Valley of Remembrance

Summary: It takes Shikamaru three years. OneShot- Shikamaru Nara (Ino Yamanaka). Final part of the "Forest of Glass" trilogy.

Warning: Rated for angst and dark themes. Also, for language.

Set: Sequel to "Ocean of Shadows", final part of the Glass Trilogy.

Disclaimer: Standards apply.

On a personal note: this is for all the people who read the predecing two parts of this story, who dropped by to leave me a note and who encouraged me to write a sequel. I am very happy you liked it enough to stick with it until part three. This has gone beyond my expectations, both in length and in what I thought it would be, and I am very glad I was able to write it! Thank you.

It begins.

Or it ends.

In hindsight, Shikamaru never was sure of what it was exactly, beginning or end. As little as he could pinpoint the moment when everything started falling apart.

Or coming together.

The same old shit, repeated over and over again.

"Wolf, Stag."

Tenzou's introductions never were longer than necessary. The ANBU captain's mask was completely white, with no markings to give away his code name. Ghost was accurate enough, Wolf surmised.

Stag was smaller than him. His features were hidden by the ever-present mask, his body by the grey, ANBU-issued cloak. He cocked his head in greeting, an odd gesture. Wolf ignored him, just kept staring at Tenzou.

"I work better alone."

"You have your orders." The captain disappeared.

Wolf shrugged, deciding he did not care enough. His new partner would either request transition soon – or would be dead. "Let's go."

"Wait."

Wolf froze. Not because the voice, despite the hollowness rendered by the mask, was unmistakably female, but because –

Because that gesture had been familiar.

"What the flying fuck?"

"Language," Ino admonished him, as annoying as ever.

A stag. A fucking stag – no, a doe. Shikamaru laughed.

Shikamaru had learned to blend in with the shadows long, long ago.

It was easy. He controlled them, after all.

By all accounts, the Nara clan should have been a clan bred and trained for assassination missions. Being in control of someone's shadow meant possessing the ability to hurt that someone, to control someone else's movements entirely. Was there anything more convenient for an assassin than marks that could not escape? Killing from the shadows – with the shadows – was like leading lambs to the slaughter house. And yet, Shikamaru's clan always had bred strategists, never assassins. The reason was as clear as it was simple: killing always came with a price. It was a shadow mirror technique, after all, what good would it do to not only eliminate the target, but the operative, as well? So – strategy. Strategy was needed to sort out the possibilities, to direct the marks where they were supposed to be, and to fight them without losing one's own life. Of course there were tales of heroic Nara shinobi who had held off the enemy so their team mates could escape and who had died in action. But mostly, that was it. Not that it would have been known otherwise, had any especially suicidal member of the Nara family chosen to join ANBU before him: the identities of the operatives were one of the best-guarded secrets of Hidden Leaf.

And the fact remained: killing was easy.

The first mission was simple and went off just fine.

The second – well. Not so much, but who cared as long as they completed it?

The third was a mess, and then Stag refused to kill the mark's newborn and insisted on taking it to a monastery instead. Wolf was steaming when they arrived back in Leaf, he could not remember when he had been that angry the last time. Stag did not say anything, her obvious calm enraging him all the more. The captain seemed to be grinning behind his mask when they reported back; Wolf took his leave and went straight to a training ground.

The fourth mission was completed without him and Stag exchanging more than ten words.

The fifth mission – there was no better description for it than clusterfuck, he supposed.

Waking up was like wrenching himself out of a bear trap; its sharp, blood-hungry steel claws clinging to his waking self with all the viciousness they possessed. Chouji was next to the hospital bed, his eyes red with the lack of sleep, the bag of chips suspiciously absent.

"You slept for eighteen hours," he said, voice hoarse with exhaustion and something else that felt suspiciously like relief and which Shikamaru pointedly ignored.

"Where's-"

Chouji pointed at him and looked at the wall behind him, and only then he became aware of the warm body pressed into his side. Even asleep Ino looked worse than Chouji; white as a sheet, her expression drawn and exhausted.

