4. Darkest Evening of the Year

It was funny how things never seemed to really disappear. The last time Akamichi Chouji saw his sensei, he was lying so statue-still to the point that he no longer looked human. And he remembered that what he watched them bury that day wasn't just his body and the white lilies people in black brought, but proud smiles before setting suns that meant free dinners at Yakiniku Q and encouraging words that kept him huffing on during morning jogs.

But now all those mannerisms were breathing in this girl as she slept in the hospital bed. The peaceful expression on her face reminded him of Sunday afternoons watching Asuma-sensei and Shikamaru play shogi.

This was the girl he helped save. Her, along with two boys who rested across the room.

He wondered at his stomach; certainly it was growling, but there was something else inside keeping him in the dark hospital room. Perhaps it was an old, old sense of having protected this girl's muttering in the midst dreams of tomorrows. It was a warm feeling, better than anything he could've eaten.

But then there was that rock weighing down, one that felt heavier every time he looked at the bandage wrapped the girl's head and the cast on one boy's shoulder and the patches on the other boy's torso. This is what he let happen to them.

He looked at his hands, softened by the eight years during which the most dangerous thing he had held was a chef's knife. His palms closed, as if trying to reclaim something lost and clasp it tightly so as to reaffirm that it was indeed his.

His stomach growled.

Looking out the window, he wondered if the forest path he used to jog on was still the same.

Outside the same room in the hospital hallway, Nara Shikamaru stared at the tile grounds, remembering how much he hated its mint green color. Mixed in with the smell of antiseptic and the awareness that the patients were all being treated due to his own shortcomings, the floor sent a sickly heat up his neck.

He remained bowed, "I'm really sorry."

The woman looked at the man silently, wishing that words could help him take the blame off his shoulders. But she knew has known him for a long time, long enough to know that beneath his detached attitude was a person who took responsibility to its utmost seriousness.

"I should've gotten there sooner." He clenched his fists, tense from what-if's and what-then's.

She replied with a calm smile, "Shikamaru-kun, please look at me."

He hesitated before finally standing up straight again. Despite this, he still could not bring himself to look into her crimson eyes. They were probably understanding, kind, and all other things he didn't deserve—especially since he almost let her daughter get kidnapped.

"She'll be fine. It's a small injury. The medics said that she'll be released in a few days." She said gently.

Floors were always the safest place to look when all other places brought shame. But even that couldn't hide him from the fact that those head injuries could've been worse. If it hadn't been for that stroke of luck, he wouldn't have been able to carry her back...with that forehead protector tied on her arm...

"See? Does it look familiar?"

He should've told her to tie it around her forehead, like her father did. Her father, who could actually protect people. Him? He wasn't worth looking up to. Why did she smile at him like that? There was nothing about him to emulate.

The "kings" are the unborn children who will grow up to take care of the village...Take care of my "king".

He could barely look people in the eye.

He wasn't even a jonin.

At this rate, how was he going to protect anyone?

Once again, Shikamaru found himself in places that he hated the most. It probably would've been better for him return to his apartment, but instead he entered the sake bar. He didn't even like rowdy people. Or alcohol.

But he knew that Yamanaka Ino did.

Seeing her holding a glass with a limp hand, slouched over the counter silently trying drown herself...

He was supposed to be the laid-back kind of guy. So why was it that this woman had the ability to make him incredibly furious?

She sensed a shadow block the light above.

"Yeah. I know. I totally fucked that up didn't I?"

Caught aback by her bluntness, Shikamaru held his tongue. What burned inside him as anger threatening to escape as argument quickly dissipated when he heard the unusual lead in her voice.

"Well? That's what you came here for, right? To yell at me?" She slurred.

This was pretty much true. But he sat on the stool beside her and instead quietly asked, "Are you okay?"

"Okay? I'm fucking perfect." She laughed almost too loudly, "I'm not the one with a concussion. Or a dislocated shoulder. Or a goddamned gash on the side of my stomach."

He stared at this woman. She was talking, yet not much different from the broken puppet he saw before. "Ino..."

"I know right? Ino, it was just a shallow wound. A fucking scrape. Why couldn't you just heal it, huh Ino?! Are you shitting me?! Why couldn't you just heal the damned kid?!"

She slammed both her hands on the counter. The glasses on the cabinet rattled on impact. Her hand shoved up the strands of tangled blonde hair falling over her face, gripping tightly in frustration. The pale arm blocked his view of her face, but he noticed droplets magnify the tabletop.

