A/N: I'm putting my author's note at the beginning today, because I feel I should apologize. I'm not going to try to make excuses, because there is no excuse for taking this long on an update. Suffice it to say, an extraordinary case of writer's block and "I-really-don't-want-to-screw-up-this-very-important-scene" syndrome may have been involved. Regardless, I hope it was worth the wait.

Secondly... 100 reviews. O.o You, my dear readers and reviewers, are simply fantastic. I'm so excited to have hit that little milestone, and I simply cannot fully express my gratitude for those of you who continue to read and enjoy this fic. Thank you so very much. ^_^

Once again, sorry for the insanely late update, and as always, I wish you happy reading!

"Ino."

Every thought and action was suspended in that moment, and Ino's eyes went wide. At first, she couldn't dare to believe it was any more than her imagination: it must be simply a manifestation of her exhaustion, both physical and emotional.

"Ino."

The voice persisted. Just the sound of it, his familiar voice – tired and thick and slightly husky from the months he'd smoked – was enough to send a chill spiraling up her spine.

It took her eyes a moment to adjust as they searched for his figure among the shadows that surrounded him. When he stepped forward into the light and her gaze finally focused, she couldn't draw her eyes away from him.

His pale skin was washed whiter by the strains of light emanating from the full moon, and his onyx eyes were made even darker by the cavernous black circles beneath them. Though he had only been gone for a little over two weeks, he looked noticeably thinner, his clothes hanging loose in places they hadn't previously.

Despite the change to his appearance, however, the trip seemed to have brought no change to his personality. Seeing Ino's tears, he let out a prolonged sigh. Ino could practically see the thoughts forming in his head, the word "troublesome" sure to be among them, but he didn't have time to get the words out before he was practically knocked over.

Ino hit him with the full force of her strength, her arms wrapping around his neck to bring him as close to her as she possibly could. She buried her face in his neck, letting free-flowing tears soak into the fabric of his flak jacket. In the rush of relief, she didn't feel him wrap his arms tighter around her; she was too consumed by his familiar smell – that subtle hint of smoke and forest – by the solid feel of him in her arms, by the fact that he was here and alive. She didn't bother to mask her sobs, which were now so violent they made her whole chest ache every time one escaped. She gasped for air unashamedly, suddenly aware that the strange feeling she'd been experiencing was the same feeling a person gets after having been punched in the stomach and deprived of oxygen.

Until now, there had been no opportunity to catch her breath.

She pressed her face as close to him as she possibly could; his skin was cold to the touch from traveling through the mist. With her forehead pressed against his neck, her lips hovered near his collarbone, and it took all of the self-control that remained to her not to touch every inch of his exposed skin, reassuring herself that this wasn't some phantom of her overworked mind.

When the sobs finally died, Ino realized that he was still holding her, and the proximity sent a shock right through her. She jumped back, her reddened eyes glaring at him warily through swollen lids.

"Why didn't you send a message? Do you have any idea what you've put me through? I—"

"Che." Shikamaru cut her off with a shrug, and she thought she saw a grim smile hovering at one corner of his mouth, though it was impossible to tell in the shifting moonlight that fed through the clouds. "Didn't have time. Besides, it's too—"

"If you say troublesome, Shikamaru Nara, so help me you'll wish you had been injured on that mission." As her brain began to recover from the panic of thinking he was dead, Ino's relief was giving way to righteous indignation. She moved back toward him, her fists clenching around the collar of his flak jacket until her knuckles turned white. "You just gallivant off on an A-rank mission, giving me less than a day's warning, and then you go and say something like it's too troublesome to send one message? We got a unit of patients at the hospital today, deployed on the same day as your squad, with an A-rank. Two of them died, one before he even arrived, so I didn't even see the report. What was I supposed to think?"

At the mention of the other team, Shikamaru's face clouded over.

"You said two dead?"

"And two in critical care." Ino replied slowly; she paused in her tirade and released her hold on his flak jacket, halted by the strange expression he had suddenly adopted. "Did you…"

"My original deployment." He responded, anticipating her question. "But I received orders from Tsunade-sama not too long after deployment to transfer to another squad that needed a strategist. Since we'd already developed the plans for our own mission, my original squad was able to substitute me with a mid-range fighter from the other unit. The second mission ended today. The team sent me ahead to file the mission report."

"So your team is alright…" Ino shook her head in disbelief, unable to look him straight in the eye. Too many conflicting reactions were warring within her: at the moment, she wasn't sure whether to hug him again or simply hit him.

For lack of a better option, she chose to her standard response.

"…and here I was, worried to death that something had happened to you after I yelled at you!"

"Ino," Shikamaru narrowed his eyes, and the ghost of smile passed over his face, "if this is your way of trying to apologize for the argument, you're doing a damn lousy job."

Ino stared at him, her expression incredulous, but noticing the almost imperceptible signs of weariness in his posture, she decided to let it go. Her rage was gradually subsiding to relief again anyway.

