behind her lifted his hand to shield his eyes. In front of them, Ino could sense the small group of kids and their teacher, waiting expectantly, the kids' mindscapes practically bubbling over with enthusiasm and a heart-warming streak of wanting to prove themselves to the Fire Shadow of Hidden Leaf. This probably was, she mused, why Shikamaru seemed to enjoy his short inspections of the school grounds and classes so much: there rarely was a better way to feel energized and hopeful than actually meeting the future of their village. At times like these, seeing and sensing all the young, probing minds ready to be taught and willing to make mistakes, she knew what Sakura had spoken about when she had told Ino how glad she was that she had decided to keep the baby. It made Ino think that maybe, someday…

Still blinking, she caught Iruka-Sensei's smile and then realized that it wasn't their old Academy teacher anymore but a younger, still no less kind-looking chuunin who was in charge of the kids nowadays. The sensation rocked through her like every time and she stilled her mind until everything within her was frozen. It passed, eventually, and each time it passed more quickly. Nowadays, Ino grieved more for the fact that she couldn't grieve the way she felt Naruto, Chouji, her father, Asuma-Sensei and all the dead deserved to be grieved for than she grieved for them. Time heals all wounds, her father had said, but Ino was pretty sure he hadn't meant it like that. Never forget, my daughter. But how could she keep on living when she wasn't supposed to forget? It felt like Yamanaka Inoichi had left her a riddle. And even years later, with more than twenty years of experience and knowledge, Ino was unable to solve it.

Shikamaru greeted the kids, listened to the teacher's small speech attentively, and then focused on the first child brave enough to raise its hand and ask him a question.

The sun was low when they left the Academy grounds, the kids having gone home some time ago. Shikamaru had stayed to discuss some curriculum details with the teacher. The young man had looked near delirious that his Hokage was talking to him, Ino had the increasing feeling that Shikamaru's endless paperwork had cost him some of the closeness he had developed with Leaf's inhabitants during their time as refugees in camps out in the forest. On the other hand, there was no way to prevent this from happening: he had so much work to do it was near impossible to stay on a first-name basis with all his shinobi. Maybe she could talk to Sasuke and Hinata, they knew about the precarious balance between leading and commanding people.

Shikamaru took his time walking down the street, his hands tucked into the folds of the white, flame-embroidered gown he only wore when they made him. His gaze wandered over the houses lining the street, the small cottages that had been restored with sweat and blood and hard, hard work. Behind them, the trees of Training Ground Five rose into the evening air, the fir's scent familiar and calming. Ino opened her mouth to say something when a muffled cry reached her ears. At the same time, the sensation hit her mental feelers and she spun around: a woman was walking towards them, almost running, she was wearing indoor slippers and only a thin house dress despite the chill of the fall afternoon. Her hair was in disarray and she gesticulated wildly.

Her fear crashed over Ino in a cold shockwave, triggering every instinct of hers to rush to her help. Shikamaru, right next to her, straightened in alarm.

"Shinobu!" The woman's voice was hoarse, high-pitched and laced with distress. "Where's my son? He's not there anymore! Shinobu!"

She stumbled over her own feet and fell forward, right into Shikamaru's supporting arm. However, she didn't even seem to see him. Struggling forward, she tried to get away from him, heedless of the arm he had slung around her middle to steady her. Shikamaru's worry peaked, and Ino whirled around to the mindscape of another woman, much younger than the first, quickly exiting the house and running towards them.

"Mother-in-law, please! You have to calm down! You'll hurt yourself, please…"

Grasping the other woman's shoulders, she looked at her intently.

"Shinobu is on a mission, mother," she said calmly, but the turmoil in her mind told Ino that Shinobu, probably her husband, had gone to a place he would never return from. "He will be back soon. Please come inside again, you'll make yourself sick."

The woman leaned on her as she led her back, but her eyes continued to roam the street, still in search for a fallen son.

