At the End of the Road, a naruto fanfic

At the End of the Road

Summary: Is this, she asks softly, what you wished for? OneShot.

Warning: This is introspection pure. But after the fluffiness of the last one shot I wrote I feel like I'm allowed to do a tiny bit of... Melancholy. Not Angst. Angst is reserved for the next story.

Set: Story-unrelated, future-fic

Disclaimer: Standards apply.

Out through the fields and the woods
And over the walls I have wended;
I have climbed the hills of view
And looked at the world, and descended;
I have come by the highway home,
And lo, it is ended.
(Robert Frost, Reluctance)

At the end of the road, the ocean begins.

At least that's what Shikamaru thinks must be. He never travelled down the road far enough to really see what comes behind the trees of the forest of Fire, behind the mountains of Snow, behind the vast planes of Rain. He never came to the end of the road, where all stories end. He has never seen the sea with his own eyes, not the one he really wants to see. Naruto has been there, of course, and many others as well. And Shikamaru has travelled far and wide, has journeyed across many countries and seen sights few people have seen before and yet the one thing that still remains to be seen is the ocean at the end of time.

But there are still things left to be said, as well. Things still beg to be done, cry to be remembered, and sometimes he wonders whether honesty really is the right answer to every question in life. It is what he has applied to every situation he has found himself in and he has witnessed every kind of reaction to it. Good and bad, strong and subdued, desperate and relieved. He has seen the damage it has done and has found that with every passing year his own honesty has turned into something malleable, brittle almost. Lines and cracks have appeared everywhere and sometimes he fears it will all come crashing down around him. But it has brought him this far and although he feels the strength of his body diminish he does not intend to let go of it.

And this is not the ocean. These are the hills of Hidden Leaf, the ragged-edged cliffs of his home town, and the cool wind is a relief after the heat and the breathlessness of the summer city below him. The sunset is glorious, golden and red and orange, and the tree tops are green and endless. The forest moves in the wind, like a living, breathing thing, and it is exactly that.

Shikamaru's hands are buried in his pockets. Ino next to him is quiet.

He does not look at her but still watches her from the corners of his eyes. It is something that has come to him over time: the constant urge to be sure she's there, still is with him. How it happened and when is of no consequence. It feels like he woke up one day and she suddenly was there, a part of him that he had missed before and never known it. It is troublesome and annoying and terrifying and amazing. She reads his mind and annoys him to hell and smiles when he comes home and cries when he is sad and it is difficult to even remember a time when it was different. He never promised her until death will part us because death is their – and hers, especially – constant companion. He never promised her a life without worries and sadness, without difficulties and problems. She brought her own demons when she walked into his heart and he finds them even more terrifying than his own ones. She brought worries and sadness and loneliness, and on some days it is oh-so-hard to cope with it. She brought him sleepless nights. He still wakes up and checks her side of the bed first in the morning, making sure she's still there. She brought him anger. There have been days when he has stormed out of the room, fuming and bristling as he never did before, and there were few fights that were resolved easily between them. She brought him uncertainty and the feeling of powerlessness, but she brought him other things as well and until today he isn't sure what he has done to deserve this. Deserve her. They have shared many things and others they haven't, but that never meant less to either of them.

Because he sees her almost every day it is hard to keep track of the changes life engraved into her face, but he always was a good spectator. Her eyes are blue as the sky, warm and distant and yet withdrawn. There are lines in her face, around her eyes, and he knows they are equally due to pain as they are due to laughter. Lines around her mouth make her look strict or soft, depending on her mood and the light in the room, and he thinks only Ino can look even more beautiful than she was before when shadows fall onto her face. She has been marked by the life she chose and by the life he chose. She's not sorry and he knows he isn't, either. She's still tall, still stands proudly. The vest she is wearing makes her look different to when she's wearing civilian clothes, the head band on her arm a constant reminder of who she is. Who they both are. When she's wearing her ANBU cloak she looks dangerous, anonymous and calm. When she wears her regular shinobi uniform she looks like a soldier. When she's wearing normal clothes she looks like a simple, normal woman. Tall, silent, watchful – but however she looks, she always looks like Ino to him.

Years haven't changed that.

Years haven't changed how he feels. Have they changed him? Perhaps. Does it matter? No. He's still who he is, and she's still Ino. And even though silver lines color her golden strands of hair, and even though time has carved lines into her face, she's still beautiful.

She smiles at him from the corners of her mouth. It's a special smile, reserved only for him. It's not overly cheerful and not sarcastic. It's Ino who looks at him, not an ANBU, not a shinobi, not a trained kunoichi. Shikamaru wonders what she sees when she looks at him: a middle-aged, graying man in a nondescript vest and uniform, with a ponytail and the obligatory forehead protector around his upper arm. His hands buried in his pockets. The lines around his eyes are not due to laughter and he knows the expression on his face rarely is open and inviting. He knows he's not an easy man to live with. He is too quiet and too withdrawn and too closed-up. He is too loyal and too dutiful and if justice is anything what it was when he was young he will die some day (soon) and won't be missed too much. Oh, of course there still are a few people left. A few, and he neither wants nor dares to try to count them because he knows his one hand is enough to go through the list. It always was like this: life goes on, people come, people leave. What matters is that he has a job he likes doing, a superior he would die for, a place he deems worth protecting and a woman who stays with him no matter what happens and how he is.

He takes her hand.

It is a natural gesture. Her hand folds into his like she is a part of him. Her skin is cool, even on a hot summer's day like this, and he can feel her skin warming underneath his fingers. She smiles at him from the corners of her eyes. Is this, her eyes ask, what you wished for?

