A/N: I forgot to mention, I don't own Naruto. From the comments on the last chapter, I was reminded that not only was the first chapter confusing, but that I also wrote it that way on purpose. So maybe I need to post more before I decide if it's a lost venture. Also, am about 50/50 on whether this needs to be switched to M in the future. For now, I'm just going to be extra generous with the content warnings. This chapter is graphic in descriptions of what is essentially surgery. Also, I ended the world, so as per the description, lots of death.
Shikamaru had always thought himself a practical person, more interested in what would work than what should, as per whatever cited higher moral calling. Seeing the world for what it was, rather than what it should be. But as his skin burned with some strange sensation and head spun between dreams and a place full of crying; he was rather certain that Lady Tsunade shouldn't look like a bright purple blob. And that whatever she was shouting should be in a language he at least recognized, and not sound like birds squawking.
Rather than try to make any sense of it, he let the pain in his head pull him to another place. The empty Sixth Hokage's office, a single sheet of paper.
Hey there Shikamaru. I know you're reading this, to process the paperwork. And since you have to read this, I might as well let you know exactly how I feel! First of all, I'm not over-reacting or being dramatic. You're on the wrong side, and I'm doing what I know is right. I'll prove it to you! I'll come back, we'll all come back with proof.
But I can't do what I know is right without leaving. And you don't trust me. So, here's my promise to you. Hold onto it for me? You think I'm betraying us. Our families. You. Give it back to me someday when you realize you're wrong!
Until then, Naito can take my place as head of the Yamanakas. He's talented and knows the clan well. Give Choji my love. He would probably be on your side if he were here, he always was. While you take care of the village, try to remember to take care of yourself. Stop staying up so late, it makes you sleepy all day. Eat your vegetables. Pick better friends. Don't feel too bad when you realize I was right, and you were wrong. And if you let anything happen to Choji, I'll hunt you down and melt your mind! That's all.
I, Ino Yamanaka, officially resign from my position as a ninja of the Hidden Leaf village and lead of the Yamanaka line. I renounce my citizenship and all connection to the village. All actions taken against me in the future by Hidden Leaf are against persons alien to the village and without claim to name or property.
And that was it. A lifetime together dissolved in a note. Shikamaru had stared at it, trapped. There was nothing he could do to take it back. Nothing he could officially do to get her back. No official solution he could think of that wouldn't bring catastrophe to the Hidden Leaf.
He looked to where she had drawn arrows between her characters for "my promise" and a black dot on the page, she had circled twice. But Shikamaru hardly needed her patronizing penmanship to notice, it had been the first thing his eyes found weighing down the corner of the paper. Her earing. The very symbol of the alliance they wore every day. And she took it off and gave it back.
He pulled it out and set her final words on fire. He wouldn't need the page to remember every character. And there was no way she was doing this. No way that she, Sakura, TenTen, and Kurenai were all staying away from the Leaf for long. Kurenai had a child, after all. They would be back; Ino would be back. And they would pretend that none of this had happened.
They just had to make a point. Girls. Always had to get the final word in. They would come back. Then again. He had been just as confident they wouldn't leave in the first place.
Shikamaru felt his skin prick, and head throb, slowly remembering this had all already happened. Four years past, and he hadn't seen her since. To escape the resonance of his guilt, he put every ounce of effort into prying his eyes open, letting the blinding light create a new chorus of pain.
"Awake?" He heard, blinking Lady Tsunade into focus. She wasn't purple this time and his mind made sense of the sounds.
She placed a cold hand on his head, and he knew the touch of medical ninjutsu. "You're well enough," she clipped, removing the comfort of her healing in a painful motion, "we need you to help out."
Shikamaru groaned. He didn't want to work through this pain, but dreams were just as bad. And helping out was the practical thing to do.
