The red ribbon

It shouldn't have surprised him when that tiny spark of hope turned into a wildfire and burned itself out of existence.

Really.

Out of the three of them, he should have known better, he should have known that there is always a secret scheme, a truth to uncover, a game to play. He should have known but he didn't, or rather, he ignored it in favor of attending to his hysterical companions, whose fears of being left out convinced him to begin a test that, within himself, he knew was fruitless.

Shikamaru has never seen a gënin squad of only two members, not once in all his years of council meetings that he now regrets not paying attention to, and that should have been a signal, that should have made him suspicious of Asuma's words but it didn't. Because he let himself be infected by the doubt and fear that his teammates had and that cost him his hope.

And to be honest? The three of them couldn't have been more stupid, knowing that their fathers had been on the same team since gënin days.

At least he fabricated himself an excuse.

Shikaku would probably tell him that it made it even worse.

"Here's the deal," Asuma had said, "I hid some things around the training ground, the first two of you who can bring one of the objects to me stays." He paused, looking at their twisted faces. "The other one is gone."

He had never said what kind of objects they were looking for and none of them had asked, Chöji pushing him forward so he would start the search and not stay lazily behind. Chöji liked to play fair and he wasn't going to let him surrender just to have more hours of sleep.

The universe hated him. Kamisama especially.

But still, he searched for something in total blindness because what on earth was he supposed to look for, he searched with his heart hammering in his chest and biting his upper lip while Chöji's presence frantically begged him to look. He didn't want to leave his best friend alone.

It was such a weird thing, a weird and fragile thing he could turn into shreds by stretching it too much, it was impossible for him to overlook, his bright crimson color moving with the wind, entangled in the branch to which it was tied.

He was the last one to return, well past noon because he forgot the timeline.

But he wasn't the one without an object.

Ino was standing still, the sun cascading down her form roughly, making her face harder, somber. She was looking not at him but at the thing he was wearing around his wrist, he supposed it was because she realized what it meant, but Shikamaru wasn't sure Asuma appreciated more a task completed out of time than following his established limits.

Chöji relaxed his shoulders at seeing him but didn't smile.

It was like something had hit her because, before he could understand how or why, she was in front of him in a blur.

"This is mine!" She yelled at him, trying to take the cloth with her nails.

"What?" He pushed her, without being able to believe her reaction. "No, it isn't! I found it."

"Give it!" She yelled again, trying to grab him by the collar of his shirt.

"Stop it!" He retaliated by slapping her hands away. "Get over it Ino, you lost!"

He should have known.

"I said is mine!" She jumped at him, ready to kick his face and punch the hell out of him if her expression was any indication. But Chöji got in the way and grabbed her by the leg, turning her in the air and making her fall to the floor.

"Stop!" He screamed, begged. "Ino, please, stop!"

"No!" She jumped to her feet again. "You stole it!"

Nothing was making any sense and that was when he finally, finally knew.

She was trying to run to him once more, Chöji looking more and more exasperated by the second, trying to pin her down.

"This was Sakura's." He mumbled. It wasn't a question but a statement.

Ino's eyes opened at that, maybe surprised at the fact that he knew, that he remembered that she once had something like he and Chöji do. Because it didn't matter how many girls and boys were all over Ino she always seemed alone.

"You stole it." She looked defeated. Chöji letting go of her wrists.

"I did not."

And how many times could this piece of cloth broke her heart, he wondered.

"But is yours." He looked at her, forcing himself to shrug his shoulders like it wasn't a big deal, and stretched his hand for her to take it. It wouldn't have been the Ino he knew if she wasn't taking it off his wrist in half a second.

Ino finished the task of disentangling the red ribbon she loved so much from the wrist of the boy she didn't even appreciate and looked at him and swallowed, not a word leaving her mouth.

"You guys sure suck at this." Asuma appeared from the shadows where the three of them knew he was watching but forgot, making them gasp in surprise, the smug expression returning to his face. "Like, for real."

He could practically hear the sigh of exasperation his father would make.

"I see we have our winners," Asuma continued, walking more and more into the light, glancing at Chöji and Shikamaru respectively.

"The red ribbon is Ino's." He said matter of factly, winning expressions of disbelief of everyone in Team 10.

"What?" It was Ino and Asuma whose voices collided, but it shouldn't have been such a surprise, he was known to prefer sleeping over missions or status, so it wasn't really surprising he was giving her the object that was actually her possession to begin with.

"I said-"

"I don't want it."

Ah… what?

It was his turn to look at her in disbelief. Asuma seemed incredulous, almost upset, and Chöji was clenching the doll he had in his hands so tightly he could have broken it.

