Chapter Text
Thing is.
About a decade ago, the world survived a war that no one could have ever predicted. The loss of shinobi life had been colossal. More than ten years later, no Elemental Nation has bounced back from it quite yet. But the loss of civilian life had been on a scale so destructively, crushingly massive, that neither the culture, nor the economy, came back from it.
The first problem was rebuilding. What, and how, can you rebuild anything without the manpower, and beyond that, the engineering knowledge, to do it? Once they figured out rebuilding, which took months longer, and even years in some countries, than it ever should have taken, they had to figure out the agriculture. The shop ownership. The regular, every-day jobs that no one was left to perform.
And so it quickly broke down into two opposite results: the countries that adapted, and those that didn't.
Of the Five Elemental Nations, only three survived.
Thing is.
The shinobi force of the Land of Fire is made in equal parts of war survivors, bitter, wounded, with edges so sharp they regularly cut themselves, and each other, on the blades of their soul-crushing hurt; and the young blood of the baby boom that happened right after the war, where Konoha made the horribly unethical, but sensibly inevitable choice, of conscripting half of the children population into the Academy, parental consent or not.
Thing is.
The citizens of the Land of Fire, and Konoha-born shinobi in general, know one hard fact, know it deep and bloody, like an infected wound that finally scabbed over into an ugly, unavoidable, unforgettable scar. They know that when something can go wrong, it will.
So when their squad is ambushed by the cultists, on the edge of the great Konoha forest, where they all start to relax slightly because those trees mean safety and home. They strike where no one has ever dared strike before, so close to the Walls that a well-trained tokujo can make the run under five minutes, and any jōnin worth their while can shunshin to the doors without missing a beat.
This squad is made up of the most well-trained members of the jōnin force, including the ANBU Commander, the Jōnin Commander's second, two ANBU members and not a single person who hasn't fought their way bloody through the Fourth War.
Thing is.
The ANBU Commander and the Jōnin Commander's second swapped bodies less than ten hours before and neither is comfortable fighting in a body they don't know the capabilities of, nor have any kind of mastery of their respective techniques and jutsu.
It all goes to shit really quickly. Without them really noticing how it happens, they get separated from the rest of the squad, the bulk of the cultists going after their comrades in what Shikamaru and Sakura assume is confidence that they're not going to be too hard to subdue.
The cultists would be wrong, but only because luck is on Shikamaru's side today. He's not exactly sure how he does it, but his body somehow knows instinctively how to punch like Sakura would (not as skilfully, that's for sure, but he can punch hard and it's all they need). Sakura, on the other hand, doesn't need her enhanced strength to be a master of taijutsu, and together, they're good enough to get rid of the three men trying to capture them.
When the last one collapses, Shikamaru follows right behind, crumbling to the ground when the dull pain he had been pushing to the back of his mind in desperation and survival instinct roars its ugly head back into focus, hard enough that he sees white, then black, and when his vision finally agrees to work again, he's curled into a ball with vomit burning his throat and nose.
Sakura doesn't say anything and picks him up easily, swinging him gently until he's resting against her (his?) back in the medics' hold when the patient doesn't have spinal injuries. Both found out during the fight that they have no issue manipulating the chakra in each other's body, so Sakura coats her skin with a thin layer that allows her to stick Shikamaru securely to her back, forearm and hips, only his head free to move around so he can at least watch her six and warn her of incoming threats.
“I'm not making you walk all the way back to Konoha right now, and I don't feel comfortable using a shunshin when I'm not even sure your body will react the way I need it to.”
Shikamaru hums in agreement, the pain so encompassing he's having a hard time focusing on the logistics of their situation. He's stupidly glad Sakura is making the decisions for them right now. If he had half the brain to realize how he's acting, he wouldn't recognize himself. Which is kind of the problem, honestly.
“So I suggest we camp out in the manly cave until we're both feeling up to the trip, yeah?”
