Disclaimer: I'd do a better job than Kishimoto. Too bad Naruto isn't mine.
PIERINE
(BUTTERFLY)
Despite everything that had happened, he'd like to believe that their story has reached its happily ever after.
For him, at least. He now has a channel for all the love in his life: his love for watching clouds, his love for playing shogi, his love for the child that his sensei left behind as a reminder – and above all, his love for her. She is his muse, and every thing that he does, he does it for her – whether it's as complicated as being the Hokage and keeping the peace in their village, or as simple as surprising her with a breakfast of her favorite pancakes.
He likes to think that everything has turned out to be for the better. After all, she is gossiping with Sakura and Hinata again, and she is telling Chouji that he needs to be on a diet just like she used to when they were younger, and she is nagging him at least three times a day to accompany her shopping just like she has always done before. It used to annoy him slightly, but now it all just makes him smile. Because Ino is Ino again. Because Ino is smiling again.
And yet deep inside, he knows that it can never be a happy ending for her.
In the daylight she is happy. She cooks him lunch and brings it to him everyday at the Hokage Tower, and has even taken to teaching kindergarten classes at the academy (everyone knows how much she loves children and how great she is with them). But in the darkness of the night, the darkness that is no different from the dreary darkness of terror back during the war, there are times when she wakes up screaming from nightmares of unspoken horror. In those dreams she relives those dreadful days of anarchy and pain – or even worse… that other man.
He tries to soothe her fears, pressing her cold, shivering body against his own, stroking her damp blonde hair. He softly whispers assurances in her ears until her sobs die away and her limbs cease quivering. But he knows that in this tragedy that the night revives in her, he has no part – he is but a bystander who, no matter how much he wants to help her, can do nothing but watch her pain helplessly from the sidelines. He knows that when Uchiha Sasuke fell, he took part of her with him, something irreplaceable by any other love in her life. Sometimes, in those dark nights, he sees the arrogant face of the Uchiha, mocking him and his helplessness.
Yamanaka Ino will never be the same, and there is nothing that Nara Shikamaru can do about it.
After her class with the children is over, he seeks her out in the empty classroom, the same classroom where fifteen years ago he realized that he had fallen in love with her, and right in the middle of Sir Iruka's discussion about ninjutsu too. He finds her staring out the window as she sat on one of the seats, the same seat were fifteen years ago she wished that she would be team mates with Uchiha Sasuke.
She smiles when she notices that he has come in, and she leans back into him when he comes up behind her chair.
"You look beautiful today," he tells her, even though she is beautiful every day and she knows it.
"Flatterer," she laughs, and rises from the chair to face him.
"Ino," he says, suddenly serious. "Do you love me?"
The laughter is wiped from her face, replaced by a concern that makes him regret the question. "Of course I love you. Why do you ask?"
He shakes his head wistfully. "Nothing. It's just nice to hear."
She throws her arms around his neck and kisses him. "Then I'll say it again. I love you, Nara Shikamaru. I love you and that's why I'm Nara Ino. Will that do?"
He can't help returning her smile. "It'll do," he says, and he kisses her back.
Tonight she will wake up crying from those nightmares again, and tonight he will be unable to do anything but hold her until she falls asleep again. Because Shikamaru knows that whatever he does, Ino will never love anyone the same way she loved – loves – Uchiha Sasuke.
But as long as she tells him that she loves him, it will be enough reason to live.
And as long as she tells him that she loves him, he will believe it.