Tsunade pressed heavy hands against Karin's sides, willing breath to return of its own accord to tired lungs, desperate not to have to cut. From the corner of her eye, she could see Hinata, channeling chakra directly into the still unconscious Sai and Might Guy. Both, in less severe conditions. Besides, by her own rules, the imperative was always saving the medical ninjas first. Early costs, for saving lives.
Ten breaths per minute, and barely there.
Tsunade wished she had the energy to summon Katsuyu, be the healer they all needed, all at once. But her own body was still reeling from the blast, and the chakra required to simply keep Karin breathing was threatening to break the last of her reserves. Which might have been full, had she not been sent to the front lines four months prior to save a town they suspected was the next target. Every healing hand she could summon wasn't enough to save even half the villagers. Not against this nerve attack.
"Update Hinata!" She called.
"I-I-I don't know, I don't," the girl cried back between bursts of panic.
Just under her breath, Tsunade cursed. She needed help, someone who knew what they were doing.
Eight breaths per minute.
"Just check with your byakugan Hyuga! What's working, what's not?"
While the girl fumbled in frustration, Tsunade turned to where Shikamaru was still drifting in and out of consciousness every few minutes. She knew he was fighting, the pull of a body suddenly failing in any sense of self-preservation. But she wished he would fight a little faster.
Not that she could count on his being much help. Just another ninja who hadn't bothered to attend any of her emergency medicine meetings. Always running off with Naruto to face the new, impending crisis of the week. That was the problem. Perception.
Battle always looked impressive, the obvious work of heroes. Brilliant flashes of blue and yellow, painting the nations in tales of their victories. The work of medics was the silent struggle. Blood, bones, and flesh. The price behind the valor, keeping nations and their heroes alive. Invisible until it wasn't there. And if it wasn't there, it was too late.
Seven breaths.
"Hinata!" She shouted again.
"They're alive!" Hinata squeaked, "they're, they're alive. But everything is slowing down. It's harder to keep their chakra flowing."
Not surprising, but not on the list of things Tsunade wanted to hear. She pressed her own chakra directly into Karin, trying to run a full exam, deciding what to do next. Every pathway was clogged with resistance, a body programmed to die. Light flutters at her fingertips confirmed what Tsunade already knew, the heart was failing. One already dead and four on the way.
Tsunade finally heard the sounds of heavy steps hit the ground and wasn't about to wait until Karin's body dropped to six breaths. She found a kunai and coated it in a fine trace of her own chakra, "Shikamaru, stay on your feet," she ordered, "help Hinata. We need to open them up."
Hinata felt the cool of the blade in shaky hands, she was terrified, but at least she was awake. Shikamaru still toddled on dizzy feet, clutching either side of the table where Sai laid. She took a heavy breath, finding the strength she only knew when people needed her, and lifted Shikamaru's hand, folding it slowly around the knife and waiting until his eyes softened. With heavy breaths of his own, he nodded, and Hinata knew he heard her, he was ready.
For a split second, she thought of Kiba and Shino. She hoped desperately they had been far enough to avoid the destruction. That they were still alive, even though they felt lifetimes away. Surrounded by low lighting and pale walls in their little safe house, she was burdened by vision. The outskirts of destruction, burned to the ground. Every last person dead in their wake. Even the one Lady Tsunade had tried to hide just out of reach.
"Hinata!" Lady Tsunade ordered, and Hinata found a knife of her own. At the instruction, Hinata coated the blade in chakra and sliced Might Guy's chest from the fourth to the twenty-seventh chakra point.
"Reach your weaker hand around the heart." Lady Tsunade ordered, and Hinata found it strange touching what the byakugan had always allowed her to see. Strange that someone as powerful as Might Guy would have such a delicate little heart keeping him alive.
"Channel your chakra directly into the heart while squeezing gently! 120 beats per minute, same rhythm as the Leaf's anthem. Count them if you can't figure it out."
Carefully, Hinata wrapped a tiny hand around her patient's heart, humming out the rhythm it needed to keep, amazed to see the instant effect. With every squeeze, the other organs seemed to come to life, glowing a little brighter, chakra moving a little more easily.