Shikamaru nods, his cheek compressed against the back of his own flack jacket. The manly cave is actually a great place to lick their physical and mental wounds, given that it's precisely what the place has been designed for. No one knows who found the manly cave, but a team found it, the only information we do have about them being that the Sannin were in the same promotion.
The team had been beaten and bloody, but not in danger of immediate death. However, what they were, was traumatized, flinchy, twitchy and kunai-happy. So their squad leader had made the executive decision to have them all stop in the cave, and basically... calm themselves down.
They spent two weeks there, sleeping so close together they found some of the blood from one guy's gut wound into a woman's head injury. They slept in what can only be described as a nest, surrounded by a circle of rocks and padded with everything from leaves to moss and the cured pelt of the bear they stole the cave from. After a couple of days, when the leader realized they all, him included, needed that time to put themselves back together, he sent a summon to the village and explained their situation.
One of his teammates may or may not have shed a few tears when reading the paper before he sent it away, and thus began the manly cave. Throughout the years, shinobi passing by improved the place, expanded the nest and added more pelts, built a structure of elevated beds for the twitchy people who need space during nightmares, a sturdy fire pit, a water collector, someone brought a solar shower, someone else built drying racks for meat and vegetables, and everyone who stops by cuts and piles up firewood for the next inhabitants.
There's a few sealing scrolls with tools, books, toys, a go board, even some basic art supplies and a well-loved, well-cared for biwa that literal generations of bored, traumatized shinobi has played for their teammates, friends and lovers, hidden away in this cave to begin to heal.
The instrument is carved with names and quotes about holding on, about family, about home, the wood is painted from top to bottom in a beautiful, sprawling fresco that has been worked on little by little, each new visitor who decided to add to it only doing it in small increments to form a complete scene.
The Naka river is running through the Nara forest, deer coming out from the shadows of the trees, birds, rabbits, turtles and what are obviously summon animals hidden throughout the scene as well, all looking at the river bank where a woman in a formal kimono is looking at her reflection in the water, her back turned from the painting's viewer. The water is clear and filled with salmon, koi and smaller fish.
On the back of the kimono are written the kanji for home, and the woman's face reflected in the water has glowing, white eyes, red lines coming from the lash line and disappearing into the kimono's collar, the same red echoed in triangle on the woman's nape and golden and crimson broaches and pendants in her pitch-black hair. With a red dot on her forehead, the jewels around her neck and her brother's sword laying next to her, Amaterasu is like a final layer of protection upon the biwa, and the cave as a whole.
It's no surprise that someone thought to built a shrine at the back of the cave. The makeshift altar is bound branches and weaved reeds, with a stack of incense neatly tied with a string, petition paper with a brush and an ink stone, clumsily drawn representations of Amaterasu and Tsukiyomi on the wall and many, many trinkets brought back from hundreds of people after the years, scattered all over the altar as offerings.
The cave, in many ways, is a more welcoming place than the hastily rebuilt Konoha, and the joke name for this very real place of healing is only a reminder of how much they need some time for themselves to untangle this mess of physical and emotional pain.
Honestly, had the situation been anything but this and they still needed a place to calm down and take stock, Shikamaru would have suggested the cave immediately. It's so close to the village, it's easy for anyone to come help them as soon as they're alerted, and it has everything they could possibly need.
As Sakura climbs up to the entrance of the cave, hidden behind a pretty strong genjutsu and a bunch of seals keyed to Konoha chakra, Shikamaru fights against the fog in his brain, the feeling of helplessness, and for the first time of his life, like his brain isn't his greatest ally anymore and he's having to come to term with all the secrets they all keep from each other, since no one knew about her pain (he doesn't think about how no one knows about his own quirks).
So yeah, had the situation been different, he probably would have been the one to suggest the manly cave, and not punched-out from pain, carried on the back of his own body by a woman who's body he's living inside of.
Thing is?
This is the situation they're in, and Shikamaru is finding it increasingly hard not to panic.