Timestamp Meme

[evandar]

Give me one of my own stories, and a timestamp sometime in the future after the end of the story, or sometime in the past before the story started, and I'll try to write you at least a hundred words of what happened then, whether it's five minutes before the story started or ten years in the future.

I don't usually post things that aren't fic here, but this meme sounds pretty interesting, and I'd love to see what - if anything - gets requested and to have a go at it. So yeah, any fic; any fandom.

- Meme taken from calliopes_pen on DW

Comments

Fic - Desolation - 1/1 - Blood Timestamp - 15years later

[hikarievandar.livejournal.com]

Konoha’s gone, nothing but a crater, and the forest is beginning to take it back. Pein destroyed the city, the war destroyed the people, and now that there is nothing left to come back to, he can come back.

There are still deer in the trees. They spook when they smell him, but he’s fast enough to catch them. Their blood is hot and thick and salty on his tongue and he feasts on them in the dark.

There are people, still, scattered in small make-shift camps. He peers down at them from treetops and doesn’t speak, not even to the ones he knows. He has no right to anymore, and he hasn’t for years since he left with a kunai in his chest and blood on his hands and the truth of what had happened to him buzzing in his head. He watches and listens to plans that are made and wishes he could jump down and tell them all how stupid they are.

But for all that they’re the same now, he’s not Him; he doesn’t like the look on peoples’ faces when he survives.

He waits for him in the trees, in black robes and a rosary that glints in the moonlight. His weapons are gone, but His smile is sharp as a razor and Shikamaru knows that He never needed them in the first place. He wants to kill Him for what He’s done, but he’s already done that and it didn’t work – it never will – so he lets Him pull the kunai from between his ribs and lick the blood from the blade. He thinks he might try loving Him instead.

He sees Kurenai with white in her hair and a kid who looks like Asuma must have when he was a teenager. There’s no chuunin vest on the kid’s back, though, and no hitai-ate. Shinobi are a dying breed - dying so swiftly, dropping like flies in battle and ripping the world apart around them, leaving blood pooling around gasping bodies for him to lap at, to smear through His hair and over His robes - and those of them that are left are leaderless. Prey.

Naruto is the one they hope will save them, but the Kyuubi has taken its toll on his body and Sasuke has taken his toll on his heart, and there’s little left of the boy Shikamaru used to know. Ino is there, brittle in her strength, tending to two boys that look like they might be Choji’s. Choji isn’t there, though, so any congratulations Shikamaru might have wished him are dust.

There’s a moment when he thinks that Neji might have seen him and he shrinks back into the shadows reflexively – Neji peers up at him and there’s lines around his eyes that aren’t anything to do with the veins of the Byakugan. After a moment, Neji moves on, and Shikamaru slips away, leaping from branch to branch, hidden in shadows and moonlight.

He is waiting for him, in a clearing with a dead doe, and a grin as sharp as a razor. There’s blood running from His mouth and a hole in his chest and Shikamaru moves in to feed.

Re: Fic - Desolation - 1/1 - Blood Timestamp - 15years later

[k-undertoe.livejournal.com]

That creeped me the heck out (in a good way?) Wonderful! Thanks for the revisit, perfect bedtime story - I think the old tales were meant to put a good scare into you after all, eh?

[hikarievandar.livejournal.com]

I'm really glad you liked it. It's been a while since I've written in the Naruto fandom (and written horror for that matter) so this was kind of a challenge. A fun challenge, though. I loved writing it!