Ino was numb. She couldn't cry… couldn't even form a coherent thought through the haze that had enveloped her mind. Instead, she resigned herself to walking in endless circles around the garden path, inhaling the heady scent of hundreds of blooming buds. At least that clouded her head with something other than the images of that ring.

She knew it had been stupid. To assume that one impulsive kiss had meant as much to him as it had to her was simply catering to her own desires. The more she thought about it, the more her head began to wrap around the idea that this whole thing had just been a product of her deranged, overactive imagination; that every little signal, every subtle sign she'd read from his actions had been merely a normal response, and she was the one straining to make it extraordinary.

With that rationalization established in her mind, the next order of business was how to handle it. Obviously, she had overreacted far too many times over the past few months for it to be anywhere near normal behavior and that was merely to the casual observer. For Shikamaru, analytical genius that he was, her mood swings probably resembled the first signs of insanity, and there would be no easy way to just explain that away.

In her mind, there were really just two options: the first was to throw herself into every mission that came her way and deny the whole thing had ever happened, slowly and painfully separating herself from the idea. The other was to come clean about all of her actions.

Given Ino's ability to handle confrontations… just one option after all.

"You really shouldn't snoop through other people's things, you know."

His sudden appearance startled her, but she at least tried to act as though his presence didn't faze her. She didn't break stride in her circuit, acting as though he hadn't said anything at all.

It was better if he just wasn't there. Then she wouldn't have to worry about tears or screaming or whatever response happened to explode from her the moment she let herself acknowledge his existence. Then she wouldn't have to worry about consequences. She seemed to be good at ignoring consequences lately.

"If I could explain—" Shikamaru began.

"Really, Shikamaru? Can you really?" Ino swung around, stopping in mid-stride. Her tone was anything but level and controlled.

Ignoring him seemed to work just about as well as any previous attempts to control her emotions had gone.

"I'm supposed to bring the ring to Temari…" he continued with a sigh of exasperation.

"Oh, I'm sure you are!" Ino interjected, immediately jumping to the defensive. She broke her away from her circular path and marched straight over to where he had propped himself against a tree, stopping mere feet in front of him. He didn't shrink away from her as she advanced, merely watched her with his infuriatingly impassive dark eyes.

"I'm sure you're just dying to give her that ring. Well, you know what? I hope you're damn happy, Shikamaru. I hope you're happy with your stupid average wife and two stupid kids and whatever the hell else you decide to do with your stupid life…"

By this time, the tears had surfaced, flowing freely down her cheeks and into her hair, burning red-hot trails across her skin. She realized how utterly ridiculous and childish she sounded even as the words were leaving her mouth, but they bubbled out anyway, an unceasing flow of rage that poured over her lips and left her scorching.

"…and I hope you like Suna and you had better be moving there, because I sure as hell don't need to see you… ever… again…" With each word, she emphasized it as though it were a physical affront, but finally the sobs broke through her words, rendering them incoherent, so she settled on actually hitting him as hard as the limited coordination brought on by her heightened emotional state would allow.

After a few seconds of taking the blows as stoically as possible, Shikamaru caught her fists, but she managed to struggle out of his grip and started to bolt. Her rage was rapidly beginning to fail her, so the only real choice was to run. She was a few feet away from getting out of the garden when her entire body seized up and froze.

For the second time that day, she was caught in a Shadow Possession Jutsu.

"Goddamn, woman, is this the only way I can manage to get two words in edgewise?"

Ino ran through every expletive she could think of in her head, but her jaw remained clamped shut, frozen like the rest of her body.

That was twice today, twice that he had broken the unspoken agreement between them. Ever since they had been placed on the same team as genin, Shikamaru and Ino had developed a mutual understanding that under only the direst circumstances were their signature jutsu to be used on one another. It was an invasion of privacy, the likes of which was unfathomable to both of them. Shikamaru had always been the one who protected her body during the mind-transfer jutsu. For him to take control of it this way just made her feel hollow and vulnerable, like everything their relationship had been built upon was an easily-ignorable truth.

He must have seen the accusation in her eyes, because he frowned noticeably, stepping forward out of the dappled shade of the tree and into the full sunlight of the path.

"I don't like doing this anymore than you like being forced into silence, but you refuse to listen to me any other way." He stepped forward until they were a few feet away again, and he regarded her with earnest consideration. "If I release it, will you listen?"

The paralysis receded slightly, and Ino had control of her head again. Still, she took a moment before she responded, her expression guarded.

"I'm listening."

The jutsu fell away all at once, but Shikamaru waited a few moments before he began, just to make sure she wasn't about to bolt again. But if Ino had done everything else wrong today, she at least refused to make a liar out of herself, so she stayed.

