Forest of Glass

Summary: Shikamaru joins ANBU by accident. OneShot/Drabble- Nara Shikamaru.

Warning: Drabble-esque, angst.

Set: Story-unrelated.

Disclaimer: Standards apply.

Team Ten had that much in common, at least.

Chouji never had intended to become ANBU. Shikamaru had always known that. He could even remember the day they'd talked about it – well, talked, as in Chouji had talked and Shikamaru had listened – but his best friend's intentions had been clear. As far as Ino was concerned: Shikamaru supposed Ino had talked about what she dreamed of more than once, and had done so at length. But he had always practiced a certain sort of denial where his childhood friend was concerned. So he might have nodded and given wordless, short answers at her words, but he hadn't really listened to her. Either way, he was pretty sure the female third of Team Ten had by far a fancier, more glamorous future in mind than becoming a shadow assassin. And lastly, Shikamaru himself had never felt any draw towards joining the Konoha Special Forces, either. To his mind, ANBU were necessary but there also were many other ways to serve his village, and besides, there was a certain quiet dream of a wife and two kids and a peaceful life he'd had ever since the day he'd looked at his father and realized what loyalty meant. In short; none of the members of the current generation of Ino-Shika-Chou felt even the smallest inclination to join ANBU.

Of course it was Shikamaru who found himself wearing the white porcelain mask when he turned nineteen.

"I'm sending you to Iwa," Tsunade-Sama had said one day, almost absent-mindedly, her eyes scanning over the page in her hand. "I need someone to keep an eye on the developments there. The murder of the Fifth Tsuchikage…" Her lips thinned into a hair-fine line.

It's like Danzo all over again.

Shikamaru didn't know whether she only thought it, or whether he was projecting. Ino was rubbing off on him, and not in a good way.

The blond woman shook her head to clear her mind and straightened her shoulders. "The factions that still advocate war against Suna have been able to make themselves heard more and more clearly in public. I don't like it."

"Mission parameters?" Shikamaru asked.

Tsunade-Sama steepled her fingers. "You'll be my official delegate. You'll take a chuunin as your aide and a tokujo as your bodyguard." Shikamaru wanted to protest, but she cut him off with a quick gesture. "The three of you will be the smoke screen for an ANBU operative to infiltrate the rebels' camp. You'll return without him – it's a long-term mission."

Shikamaru finished his calculations ten seconds after she had finished the sentence, double-checked them and nodded his consent.

His A-rank mission turned into S-rank three weeks into their allotted time. The tokujo died painfully, his hand uselessly clawing at the kunai that had pierced his throat. Shikamaru shoved the chuunin away and snarled at him to go, now!, luckily, the guy recovered fast enough to grasp the situation and run. Someone had to take the information back to Leaf, after all. The ANBU's mask – blood-red lines now marred by actual, dried and caked blood whose sight made something deep inside Shikamaru twist – weighted down his pocket like the living embodiment of fate.

(Or sacrifice. He wasn't quite sure what it was called nowadays.)

The forest was unfamiliarly quiet, deathly still: not even a faint rustling of the leaves penetrated the suffocating silence wrapping around him. The trees seemed as if chiseled from stone, or glass. A frighteningly still, painfully beautiful and terrifyingly breakable world. Chouji's smile danced in front of his eyes. There are some things one just can't do. But Chouji wasn't here. And some things just had to be done. He was the only one who could, wasn't he? Didn't he have a duty towards his home? Asuma-Sensei had shown them often enough that loyalty was part of the shinobi path, and he had died for his loved ones and his village. The least Shikamaru could do was to follow his example. His father would understand, he was sure of it.

When he tried to imagine Ino's face, he failed.

Shikamaru shrugged out of his jounin vest and untied the Konoha hitai-ate from his right arm. If he'd been an Uchiha or Hyuuga, he'd have a clan symbol stitched into at least one of his clothing items. But Konoha's older clans were not as important – or, maybe, just less vain. A quick, small fire jutsu burned everything that could have identified him as a shinobi from Hidden Leaf to ashes in the matter of seconds. The flakes floated away on the wind, leaving nothing behind but a melted, blackened lump of metal and an aching emptiness he couldn't explain. Carefully, Shikamaru cleaned away the blood from the mask. A wolf's snarling face looked back at him, wild and beautiful. It wasn't the animal he would have chosen for himself, but that was just as well. Less to identify him by, he supposed. He shouldered the two short swords, sealed what remained of his provisions and weapons into a single scroll and slipped on the mask, securing it behind his head. Where it touched his face, the porcelain felt smooth and cool.