"She's asleep," Chouji said. "Severe Chakra depletion. You'll both be fine."

There was no point telling Chouji that there was nothing like fine in the sense of the word for either him or Ino. But Chouji's smile, albeit tired, was one of the best things he had seen in a long time. So Shikamaru nodded, and laid back to listen to his old friend chatter about the weather, his team and other inconsequential things.

Ino was a warm presence next to him.

After that, he resigned himself to the fact that she was going nowhere.

Tenzou was right, as usual: they did work together flawlessly. Their past teamwork training, it seemed, payed off.

He hated the thought.

It had been a long time since he had spared enough time and energy for anything else beside his missions to truly and completely hate something.

Still, there was nobody else in ANBU who completed his special set of skills as perfectly as she did. Maybe, his inner voice whispered, that is because she is a Yamanaka, and she knows exactly what you think.

That he hated, too.

So either way, there he was, three years into ANBU duty, and Shikamaru was still alive.

Sometimes he wished he felt anything regarding that fact.

At one point, he stopped counting.

Did it matter, anyway? The number of missions they had run, the number of peoples they had killed in Konoha's name. The blood they had wiped from their blades, washed out of their cloaks. Their own injuries they had treated. ANBU were weapons, tools for the Konoha council and the Fire Shadow to use. The shadows in the night that kept the people of Leaf safe, the monsters that killed other monsters.

Ino counted, he was pretty sure. He could see it in the rigid tilt of her shoulders.

It was easy, working with her. Running missions with her. It was easy, relying on her: she knew what he intended to do, always had his back. She was near, but never close; keeping her distance from him in an unobtrusive way that relieved him. Something in the back of his memory insisted it had not always been this way but he could not muster enough energy to wonder whether it was better the way it was now or not; he preferred saving his worries for his work. Sometimes, he was almost stupidly glad for her presence; after some particularly harrowing missions the shadows seemed to suffocate him, refracting in the forest of crystalline trees he could still feel encasing him like a living beast. Ino's silence was calming, as long as he did not look at her.

Time passed.

Days. Weeks. Years.

He could have gone on like that forever, except, as usual, whenever Shikamaru got used to something – started to accept it, even – something else came around and laughed him in the face, and then proceeded to take apart his life piece by piece.

He had stopped counting, so he could not have said how long they had worked together by then. How many missions they had run. He could have asked mission control, he supposed – Konoha kept the records, even if they were mostly blackened out – but he did not care enough.

He should have.

He should have.

Everything came to an end, eventually.

It was an ordinary mission, nothing out of the usual.

Of course, it usually was the part that did not belong to the mission that caused trouble.

No missing nin, Stag signed, hands flashing in the darkness.

They were not, indeed. But these people clearly had been trained. And they were not randomly attacking two masked special operatives, but they were going after them – after Stag, specifically. He should have forced her to understand, that night two and a half years ago, that nothing good ever came from saving things.

Wolf dispatched his opponent with his blade and leaned against a tree, too weary to stand straight, while he observed the area. That was when the last one managed to sneak up on him, coming – ironically – straight from the shadows. A flash of steel – Wolf raised his hand, a kunai sliding into it immediately. The knife slid through flesh until it met bone in a jarring impact, but instead of jerking violently, the assailant went stock-still. Wolf stopped, momentarily confused, and looked into a set of wide, empty eyes. Blood-shot. The man's heart was still beating, but his face was completely devoid of any life –

Wolf pushed him away as far as possible and stood. The bloodied kunai dropped to the soft earth. With suddenly shaking fingers, he grasped his equally stained tanto and proceeded to wipe it clean with his cloak.

Stag made a disapproving noise, but did not say anything.

Without turning to look at her, Wolf gazed at his last attacker; he was on his back, his arm stretched out, his hand cramped around an exploding seal tag.

"What did you do?" His own voice sounded hollow in his ears.

"I could have let him kill you."

He surveyed the clearing again, instead: twelve of their attackers were lying in puddles of their own blood. Four more were caught in a genjutsu, staring blankly at the trees. The two Wolf had dispatched using his shadow binding were broken heaps below the trees, blue faces and swollen tongues testament to their death.