"We're going to repair the chakra points one by one," Tsunade instructed, "the first one is about three centimeters from the top of the heart. Check for ruptures along the surface of the artery, and that the chakra is flowing in the correct direction.
Hinata found failures immediately, as if the blood vessel was full of holes. She held them closed with her free hand, crying out in frustration when blood pooled around her thumb, "I can't fix it. Do I squeeze harder?" She asked, holding just a bit tighter in a chakra clad grip, and creating a larger pool of blood.
"Gentle! This is a human body, not a training dummy! If you're struggling to make a seal, increase your chakra emission."
That was a new message. Hinata studied the elder's face, grimacing in the operation, and found her confidence. Strength for others. She gave her right hand a gentle squeeze, feeling the moment her chakra created a seal, a flood of relief as she saw the chakra point shine a healthy green glow.
"Next one!" Tsunade barked instructions, Hinata fumbling each step. Every little gesture, point of contact, and touch, stained her patient in colors of life or death. Over and over Hinata marveled. How each tiny, delicate thing controlled the very existence of this larger-than-life person.
She was shaken from her awe by a strangled sound.
"What's going on over there Shikamaru?" Lady Tsunade called.
"He's waking up."
Hinata turned attention to where Shikamaru stood, covered blood and flusters, to where Sai's eyes began to flutter, then dart. And when they found her, he screamed.
For all the feelings he couldn't understand, pain was not a new sensation to Sai. Danzo had no tolerance for weakness, and weakness was conquered with struggle, loss, and plenty of pain.
Still, this was different. His limbs, skin, and mind burned. He strangled for breath. And when his eyes drifted, searching in a final moment of self-preservation, he saw Hinata covered in blood, a village elder torn open in her hands. And he remembered watching the village turn to flame.
He screamed, thrashing, trying to make something work. What was happening to him? He needed to get to his ink, his paper, he would get away. Find the survivors. The Leaf couldn't turn to ash. Not like the other cities. His own words ricocheted in his mind, they're all like this. His home was gone, and there would be nothing left. So, against any form of reason, he fought harder.
Then felt his body stilled, as if paralyzed, the final loss of control. To lie in pain, defenseless to act otherwise. At a distance, he heard shouting.
"I can't hold him much longer."
"You're going to have to knock him out! Eighty-sixth chakra point, apply pressure."
"It's too bloody to see!"
"Hinata help him!"
Blinding pain rushed Sai's senses and his mind reeled for answers in the muddle of bright lights and voices he could no longer understand. Why had this happened. It wasn't like all the other times. All the other times, the towns had less than a hundred people. It was how they predicted future targets, knew where to send evacuation teams. Like Hinata. Hinata should be helping with an evacuation team, not ripping open a village elder. What changed? Why had they attacked the Leaf? Why was everything where it was not supposed to be?
Lost from the world, Sai found Shikamaru's voice in the sounds he couldn't understand and held to the final thing he recognized. While the pain stayed, it fell just out of reach of his understanding, a vague permanence to his existence, impossible to place. His mind drifted to thoughts of missing things. To four years prior. To Project Fade.
In response to several break-ins, the whole of village information had turned its attention to Project Fade; a development between the Nara and Yamanaka clans to revolutionize village security, create a cloaking technology so powerful it could mask the existence of an entire city from even the most powerful ninjas. For countless months, Sai had reported every day to the Nara research facility, alongside Shikamaru, Ino, Naruto, Karin, and just about every other sensory ninja they could find in the village.
Thousands of tests, hundreds of experiments, dozens of models. Then the look.
Sai memorized faces like lines in a book or techniques in a scroll. This one was something between frustration and fear. Furrowed brows, pulled lips, constricted pupils. When a sensory ninja suddenly couldn't see, didn't feel, didn't know the presence of everyone there. Their prototype finally worked. Naruto had said it was being alone all over again and that he didn't like it.
