A/N:
I finally wrote an outline for this story and it'll start officially next chapter!
btw this is irrelevant I found out one of my stories got plagiarized and I am absolutely fuming -_- Officially blacklisted that idiot on my profile.
Not a good day. Horrible day.
2. Resolve
The first time they met was on a broken September morning.
From what Shikamaru could recall, it'd been an awful, dismal and overcast day. Shikaku had pushed his only son off to the Yamanaka household and insisted that he'd 'take care of Inoichi's girl' because 'her birthday is tomorrow'—to which Shikamaru countered, "but it's my birthday today." Sadly, his mother was far more adamant and unwavering while she slipped a black ensemble over Shikamaru's tiny body. Much to his chagrin, she insisted he'd go on his way instead of wasting time sulking around the compound.
He had no choice but to concede defeat.
The first time he saw her Ino had been kneeling on the edge of a vanity, staring at her own reflection in the mirror.
It was only seconds later that he watched in disbelief as her long, golden locks littered the floor of her very, very pink bedroom. Shikamaru wondered for the longest time how he could've possibly missed the kunai in grasp of her small and ineffectual hands.
Four-year-old Ino met his gaze in the mirror that sat atop her vanity and slowly turned around, the kunai angled to shred the rest of her locks off. With one foot propped on her chair, she stepped off the table edge with a wad of her long blond locks in one hand, holding onto the handle of the kunai with the other. Rip. Tear. Break; and so she threw her remaining locks onto the ground unwaveringly, a few strays still wedged in the sweaty crevices between her fingers.
Shikamaru blinked twice and tried to register all of this properly.
"Did you—" never in his life had he been caught off guard like this before; he was four years old, after all, "did you just…"
He trailed off as her lower lip trembled.
"No," the word spilled from his lips, "no—please don't."
It took only that much for Ino to open her mouth wide and let out an agonized wail.
Shikamaru learned years later that that was one birthday he was better off missing.
Ino's mother had passed away in the weeks prior. Inoichi held the funeral only a few days afterwards, which happened to coincide with Shikamaru's fifth birthday. The young Nara understood none of what was happening and took every little, inconspicuous detail with halfhearted tolerance: the black ensemble Yoshino slipped over his head, his father's uncharacteristic assertiveness (as opposed to his usual languidness), and the sky cracked in shades of gray.
Ino collapsed to her knees and cried; and he watched; and he watched; and he watched until she cried herself into a crumpled heap onto the floor—then he watched some more until she stopped crying, until her breathing evened out and he knew she was sound asleep. He would never say it today but he watched her for a few more minutes before he tugged her blanket from her blinding pink bed and covered her tiny, fragile body.
Few people knew about her mother's passing. Shikamaru watched as they installed a shrine by the entrance of her house the following day. And from that day forth, each time she left for academy, she'd also bid a farewell to her mother while slipping on her sandals.
The worst birthday ever also turned out to be the one birthday that changed everything.
"Uh…yeah," Shikamaru answered awkwardly, painfully aware of the blankness in her face, "that's right. Do you—um—remember me?"
He'd never stumbled over his words so quickly before; and this was one question he never wanted to ask.
She faltered and pursed her lips—but only for a split second; Ino beamed almost too quickly and brushed a lock of hair behind her ear. Shikamaru was taken off guard by her candidness but he shouldn't have been surprised at all. Ino wouldn't be Ino if she didn't have a smile on half the time, even with all the broken bones and wears and tears in her body. As a means of distraction, he averted his gaze to the nasty gash dangerously deep in the carotid artery of her neck.
From the moment Shikamaru was born, he spilled over books of human anatomy and herbs. It wasn't what he wanted, but Yoshino had been insistent so Shikamaru had little choice in the matter. So he spent days under the summer sun soaking up blood vessels and contours and curves. It didn't take him long to memorize; it was easy—almost mediocre. And he could've become a doctor if he wanted to, but that was far too mundane and boring for someone like him. So in a way, Ino was right (somehow, she always was)—he wouldn't have become a shinobi had he really, genuinely wanted to be average.
