The lights in the record room flickered like dying fireflies, making the shadows jump across the tiles. Shizune sat on the floor of the cramped space, files spread out around her in a fan. In her lap, she held the document she had been searching for.

It hadn't been easy to locate. Following Pein's destruction of the village, the files that hadn't been ruined had mostly just been thrown back into cabinets rather than organized. They'd had a war to fight – no one had time to worry about organizing old hospital records. But by some miracle, after over two hours of fruitless searching, she had uncovered a thin folder – it contained only three documents – with the name Inoichi Yamanaka marked on the label in nearly illegible scrawl. Shizune might not have been able to decipher it at all, were it not for the seal of the boar that had been stamped next to it. But there was the Yamanaka seal, fresh as though it had been inked yesterday.

The first page of the report was a standard medical history. Name, age, weight, height, a list of previous injuries and illnesses, all the biographical details of a man almost a year dead. It always struck Shizune, every time she had to comb through the medical files of a shinobi already deceased, how cold and perfunctory the reports were. What had once been a living, feeling, thinking person was now just lines on a page, just information.

And imprecise information, no less. The file had been written when Inoichi was only sixteen, so he had not yet been at his full adult weight and height. The doctor attending him had marked on the charts that he was prone to headaches, a common ailment of the Yamanaka clan. What was perhaps more surprising was the note scribbled along the bottom of the page, listed under the heading Mental Health. Apparently, in a previous hospital visit, a teacher of his – the name was too smudged to read – had expressed some concern about aggressive tendencies in Inoichi, ones noted to be "so severe as to be self-destructive".

The Inoichi she had known, albeit for only a short while, was one of the most methodical and careful shinobi in Konoha. That description didn't seem like him at all.

Then again, she thought as she flipped to the next page, a few years ago, she would never have thought of Ino as methodical and careful, but those were both qualities she would ascribe to the girl now. The majority of her rashness seemed to have faded into the bygone days of her childhood. Perhaps the mellowing of temperament ran in the family?

The next page was an account of the injury for which Inoichi had been admitted. The report stated that his release form had been signed on behalf of his mother, but by another party, as she had not been in a state to authorize it. That was interesting in and of itself, but not what Shizune was looking for. She pressed on.

Inoichi had been admitted early in the morning, already unconscious, carried by his teacher, one Tobirama Sarutobi. The elder son of the Third. He had also been accompanied by a visibly distraught Shikaku Nara, who the medical attendants had had to physically restrain to keep him from following Inoichi back into the examination room.

Upon examination, Inoichi had been found to have no marks on his body consistent with a concussion or another traumatic injury that might have provoked the loss of consciousness. The only mark on him was some minor bruising around his left knee.

The report went on to list the barrage of tests they had performed on the boy, each one just as inconclusive as the next. Finally, after several hours of probing, the head medic had called for an end to it, and determined he ought to be found a room until they could learn more about his condition. The report was as frustratingly unhelpful as Inoichi's initial account.

The third piece of paper, however, was something far more interesting. After scanning through it, Shizune closed it back into the file and, gathering up Inoichi's papers, sprinted for the stairs.

Tsunade would want to see this immediately.

It was just like reentering Konoha after a mission. Ino stood at the village gates, staring up at the enormous green doors, thrown open to welcome her home. She almost expected someone to come running to greet her – one of her parents, maybe, or one of her old classmates. But no one came, and after a moment, she moved forward.

The village was exactly the same – every building, every tree, every blade of grass perfect to the last detail. There, in the distance, she could see the Hokage monument, five faces looking sternly down on the city below. Off to the left, she glimpsed the roof of the Academy, peeking out over rows and rows of shops and residences. If she squinted hard enough, she could almost see her parent's flower shop from here, smell the sweet, faint scent of early spring roses.

The aromatic memory almost overwhelmed her. With her head throbbing, cradling a hand that was surely broken, and still drenched to the skin from the deluge in the forest, Ino wanted nothing more than to run straight to the flower shop. She wanted to breathe in the sweet comfort of a dozen varieties of fresh spring blooms, to see her parents standing behind the desk, smiling over the counter at customers buying for a wedding or a birthday or just getting a gift for their sweethearts. Her father would chastise her for being late, even as he smiled at her arrival, and her mother would wonder at the mess of her clothes and her hair, and insist that she get cleaned up this instant. And Ino would have happily obliged, safe in the refuge of her happiest memories, surrounded by the gentle remonstrations of people who loved her.

But the scent faded, and she remembered where she was. The impossibility of the dream crept into her, leaving her just as cold and tired and sore as she had been before. No. It couldn't be like that anymore.

Besides, this Konoha was not her Konoha, no matter how much it looked like it. For all its perfect exactness, it lacked the one thing that made the village real. Every corner she turned, every stall she peered into, every street she walked… all empty. There was no chatter of people haggling over food, no friendly chatter of birds overhead, no laughter of children playing at being ninjas. It was a Konoha devoid of life.

Ino walked on despite the feeling of wrongness that surrounded her. It was all she could do. The more she walked, the more she felt that she was close, so close to where Shikamaru was. She was six layers in at this point, if she had counted correctly. How many more could there possibly be? And compared to the other tasks she had accomplished, the other places she had been, this model of Konoha seemed so… docile. It was as if all the threatening things had been drained out of this world, but all the good things too. It was a true neutral.

Ino's wanderings soon led her past her team's old training grounds. Even though she knew it would be as empty as all the rest, she stopped anyway, looking out over the swaying grass of the clearing. She could almost see the three of them, herself and her teammates as they had once been, sitting cross-legged in front of Asuma, young and eager.

Well… at least she had been eager. She didn't think Shikamaru had ever been eager about anything a day in his life.

