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Kagemane was a lot like tug-of-war, his father had told him once. The less experienced you are with it, the easier it is for the other person to overpower you, no matter how much chakra you poured into it. The more experienced you become, the more used to the ebb and flow, the easier it is for you to overpower your opponent. To control one’s shadow was to control the after-image, the puppet, rather than the strings. The strings would fight, they would try to move as they saw fit, but the experienced puppeteer can make an after-image move the strings.
But experience can’t prepare anyone to try and hold the juubi. Shikamaru pours his chakra into his shadow, pooling beneath his feet before it connects with the juubi’s; a tiny, frail rope of chakra connecting him to the great chakra monster. It felt like he was grabbing an electrical line with both hands, it felt like he was holding back the ocean—an angry force of nature, roaring and screaming for release. Shikamaru tugs. He feels the blood drain from his face, feels his arms shake from the force of it—he barely hears one of his clansmen shouting behind him, each of them rising to join him in holding the juubi for Ino.
All at once, the monster stops fighting. Ino sloughs to the ground, her body falling heavily against his own. Shikamaru feels his own arms drop, his whole body suddenly ten times heavier than it was before, his head pounding in-time with his heartbeat. He drops like a stone, falling to his knees on the sharp, upturned rock beneath his feet, barely able to catch himself before he fell face-first to the ground. His arms burn from the effort.
Shikamaru shivers, queasy and drenched in sweat, his muscles burning. He tries to sit back on his heels, swallowing against the bitter taste of bile gathering at the back of his throat. The world spins. The juubi melts into a mess of browns and reds, the world drops out from beneath him and Ino disappears from his shoulder. Shikamaru leans forward on his hands, coughing and retching, gasping for air between unsuccessful heaves until something finally came up.
Shikamaru gasps as the world goes dark around the edges. He wobbles, desperately trying to keep himself from falling into his puddle of vomit.
Just my fucking luck. My old man dies, then the juubi sucks me dry and I die in a puddle of my own vomit. What a fucking—
Shikamaru does not, in fact, end up face-first in his own vomit. There's a smudge of blonde on one shoulder and a smudge of brown on the other. Ino was holding onto him, Kiba too. When he forces his eyes to focus, he could see Kiba was covered in scrapes and Ino looked worse for wear, sweat glistening on her forehead from the force required to capture the juubi with shintenshin.
“Gods, he’s exhausted—” It sounded like Ino was speaking. “I could probably...”
Shikamaru forces his eyes to focus again, willing the swirls of color back into definite shapes before him. He was staring at the ground, at a puddle of what used to be his improvised lunch, and his hands scraping against the rock. The most noticable thing, however, was his distinct lack of a chakra cloak. He had used up all of the chakra Naruto gave him.
“Can you do something like a chakra transplant? I have more than you—” that was Kiba.
You can’t just give me your chakra, you idiot, we might not have compatible signatures. You could kill me... Still, a tiny voice in the back of Shikamaru’s mind tells him to be grateful Kiba was willing to sacrifice a bit of his own limited chakra to get him back on his feet.
“My chakra is compatible with his.” Ino says, insistent. She guides Shikamaru to lay his head against her shoulder, his sweaty forehead resting against her warm neck.
“Yeah, but you’re pretty low...” Kiba trails off for a second, before asking; “hey, is the puking normal? I’ve never done that when I’ve had chakra exhaustion.”
Probably not, Shikamaru thinks to himself.
Everyone was different, but chakra exhaustion aimed to do one thing—conserve what was left of the body’s chakra, and recoop more. Invariably, anyone afflicted would find themselves tired and, after a period of rest, voraciously hungry. Shikamaru found he could eat almost as much as Choji in the aftermath of a particularly taxing mission. He’s never thrown up from chakra exhaustion before.
Now, however, the thought of food was the furthest thing from his mind. The queasy feeling from before washes over him again and he finds himself burying his face into Ino’s shoulder, desperate to escape the smell of sulfur and his own sick. She had been wearing this noxious perfume two days ago, but the battle had worn it away. He couldn’t even catch a whiff of it now.
A hand glides up and down his back, rubbing circles between his shoulder blades. Shikamaru can’t tell if it’s Kiba or Ino.
“No,” Ino says, “puking isn’t a normal symptom of chakra exhaustion. I think it was from the strain.”
“Fuck—” he can hear Kiba say a few more choice words under his breath, “what are we gonna do? He can’t stay on the battlefield like this.”
“I know, we’re going to have to move him, but I don’t know wh—”
“Mm okay—” Shikamaru pushes a hand against Ino’s other shoulder, trying to maneuver himself into an unsupported sitting position. He manages to push himself off of her, but the world swims, colors blurring together once more. He feels the ground move beneath him and his guts twisted. He falls backward, only to be caught by Kiba.
“You’re really not—” his friend mumbles as he twists around to spit. Kiba turns him over onto his side just as he starts dry heaving. “Fuck. Shit—”
“We could shunshin—” Ino suggests. “You could shunshin.”
“What about you?” Kiba asks, absentmindedly patting Shikamaru on the back like he was a baby that needed to be soothed.