"Have you ever tried to control me?"

"What do you take me for?" Her voice was deceptively mild, slightly hollow through the mask. A blood-red doe gazed at him. Wolf knew a wolf was staring back at her, and yet she could read him better than anyone.

"Let's go."

Pushing aside his inner turmoil, he surveyed the scene one last time to make sure he had not missed anything. A quick earth-based jutsu buried the victims of his Kagemane, hiding the evidence of its use. The rest would remain. Not that he cared.

Stag did not move.

"Wolf."

He turned towards her, wanting nothing more than to get away. From her. "What-"

Realization stuck.

He was next to her within seconds, kneeling in the mud. The stench of blood assaulting his nostrils was her blood, and it was what was turning the forest ground into mud. Her hand was pressed to her side, blood seeping through her fingers.

"No vital organs, as far as I can tell," she pressed through her lips, and now, up close, he could see her chest heaving with the force of suppressed pain. "Staple it."

He forgot himself.

Despite everything, Shikamaru Nara forgot himself, for the first time in his life.

"Ino-"

"Stop talking."

The six-hour trip back to Leaf took them nine hours, and it was the longest time in his life. Sakura's eyes screamed bloody murder when he more carried than helped Ino into the hospital. He wondered what Inoichi would have had to say on the topic of Shikamaru almost getting his only daughter killed.

Then he remembered that their fathers were dead already.

"Where are you going?"

Naruto had long since learned to freeze like a rabbit when Sakura addressed him in that tone. Shikamaru kept walking. Maybe that was why Naruto was next in line for the succession of the Hokage, and Shikamaru was not. He tossed his answer back at her.

"Home."

"What about Ino?" Her voice would have cut glass.

"I thought it was better to keep her here. Your words."

"She almost died because of you. Your words." The edge became, impossible as it seemed, even more hurtful.

"So?"

"Are you really that stupid?"

"How so?"

Her face contorted at his unemotional question, and something in Sakura seemed to snap.

"You ignorant fool! How often has she been hurt since working with you? How come you mostly walk away without a scratch and she's in the hospital every second time? Can't you see what's going on here? She's protecting you, bastard, putting herself between the world and fucking Shikamaru Nara ever since you had the brilliant idea to become ANBU, she only joined because of you–"

Shikamaru froze.

Sakura caught herself, blanching. "Fuck. She's going to kill me." But the anger in her eyes did not fade the least. It was as if she was glad she had finally said it, no matter how much her friend would be furious with her. Hidden Leaf, Shikamaru reflected numbly, was full of people who cared too little, and full of those who cared too much.

"Forget it," Sakura said, her shoulders dropping, and marched back into the hospital, the sliding doors closed behind her quietly.

Shikamaru hated them.

There was the chain of evidence, laid out neatly before him:

Unmistakable, once he began to put together the pieces and follow them back to their origin, impossible to overlook. And yet he had been refusing to see it for the past years.

She only joined because of you.

Sakura's words, and yet it was as if he could hear Ino's voice say them, too, shape her lips around them, smile at him like nothing had happened. It all came back, slowly at first and then with breathtaking speed. It was the curse and the gift of a memory like his: there were no blank pages. No subterfuge. Also, no way to run and hide, no way to forget.

All those times she had put herself between him and their opponents: she had intended it like that all the way.

All those times –

"When I told you I would join ANBU," Shikamaru said, carefully forming each word and yet not looking at Chouji. "You told me to reconsider the decision."

"I did." Chouji had not changed. Maybe that was the only reason Shikamaru still was there: because here, at least, was someone who would always be the same, no matter what happened.

"You begged me not to do it."

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because I did not want to lose you."

The silence hung between them, heavy, suffocating. There was a blackbird, singing, somewhere in the crown of the Sakura trees.

"Did you…" Shikamaru tasted ashes. "Did you beg her not to go, too?"

Chouji's silence was answer enough.

He still saw the forest of glass, cold and empty.