I have come by the highway home and lo, it is ended.

Shikamaru didn't wish for a war or for a job like the one he has now, and he surely didn't wish for a beautiful woman in his life who goes out every day to do a job that is so much more dangerous than his. He never wished for a life full of problems, of arguments and opportunities. Full of choices. When he was young he wished for a peaceful life, a moderately pretty wife, two children and a dog, and for time to play shogi and watch clouds. Today, there are no children except for Chouji's, but they're like his own children to him. There is no peaceful job, not with Naruto as Rokudaime and not with the bushfires and the catastrophes and the negotiations that come with being the Fire Shadow's closest consultant. And Ino isn't merely moderately pretty and surely not the average wife (not a wife at all) but does it matter? No, this isn't what he dreamed of. But he finds it is even better than anything he could have wished for. Except for...

It is far too late to ask her now.

They had a conversation once. Years ago and yet it still is vividly in his head as if it had been only yesterday. It was a short conversation.

"I'm sorry."

"Me too."

So much is said in those few words. He can't stop in his tracks and she can't stop being ANBU. He can't save her from her nightmares and she can't fix him. She can't give him children and he can't ask her to marry him, and aren't they both broken and lost? But they are no different to all the other people they know and perhaps even more lucky. Their former team never fell apart, only grew together more tightly when they lost one of theirs. They never watched a member of their team be married without her consent. They never fought the pressure that weighted down on those who were different, who stood out. Instead, they always had just the right amount of ability, cleverness and humbleness to not be noticed, not be broken. To what has it led? One ANBU, one shinobi, one consultant, and they still manage to remain in the background of history. Perhaps they would have had the ability, perhaps the cleverness, to fight for a different outcome. Shikamaru knows he's intelligent enough to make it up the career ladder. He knows Ino is an ANBU good enough to already have gained a lot of fame, but then, perhaps that's why she's an ANBU – they have no faces to be associated with. And Chouji trains the one Shikamaru knows has the strength to become the Seventh Fire Shadow to the village, even if few yet have noticed. So they managed to lay low, remain under the watchful eye of fate, and their lives have never been spectacular and amazing. Nothing to fill history books with, and isn't that exactly what he wanted? An ordinary life. With all the sadness and worries it brings, but with all the things that make it worthwhile, too.

Little things are what give him peace.

Waking up with her does. Falling asleep next to her. Listening to her return home. Even watching her leave is normal, although there is a pressure in his chest every time she does so. Working with Naruto is worthwhile, feeling his devotion and loyalty and endless optimism again and again. Wondering how he has kept all this faith, how he has managed to overcome all the burdens and tasks that had been placed on his shoulders. Seeing Hidden Leaf grow and shine is so much more than he ever expected and Shikamaru doesn't think he could wish for anything more than what he has already. But perhaps he is selfish. It is his life he thinks of, again and again, only his life and himself. Ino never complained about it. She had accepted the fact that he would not ask her, even seemed to have come to terms with it. Sometimes he wondered where the girl he once knew had gone. Had he lost her somewhere? Perhaps on a mission, somewhere a long time ago? Did they bury her with Asuma-Sensei or was she killed on a battle field far away? He doesn't know. The only thing he knows is that she has been the way she is now for so long he barely remembers a time when she was different, and somehow he has lost track of time, too. Has lost track of her. She disappeared one day and came back changed and he, like always, accepted what he was presented with. Nowadays, sometimes, he wonders what happened. When. Then he thinks of a man that was almost like a father to him when he was a boy and a girl who was as scary as his own mother, of a scar that runs down her side like an angry mark, a tattoo on her left upper arm and a neatly folded letter bearing an official seal. Of what she has lost – what both of them have lost – and of how that makes her so damn good at what she does for a living. Thinks of nights in which neither of them slept and she wasn't the only one to cry, of nights when he waited for her to come back home and the one night he returned to find her unconscious on the floor. At the same time he thinks of evenings she spent rolled up on his side, and nights when her warmth was the only thing he could feel. Of days of sunshine and rain and how she stood there, her arms outstretched, to welcome the snow. Days of quiet happiness. Good days and bad days, and isn't that what life is about? Maybe not pressing him to ask her to marry him was her way to repent for the fact that she couldn't become pregnant but either way it doesn't really matter anymore. Days and weeks and months and years have passed in a blur and the only thing he can say is that he spent a majority of this lost time with her, and he cannot imagine another way.

It is a feeling so strange he cannot place it at first: for the first time since he can remember he is being honest with himself.

The wind touches Ino's golden hair and strands of it dance in the last sunrays of the day. Shikamaru knows her and knows what she is and who and he knows the fact that she doesn't display her emotions openly (anymore) doesn't mean they aren't there. From the way she looks at him he knows she loves him. Her eyes never lie. It's why they fit together so well: he never lies to others, even when he lies to himself, and she never lies to him. In return, she never asks him the why both of them yearn for. It's their secret, the one they keep even from each other even though they both know the answer. And he knows she feels it, too, the one thing that makes us comfortable like worn and beloved sweaters that refuse to leave the closet. It's the reason why they still are here, still are the ones they are. He doesn't try to change her. She stays who she is and comes back to him every time she has to leave.

Ino's hand now is warm in his. She never lies, even though she seldom tells everything. From her strength he draws his strength. Perhaps he'll ask her one day.

At the end of the road, the ocean begins.

"I love you."

And he doesn't think one could be more honest than that.