Chapter Text
There are more things in Heaven and Earth...and Hell.
Life and Death and Time and Space.
Shikamaru thought he’d seen everything Hell had to offer, thought that he had come to know it intimately like one would a lover. He thought that he knew what true monsters were. But looking up into the endless sea of eyes and darkness towering above him, he realized that he knew less than he ever could have imagined.
It towered over him, colossal and endless and ever-watchful...always always watching him, appraising him, judging him. Every time those infinite eyes landed on him, Shikamaru felt like he was being picked apart piece by aching, bleeding, piece. Completely dissected by its all-seeing gaze.
“You will suffer.” It told him once again, grinning wide and awful as if it were purely a matter of fact. Perhaps it was.
He couldn’t even begin to gauge how long he’d been engulfed in darkness with nothing but the entity before him as company. It could have been days or weeks or months and yet it also felt as if no time had passed at all
It wasn’t like it mattered though. Shikamaru had already agreed to the deal and as such they could do as they wished with him. It wasn't Shikamaru could stop them even if he wanted to. Resigned to his fate, he allowed the entity to toy with him and teach him things without complaint.
He'd expected them to be more brutal with him, but they seemed aware that for all that they would change him, he was still mostly human. They didn't seem to want to break him more than he was already broken. To Shikamaru's further immense unease, they seemed amused and endeared all at once by him in general, but his jutsu most of all, especially those indicative of the Nara Clan.
“Show me.” It commanded and Shikamaru molded his chakra as easily as if he were flexing a well-used a muscle. As a Nara, the shadows were an extension of himself and together they watched his shadow possession control the amalgamations that the entity brought forth from the living shadows to dance for them as if to some haunting tune.
“Good.” It cooed, smiling even wider. “Very good. Now once more, but this time Little Shadow, put your very soul into it.”
Forms of its own making twitched unnaturally and then reached out for Shikamaru. They slipped from the shadows to swipe and lunge at him only to be cut down by Shikamaru’s own hand and will. Sometimes the entity chittered in amusement at him when the shadows resembled people he’d once known and at other times it remained worryingly silent.
Once, it had even laughed at him, high and booming, when he hesitated in the face of a lost loved one, before unexpectedly showing him mercy and making the humanoid form featureless once again. The entity was cruel to him at times, yet oddly kind at others.
It was gentle with its claws and its words even when he didn't quite perform the way it wanted--which was rare on its own.
Shikamaru watched and he learned like a babe at the knees of its parent.
And then, once enough time had passed (by what gauge Shikamaru would never know), he was deemed strong enough in ways he couldn’t quite name. The entity smiled when the shadows truly danced for Shikamaru like puppets on a string and towered, deeming him ready to finally take the plunge.
Shikamaru trembled where he stood, his knees weak under the intensity of such a fathomless gaze.
The Nara were shadow incarnate, but they weren’t supposed to be so other, not like this. Whatever the creature had done, Shikamaru was certain there was no going back.
The entity hissed its promise to return the eye it had stolen in his ear, whispering softly about Shikamaru's own promises and debts as if to remind him for the final time that he’d made the choice to do go through with this all on his own.
Whatever came next, Shikamaru knew that he’d taken the deal and that there was no going back, not even if he wanted to. The entity quivered with untold glee and Shikamaru could only watch, sweat sluicing down the back of his neck while he tracked the Sharingan eye held delicately between the creature’s massive clawed fingers.
How such a thing was even possible to begin with, he couldn't say.
By all rights, the eye should have been crushed to paste and yet there is was, whole and gleaming and still so far out of his reach. The creature made a motion with its hand, turning it slightly away and then abruptly closing it into a tight fist and Shikamaru heard a wretched noise as he lurched forward in some vain attempt to stop it from destroying the last piece of what he loved.
He barely registered that the noise had come from his own throat until a few moments after; some kind of animal sound that he hadn't even realized he could make until that very moment. The creature giggled like a child at the sound of it as it opened its hand to show its palm unmarred like some magician performing a trick.
“Like I said, Little Shadow, you'll get the eye just as promised.” It soothed. “But before any of that, you have to become something more.”
