Chapter Text
Bodies lay all over the field, some groaning out their last breaths. Some still alive, but better off dead. Shikamaru’s stomach was flipping violently at the sight. The war had ended in the Shinobi Alliance’s favor, but so many were lost.
He swallowed back the bile filling his mouth as he approached a rather curious scene. Ino and Sakura were hunched over a body, tiredly pouring their healing chakra into it. Their bodies sagged but their eyes held a burning determination to save a life. Lee was there too, Shikamaru noticed, holding his breath as he stared over the two kunoichi.
“What’s going on?” The Nara said to the green clad ninja, but he just continued to stare with bated breath.
“They’re… They’re trying to stop the bleeding,” a low, feminine voice said behind him.
The man turned to see, “TenTen… What happened?” His brows furrowed as he looked down at possibly the only casualty of their class. And after all he had lost already in this war he stood to lose more. He flopped down to his knees a little way away from Neji’s head, watching with hard eyes.
“He saved N-Naruto and Hinata,” she said with a sniffle, she refused to cry right here on the battlefield.
Shikamaru didn’t reply, he just recalled a memory before the war, when Neji promised him he wouldn’t put Hinata’s life above his. He’d promised to see Shikamaru when this was all over. To hear he sacrificed himself cut the shadow ninja deep.
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He doesn’t know how long they waited there, him stroking Neji’s pale face, the rest watching closely as the two medical kunoichi worked. There were in a bubble of suspense, that was burst when Sakura and Ino fell back onto the bloodstained ground, grins on their dry lips.
The onlookers all let out a sigh of relief, but with Shikamaru’s came a rush of tears. He almost hated the man for leaving him, but now that was over.
“He’s stable,” Sakura mumbled out as her eyes slipped shut.