"That troublesome ring," he began again, "is not from me, and it's not for Temari."

That in itself gave Ino pause, and she bit her lip, increasingly coming to the realization that her actions were even more ridiculous than she had originally supposed.

"I'm bringing it to Temari, for someone else entirely. As for who, you're just going to have to believe me, because it's a mission and I'm not at liberty to say."

Ino's stomach dropped a little.

"As for what possessed you to break into my house at ridiculous hours this morning…"

"I had to make sure…!" Ino blurted, but she quickly clamped her hand over her mouth, her red-rimmed eyes going wide.

Shikamaru raised an eyebrow. He had walked back toward the part of the garden that housed the bench and was now sitting down. He gestured for Ino to follow. "Make sure of what?"

Ino chose her words carefully. "Make sure that you… weren't… leaving."

She stopped inches from the bench, her arms folded up defensively in front of her, watching as Shikamaru processed her words, finally settling on an expression of obvious bemusement. Then it cleared, and he nodded to the seat next to him.

"You wanted me to talk, so now you're going to hear it." He said decisively. "Sit."

Ino did as she was told, too flabbergasted by how serious he had suddenly become to even bother to protest.

"It's best if I start this story where it actually begins, so here goes. And no interruptions, alright? This is troublesome enough as it is."

Ino nodded.

He began to speak.

It starts with a boy, who some called a genius, but all he ever wanted was to live a quiet life, staring up at the sky. A life where no one got hurt and he didn't have to be responsible for anything or anyone. But no one can live that way, especially not when you're the son of an overbearing mother, and…

Ino had started giggling, but Shikamaru shot her a look, and she clamped a hand over her mouth.

"Sorry." She whispered. He just shook his head.

…and he decided to become a shinobi, because as much as he wanted to live a quiet life all on his own, he had people that he cared about and needed to protect. So he became a shinobi, and that only made him find more troublesome people he wanted to protect, but some of those he couldn't. So he decided to live toward simple goals: an average wife and two kids, a death that was quiet and painless, because he couldn't hope for anything extraordinary, because for a shinobi, getting an ordinary life is extraordinary.

So, with the hundred thoughts that were constantly flying through his head, he tried not to think too much about something happening to the people he cared about, because he couldn't bear to. And some of them he kept at a distance, because they didn't fit into his mold of the ordinary, and he couldn't quite make himself believe that there was anything more than ordinary in store for him.

But then, some troublesome woman had to keep coming into his life: being assigned to his team, asking him to care for her when she couldn't care for herself, understanding the pain of losing a teacher… becoming one of his closest friends, even if she was troublesome. He thought he could keep it that way, but for all of his strategic planning, if there was one thing he always underestimated, it was her ability to deliver a shot completely out of the blue.

Because she kissed him, and for once, the genius who had a plan for everything was completely at a loss for what to do. And this wasn't one of those problems that could be solved in an instant. For once, every scenario that his brain ran through just didn't fit, so by the time he'd even processed it, it was past and matters of rebuilding a village and a life after war had to be dealt with.

He thought he could forget about it, but she kept showing up in his life, sometimes seeming like he was the last person she wanted to see, but sometimes… he could glimpse behind her emotions and her impulses. See that her reasons were just as complex as his, sometimes even more so. And every time he found his vision of ordinary slipping away by leaps and bounds. He almost admitted that he loved her at someone else's wedding, but she didn't see, and his own complications got in the way. But eventually he realized that there was no getting away from this: every strategy he'd run in his head… it all ended up in the same place.

Shikamaru stopped, and from under the collar of his shirt, he pulled a cord of leather that ended in a small drawstring bag, the kind that the ANBU often used to carry poison. He fiddled with the ties as he spoke.

"Honestly, Ino. If you were going to draw conclusions from a ring, you should have known better than to think that I'd be so careless with the ring I was going to use to propose. If I were going to do something so troublesome, I'd keep it on me at all times."

He had succeeded in opening the bag, and something silver fell into his hand, glinting in the morning sunlight. Ino bit back a squeak.

"Besides, if I was planning to leave Konoha," Shikamaru raised an eyebrow, looking up at her with a wry grin. "Why would I have gone to the trouble of talking to your father about this?"

A/N: So, so, so sorry about how late this is. Writer's block has been terrible recently, and I hadn't been able to write this scene without it coming out... terribly to say the least. However, I finally got the idea today for how it needed to go, and voila!

As you've probably noticed, we are nearing the end of this story. Two more chapters or so, and Shadows will have reached its conclusion. I appreciate so greatly every review, favorite and alert I've received, and I hope you all enjoy these last few chapters.

- Senka Hitomi