But these days, it lived in Ino's eyes. It was barely hidden behind the ice-blue of her iris, invisible for those who did not know what to look for exactly. But Shikamaru knew, and he saw it: ice and glass, cold and majestic. Empty. It was beautiful, and terrifying.

He had not expected to ever see it mirrored in someone else.

Nothing lives in a forest made of glass, he thought, angrily. Nothing.

His knuckles smarted from where he had slammed them against the training ground poles again and again, cracked and bloody, and he angrily wrapped gauze around them without looking down.

Of course nothing could survive in a world made of ice.

"As long as Stag is out of commission, you will team up with Dragon."

"No."

The captain steepled his fingers, watching him through the bottomless slits of his unmarked mask.

"First, you refuse to partner with Yamanaka. Then you refuse any other partner than her. Is there anything I need to know?"

Wolf did not deign that suggestion with an answer.

"Well." The captain shrugged. "I guess it is good that you do not mind working with a mind bender, after what happened to you in the past. Report back tomorrow for a solo mission."

"To think that the great Shikamaru Nara would, one day, ask me for help."

Kakashi's drawl was so relaxed it would have fooled anyone, Shikamaru included, but he caught the sharp glance the Copy Nin shot in his direction.

"What makes you think there is something you don't know? A sudden flash of humility?"

Shikamaru painfully unclenched both his fists and his jaws.

"Because you're as messed-up as I am."

Another sharp glance, unveiled, accompanied by the same faux-innocent tone of his voice.

"I don't know about that, but they do say realization is the first step towards recovery, don't they."

"So can you?"

"Can I what?"

"Tell me."

Suddenly, the silver-haired man's eagle glance carried something that, very much and very hatefully, seemed to be pity.

"Are you sure?"

"They blackened it in my file, I can't remember it, nobody will talk to me. Tell me."

At once, the man's seriousness was again replaced with his usual bullshit attitude that had made everyone, probably including Hinata Hyuuga, the mildest person Shikamaru knew, want to kill him at least once in their lives.

"Well, once upon a time there was a little boy who lived in a little village…"

"You said you would never mess around in my head when you've already done it! You buried my memories!"

"I buried your memories? Are you kidding me? You chose to forget! And, while we are at it, hypocrite much? You accuse me of being able to control peoples' minds, while you control their bodies? Where is the difference, Shikamaru, tell me, where is the fucking difference?"

In the midst of the forest of glass, there it was, frozen in crystal.

Until the end, Shikamaru would never be able to say whether it had been there all the time, or whether it appeared there once he began searching for it. He watched the scene unfold, wordlessly, listened as the trees surrounding him echoed with his silent refusal to believe.

It happened all the time, really. Children wandered out and into the forest, and some returned, and some did not. Sometimes they encountered monsters, and sometimes wild animals. Sometimes they were six years old, innocent and naïve. Sometimes they were sixteen, broken and weary. Shikamaru watched, feeling nothing but the cold.

And then, the scene shifted, and –

He does not know the woman in front of him.

In fact, he does not know where he is, or what he is doing here. Or where here is. Carefully going through his options he decides that he does not know who he is, either, which means he must have lost a significant part of his memory. His mind works just fine, however, and a quick mental check of his limbs and other faculties leave him no doubt about his physical status. Still, something is wrong, fundamentally so, and it leaves a deep sense of unease boiling in the pit of his stomach. The people in white coats in front of him part and someone passes through, infinitely smaller than the others. The woman stops in front of him and just looks, her cornflower-blue eyes wide with something he cannot define. She looks like she wants to cry.

"Only you would fight a mind sealer, wouldn't you."

He is not aware of what this means, so he frowns.

The woman – or is she only a girl, she looks so young – bites her lip and then sighs. "I will have to have a look, okay? I'm sorry." She stretches out her hand and he freezes her in a Kagemane, her fingers just barely grazing his temples.

"Shikamaru," the girl/woman says, with a voice that carries anguish and apology and reproof and impatience like a cloak. But her face shows no hesitation, no fear despite the noose he has placed around her neck and that is caressing her throat like a lover.

