Disclaimer: I do not own the Naruto verse.

Ashes Burn

They call him lazy. (He disagrees.)

He's not lazy –though that's not to say he wasn't. He was, was lazy and bratty and unwilling to consider things like death and losing people because it was easier. With a brain like his, sometimes he just had to ignore the truth in order to remain sane. (It plagued him.)

He's not lazy any more though. (How could he be now?) He actually had a period, soon after everything changed, where he did nothing but train and train and strategise and train some more –because he had made a promise and he might have not been able to keep it so far but it didn't mean he would fail in keeping it at all. He trained himself raw and he strategized until he had accounted for far too many things and his brain ached. He pushed and pushed and pushed, shoved the universe out of his way because of a promise. He promised. He avenged. (The push had been done.)

The universe shoved right back.

Shikamaru isn't lazy. He's tired.

It's bone deep. He wakes up and he is tired. He dresses and he is tired. He eats and he is tired. It dogs his steps, because Shikamaru cannot allow himself to forget. (Kurenai and little Akira-chan, with a smile so bright it feels like its light can never be snuffed out.) There are reminders of him everywhere he goes, in the way he holds his cigarettes and plays shogi and throws his kunai, and Ino and Choji never really speak of him. For all they were Team Ten, Shikamaru was always a little more Asuma's than the other two. (He was Asuma's friend, where Ino and Choji were his children to love and nurture and protect.)

He's tired. Shikamaru sits back and watches the clouds roll by.

The Immortals are dead. Shikamaru no longer has the strength to keep pushing the universe out of his way. (His hands shake when he lights a cigarette. Ino adverts her eyes and Choji tries not to cry.)

It's coming back reeling, stronger and fiercer for all Shikamaru pushed it away. It's like the sun is far out of reach and there's no sky to behold. It's like the clouds have chocked up the world and there's death on his tongue.

The burn of ashes on his hand wake him. Shikamaru didn't realise he had fallen asleep. Grief, his mother calls it. Shikamaru tries not to think of it. (He doesn't believe in grief. Grief, he thinks, is self-indulgent and useless. Shikamaru failed and now he has a promise to keep. To Asuma and to himself.)

Shikamaru feels like he's drowning. His lungs are painful and there's smoke in his airways. His nails are stained yellow and he wonders if he'll ever have his mother's white smile. (His father has sake. Shikamaru never asked.) It's hard. He's not lazy any more. Lazy killed and killed and ripped apart. Shikamaru isn't lazy.

He's tired. He's tired and he wishes he could just go to sleep.

(But he has a promise, a promise to himself and to Asuma and to the universe. Shikamaru made a promise, and if there is one thing Shikamaru will hold himself to; it's that promise.)