Chapter Text
The first thing he feels is his head throbbing.
The very next is the slight sting to his eyes when he tries to open them. Bright fluorescent lights soon come into view. Slowly his vision begins to adjust the light.
His body feels stiff, the kind of stiff that comes from waking up after a long nap. Strangely enough, he can't remember laying down to rest. He registers it as odd, but he doesn't think about it further.
"Oh hey! You're up."
He starts to take in his surroundings. The room is mostly bare, with few decorations to note. Likely some kind of hospital room. Something far more interesting than the white walls catches his attention though.
There's a young man a few feet away from his bed. He has long blonde elegant hair that's tied into a neat braid, with a small ribbon at the base. Soft blue eyes are looking directly at him, searching for something. As to what? He has no idea. His skin is rather pale, but not unhealthily so. Something more... doll-like. That's the word.
He knows one thing for sure. He's beautiful. He also has no idea why he's here.
Confusion rushes through him, but before he can voice it, the man speaks up again.
"You scared the shit out of me. Don't ever do.. that again. Okay?" Despite the fact he doesn't give any sort of answer, he keeps talking. Weirdly enough this doesn't feel that unusual.
"I tried to stay as involved as possible. Even though I am a trained medical nin, they wouldn't let me look at anything. Said I'm 'too close' to this. Like! I just wanted to know you were fine, and the numbers would have helped." He continues to ramble on. It's endearing in a way. It's also giving far more questions than answers.
What exactly did he do??
"Anyways.. they said you'll be fine. Might be some lingering dizziness and head pain." The man finishes. The head pain thing did track.
"I-" He tries to speak finally, but the words come out hoarsely.
In an instant, the man is handing him a small cup of water with a straw. "Here. Thought you'd be thirsty." The blonde adds along.
He sits up and takes a few sips of water to clear his throat. "Thank you." Is the first thing he gets to say since waking up. The man simply nods in response, and sits by his bedside. It's then that he notices a few more details as well. Along with the blonde hair, he has a streak of green to the side of it. His ears are pierced in several places.
It takes him a moment to think of what he wants to say. Multiple thoughts coming to mind, all wanting to be voiced. His mind is trying to make sense of this all.
He feels guilty. It's obvious that this man knows him, and has some kind of care about his well-being but..
"I'm sorry but... who are you exactly? Have we met before?"
All of the sudden the somewhat warm feel of the room changes, and the blonde seems to still in his seat. He looks at him with a face that's a mix of confusion and concern.
"What?" He says, staring him down. Suddenly, he feels as if he has said something very wrong. Maybe they had met before. And he was obviously supposed to remember it. Great.
"I can't really remember us meeting before. Do you work here or...?"
"Are you being serious right now? Like actually? No jokes?"
"Yes....?"
The blonde's face goes through a flurry of expressions, before looking away from him. He doesn't get to see which one he lands on. He starts to head towards the door. "I'll be back, I need to go check on something." He says with a tone that has his words shaking ever so slightly.
Once the man leaves, he doesn't know what to do with himself. He tries to rack his mind for any moment, any memory of the blonde. Nothing comes to mind. All he earns from it is a strange almost.. ache? In his chest. The feeling that something is very wrong.
------
Inojin leaves the room, willing his emotions to calm. He's a shinobi. Shinobi can handle stressful situations without flipping out. He's a shinobi. He did not feel like one.
He knew it was a risk this could happen, considering the state of the other victims. All hit by a powerful genjutsu that altered memories. The first victim had been hit about three weeks ago, and only now was having memories return. Even then they were few and in between. He had hoped that by some odds Shikadai was going to be the lucky one. He shouldn’t have hoped like that but Shikadai was the more rational of the two.
The man stands in the hallway for a moment, hands frantic as he tries to think. What's the first thing to do now? Think!
Assess how bad the damage is and grab Sakura.
Okay. That was a thing he could do. Sounds easy enough.
Still, as he made his way over to another part of the hospital, negative thoughts rang through his mind. What if Shikadai couldn't remember him ever? This jutsu was something the Leaf had never encountered. Sure they had been able to capture the culprits, but nobody was giving anything useful. He had half the mind to go down to T & I himself and get someone to talk. He decides against it. Someone needs him here. If he was the one hit, he’d want Shikadai by his side.
He's brought out of this thought spiral by someone calling out to him.
"Hey!"
It's Chocho. Inojin had managed to walk to the waiting area only to stop. She walks up to Inojin, and brings him over to the others.
