Title: Beautiful Surrender
Disclaimer: Didn't you know? I'm secretly Masashi Kishimoto in disguise. (It's a good one, huh?)
Rating: PG-13 ( T ) – for mentions of death, nudity, and all that fun stuff.
Spoilers: Asuma died...oh, crap, did I just give it away?
Summary: OneShot. And the best part was, she was completely nude. ShikaHina. For SpammishRice.
Story #51
Wow, I am sooooooooooooooooo late with this...
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Shikamaru slumped down onto his favorite grassy knoll, grunting as he collided with the cold ground. The damp greenery beneath him did little to break his fall, but the shadow nin hardly cared; his lungs were already working properly again, breaths coming in and out of his body and oxygenating his blood the way they were supposed to.
Almost as if desiring to put an end to all of this, Shikamaru lit a cigarette and brought it to his lips. He took a hesitant puff, filling his healthy pink lungs with foul smoke, and coughed when it disagreed with him.
"Ugh...," he commented, small clouds of smoke wafting from his mouth as soon as he opened it. It still tasted bitter...he'd never understand why Asuma had liked smoking so much. It was a disgusting habit, one that made his teeth yellow, his clothes smell funny and his breaths wheeze.
Shikamaru laid back, the dewy grass dampening the back of his jounin issue vest, and took another draw on the cigarette. He didn't cough this time, but the taste was hardly any better...it still tasted of bitterness and despair. Maybe that was why his mentor had enjoyed them...
As the clouds above drifted across the face of the moon, Shikamaru allowed his mind to wander aimlessly. To his fallen master...to the wife and child samesaid master had left behind...to the funeral that was finally over...
As if hypnotized by the drifting clouds and his wandering thoughts, the only true genius of Konoha fell asleep under the sympathetic gaze of the moon...
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Shikamaru stirred what felt like moments later, easing into consciousness with a groggy moan. When he lifted his heavy eyelids, he observed that the moon had moved; it was no longer directly above him, watching him slumber with an impassive silvery face. Instead, it was on the other side of the sky and had become a pale, ghostly imitation of its former self. To the east, the sun was peeking shyly over the horizon, bathing the landscape in an eerie green-ish glow.
"Crap...," the shadow nin grumbled, forcing himself to sit upright. The grass had frozen overnight and clung to his clothing; he ripped a few blades free of the Earth when he moved. "I've been here all night..."
Though he would have preferred to simply roll over and slip back into dreamless sleep, Shikamaru knew that it was time to go home. Since Asuma's death and the inception of his new smoking habit, his parents had been watching him closely, clearly worried that he was going to do something drastic in a fit of grief. He wasn't, of course, but he didn't want to disillusion them by telling them so.
Shikamaru looked down at the dew-snuffed cigarette in his hand. He'd have to go home, slip inside before anyone realized he'd been missing, and climb into bed as if he'd been there all night. That was the only way to keep his nagging mother and passive-aggressive father off his back.
As he stood up, Shikamaru's muscles and joints scolded him for sleeping on the hard ground all night. Obviously, he was going to hear about his poor decision no matter what. Despite its protests, however, the shadow nin lurched his body into motion and took off into the woods, headed for home.
Shikamaru paid little attention to the sights that flew past him, – trees, rocks, shrubbery, birdies – perfectly accustomed to the way everything was supposed to look in this portion of the forest. He knew very well that the foxes had a den within the roots of that big oak at the halfway point between his sanctuary and his home, and it was well established that the trickling stream nearby led to a small lake that housed various shades and sizes of koi. There was no reason for him to slow down his journey to take in the sights; they were the same the last time he'd come through, and the time before that, and the time before that, and he was fairly positive that nothing would change before the next time he came through, either.
Which was why he stumbled to an ungainly halt when a flash of blue-ish white light flashed in his peripheral vision. 'That was...different,' his thoughts supplied helpfully as he fought to regain balance on his unsteady feet.
There! The light flashed again...It was coming from the direction of the lake, he surmised.
Though not usually the curious type (well, not the curious type that proactively sought information, anyway), Shikamaru had to admit that he was intrigued by the luminescent alteration in his uneventful scenery. Almost as if resuming his auto-pilot mode, the shadow nin's feet guided him unconsciously toward the source of the sporadic brightness, encouraging him to seek it out.
The light made itself known to him once again and, this time, Shikamaru recognized it. It was chakra...someone was training out here. In the middle of nowhere. At (approximately) five in the morning...
What kind of self-loathing idiot would do that? Didn't anyone believe in sleep anymore?
Moving a low-hanging branch of shrubbery out of his way with an absent swipe of his hand, the shadow nin emerged into the clearing that housed the lake and beheld the scene before him on a rocky perch.
It was...
...beautiful.
