Almost as soon as she turned around, the jutsu dropped. Ino sank to the floor, her body shaking slightly. It wasn't the first time Shikamaru had used the Shadow Possession Jutsu on her, but every time it left her limbs slightly numb. She flexed her fingers tentatively, still unsure whether she had full control. It was one thing when she was expecting the jutsu, but when she wasn't… She shivered, trying to rid her body of the last remnants of paralysis.
When she finally looked up, she found a pair of dark eyes staring at her through shadowed lids, as though he hadn't gotten enough sleep. Guilt at the fact that she was probably the one who woke him pushed words out of Ino's mouth.
"Baka, what have I told you about—"
"Ino, what in the hell are you—"
They both stopped; Ino tried to fight the steadily rising blush in her cheeks.
"I was… I mean, I thought…"
"When I said we'd talk, this wasn't what I meant." With a yawn and a stretch, Shikamaru moved to the window to examine the latch. "Troublesome."
He turned back around, crossing his arms and leaning against the sill to regard Ino.
The steady stare unnerved her. "What?"
Shikamaru sighed. "You could have waited until a normal hour, and come to my house and knocked on the door, you know."
Ino averted her gaze.
"Though," he added, "why do something normal when you can break the chakra seal instead?"
Ino really didn't have a good explanation for her behavior—or at least not one that wouldn't cause all kinds of complications—so she just gave a huffy sigh and turned away from him, taking the opportunity to survey the room.
It had been a long time since Ino had seen Shikamaru's room. Even the few times she had glimpsed it, it had only been in passing, to pick up supplies for a mission or to notify him of an emergency meeting. Seeing it now, she found it to be much like she had always imagined the place where Shikamaru lived: clean, minimalistic, designed for utility, not comfort. There was little furniture, and even fewer embellishments.
"Not even any plants…" Ino murmured, shaking her head. She'd kept at least one plant in her room for as long as she could remember.
Then again… she considered Shikamaru trying to care for a plant.
Perhaps it was best that he didn't have one.
"What?"
Ino started, not aware that she'd voiced her thoughts, but Shikamaru was looking at her with an expression of slight confusion.
"You need plants." She commented, motioning to the bare dresser and desktop. "It would brighten the place up."
Shikamaru raised a skeptical eyebrow, as if to say 'Can you really imagine me keeping a bunch of troublesome plants?' Ino couldn't suppress a giggle, considering the fact that she already had imagined it, and it didn't look pretty.
She turned to smile at him over her shoulder and abruptly, she was struck with an overpowering surge of relief. The sight of his figure at the window, framed against the strains of morning sunlight, alive and healthy, was an image of such normality that for a second she could scarcely believe it was real.
Before she even knew what she was doing, Ino found herself across the room with her arms wrapped snugly around his neck and her face buried in his chest. One of her hands slid to rest just below his shoulder, where she could feel the steady beat of his heart through her palm.
"What's wrong, troublesome woman?" Shikamaru mumbled the question into her hair, but it lacked his usual tone of exasperation.
"I thought you were dead, Shikamaru." She admitted quietly. It was a relief to allow the unvoiced fear to finally slip off her tongue, ridding her head of the burden she'd been carrying for days. The words seemed to break as they left her mouth and hit the air, hanging heavier than any protest or accusation she'd made against him.
"And why would that matter to you?" He replied sarcastically, but he was quickly silenced by a hit to the chest. Ino pulled back from him slightly.
"Don't even say that. You know why."
Shikamaru regarded her with all seriousness. "Do I?"
Ino disentangled herself reluctantly from his arms, turning away to lean against the window sill. "You should. You, genius boy, should have figured it out a long time ago without me having to spell it out for you."
For a few moments, everything was silent, and Ino's stomach churned at the thought of the almost-admission.
For a genius, Shikamaru really could be dense.
She was beginning to turn around to gauge his reaction when a shadow fell over her, and she drew a sharp intake of breath when she realized he was standing mere centimeters from her.
"Ino, I—"
"Shikamaru!" Shikaku's voice sounded outside, loud and disgruntled.
"Damn it." Shikamaru ran a hand through his hair, looking anxiously between Ino and the door. The sound of footsteps down the corridor got steadily louder. "Look, I have something I need to tell you, but I have to take care of this first. Stay here, alright?"
Shikamaru moved like lightning to the door, certainly faster than Ino had ever seen the lazy boy go. She stared after him, slightly dumbfounded. After a few moments frozen in a torrent of emotion, she sunk to the floor, utterly at a loss.
