3. What It Means to Live
"But I also felt like an eggshell that had gotten a tiny crack. You can't repair something like that. All you can do is hope that it sticks together, hope that the crack doesn't grow until all your insides come spilling right out." — Leila Sales, This Song Will Save Your Life
The work was more than troublesome. Shikamaru had never worked so hard in his life, and yet he'd never felt such satisfaction. Hard labor took his mind off of everything but the task at hand. When he worked on rebuilding the structure of a building or restoring the remains of another, he had to pay attention to detail or risk a collapse. His hands, once softer, had grown rough from the time he put into his work. There were others there, like Chouji, Shino, and Lee, but they hardly got an opportunity to talk. They had too much to do, so they had little time for pleasantries.
Their three meals of day rotated between ration bars, rice, and fish. They were loaded down on carbohydrates more than protein-they lacked in real protein. On days when there weren't fish, they had deer, hog, or bird. The deer were captured off in the forest, a good day's walk from the field hospital, but Shikamaru had a sneaking suspicion that they'd fled from Nara territory. He couldn't care less. He was the last remaining person in the Nara clan, and he chose not to concern himself with deer, not at a time of so much loss. After things had returned to normal, he'd fall back into a steady rhythm. He'd return to routine, and relish in the consistency.
Once Neji was released from the hospital, he opted to share a tent, which meant that Shikamaru had to deal with someone in his space. Chouji still spent his time elsewhere, most likely with a pretty kunoichi named Misao, and Ino opted to sleep at the field hospital. It wasn't as troublesome as Shikamaru had originally thought, but it wasn't the same as being alone. When Neji fell into one of his coughing fits, he woke Shikamaru. When Shikamaru got up to piss, he woke Neji. Their lives were, at least temporarily, connected.
A week after Neji's release from the field hospital, Shikamaru found himself tossing and turning in his sleeping bag. He could tell Neji was asleep, or he assumed the Hyuga was asleep, but Shikamaru couldn't find a comfortable position. More than that, Shikamaru kept having dreams about the war. He kept hearing the deafening roar associated with attacks. He kept seeing the battlefield littered with bodies. He awoke in cold sweats, his body quivering. Once he gave up on sleep, once he gave up on tossing and turning, Shikamaru lay on his back and looked at the moonlight filtering through the fabric of the tent.
"I can't sleep either," Neji finally spoke. He'd been pretending to sleep the entire time, but he hadn't thought it wise to speak up, not when Shikamaru seemed to be having a private moment. When he spoke, he slid upwards in his sleeping bag and got into a seated position. "My chest hurts."
"We should get you back to the hospital," Shikamaru decided.
"They're ghost pains, Shikamaru. I keep feeling myself get impaled. I keep dreaming about that moment, over and over again." Neji frowned, the moonlight making his expression evident in the darkness.
For a long few minutes, Shikamaru debated on whether or not he should share his own problems with Neji. The simple answer was that he deserved to bear his own weight and suffer quietly, but he was smart enough to know that wasn't necessarily the right thing to do. After some thought, he sighed and sat up in his sleeping bag. Any other time, he might have muttered about how troublesome Neji was being, or how what they were about to do seemed like such a drag; instead, he remained quiet.
"I'm the last remaining Nara. My fellow clan members died on the battlefield. My dad was trapped in the tower when," he trailed off, his voice cracking. He cleared his throat, even as his eyes began to sting. "I keep seeing the dead bodies. There's blood everywhere. I keep asking myself how we're going to start over after such a slaughter. How are we supposed to go on? The obvious answer is that we endure and we go on as expected. We fight. We persevere. I have all the answers, but none of them seem to fit the equation. None of them satisfy me." Shikamaru finished with his words, but he could have gone on for hours about the intricacies of what they were all attempting to do by rebuilding instead of surrendering to their own despair.
"I'm sorry," Neji apologized, his head bowed both out of respect and out of thought. "I still have my uncle and my cousin, but most of the branch family died, sacrificed like lamb," he said, his words just as heavy as Shikamaru's. "You do endure. You do fight. The key is not doing it alone. That's something I learned from Naruto. You might be the only remaining Nara, but you aren't alone, Shikamaru."
Up until that point, Shikamaru had considered himself alone. Even surrounded by people, he felt alone; even with the company of his former teammates, he felt alone. The words spoken were difficult to accept, but easy enough to understand. He didn't know why, but he nodded. If he nodded, he thought, then he forced himself to continue on the path to acceptance.
They both needed their rest, or they might have continued talking, continued broaching subjects neither of them were had considered. When they lay down, they moved their sleeping bags closer together. Neither one of them knew which one made the initial move, but they didn't complain. They slept through the night, and that's all they needed. At dawn, both of them went their separate ways. Shikamaru went back to hard labor and Neji went to collect food.
It took weeks of the same routine to call the village rebuilding, but they were weeks well spent. Trade picked up again and outside materials flooded the blossoming village. The new Hokage, Kakashi, declared it a time of peace, and the outside villages sent in builders to help with the reconstruction of Konoha. The increased trade and the influx of qualified builders kicked the village into high gear. Shikamaru no longer worked his fingers to the bone, and Neji no longer spent all day hunting and gathering.