He frowns, again. "Is that my name?"

Her lips move, but he does not hear what she says.

And then something touches his temples. Not her hand, nothing physical. The touch feels fundamentally wrong, unwanted, but he cannot see anything move so he cannot fight it. He tries to shake off the sensation but it slips from his grasp like water and distances itself. And he has no time for relief because it returns, the same, hated, soft touch, and then it buries itself under his skin like a hundred tiny, barbed hooks.

I'm so sorry, Ino whispers in his mind, and why does she sound like she is crying–

Shikamaru screams.

How many times had she saved him now?

Ino was awake when he crept into her hospital room, lying upright on her pillows, her eyes reflecting the light from the window. She seemed very small in the large bed. The thought hit him: she had been so lively, so loud, before, that he had never realized how small she actually was. But then, she had not been the Ino he had known from his childhood for a long, long time. When had it begun? Perhaps that same day that a rogue Yamanaka had sealed his mind and she had to invade it. And it had not been the only decision she had made with him in mind.

You gave up your life for me.

There was no way he could say it. No way he could tell her he knew. She probably knew he knew, anyway. There was no way he could simply accept it, either. What kind of gift was this? Ino had given up everything she might have dreamed of, just to follow him into ANBU. Where he had proceeded to almost get her killed more times than he could count. There was no way he could apologize for something like that.

There was no way he could simply accept it, except that he had no other choice. They had even taken that away from him.

Her lips formed his name.

Shikamaru hesitated for so long that her face fell, every emotion slipping from it like chalk being wiped from a slate. It made him move.

Away.

Her haunted eyes followed him into the darkening night, and something bloomed in his chest.

Guilt, most likely.

"Stag was already here, so save your breath," Tenzou said, already turning away. "I'm not breaking up one of my most effective teams just because you're going through midlife crisis, or whatever. Heck, I don't want to know. Get your act together."

Flawless.

Their partnership did not seem to have carried off any cracks and bumps; they still worked together like a well-oiled machine. They just… Well, they did not talk to each other much, Wolf suspected. But they ran the mission, and achieved the goal, and everything was fine –

"What were you thinking?!"

- or maybe not.

"What?" He asked back, in hindsight not particularly intelligently.

Stag came even closer, her eyes level with his chest but her wrath a force to be reckoned with. From behind the mask, her voice sounded horribly alien. Had it always been that way?

"That's not how it works, Wolf! Dammit!"

"What works?" In his defense, he really had no clue –

"You don't get to try to protect me all the way! Fuck! We're partners! It doesn't work like that!"

His first instinct was to protest, of course he had to – on second thought, belay that.

"You realize the hypocrisy in that statement, coming from you?"

She froze, her index finger still buried in his chest, and he went over his last words again. Closed his eyes, felt the body-warm porcelain press against his face like a second skin. He had been unable to say anything to her all those years before. Why was it easier to say such things to her when both of them wore their masks?

Realization, crystalline like the mute trees surrounding him, refracting the light of a cold sun into a thousand pieces.

Stag, not Ino.

Stag, not Ino.

Not the woman he had known as a child, not his team mate, not his best friend. Stag, his partner. Not Ino, the girl he had once –

I don't want you to take off your mask.

Ino, who had chosen the doe mask for one reason only: to remind him of where he came from, who he forever would be no matter how fast and how far he ran.

Which was why it was so much easier to talk to her when she was wearing it; why he was able to put everything aside and partner up with her. The mask hid the person she was and made her a different one entirely; he was able to work with Stag but not with Ino. He was able to talk to Stag but not to Ino –

She felt it, blasted mind-reader, thrice-cursed family, felt the thoughts that screamed through his mind. The way she froze told him more than anything else ever could have, while her face – her mask – betrayed nothing.

"Ino-"

"It's fine," she said, her voice the painfully unfamiliar echo through the mask's mouth piece. Hollow, dead. And worse. "I get it. I'll be leaving first."

She did.