But the wound screamed and he closed his eyes slowly.
From top priority to bottom priority were all the arteries in the human body—beginning with the aortic in the heart. A medical shinobi wouldn't be able to save someone with a kunai stabbed through their chest if they wanted to. It would only take three beats for the blood loss to hit and for all the organs to shut down.
And next was the carotid artery: the life vein in the neck. One minute. Ino only had one minute between the now and the-if-hypothetical that scared him more than he wanted to admit aloud.
She could've been dead. Every second mattered. Every second counted. Had Shikamaru not made the extra effort to stop the bleeding, had Choji not been there, had they been alone at all—Ino would've been six feet under. There was no doubting this. Her limp body would be lying somewhere in the gravel on the edge of the battlefield with all that dark red spilling from the ugly shadows and crevices of the rocks.
He couldn't stop picturing it. And that terrified him.
"…kind of," she grinned.
She was lying.
Shikamaru would know. Ino always had the worst poker face.
"What do you remember?" he asked vaguely, feeling the palms of his hands go into a cold sweat.
Her silence confirmed his doubts; and so this became one question he already knew the answer to.
They wound up back on the battlefield only two hours later.
Litters of body spilled across the field and Shikamaru silently wondered when the he would find himself in the comforts of familiarity—the lush green of the forest in his backyard, the flash of brown as a doe sped through the trees, and a half-satisfied smirk as he strolled through and came upon the ditch with all the gravel caved in on the one man he had never hated so much in his entire life. These were comforts and these were things he knew through and through. These were the things he had memorized down to every last shadow crease; and these were the things he was never threatened by.
With a kunai in his right, he tipped his head up to the sky and caught his own reflection, refracted and creased.
Choji smiled and wiped the hard sweat from his forehead.
Looking vaguely satisfied, Shikamaru slipped the kunai back into the pouch attached to his thigh and turned around fully with a hand propped against his hip.
This was everything he wanted.
Even through the broken and wasted, here was Temari checking her fan before taking off towards her brother—and here was Gaara, sand withdrawing all the sand into the gourd attached to his back—and here were all the survivors pulling themselves from the ash and fragment pieces, one hand outstretched, another hand helping the next chain link behind. This was not a plan; and this was not something anyone expected—some kind of beauty and unsuspecting teamwork in the midst of all this ugly, ugly warfare.
But then again this was called war—not a fairytale— and war always meant casualties. And there were too many to count this time around.
To the hundreds of shinobi who gave their life away on a mere thought for the future. To the hundreds of broken bodies lying lifeless on the ground; to the flames of Konoha—and the cycles that would always follow afterward.
This was for the kids who were fifteen and fighting on the frontlines; this was for the kids at home who prayed so hard until their eyes bled tears, until their throats constricted and the sobs poured into unrelenting cries of agony. This was for the kids who pushed up their forehead protectors and held their kunai out with a half smile as they accepted an inevitable fate while the sky above them exploded into bursting reds and crimsons.
This was for the kids who were lying on the ground lifeless.
"It's over," here was Shikamaru staring up at the sky—blue.
Blue like Naruto's eyes. Blue like Ino's eyes—blue with the promises of a new day tomorrow dawning, something hackneyed and overplayed like that phrase; here was Shikamaru reaching his hand up unsure of what he was reaching for, and when he closed his eyes, he could see it again, and again.
Blue, blue, blue.
"Thank God."
A breath as he opened his eyes to meet Choji's gaze, "I'm going to do it."
An arched brow, "Do what?"
And here was Shikamaru throwing away the entire rulebook he knew; here was Shikamaru living in the hackneyed and stupid goddamn clichés he always hated.
"It's impossible to forget something completely," Shikamaru stated, "eventually, it'll come back. They're called memories for a reason. This isn't the kind of memory loss that'd last forever. It isn't...alzheimer's."
Choji opened his mouth to say something; to tell his best friend the truth, to tell him what Shizune mentioned in his absence, to tell him what Kiba said after his departure from the tent, but instead, Choji pursed his lips and suppressed a soft sigh.