Disclaimer: NARUTO and its characters were created and are owned by Masashi Kishimoto. Original characters (Tsubasa Hibari © TA. RAYNE) and plot are the property of the author. No copyright infringement intended.
Title: Heaven Hold Us
Pairings: ShikaNeji, KakaGen, InoKiba
Rating: M / R (language, themes, violence, sexual scenes etc.)
Genre: Drama/Angst/General
Summary: The War is over. But the wounded remain. In a world struggling for hope amidst terrible loss, the Tailed-Beast chakra that saved Shikamaru's life on the battlefield may yet cost him his soul. As darkness encroaches upon the hard-won light, there's only one man Naruto can turn to for help. A man no more a stranger to the darkness than Shikamaru himself. Sasuke. [BtB Post-War]
Timeline: Post Fourth Shinobi World War. 4 months after the War.
HEAVEN HOLD US
VI
by Okami Rayne
Framed by the rough-hewn window, the moon hung low and full, it's pitted face tarnished silver and tinctured red. Clouds scudded slow across the ghostly halo, their wisps as spectral as the sudden presence at his back. Stiffening against the mattress, Shikamaru blinked from his brooding cloud-gaze, awareness prickling across his skin. A puff of warm moist air tickled his nape, raising shorthairs, sending a white-hot quiver along his spine.
Every time.
A familiar body pressed against his back, solid and warm, its heat dragging across his naked skin, catching sparks. Shikamaru marked the scent of weapon oil, cedar, camphor-salve, and the unmistakeable musk of arousal.
No anger.
No aggression.
Absolution, maybe.
Closing his eyes in relief, the shadow-nin rocked back a fraction, his breath catching hard on the apology locked in his throat. He'd done a bang-up job of almost costing himself this moment earlier; could still see the wild flicker of confusion chasing across Neji's eyes, like those clouds across the moon, before the pain standing in the Hyūga's gaze had frosted over into icy withdrawal. Shikamaru had expected distance. And a lot of grovelling mileage on his part. But the fact that Neji had thawed so fast, sought Shikamaru out at all, caused a stabbing pain deep behind the shadow-nin's ribs, cutting a little too hard and a little too left of his chest tonight.
Dangerous.
Stupid Dangerous.
Because that kind of pain became a flint stone against his sharp tongue – and Neji, the poor and unsuspecting bastard, had felt its cutting edge like a sword thrust. Exhausted, the Hyūga had been an easy target, because his emotional guard was down. A rare event in both their worlds. Shikamaru's forward-thinking brain slammed in reverse. Neji's emotional chainmail cracked off at his feet.
Yeah. And you went for him.
Took a spectacular kind of asshole to do something like that to someone like Neji. But in that blindingly stupid moment, Shikamaru hadn't grasped sense, much less anything else – like the look on Neji's face. All Shikamaru's sleep-deprived mind had grasped was three days, no word…while the Hokage circled the drain, comatose and fading…while ROOT came crawling out of the woodwork and sawdust hung like a shroud over Konoha's smashed bones as the village tried to rebuild…the tough calls getting tougher as Kakashi dodged the throne and Danzō rose to claim it and – three days, no word, Neji…where the hell are you? – Naruto slipping sideways on the blood Sasuke kept spilling a whole damned world away and—
Neji had walked in.
Safe.
Alive. Home. Bruised and bloody, but whole – the damage attesting to his three-day hold up. Damage Shikamaru had seen countless times before – but unlike all those times before…this time something had snapped inside him…stabbed inside him…and not in his head…
He'd lost his shit.
Lost it in front of Kakashi, and Genma, and Hinata…and if the walls really did have ears in that war-room then said shit had probably been lost in front of several ROOT members and a few ANBU operatives too.
Nice work, genius.
Neji might've appreciated the shadow-nin scraping his shit together just long enough for the Hyūga to get both feet through the door…or at least long enough for him to beat Shikamaru's tongue back into his stupid head.
Hn. There's the catch…
Because Shikamaru couldn't claim stupid. He didn't get dibs on the dense department. He'd never had the justification of base stupidity at his disposal…which left him empty-handed of any excuse – because there really wasn't one. Which continued to beg the question that no one, certainly not Neji, had chosen to ask him in that crash-and-burn moment – though Genma had come close.
What the hell is wrong with you, idiot?
The steady and forgiving breath at his nape chased down, skittering out into a rattled sigh along the tense junction where neck met shoulder. "Shikamaru…I didn't come here to fight…"
Crazy, how that voice could caress as tangibly as a touch…the smooth velvet of its texture roughened as much by the tiredness pulling through it as by the bruises Shikamaru knew were still ringing the proud pale throat. Shikamaru's chest tightened against another involuntary tic of 'Stupid Dangerous'.
Get a grip.
He'd seen a hell of a lot worse on Neji's body than bloodstains and bruises – he'd seen bone peeking through flesh; he'd seen dark red wet pumping between shaking fingers; he'd seen bloodless skin gone ashen, lips blue-grey and chest not risi—
He screwed his eyes shut against the memory.
Knock it off. Deal with it.
Wasn't like Shikamaru didn't know how to deal with it. It rated high on his list of Stupid Simple solutions. 'It' being the world his generation, like the generations before, had inherited. Shikamaru had hedged his bets on Naruto being the one to break the hand-me-down death cycle – provided the idiot didn't lose himself diving head-first into the void after Sasuke.
Not gonna happen.
Shikamaru was done spectating on the Uchiha matter, watching Sasuke run homicidal rings around Naruto's stubborn promise to bring him home. Painful – pitiful – to watch. Even harder to keep humouring the possibility.
Yeah, because it has a snowball's chance in hell at this point.
Hard truth. And the shadow-nin had benched that truth long enough. And for what? For Naruto to 'take one' – or ten, or twenty hits – for the broken team? Letting enemy ninja beat his stubborn head into a punch-drunk pulp because he'd sooner take Sasuke's punishment and bleed out on the ground than accept that—
Sasuke doesn't want to come home.
Time to step up to the plate. Naruto had gone enough rounds. It was Shikamaru's mistake to correct, given how phenomenally he'd failed Naruto during the retrieval mission years ago. The Uzumaki wouldn't listen to reason let alone basic common sense where Sasuke was concerned…and Shikamaru wished to hell he didn't understand such Dangerous Stupid thinking – feeling – as well as he did.
It's not personal…
Yeah. Now wasn't that a familiar line?
"Shikamaru?" Neji's teeth pinched lightly at his shoulder before the Hyūga's tongue laved over the skin in a molten swipe, terminating in the soft buss of a kiss that melted the tense muscle into a shiver. "Did you hear me?"
I hear you.
Swallowing hard against the stricture in his chest, Shikamaru tensed against the skin-raising sorcery of that talented mouth and sighed a quiet stream through his nose, working his throat. "I'm not likely to launch an attack in this position, Hyūga, even if I wanted to…which I really don't."
A pause. Then the feel of those full, smooth lips curving in a smile before they settled at the pulse point just beneath the shadow-nin's ear, a slick tongue teasing out to flick the cold silver stud embedded in the lobe. "Well, I can assure you, Nara…I'd most definitely have the advantage this time around."
There was no threat implicit in those words…
But there was a warning: I'm not taking any more shit tonight.
Shikamaru winced inwardly, the translation setting heavy in his gut – or maybe that was the guilt. Uncertain how to ease back into their usual intimacy after his spectacular fuck-up, Shikamaru stared out the window where the midnight sky glowed like an aperture to another world. A world where he hadn't acted like an asshole. A world where a deep baritone laugh and the swirl of cigarette smoke still existed. A world where their village wasn't being rebuilt from the ground up and Kakashi wasn't playing hot potato with the sovereignty granted to him. A world where friends didn't leave, and loss wasn't carved into headstones. A better world. An easier world. A world where moments like this weren't stolen.