Their team had been so happy, celebrating the little mirrored box they called Fade 5.0. Sai had liked how compact it sat, concealing their many hours of work. And he had liked the celebration very much as well. Smiles abounding and moderately inebriated, everyone had been so happy. So simply happy. Until the next morning, when the machine that made people invisible, disappeared. Without rhyme or reason. Without a clue. And all that happy was gone just as quickly.
Somehow, in a series of events Sai could never bring his mind to understand, feelings so complicated he gave up hope of understanding, he learned there was more to lose. As mysteriously as their prototype vanished, and nearly as quickly, Project Fade made his friends disappear.
Sai hadn't been there to see Sakura leave. He hadn't said goodbye. All he had known when Shikamaru told him the next day was that Sakura wasn't where she was supposed to be. Like a town turned to ash, there one day, gone the next with nothing left. Missing.
And the pain was familiar. Always there, just out of reach, unable to explain.
So, Sai sifted the remains. He requested a key to her apartment, made a list of everything left, everything that needed to be taken care of while she was gone. Naruto had taken books and things that didn't need to be cleaned regularly and stored them in boxes below his home. Sakura's parents had taken the trinkets that needed to be protected and cared for. Kakashi didn't want to hold onto anything, so Sai sent him the bills that wouldn't pause. And for four years, Sai had handled the rest. Her collection of house plants lined his walls and her orange and white Sakura goldfish sat on his kitchen counter.
Swimming circles in her bowl every time Sai passed. Head bobbing at the surface, ready for feeding. Twice a day, at exactly 7:30 AM and 9:00 PM. Exactly where she was supposed to be. Where she would be the moment Sakura came back.
Because she would. Friends never gave up on each other. So, why had she left?
Sai learned to live with the pain. And staring at her fish, Sai couldn't help but wonder from time to time, had he been a good friend? To her. He hadn't thought about it until then. She was easier not to think about than Naruto or Sasuke. Did Sai really understand what a friend was? It was always so complicated.
Tsunade listened to Sai's mumbles of delirium, in Shikamaru's untrained care, slipping between this life and the next. They were words of regret. When the patient's body knew something that a medical ninja never wanted to hear.
"How is Guy, Hinata?"
"Stable, Mamm," the little voice chirped, "the blockages aren't getting worse right now."
About the same state as Karin. Both with hearts strong enough to beat on their own, but only halfway through the necessary procedures. She didn't ask the same to Shikamaru, she knew Sai was going downhill and that neither she nor Hinata could join without killing their own patients. She needed more hands. No, she needed trained hands. She needed medics.
There had been a time as a young ninja when she championed a requirement of one medic per team. She fought in a way that only young people could advocate. As if your conviction, your plan, would save the world. Full of hope. But only hope, no results.
Years later, she was a teacher, rearing the next generation of medics. She had a star student, a replacement, and others she personally trained. She had hope again, that her dreams would finally be realized, that no team would enter the field without a medic at their side.
Then her star left.
And the world fell to fire. And Tsunade realized how far her dreams truly were.
Naruto refused her request to mandate medical training for the remaining ninjas and Lee's desperate pleas fell on deaf ears. In the civil fallout, medical ninjutsu had been deemed the work of women, and that had sealed its fate. No one came to learn. Nobody came to her emergency medicine meetings.
Medics were fighters of the silent struggle, only known if missing. And it was too late. Tsunade saw the last of her hope smothered to ash. Just like the last of her medical ninjas. Just like Konoha. Her Konoha. The image of Naruto's clock burned in her mind, 6:24, the exact moment her world caught fire.
The memory drew her eyes to a tarp where she had hidden the body. Moving on, no matter the loss, was the training of a medic. And neither Hinata nor Shikamaru were medics. They were fighters. Bastions of a different type of strength.