Ino couldn't have said why they lingered. Perhaps Shikamaru had wanted to make sure everything was okay, or some other instinct of his had compelled him to wait. She shouldn't have let him. Afterwards Ino knew – with the earth-shattering security of the one who looked back at something (in the end, only the patient man will be wiser), that they should have continued on. This woman hardly was the only person in Leaf that was suffering from post-traumatic stress. Dementia might have been a part of her mental disposition, as well. Who knew. Either way, it should not have made her dangerous. But who if not Ino knew how dangerous a mind alone could be?

In the second between indecision and silence, the woman stepped back out of the door and smiled shyly.

Some time later, standing behind Shikamaru who was sitting at the kitchen table, Ino watched the younger woman who had introduced herself as Ayase Hoshino put a cup of tea each in front of her mother-in-law and Shikamaru. The old woman was muttering to herself, clearly lost in her own world, singing a lullaby for her child. The mental images Ino received were blackened and charred, twisted into grotesque faces she didn't want to look at closer and which made her sick. It was a stark contrast to the almost peaceful atmosphere in the room, to the sea of calm that was Shikamaru and what felt, compared to him, almost like a listless, unmoved little pond that was Hoshino-San. Ino didn't dislike the woman, but the atmosphere was making her nervous. Ino could understand why Shikamaru had accepted the invitation for a cup of tea, but something made her want to run from this home as fast as possible.

The Hokage didn't seem to share her unrest. He talked to Hoshino-San and listened to her even more. The woman seemed to blossom under his attention and Ino bit her lip.

Finally, Shikamaru finished his tea and stood to leave.

"Thank you, Hokage-Sama," Hoshino-San said and bowed politely. "I apologize again for my mother. It is not her best day today. My husband fell in the battle for Hidden Leaf, almost eleven years ago." Were there tears in her eyes? Suddenly, Ino felt nothing but dislike for the other woman and immediately scolded herself for it. Here was a woman whose husband hadn't survived the war and whose mother had gone mad over his loss, and Hoshino-San had been taking care of her since then. It surely hadn't been easy for her at any time. Ino had no right to judge, had she? She could feel the overwhelming self-doubt, the endless sadness, the exhaustion of coming home to a sickly mother-in-law after a hard day and still having to care for her. Her mindscape was wide open and squishy, like a small child, and she projected her emotions straight and forward. Ino could already feel the sticky, suffocating tendrils of misery seeking even the tiniest crack in her shield.

At the woman's words, however, the old woman looked up and made a sound. All occupants of the kitchen turned to her as she struggled to her feet and made her way around the kitchen table.

"Hokage?" She asked, her voice a mere whisper. "You are the Hokage?"

Shikamaru's mindscape mirrored his dislike at having to confirm her question. Even years after his inauguration, he still thought he didn't deserve the title. It was true that Ino often had wondered how the people could have gone from hating him to loving him so unconditionally in such a short time. But for the past ten years Shikamaru had been a good, loyal and able leader of Hidden Leaf. He'd helped them, had done everything for them. He deserved to be called in the same sentence with all his great predecessors. This was Nara Shikamaru, Eighth Fire Shadow of Hidden Leaf, and Ino loved him as much as every other inhabitant of Konoha loved him. For what he was, what he had done and what he still tried to do every hour, every second of every day: just for them.

That was why she was so unprepared when the old woman grabbed for the knife on the kitchen counter next to them and stabbed him.

Everything else Ino might have been thinking was lost in the mental scream of rage that went up from her, the sudden surge of surprise and alarm from Shikamaru and of horrified shock from Hoshino-San. Together with Ino's own mental scream it all blended together into a white noise so overwhelming she had to shut it out forcefully. She didn't even have time to think anything else as she blurred forward, putting herself between Shikamaru and the insane old woman, and tried to block her wildly-swinging arm holding the knife.