"Baka." She muttered, turning away from him with a flip of her hair. She could practically hear him roll his eyes behind her, and she caught the words "troublesome woman" somewhere in his mumbled complaint. She didn't care; at least the dramatic gesture was enough to hide the shaking in her limbs and the fear shining in her eyes.

She heard him shift behind her, and she turned slightly, ready to counter whatever argument he made, but the words stopped, choked in her throat.

His movement had been to shift closer to her, and his expression was one of such gravity that it unsettled her. Dark, discerning eyes bored into her, seeing too much.

"Shika…" Ino started to back away, unable to handle the intensity of his stare without doing something she was sure she would regret later, but Shikamaru stopped her, closing the distance between them. He clasped one hand firmly around her upper arm; the other moved to her cheek, brushing her bangs away from her face where they had been plastered by the flood of tears. In any other circumstances, Ino might have been prompted to think about how horrific she must look, puffy-eyed and exhausted, but the intimacy of the gesture just left her numb.

"I have to report to Tsunade-sama." Shikamaru spoke quietly, his face only centimeters away from hers. "I should have arrived a few hours ago, but I met a few delays on the way, so she'll have been expecting me for a while. I don't even want to think about how troublesome this meeting is going to be."

He grimaced, casting a glance over at the place where the Hokage's office rose above the reconstructed village.

"But after I finish, we'll talk. Okay?"

Ino could only nod. She could feel her heartbeat pounding in her throat and her mouth had suddenly gone dry, rendering her incapable of speech. Not, of course, that she could even make her brain form coherent thoughts at this point…

Shikamaru leaned in closer, and Ino could now clearly see that his expression had resolved itself into a satisfied, if tired, grin. His next words were barely more than a whisper.

"Apology accepted."

With a movement so swift, she was almost sure she imagined it, Shikamaru leaned forward and his lips brushed her forehead. Then he was gone, swallowed up by the shadows.

Ino's hand shook as she brought it up to touch her forehead. Had he just… just…

Heart racing, Ino turned back onto the path to her house.

The maelstrom of emotions from the previous night had left Ino in shock; she couldn't even recall her head hitting the pillow by the time she woke the next morning. For a moment upon waking, she was consumed by bliss, remembering how the night had ended, but then a cold panic ran through her.

Ino shot up and hurtled downstairs, barely managing to avoid tripping over several steps. She found her father in his normal early-morning haunt, sitting at the kitchen table drinking tea.

"Have you spoken to anyone from the Hokage's office this morning?"

Inoichi looked up calmly, relatively unaffected by his daughter's strange outburst.

"It's only seven, Ino dear." He gestured to the window, where early morning light filtered in through gaps in the curtains. "The Intel division doesn't need me for another hour."

"But you might have heard!" She persisted, rushing toward the table to slam her flat palms against it. "About the squads that returned yesterday?"

Inoichi shrugged, but he set his cup down, beginning to grow concerned at his daughter's panicked insistence. "The only squad I heard about yesterday was the four-man you received at the hospital. Why…"

"I've got to go." Ino interrupted. Leaving her puzzled father sitting at the table, she rushed upstairs and then back downstairs like a bolt of lightning, slamming the front door behind her.

Inoichi stared at the place where his daughter had just been, then shook his head.

It was much too early to try to interpret her peculiar actions. He went back to drinking his tea.

Ino ran as fast as she could, her eyes scanning for the correct turns. Finally, she just gave up on taking main routes and decided to take a shortcut over the rooftops.

After a few frantic changes of directions, she landed squarely on top of her destination in the Nara estate. She dropped off the roof and, checking to make sure no one was around, slipped into the hallway nearest to the room she needed to access.

The window to the room was dark, and the latch was secured, which she'd expected regardless. Pulling the pin she'd thought to grab out of her hair, she began to work the latch with the skill of a professional.

Over the many years they'd been teammates, this certainly wasn't the first time she'd broken into Shikamaru's room… or even a numbered time that could be properly expressed in only one digit. There had been several instances of mission assignments for which Shikamaru had to be dragged by Ino and Choji – and occasionally even Asuma-sensei as well – to the Hokage's office at ungodly hours. He had never been particularly cooperative on those occasions.

When the manual lock fell away, she concentrated chakra on two of her fingers and disabled the chakra seal she knew was also present, which, when broken, would have tripped an alarm.

The window swung open silently, and Ino climbed up over the sill, trying to avoid trampling on some rather sad-looking morning glories in the process.

Peering into the half-light of the room, she couldn't discern any sign of a sleeping form. Her immediate reaction was fear, and she slowly climbed the rest of the way through, dropping down to crouch silently on the floor below the window.

She crept over to the pallet that was against the wall, expecting to find it folded up and possibly dusty from a couple of weeks of disuse, but something struck her as odd. On closer examination, she saw that the pallet was rumpled and…

She let her hand hover over it. Still warm, she realized, like someone had just slept—

It took her a moment to realize that she was frozen, her hand suspended over the pallet. Then, her body began to move of its own accord, slowly circling around to face the other side of the room. She took a step forward…

… out of the shadows, another figure moved toward the center of the room.