The others being Shikadai's parents, Shikamaru and Temari. Though the newest generation of Inoshikacho was grown up for the most part, they still came when they heard what happened.
"Did he wake up?" Chocho asks him first. lnojin nods his head slowly. "He did." He starts.
"And?" Shikamaru questions.
"He doesn't remember me. At all. I don't know how bad it is though, maybe he'll recognize one of you at least? I don't know." Inojin spouts out. He still does not feel at all like a shinobi.
"Relax." Temari says, and her tone actually does make Inojin feel calmer. Oddly enough. "The first victim has already started to regain memories. Even if it's bad, he'll get it back eventually." She sounds so sure, Inojin wishes he felt the way.
Inojin just nods his head.
------
A solid five minutes passes before the blonde returns. He isn't alone either.
Suddenly the small room feels all the more smaller with the entrance of five. Five people he could not name even if he wanted to.
"If this is some kind of weird prank, you are so lame." A young woman with brown reddish hair and dark skin says, arms crossed. She eyes him up and down as if trying to decipher something. He merely stares back.
"Okay yeah. I don't think he's faking." She continues on, before stepping back. "You see what I mean?" The blonde man tells her and she shrugs.
A woman with odd pink hair and green eyes speaks up next, she's wearing an actual white coat. "Hi. I'm Sakura. I know this probably already feels a bit overwhelming, but just try to stay calm. Can I ask you a few questions?"
She's a doctor of some type, he figures. He nods. "Sure..." Maybe this would give him a better idea of what was going on.
"Can you name anyone in this room?" Sakura asks, and despite already knowing the answer he looks over everyone.
There's the blonde haired guy from earlier, the reddish brown haired girl, a blonde woman with green eyes staring right at him, and a man with dark hair.
He does not recognize anyone.
"No. What's going on?"
Instead of answering right away, Sakura just nods and begins to write things down on a clipboard. Just out of earshot he can hear faint whispers between the two younger people.
Finally, she answers his question. "You took an injury in the field. I've seen a few other people who underwent the same thing, and it's been causing mild to severe memory loss. I'm going to ask you a few questions to establish the severity, okay?"
He takes a moment to process all that. An injury in the field? How could something like that cause memory loss? And if it did.. who are these people to him? Obviously ones he should know.
"Okay." He answers back. There's a small underlying feeling of trust.
"Can you tell me your full name?"
That's an easy one. His mouth begins to move to form the words, but then he suddenly stops. His name.
Nothing comes to mind either.
A small bit of panic starts to bloom. He didn't know.
"I can't remember." He settles on, and despite his own anxiety, Sakura just nods. "Why can't I remember?" He tells her in a hurry.
The blonde woman steps forward, and places a hand on his shoulder. While he can't remember her, there's a sense of comfort. Safety. It made it easier to believe that he had somehow lost his memories. "You're going to be okay." She tells him, and he believes that too.
The man with the dark hair steps forward too, and sits by his bed. "Hey, Sakura's going to run her tests and figure it out. Just sit tight." There's that same feeling.
The other two are still close to the door, and the young woman speaks up again. "We'll give you some space." She says, able to tell he was feeling overwhelmed. She takes the other blonde with her.
Sakura speaks again. "Part of your injury is you were hit by a powerful genjutsu. Do you know what that is?"
Strangely enough, he nods. That he could recall, and several other facts about them came to mind. There's a distant thought that he's been hit by them before, but he isn't sure where it comes from.
"Good. Now as of right now we're still trying to understand exactly how it works. The first person who was hit by it has begun to get memories back." She explains.
"You were on a team we sent out to capture the people responsible for it. The rest of the mission was a success." The man tells him. So he likely was the only person hit by it.
"These are your parents. Now I know you said you didn't recall anything, but do you feel any sort of familiarity?"
He looks at the two people on either side of his hospital bed, and thinks. "There.. definitely is some type of familiarity."
"Well, I'd hope so, considering I spent hours and hours birthing you." The woman by his side tells him, with a slight hit to his shoulder. Ow.
"Tem' you'll embarrass him. And he doesn't even remember us." The man says.
"So? That doesn't mean anything." She responds quickly.
Sakura and the man exchange a look, and she just nods. "You can tell him."
"Okay so," The man starts. "My name is Nara Shikamaru, I'm your father. That's your mom, Nara Temari. You're Nara Shikadai."
He- Shikadai, takes that in for a moment. Then voices the first thing that comes to mind.
"...... Why do both of our names start with deer?"
Temari snorts at that. "You can check off that he still has basic world knowledge." She tells Sakura.
