One Moment
Author's Notes: Never written a Temari/Shika. Maybe someday I will write a proper one, instead of this silly little drabble. )
Temari looks, taking in the stramineous, sallow pools of sand around her. There are footprints leading away from her camp.
She breathes, inhaling the ashy, pungent scent of burnt food. Someone had cooked here while she slept.
She walks, tracing the careless, smeared footprints that lead to the unknown. She has to know who was here.
She looks again, spotting the torn, cryptic note on the ground. It says, "I'm here." She still wonders who was (or still is) here, and carefully draws the fan from her back, folding it out so one purple moon shows: A warning to whoever is waiting.
She surveys the near expanse, and comes up with nothing. She decides that perhaps the note was just a joke, some little brat messing around with her.
She turns, and the breath from her lungs is gone and the sandy taste in her mouth from the desert air is forgotten. Is that…?
She sees before her a tall, aphotic figure with spiked hair and murky, tenebrous, bored eyes.
She speaks, hysterically repeating "Shikamaru, Shikamaru!" over and over again, forgetting to act uninterested.
She stops talking as if she hadn't realized her lips were moving. And then, caught in this moment, eyes wide open, Temari understands:
She's in love with a bum.
She's going to grow to be old and poor. She will live on games of Go and Shogi, and will have two children, a boy and a girl. She will be considered average, neither beautiful nor ugly, and Shikamaru will die before her.
She will be a widow someday.
The moment passes, and Temari blinks.
Owari.