I fucking wish.
And there it was again. That stupid feeling cutting into his chest. Small, but persistent, like a damned splinter inside him. With infinite caution, Neji's voice teased at the edges of that splinter, precise as any instrument created to extract it.
"Shikamaru…it's alright. Everyone's alright."
"Yeah. I know."
"We're alright."
Was there a question lurking in that statement?
Frowning, Shikamaru turned slightly and slanted his gaze across, one dark orb peering over his bare shoulder before flicking away. "I'm here. You're here. We're good."
"You're not here," Neji countered, though there was more caution than censure in his voice. "You're not here, and that's never good."
"Yeah. I got it. Don't go mindful zen on me."
"Then don't go back there."
There could've been any number of burning pages from the past few months. Only this time, in the chronicles of war, there meant Pein. There meant decimation and disaster ratcheting into outright doomsday. There meant hell-spawn summons from the bleeding pits while apocalypse planted itself at Konoha's unprepared doorstep. There meant red Akatsuki clouds as bloody as any Tailed-Beast's chakra – only redder, darker, because it had been so horrifically executed. Smashing through their lines of defence, just like Hidan and Kakuzu…only worse…because no badass bingo book or intelligence-gathering guesswork could've catalogued the outright ass-kicking they'd faced on Pein's day of ungodly reckoning.
I should've estimated the level of the threat after the last time…
The last time…
Asuma…
...a candle-flicker image in his mind.
Shikamaru swallowed roughly, shaking his head.
…even if I hadn't known exactly what it would look like, I should've known it'd be so much worse…cost so much more…I should've known…
Logically, an impossible ask. Way too tall an order for any genius no matter how many giants' shoulders that genius stood on. Because those giants had been blindsided too. Jiraiya, Shikamaru's own father, ANBU, ROOT, Kakashi, even Tsunade. Missing all those blaring signs well ahead of the final assault. Gaara's close call. Others who'd almost fallen – and those who had. The fatal bloody second Hidan's scythe had sawn into Asuma, severing his existence, and blowing a hole in Shikamaru's world as wide as any Shinra Tensei crater into the heart of the village…
"We do what we can with the information we have," his old man had told him. "That's all we can do. We can't know everything. And even what we know is always subject to change. That's war."
A chill flushed the heat from his skin and his right leg pounded with phantom pain – as if the plaster cast hadn't been removed several days ago.
Days ago…
It felt both so much closer and farther away than that. Time had taken on a messed-up quality in the aftermath, owing to the fact that he hadn't slept. Hadn't stopped.
Shit…has it really been days…?
He had only to close his eyes and it played out like a real-time showreel behind his tired lids. He'd see it all again in startling clarity – the grotesque and monstrous abominations straight out of an Aburame horror show; a mass of wriggling legs, orange mandibles yawning wide on Kurenai-sensei and her unborn child – Asuma's child – and the heart-stopping second of god not them.
Not anyone.
And not here.
Who the hell among them could've accurately predicted what was going to storm their gates? Other than Jiraiya, perhaps, in his final moments. And even then, no talking toads and cryptoanalysis codebreaking had given them a big enough head's-up for the whole "The real one is not among them" curtain toss on Pein's carnival of chaos.
Chaos.
Spirits ripped out of bodies. Tongues ripped out of heads. Explosions. Monsters. Executions. The ultimate detonation. Hinata's blood on cratered ground. Her body swatted like an insect by a titan's hand. And if Naruto hadn't turned that hand, unclenched its gnarled-up fist and convinced the fingers to move in seals that'd undo the damage, reverse the clock, return the dead, then…
Then what?
"Too close," he breathed, his voice a rasp against the sheets. "Too fucking close."
"Shikamaru."
A steel note of censure rang cold in the stark and barren room. Four walls alien and unadorned. Just a ninja-barrack matchbox with the bare necessities: bed, wooden chest, shelves, window. The Nara residence was crushed to rubble, the woods uprooted, the deer scattered. All of it undergoing restoration. Like the village. Like the people. Hope was a little harder to resurrect with their Hokage laid out in a coma and Danzō perched like a vulture on the vacant seat of power, pecking holes in Shikaku's arguments to instate Kakashi while the copy-nin did his damnedest to dodge the inheritance claim with his usual self-deprecating diplomacy.
No way ROOT can be allowed to come into power…
Shikamaru ran through the string of events on autopilot. Clipped thoughts, logical processes, distracting him from his guilt – and from the hair-raising gaze he could feel boring into his skull. Those Byakugan eyes were probably activated, scanning his vitals, seeing his heart throbbing a little too hard and fast…and for all the wrong reasons given how goddamned much he'd missed having the Hyūga this close to him.
"Shikamaru," Neji said again, the trace of his fingers grazing warm and life-affirming along the Nara's ribs. "How is this different?"
"What?"
"From anything else we've ever faced with this enemy. You suspected the worst-case scenario might be something along these lines. Extrapolated it. After Kakuzu and Hidan—"
"Don't. That was different."
"How was it different?"
It wasn't, essentially. But he was. That was the whole sharp and thorny point lodging itself into Shikamaru's hide. Or rather, his heart, given the splintering twinge insinuating itself ever deeper behind his ribs. Neji continued to trace those ribs, his voice moving smooth and easy into the grain of fragile quiet falling around them, motes of sawdust drifting hazy and slow in the moonlight.
"This isn't like you."
No shit.
Because Nara Shikamaru didn't spin his mental wheels in troublesome crap. It served no purpose other than to mess with his head and knock him off centre. The thud of his heart beat a little harder and his breath cut off for a second as he tried to toe his thoughts back over the central line Neji was attempting to draw. Using Stupid Simple logic wasn't difficult and Shikamaru ought to have been wielding it like a club. Compartmentalisation had always come easy to him…until it hadn't…and yeah, maybe he'd known Neji would detect the complete lack of professional assortment going on inside him even before his mouth had given him away.
Yeah…and not just in front of Neji…
Again, enter in 'Stupid Dangerous'.
For Neji.
For him.
For them and what they had.
And for everyone else too. Everyone else who needed him to keep squaring this theatre of war madness in his head. Unfortunately, the way Neji was touching him now, made it increasingly difficult to think. Neji knew where to touch to elicit more than affection, anger, or arousal.
He could elicit truth.
A precious commodity in Shikamaru's world of perpetual avoidance. Tonight, Neji touched with his usual accuracy. His fingers skimmed across Shikamaru's chest, right above his throbbing heart, causing the beat to falter, skip, jump-start.
It kept him out of his head.
Kept him way down low in his chest.
"I think I understand," Neji murmured – and for all the gentle acceptance those words held they still ricocheted around Shikamaru's brain like rigged kunai. "Why it's different even though it's all the same."
Shikamaru grit his teeth, the lean muscles in his face bunching hard beneath the mouth that skimmed his jaw, following the tense edge like lips along a blade – careful, light. A barely-there touch, soft as the voice that followed. "It happened here. Worse than anything before it. This time it hit too close to ho—"
"Close? You weren't even here, Neji. Don't fucking tell me what hit too close to home."
The silence rang – discordant and painfully sharp.
Shit.
Shikamaru wished his anger and his words back.
Instantly.
Desperately.
Neji remained very still behind him, his warm chest cooling to a granite wall against the Nara's spine. A beat later the mattress dipped. The bed creaked, announcing Neji's withdrawal as surely as the Hyūga peeling himself away. Flinching, Shikamaru cursed behind his teeth and whipped back a bandaged arm to grip Neji's nape, keeping his lover's head against his as the Hyūga froze in his attempt to slip away.
