When I woke up, my Mom and Sis were having a row downstairs. It was a usual occurrence in those days, probably about something small. Shikamaru was awake too. He had managed to pull himself out of bed, and he was sitting in the chair watching me sleep. He grinned at me lazily when we met eyes, and I thought that he looked very much like a Tom cat who was very pleased about having caught something and I told him so. His response was to blush slightly.

"I succeeded in avenging my sensei's death and woke up a few days later in the same bed as an incredibly handsome shinobi. Of course I'm pleased." I looked over my shoulder, as if looking for someone else and he smiled at that.

I wanted to kiss him, to pull him into bed next to me and kiss him hard and everywhere, to do unspeakable things with him, oh how I wanted to... But something shattered downstairs. Shikamaru felt me wince.

"Let's sneak out the back." He suggested.

"Your wounds..."

"... Are doing just fine. It's not like I let him damage anything vital. It's actually mostly burns." He peered down the stairway, and something else shattered. "No good, they're in the Kitchen."

"Yeah, Ino was telling me about..." I trailed off as he strode back across the room determinedly. "The window? No. I'm drawing the line. Plus, I'm not even dressed yet!"

"You never took your clothes off. It'd be a pain to let you get sucked into this fight and you hate them anyway. I'll be fine." He was right, I was still wearing the same clothes from yesterday, albeit a little more rumpled.

"One condition. I'll go first to help you." He rolled his eyes at me, but let me climb out first anyway. It turned out that he did need help because his wounded almost opened up again and I jumped down from the roof to the ground with him in my arms. That was a pretty awesome moment. Handsome prince points for Kiba.

Not that they really counted towards anything, because Akamaru appeared from the bushes then to lead us down the familiar deer trail between the rather paltry Inuzuka backyard and the expansive Nara front garden.

Despite what he had said earlier about being able to walk just fine, he was leaning on my shoulder pretty heavily when we got into his living room. His mom was home, and she chewed him out some more while I rooted around for a set of fresh bandages and some peroxide. We went into the bathroom and I changed his bandages again while he swore at me between his teeth for administering the peroxide in such large doses. I didn't say anything, just ran through the procedure for checking a dog for ringworm in my head in order to falter what was going on below. I'm telling you, there is nothing worse than having your hands all over a shirtless Shikamaru while he is injured and his mother is in the next room and you can't do a damned thing. I should be given a sainthood for my exemplary abstinence during those few days.

It didn't help that he kissed me, long and hard, before getting up to confront his mother again. She proclaimed that he would be confined to his bed for the next week and wouldn't be allowed to see anyone, nope, not even you, young man. "My son needs to do some deep thinking about how sane it is to confront a psychopathic, insane, immortal, mass murderer all on his own before he allowed out of my house again."

"What a pain." He grumbled as she herded him to bed.

"Let me know when you get out on probation!" I called after him.

He waved a lazy hand in acknowledgement, but I even from that distance I could tell he was smiling. I knew that I should go home and try to clean up the dishes because Mom and Hana were both to stubborn to do it themselves. But I left that house with a spring in my step and which carried my to the nearest park, where I played catch and hide and seek and wrestled and generally goofed around with Akamaru. He was in a good mood too.

But all fairy tale stories need to end, and no sooner than I got home was I informed by my mother that she had volunteered me for a tracking mission. Some border clan had managed to kidnap some merchants outside of Konoha and they were holding them ransom. Tsunade and Shikaku were stalling them with laborious negotiations, but the Anbu had failed to pick up the trail. Mom was beaming. She always loved getting jobs where the Anbu had failed cause that's where Dad worked at the time.

I barely had time to call up Ino and update her on the state of things, asking her to tell Shikamaru where I was when she visited. She seemed kinda confused, but agreed anyway.

That mission really isn't worth talking about. It was a cinch. The Anbu had been following visual hints, and the kidnappers had laid several snake trails using that method, but no one can fool the nose of an Inuzuka hound. We are the best of the best. We ran into trouble while trying to overpower them though. Well, I did.

My mind was elsewhere, and while they were really bad at taijutsu, their specialized jutsu turned out to be psychic. They'd get into your head and exploit your weakness. Like an Uchiha genjutsu, but one where they automatically gravitate to your weakest link. Anyway, a little girl got me. Tricked me into letting my guard down and hit me while I was asleep. I was having a very pleasant dream, not a nightmare at all, but she turned it into one. I didn't realize at first, it was just my regular nightmare. It was horrible, like always, but it got worse. So much worse.

One minute I was laying on a cloud with Shikamaru's hand in mine, and the next, like a message sent directly from God, I knew he was going to die. I looked over at him. He smiled at me. We fell through the cloud. I grabbed him, tried to get beneath him as we fell. He spread his arms out and smiled as he fell. And then I saw the girl, she was falling with us. Her smile twisted and I knew she understood.

And then we weren't falling anymore. We were in the woods. Shikamaru's woods. He was fine, standing across from me...

Staring at me. Shikamaru was staring at me with a look of horror and betrayal on his face. I put my hand to my cheek and it came away, black with paint. She was smiling at me from behind his shoulder, and there was a scythe in my hand. NO! I wanted to scream at him. It's not me, I would never! But I felt my mouth twist into a cold smile instead. It's not me, it's not me!

"I've met Shikamaru Nara before. He came from Konoha to deliver my father's body back to us, hardly even a month ago." She spoke softly and crisply. "I was able to see his nightmares that night."

"Kiba?" Shikamaru spoke this time. The hurt in his voice was like a stake through my heart. I wanted to keel over on the forrest floor and beg for his forgiveness.

"I'll bet you didn't expect this now, did you? You stuck up little brat."

It wasn't me saying these words, I didn't want to say these words, WHY WAS I SAYING THESE WORDS?

"Do you want to know the nightmare of Shikamaru Nara?" She smiled wider, revealing pointed teeth. "Betrayal. Betrayal, and the man who killed his sensei. And now you are both." She laughed, an uncomfortable, metallic sound, and her skin began to slowly peel away.

"Kiba, please..." Shikamaru had fallen to his knees. There were tears running down his face and his hands were shaking. "I can't fight you."

"I know." I said, in my cruel, high voice. The voice that wasn't me. My hand lifted the scythe, and I tried to look away, but I couldn't. My face was smiling, my eyes met his, and the scythe came down, I brought it down. Into his shoulder. Out of his stomach. Belatedly I heard the thunking noise it made as it stuck there, and the soft trickle of blood on the fall leaves. His mouth opened slowly in surprise, and I realized that he had believed that I couldn't fight him either. He hadn't made any move to protect himself because he had believed that he wouldn't have to protect himself.

There was no more noise. The light behind his eyes went out. I pulled the scythe out, still smiling, and blood sprayed against the trunk. He fell onto his side, his mouth still open and his eyes wide and lifeless. The girl pulled off her face as if it were a mask, and underneath was a face that shifted into Hana's, complete with the self-satisfied little smirk she always wore when she bested me at something.

"You are cursed, little brother."

And I woke up screaming.