(Shikamaru realized that the doll seemed strangely familiar to him. And it seemed strangely familiar to him because it was his. It used to be his. But he didn't remember that until one night when the two of them were eating at Ichiraku. Ino not surprisingly absent. His hand on his chin and his teeth clenched)

"I don't want… I don't want to be in this team if it means…" she was fighting with the words, "you found it, you stay." It was definitive.

And no, no, no, she was ruining it. Shikamaru was about to save them all from going back to the Academy and she was jeopardizing it.

"No. It was yours. You stay." He replied. "We both know that you want to be a ninja more than I do."

She looked at him and was ready to retort, but he beat her to it.

"You need the training more than I do anyway."

He almost chokes in the silence that followed.

"What did you just said?"

This. This he could work with. An angry Ino. He could handle an angry Ino, he was used to this part of her more than any other. An upset Ino would argue with him and do anything to prove him wrong and that was what he needed. He needed to see -for Asuma to see, a determined Ino, not a defeated one, not a girl that felt pitied but the strong-willed girl that he knew she was, always trying to bend things in her favor.

"It's just my opinion." He shrugged.

She lifted her chin and put her hands on her hips, the red ribbon strongly secured on one of her fists. "Just your opinion? You asshole." She made a step towards him, ready to lash out her poisonous tongue, "I could beat you in a heartbeat, Chöji had to stop me so I wouldn't hurt you."

"I don't like fighting girls."

"And that's why you clearly need the training more than I do. Maybe Asuma-sensei can teach you how not to underestimate your enemies. Or allies."

"See? That's why you need more the training, you need to stop lashing out against your own comrades."

"You keep the place."

"No, you keep the place."

"Stop it! Guys. Here, have my place." Chöji offered the doll to whoever took it first.

"NO!" They both shouted.

"Keep the good damn place!"

"You keep it! I said I don't want it!"

"Both of you clearly need to learn about teamwork so is one of you going to take my place or I'll have to make you take it?"

"Stop." Asuma's voice wasn't a scream but it felt as high as one and the three of them glanced at him. "None of you is leaving this team." He deadpanned and grunted, pinching the bridge oh his nose. "This was supposed to be an easy test for you," it was a whisper, but all of them heard it.

"What?" Chöji's curiosity took over his shyness, something that didn't happen often enough as it should in Shikamaru's opinion.

Asuma looked at him, still pinching his nose. "Teamwork." He grunted, his hand falling off his face. "The last thing I thought you would be able to fail at."

It wasn't a stab but it felt just the same in his chest.

Asuma was shaking his head like he wanted to laugh. "Although you did sacrifice yourself for the other at the end. Sort of…" he looked up at the sky, "I never thought you would go as far as deflecting tho."

Deflecting? No. None of them were actually thinking about deflecting, it was just a stupid argument based on which pride was hurt the most. Nothing else.

"We weren't deflecting," Ino argued. "We were just…" but she couldn't continue, whatever she could think of didn't seem good enough.

"You are not children anymore." Asuma said simply, "you can't just quit because you didn't like something." He sat, focusing his gaze on her. "You can't just walk away."

(In the future, in a distant point that none of them could even imagine back then, Shikamaru will shout those same words to her, his heart trying to break free from his ribs. But she kept walking.)

"Still," Asuma breathed, looking completely exhausted. "You pass. We can work with that."

It didn't feel like winning.

Deflecting was a strong word, he definitely wasn't actually thinking on doing it, the argument was just a strategy to make Asuma see that they will leave something they wanted behind if that meant the other one would have it. That was the whole point, was it? To make sacrifices or whatever.

But they didn't do it out of conviction because they truly believed the other one deserved or because it was for the best.

Still, they did it.

But…

("Your pride must be bigger than the one of your enemies because you would never let yourself be killed by someone inferior. But your pride must never be bigger than Konoha." His father said to him when he was little, he said it so casually that Shikamaru didn't think it was actually important, moreover considering that at the time Shikaku was drunk.

He never said that while sober.)

Ino was walking in front of the two of them while returning to their respective houses, weirdly quiet, weirdly wounded where it hurt her the most, for many reasons, but one dyed flash of red to the rest and he knew, as Chöji did, that there were no words of comfort.

(Chöji knew how to hug her to make her feel better, but they weren't in that place just yet).

It wasn't his pride that Asuma spoke about.

But even their sensei had it all wrong. It wasn't pride what she defended.

It was love.

And really, he hated that he knew, he hated that he knew her that well despite his best efforts. A piece of cloth was more important to her than he would -could- ever be, and while he didn't particularly care for Ino it wounded him in the deepest part of his esteem to know himself less worthy than a ribbon.

There was no hope for this team.