"Sorry," Shikamaru husked, fast and breathless into the silence – a regretful hitch in his chest. In his voice. "Neji," he paused, a brief squeeze of his fingers impressing the gravity of his apology. "Sorry," he said again, softer, slower – as soft and slow as the slip of his fingers up through the mocha strands, caressing the back of Neji's head. "You didn't deserve that. And you didn't deserve to get chewed out earlier. I wasn't thinking…even now…I was—I don't know what the hell I was…or why the hell I said it."
Neji said nothing.
Or at least, not with words.
A measured pause, and his palm came up to skim along the underside of Shikamaru's raised arm, following the long limb from bicep to elbow and down along the injured forearm until he tugged the Nara's hand away from the tangle of mocha strands.
Damn.
For one tense second, Shikamaru suspected Neji would simply drop his grip and extract himself. The Hyūga surprised him by bringing the shadow-nin's bruised knuckles to his lips – it was a tender and oddly affectionate thing to do in light of the attacks he'd taken today. A move both patient and merciful, given how deep Shikamaru's sharp tongue had cut – a lot closer to home for Neji than anything Shikamaru wanted to stop remembering…or feeling.
"Shit," Shikamaru breathed again, tugging his wrist free from the mercy of that mouth to scrub his hand across his face, guilt driving that splinter deeper. "I don't know what the hell's gotten into me."
"Hn…I can suggest something far more pleasurable if you'd prefer," the Hyūga offered.
Blinking back his surprise at the point-blank humour, Shikamaru smothered a chuckle against his palm, a rough throaty sound that strangled into a choked groan when the Hyūga's left hand coasted over his bare hip, gripping hard to tug the shadow-nin onto his back. Shikamaru relaxed into the movement, a lazy roll that left him sprawled out under the rising figure, his hands sliding up the marble thighs.
His skin prickled with awareness.
So did the air between them.
Every time…
Beneath the moonglow, Neji took on an unearthly countenance in the spectral light, shadows deepening his contours even as the blue-white strobe fired his opal eyes like two lunar spheres. Gazing up, Shikamaru remembered there were windows to other worlds standing in those eyes too, better than any glimpse out the aperture of this skeletal room into the star-freckled night beyond.
Who needed tomorrow?
He had tonight.
He had this.
Yeah. Until you don't.
Unbidden, unwanted, and again, so fucking unlike him. He didn't think like this. Sure, he'd always review worst-case scenarios to ascertain what to avoid in the future, and yeah, he future-tripped a hell of a lot – had to, being a strategist. But anxiety? Fearing the next dark bend in the road miles before he needed to think about it? Unless ordered to do so, that wasn't in his nature – avoidance cut anxiety off at the knees every time it tried to get a toehold.
So why not now? What the hell's wrong with me?
Frowning, Shikamaru pressed his eyes shut for a long second. Slid his mental fingers across that splinter lodged in his sternum and tried the 'yank it out' treatment rather than explore exactly when – and more importantly why – he'd sustained this emotional and mental injury. An injury far more troublesome than his broken leg had been. Avoidance aside, he could've identified what the emotion was – if he'd dared look closer at it, instead of trying to pluck it out or lay into Neji for his own inability to remove it in the first place.
Why and how had it driven so deep?
Because they hit us here. At home.
What Neji suggested made sense. But Shikamaru had accounted for that possibility. He'd had to. It's why they'd evacuated. It's why he'd sought out Kurenai immediately. But it wasn't as if there was only just the one mother and kid to protect, no matter how precious or personal that particular mother and child would always be to him.
Every child mattered.
Every King and Queen of the village bequeathed to him.
Every friend and family member.
Every resurrected soul that'd died in the miles-wide crater smashed into the epicentre of their home. Their haven. Their fucking heart. Shinobi were fair game outside their villages – and yeah, okay, even within them. Because sure, Konoha had faced threats on their own soil before. But nothing like what Pein had brought to their door; kicking it in and mowing down everything and everyone in his path, decimating every square inch of the goddamned village without relent or remorse and all Shikamaru could think at the time was—
We're losing…fuck, we're losing…and you're not here but at least you'll live…
Shikamaru jerked a little as that deeply buried truth swung up from its lockbox cage in his chest and cracked him in the temple, eyes widening upon impact.
Neji's fingers touched his throat, his jumping pulse. "Shikamaru?"
It took the shadow-nin a moment to respond. To register what he was feeling. Both now…and at the time he'd first felt it. Beneath the professionalism, beneath the panic.
"You weren't there, Neji," Shikamaru croaked again – but there was no anger in his voice this time. "You weren't there…and a part of me felt…" Felt. Felt. Felt.
"Angry?" Neji supplied into the silence.
No. Grateful.
Relieved.
And right behind that feeling came the guilt Shikamaru didn't even know he held inside him over harbouring something so utterly selfish and so perilously dangerous.
Shit. This isn't about the attack…
At least not Pein's attack.
In an instant, it all made Stupid Simple sense. The lack of compartmentalisation. The line between personal and professional blurring so hard it ran like bloody ink inside him.
It wasn't what he'd observed during the attack…
It was what he'd overheard during the aftermath…
A private moment he shouldn't have been privy to…
Hoarse voices and rough words and…
"Handle it, or I will. What you and I have comes at a cost in our world – and one of us will eventually pay it."
And. There. It. Fucking. Was.
The Stupid Dangerous splinter. Or rather, the rusty kunai Kakashi's words had driven into Shikamaru…deep into him. Even though the copy-nin hadn't been targeting Shikamaru when he'd lashed out with them. Hell, Kakashi probably had no idea anyone other than Genma had even heard them.
Or been hit by them.
Passing within accidental earshot of the Jōnins' argument, Shikamaru had been struck numb by the ricochet of those words, not processing their impact, or registering just how deep they'd hit, until he'd projected all his fear and slammed Neji with his delayed reaction three days later.
Three days later.
Fingers swept across his face.
Shikamaru's lashes slipped open, and his focus drifted up to centre on the eyes gazing down at him, his expression twisting a little. Neji cocked his head at the look, a slow-motion tilt that sent his tousled mane swishing over one broad shoulder, the ends tickling Shikamaru's chest.
He searched Shikamaru's face, waiting.
Shikamaru hesitated, searching in turn for the right words. One thing to explain what he'd overheard, another thing entirely to explain what he thought about it. Felt about it. And it wasn't even his wound to wear.
Shit. Genma.
If Shikamaru had been cut down by something not even directed at him – how the hell had Genma felt? How the hell had the Shiranui managed to stand in that war-room this afternoon, three days on from Kakashi's verbal hamstringing, with his hip cocked to the same lazy angle as the senbon slung at the corner of his mouth, giving away nothing behind a convincing demi-smile and a lidded gaze of cool bronze…which, Shikamaru belatedly recalled, hadn't strayed even a millimetre in Kakashi's direction. As for the copy-nin, Shikamaru had written off Kakashi's 'who pissed in my cereal' bad-mood as stress from his impending inauguration and not from—
"What you and I have comes at a cost in our world – and one of us will eventually pay it."
Cruel. Because Genma had already paid it. First Naoki. Now Kakashi. At the time, Shikamaru had been more shocked by the revelation of the relationship than by the words that'd revealed it. Shocked and saddened – because if Pein hadn't redacted his judge and jury death sentence, Kakashi would've been cold in the ground…one more lover for Genma to bury…one more loss chalked up to the lives they led…one more name scratched into the Memorial Stone…and thinking all this left Shikamaru feeling the unavoidable relatability and the fact that—
That it could be us.
Yeah. There it was alright. The ever-present splinter he tried so hard to ignore. Speared dead-centre along the thin red line between his head and his heart. He'd need to get clear on that line. Real damn clear. Both for his own sake and for Neji's. Identifying the problem didn't make it any easier to feel it, but it made it clear as fucking day in Shikamaru's mind what he needed to do about it. Which was to—
"Handle it."
