Saladshla: For Random Naruto Pairings! My first chapter really, and I want to dedicate it to firefly, who is absolutely fcking badass. Yeah, fcking, because here in Belgium people say FA-king. Anyway, I've been stocking up on her latest and oldest Naruto stories, and have been thinking about some stuff in her story Sky Runs Red. It's so, so.. Thrilling, so unique, and it really grips you with it's amazing detail and apocalyptic-ness! Simply love it. Contribution to her fic! 3
Pairing : Temari and Itachi
Subject : Family
Temari sighed and sunk into a lone chair, the wooden hinges creaking from it's age, body exhausted from Maru's recent teething problem. She closed her teal eyes and ran a hand through dirty blonde locks. She felt Itachi's analytical gaze swoop over her and tiredly cracked an eye open to give him a bit of a bemused side glance.
"He's a fast grower." He said, ruby eyes moving to the closed battered door at the end of the room where the baby was now napping.
Temari adjusted her posture in the chair and sat up straighter, hands straightening creases in her trousers. "I'd put him around six or seven months now, but I'm not exactly a professional. Babies can start to teethe at three months."
Itachi probably found no usefulness in her information or apparently decided not to show any outward emotion, because he didn't immediately reply.
He opened his mouth and seemed to mull over his reply before speaking. " ... It usually depends on how fast the mother and father teethed themselves when they were younger."
Temari found herself emitting a soft hum in return, pondering on how he got such information. She knew that as an ANBU at the age of thirteen he must have had come into contact with countless snippets of stray information, but the randomness of his stray bit of information still left her curious.
She lifted her gaze from her feet to him, lips parting to ask. But Itachi's mouth was already open to speak. "My aunt studied medical infant care." Was all he said, seemingly calculating her next response. She hummed again and looked at her feet again, too apathetic to really do anything.
It was midday, from the way that the sun shone, and gave Temari about six more hours to rest and scout for food before she had to return to the cover the basement provided from the moon.
"Temari,"
"Hm?" She hummed back at him, eyes still looking at the sunbeams coming through the razor thin gaps in the floorboards above them.
"Do you ever think about what it would be like?"
"Hm."
They both knew what he was asking about, even though they pretend not to, they'd thought about it nearly every single waking moment since the purge. How life would have been if Naruto and the Hachibi had survived. How Madara's plans would have fallen to ruins and how life would have been if nothing had ever been real. How they would have never met. How Maru would have lived with his real family with his full name, and not the last four letters of it. How Temari would have finally gone on that long promised date with Shikamaru ...
"Always," She murmured into her knuckles, elbow on the armrest, slightly slouched out in the chair. Her spread legs stretched out in front of herself, heels digging into the ground.
"All the time?"
She nodded, then echoed his words, muffled, eyes becoming cloudy. "All the time."
She turned to him and absently caressed her midsection, where a former Suna trooper mate had slashed across her skin with her tanto. "What about you?"
Itachi's sclera looked a certain light grey in the sunlight. "I would have been able to change nothing. I am already dead, Temari."
The young woman felt like grinding her teeth together. Itachi's ruby eyes held an air of smugness in it, as if he knew that she knew that he'd rile her up if he responded in that monotone way.
"I knew that Madara would use my body after Sasuke killed me, so I set up a counter genjutsu. That was the end of my life." She gave him a look, a stare or a gaze, she didn't know. But she just felt the urge to analyse and commit everything about the remarkable man in front of her to memory. The way his face looked chalk white in the sun. How his eyes wrinkled as he gave Maru a small curl of the lips as she fed him. How his face looked so worn and old. How he was so wise and intelligent.
"Maybe," He said softly, arm sticking out of his cloak, thoughts turning introspective. "I would have changed the way Sasuke lived. Made it more clear which path not to walk."
His red eyes with the passive tomoe flicked to her, and Temari gulped as the question was shot back at her.
"I guess that I would have helped Gaara, before everything. He's suffered so much, Naruto really changed him." The man also seemed to think so, because he also let out a long suffering sigh and stared at the ceiling.
"You changed me."
Itachi blinked and looked at her, black eyebrows angled and surprised. His mouth parted slightly. She had caught him unawares.
"How?" He glanced at the door leading to the bedroom, to Maru. She caught his look.
"I hadn't seen or heard hide nor hair of anything untainted for twenty-nine days, then suddenly found a baby in a survival basement. At that moment the only thing that kept me alive was Maru. And then when I'm at my wits end, you suddenly appear, and I'm trekking the globe with you. And," She faltered a bit, looking at her knees and feeling some heat in her cheeks. "And I kind of started to feel good, yeah? I, I wasn't utterly alone anymore. I felt, ... Better. Like family. Better than family."
Itachi didn't respond. There wasn't a need to. A somewhat peaceful silence settled over them, Temari occasionally going and checking if the baby was awake or not.
"Do you think that we'll ever find anyone else?" He blinked at her question when she plopped down in her seat again, holding Maru and shaking the milk formula in her other hand.
He studied her for a short while as she fed the infant. "Maybe," He said, as her fringe fell in her eyes as she turned to look at him, Maru eagerly holding the bottle and guzzling the contents. "There's got to be other survivors," It sounded like an unspoken plea, or a desperate hope. Temari nodded. "They're most likely hidden away in shelters."
"Like this one," She said.
Itachi nodded. "Like this one." He echoed.
A new hope lit up in her heart. It could be that Gaara and Kankuro were in one of them right now, wondering endlessly where she was at the moment too.
But she knew deep down that she was just clinging to an idea, an illusion.
But feeling Maru wriggle in her arms and grope his fat little fingers at Itachi, bottle long finished, she knew that her life right now was real.
But that the one she led right now, that was her family, and much more.