Their little group had been spared the fate of the village, evacuated just in time to avoid incineration. But not the poison. She looked at the medic on her table, brow furrowed even in her sleep, and Tsunade refused to lose anyone else. Her hands didn't tremble, they were too well trained for that.
"Shikamaru," she spoke in a measured tone, "how is he?"
Shikamaru had never seen so much blood. From eviscerated towns, to one-on-one combat, to an actual war. Blood had never been so close, so intimate, so all over everywhere. Under his fingernails, fresh in his nose, metal in his mouth. His hand around Sai's heart, counting the beats, was the only point of focus keeping him from vomiting.
His other hand desperately plugged at holes, pressing every bit of chakra he could into Sai without passing out. The blood didn't stop, finding new places to spill, new organs to fail. And Sai just kept muttering, morbidly.
Shikamaru's mind raced for practical solutions, anything that would work. Anything that would bring Sai back. Help, he needed help. "There's too much blood. I can't see. I can't make it stop. I need some help."
Nobody replied, and Shikamaru continued trying to solve the problem, "Hinata and I can switch, she can use the byakugan, she'll be able to see."
Hinata muttered something about trying, but Tsunade shouted, "stay where you are Hinata."
Shikamaru's pocket weighed heavy, and he had to think of something, "can I physically patch the holes? I can use an earing and thread from my clothes."
"You can't sew if you can't see," Tsunade replied.
He could feel his hands shaking, he was low on chakra, dizzy, and still in so much pain. He had to think of something. What would work. Because nothing, nothing he was doing was working. He had seen the worst that could happen when his plans failed. But defenseless, in his own hands? He couldn't, he couldn't let Sai go. He wouldn't.
Then he felt it, in the hand holding Sai's heart, the slip of a finger that shouldn't slide, the burning heat of blood. A tear. "I need to patch the heart," Shikamaru felt his normal calm like gasping breaths in his lungs, "there's a tear. I know where it is. I need to sew."
"Don't." Shikamaru understood Sai's mutter but didn't want to hear it. He was looking for a loose thread on his shirt.
"Listen to him, Shikamaru," Tsunade spoke, not shouting, but solemn.
"I need to sew the heart," Shikamaru spun his mind, trying to figure out how he would free his hands to thread a needle, if he let go…
"Don't," that same delirious voice.
Shikamaru watched Sai's near translucent, blood-stained face. "I need to sew."
"Listen to him, Shikamaru," Tsunade continued, turning to look at him and Shikamaru felt his breath still, "you're his medic, it's your responsibility to hear his final words."
No. He wouldn't. He would, he would. Shikamaru felt his hands shaking, pressing the last of his chakra into the heart in his hand, bowing, and unable not to listen to Sai when he said, "I don't think I was a good friend."
Pain raged through him and Shikamaru physically felt the final breath, the vague lull, the eyes still half open, half closed. Shikamaru dragged hands from a heart that wouldn't beat, lungs that wouldn't breathe, and a friend who would never be again. He reached to close Sai's eyes; he shouldn't be in that state between.
Shikamaru felt his knees go weak as he left a bloody handprint on Sai's face. He would have collapsed had Tsunade not already been giving orders, "Shikamaru. Go down the hallway to the right, now!"
Dazed and barely there, Shikamaru's grieved body followed her orders. One step after another, still covered in blood. What happened? How? How did this happen?
His hand slipped on the doorknob at the end of the hall, and he stared at it, stained. It was Sai's blood. Sai was dead now. His heart stopped, but Shikamaru could still feel it in pieces between his fingers. He tried again, pushing into the room. And if there was anything, anything that could pull him from his shock.
Naruto laid open on the table, cut from the fourth to the twenty-seventh chakra points. And the hands on his heart were attached to a medic with pink hair.
"We have half an hour," an all too familiar voice spoke from just behind.
"I'm going in," Shikamaru wound on those words. Bloody towel in hand, scars and bruises down the arm, and a blonde ponytail tied behind.
She set eyes on him.
"Hey there Shikamaru."