It was ironic, he thought, that it was him of all of the Konoha Twelve that had ended up most like Kakashi: perpetually late, over-the-top lazy on the outside and completely screwed on the inside. Talking to a dead stone instead of talking to living people.

"I am an idiot."

Of course, the Cenotaph did not answer. How would it? It was as dead as he was on the inside.

It took him another week to actually talk to a living person; it had to be Chouji, of course, even though he felt distinctly shitty for it. He hated burdening his friend with his crap, but there was no other way.

He also got the feeling that his speech was slurring slightly.

"What is she protecting? There is nothing left of me."

"Idiot," Chouji said, softly and kindly. "She's been protecting your heart all this time now. She's not gonna leave, hasn't she proven it over and over again?"

"Everyone leaves."

Everyone dies alone.

"You know, I've never understood how such an intelligent person like you could be so fundamentally stupid."

For the second time in probably at least three years, Shikamaru threw his head back and laughed.

"Well done. I knew I could count on you getting your act together."

Nobody, Shikamaru reflected idly, was getting anything back together, but all the better if it seemed like they were. How strange, that they would still work together so effectively when it was her, this time, that did not look at him even once.

She was in the flower shop.

Of course.

Shikamaru could not say when he had seen her inside her family's small shop the last time. Still, almost his entire childhood memories of Ino revolved around it.

Ino.

Her sight was familiar, the way she cocked her head in thought; the way her shoulders relaxed when nobody was watching her. The way she had constructed her own mask, without porcelain and red color, invisible and yet hiding her own emotions in the same way his ANBU mask hid his memories. Realization flashed through him, hot and dizzying.

Ino.

She felt him. There was no way she could have seen him; her back was turned against the door. She stiffened, almost invisibly, but did not turn around.

"I am sorry," he said, without any preamble, without as much as a greeting. "Ino. I apologize."

She froze, momentarily, her hands stilling in the midst of work. It lasted seconds only, then she continued. Her voice was light.

"What is there to be sorry for?"

He could have listed a whole number of things, but his throat closed up. Everything inside him screamed in refusal to face the horrid memories once again. So he tried to fight it – she deserved it, deserved the effort to stare his greatest fears straight into the face – but he could not. Not yet.

Ino's fists curled up and then relaxed, curiously, and her entire posture seemed to relax with her. He needed a second to process – and understand – that she had accepted not only his words but his unspoken apology, as well. And, for the first time since he could remember, Shikamaru did not mind that she could sense his emotions. It was… It was strange. A feeling so alien he could not place it, something he had completely forgotten or refused to accept for himself, and feeling it now – it was pure relief.

"I –"

Something stabbed him in the back.

Sharply, repeatedly.

Cursing, Shikamaru whirled around and fixed his glare on an old lady who glared back just as threatening.

"Young man, some people would like to buy flowers here! Move aside if you are not buying anything, will you."

"Listen, Lady-"

Behind him, Ino burst into something that sounded both like laughter and tears. Shikamaru shot the old hag a withering glance, grabbed Ino by her hand and dragged her into the back of the shop.

She let him.

He plowed right through the back room – Ino's two assistants watched them leave with open mouths – and out into the backyard. The rain assaulted him full-font the second he stepped outside, soaking him within seconds; Shikamaru whirled around and pushed Ino gently back under the slanting roof. She let him, her face downcast.

"I am sorry," he said, again, helplessly. "There is so much I need to tell you. I've done stupid things, I've hurt you so badly, I know I have to apologize for so many things but I can't –"

In his hand, her fingers were warm and still. He had not realized he was holding on to her, but he could not make himself let go of her now, either.

A tremor ran through her figure, and then she looked up at him. The mixture of anger, worry, sorrow and relief in her eyes was staggering.

"It's alright."

"It's not." He dropped her hand and pressed his palms against his eyes, the darkness doing little to wipe away the fragile contours of her face. "I wasn't the only one hurting, but I was the only one who ran away. And, most of all, I shouldn't have blamed you for a rouge shinobi's actions."

