I wonder if Summer realizes just how strange a season it is?

The sun burns brightly much longer in the day, women bring out fans, kids bring out shorts and water guns. And for just one time of year we all get together and agree on just how friggin hot it is.

But ironically enough when the season passes and it moves to the colder seasons, we're usually always wishing for it to come back. People can be so shortsighted sometimes.

Though in Konoha, there's one more thing that marks Summer for us all. The days when Summer knows it's coming to an end, but makes one final stand to go out with a bang.

No matter the year, no matter the time. At least once before the season changes, it'll will pour for one week straight.

And to be perfectly honest I always hated the rain, Cloudgazing is damn near impossible when they're black and hazy behind the droplets. And without the clouds to clear my mind, I'm always left with too much to ponder about, too much time to reminisce while under shade, or rooftop. Watching as drops from the sky pool and puddle onto the ground.

As if I didn't have enough on my mind.

When I think back to when I was a kid, I suppose you could say this is the normal life I always told myself I wanted. As normal as it could get with what we've been through, with how it is we live our lives.

The strugggles to become a chuunin, Orochimaru, Asuma, Sasuke and Madara both, all subjects that nowadays would garner a small smile from any of us if you happened to bring it up. If not just a nostalgic sense of things.

But, it'd never last.

We're older, Seen a share of combat, seen another of death and destruction, and countless funerals and rebuilding efforts. So much so that, no matter what we lose, the nature of the world just keeps pushing us onward into the future.

Time stops for no one, right?

Still, leave it to a rainy afternoon to make me of all people get so reminiscent. Another day as the 6ths adviser, another day wiping the ass of the incompetent folk littered around his desk. It was a miracle anyone got any work down with how haphazardly they could be from time to time.

I was flattered he'd picked me to wok alongside him, but I never know how to tell him how much I hate my job. I figured it was only natural to have some kind of ill will towards where you work, right?

I figured it'd be better just grow up like I said I would, get a good job like my old man. Get a woman you could bring home to your parents, have a couple of kids, and die a happy man with a porch and a Shogi board.

So why was it?

Why was it when I got her letter, I couldn't help but be torn either way because of it. Just the words she used, the way she wrote it, all of is terribly nostalgic, even moreso troublesome.

How else was I supposed to act, getting a letter from my X out of the blue?

Part of me felt ecstatic, but the other didn't really know how to act, or what to say. How exactly do you go by meeting someone after three years of not seeing them? How do you mend a broken relationship onto friendship?

I've seen people do it before, long lost loved ones from the past showing up on doorsteps. My father was no exception, I remember when I was younger, having to watch him sneak a woman into my house so that my mother wouldn't know. And despite his commitment to either woman, pushing the other away. Even he looked lost at the time.

Because there was truly no book on how the world should flow, something I learned quite some time ago. There's no benchmark on how to tell someone anything: a new job, a new lover, a new child, a death. There's no special pattern.

But I suppose I was too wrapped up in my thoughts that rainy evening to pay all that much attention. Cold and wet from the rain, already way too late to bother asking Ino to come make dinner, and part of me was pretty sure it'd be better if she didn't see me like this, caught up in thoughts about "her" of all people.

I was almost certain I'd have more time to sort out my feelings, take a step back and think of something rationally. But as I fished through my pockets for the keys to my apartment. I quickly realized something...

I didn't even know how to say, "Hello"

"Nara"

She said to me, bright red from the cold, and coiled up tightly in a sleeping bad next to her belongings, my apartment doorway a roost for her back. A living example of beautiful homeless, soaking wet from the pouring rain. She slowly climbed her way out of the bag, and faced me with a grin.

"You really shouldn't get home so late."

Temari and I had been through our ups and downs. She was with me through most of that final fight, the day when he was born, the day I had the accident. We were together for a great many things, and experienced even more together, a peculiar bond I couldn't claim to share with any other woman, but a bond she herself had broken.

One day, it all just stopped. She vanished out of the blue, right from my life. Right from Konoha, all over her existence gone without a trace. I tried to find her, but I heard nothing. Sent teams to Sunagakure, but could never go myself. And in time, she'd become nothing but rumors, if not just a symbol for me to move on with my life.

Yet, in less then an hour a one person apartment had become an abode for two.

Two pairs of wet sandals waited by the doorway, wet clothing hanging in my bathroom, everything from overcoats to underwear strung together by rope and clothing pins to let the water drip onto the buckets below. All her things were thoroughly soaked.

We stood in the kitchen, I at the stove, and her near my counter, grasping a lighter and a soaked carton of cigarettes, a habit she picked up, and kept from me so long ago.

It was alittle surreal, to see her in my kitchen again. Her beauty only growing in the years I hadn't seen her. Blonde hair down and flowing by her shoulders, her body covered with nothing more then an old shirt of mine, and a pair of boxers. Legs that stretched on for what seemed like miles out of the chair at my table, and a curving of chest that left an imprint in the face of the shirt.