"Murderer! Traitor! Shinobu died because of your plans! He would still be alive if you hadn't ever returned! Why couldn't you just stay in your little hole, damn Nara? You killed my son! You killed my son!"

The woman's mindscape was a black pit of insanity and completely useless to Ino. Shikamaru was struggling to grab the old woman's hand, but her madness seemed to have given her strength. She lifted the knife and brought it down, without aim and all the more dangerous. Scrambling for a hold on something, Ino threw out her hands and felt the knife skim past her arm. She grabbed for the woman's wrist but she twisted and tore and suddenly Ino felt the cool metal in the palm of her hand. The madwoman tore the weapon back – Ino felt her hand slip on the knife's edge but couldn't grasp it – and brought it forward – so strong, just why – and again – Shikamaru grunted, oh God no, don't let him be hurt, I refuse to let him die in my care – and again – and felt an impact. The woman's hand suddenly stilled. For a second, all of them froze, Shikamaru behind Ino, Ino sandwiched in between him and the woman. Unreal. Shecould hear Shikamaru's breathing, the woman's keening moan that went on and on and on, and the sudden absence of all feelings in the mindscapes surrounding her. Shock. A heart-beat, two, three. And then the woman, who was still holding the knife with both her hands, jerked at it and twisted, trying to free it from where it was stuck, and Ino jabbed at her mindscape, projecting a flash of something. The womanscreamed – a guttural sound, insanity in its purest form – let go of the knife and looked at her hands. She stumbled backwards, staring at her hands as if they had turned into snakes, crashed against the table, looked up to meet Shikamaru's gaze and dove for the door, screaming at the top of her voice. Her insanity fled with her, leaving Ino's head a mercifully much quieter place, and she exhaled as she whirled around to look at her Hokage.

"Shikamaru, are you alright?" Frenzied, she grabbed a fistful of his gown, pushing it aside, inspecting his clothes. There was a long gash in the white cloth, but nothing she could see on his body. "Did she stab you?"

"I'm fine." Shikamaru's voice was almost gentle, a counterpoint to her terror, he carefully eased aside her hands but sent her a tendril of reassurance instead. Grateful, she fell into the calm waters of his mind, still high on adrenaline and shock.

"Thank God."

Relief made her joints weak and she laughed when she actually dropped to her knees.

Shikamaru's expression turned to alarm and his mindscape altered so rapidly she couldn't follow.

"Ino…"

"What?" She said, still feeling too relieved to get up immediately. Instead, she leaned back, glad to find the support of one of the table's legs behind her. "I'm fine. Sorry. I'll be up in a moment."

"Ino!"

He was on the ground next to her like a flash, supporting her as she collapsed into herself, unable to remain upright any longer. Something trickled down her chin. Ino wiped her hand over her mouth: it came away bloody.

Shikamaru swore, caught her and carefully placed her on the kitchen floor. The knife fell to the ground almost unnoticed, almost like an afterthought. Shikamaru was cursing, a steady stream of expletives tumbling from his lips as he carefully pushed his hastily bundled cloak under her head. His hand searched for her injury and came away bloody. Ino ran a mental chakra check-up of her own body – Sakura had taught her a bit, even if it wasn't nearly enough to be a medic nin – and immediately found the ragged flesh, cut muscles and torn ligaments in her side. The flesh around the stab wound had been shredded by her attacker's sudden jerk and twist and by the serrated edge of the knife. Something seemed to drain from her, something more than just blood. Still, the pain would not come.

Shikamaru's gaze, when he finally looked at her, carried something she couldn't immediately place. "Call Sakura."

"Shouldn't you take her to the hospital?"

Both of them had almost forgotten about Hoshino-San. The woman was pale, tears in her eyes, but she was clinging to her composure. Ino gave her points for calm, but maybe she was being too generous. Because, when it came down to it, Hoshino-San was pretty much a perfect woman: calm, composed and fragile. One of these women the twelve-year-old Shikamaru would have envisioned as his future wife.