"God. Why won't they go away? Nothing will go away." The words came in a whimper, hardly audible compared to the clamor in the background. But the uncharacteristic fragility of her voice shouted in his ears, "Asuma-sensei. My parents. Everyone. Even the fucking dog. They won't go. No matter what I do, they won't go."

For some reason, whenever he pictured Ino, he imagined a tall young woman in a field of flowers—probably purple cosmos. Although the meadow was thick, she would walk through with ease and her long ponytail would swing behind her in a gold trail. It was as if she knew exactly where she was going—as if there was a clear path in her sky-blue eyes.

But this woman in front of him looked lost in a barren forest. And perhaps her stripped trees were frozen tears.

He started to reach out for her, but found that his hand fell awkwardly back on the countertop. It lay there—midway between them, blocked by a glass wall of restraint. The last time this happened, they were first time drinkers who ended up taking separate paths in their respective, cold snow.

"Fuck life. Fuck me." Her shoulders shook violently in half-laughter, half-sob.

He decided to try anyway. Partially because he wanted to be the one to drop the flower in her hands again and tell her that yes, cosmos were beautiful.

And partially because he was scared of what she might do alone in such a dark evening.

Slowly, he stood up and pulled the woman's hand away from her head. "Come on." He sighed and gingerly swung both her arms around his neck. Carrying her on his back he walked out of the bar and down the streets, which were as empty as any place would be at two in the morning.

With her head buried in his shoulder, he could smell the heavy scent of alcohol in her breath.

"Hey. Shikamaru. Remember that time you dropped me in that mission?"

Of course he did. It was the first time they used their formation in battle and he didn't expect her to be that heavy. He didn't tell her that, obviously. But since she was clearly drunk at this point and wouldn't probably remember anything he said, he replied,

"Yeah. You were heavy as hell."

She giggled girlishly. And that was when he knew she really was drunk. He had thought that a woman like her would've developed a better tolerance for alcohol by now. Then of course, he did remember seeing more than four empty glasses by her side.

"Hey. Shikamaru?"

"Yeah?"

"I want to go home."

"I know. I'm taking you there."

"Alone."

He pictured her mistaking a dumpster as her bed and waking up nestled in a pile of trash bags. Then, he replied, "Uh. No."

"Hey Shikamaru?"

He sighed. "What now?"

"Lemme off."

"No."

"I don't feel too well—

Before he could tell her that he could barely understand her slurred speech, she vomited over and on his shoulder. After ten more minutes of watching her kneel over the bushes and dealing with the uncomfortable puke on his shirt, he finally reached her place. It was his intention to just set her on the bed and leave, but her fingers curled tighter around his pants.

"You have to stay...We haven't even had cake yet. And we have to sing Happy Birthday together...And maybe we'll call Chouji too..."

He looked down at the mumbling woman. From this angle, she hardly looked capable of all the pain the world burdened her with—only he noticed her tragedies entangle in her lashes in teardrops, slide down her cheeks in a streak of silver in moonlight.

The last time this happened, everything ended up torn and empty.

But he took his chances anyway.

The first wrong thing was the tiny purple splotch on the ceiling—she knew it was nail polish because she was the one who threw the bottle of Lavender Allure up into the air in surprise when a spider had crawled up her bed.

The second wrong thing was the faint smell of cigarettes underneath the blankets. The third was the bare, broad chest she saw the moment she turned around.

Everything wrong just came crashing down on her in the form of a headache. "Holy shit...holy shit. Holy shit. Holy shit."

She stood up and found herself in nothing but a bra and her underwear. That typically would not have been a problem, had the person lying on the other pillow not been none other than Nara Shikamaru.

Her muttering crescendoed into a panicked shout.

"Holy shit!" She yanking the blanket off to cover herself and sending him to the floor with a kick.

"Ow!" He groaned and rubbed his head from the impact. Still groggy from sleep, he clutched his forehead from the noise that stabbed his ear, "What the hell was that for?!"

"What the hell was that for?! Why don't you tell me why the fuck here?!" She screamed.

He stared at her, incredulous. She really didn't remember a thing, did she? Watching her pace around the room, he attempted to calm her down, "Look, I just—

"Get out."

"What?"

"Get out. Get out!" She shrieked and threw the nearest, most dangerous thing she could find at him.