Shikamaru doesn't answer right away, pondering for a moment. "The short version? Tradition." He settles on. "You're from a shinobi clan. Do you know that?" He adds along.
Shikadai shrugs. "I know what a shinobi is. I think. That's about it though." He admits.
He takes stock of what he does know, and it is still concerningly little. Anything before today is just blank. An entire life. In an attempt to feel less.. powerless, he asks more.
"How old am I?"
“Twenty three, twenty four this September." Shikamaru tells him.
"Who were the people from earlier?"
"The girl is Chocho Akimichi, and the other is Inojin Yamanaka they are..." Shikamaru stops mid sentence as Temari gives him a look. "They are your friends and teammates."
Shikadai notes their names are odd as well. Starting with 'Butterfly' and 'Boar'. And his doctor was named after a flower. How strange.
The look only seems to amp up. "What?" Shikamaru asks with an exasperated tone across the bed.
"You're not going to tell him all the details?" Temari questions.
Shikamaru shrugs. "I don't think it's really my place. He can tell him later." Shikadai watches the exchange, trying to make sense of what they're talking about. His mind continues to not aid him in this. There was a bit of frustration about the whole thing.
He's lived a life for over two decades, and no mental sustenance to show for it.
Temari speaks up again, this time directed to Sakura. "Do you think photos could help? We have a lot of old albums back at the house." She explains.
The doctor looks up from her clipboard. "I'm not sure it'll be of any use, but it's definitely something we could try." She concludes.
"A lot is still somehow an understatement. I think one of those albums easily weighs ten pounds." Shikamaru comments.
"I like to keep records."
"Very heavy records."
------
Shikadai's parents stay for a little while longer, before heading home to grab the photo albums. Sakura tells him that they'll keep him for observation for likely the next couple days.
He has no protest against that. After all, even if he does belong somewhere, he has no recollection of it. This hospital room is all he knows for now.
Little time is given to really dwell on this, as the two people from earlier return. Chocho and Inojin. He enters the room first with a small knock to the open door.
"Hi, we're back and brought you a few snacks from the vending machine." Chocho tells him, placing a few bags of chips on his bed. "... He can eat right?" She asks Inojin.
"Should be able to. Technically this is all just a mental injury, nothing physical." He surmises. With the way he speaks, Shikadai thinks back to when he mentioned being a medical nin. That sounds like it tracks.
Inojin keeps more distance from him than earlier. That strange ache forms in the pit of his stomach again, but he ignores it. "It's... Chocho and Inojin right? My um, dad filled me in."
The two of them nod. Inojin crosses his arms over his chest.
"Is there anything you want to know?" Chocho asks. Though they had just met, Shikadai took a liking to her. She seemed nice.
"Honestly? Everything. Maybe it'll help something click." Shikadai admits, as he reaches for a bag of chips. He looks between the options and frowns. Which would he like more? He didn't know that either.
"You like the blue ones the most, orange ones are your second favorite." Inojin answers, as if he was able to tell exactly what Shikadai was thinking. He says a quiet thank you and reaches for the blue bag. "We're all friends is what I've been told. How did we meet?"
Shikadai opens up the bag and begins to start eating. He smiles a little at the taste of the chips. Definitely a favorite of his.
Chocho speaks first. "We've been friends for a really long time. Like.. since we were babies. I'm sure there's pictures of it somewhere. Our parents all knew each other, even fought alongside one another."
"Alongside one another as in.. shinobi right?"
Chocho nods. Inojin makes a small comment. "This is still so weird..." Shikadai wonders what he'd think of all this once he got his memories back. He'd probably feel stupid. He didn't like that thought much either.
"And! You two aren't just friends." Chocho says all of the sudden, nudging Inojin with her elbow to speak. He gets the hint.
A small flush makes its way onto his face, and absentmindedly Shikadai thinks it looks nice like that. Inojin, despite talking so easily earlier, seems to take a moment to say what's on his mind.
"Um.. what she means is, you and I.. we..." He starts, and Shikadai listens closely.
"We're together. As in dating." Inojin finally finishes.
Shikadai's eyes widen a bit at that, and he just simply stares for a second. "You're my boyfriend?"
"Yes." Inojin answers. "What are you like unpleasantly surprised or something?" He adds. Shikadai shakes his head. "No! Not at all. I just feel worse about earlier." He rushes to say, feeling oddly nervous.
At that, Inojin seems to relax a little. "You shouldn't. You literally couldn't have known."