Why was she thinking of this now?

"She's right…"

"Call Sakura!"

His sudden, uncharacteristic outburst made her wince. Ino closed her eyes – she needed every scrap of concentration she could find, because she felt weak and her thoughts seemed to flutter like flowers in an autumn storm – and sent out a mental call. She could feel Sakura on the other side. It had been years since she had last contacted her friend like this. Years of peace, in which a mental coordination of shinobi on the battle field hadn't been necessary -

Sakura's horrified understanding pulsed through her and with it came the pain: hot, white and blinding. Shikamaru's hold on her stiffened and with a tiny part of her mind that was not screaming in agony Ino realized she had been projecting. Desperately trying to reel her thoughts in, she clambered to calm herself but she could feel her thoughts being ripped apart like paper flowers instead. It was difficult to hold on to something, anything, when the pain writhed inside her like a living, breathing, burning being. Her hand moved across the floor, fluttering as a tiny bird, and she forced herself to breathe through the pain, as she had so often done before, mentally assessing the damage the stab wound had caused. It didn't look good; she didn't need to be a full-fledged medic to see that. Sakura wouldn't make it on time.

Shikamaru, disregarding logic, was pressing his hands to her side, sticky with blood. Hoshino-San offered him a few towels which he took and used to staunch the ever-flowing stream of blood. When Ino tried to look at him his face kept fading in and out of her focus, it was hard to tell whether it was because she was so exhausted or because he was doing something with his shadows.

"Stop it," she mumbled. "You're making my head hurt."

Shikamaru faded in again and remained solid, but she didn't like the look on his face.

"Stop worrying," she whispered. "Look at the whole picture."

I couldn't let you die, Shikamaru.

"Leaf needs you more than me."

"Oh, bullshit." She put all her emphasis onto the last word. She could already feel her voice subside, and her strength was following quickly. "I'm not the one who saved us."

Ino felt her own mindscape collapse. It contracted rapidly, minds she had been able to sense just minutes ago falling away one by one. The gate guards, the civilians, the shinobi on the training grounds and in the Hokage Tower around them. Kakashi-San, old and worn, in close proximity to Rin-San, as always these days. Hinata and her two kids, Shino and Kiba and Sasuke and his son. Next, Hoshino-San's consciousness disappeared, and then Shikamaru's. Within seconds it was only Ino herself, left in the darkness of her own mind. For the first time in many, many years, she was forced to take stock, uncrowded by the many minds and human beings she had felt every day and night since the day she had purposely let down her mental barriers. What she saw made her shudder: her mindscape was close to empty. There was none of the helpless optimism Naruto always had displayed, none of Sasuke's single-minded determination, none of Hinata's kindness. Horrified and yet not surprised, she realized what she had been: a mirror to the people surrounding her; reading their emotions and reflecting them back – while, all the while, being a book without pages. An empty shell. Ino knew: she had banished every sentiment, every feeling of guilt, hopelessness, pain and loss long, long ago. Instead, she had focused on other people. Now she was on her own again, in the dark, suffocating emptiness, her heart-beat unnaturally loud in her ears.

Being empty like that was scary.

Look at the world with kind eyes, my daughter. And she had tried; tried so, so hard. Stones can build bridges, Ino, but sometimes the bridges that need to be built are invisible. Look at the world around you. What can you see? What can you do to make it better?

Shikamaru's eyes were pitch-black ponds in his face.

Stones for bridges, Sakura's voice whispered in her mind. It was replaced by her father's. Eyes to see.

Ah.

Ino smiled.

The Yamanaka family motto.

She didn't mind dying like her father had: for the one person she'd sworn to protect. There was so much they had done wrong, and still things they could be proud of. She had failed to protect Chouji, and Naruto, and so many more. But she had not failed Shikamaru.

