Through The Veil

A/N:

Those who do not want, do not live but with hypocrisy.
Those who do not need --but want-- live, but without illusion.
These who do not indulge --but crave-- live, but with clarity.


Shikamaru blearily allowed himself to be guided by the arm draped so snugly about his shoulders. ”So I heard that it’s a certain someone’s birthday today,” Kiba said, ribbing him playfully.

”Yeah, it’s been quite a day...”

Kiba chuckled softly. ”Well anyway, drinks are on me tonight, so try not to act so spacey, kiddo.”

”Who are you callin—,” Shikamaru broke off as they rounded a corner and the bright neon of a sign momentarily blinded him. After a moment his eyes refocused, enough to realize where they were, and he stiffened. Kiba sensed his sudden discomfort and faltered in step.

”What’s wrong man?” Kiba squeezed the arm around his shoulders to reclaim his attention, but Shikamaru didn’t seem to relax any.

”Nothing,” Shikamaru said nonchalantly, eyes downcast, ”I’m just not really into this place anymore.”

Kiba pulled back at arms length to take in Shikamaru’s face, then the sign of the bar that they had used to consider a second home. Their circle had come here so often that their names had been plaquered onto a booth. ”Well why the hell not? We always came here, and besides, I wanna say hi to your dad.”

”He’s out on a mission, so how about we break the monotony, eh?” Shikamaru said, forcing himself a smile, ”besides, I know an even better place.”

Shikamaru turned a bit, planting himself squarely in front of Kiba as he grabbed the Inuzuka’s upper arm and placed his other hand in front of his eyes. ”Whoa, what are you doing, trying to blind me?” Kiba protested.

”Geez... just stop complaining and keep your eyes closed. What you see could make you a little uncomfortable.”

”Me? Uncomfortable? I don’t see that happ–,” Kiba broke off, suddenly shivering at the change in scent from his friend. For a moment he thought he smelled something... alien. His body went icy cold as the feeling of vertigo gripped him, and he suddenly felt as though he were melting into the ground. ”What’s happening!” He yelped.

”We’re shadowstepping.”

”Well what in the hell is that!”

”Relax, it’s just a new trick, nothing to get excited about. Besides, this’ll get us in before the bar closes. Remember to keep your eyes shut, and don’t let go of my hand.”

Shikamaru dropped his hand from Kiba’s eyes as they were swallowed into the world of shadows, a place he had come to know as the Veil.

Nothing was quite as it seemed in the Veil, time ran a different course, or perhaps it simply didn’t exist when balanced against that of the corporeal world. He glanced about, and the street corner took on its familiar shape, with buildings and people still in their proper places, only frozen without movement. Everything was a silhouette of black contrast, even the inverted moon and motionless clouds appeared dark and subdued. Shikamaru himself looked to be only the silhouette of a man, his features drowned in the deepest black. His contours where the eerie silver of moonlight, and his eyes irradiated a pearly light in the place of their natural color. Kiba was the only being of color in the Veil, and he would have no doubt been in great danger if not for the protection that Shikamaru extended through his touch.

Things really were not what they seemed in the world of darkness. The seemingly frozen silhouettes of the market-goers would not have stayed so frozen had Kiba found himself in the Veil unattended. They would have immediately sensed the presence of a living thing and converged to fight for possession of his flesh, likely tearing him apart in the process. Silhouettes coveted nothing greater than to have a body to call their own. Something Shikamaru had learned the first time he had entered this place. He recalled the experience well as he glanced down at his own silver outlined hand.

”Shikamaru, I’m just... a little bit uncomfortable now,” Kiba chuckled nervously, his eyes still plastered shut.

In this place it was a small matter for Shikamaru to gently extended his awareness into Kiba, blanketing his friend from the fear he felt from being so suddenly cut off from his sense of smell. To Kiba, losing his sense of smell must have been worse by far than the absence of sight. There was just no scent within the Veil.

Still sensing the pulse of fear in his friend, he gently willed the Inuzuka to sleep, and just as he had caught Kiba’s slumping form the darkness pressed in on the both of them.

*W-w-hy have you brought this creature here*, a voice reverberated through Shikamaru’s very bones.

”Buzz off, Ankoku, it’s none of your business. Go torment one of your children for a while.”