No kidding. Kakashi might've played by some pretty hardass codes and hardline relationship rules, but Shikamaru wasn't about to lay that burden on Neji. This was his shit to figure out. Neji wasn't the one popping off at the mouth and running the risk of saying something as cutting as Kakashi had to Genma. Not that Shikamaru – brain-dead or not in the heat of a Hyūga-inspired moment – would have ever risked disclosing what they had.
Yeah? Well, Kakashi wasn't exactly aware that he and Genma had an audience…
Shikamaru wasn't sorry for that. Because however unintentional, overhearing those words three days ago would now save him some long and painful mileage on the road unfolding between him and Neji, with all its unpredicted twists and turns. He couldn't help his heart – he felt what he felt – but what he felt couldn't compromise what and who he needed to be in his head.
Even Neji appreciated that. Insisted upon it.
I need to get this right…
Because what Neji sure as shit wouldn't appreciate was any declarations of 'gratitude' or 'relief' on Shikamaru's part when it came to the Hyūga being absent during a fight. Neji wasn't likely to find it endearing or protective, even if he physically exhibited the same over-protective tendencies with his 'human-shield' antics and front-line manoeuvres.
Troublesome Hyūga.
Yeah, no. Neji would've found it downright offensive – both professionally and personally to be side-lined, no matter the sentiment; he prided himself on his aptitude as a ninja, serving as a closer-quarter shield to those he cared for…however batshit crazy that latter part drove Shikamaru when he was trying to keep his people from becoming sacrificial pieces…especially someone like Neji…someone who'd had more close calls with death on account of personal sacrifice than anyone Shikamaru knew.
Shikamaru hated it…
Hurt with it…
Hurt a hell of a lot harder than he ever remembered hurting before – and he remembered the first time – or rather, times. He'd buried those memories deep. Knew better than to look again into the yawning void of loss. Most ninja didn't. Is that what Kakashi was trying to impress? A realist point, rather than a cold punishment? Because the copy-nin wasn't wrong, even if his delivery was brutal.
But brutal was the game.
Brutal was their world.
Shikamaru didn't need to like it. But he did need to accept it.
"Handle it, or I will."
He'd handle it. Because his village needed him to – and so did Neji. While Kakashi's words had "hit home", Shikamaru didn't truly need those words or Genma's tragic past to illustrate the danger of such personal entanglements…he had Kurenai's unborn child and Asuma's headstone for that.
He needed to prepare for the possibility.
He'd been avoiding it for months.
Ever since Kusa.
Ever since…
"You said you'd kill for your village…but you'd die for me. And you did."
"Yes. I did. And it pains me that you call my reason to live my excuse to die. I wasn't thinking about dying, Shikamaru. I wasn't thinking at all. And, as you never fail to remind me, this thing we have…it isn't a 'thinking' thing."
No. It wasn't. But that didn't mean Shikamaru could avoid his head forever when it came to what they had. Because as with most things regarding Neji, there was only so far down the road of avoidance Shikamaru could run before the truth caught up with him. Kakashi, unwittingly, had caught him first, causing one hell of a turnabout. Shikamaru was never going to be ready to take that journey of loss – who the hell was ever ready for that? – but he'd still need to gear-up for the possibility, mentally and emotionally.
But I don't need to do that tonight.
And neither did Neji.
Which brought him back to the scrutiny of those white and watchful eyes. Gazing up, Shikamaru's expression slackened, the tension that'd gripped his brow melting away by degrees as he searched for something honest to explain his silence and his earlier actions. Something honest that wasn't the direct truth.
"You called it…" he eventually breathed. "This isn't like me. There's nothing wrong now that hasn't been wrong before. With every fight…with every loss…" He trailed off here, shook the rust from his voice, eyes dark and grave. "The kind of shit we come up against is never going to be alright…but I need to be. In my head…"
…because I can't be alright with this any place else.
Neji stared down at him, letting the words hang; both the words spoken, and the words left unsaid. What was said, was not a lie. It was the truth. It just wasn't the whole truth. If Neji suspected as much, he didn't let on – which pained Shikamaru more than anything the Hyūga might've pushed for, because it suggested Neji was either too tired to press him, or too trusting to question whether the shadow-nin was cutting corners.
Both, probably.
Concern pulled through Shikamaru's blood. Frowning, he reached up a hand and carded his fingers through the long strands hanging by his lover's face, eyeing the bruise which bloomed an angry shade along one high cheekbone. The shadow-nin shook his head in wordless apology, dropping both his gaze and his touch to the inky contusions circling like a ring of black pearls around Neji's throat.
"I'm not angry. Or if I am…it's sure as hell not with you."
Neji's lips twitched. Faint but significant, considering the length of his silence. Until eventually, by degrees, that smile warmed with the same affection as the look in those white eyes. Even the heat radiating from Neji's body climbed, easing away the cold that'd almost stolen in between them.
But he offered no words in response to the Nara's confessions.
He just gazed.
It should've been an easy silence. It usually always was between them. But Shikamaru felt the fear behind his ribs hitch higher. Cutting up from his chest right into his flexing throat. Maybe that's why Genma sucked on those crazy senbons and Asuma had needed his cigarettes…easier to take up smoke and steel, even a bottle of saké, than swallow the pain that came from fearing the price of…
What we have.
Yeah, he'd really need to 'handle it'.
Just not right now.
Right now, he was struggling just to hide it. A reflex swallow and he scoffed a self-derisive chuckle. "Troublesome Hyūga. Silent treatment, huh? Guess I deserve it."
"No." Neji leaned down, stroked their noses. "I'm listening to you. And I hear you, Shikamaru."
Shikamaru's eyes screwed shut on those words even as he pressed up onto his elbows and slanted his mouth beneath the Hyūga's parting lips. "Yeah? Well, I'm sick of hearing my own voice. What was that suggestion you put forward earlier?"
Neji hummed into the kiss, nudging their open mouths without deepening the contact. Maddening and controlled as ever. "When I said I didn't want to fight, I didn't mean I didn't want you to talk about whatever you—"
The shadow-nin hooked his heel at Neji's calf, tugged and rolled, bringing the Hyūga beneath him, tangling them up in sheets and dark strands. "I really don't wanna talk anymore, Neji."
Please, went unspoken.
Neji held his gaze, resolute and fixed – and while it would've been easier to imagine his white-eyed lover was just being a stubborn bastard, there was no mistaking the concern in Neji's eyes – and in the not-quite frown tugging at his marked brow.
Shikamaru forced a half-smile, brow quirking. "What? You gonna let me upend you this easily, Hyūga?"
Operation humour. Abort the tension. Distract and diffuse. Stupid Simple 101. Neji knew the tactic. Was well-versed enough in these routine drills to be capable of shutting them down with a look, much less a word. But that would've driven a wedge between them and killed the moment.
This moment.
Which was all they ever had. Shikamaru could never guarantee when or where he'd get the next one – or for how long. He'd never taken that for granted. Never let anything going on his head or heart steal that from him…
Yeah, until today.
Regret pooled inside him, congealed like ice in his gut. "Neji…I—"
"Accurate enough," Neji cut in, sparing Shikamaru the words, reading his discomfort. The Hyūga's long-fingered hands lifted to rest at Shikamaru's hips, thumbs circling gently, though the speculative glint turned stony in his opal eyes. "I let you upend me. Now. And earlier in the war-room."
Hello Hyūga pride.
Shikamaru could've laughed in relief. Honestly, it should've been reassuring. A face-saving show on Neji's part meant stable ground. Because this, right here, was Neji through and through. Headstrong and proud to the last…yet giving ground and granting miles with the simple fact that he no longer wore the headband when they were together…or the armour inside him.
Shikamaru's chest swelled.
Was it possible to miss someone this bad when you were with them?
The thought threatened a darker one.