Outside, she could hear Shikamaru's voice occasionally breaking through his father's gruff monotone, but they didn't seem to be getting any closer to the door, so she assumed she was safe for now. She could only imagine what her father would say after her abrupt departure from the house this morning and there was no way that her being here would escape his knowledge if Shikaku found out.
Rather than running that unpleasant scenario over in her head, Ino focused on Shikamaru's last words. Had something he needed to tell her? Maybe it was about that odd meeting with Inoichi a few weeks ago that they still hadn't gotten around to discussing.
Ino looked down at her hands, suddenly aware that she was twisting the fabric of a flak jacket back and forth around her palms in agitation. She set it down as soon as she recognized the nervous habit, but her attention had been drawn away from her worry enough that she noticed the unusual sound the flak jacket made when it hit the ground.
It wasn't the metallic clink of a weapon, or even the slightly muffled thump of a scroll. Ino made a vain attempt to convince herself that it wasn't any of her business, but her curiosity got the better of her, and she picked the flak jacket back up, feeling the pockets for the source of the strange noise. Most of them were empty, but when she checked one of the pockets sewn into the inside, her fingers came across something solid.
Pulling the object out, she opened her hand to find a small, square box, and her breath caught, because she recognized the shape immediately.
She knew already that she had gone much too far, that it really wasn't any of her business, but her hands seemed to be somewhere out of her mind's control, and the box sprung open, revealing exactly what she had anticipated.
Only, the realization was ten times worse, because it was beautiful.
The ring was gold, with delicate etchings of what looked to be interwoven rose vines around the inside of the band. The stone itself… that was what made her heart drop. Because though Ino was no expert in gemstones, she knew exactly what kind of stone it was that graced that beautiful, intricate setting:
Desert quartz.
Ino bit down on her lip so hard that she feared the skin might break. She closed the box, shoving it back into the pocket, all the while cursing herself for being so goddamn meddlesome.
She now had a fairly good idea of what it was that Shikamaru needed to tell her.
In a flash, a conversation in the flower shop that had once meant hope to her was twisted, and she saw how completely wrong her interpretation had been. She couldn't believe she had been so stupid as to believe that Temari's accusations might be true.
"Why else would I get invited to the wedding, only to have him tell me that a long distance relationship is 'too troublesome'?"
"Shikamaru, you sly bastard…" She fumbled angrily with the newly repaired latch; fortunately, he hadn't had the time to reactivate the chakra seal so it sprang open easily. Not even caring if someone saw, Ino jumped out of the window and traveled as fast as she could, away from that house and that ring and that stupid, stupid bastard.
A long-distance relationship apparently was too troublesome, so it was being made into a short-distance one.
As she thought through it, Ino realized that the ring explained other things as well. As the head of the Intelligence division, her father had to be involved when anyone with knowledge of Konoha's defenses left for an extended period of time, or when anyone from an outside village entered Konoha.
Ino didn't care to consider whether this meant Shikamaru leaving or Temari coming. She couldn't make herself think about the situation, about Temari's apparent obliviousness to what had actually been going on, about Shikamaru's reluctance to talk about the conversation with her father, about her own blindness to a plan which had been going on behind her back for all this time.
All she knew was that she had been a complete fool, and now she had to deal with the consequences.
When Shikamaru returned half an hour later, he knew immediately that something was wrong.
Ino, impatient though she may have been, was not one to just get up and leave in the middle of a conversation, especially not one as important as this. For a second, Shikamaru considered the idea that it might be a trick, but then he spotted the open window, and he knew she was really gone.
He ran to the window, almost tripping over his flak jacket in the process. It took a few moments of staring out the window to realize that the jacket was not where he had left it…
… which could mean only one thing.
The pieces clicked together in Shikamaru's head as he rummaged through the pockets and, not finding the ring in the one he'd left it in, checked the one on the other side. Sure enough, one ring box, complete with engagement ring, lay in the other pocket.
"Troublesome, nosy woman…"
This was going to be one hell of an explanation.
A/N: Ino and Shikamaru never can seem to have a whole, uninterrupted conversation... XD
Bit of a short chapter, but it's part one of two, so fear not! Plus, I actually managed to get this update done fairly quickly! ^_^
As usual, thank you to all my readers and reviewers! Since I'm not sure when I'll get my next chapter out, I'll go ahead wish you all a very happy holiday (whichever one you happen to celebrate) and a wonderful New Year!
- Senka