Story: leave a light on when i'm gone

Summary: But with Shikamaru paying for my dinner and Ami holding my hand, I'm kind of this weird blend of content and satisfied, you know? Like, even without Spa Weekend Adventures, things are going to be some modicum of okay.

Notes: I was all ready to be like, Yes, finally, NOT AN AU, except this totally is, isn't it? Technically speaking it's a future fic, but it so is AU, even if it's masquerading as a future-fic. GAH.

GAAAAHHH.

Disclaimer: I actually . . . don't really like David Cook. Imagine that.

What do you say to a man who declares himself to be your soulmate? "I'm sorry, you appear to be suffering from a minor mental deficiency"? No, you smile as normally as you can and you back away very, v e r y slowly, and you hope he doesn't pull a kunai before you're at least two countries over.

That's just the way it works.

All right, to be fair, I've done a bit of soulmate-declaring myself, back in my day. But I was twelve. My concept of soulmate included chocolate hearts on Valentine's Day and hand-holding in the park. I thought soulmates existed so that women could go dutch with someone other than their mothers on the BOGO sushi platters at Tsubaki's. (Well, okay, that's kind of a lie, except it made sense when I was seven. Why else would only married women buy the BOGO with the yellowtail and the eel? Was there some sort of ban on single women getting their raw fish from Tsubaki's? But I digress.)

It's the kind of thing I'd expect from Lee, King of the Land of the Springtime of Youth, or maybe Gai if Kakashi slipped him something particularly mind-boggling in the midst of one of their rivalries. And yeah, Naruto, too, provided there was someone around to be impressed by such a declaration (I'm being cynical again, aren't I? I should stop).

Wanna know something sad? All three of those guys would totally declare Sakura their soulmate in about half a second. Even Gai, I bet, because when you get down to the bare bones of the deal, Sakura is sweet. Oh, she'll bash your head in if you even begin to utter something as patronizing as sweet in her presence, but you get the point, right? Sakura is nice, fluffy, soft, vaguely terrifying, and maybe she can't cook anything other than a pot of water for some really crappy tea, but who cares when she can do heart surgery with her pinkie?

Sakura was invented for the word soulmate.

I was invented for . . . one-night stands.

No, that's being a bit too self-pitying. How about crappy relationships?

Again, the self-pity parade is warming up in the back. It's just the classic case of the girl you take home to Mommie Dearest and the girl you have an invested interest in showing the stitching on your futon, if you get what I mean.

Under normal circumstances, this means I get to have all the fun and Sakura gets to have all the wailing angst and heartbreak and declarations of love accompanied by promises to, I don't know, save the world's population of puppies or something. Give me a choice between a bottle of sake and a bunch of sobbing puppies, and you know what I'm going to choose. Hot sex and no strings all the way, baby.

It's just—gah. Infuriating. You know? I'm not exactly a horrible person, either. I realize that Mr. Too Talented For My Shirt Chunin can't show me off to his Clan-Driven mother, but I'm not slinking around dark alleys with married men or anything. I've had reputable relationships. Ask Shikamaru. I complained to him about most of them.

Then again, maybe you shouldn't ask Shikamaru. I doubt he remembers the details of much of anything I tell him. Sure, he's a great friend, but the guy has the attention span of Tenten in a weapons gallery, and that's when he's not talking to troublesome women. I'm sure he remembers the shape of the cloud my head was obscuring while I ranted better than he remembers any of my boyfriends.

But that's fine, really. Who wants morally (and sexually) ambiguous teammates with bad fashion sense and crappy hairstyles when you can have a pair of solid individuals like Chouji and Shikamaru? They may not be made for hot sex, but they were made with shoulders for crying and arms for punching. They are my bitches.

But yeah, where was I? I was complaining, right? That's all I do, according to Shikamaru.

Ooh—soulmates.

So yeah, here I am, twenty-one years old, and there's this guy declaring that I, Yamanaka Ino, am his soulmate. This would probably be a lot sweeter/more romantic if I actually knew who the damn guy is.

"That's nice, sweetheart," I tell him, biting my lip and nodding. "Er, good to know. Thanks." I can see Shikamaru two feet behind him, and stupid Pineapple Head is groaning and rubbing his neck like I purposely staged this. Admittedly—staging a scene like this is something I would do, but I wouldn't do it on a day that I have Ami! What kind of mother figure does Shikamaru think I am? Besides, there isn't anyone around to appreciate it.

"Can I call you?" he wants to know.

"No, no, it's okay," I say hurriedly, grasping Ami's hand a little tighter and backing away so that my body is between her and Psycho Lover. "I'll call you."