Something nudged her empty mindscape, melted into her. Trickled like a tiny little stream until it grew and expanded and filled her completely. If she had any breath left Ino would have gasped when she realized the source of the warmth and familiarity that suddenly was filling her. The essence of what was Shikamaru suddenly echoed through her, filled her emptiness with sound and light. It wasn't pure happiness. It was loss and sadness and grief and anger mixed together, and memories of other times. But it was peace, and possibilities and choices. It was accusation and forgiveness in one, both refusal and acceptance of fate. Shadows and light, laughter and tears. How could one single person hold all these emotions?

I could have protected myself.

I couldn't let anything happen to you.

Everyone has already left, he thought back at her. Now you're leaving, as well.

There was bone-deep weariness echoing in his mind's voice. Regret swamped her, choking and hot, regret at the one thing she had known was wrong and which she had done, nevertheless: she'd gone to find him. Kakashi had debated sending her to search for him, but Ino had stood her ground. She had argued that she knew Shikamaru best, that she would be able to find him. That she, if anyone, would be able to bring him back, because Hidden Leaf needed him. In truth, her motivation had been more selfish than that: she had just wanted to see him again one more time. She hadn't expected him to be able to save them, but had known he would do his best. Shikamaru never did anything less than his best. It had broken him, again and again, but in the process, he had saved her, too. How strange, the way human beings drew strength from other people's pain. But Ino had never been complete, not since the day Shikamaru had left, so how should she possibly have understood what it meant to be entirely human?

Surprise colored his mindscape as he put together one and one, then his regret mingled with hers. Too late. So many lost opportunities. So many lost years. In the end, the only thing he could do was look at her.

Thank you. For finding me. For bringing me back. For saving me from myself. You were right to come.

His forehead touched hers and her sight blurred, but the warmth in her mind remained.

I'm sorry.

I am, too.

Ino smiled at Shikamaru, the impossible warmth of his mind chasing away the coldness that was creeping into her body and heart, and closed her eyes. She couldn't remember ever having been this close to anyone before. Shikamaru had always been distant, however much she had yearned for him not to be. His mindscape was achingly familiar. In the velvet black darkness that crept nearer, she could feel her heart beat slow. Smiling, Ino lifted a hand and placed it against his hair, then dropped it again because she had no strength to hold it. She was dying, she knew, but she also knew that it was fine. She had found her way, at last. She had found him. Mentally distancing herself, she closed her eyes.

It's okay, Shikamaru.

Shikamaru always had known when to let go. Ino expected him to draw back, to leave her to the dawning darkness that promised oblivion and peace. She expected him to leave her alone, as she'd always been. To be rational, as he'd always been… But this one time, he refused to let go.

Don't. Please. Shikamaru sounded almost desperate. I can't lose you, as well.

I can't stay, she thought, giddy and exhausted and impossibly far away. I can't stay any longer.

But still, he didn't let go. It made her incredibly happy, and, at the same time, unspeakably sad.

Ino gathered the last remnants of her concentration and sent Shikamaru a burst of sunlight: a bubble of memories. Of laughter, sunshine and warmth and the invaluable feeling of being completely at ease, and surrounded by love. She sent her brightest, most beloved memory: of three children named Shikamaru, Ino and Chouji on a Sunday afternoon on the veranda of the Nara main house. She felt him drift away, slowly, finally, his pain merging into her calm and being dulled. Being shifted, formed and mellowed. One last touch, impossibly soft, and he was gone, but Ino wasn't alone anymore. There was an island of sunshine on the porch: their parents were seated at the table inside, engrossed in a discussion, their loud, enthusiastic voices rising into the blue summer sky. Outside, on the porch, in the bubble of sunlight and warmth Ino felt herself falling asleep. Chouji's even breath next to her was steady and comforting, and Shikamaru's familiar, warm fingers just barely grazed hers.

The children's laughter in the distance sounded like Naruto and Kiba were pranking the villagers again, and Ino knew the others were near.