Shikamaru's smile faltered, one palm settling atop Neji's unguarded chest, the other stroking down along the ridges of the Hyūga's flat stomach, a dark brow sketching upwards again as he fought with everything in him to hold onto his humour – but his gaze lacked the playful challenge he intended, uncertainty bleeding into his eyes…into his touch.
Trust Neji to catch it.
This time, Shikamaru tried to do the sparing.
"That's a lame counter, Hyūga," he prodded, tone light, eyes dark and luminous…his tone way off, even to his own ears.
The muscles in the Jōnin's stomach rippled into stillness, his entire body stiffening as he picked up on the mixed-up frequency the shadow-nin was emitting.
Damn it.
Neji read it off him. Read it all. And immediately changed track. The Hyūga's approach shifted without a word, and he delivered the moment with a single sound. Deep and resonant, it rumbled low in his throat – way sexier than a hum had any business being.
Shikamaru's smile stretched a little wider, hitting his eyes this time, chasing back the shadows gathering there. "Permission to 'let me' turn your suggestion around?"
Neji rolled his eyes.
And Shikamaru's laughter rolled in close behind, the low smoky sound smothered into mock-protest when Neji reached up one-handed to snag the back of Shikamaru's neck, pulling the shadow-nin down into a kiss that burned wet-hot, tongues stroking erotically slow. So slow Shikamaru's eyes flickered shut, sinking deeper into the singularity of this moment. Spirals of heat unravelling, one breath at a time.
Neji's palm pressed to his chest, urging him up.
Easing back, Shikamaru didn't expect Neji to follow, bringing them brow-to-brow as they knelt, knees digging into the flimsy mattress, angling for purchase. Neji reached first, one hand at Shikamaru's nape, fingers following up, up, up, until the hair-tie met its inevitable doom, pinging off somewhere across the room – bringing the sharp black shards of Shikamaru's hair falling down into the Hyūga's waiting fingers.
"You've made this a thing…" Shikamaru snorted, tilting his head back into the clawing touch, baring his throat for Neji's mouth, his own lips falling open upon contact, issuing a hoarse groan.
Again, the trilling hum, deep and quaking, running from Neji like music as it played along the chords of Shikamaru's neck. "You let me," the Hyūga purred.
While intended playfully, Shikamaru didn't miss the significance of those words, reminding him once again that while Neji would always stand on pride, he wouldn't stand on power – and he'd never stand on punishment.
Never again.
The give and take they'd created didn't allow for it. Not here. Not in these moments. What it did allow for, was the delicious anticipation of not knowing where one move started, stopped, or segued into the next – both of them moving instinctively to lead and follow. It made every time the first time, because neither of them knew who was leading who, or for how long that was likely to last, until the second they were together…just like this…
God, just like this…
"Neji…" Shikamaru's head went back, back, back, as Neji's mouth went down, down, down like a sinking sun, emblazoning chest and belly and thigh before engulfing him in burning wet flame.
Shikamaru's head dropped back and his hips lifted up, a slow and scorching roll.
Neji moved with him, over him, a living tide, withdrawing and coming in again, tongue rolling slick as sin, coiling and milking, lathering in breathy combers as his mouth pulled and lips dragged, the faintest scrape of teeth.
Sweat sheeted salty-hot across Shikamaru's skin…
Pleasure rolling low in his core, rising tidal-fast along his spine.
They'd been too long apart.
Fighting back the surge, his thighs locked, jaw cinched tight, the moonlight streaking blue-white across his closed lids, his vision misting from black to stars. Arching, his hands reached out, a blind drift until his fingers grazed that moving head, combed back through Neji's hair and fisted up the thick strands, not to control the motions, just to hold the hell on…
Ah, god…
Strong hands clamped at Shikamaru's hips and stroked around to the flexing glutes, kneaded hard, tugging Shikamaru deeper, deeper – the blunt head of his arousal scoring a sweet milky line along the roof of Neji's mouth before it struck soft and yielding throat. A satin convulsion as Neji swallowed around the sensitive glans, humming so low the purring vibrations rode the shadow-nin's thick and curving shaft in a wave that threatened to pull him so far out of his mind there'd be nothing but yes, yes, yes, and…
Neji…
"F-f…" Shikamaru's eyes flickered open and his chin dropped down, a shattered pant breaking from his throat. "Neji…you…"
White eyes flashed up, their virile heat burning in response, as all-consuming as that carnal mouth. Shikamaru could've come undone right then and there, his pulse quickening to a wild canter. But his grip on Neji's hair roped harder, reigning himself in, the tendons in his arms jumping and striping against his flushed skin.
"Stop," he mouthed.
Neji did. Wicked slow. Drawing it out. His lips and tongue and gently-grazing teeth pulling back across the length of swollen flesh until the pleasure bordered torture. While the threshold of Shikamaru's breaking point was by no means low – courtesy of his tantric-teasing lover – he'd been too long without this touch…and the pounding in his chest, in his blood, in the rock-hard heat of him, beat a painful rhythm for…
"You," he rasped.
Neji held their gazes, lips teasing along the leaking slit by his mouth. Shikamaru gazed back through his shuttering lashes; saw the hunger and the heat. The carnal deliberation dancing like white flames in Neji's lust-struck eyes.
A beat later, those eyes offered a slow affirming blink.
Shikamaru's heart tripped in his chest.
That single gesture from Neji spoke more, meant more, than anything the Hyūga might've said in response. And never mind words, because his mouth talked plenty without issuing a sound as he worked his way back up the stretch of Shikamaru's tightly chorded body, moving at the same leisurely pace as he'd descended; tasting, savouring, denied his spoils but not his sport.
"Neji…" Shikamaru groaned, teeth bared. "Move...little faster…tonight…"
It was taking everything to hold back. How Neji still managed to move with such easy grace and painstaking control after weeks of abstinence never ceased to amaze or aggravate…not that Shikamaru minded being assailed this way, all vestiges of his laidback aura burning away, leaving him virile and raw and aching to chase, catch, claim.
He drove forward just as Neji's mouth latched at his.
Sheets caught and twisted, spiralling into a starburst beneath the shift and slide of Neji's body, his musculature at once firm and fluid beneath Shikamaru's wandering hands. Feeling Neji this way, moon-licked skin glistening and pulling taut wherever Shikamaru touched him, kissed him, dared to sink his teeth in…
Neji's ragged moan shredded through the shadow-nin like claws.
Choking off a curse, Shikamaru rolled his shoulders back, swaying down along the undulating form to drag the flat of his tongue from navel to nipple, pinching the tight nub in a mock-bite that had Neji's hips lifting sharply into the Nara's hands.
Again, that wrecked sound from deep in Neji's throat.
"Give me more…" Shikamaru husked, his mouth coasting south, words riding against the firm and flexing ridges of Neji's stomach, voice tight with restraint. "When you let me hear you – feel you – like this…god…the things you make me want to do to you…"
Say to you…
Shikamaru hesitated, the barest skitter of his heartbeat before the slick nudge of burning-hard flesh against the hollow of his throat distracted him. The head of Neji's proud and jutting length seared a moist and silvery streak along his throat – like a blade drawing blood, cutting off his air. It killed his words as surely as any stroke of steel across his throat.
Shikamaru bent like a man at prayer and smoothed his lips along the proud shaft, tongue gliding over the sensitive flesh in rasping strokes, his fingers feathering down to caress the velvet sac below.
Neij clamped down on his next groan.
"Don't…" Shikamaru urged. "I wanna hear you."
Neji shifted and his hips tilted higher, solid thighs drawing up like marble walls, the mocha head pressing back into the sheets, muscles fluting with coiled strength. Built as much for ravenous pleasure as for raw power…and as much for losing control as for keeping it.
Lose it…lose it…
Damn, but he made Shikamaru work for it. Fine by him. It only threw oil on the flames, which brought out the shadows as well as the fire…and yeah, Shikamaru wasn't so far out his mind – close enough though – that he couldn't redirect some blood-flow to his brain.