I tried to keep my back to her, but something about the sound of the smoking, the nonchalant matter of it all.

It irritated me.

Not that I didn't think Temari was that kind of woman, who could do what she did to me, and then show up practically unannounced and hope for shelter. But that she always knew what I was going to do. And I was always left guessing, chasing after this angry blonde vixen.

The only woman I couldn't read.

"Gah!" she said with a laugh. "Talk about bad luck, the day I come to visit you and I get drenched from head to toe. Talk about bad luck, right Nara?"

"Mhm" I replied warming my hands on the stove, pouring her a small cup of tea and placing it on the table for her to drink. Although, she'd probably hate it, because it was the kind that Ino liked and brought over here only yesterday.

Still, she drank it down in a haughty flash. Wharfing down the glass with more of a manlike charm then anything else, Temari's old tomboyish habits still standing strong despite her womanly instincts and curves.

"Still" she said with a smile. "Guess it was a good thing you were here in the end. I'm surprised you were getting to your own home so late."

She shot me a questioning glare from behind the mug, examining me and my response very carefully, another one of Temari's measure's I'd seen through in the past. I figured, two could play at that game.

"I was with someone"

It's not that I wasn't technically, but tonight my job had just ran later then I had wanted it too. Some of Naruto's personal staff needed some help with paperwork, seeing as he never stays behind the counter long enough to do it himself. Always chasing after something new and fun around his village.

Ino was supposed to cook for me tonight, but I suppose it was for the better that she didn't at this moment in time. I haven't even had time to tell her Temari would be coming. But despite all that, I'd figured Temari would be better off dealing with a lie, makes the situation more clear.

"Oh." she replied with a bored look on her face. Exhaling alittle smoke from her lips and keeping her eyes on me for what felt like minutes, I tried to keep as stern as face as I could, but...

"You sly dog!" she said slapping me on the shoulder with a wide grin on her face. "Out getting some even with a steady job. Who'd have thought a lazy guy like you would've become such a player!"

Typical answers, from such a troublesome woman. Even with the lie, she didn't bat so much as an eyelash. The same topics that would've been "touchy" in other circumstances never mattered to such a brazen woman, if it was on her mind, it's what we were going to talk about.

But I probably should've been paying more attention.

"Nara!" she called to me, with a curious look on her face. She leaned in, standing on her feet instead of the chair, closing the distance between us with her dark green eyes looking straight into mine. Unaware at how the neck of the shirt was big on her, enough so that a well placed glance could see down her chest.

"What's the broads name anyways?" That quiet one who's always chasing after the 6th? Or maybe that girl with the pig tails. It's allright, you can tell me." her grin growing to a more devilish smirk. An incourrageble woman to the end.

"What? No" I complained as she leaned closer and closer to me, keeping my eyes from stealing glances anymore. "The hell are you doing?" I questioned as she pushed me back more and more in my chair, the two of us barely touching as I retreated towards the wall.

Her eyes looked into mine like two green orbs of mystique, scorching behind the shallow fog of the smoke that flowed from soft pink lips. As she got closer and closer, the man in me couldn't help but grow more and more entranced, snared like a lazy cat in a clever dogs trap.

By the time I realized it, it was already too late.

The legs of the chair gave way to my retreat, flying out from underneath me and the two of us toppling onto the floor. The wooden chair I'd gotten for only half price down the street, quickly bouncing once into the counter.

What a stupid move...

I had closed my eyes when my head hit the floor, but my body was not so willing. The warmth of her body as it straddled across my own, the feeling of her breasts lying atop my chest, the way her hands had pinned my own down, legs wrapped firmly around me, her favorite controlling kind of position.

I could feel the heat of her cigarette as she snuffed it against the floor, coupled with the sounds of soft moaning in my ears as she fidgeted to get up, soft whispers that felt as if they were melting my head. My mind oozing out onto the floor.

When I opened my eyes, she had done the same, glaring at me in the same smile that I hated the most about her. The look in her eyes that showed me her true nature, the true Temari that wasn't a loud obnoxious pretty princess of Sunagakure, or a tomboy who likes fighting.

The look, of maturity.

"Oi, Nara." she said very slowly. "I'm a bit flattered that you'd say something like that to me. but apart from my brothers, I know you better then any man I've ever known in my life." she looked me down as if I were her toy, her tool, the same older, and voiding gaze that had captured me so long ago.

A vixen to the very end,

"Despite whatever woman it is you could be seeing. I know you know me the same way, as well. But keep in mind that when your lying, I can tell right off the bat."

Any quick rebuttal I had was snuffed out like the cigarette onto my floor, I looked at her with hungry eyes, I could smell the rain on her body, mixed well within her perfume. Even felt the coldness of her breath as she lay on top of me.

We stayed there for a few seconds, entagled with one another, staring into the others eyes and allowing the silence to do the talking for us. The soft patter of the rain atop the roof building saying much more then my lips could ever muster. And the calm thunder-less night replying with what it is Temari had heard from me all along.