Shikamaru could tell that it enjoyed teasing him.
Become more? He wasn't really sure what that meant, but he had a few ideas and none of them sounded particularly appealing in any way shape or form. He he was scared out of his mind and he wasn't ashamed to admit that, at least to himself.
He’d be a fool not to be terrified. The entity cooed at him like he was a child or a pet. Hadn’t he suffered enough indignaties already? One would think so. Shikamaru balled his hands into fists until warm blood began to slick his palms as his nails bit into the calloused flesh. It dribbled from between his fingers and splattered at his feet but he couldn’t be bothered to care.
With a trembling breath, Shikamaru forced his hands to loosen from the fists he'd balled them into and held them outwards, palms up and open. The creature watched him and despite the fear gripping his heart like a vice, he didn’t once shut his eyes. It must have liked what it saw because its smile suddenly widened, stalactite teeth all sharp and horrifying like nothing Shikamaru had ever seen.
Then it lunged for him.
It was difficult to explain. One second the entity was this towering, impossible thing and the next it was in front of him, almost man-sized, but still towering. At least nine feet tall and still just as impossible and so very wrong. Shikamaru flinched back on instinct, fingers practically itching to make hand signs and mold his chakra in a desperate yet ultimately futile attempt to defend himself.
He pulled back instinctively, trying to give himself some breathing room but of course it didn’t let him get very far. Its hands shot out and it gripped him about the face, cradling his skull. Shikamaru felt those claws curl about his head and in his hair. It froze him to the core. He was terrified, unsure if too abrupt a movement would lead to those very same claws cutting his head to ribbons.
It was so much worse up close, thousands of eyes condescend into one place and they glinted black and white and looked about wildly, completely out of sync. “Open up for me.”It commanded, practically hissing with glee. The black irises of it's eyes shivered and then the suddenly irises were silver once again again, pale and glowing. All at once they turned to focus on him, painfully wide and searching. He felt like they could see right through him, through his very soul.
“Let me in.”
He could feel it prying at his jaw and his mouth being wrenched open and the fear sent his heartbeat ratcheting up to dangerous levels.
“Take my secrets.”
Light feathered touches down his face, along his temples and over the lid of his eyes and then the thumb claw pierced his right eye. Suddenly the world was on fire.
Someone was screaming.
Shikamaru quickly realized that it was his own voice that he was hearing, rising through the air and shattering like glass. He could hear his pulse in his ears along with that hissing chuckle as his mouth was pulled open as far as it would go naturally and then some.
He couldn’t help but struggle, though the entity did nothing but cooe at him for his efforts. It ignored his pathetic attempts to get free as tears and blood fell unbidden down his cheeks. Then it pressed forward and in and oh, by the gods, did he struggle then.
He couldn’t speak, could barely breathe as it leaned forward and all but poured itself into his mouth, down his throat, oily and slick and thick and too much, too much. It knew that he was crying, sobbing, but just wouldn’t stop. His head was on fire and Shikamaru clawed at all the bits of it that held him still, even though it did no good to fight.
He’d asked for this, after all.
The very essence of that thing’s being continued to pour into him and he convulsed on it, chest heaving and near retching even as it began to show him everything.
He could feel Kurama on the edge of his awareness, distraught and angry and completely unable to stop or lessen any of the hell that Shikamaru had chosen to endure.
The fox’s chakra was a raging whirlwind of fire at the back of Shikamaru’s mind, burning him from the inside but offering no relief to the cold of the entity pouring its way inside of him.
“Go back, little shadow, wake me from my slumber.” Shikamaru was drowning. His single unmarred eye rolled into the back of his head and he knew that it wouldn't be long before he finally lost himself to the darkness. “Do what you want to save what’s yours, but in the end I will eat that bitch alive, body and soul!”
It started to laugh, echoing through his head as the world as he knew it began to come apart at the seams and just as suddenly as Shikamaru started to drown under the weight of it all, he was given reprieve once more. Despite the pressure building in his chest, Shikamaru could breathe again.
For a moment he thought might have even imagined it was peaceful but then the pain hit. It arched through him, tearing him up from the inside out and he could do nothing but take the breath he'd been given and scream.