At least long enough to use those shadows.
They came when summoned.
Ebon tendrils pooled and spread, slipped over skin and sheets and off the bed, one breaking off snake-like, moving like a black sidewinder over the dusty floorboards, meandering through Shikamaru's belongings until it located his ninja pouch and—
Almost terminated its mission when Neji reared up and flipped them.
The hell?
Thrown, Shikamaru's back hit the bed and Neji attacked his panting mouth before he could gather air enough to speak, taking control of the kiss with sudden feral dominance – not unwelcome, just unexpected.
Shikamaru's jutsu wavered…
But held…
Barely…
The shadow-tendril laboured in its mission to drag its prize back towards the bed…
Fuck…focus…focus…
No easy feat.
Shikamaru was struggling to coordinate, his concentration and chakra-command flying all over the goddamned place. He had to crane his neck to accommodate the sheer force of Neji's mouth moving over his, the wildness of the kiss fuelled by the moist friction of tongues thrusting together, over and over, in mimicry of sex. It was a unique kind of torture – not knowing from one minute to the next whether he wanted to give or take. A unique kind of pleasure too, knowing Neji felt the same way.
"I was here, damn you," Neji choked out suddenly – shockingly – the rough angry words at total odds with the tender-wild play of his mouth. "I saw…and I ran…for hours…I tried…god, I tried…and I felt…"
Wait…what?
Shikamaru's eyes flickered open on the heavy words, chin tipping down as his lust-whipped brain struggled to haul itself off the floor. "W-what?"
Neji's answer was to knife his fingers through choppy hair black strands, angling Shikamaru's head back to accommodate the next silencing thrust of tongue, a taste of punishment, but also…pain…
It shut the shadow-nin up, but it didn't shut him down…
The same couldn't be said for his jutsu.
The shadows cut out just as the kage-nui tendril dropped the ninja pouch onto the sheets, a black ribbon misting away. Shikamaru dug his elbows into the thin mattress, tearing his mouth away with an effort that pulled every muscle into a shudder. It didn't help that Neji bore down on him again almost instantly.
But the shadow-nin was ready this time.
Rather than push Neji back, Shikamaru pulled him in, fast and sharp, throwing the Hyūga's balance as Neji's knees slid forward and he made to plant his hands. Shikamaru didn't give him a chance. Snapping his hips, the shadow-nin arched high and bridged sideways, grabbing Neji's left wrist before the Hyūga could reach for the headboard to brace himself.
The world spun again.
A wheel of fire and slapping flesh.
Shikamaru came up on top, chest heaving like he'd just surfaced through water, hips grinding down as he lifted up to secure the mount advantage. Neji shot him a look too brief to be named, brows drawn low over his flashing eyes before Shikamaru splayed a palm against his chest and took him in hand with the other. Holding that gaze, Shikamaru stroked the rigid length in his palm with a corkscrew twist and was rewarded with a silken trickle from the weeping tip, warm pre-fluid slipping like cream through his fingers and along his knuckles, smearing his hand in white oil.
"You felt…?" Shikamaru panted out, the words staggered and rusty around the want eating into his voice. "You felt what?"
Neji's mouth tightened – against a moan or an answer, it was impossible to tell. Shikamaru's grip changed, alternated, quickened, and Neji's expression twisted and loosened, a concerted effort to control his reactions to the touches – or was it the question that'd preceded them?
I can read you too.
Acutely attuned to the frequency of Neji's pleasure – and his pain – Shikamaru slowed his pace, then stopped altogether, hands resting at the Jōnin's hips.
"Neji…" he urged.
Neji reached for his thigh and squeezed once. "You," the Hyūga sloughed out, a ghosting sound that Shikamaru only caught because he was reading those kiss-swollen lips as intently as the eyes that finally lifted to seek him, seize him, and pin him harder than the solid body beneath his own ever could.
"I tried," Neji said again, stroking his gaze over Shikamaru. "To get back…to the village…" and then, softer, "…and to you."
Life a knife through the heart.
"You weren't here."
Shikamaru's eyes widened a fraction before softening. Understanding filled him to the aching brim – along with everything he harboured for this white-eyed man…and the cold fear of what that might cost him.
"What you and I have comes at a cost in our world – and one of us will eventually pay it."
Swallowing thickly, Shikamaru cupped the side of the Jōnin's flexing throat. "Neji…I—"
Another squeeze to Shikamaru's thigh. His right thigh, the thigh attached to the troublesome leg that'd been broken at an ugly angle that day…that day when Neji was and wasn't there…because even though he hadn't been present in the flesh, he had seen…he had known.
Byakugan…
Of course. While Shikamaru had been relieved that the Hyūga was miles outta harm's way, Neji had been tearing muscles and burning through chakra hauling himself across those same miles with Team Gai, all in a desperate bid to get back, his far-seeing eyes relaying everything in real-time…
What the hell must that have looked like?
Felt like?
To see it all unfolding, powerless to do anything but run…run…run…not knowing if he'd make it in time. Shikamaru flinched at the realisation. At the reality. He knew a lot about running. Namely away from things. But he knew what it meant to run like hell towards what mattered most…and he knew the crucifying feeling that came when what mattered most was out of reach…
With Asuma…
And almost, too many times, with Neji…
But not now.
No. Neji was here. They both were. They'd made it. They'd survived. And Shikamaru reached to affirm it. Reached with both hands, pulling the Hyūga into a soft and searching kiss, expression torn with the same splintering emotion he'd felt earlier. Only rather than hide it, this time he suffused it into the kiss, into the slow glide of his hips. Let it cascade over every smouldering space where skin-met-skin, not dousing the flames so much as tempering their heat, banking his lust to a slow and tender burn. A burn that spread as Neji's palms slid up along his sides, fingers digging in as the stress and the emotion the Jōnin kept so closely guarded smoked from his lips like pent-up steam, searing from his lungs…
Neji shuddered into the kiss…
And into the slow grind of their bodies…
Shuddered in a way that showed he understood – as he always had, though neither of them had ever truly asked…or answered.
"Guess you gotta ask yourself, what the hell were you thinking chasing me down?"
"I don't think, remember? I do. Thinking is your area. So you tell me, Nara, what the hell were 'you' thinking chasing me down all those months ago?"
"Good question. But then, I asked it first."
"Indeed. You started it first. So, tell me. What's the answer?"
"I don't ever wanna know."
Only he always known. Just as he'd always avoided the fear – the cost – that lived in the shadow of his answer.
"Shikamaru…tell me you hea—"
"I know…I hear you…god, I hear you…"
Another steaming sigh and Shikamaru tasted it, pulled on it, breathed it in and breathed it back, pressing their chests flush together, pulling Neji closer, one hand curving around the back of that mocha head, fingers sliding down along the arched nape until he hit the sensitive vertebrate and…
Neji went electric.
And Shikamaru felt the chain-reaction like static beneath his hands. The alchemical shift. As arousing to witness as any primal act. An exquisite transmutation as all that tension and all that control holding in the Hyūga's tightly wrought frame turned from solid iron to liquid steel. One touch to that spot and Neji's muscles rolled like magma beneath the rippling surface of his sweat-slick skin, the rigidity melting out of him on a guttural exhalation.
It was a sweet release all its own.
And it touched and aroused Shikamaru to the point of physical pain.
"More…" Neji strained, his voice crushed to gasps and gravel.
"I know…I'll give you more."
And he did.
Only the shadows went ahead of him this time. Retrieving the lubricant from the discarded ninja-pouch…charting the path and easing the way, sliding over and into Neji's burning core, breaching the tight portal with languid black fingers, opening, stretching…
"Anh, Shikamaru…let me feel you…"
There was a hoarse note in Neji's voice that Shikamaru had never heard before. And it called to him as potently as the hands that reached, gripped, guided…until mouths melded and Shikamaru sank inch-by-torturous-inch into the hot crucible of Neji's body.