"Oh," he says, looking disappointed. He's starting to look vaguely familiar. I wonder if he's the chunin secretary of that village council member who is always hanging around outside Ibiki's office, petitioning for a cease and desist on all torture committed by the Interrogation and Special Tactics teams.

What a schmuck. It's totally him.

"Yeah, okay, it's been fun," I say, and I turn on my heel and bail. Screw Shikamaru, if he wasn't worried about Ami/my safety enough to butt in, he deserves being left behind to deal with the Weepy Chunin Stalker. Hmm, perhaps WCS was turned on by my passionate defense of mind-reading as a valuable addition to a hidden village's special tactics roster? He wouldn't be the first.

Ami (unsurprisingly) drags me out of my mental gymnastics when it comes to the identity/motive of WCS. "Who was that?" she wants to know, with the completely right amount of derision. I'm sure Asuma-sensei, watching as he is from Heaven or wherever his chain-smoking ass got passed, is glad that his daughter is being taught the sacred art of Mocking Weepy Stalkers. Because Ami is one cute little girl, and she's so going to be the Sasuke-kun of her Academy class (only hopefully without all the groping from middle-aged women, because that's just scarring).

"That," I say, guiding her to the swing sets, "was a freak of nature." Ami nods sagely, like this makes sense. I wonder sometimes what Hinata teaches Ami when she gets her for her weekends. How to be nice and sweet and how to garden, right? And I bet Shino teaches her creepy shinobi sneaking tactics, and Kiba probably just lets her play with the puppies, and I know for a fact that Chouji and Shikamaru never teach her anything because she always stays with me for her weekends with them instead.

The reason why I'm wondering: if I'm Ami's only role model, she is so frigging screwed.

"Oh," she says. "I avoid them, right?"

"Like the plague, love," I agree. "If you ever, ever see a guy looking at you like that, you kick him in the shin and run in the other direction, all right? And scream really, really loudly."

"Like what?" she wants to know as I load her onto one of the swings. For a six year old, she is damn persistent. I blame her having to deal with Shikamaru all the time.

"You wanna know how to scream?" I ask her, raising an eyebrow. "I didn't think you needed help in that department."

"No," she says patiently—she probably learned that from dealing with Kiba—"like, look at me like how?"

"Like creepy," I say, confused as to where this discussion is going. Hello, the guy's creepy, you run away. How complicated is Ami planning on making this?

"Like,"—here Ami gives me a look I can only assume is meant to convey deep devotion and affection, except she has her eyes crossed and it makes her look like Asuma-sensei did when we would show up at his house at 5 in the morning for our 8 o'clock mission specs, and I really want to laugh, but I know better than that—"like that, Ino-san?"

"Er, sure," I say, prodding her so she turns around and I can push her properly. "Exactly like that, Ami. If it gives you a bad feeling in the bottom of your stomach, well, better kicked than molested, right?"

She nods like this means something to her.

"Thank you, Ino-san," she adds a few moments later. "For helping me. Now I'm extra-prepared for school, right?"

Aww, crap. Bless me and my unconditionally-loving heart, except damn it. Ever since Kurenai kicked it and left me and a bunch of other crazy teenagers (at the time) in charge of the Light of Her Life, we've all been living in this sort of mortal fear that we're going to irrevocably screw this kid up—all of us except for Hinata, but the girl was practically born to be a mother if you take her psycho family out of the equation—and so we've got this highly-evolved extra-sensory perception of Topics That Might Potentially Be Sticky.

And "being prepared for school" is one of those topics. Like, one of the big red-flagged ones.

Because Kurenai told Ami that one of the big parts of being a mom is getting your kid ready for school. Not just making them breakfast and tying their shoes and blunting their practice kunais, either, but, like, teaching them to share their toys with the other midgets and stuff like that. To the point now that Ami is convinced that being extra-prepared for school is just about the Meaning of Existence.

Yeah, I know, I know.

But when you leave your four-year-old kid to six teenagers, whatdya expect? We keep her clothed and fed and loved like a frigging bitch, but kids need stability, and we're just about the least stable individuals on the planet (here I'm counting Hinata as a single unit of Hinata + Psycho Clan). I'm probably the most stable—yeah, I know, cut your surprise before you choke on it—but that's just because Ibiki needs me here in Konoha more than Tsunade needs me out in the field.

What if that changes? Like I'm going to let the clan that almost sold Hinata to Cloud a couple years ago when she revealed her Grand Plan to Make Over the Hyuuga Family Dynamic take charge of an emotionally fragile child (which would so happen if Ami went to anybody in Team 8—end up in the hands of the Hyuugas, I mean. Either that or she would get eaten by, like, a super-bug or something with the Aburames).