So many ways to take the life of a stranger, and so many more ways to give away one's own life.

Shikamaru returned from Iwagakure three months later, haunted, exhausted and bleeding profusely. He was treated in the hospital by Sakura who barely recognized him, and the flash of confusion as she compared his faceless mask to the name on her clipboard did not spark anything reaction in him. He was debriefed by the Hokage, guardedly watched by Kiba and Shino whose careful probing towards him was most visible in the way Akamaru kept whining and shifting, and then ordered to take some time off, again by Tsunade-Sama. He went back home and slept for thirty-six hours, met Chouji for a spar and a lunch, trained by himself for the rest of the evening and found himself unable to fall asleep. The next day, he went to see Tenzo.

The ANBU commander wore his mask like a second skin. In comparison to him, Kakashi had been an open book. He listened to Shikamaru – listened to his unsaid words, mostly – and nodded curtly, once.

Shikamaru kept the wolf as his code name and mask. He kind of liked the irony of it.

So no, there wasn't really a reason.

There wasn't an excuse, either. Shikamaru had figured out long ago that there were plenty of other ways to work for Hidden Leaf. He had also known he might not be the best choice for an ANBU operative. But he was intelligent, he was fast, and he was able to manipulate the shadows around him (though it was an ability he couldn't use often, staying anonymous was kind of difficult when he used a technique famous for Konoha's Nara clan, after all). Still, he couldn't say how often his hereditary abilities had saved his life during his time in Iwa. They continued to serve him. Nobody who found himself confronted with them survived to tell the tale. Sometimes he wondered what his ancestors would have to say to the way he had decided to use their precious family jutsu, but he never dwelled on it. He also didn't dwell on the question he could read in Chouji's eyes. His decision hadn't been planned, or even anticipated. Not in the way it had been sure Neji would join, or how it had been sure Chouji would step into his father's steps when it came to leading his clan. Nobody could have anticipated it, because he'd been lazy and easily bored and calm and dependable, and those qualities mostly made for a good, average mission desk shinobi. Of course, his brains made him a highly qualified strategist, as well, so most people had expected him to be either the former or the latter. Most people continued to believe that was what he worked as.

His mother didn't take it well.

Neither did Chouji, but Chouji, at least, didn't throw a tantrum in the middle of the street and refused to talk to him for three weeks straight. And his father just looked at him closely and then smiled, and told him he could still follow in his footsteps whenever he chose to.

Help me, the child whispered, and behind the cool, blood-red wolf mask he bit his lip hard enough to taste blood. Help, please. Tiny fingers grasped for him, trembling, and the person that had been Nara Shikamaru closed his eyes and turned away. The person he'd become kept his eyes open and watched, and the sound of shattering glass accompanied his dreams.

The shadows welcomed him back like he'd never been gone, and maybe that was part of his reason and part of his excuse.

Maybe it was that Shikamaru was tired of people questioning his decisions, of people drawing out his own future for him. He'd never realized how much their expectations of which path was before him had made him wish he could run into the opposite direction. At ANBU, nobody asked for his motives as long as he did what had to be done. Maybe he'd lost himself, those three months in the snowy, desolate wilderness of Iwagakure. Maybe it simply was impossible to shake off the burning focus he'd needed at that time. Maybe it was the resignation that blossomed in a man's face when he realized he was going to die that kept Shikamaru moving forward on his self-chosen path. Maybe it was the prospect of so many other children, so many other people, who were defenseless in the face of all the evil in the world. Maybe it was the fact that ANBU were excluded from clan succession. Maybe it was an excuse not to worry about diplomacy anymore, or a reason to never again have to think of the consequences of his actions. Maybe it was the fruitless attempt to blot out a pair of blue eyes he would still see in his dreams, a voice he would hear in the midst of a fight that would warn him, whisper to him and urge him on. Maybe it was nothing of it and everything. It worked, that was all that counted.

The sunlight refracted in the trees of glass surrounding him, beautiful and lethal. It reminded him of something (someone?) but he couldn't remember what.

Nara Shikamaru joined ANBU by accident.

Yamanaka Ino did so fully conscious of her choice. After all, someone had to keep an eye on Shikamaru.