But the memories were still there. The first time she had smelled the acrid stench of Asuma's brand of cigarettes. The first time she had tried her Mind-Body Transfer in the presence of anyone who wasn't family. The first time the three of them had gotten the Ino-Shika-Cho formation right. She could still taste the exhilaration of that moment.

It was Shikamaru who loved cloud-gazing, but gods above, if she wouldn't have given everything she had to spend one more day stretched out on her back on the prickly grass, staring up at the sky with her team.

She caught herself, surprised at her own sudden surge of emotion. She had always been prone to bouts of strong emotion, sure, but this wasn't the kind she let surface. This was the kind she buried, only to be pulled out for special occasions, when it was warranted, when she was alone. When she could afford to be vulnerable. So why was she suddenly so nostalgic?

On instinct, she gazed up at the sky above her. It was a perfect crystalline blue, broken by strands of thin white clouds that glided across the surface. The kind of sky that Shikamaru would have loved.

Impulsively, she waded out into the field, telling herself it would only be a moment, just a short indulgence. What could it hurt, after all she had done, all she had been through, to indulge her nostalgia for a short while? She wasn't sure when she found herself sitting, but within moments, she had sunk into the warmth of the grass, her limbs slack. All of the exhaustion and pain of the journey seemed to settle on her at the moment her head touched the ground, keeping her anchored flat on her back.

But as she lay there, safely ensconced in the familiarity of her old training ground, the pain began to leech away, until she was barely aware of it. The grass was soft beneath her, and a mild breeze picked at her hair and her clothes, drawing the residual moisture from the forest away with its soft touch. In the back of her mind, she knew that she needed to go find Shikamaru, that she had no time to be relaxing. But those thoughts were drowned out by the drone of the cicadas, rising and falling in a steady rhythm, in a collective sigh with the rustle of the wind.

Through drooping eyelids, Ino almost thought she saw him, stretched out on the grass beside her, hands folded behind his head.

"You're falling asleep," he observed.

"Mm." She stuck a hand out half-heartedly, intending to give his shoulder a shove, but she missed. He chuckled, the sound rumbling through his chest, through hers, where her side was pressed up against his. Had they always been this close?

"I thought you weren't planning to give up."

The conversation was familiar somehow, but in the haze of the summer afternoon, Ino was having trouble placing it. It was warm, and she was so, so tired…

"'Mnot," she mumbled. "I'm just… resting."

"No." He was looking at her now, his tone firm. It was suddenly harder to tune him out. "No, you're not. You're letting yourself get caught up in what was, instead of moving forward."

"Is it really so bad?" Her gaze, blurred with weariness, flicked from cloud to cloud, drinking in the bright blue of peeking through. "Is it really so bad, living here? Where things were good. Where we were all happy."

"Ino." Shikamaru had rolled over onto his side, the full weight of his gaze pressing against her. "Was it ever really like this?" A hand, firm but not unkind, patted her cheek. "You've got to open your eyes."

She turned, so she was facing him, meeting the steady darkness of his gaze head on. The motion was difficult, as though her limbs didn't want to comply with the movement. She didn't want to open her eyes. Not if it meant leaving this. Not if it meant…

"Was it ever really like this?" He asked again, the words a whisper, a mere exhalation of breath.

She gazed at him, willing her lids to keep from closing. The lines of his face were familiar, a sight she had woken to so many times. Returning to her body after the Mind-Body jutsu to find herself still safely in his arms.

Was it like this? Her mind was struggling to reconcile what it saw with what it knew. This sky was too brilliant, this field too quiet. Her Konoha had never been this peaceful. Even when training was new, it hadn't been easy.

Gradually, her idyllic memories of the training field sloughed off, overcome with new memories that were less bright, but more real, somehow. Of sweat pouring down her brow, of frustration at her teammates, at her sensei, at herself for never being good enough to beat Sakura. Or win Sasuke.

Did she really want to go back to those days of petty competition, of so much jealousy and uncertainty?

As she gazed at Shikamaru, even he began to blur. This wasn't how it had been back then either. She hadn't loved them then. The Ino of the past would never have pushed the limits of her abilities on the off chance she might save one of her teammates. That Ino had been appalled at her assigned teammates, reluctant to work with the two she thought were the class rejects.

And now they were her two best friends. Maybe the two most important people in her life. And one of them was depending on her. Did she want to let that go?

Ino's eyes snapped open. The pain came back too – the throbbing in her forehead, the dull, swollen ache of her wrist. She was still in the field, but it didn't seem quite as beautiful as it once had. It seemed oversaturated now, the images too bright to be real. And somewhere out there in this false Konoha, Shikamaru was waiting. With no small struggle, she pulled herself up, scanned her surroundings. It all seemed different now, in that too-bright, surreal sort of way. All of it wrong, all except… there, in the distance. Her vision honed in on a spot that seemed somehow less bright than its surroundings. In the direction of the Hokage's office. How she had missed it before she couldn't imagine.

And then, like a shock, she knew where he was. Her feet couldn't fly fast enough.

Shikamaru slumped against the desk, listless. He was supposed to be doing something. Going somewhere. Only he couldn't remember just now. It was dark, aside from the brightness of the single screen, and his thoughts were so sluggish…

The door burst open with a thud, deafening in the silence that had surrounded him for so long. Light streamed in, blocked only by the silhouette of a single figure. Her long blonde hair glinted, radiant as a halo around her head.

"You idiot."

Those were the only two words she managed to get out before she collapsed, unconscious, across the threshold.

A/N: I'm consistently amazed by the response I've gotten to this story. You guys are awesome! I'll probably be wrapping up in the next few chapters or so, so keep an eye out for updates.