Something fluttered against his temples, settled on his cheek like the ghost of a touch and was gone again. He more felt than saw her hand drop back to her side. Her touch was oddly distant, made him ache.

"You shouldn't have." Her blunt response was softened by her tone, but it still carried years of hurt. "But it's too late for regrets, now. You can't keep running forever, Shikamaru."

"I'm –"

Shikamaru shut up, because, he reasoned: however often he apologized, it would not change anything. Ino's eyes were vulnerable, both hard and soft at the same time. He understood, he really did: it was not easy to forgive; what he had done. But she was trying – had been for the past years. It was humbling: how little he deserved her empathy, how angry and hurt she was and yet how willing to absolve him of his mistakes. He closed his eyes again, feeling chill of the rainy night on his skin.

"You know," Ino said, softly, and the softness in her voice was so palpable he felt it crush the air from his lungs. "That forest you see in your head? It's just that – an illusion. Some people construct walls as mental shields. You built a forest."

His eyes opened wide; understanding, disbelief, relief and shame flooding him in equal measures.

"What?"

"The forest."

He knew what she meant. The trees reaching out to him, eerie and cold, the forest that stared at him from Ino's eyes -

Mirrors.

He drew in a shaking breath, painful and liberating, and dropped his head onto her shoulder. She smelled like summer, like flowers and honey and earth, and she did not move away.

The rain continued to fall.

The early morning sun barely touched the Cenotaph, lighting up the world.

Another thing that did not change, no matter the years.

"Look at what the flee-infested, stray cat dragged in," Kakashi drawled. "Congratulations, captain."

Nothing traveled faster than gossip in Konoha. Nevertheless, the fact that even this highly classified piece of information had already made it out already would have normally worried him – had it not come from Kakashi. The man was as slippery as a grease-coated eel and had his ears everywhere, but he understood the necessity of secrecy.

Shikamaru wanted to say Fuck off, but did not bother.

Tenzou had not looked like he regretted it when he had handed all the responsibilities as an ANBU captain over to him. In fact, his last words had been Good luck. It was a bit ironic and quite terrifying that the Fifth Fire Shadow had agreed to give him the post, after all the stunts he had pulled in the past. Apparently, Leaf liked its ANBU captains broken and with a liberal streak of insanity.

"Did they ever try to give you the post?"

Kakashi, for whatever reason caught by utter surprise for a second, looked truly horrified before his countenance returned. He grinned his usual, shit-eating grin, half-hidden by his mask.

"What do you think?"

Shikamaru thought that the man was probably the most intelligent man on earth, if he had managed to dodge all the responsibility that had most assuredly been thrown at him in the past by behaving like a complete and utter lunatic. It seemed he had not dodged hard enough, himself.

Troublesome.

Now it was him who would send out people to fight, kill and die. The blood on their hands would be on his hands.

Their blood would be on his hands.

It had never bothered him before, so why would it now?

That was not the problem, he figured. It was not the fact that he could not sentence people to die, because he could. He could analyze a report and decide how to proceed; he could objectively regard the consequences arising from an action and judge what had to be done. His mind traced the straightest path between all possible outcomes, calculated the risks, weighted the costs and drew the conclusions, and all of it was done in the name of one thing and one thing only: the safety and future of Hidden Leaf.

When had he started to care? He had been content enough carrying out the orders.

Something had changed. Somewhere along the way, Chouji had anchored him, Tsunade-Sama and Naruto had gained his loyalty, and Hinata, Kiba and Lee and the others had made him think that, perhaps, it was not too bad being surrounded by people once in a while. Kakashi had annoyed him enough to surface from his self-induced stupor. Kurenai's daughter, who always had painfully reminded him of Asuma, still looked like her father but her smile was so wide and so innocent he could not help but answer it with one of his own. Others, countless others, had done nothing special but had simply been there. And, through it all, Ino had been by his side; had taken his anger, his refusal and his silence and had given her loyalty and her trust in return. He still kept no count on how often she had put herself between him and some or other threat. It felt like it would be demeaning, putting a trivial number on something so immeasurably important. He also felt he would never be able to pay it back, but at the same time he knew she neither wanted him to nor expected it from him. It made him angry, and sad. But the cold hatred he had felt for such a long time, the terror he had carried with him for such a long time – it had gone. Did it make him more human, he wondered, that he could decide to not openly acknowledge her sacrifices? Did it make him more human that he could look at her and pray that she would never leave? And if it did, why was it that he could still put out an eradication mission and it barely made him lose a second of sleep?