And Shikamaru? Shikamaru? Don't make me freaking laugh, okay? The guy forgets to cut his own fingernails, for Kami's sake. Asking him to take care of Ami would be a recipe for disaster only rivaled by the Great Ramen Debacle that Sakura has forbidden anyone for discussing outside of the Rookie 9. And while Chouji would certainly love Ami, he could also quite possibly eat her.

I am not kidding. He has a collection of chocolate life-size dolls (gag gift once, don't ask). If he can eat those, he could eat Ami.

Or, he would just leave Ami to his parents, which is what I think everybody does except for me (but that's because I don't have any parents to leave her to, so it's basically just me and Mr. Ibiki the bonsai tree—again, gag gift, again, don't ask—and it's not like Mr. Ibiki is a capable baby-sitter), which in my opinion is kind of just as bad as mistaking her for a life-size chocolate doll and eating her. Kurenai left her in our care, not our parents'.

Meanwhile, as I'm basically contemplating the unadulterated amount of emotional crap the universe has put me/us through, Ami is poking me and going, "Right, right, right?" in this concerned tone of voice, which eventually I am clued into and immediately I feel guilty.

It's just: ignoring Ami? That's the worst crime there is. "Right," I tell her, and she's immediately appeased and I feel ten kinds of awful as we get back to swinging. I decide right then and there that I'm commandeering this weekend (it's Shikamaru's, so really, what plans am I interrupting? A little recreational Bailing on the Bill and maybe a few hours of Lazy-Ass Napping?) and am going to take Ami on a Whirlwind Spa Weekend Adventure.

Then again, while I certainly liked going to spas with my mom on the weekend when I was six, Ami isn't really me (which she proved by refusing to wear dresses once she turned five, not even this really, really cute little yellow yukata that Sakura and I had made, embroidered with little white sakura flowers and everything, for her birthday) and so maybe the spa weekend is out.

As I'm thinking this, Shikamaru appears over the hill, looking murderous (for him, which really means vaguely irritated for any normal person). "Oi, Ino!" he calls down at Ami and me, and Ami looks up and cries out his name like she didn't just see him ten seconds ago. See, this is (one of) my (many) problem(s). Ami loves me, yeah, but she loves Shikamaru, too, and is constantly demanding that I move back in with him like I was for a few months when she first came to live with me.

The complexities of rent and other human relationships are apparently not appreciated by six-year-olds. Ami actually went through a period of actively trying to get me evicted from my building. Thank god my landlord has such a great sense of humor/willingness to be bribed, otherwise Shikamaru might have ended up with my fat ass parked on his couch again. And he would deserve it, the slob.

Ami throws herself off the swing and barrels towards Shikamaru, who stops looking irked—ah-ha! I knew the bastard was faking it—long enough to catch her as she plows into his stomach. They look kind of annoyingly adorable, which I absorb for a few seconds before moving in to detach Ami's octopus-arms from around Shikamaru's left leg. He looks like he really, really wants a cigarette, so I purposely loiter because I know he won't light up around Ami. He's obsessive about her lungs, even if he willfully plugs at his cancer sticks while the rest of us are around.

"Can we get sushi?" Ami wants to know.

"No," says Shikamaru.

"Why not?" asks Ami, folding her hands behind her back and peering at Shikamaru from underneath her bangs. "Ino-san, why not?"

"I didn't say no," I say.

"Cool beans!" she cries, which is the weirdest phrase in officially ever, but yeah, whatever makes the kid happy.

"Come on, slouch-pouch," I say to Shikamaru, poking him in the shoulder. "You're paying."

"Tch," he mumbles, so I hook my thumb in one of the many handy loops and buckles on his jounin vest—yes, I am incredibly talented when it comes to manipulating a jounin vest, but that's a story for another time and definitely a non-PG audience, if you know what I mean—and drag him along. And without a hint of super-strength, either.

"If you even think about bailing," I threaten him cheerfully, "Ibiki's been after me to practice locating the twelve most painful spots on the human body: namely, where to put fingernails." Shikamaru isn't really impressed by this threat, but he's still (sort of) walking, and (kind of) listening to Ami as she chatters about her recent adventures with the other kids at the psychotically cheap day-care center that technically speaking the village's foster care system pays for her to attend, so it's a win-win and I don't push it.

And yeah, I'm not the type of girl who has a soulmate, and I don't have one despite that (WSC so doesn't count, don't go there) and I've got a kid who isn't mine and a test on the human nervous system next week that I haven't even glanced at the scrolls for yet, let alone done anything even vaguely resembling studying for, but with Shikamaru paying for my dinner and Ami holding my hand, I'm kind of this weird blend of content and satisfied, you know?

Like, even without Spa Weekend Adventures, things are going to be some modicum of okay.

One day, I will write a Naruto fic that isn't AU. One. Day.

Broken record? What is this broken record of which you speak?