"I literally do not know anything." Shikadai agrees. Well at least he had a few more pieces to the puzzle that was his life. He wondered if he'd have the chance to speak to Inojin alone later, maybe figure out some more things about them.
What kind of person is Yamanaka Inojin?
What kind of person is he?
"You know sometimes I forget you two are dating." Chocho casually says. Inojin looks at her with a raised eyebrow. "What? You were our biggest supporter for years."
"Not like that. I forget you're just dating since it's been so long." She explains with a wave of her hand to emphasize. Shikadai notes that down internally.
"You are only saying things like that because you want snake boy to propose soon." Inojin teases with a cheeky grin.
"Who's.. snake boy?" Shikadai asks, but he isn't sure he even wants to know. Knowledge can't hurt, right?
"His name is Mitsuki." Chocho says while looking directly at Inojin. "He's my boyfriend." She adds along, now looking back at Shikadai.
"Oh." Is all Shikadai says at first. "Is the snake boy thing a mean nickname or a literal thing?" He questions.
Inojin shivers. "In this case it's very literal."
Okay that was something he'd definitely have to revisit another time. What could that possibly mean?
"You know, Inojin, you really should call him by his name. Maybeeee he could be your brother in law soon." Chocho continues.
"I'm not doing anything till I see an actual ring on that finger." Inojin is quick to shoot back. They have an easy back and forth. Like they do this all the time.
Shikadai looks between the two of them. Brother in law? These people could not look more different, but still he asks. Even if he feels dumb quickly after.
"Are you two.. related or something?"
Chocho and Inojin look at Shikadai. Then slowly turn to one another. Then... proceed to burst out laughing. Inojin covers his mouth as he laughs, and ends up snorting. Which in turn only seems to make Chocho laugh harder.
Shikadai watches the scene in front of him, wanting to find humor in it.. but he still was rather confused. They both seem to calm down, and Chocho takes a big breath.
"Nope. We're not at all related. Just have been around each other way too long that I kinda see him like that…. I see you like that too." With the way the last words are spoken, Shikadai can feel the warmth coming off of them.
He wishes he could remember. Which isn't the first time since waking up that he's had that thought. Why did this happen to him? He's apparently a capable shinobi. It did not feel like it.
He then catches sight of Inojin eyeing him. "What's going on in your head?"
"What do you mean?"
"You have that.. face. You make it when you're thinking way too hard." He tells him, like it's the most obvious thing in the world.
Chocho takes a good look at him. "You're right. He has the face."
Shikadai clutches his bedsheets. "It's nothing." The blonde tilts his head to the side. "I don't believe that."
"I just want to remember already. Don't like the feeling of being.. lost." The tone of the room becomes heavier, and Shikadai knows he's to blame.
Inojin takes a step closer to him. "It's only been a few hours. It'l take time, but everything will be okay. It has to be." He seems to be holding back, but Shikadai doesn't feel it's his place to ask. After all, to him? This man is still a stranger. Even though, when he looked at him, there was a feeling that bloomed in his stomach. He couldn't quite place a name to the feeling.
Chocho nods. "Just a temporary set back. And once you remember us, you're gonna be all.. how could I forget my bestest friends?"
"The ones you love dearly." Inojin adds along. His expression is quick to turn to a light smile, pushing aside his frown from before.
She then comes forward and taps Shikadai on his shoulder. "Now eat your chips. You'll feel better."
He does as told. Strangely, he does feel better.
"Not a proven science, chubs." Inojin says.
"I think there's more than enough evidence for it. Whenever I'm down, my mom always makes me this big stew..." Chocho begins to say, though she's soon cut off by another voice.
The doctor from earlier... Sakura comes in all of a sudden. She gives a small wave to Shikadai. "Hi. Nothing's wrong, just stopping by to grab piglet."
Inojin turns to her. "Oh?"
"We just got a big case, shinobi coming back from a mission. Multiple penetrating wounds. Want to come help out and learn?" Sakura asks. And despite the situation, she has this eager energy. With determination sprinkled in.
He's about to answer, but hesitates. Inojin looks at Shikadai.
Shikadai takes a second to answer. "You should go. I'm not going anywhere." He tells him. Chocho chimes in next. "Yeah! Go do your medical nin thing. Learn just in case it happens to one of us." She shakes her head with a shiver at the thought afterwards.
Shikadai agrees with that last sentiment. He really hopes that never happens to any of them.
Inojin turns back to Sakura, and walks over to the doorway. "Okay. How bad is it?" He starts to ask, as they leave the room.