The darkness crept in around him, vibrating with Ankoku’s mirth.

*O-o-oh? None of my business you say? You bring a man-creature into my womb and are so brazen to suggest that it does not concern me? Perhaps I should allow one of my children to occupy him for a time. Oh how entertaining it would be to see the man-pup perform a little dance... on fire. *

A kunai flashed into Shikamaru’s palm with practiced ease, and he pressed it to his own throat with alacrity. ”And perhaps you’d like to experience just how painful an eviction can get, my friend.”

Shikamaru continued to head off Ankoku’s threat even before he had voiced it. ”And let’s not dance around all night with your hand on my ass. We’ve already bonded, so my body is the only vessel that can sustain you. That means you can skip trying to feed me any fairytales about occupying him.”

Suddenly the blackness that was Ankoku drew up titanically in front of him. It climbed so high as to extinguish the lacquer rays of the veiled moon, and continued until it had enveloped the entire of world of darkness; even Shikamaru’s own dark exterior. In what seemed an instant, the now endless shadow condesed in on itself, but it certainly did not remain shapeless. No, it took a form intimately familiar to the young nin – his own. That form now settled before Shikamaru, and all around them there was naught but an eternal platform of perfect grey, upon which he stood and stared into that silhouetted form of himself, it's pearly eyes unblinking.

In an instant the creature had itself planted uncomfortably close to Shikamaru’s face, and the unholy speed made him tense enough that the blade bit lightly into his own throat. Sweat beaded along his brow as he stared it down.

”You forget yourself, child.” The entity spoke softly, but the very sound of it chilled Shikamaru to the core. The voice was everywhere and nowhere at once, permeating even the smallest atom of his body. ”Remember well that you are in the presence of one of the two eternal elements of the universe, and do not encroach upon my patience. You speak to no lowly demon who can simply be sealed up and leached upon, you willingly entered into a bond with me, the immortal element Ankoku.”

Shikamaru struggled to control his breath as the last of Ankoku’s words rang throughout his being.

In a moment, however, his own sudden smirk drew a raised brow from the dark being. However discreet, there was a small cut on the throat of Ankoku, where white blood had begun to form for it’s slow descent.

”Back off, windbag,” Shikamaru drawled with all the indifference he could muster, adjusting Kiba’s sleeping form. ”You’re such a drag.”

After a moment of silence hanging thickly in the air, the being in front of him actually began to chuckle lightly. ”You’re nothing if not unique, boy. Don’t worry though, I have time to find the chink in your armor. After all, we’re going to be spending eternity together,” and with that Shikamaru’s tenant melted away, stretching out to once again form the world of darkness.

Shikamaru lifted his own hand in front of his face to find it once again drenched in silhouette.

”Happy bithday to me,” he sighed for the second time that day.


~*~*~*


Kiba awoke to the dull thud of a mug hitting the hard table on which his head rested upon. He groggily lifted himself and thoughtfully demanded, ”Whazzat?”

His vision adjusted to the dim light and smoky interior of the Cherry Blossom, and he looked about to see several bodies moving in tandem, some singing off key to the bassy music issuing from the karaoke. He was only partially sure that he saw Shikamaru among them as his head swam precariously. His nostrils suddenly filled with the downright nauseating scent of a month’s worth a stale sake spilled onto the floor, and he willfully suppressed a gag.

He was drunk, he realized disjointedly, and he didn’t even remember taking his first sip. That was always a gloomy realization. He didn’t remember much past the point of asking his birthday boy to join him for a beer or two, yet obviously he had missed a pretty wild chunk of the night, seeing what his Shika was up to. He looked out onto the dancefloor to see Shikamaru grinding eroticly against two people whose faces he couldn’t quite make out. Though one was a full grown man, and there was no mistaking the other for anything but a lithe girl.

The picture of the shadow nin grinding low against the two strangers began to tilt sideways as Kiba slid slowly down his bench, and he wondered why that was. Suddenly he felt giddy as his pants grew curiosly tight.

”Whooo Yeah!” He shouted hoarsely, fist raised in the air even as he continued to slide. He giggled at his own feeling of elation even as his eyelids grew heavier, and heavier.

The last thing he remembered seeing was a very rosy-cheeked Shikamaru stumbling toward him, and then, darkness...