The glass of the picture frame shattered by his leg and he barely saved his hands from becoming bloodied up. This, in addition to the fact that he barely had enough sleep last night, was enough to tick him off.

"Jesus, will you just calm down?!

How could she calm down? Ino frantically tried to find her clothes, impeded by a tremendous, pressing headache that was magnified by her frantic thoughts.

She never slept with the same guy twice. Never. And she most certainly would never do it with a person she knew. Because that would ruin everything; how else would she keep moving and not thinking if there's a guy constantly reminding her of the past? It was as if shadows of tears and funerals and pathetic mistakes lurked about wherever she went.

"Didn't you hear me?!" She figured that the hot tears starting to stream down her cheeks were ruining the mascara she never wiped off from last night. Actually, she was sure her whole face was a mess. None of that mattered.

"Get the fuck out!"

Her lungs hurt. But she hoped that her loud, high-pitched scream was enough to shove her past away and give her enough room to breathe.

The moment he silently walked out the door, she felt her knees collapse from underneath. She slid down to the cold wooden floor, her back pressed against the wall as she curled herself in as small as she could.

This shouldn't be happening. She had worked so hard to escape dead faces and pointing fingers. Yet here she was, trapped in a corner, prisoner to phantoms of tragedies passed.

She never knew that bodies could be so heavy.

Even if she had studied anatomy under Tsunade and Sakura, neither of them ever told her how difficult it would be to carry Asuma-sensei's body back to the Konohagakure. Nobody ever told her that—although Chouji and Shikamaru were the ones who each had one of Asuma-sensei's arms slung over their shoulders—holding the lifeless, cold hand that once could make any ninjutsu possible to protect them would be almost unmanageable. That the journey back home would seem endless. That it would be impossible to stop the silent tears falling down her cheeks.

They told her that she couldn't have saved him. Even Tsunade agreed afterwards, when she skipped out on visiting Kurenai-sensei with her other team mates to offer her condolences. And inside, even she knew that it was hopeless while he lied on the ground with the smoke from his cigarette making its final circles.

So she let him say his last words. She let him tell her that she was dependable and all other praises she didn't deserve. She let him do this, all while she could've been able to heal him.

If only she had been stronger.

But no matter what new medical ninjutsu she learned, there was nothing she could do about people already gone. She couldn't even find her father's body and give herself the false hope of finding him somehow just barely alive, so that she could save him and they could look back to that time as some adventurous tale. Instead, she could only sit on the wasteland and feel her father's smile leave her for the dust that blew into the wind.

One year later, when she walked into the family room and found her mother on the ground with an empty capsule meant to hold pills, she barely had any tears left to cry anymore. She did all she could, using all the experience she had from 14-hour shifts at the hospital. She tried expelling the poison with ninjutsu, and by the time Shikamaru and Chouji found her, she had been trying to revive her mother for so long that she came close to losing her life from chakra-overuse. When they shouted and dragged her away, she didn't even break down. It was simple; nothing she did would've work because she didn't know how to mend the loneliness in her mother's eyes whenever she placed a meal in front of her father's portrait. She didn't know anything.

The black kimono still fitted the third time. If anything, the cloth hung looser around her body. White lilies were all she saw and crying was the same as silence to her. Even still, death frightened her.

She thought she only needed to become stronger. She became a jonin and worked beside high ranked medical ninja in the front lines. She saved enemies to keep for interrogation, strangers, accomplices.

But she couldn't save a dog.

"I'm sorry." She whispered to her friend. Her hands were drenched in fur and blood. It was as if she had killed the dog herself.

There was something about watching him break down that shattered her into a million, trembling pieces. She had worked all this time, only to lose her sensei, her father, her mother, and now this dog. And even after the heavy rain shower on their way back from the mission had washed her blood-matted arms, she hardly felt any cleaner.

By the time she arrived back to New Konohagakure, she had the weight of four bodies all on her shoulders.

She never knew bodies could be so heavy

One by one by one by one, they crushed her chest until she finally broke after her first drink. It didn't even take her an eighth of her father's old bottle of sake in the cabinet to cause her to drown in her own tears. And in the midst of being alive and feeling dead, she found a kunai and wondered what being one of her own patients would feel like. Perhaps lying in a field of red flowers would help her understand what it was like for Asuma-sensei...or even that dog.

Only she couldn't do it. In fact, she couldn't do anything but cry because it was so incredibly cold. And the next thing she knew, she was curled up naked in Shikamaru's arms, his head rested over hers.