When they returned to their tent, on the final day that they'd have to share their tent, the two of them changed into their sleeping attire, their backs facing one another, and retired to their sleeping bags. They closed their eyes and waited for sleep, but sleep evaded them, as usual. They both had developed severe cases of insomnia.
"Were you offered a place at the first apartment building?" Shikamaru chose to break the silence first. He knew, by the lack of gentle snores and the occasional shifting around, that Neji had yet to fall asleep. "I know Sasuke and Naruto accepted the offer. It's really no surprise," Shikamaru said.
"I was, and I accepted the offer," Neji replied, after some time. "Were you offered a place?" Neji shifted around then, moving so that he faced Shikamaru. The two of them were looking at one another, though they couldn't exactly make out one another's facial expressions in the dark.
"I wasn't," Shikamaru admitted. The fact that he hadn't been offered a place seemed almost appropriate. He hadn't done as much as Sasuke and Naruto, not even as much as Ino, so it would have been surprising if he'd been offered an apartment. He sighed and turned onto his back, his hands clasped behind his head. Shikamaru's elbow just brushed against Neji's arm. Neji lay with his head resting on his right hand, still facing his friend.
"You're welcome to stay with me," Neji said, no hesitation in his voice. "Consider this your offer."
Shikamaru's lips twitched for a smile. The two of them had gotten along well enough, without fights or complaints; they seemed to suffer from the same insomnia, so they understood one another's sleeping habits. He couldn't think of a single reason to dismiss, or outright reject, Neji's offer, so he nodded once. Knowing that Neji likely couldn't see the nod, he muttered about it being so troublesome and then relied on his words.
"I accept your offer." He thought he made out the ghost of a smile passing over Neji's lips, but it could have been a passing shadow, it could have been an overactive imagination. Still, Shikamaru found some comfort in knowing he wouldn't be alone.
When he was alone, the nightmares returned. When he was alone, the stress vomiting returned. For some reason, he couldn't hold himself together. His composure went out the window. Some part of him wondered if he'd ever be cleared for duty again, due to his sensitivities. He knew, given the chance, that he'd hide them away, just as he'd hidden them away on the battlefield, just as he'd hidden them away throughout his entire career as a shinobi, but they'd grown exponentially. He didn't have basic fears anymore. He saw monsters. He saw phantoms. He saw bloodshed on an unimaginable scale. That's what it was like to live through war.
"You're shaking," Neji noticed, unsure of whether he should have brought up the fact or not.
"I was thinking about my future. I'll be unable to perform on missions if I can't get this under control," Shikamaru finally admitted, a tight frown on his lips.
"Stop thinking like that. It's only been about a month. We both need a little more time to recover," Neji reasoned, his own doubts dismissed in an attempt to provide comfort.
"Would you still follow the same path, if you knew this is how we'd end up?" Shikamaru didn't know where the question came from, but he felt as if he had to ask, as if he had to know. Neji seemed to consider the question and calculate his words, and every second that ticked by had Shikamaru further in doubt.
"No," Neji finally said, "I wouldn't have wasted so much time worried about my fate. In my own way, I am a prodigy, and I am a genius. I'm more than a branch family member, a bird bound in a cage. I wish I would have realized that I was the one holding myself back. I would have valued teamwork more. I would have valued my own family more. Would you follow the same path?"
It was Neji's turned to shift around, and he shifted so that he, too, rested on his back and stared up at the tent. In hindsight, he knew and understood. Everything was so much clearer, at the end of the road. Shikamaru listened intently, remembering Neji's fights before the war versus during the war. There was a huge difference in the man's determination and fighting style. He seemed hardened, yes, but also weightless. They'd all grown, by that point. Time did that.
"I want to say that I wouldn't. I have a lot of regrets, from before my genin days to now, and I want to correct my errors, but changing one thing could change them all. I may despise where we are right now, as a whole, but there are things we need to learn and grow from," Shikamaru answered.
"Don't think about the consequences. What are some things you would change?" Neji had to rephrase himself just to try and weasel more information out of the other man. In response, Shikamaru chuckled.
"I would have listened to my parents more. I was a lousy kid, not too helpful at all," Shikamaru thought aloud. "I don't think I would have become a shinobi of the Leaf. I think I would have rather entered into business. I could have mastered the laws and I'm great with money," Shikamaru smiled, though it was sad. "In the end, I always end up right back here, in this tent."
"I think you would have made a good businessman, Shikamaru," Neji said, his voice softer than usual. Shikamaru assumed it was due to sleep, not the other man's insecurity or uncertainty.
"I would have been terrible. Business ethics are a drag," Shikamaru laughed, tears forming in the corners of his eyes.
Someone from an adjacent tent had the nerve to shush them, and both men couldn't help but chuckle. Shikamaru asked about Lee and Tenten, while Neji asked about Chouji and Ino. They tried to keep talking until sleep eventually claimed them, but they ran out of things to say. They lapsed into a silence which threatened to devour them both. Somewhere between their last words and the moments before the silence imploded, Neji reached over and nudged his arm against Shikamaru's.
"You make a better ninja anyway." After those words, Neji curled into his sleeping bag and closed his eyes, just waiting for exhaustion to claim him. He left Shikamaru to stare, surprised by the compliment.