A girl danced – there was no other way to describe her motions; "dancing" was the only thing that came anywhere close – across the placid surface of the lake, her toes barely skimming the wetness she used as a foothold. She twirled and spun around and around in a single spot, manipulating thin streams of water with her waving hands. Though the liquid obeyed the commands of her chakra, her hair whipped about her form wildly, swishing and swirling in time with her movements and the gentle prodding of an intruding wind. A few leaves – orange, gold, red, green – seemed incapable of staying away and, thus, joined in her dance, too.
And the best part was, she was completely nude.
The pure bareness of the girl's body seemed to blend perfectly with her surroundings; not a thing came between her and the natural setting which she manipulated to her every whim. There was nothing lewd about what she was doing, nothing overtly sexual or lascivious, but her dance was all the more breathtaking because her pale skin glowed in the fading starlight. Had Shikamaru believed such things were real, he would have called her a water sprite. Perhaps a nymph. Whatever she was, it was hard to believe that she was a being of the physical world...
Shikamaru wasn't sure which had betrayed him, – the slippery surface of the rock or his own damned curious feet – but the moment was broken when the heel of his sandal lost its grip on his rocky foothold. As his body plummeted toward the murky body of water, he couldn't help but cry out; "AUGH!"
After a few extended moments of complete submersion, Shikamaru broke through to the surface, coughing and sputtering. Some of the algae-infused water had made its way into his lungs and the burning sensation that followed was...bothersome.
"Sh-Shikamaru-kun?" a timid voice called, drawing the soggy shadow nin's attention.
The girl he had been shamelessly observing was hovering over him from the bank, completely dry and partially clothed, and seemed to recognize him. Did he know any mythical water creatures...?
"Are – Are you o-okay?" the girl continued, biting her plump lower lip with clear concern. She clutched at the insignificant opening at the top of her indigo jacket, her knuckles bleached white with the tense exertion of holding it closed.
Though he hadn't recognized the beautiful vision that had danced on the moonlit water, the girl before him was easily recognizable as one of his former classmates at the academy and fellow "Rookie Nine" inductee, Hyuuga Hinata. Her hair was much longer than he remembered it in the old days and her body had certainly...filled out, but it was clearly her. The trademark eyes bestowed upon every Byakugan wielder did not lie.
"Hy-Hyuuga?" Shikamaru sputtered, coughing into a closed fist wrapped in seaweed (or was it "lakeweed"? Whatever...) "What're you doing out here so early?"
"Ano...training," she admitted, a bright flush alighting her cheeks. "I...I was p-practicing my water jutsu."
"Naked?"
Hinata's cheeks glowed a deeper red. "I...I'm not very good at it yet," she admitted bashfully, poking her fingers together in a childish habit that Shikamaru recognized. "I d-didn't want to get my clothes wet."
"You seemed pretty good at it to me," Shikamaru noted, feeling no need to add embellishment. She was skilled, there was no doubting it.
"Y-You're just saying that...," she replied, shaking her head back and forth in denouncement of the compliment. Apparently, he was wrong; some people just couldn't appreciate their own talents. "What are you doing out here so early?"
"I was...," Shikamaru paused, considering the lie he was about to tell. "...training."
"Oh..."
"You don't believe me?" he queried. Not that he cared, his curiosity was just getting out of line again. It seemed to be doing that a lot this early morning...
"I just...," she paused, much like he had, and Shikamaru wondered absently if she were pondering a lie just for him. "...didn't think you would be awake yet. K-Kurenai-sensei says you sleep until n-noon..."
Only when he was that lucky. Even when he slept in a bed, something – or, more usually, someone – would disturb his blissful rest and drag him out into the world. "Sometimes," he admitted vaguely. "You're a morning person, I take it?"
"Um...I g-guess so."
An awkward silence seemed appropriate at this point, so that's what Shikamaru settled into. Hinata seemed willing to acquiesce to this same natural phenomenon and deigned to keep quiet for the time being.
He kind of liked that about her. The quiet thing; Ino and Temari would have been insistently chattering his ear off this entire time rather than holding their tongues. Nara Shikamaru appreciated the Hyuuga heiress' capacity for silence.
"So...," he began, breaking the quiet trance between them. Enough was enough; it was beginning to unnerve him. "Want to visit with Kurenai and the kid after breakfast?"
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Author's Notes: This is a prize fic for SpammishRice who took first place in the November 2008 ShikaHina contest, "Falling For You."
…yeah, I was in a fanfiction rut for awhile. That's about all the excuse I got, sadly...Sorry, Spammy n.n;
Btw, this fic was based on her winning fanart entry, "A Beautiful Surrender." To see it, copy/paste this link into your browser (without all the spaces, of course): http : // spammishrice . deviantart . com/ art/ Beautiful-Surrender-105290832
Un-beta'd. (C'mon, I'm way too lazy for that...lolz.)
. ( . Ms Videl Son . ) .