With his face that close, she could see the stubble on his chin, which reminded her of Asuma-sensei. And then she remembered that he was the same family friend who came over during the days when she still had a mother who made chrysanthemum tea and a father who, together with his father, shared adventure stories to them.

It scared her, to be so bare in front of anyone. Especially to this young man, who held remembrance of everything she had lost.

That was when she came up with the solution to healing broken hearts. So she headed for the Taiyougakure that morning without a word of goodbye, leaving the shards of her past behind in hopes of never being cut again.

The smell of cigarettes just wouldn't leave, not even after a shower. Or buying that perfume. Or just shopping for anything she found interesting.

But neither clothes nor accessories nor makeup could fill her mind and shove that morning's scene—and scenes from weeks, ten years ago—away.

"Ino." Chouji greeted her in surprise.

She sat at the counter and breezily replied, "Hey. Hit me up."

His eyebrows furrowed in a slight, uncertain frown, "Uh...but Ino, it's only three in the afternoon..."

"So?" Her blue eyes flashed with challenge.

He meekly responded, "It's just...I don't think it's a good idea—

"Look, why don't you start acting like a bartender and just take my money?"

It that exact sharp, commanding voice that typically made him flinch. She used it whenever she found him hiding in the bushes, mercilessly scolding him for taking an extra break during training. Of course, he always listened and ended up nearly out of air, running up a hill while carrying her on his back.

"It's tough love." She would grin when he collapsed in exhaustion.

And so now it was his turn. Because even at this moment, nearly a decade since they've last trained together, he was not just a bartender and she was not just some customer.

"No. I'm not serving you." He firmly said.

"And why the fuck not? I'm not a kid, I can make my own choices."

No she wasn't the same 17 year old girl he once knew. But she was still his friend. So he quietly said, "I think you need help, Ino."

He watched her carefully, as if he were handling a ticking bomb.

Instead, she burst into laughter, as if in reaction to some sort of joke, only the tone in her voice was knife-edged, "Help? You think I need help? You just chop sushi all fucking day and you think I need help? And what do you think help is going to do? Do you want it to make the three of us hold hands and skip again? Because that sure as fuck isn't going to happen. And I'm perfectly happy as hell with that!"

"I'm still not serving you." He looked down at his feet and repeated in a small voice.

She stormed out the door. It occurred to her that she came close to talking about the past again. And there was nothing to keep the ghosts away anymore.

She had no choice but to leave.

Never in his nightmares had Shikamaru been forced to walk in public shirtless. Unfortunately, the situation wasn't even a hypothetical illusion—it was very much real and he had to use all the shortcuts he could to get back to his apartment.

That had been one of his favorite shirts too. Why didn't he think of taking it with him before leaving? Of course, he wouldn't have forgotten it in the first place if women weren't so crazy.

Lying with his back on the couch he held up the picture Ino had thrown at him earlier, allowing the glare of its glossy surface to blind him. This was a picture he didn't have a copy of. He had the photograph of the four of them smiling good-naturedly as they stood behind a lopsided cake. This picture was the one that was taken after the one he owned—after Chouji tried to grab the lighter that slipped from his hand and the camera flashed for the second time when Chouji clumsily pushed him into the cake. His ticked off expression was covered in white frosting as Chouji sheepishly apologized and Ino yelled threats. That was their second attempt at the cake, since Chouji had "sampled"—or consumed all of—the first one. All the same, Asuma-sensei had his head thrown back in laughter, probably at the fact that the 29 candles were no longer on the cake, but rather sticking out of his head.

If things were different, the three of them would try yet again to bake a cake this year. Maybe the 43 candles wouldn't be on his face...

He sat up and looked at the calendar. Staring at today's date, he came to a startling realization.

He threw on a shirt and ran over to the Yamanaka Flower Shop.

But by then, it was already too late. There were strewn mementos abandoned and left for the dust—shredded photographs, an untied forehead protector, a calendar with a hole torn in today's date: October 18th.

Asuma-sensei's 43rd birthday.

As he stood in the empty room, ravaged by an innocent eye of a tornado trying to seek solace from its own winds, he knew that Yamanaka Ino was a horrible liar. Cakes...birthday songs...Despite her words, her nonchalant attitude, she remembered everything.

And so now she had left again.

As always, thank you for reading! And a great thanks to those of you who take the time to review :)