Shikamaru didn't get a lot of visitors. He didn't mind so much though, he could tell that he made them feel uncomfortable, they did not know what to say and generally only dropped by to ease their own consciense.
He wasn't angry at them. He understood that something about him had changed, although he did not understand what it was exactly. Occasionally he tried to remembere, what being him had been like before, but most of the time it would only confuse him. It wasn't that he could not remember past events, but the memories came and went, fluttered by, without any context and too fast to focus on.
On some days it occured to him that it was this ability to focus that had changed. Before, he knew on those days, he had been able to focus, to blend out all unneccessary details, while these days he usually found himself overwhelmed by the indefinite amount of information that flooded his senses.
He was staring at the big picture, seeing the interconnectedness of everything, but was still unabled to fully comprehend it, as he saw everything at the same time.
On other days, he got lost in details. On those days he could spent hours just staring at the entangled threads that made up his beddings, trying to figure out why on earth something like woven fabric even existed.

Today was one of those days. He was lying on his back, his eyes fixed on a fly, which flew a few centimeters below the ceiling, when the door to his new room (for he had had to change rooms, so that his old room could be renovated), slid open. He briefly wondered if it was already time for Ino's evening visit, but the sun was still high up in the sky. Of course, there was always the possibility, that the sun had changed her mind and decided to just stay up all day and night for once.
Maybe it was the nurse who brought him lunch, but then he remembered that he had already eaten. He always felt much calmer after lunch.
The visitor was not Ino, nore a nurse, but the only person who visited him on a more or less regular basis, and the only one whose visits he enjoyed a little. She was the only person who did not talk to him as if he was a little child. Or maybe she did, but with a voice that was well used to talking to a little child with all the neccessary respect.
"How are you?", she asked – she always did, and he never knew what to answer – and sat down on his mattress.
"It always flies in triangles", Shikamaru replied.
Kurenai followed his gaze up to the ceiling.
"But the angles don't match", he added.
"hey don't add up to onehundret and eighty degrees", Shikamaru explained.
"I think, it acutally wants to draw a circle, but it only can fly in straight lines and obtuse angles."

For a long time they sat in silence and both watched the insect. It usually was like this, Kurenai never tried to impose a converstaion on Shikamaru, she never told him anything if he did not ask her to, as if she knew how much of an effort it was for him to keep track with someone else's train of thoughts.
"They put sedatives in my food", Shikamaru suddenly said, although he wasn't quite sure, if they really did.
Kurenai looked at him, her brows furrowed. She knew that Shikamaru had made quite a ruckus during the past weeks.
It wasn't just the drawing on his wall – shortly afterwards he had tried to destroy said drawing, and while doing so had smashed most of the room's furnishing. He had also tried to run off a few times, and even managed to seriously injure one of the nurses who worked the night-shift. It was sort of understandable that the hospital-staff would chose to sedate him, even though Kurenai and Ino both had agreed, in one of their more recent conversations regarding Shikamaru, that any kind of medication for him was out of the question. He was not suffering some kind of mental disorder, the two women agreed – he had fallen victim to one extraordinarily powerfull genjutsu, one which not even Kurenai could begin to comprehend. To drug him in his current condition was careless, to say the least.
"Did you tell Ino?", Kurenai asked. She could not imagen, however troublesome Shikamaru's behaviour might have been lately, that the younger woman would have agreed to such measures.
"She says I'm just paranoid", Shikamaru shrugged.
"Don't tell her, please. She'll just get angry..."
"I won't. Promise!", Kurenai answered, determined to do the exact opposite.