The answer was easy, and shameful.

It doesn't bother me enough.

Shikamaru knew that he himself was hardly the sanest person in the world. Maybe that had been part of the reason why he had been chosen: in order to give out killing orders he needed to be detached, both from the victims as well as from the ones carrying out the order. It bothered him more than he would have thought; not the fact that he did not mind the killing but the fact that he did not mind, up to the moment when he hesitated in the midst of a killing blow.

The shadows came alive around him to protect him. At the same time the man gasped, blood running from his eyes and ears, and dropped: dead.

"If you could please keep your doubts for marks that really are innocent," Stag said, carefully cleaning her tanto. Her hands were shaking.

She hated killing people with her mind. And yet she did it to save him – had done it twice, now. Shikamaru was pretty sure her mental shield, to anyone trying to catch a glimpse at it, would look like a field of flowers. Still, there was nobody he knew who was stronger than her.

The only thing he counted, these days, were the years that had passed.

"Why?"

It was the closest he would probably ever get to demanding an answer, and even that tiny word had cost him days. Ino turned around, her face shifting from shadow to light as the moonlight flitted over it.

Her hair was open, tonight; fell over her shoulders in a curtain of silver. Shikamaru could not remember when he had ever seen her like that: out of ANBU gear, without any weapons, without the white-and-red doe mask. She looked like Ino, tonight, not like Stag. Only it was an older version of Ino; one he did not yet know. One that did not match his memories of a cheerful child and an annoying teenage girl. She was still the silent shadow she had been for such a long time now, but in her eyes there was a bone-deep calm that warmed him to the core.

"Why do I kill with my mind if I don't want to do it?" She smiled, slightly. "Why do you keep partnering up with me even though it scares you so much?"

"Those are two different questions."

She laughed, quietly, the sound lifting towards the black night sky. "So many things have changed, and yet the way you tackle problems will always remain the same." No anger, no accusation. "Some things are worth protecting, I think."

She stopped at the bridge to lean over the banister. Below, the river was a silver mirror for the moon, serene and silent.

"Chouji said that, too."

Ino smiled at the water below. "Chouji always was the cleverest of the three of us, wasn't he?"

He did not know what caused him to say the words. "I can protect myself."

She looked at him, so he could see the honesty in her eyes. "I know."

And yet – there she was. She trusted him – had proven if often enough – and yet. Because she did not only protect him from others – she also protected him from himself, had been doing it since the day he had walked into Tenzou's office and said the words that would form the rest of his life. Maybe even before that. Probably. The message, Shikamaru realized belatedly, had always been crystal clear:

I'm not losing you like this.

Something broken and jagged inside him expanded, little by little, painful but strangely relieving. He looked at Ino: the shadows on her face were alive, but they did not cast her into darkness. It was still Ino, with or without the doe mask, with or without the shadows. Ino, who had always been by his side, no matter what had come. The question formed on his lips, dropped into the silence like a stone into a calm lake.

"Will you always be there?"

She turned to look at him, her eyes catching the moonlight. Her gaze did not leave his. Determination, honesty and trust – all the things he had never dared to ask for and she yet had given him without asking for anything in return – were etched unshakably into the single word she uttered.

"Always."

Shikamaru lowered his head, dropped it onto her shoulder. Abruptly was reminded of a different night, cooler than this one but still full of her steady presence and her comforting scent of lavender and earth. Through the monochrome forest of glass, he could see a spec of color where a sky-blue cornflower tentatively stretched her crown heavenwards, so small and yet completely unafraid.

"Thank you."

It was not quite what he needed to say to her. But for now, it would be enough.