But I couldn't do this... not here. Not now.

"Troublesome woman..." I muttered pushing her away. "Pay more attention next time."

Temari laughed loudly, a dull redness in her cheeks that spread along the peach luster of her skin. Climbing off me and retreating to the wall at the far end of th kitchen. Crossing her arms across the long hem of my shirt. That calming presence in her eyes returning to the normal way she presented herself.

It made me sick.

"You don't change a bit, do you Nara? Still the same cheeky asshole who's too good to ever see just what's infront of him."

"Glad to see I could stay the same why you did what you wanted. It must be nice to have things always stay the way you leave them."

"Don't joke around like that"

She shot back at me very cryptically. Had I touched on a difficult subject? I couldn't tell all that well. I watched her hands playing with the carton of cigarettes she had fishing for a wet bud and plucking it from the pack.

"Oi, you want a light?"

"Don't smoke anymore."

"Gah" she said flicking the cigarette out atop the counter. Rejcting it's offer outright "Must be nice to have a broad that takes care of you, eh?" she said very bitterly.

Once again, the woman I had actually feared began to resurface. For the second time tonight, I watched the luster in her eyes dull very slightly, and the calming factor once again come back to me.

It was the Temari I had fallen in love with, so many yearrs ago. Things change, but people don't more times then not. You could never change completely, and in this case she didn't even in the slightest bit.

"Why are you here...Why did you leave..."

I found myself muttering at the end of my thoughts. Watching my words as they left my tongue to reach her ears behind the pattering of the pouring rain. A fire slowly burning in her eyes.

She rose an eyebrow at my statement, taking another calm look at me as I stood up against the wall we'd fallen back towards. I couldn't read her anymore... I didn't know what she wanted, why she was here, anything. Stumped by this blonde bombshell.

She paused as she looked at me, reading the postion of my hands, the cigarette she discarded, everything around the room crossing paths with her eyesight before returning in full circle right back onto me.

"Thanks again for keeping me here, Nara." she said taking a few steps closer. "I didn't mean any trouble, just wanted a place for the night is all, I'll be gone before morning.." She slid towads me again, but tis time, I had no where to fall, or turn.

I had nothing to stop her from moving...

It was as if my tongue had had been ripped from my throat, my body struggling to take this woman in front of me, to remember what we did so many years ago, for the first time in both our lives.

It was if I was consumed by her presenece, lost in her cryptic gaze, but still staring down this woman like a snake in a trance. Lusting for her. A hunger burning in my stomach, a taste or desire.

She moved on her own as my body stayed stern, numbing from the touch of her skin, the warmth it emitted. Her lips so close to my own I could feel the sting of cold when she started to breathe.

"Nara..." she whispered, closing her eyes before she moved any closer, the warmth of her body burning into my own, my eyes closing to meet her request, my mind like mush.

Although honestly, was an error in my judgment. For forgetting just who I was dealing with.

In a harsh motion she clamped her hand around my crotch, her small hands firm enough to cause me to buckle to the side from the sensation. The side of my chest slamming into the top of her shoulder, it not moving an inch from the impact.

"That other blonde bitch wouldn't like this very much, would she?"

Temari turned from my sight in a swift motion, walking out o the room and grinning all the while, giving me just enough time to remind myself how much she just toyed with me before waving her hand to say goodnight. disappearing behind my bedroom door and closing it shut.

Typical... of a troublesome woman.

It was a funny thing, that morning when I woke up. Strangely not at all surprised when she wasn't there, the whole thing seemingly like a dream I hadn't wanted to have but didn't want to wake. The strange night with my X, ended just like that. Leaving me with nothing more then the endless rain pouring from the skies.

I wasn't really sad to see her gone, I was sure the night would leave me with plenty of unpleasant memories to enjoy for quite some time, before finding some way to clean them out of my mind.

But I'd be lying if part of me didn't feel like I was in a daze,

The day didn't change even though she wasn't around, I got up like usual, ate my breakfast, and went to work. And that night when I got home, she was no where to be found.

As I said before, time stops for no man. It wasn't a lapse in time... but just another night I would remember for years.

I walked into my room to undress for the evening, falling back onto my bed, and closing my eyes with thoughts of her pooling into the back of my mind, the sheets she'd laid in covered with her aura, her scent. It was detestable, but I felt myself intoxicated in it, lusting to see her again.

My body laid there for awhile, looking at my room, my window, my watch. I felt like a stone at the top of a hill, unable to slide down, but desiring to do so. When I told my arms to move they simply reminded me of why I was down.

And when it was all said and done,

The rain continued to pour down atop my house, the patter of the falling drops, the Summer rains that went on without fail, a typical Konoha tradition.

Eventually I rose from my roost, noting the time and leaving regardless. There was no need for a destination, a goal, a finish line. I cleared my mind, and stashed a cigarette in the face of my coat. Drifting outward into that cold wet night.

God, I really wish it would stop raining.