Characters: Kurenai, Shikamaru, Isako
Summary: He'll cherish that smile, even if he can't look at her.
Pairings: ShikaKure
Author's Note: Isako is my name for Asuma and Kurenai's child, who finally shows up in chapter 533, and he/she (since Kishimoto once mentioned that he was thinking of making the child a girl, I'm going to go with that for gender until further notice) is so cute. Also, again, there's some talk about the realities of war and the shinobi world in this that I like to think of as fact but are likely not canon. Just felt I should warn you.
Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.
She looks tired, her face wan and drained and the shadows gathering deep under and around her eyes. Her face looks unnaturally soft and rounded without the hitai-ate pulling her bushy dark hair away from her high cheekbones. Yuuhi Kurenai's still a pretty woman though, even pulled to the very limit of what she can endure. Funny… Shikamaru wonders why he never noticed it before. He notices now.
Baby Isako's pale cheeks are flushed. Her slight fuzz of dark hair is every bit as unruly as her mother's hair as Kurenai runs long, callused fingers through it. She looks up, sends a small smile in Shikamaru's direction, and leans on the rail, casting a look at the river far below. Shikamaru can't quite meet her gaze.
"So you're leaving?" Kurenai's soft voice is carefully toneless and Shikamaru consents to watch her mouth as it moves. Her lips are naturally red, he observes absently; the lacquer she wears only to intensify the color.
Shikamaru nods, hands in his pockets and eyes again on the wood—the stone and concrete bridges that were destroyed during Pein's attack have yet to be rebuilt; wood is easier, especially with Yamato around, no matter how much he complains about it afterwards—planks beneath. "Yeah. I'm Gaara's proxy."
Though he doesn't see it, a gleam of interest enters Kurenai's cinnamon red eyes. "Well good for you. You're moving up, and at a meteoric rate, too." Silence where a laugh would have come from another person follows. "Don't let it go to your head, Shikamaru."
A sharp bark of a laugh tears from the young Nara's teeth. "I don't intend on letting it get that way."
A heavy quiet follows. It's nearly morning, and the sky is a deep bronze yellow, crimson blood-red near the horizon. The faintest burning crest of the sun can be seen. Isako fusses a little and Kurenai soothes her, bouncing her slightly—the motions seem mechanical and forced, and her face goes strangely blank when she does so, unsmiling. Shikamaru watches and frowns.
Finally, her smooth, quiet voice breaks the silence, a faintly brittle note to her tones. "I wish I could go there too."
Shikamaru knows that, like he knows that Kurenai petitioned to be allowed to join the military force. "Your maternity leave runs out in five weeks." His own voice is brittle too. "It'll be over before you know it." A skewed sympathy, but sympathy none the less.
Knowing the world and Kurenai like he does, Shikamaru thinks he can map out where it all can go.
For the first year or two, Kurenai will miss Isako terribly when she's on missions. She'll dream about her, think she can see her in every village. Isako will consume her thoughts, for the first year or two.
After that, things will be different. She'll think about her daughter less and less and think more about where she's going to get the money from and about how she has no skills other than killing. Shinobi don't make good parents; kunoichi don't make good mothers. Kurenai will hear the song of a mission and she won't ignore it. Isako will be all but forgotten by the time Kurenai has her enrolled in the Academy, and once Sarutobi Isako is grown, if she has children it will likely be the same way. Shikamaru knows this because his parents were like that with him. His mother was almost never home during his childhood, and neither was his father—Shikamaru was far more familiar with distant cousins and his elderly neighbors (both sets of grandparents were dead by the time he was born) than he was with his parents.
It's still that way, really.
Shikamaru starts a little when he feels a light hand on his arm, and he looks up to see Kurenai staring at him, not quite smiling but holding an expression that, under other circumstances, would be one. He ducks his eyes almost immediately. He still can't look at her, not really.
Not with those thoughts running through his head, and Asuma still burned on the inside of his eyelids. "Well, be safe Shikamaru. I want Isako to be able to remember your face, and I want to be able to remember her remembering your face." Her eyes are utterly piercing, burning into his skull.
Slowly, agonizingly, Shikamaru nods. "Yeah." I'll be the one Isako remembers first by the time she's five. Not Kurenai, me.
But still, he can smile as he looks at her.
And he can see Kurenai smiling back.
It's the last of its kind Shikamaru will see before he sees her again. He wants to cherish it.