Only Chocho and Shikadai are left in the room, which was so full earlier. She gives him a soft smile. "Any other burning questions?"
"A few."
She walks over to his bedside, and instead asks a question of her own. "Mind if I sit here while we chat? Looks comfier than one of those chairs."
Shikadai shakes his head. "Go for it."
Chocho sits on the hospital bed with Shikadai, grabbing the orange bag of chips. She opens them and starts to eat a few of them, and he only gives a look.
"What? You're taking forever to finish the first bag, no way you're going to eat these." She explains.
Shikadai wants to argue, but admittedly he doesn't even really feel that hungry. With a slight huff he bites into a chip.
"So... first thing on my mind. Is the name piglet because of the Ino in his name?"
"That's actually an interesting question. Kinda? A yes and no." She starts to say, looking up while thinking.
"Basically.. Sakura was really good childhood friends with Inojin's mom. When they were little and she'd get mad at her, she called her Ino-pig. Now it's more like a term of endearment than a mean name. Inojin and Sakura are kinda like nephew and aunt. They got really close when Inojin began his medical training, so she's always pulling him off to look at gross stuff." She explains, and despite having a few mental images in her head, it doesn't ruin her appetite.
"Is everyone.. from the Inoshikacho clans named like that?"
Chocho shakes her head. "Just the people from the main family. Like, my dad is Choji, grandfather is Choza. Same thing with the Nara and Yamanakas. Even then, it gets confusing sometimes since we're the seventeenth version of it."
Shikadai nods and slowly takes in that information. Part of him wonders if it's even worth it to learn all this, if he'd just eventually remember. But... putting his mind to something felt better than just sitting around waiting for it to happen. Maybe he could trigger memories by learning about his past.
If Chocho was his good friend that surely.. She could answer a few other things.
"How did me and Inojin..."
"Get together?"
"Yeah." He's internally grateful she catches on so quickly. He feels a bit embarrassed asking about his own relationship. She sits up, and suddenly looks at Shikadai all serious. "I'll tell you. But! I have to warn you it's stupid."
"It's stupid?" He echos, confusion in his tone.
Chocho begins to explain. "Need to preface this by saying, that if you're sitting here thinking either of you guys had game? Think again, Nara."
"What happened exactly?"
"Couldn't say exactly when it happened, but when you guys caught feelings for each other? It took forever for you to get together. Like I just had to watch from the sidelines, not being able to say anything! Knowing what I knew..!"
She eats a few more chips. "My understanding of it is neither of you thought the feelings were mutual, even though anyone in a two mile radius could tell. Unfortunately the person usually in the two mile radius was me."
Shikadai crosses his arms. "I thought you were my friend."
"That I am. I love you both. But it was so so.. much that could have been resolved months earlier if you just talked it out."
For some reason, that wasn't hard for Shikadai to believe. He'd taken one look at that man, with the blonde hair and soft blue eyes... and been a bit mesmerized. To think that he was his partner.. and they likely spent each day together.
He's caught up in this daydreaming, and Chocho is looking at him with a raised eyebrow. "If you want to know the specifics, you should ask him yourself."
Shikadai tilts his head. "You don't think it would be weird.. to ask my own boyfriend about our relationship?" Where would he even start with something like that?
"...It would be. But I think this whole situation itself is insane anyways." She answers truthfully, and Shikadai is relieved at that.
"You know... you told me something right when we were getting ready to go in." Chocho looks at him again, smile dropping.
"What was it?"
"To not let you do anything stupid, if you lose your memories."
Shikadai almost laughs at that. "Really? Did I.. know this could happen?" He almost wants to kick past Shikadai for not being more careful apparently.
He wouldn't have understood how empty Shikadai feels now. How his name feels more like a placeholder than his own.
"You did. We all did. When we got the mission assignment, it came to us because our team is well suited to capturing difficult opponents. By the time we got word of it, already a few people were hit." Chocho starts to say, biting her lip. “It's what we do.”
"Heading into danger.. that's the life of a shinobi, right?" Shikadai says slowly. The words don't sound completely foreign on his lips.
"You bet. But there's something else you should know too." Chocho’s smile returns again.
"What's that?"
"The Inoshikacho always sticks together." Chocho speaks the mantra easily, like it's something she's heard thousands of times. Maybe she has. "So yes, I'll try to help you not do anything stupid. Even though that's incredibly vague." She gives his shoulder a little pat.
Shikadai bites into a chip, sitting with that for a moment. Tracing over the phrase again and again.
Nara Shikadai, whoever you are, you've left such a mess to fix.