“I’ll stay here, I’ll be fine,” Ino says.
His dad died to pass his last plan onto Shikamaru and now his friends were plotted to remove him from the battlefield. Worse, they were going to take him away and leave Ino-Shika-Cho down a man. He knows he’s a liability right now, he knows, and yet—
His dad died. His dad died on his feet, playing his role until the end. His dad died passing him the torch, so he could do his job when he was gone. If Shikamaru were to die on the battlefield doing what his dad trusted him to do, then so be it.
“No—” he groans, throat burning and raw from stomach acid. “No, I’m staying, I’m not—I can—”
Gods, he’s going to puke again.
Everything around him is a blur. The battlefield, the juubi—even his friends were smudges against the solid black of the sky, Ino was a mass of blonde and Kiba a mass of brown with red streaks. He can’t see anything, he can barely fucking think—he needs a second. He just needs a second to pull himself together and—
“You’re exhausted,” Ino says, “you’re almost out of chakra and I think holding the juubi the way you did put a strain on your chakra network. You’re all out of wack, Shikamaru, you need rest. If you don’t you’re going to fucking die, and I will not be letting that happen.”
“I can take you both,” Kiba interjects, cutting Shikamaru off before he could slur out anymore half-thought plans.
Ino shakes her head. “No you can’t.”
“I can!” Kiba insists, “I don’t know anything about medical ninjutsu, you’re gonna have to come with us.”
“I could—” Shikamaru mumbles.
“No, you can’t.” Ino cuts off that train of thought before it could even leave the station, “you can’t heal yourself when you don’t have any chakra, dumbass.”
“Troublesome...”
“Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t realize me trying to keep you alive was such an inconvenience to you!”
...Okay, maybe he deserved that.
“Seriously, I think I’ve got enough chakra left to take you both.” Kiba says again.
Shikamaru watches the smear of color that was Ino twist around, looking behind her at... something. He doesn’t know what’s happening around them anymore. The battle could have stopped or gotten ten times worse for all he knew.
“Okay, fine.”
“Choji—”
“—is a big boy,” Ino says as she kneels down next to him, “he can take care of himself.”
“Alright, grab onto me—” Kiba’s arms leave him, presumably so that one could wrap around Ino and the other could be used to perform the handsign for shunshin. “Grab onto him too, I don’t trust his strength right now.” Shikamaru rolls his eyes and immediately regrets it as a new wave of dizziness washes over him.
One of Ino’s arms wrapped around his torso and his skin stings at the contact, even through his clothes. It was like he had a fever, his skin suddenly hyper-sensitive.
And then they were somewhere else.
Pain explodes in Shikamaru’s head. He snaps his teeth shut against a scream, tasting copper in his mouth. His friends and surroundings fall away as awareness slips from him, his entire world compressing into the space between his brain and his eyes, the heels of his hands pressed against his eye sockets, as if pushing against them hard enough would somehow fix the pain.
When the pain finally subsides to a dull roar, Shikamaru slowly comes back to himself. He finds himself on his side on the cold rock, shivering, a metallic sheet wrapped around the lower half of his body. Ino is hovering over him—still out of focus—seafoam green light emanating softly from where her hands must have been. Healing him with her limited chakra.
“Ino...” his voice scrapes against the raw walls of his throat, coming out as a rasp.
“Shush.” She murmurs in response, “you’re all out of wack.”
Shikamaru does as he’s told, looking around as his vision slowly, finally begins to clear. He takes the opportunity to take in his surroundings. The pale white moon overhead. The dark night sky. Ino. Kiba was nowhere to be seen.
His eyes fall on Ino once again. “Where...”
“Kiba went back,” Ino says, as if reading his mind. Honestly, after seeing some of the things she’s done in the past couple of hours, Shikamaru wouldn’t be surprised if she could read his mind. “He’s with Naruto and Choji, they have our dads’ plan, everything is gonna be alright.”
Now that his vision was no longer blurry, he could see she was tired, her features drawn. Her bangs stuck to her forehead and cheeks, sharp lines drawn under her eyes. Her eyebrows furrowed and her mouth set in a thin line, lips bitten and lipgloss long worn away.
She was laser focused, staring intently at him—through him, it felt like. What was it she had said—that he had strained his chakra network? He didn’t even think that was possible.
Then again, he killed someone everyone swore up and down was unkillable. He supposed anything was possible.
“Hey… Ino?”
Her eyes flick up to his face for a brief second. “Yeah?”
“Thanks. For everything.” For healing him. For putting up with him, and Choji. For keeping her head the whole time, even when her dad died. For saving everyone with shintenshin, for stepping up to be the leader of Team Ten when he didn’t want to be. For everything.
Her eyebrows shoot up. “Oh my gods, no, shut up, you don’t get to die on me too—“
“I don’t think I’m dying.” She’s got more authority on that, she’s the one looking at his chakra network. “Just figured someone should thank you. Since no one ever does.”
She deflates, her shoulders dropping and her brows relaxing. A long, exhausted sigh leaves her. And then, a smile.
“It’s no problem. You’re welcome.”