This is my first published fanfic, so I hope you'll be kind!
I would really be happy about nice and helpful reviews, I hope you have fun reading this :)
He was the kind of person that was both very easy and very hard to figure out. He liked things to turn out simple, logical. That's the reason he was hardly ever beaten at shogi or chess – the way the pieces moved made sense to him. At the same time, he was intrigued by things he could not solve. He had been bored most of his life – school didn't challenge him and he didn't feel like any of his friends, as lovely as they were, could match his wits. He grew accoustumed to it eventually and resortet to living out most of his thoughts and fantasies inside his own head. It wasn't too bad.
He liked to label everything „troublesome"; not, because he was unable to handle a situation, but because it was difficult for him to express his thoughts in a way that others would understand. He had tried to explain his way of thinking to Choji, his best friend for many years, but it just ended up confusing the poor boy. So he let it be. It was much easier to just tell somebody it was too „troublesome" to say than to see the look of pitiful confusion in a friend's eyes.
He was not much of a fighter. Violence bothered him; he was more of an strategist than a warrior. While many of his peers dreamed of becoming Hokage, he preferred becoming the Hokage's right hand. Nobody, including his parents, understood. This fact would be commented on a lot during his next 24 years, but his answer never differed: „I don't care."
What he really wanted to say was: „I don't want that kind of expectation thrust upon me." While he was very smart and capable, he was also insecure in a way, that made him seem arrogant to his peers. He sometimes felt that this genius was wasted on him. He never asked for anybody to grace him with great intelligence. He would have been happy being average.
He only shared this thought once and he was never sure whether he should have said anything at all.
„That's stupid.", her words were harsh, but her voice was soft. That answer reflected more on her character than anything else. Her whole person, her whole being was both very, very harsh and very, very soft. Her blue eyes were fierce, but somehow calming in their deepness. Her clothes were always neat and perfect, to a degree of obsession. Her hair was both messy and controlled. Her voice was cutting like a knife, but she spoke to him in a way that soothed him. Sometimes he thought he was mad. But he liked hearing her talk. It comforted him more than anything else.
He knew she didn't mean to insult him. It was just her way of thrusting her wisedom upon him. Oh, how he hated it when she was so condescending. But he knew that she was, because she cared. She would have never even wasted her breath on him if she didn't.
„Why do you always keep yourself down?" She faced him in a way that didn't allow him to walk away. It was intense; too intense. He longed for some ice to cool him down, but there was never any, only fire and stroms and electricity. Her aura was special, it was so intense that it frightened him sometimes. It was impossible to ignore her; whenever she entered a room, her energy filled the whole space with fire. At least it felt like that to him.
„You could be the Hokage, you know?", he felt the warmth of her hand on this shoulder. She was close, so close, yet she kept him at a literal arm's lenght. It made him laugh. She just couldn't handle being close to anyone. Even though they had known each other – what – a decade already.
Thinking back, the only time she had ever allowed him to touch her was after she was hurt on a mission.
It was a surreal situation. They were captured in the middle of the Sound. Bounty hunters, waiting for the perfect situation to blackmail their rivals, the Sand and the Leaf, into submission. The princess of the Sand and the Hokage's right hand would suffice. Usually, these kind of ninjas wouldn't have posed a threat for him or her alone, not to mention together. They were a great team.
But things got complicated. People were hurt. One of them was her.
The second she fell to the ground, everything went into slow motion. He had imaged what it would be like to die a lot in the past. He had expected to pass a few times in his life and he wasn't even 25 yet He imagined this is what it would be like: losing all sense of sound, of vision. Feeling like you were falling in reverse, unable to see were you are going. That's what he felt when he saw her. He had fought her as a teenager and he had seen her fight many times after that. But he had never seen her crumble. It was such an unreal moment, for a second, he forgot all about his ninja training. Years of education, down the drain. He felt his body lunge towards her attacker. It was unwise, so unwise. He was sure that only a special blessing from the gods had saved him that day. He had felt afraid for a friend before, it wasn't anything new. But she never crumbled, she had never been defeated.
He never admitted it to her, but that moment was pure terror for him. He had never been so afraid in his life. He cradeled her limp body, the fight still raging around them. He had lost all senses. He could only see her, laying in his arms, blood pooling on her chest. „Shikamaru.", she whispered. „Crybaby.", her voice was so unbearably soft. He grabbed her hand, unable to say a single word. He wanted to say so much but once again, he could not get it out. He cursed himself for never being able to speak up, never being able to say how he feels.
Would this be it? Would he lose this person just like he lost Asuma? He never managed to tell his sensei how much he admired him. And now, that he had the chance to tell her, tell her how afraid he was, how scared he was of losing another person he loved, all he could utter was: „Please. Don't go." He could feel her clutching his hand faintly. She laughed quietly and looked him straight in the eyes. She wanted him to listen, really listen. She wanted him to believe her words. „I won't leave you. I promise."
A medical nin managed to wrestle him off her and started treating the wound. As the fear and the sadness subsided, the only thing more potent was his anger. The fight didn't take much longer. His rage caught them by surprise. No wonder, as he had been a blithering weakling not a minute ago, crying over the body of a woman. His blind rage grew into a dome of white, enveloping him in silence.
Over the last ten years, he had been teased about Temari a lot. He never thought much about it.
Temari had never been there enough for them to date. He had never bothered to persue her. They would just be together when she came around or if he had to go on a diplomatic mission to Suna. He always told his friends that it was just a professional relationship.
Of course, that wasn't completly true and he knew that. He remembered so many moments of him being together with her. To be honest, he remembered all of them. They never did anything special. They would take walks, watch clouds or eat out. He never thought they talked about anything profound, sometimes, they didn't talk much at all. But he remembered the way he felt every time she would leave. He remembered the way he was always tempted to look back when leaving her, wanting to see her expression. Temari was not the kind of person to tell him not to leave and he would never muster up the nerve to say it either. She would probably laugh at him. Call him a crybaby. Turn her back and run away like the wind. She wasn't malicious or anything, she was just incapable of talking about anything even slightly emotional. But he did think of her. He caught himself wondering what her skin felt like. Sometimes, in the dark of night.
He felt stupid in a way that was painful to him. These were the last moments he could live in blissful ignorance if something had happened to her. Right after this thought ended, after he woke up from his blind rage, he would find out what had happened to her – and he might not like the answer. How would he react? Would he cry? He hated himself. For being so scared of the answer. For genuinely not knowing how he would react. For only ever telling her he didn't want her to leave when she was bleeding in his arms.
„Oh, come on.", he laughed way too loud, way too controlled. „Don't give me that crap. You would love to be Hokage.", she teased. „What about you?" , he asked. „Don't you want to be Kazekage?" She seemed surprised by the question and answered after a few short moments: „No." „Why not? You're smart. You're capable." She laughed a throaty laugh. „I could never take that away from my little brother. He loves it, you know?", she waited for a moment and he didn't know if she was waiting for a response.
He never knew with her. It was still so hard for him to figure her out, even after all these years. She was looking at him, waiting for something. She seemed to always wait for him to say something. But he never did. Still, she watched him. Waiting, always waiting. „He loves it.", she repeated. „He loves it so much, I would never want to take it away from him." Shikamaru shrugged. „I get that." He let himself fall on the gras, feeling the thin blades between his fingers. „Hey, Shikamaru.", he noticed that she was still standing; tall, proud, frightening. „Do you ever think that you'll leave Konoha?" „No.", he answered quickly, without a doubt in his mind. „It's my home." She glanced at him for a second and the looked away. „Yeah." He thought he heard something like a low chuckle. „I get that."