For the longest moment, Neji would not let him move.
Instead, the Hyūga gripped Shikamaru's flexing buttocks, fitting the shadow-nin to him as closely as possible, disallowing anything but the slowest rock and grind.
Shikamaru chuckled, a soft growl of lazy amusement, "I can do slow."
Smiling back, Neji kissed him so damn slow Shikamaru forgot how to breathe. It took Neji's palm gliding over the quivering muscles of his back and a leisurely roll of the Hyūga's hips to stroke a gasp from him.
"Breathe," Neji purred. "I'd prefer you conscious for this."
"Haha…ah…damn…"
"That's better…mmn…much better…gods…there…yes…yes…"
"Let me move and I'll give you more."
"Not yet."
"Troublesome, Hyūga."
Neji's lips curved in a devastating smile, his features hazed with pleasure so acute it took Shikamaru's breath all over again. "Every time, Nara."
"Every time," Shikamaru echoed back, his expression sobering, hips flexing and circling in the barest gyration that had Neji's eyes rolling back and his spine arching up.
Shikamaru continued the small but deep probing motions, close to the edge just from watching. Watching what played across those strong elegant features, always carved in such taut lines…now unravelling at the seams, one purring moan at a time.
Shikamaru couldn't pull his gaze away.
His burning lungs reminded him to breathe.
Sucking a breath, he shifted his lean hard body in a calculated sway, angling Neji's trapped length perfectly along the slick ridges of their stomachs, and began to surge in minute ripples, harder each time, revelling in the pleasure he gave as well as took.
"Every time…" Shikamaru sighed into Neji's open mouth.
Neji's eyes lost focus…
But his hands fastened, gripped, pulled, urged…until each deep and measured thrust drew them both closer…closer…
It hit like it always did.
Like Shikamaru hoped to god it always would.
Like it was the first time…
…don't ever let it be the last.
Neji kissed him at the edge and time ceased altogether as they cried out and fell; all notions of first and last and then and now falling away…falling far, far away…along with the world around them…every second…everything…
"Every time," the Hyūga whispered back…
…back…
back…
…back.
Give. Him. Back.
If gods listened, they didn't answer. But machines did. Answered in the remote and clinical way they had continued to answer for the past few days – or was it weeks? Like clockwork, they responded, whenever Nara Shikamaru woke from memories, dreams, or nightmares. The apparatuses greeted him; beeping, hissing, whirring, their steel and plastic frames steeped in semi-darkness, broken by the faintest glow of monitors and a shaded lamp at the far edges of his vision.
Hospital?
Room?
Cell?
He forgot and remembered all at the same time.
Where? What?
He strained, as he had before, to hear and see beyond, his vision ballooning like a fishbowl lens before shrinking to a kaleidoscopic pinprick. Pinprick…in his arm…at the junction of his elbow…he remembered…forgot…searched for more and found, again and again, only a suspended and unfathomable stillness. A stillness that held as stark and cold as the ANBU stag-mask pinned to the shadows beyond the medical cell.
For the longest minute, he thought he was hallucinating.
Gen…jutsu…?
No. Whatever it was, was in his veins.
Drugged…?
Yeah. That pinged briefly on his mental radar…before going dark. Dark. Was the room getting darker? Maddening. He couldn't get a conscious grip. But while his immediate surroundings dipped and darkened and his memories twisted together and warped apart, the ABU mask sat steady in his wobbling line of sight – the eyeholes fixed and staring.
Shikamaru stared back, his drugged mind struggling to focus. "Naoki?"
"No," came a voice; gravel and rust.
Shikamaru frowned, confused…then clear…his comprehension coming in waves.
No. Not Naoki. Of course, not Naoki. Naoki was gone.
Gone like…
"Every time."
Shikamaru sucked a breath and it hurt to do it. Something was wrong with his chest. His bones. His muscles. His skin. They were trying to fix his structure…but his foundation was broken…plastered over by the drugs. The chemicals numbed him right the way through. From burning head to broken heart – he couldn't process anything…but he wanted to.
Needed to.
He squinted, felt something catch and pull at his temples – electrodes? He flexed his fingers, felt the same tug at the backs of his hands – cannulas. But this wasn't a hospital – was it? He struggled. To think. To feel. Struggled to recall the clarity of his memories…because his waking mind held a darkness too vast and too void to look into…everything was lost…everything was…
"Shikamaru…"
Kind, sad eyes gazing down at him. Squinting through a film of tears and swollen lids…familiar eyes but older…so much older than Chōji's…purple streaks – not swirls – mark the wet fleshy cheeks…and grave dark lines…hard and carved…dig into brow and mouth and…
Chōza…
The Akimichi touches his arm, squeezes softly, and—
His skin raises in a shiver, a prickle of dim awareness as he finds a lunar cycle of white, white eyes…phasing in and out, in and out…the passage of pale Hyūga moons orbiting his nightly world, searching his shadows…but none of those moons are tinctured the exact shade of his eyes…nor do they possess his light…though one pair of Hyūga eyes glows a little brighter and burns a lot longer, the gaze pulled deep into the gravity of Shikamaru's darkening mind until a cool touch across his brow alerts him to the shocking tenderness of the gesture…and the aching heaviness of the voice that follows…
"Shikaku. I will not allow your child to die."
Hiashi…
There and gone. Like the voices. Extracts from redacted scripts. Imagined? Remembered? How long ago? It hits him in waves, random bits of debris the drugs wash up on the ruined shoreline of his mind…
"DAMMIT! I want to see him!" Naruto. Choked-up, angry. "LET ME THROUGH!"
Did he get through? Shikamaru can't remember. Doesn't have time to make his brain sweat over the barely-there memory because the next wave hits him with…
"She's lost so much already…not you too. Please. Not you too." The words fall like flowerheads at a grave he can't rise from. The scent is strong. Yamanaka flower shop. Sayuri. Ino's mother. "Not you too."
Ino. He wants to see her. Needs to be there to—
"Yet here you are. I'd say you were still masochistic, but I'd only be stating the obvious." Answered by a sore-throated snarl of, "Well you know what they say. Takes one to know one, asshole." Ibiki. Genma.
Then more.
Many more.
Waves upon waves of voices until one crested higher than the others…falling harder than them too…closer…nearer…recent?
"No more visitors, Hokage-sama." Nara Enchū. Elder. Clansman. "It is no longer safe. You know why." Shikamaru doesn't know why – feels he should – but he knows the voice that follows Enchū's words – and it isn't Tsunade.
"Bring in ANBU." Kakashi.
ANBU.
Shikamaru's mind steadied on the word. On the clarity of it. The immediacy of it. It eased the endless waves of voices into ripples…and then the ripples into silence…until all of it stopped…until all of it was…
Gone.
But the mask remained. White and unbroken. Cold ivory fixed on black, until, just like the shadows, the mask finally moved. A fractional tilt as the operative's face tipped towards him – the eyes behind the mask as glossy black and empty as the eyeholes carved to reveal them.
Awareness came…another wave…
And Shikamaru remembered what…
And where…
And why…
Mom.
Panic flared but the drugs swirled up to swallow it whole, a vortex of chemical lies sucking at his mind in a bid to pull him under, deaden his reactions and incapacitate him entirely – inside and out. He fought it. Tried to frame words, but his tongue cleaved to his mouth and his throat cramped as if unseen hands had closed around his neck, strangling out a hoarse rattle that might've been a plea…or a prayer…
"My…mother…?" he rasped.
Movement. Ghost-like as the disembodied mask floated forwards and the shadows resting cloak-like around the shrouded figure slipped off the hard and rangy body, revealing the tall and wiry frame beneath. ANBU clad. Skin silvered and roped by scars, the muscles beneath parred down to tight gristle and corded sinew.
