Just something I saw a propmt for. Granted, I saw the prompt a while back, and saved it, then I saw it last night and before I knew it I was already typying.

This, of course, blatantly ignores the recent events of the manga (Because, honestly, who the hell knows what's happening in it anymore).

Hope you enjoy.

Where Oblivion May Live

He blinks and it's gone. Again. But this time he is absolutely sure he sees it, and he can stop lying awake late at night trying to catch things out of the corner of his eye, to stop paying attention when Chouji and Ino are talking to him because he's trying to hear something they cannot; he can stop making excuses every time he realizes a whole conversation has been lost between his teammates and himself. Most of all, he can just stop worrying he is losing his mind, because now he is sure what he saw is true.

Shikamaru stares, but the man just stands there like he didn't notice, like he just didn't feel —because he had had to feel it, how could he not?— that his body had changed its shape in some slight, but noticeable ways.

He knows about these things. His family has expertise—He himself is an expert in them. And yet, somehow, the hair is different. In the figure he sees, the shoulders are just slightly broader, sometimes, and others, much too small to coincide with the person who is a sensei to two of his friends. And how much do Sakura and Naruto know about the man, anyway?

There's changes in stature, in broadness, in hairstyles. Once, when he was thirteen, he was sure he had even seen a change in posture. There are simply too many mysteries in just one person, and he is really not the guy who digs into business that is not his own.

But this concerns him somehow, he feels. And so, when everyone has retired to their homes, Shikamaru walks up to that strange, cryptic creature, and stops in front of him, making him halt and ask if he needs something.

"Why… Sensei, why is your shadow not your own?"

Kakashi visibly falters and tenses all too quick, and Shikamaru can easily see the perplexed, almost wounded glance he takes at that obscure entity casted by a body that doesn't—that can't—belong to him.

There's a touch to a precious gift, covered with a headband that bears the symbol of the village them both—three?—sworn to protect.

And then the silver-haired enigma is gone.

Owari