Shikamaru did not know this man…
Until of course he did…
The memory surfaced like a bubble, filling with memory…
Kusa. Mission. Nara. Clansman. Kin.
…before it burst into black, leaving nothing behind but the ANBU's name.
Tsuno.
"My…mother…" Shikamaru mouthed, only vaguely aware that he was repeating himself, picking up where his addled brain had left off just seconds ago. "My…"
"Nara Yoshino is safe," Tsuno said, as sparing with his answer as with his movements, everything parsed down to the essential and most expedient. "Rest, Shikamaru. The next seals will be stronger. You must be too."
There was no comfort to be found in that. No hint of whatever the hell he'd done – "It is no longer safe. You know why." – and possibly to his own mother. No reassurance whatsoever and no deliverance from the straps and chains fastened around his body and whatever the beeping-flashing-whirring-fuck he was hooked up to…and yet…the weight of all that wrongness was nothing compared to the apathy hanging like a milestone around his sedated heart and sinking mind…
Why…?
To keep him from hurting? Not just himself, but others. He remembered. Forgot. Reversed back to…
"Nara Yoshino is safe."
It was hell…the hottest, darkest circle of hell, not being able to fully remember – or feel – anything about that. The chemicals in his system anaesthetised his emotions even as his skin registered the coldness of the tears that slipped from the far corners of his burning upswept eyes.
Some part of him knew.
The part they'd shut down.
Let me feel it…
He'd rather suffer the agony than remain in this hangman perdition. Suspended and floating in and out of time – like his memories. His normally sharp and honed mind dulled to a blunt edge, unable to cut through the drug-haze, much less whatever lies they'd told him about his 'condition'.
When? How?
The series of events leading up to his incarceration were sketchy and scrubbed out…at least on the mental and emotional front. He remembered the physical aspects – the onset of the chakra sickness. One of hundreds of cases. Nothing unique or unusual…until suddenly his condition was both…both, and so much worse…he remembered physical pain…but there was an acute dislocation of emotion and understanding…
Memory wipe?
He couldn't even feel his anger around that. And if he couldn't feel his anger, he couldn't feel his sadness…and if he couldn't feel his sadness…he couldn't grieve…couldn't ache, or miss, or remember…
No…god, no…
He'd been remembering before the sickness, hadn't he? He'd been grieving…hurting…intellectually, he recalled this…but he couldn't remembering feeling it…
Let me remember. Let me grieve.
This chilling disassociated nothingness was an all too familiar kind of wrong. Reminded him too much of his former Darkness. Kurayami. Maybe that's why ANBU was here. ANBU knew the nothingness. The darkness.
They lived in it.
Died in it.
No…fuck…please…let me out…let me feel…
He needed to feel. The crippling grief and all its wreckage. Not just for him – but for Ino.
She needed him.
And he needed to be there.
A cold hard reversal on who he'd been before. The runaway avoider. A fractured wreck once upon a former self. Not anymore. He didn't need alters to protect him from this pain. Didn't care how fucking bad it would hurt because anything less would leave them cheated. Them. His holy trinity in the ungodly hell of the grief denied to him. He'd sworn on their undying memories that he'd never abandon himself and fall into the numbing darkness ever again. Had sworn it on his knees at the three neat headstones. The three infinite wounds torn into his heart. Three bloody scars in the shape of his sensei…his father…and…
Something broke.
And something screamed.
But the scream wasn't human.
High and ultrasonic, the machines fastened to his body went haywire; blaring, wailing, competing in a chorus of electronic discord until something really fucking noisy began shrieking faster…louder…sharper…
STOP!
Everything cut out.
The lights, the power.
But not the failsafe. The world filled with blinding, burning light – purple-white and throbbing…tangible…even behind his clenched and searing eyelids…
Chakra…?
Not just any chakra.
Seals.
Flaring, waking…
This, he remembered.
Pain.
Shikamaru's mouth tore open on a wrecked scream. His body jerking in a violent, twisting rictus against the chains and restraints, every vein and sinew bulging taut as cable wire across his crawling skin…black, scrawling script spiralling across his flesh, symbols, sigils, seals. His nerves forked with lightning, a voltage of chakra that flash-burned his entire system into an abrupt and brutal shut-down even as the chakra glow expanded like a supernova set to burst…
A final angry glow.
And then darkness.
Abrupt, bottomless, and absolute.
Shikamaru collapsed back as if body-slammed through rusty nails and warped steel, heaving air in great shuddering streams until the soft beep, beep, beep of the heart monitor guided him back to—
"Breathe," Tsuno said with shocking practicality, his voice as neutral as his stare – not even a nuance of unease in his hoarse tones.
Because we've…done this…before…
Gods, how many times before?
How long had he been here?
Shikamaru worked his throat, croaking out into the chakra-singed air. "Let me…remember…"
"You have not forgotten."
What a crock of shit. Shikamaru could barely keep a train of thought, let alone get his brain to stop at any goddamned station.
Tsuno offered nothing more.
Maybe that was just as well. Shikamaru doubted he'd have heard a word. His ears felt oddly full. His hearing pulsing deaf and clear with a sudden skull-splitting headache. Blood-pressure. Dropping and rising…like everything else around him and inside him…
What the hell is happening to me?
For an untold time, shadows owned the room. And then a light winked on. Blinked twice into the black. A beat later, came the mechanical whoosh and sigh of drugs dispensing.
No…
Even if he had possessed the clarity of mind to protest, Shikamaru had no time to process any of it. A fresh chemical rush pumped through the catheter attached to the crook of his elbow and the world began to shrink and swell…warp and wobble…tuning in and out, in and out…
Light glowed…gentle this time…faint…and far…far away…
Wait…wait…
Somewhere in the distance, an amplified crackle sounded out…static and white noise. And out the corner of his rolling eyes, he thought he saw Tsuno's disfigured hand rise to touch something at his ear, drawing Shikamaru's fading gaze to the gap where the ANBU's ring finger used to be.
Used to be…gone…gone like…
The crackle came again…
A scratch and buzz, the dry leaf static of a radio mic. "Go for Morino."
"It must be now," Tsuno said, his voice a smoking world away. "I am here."
Here…
Right now, here was nowhere. And that sure as shit wasn't a place Shikamaru wanted to be. So, when the chemicals kicked in, he didn't kick back. Would've lost that battle, even if he'd tried.
"I tried…to get back…to the village…and to you."
The agony didn't come. Shikamaru clenched his eyes shut as for just one selfish second, he was glad he couldn't feel the pain of that memory.
I need to feel it…
And then he tried to. Really, truly, tried to. In his final seconds of awareness, Shikamaru turned his tear-washed eyes heavenward as he searched for the only anchor he knew…the fading square of the skylight window…
He searched for the moon…
For his memories of those lunar eyes…
Found a starless, empty night staring back…its darkness yawning wide and cold.
The moon was gone.
Neji…
And then so was he.
A/N: I don't know how this happened (well, I kind of do – though I sure as hell wouldn't advocate it)…but it did. Which brings me onto the future of Heaven Hold Us…a dear Anon over on Tumblr asked me about it and I've added an abridged answer to my profile page here on ffnet.
A/N 2: No idea who still rides the crazy BtB locomotive, but yours truly appreciates you so very much if you're still hopping on the ghost train whenever it crawls along! I figured I'd take a chance and gauge it. Your thoughts on the chapters/characters are always deeply appreciated by my hungry writer heart, which has been struggling to pump its vital creative lifeblood for months on end. This update took ages whereas once it flowed easy…which means the tank is empty, or at least running on the last fumes – maybe said fumes made me high enough to finish writing this! Crazy is as crazy does! I tried. 3
A/N 3: Questions? Hit me up on Tumblr under okamirayne and drop me an ASK, I'll do my best to answer! Feedback always welcomed and warmly appreciated. Thank you, always. 3