The wind is never quite as still as when she stops to feel it.
She needs it, sometimes, when it's the only constant in her life other than the blisters on her feet. She utilizes the wind, controls it and uses it to slice open her enemies and decimate anything in her path, and because it's her only element, she can tell. The temperature, the speed, the direction, they all mean something to her.
That's how she sees it coming, gets what warning she does, so the only thing that shatters is her tessen rather than her rib cage.
Immediately, her mind starts racing-she needs another conductor, something to channel her chakra through, a discarded sword, a couple of shuriken, something that will help her refine the mass quantity of chakra she was born with that has never once been a burden until this moment.
But the enemy is charging, four of them at once, and they've clearly heard about her, Suna no Temari and her warfan, known for her restraint but also for her power, who, if pushed, would not hesitate in slicing her enemies in half. If the impact didn't kill them, the blood loss would. So they employed a strategy so classic that a genin would think of it: take out her weapon.
She wasn't a sensory type, couldn't realistically have been expected to notice them through their expert skill at hiding their chakra signatures, shouldn't logically have been out on this mission by herself- but she'd insisted. And even the Kazekage had to give in to his elder sister.
Her fan is gone, useless at her feet, and they are getting closer. She feels the chakra vibrating through her veins, shifting her bones nearly enough to displace them in their sockets; it is the form of adrenaline she is accustomed to feeling, and she finds relief that her power has not deserted her. She is far from helpless without her tessen. Rather, without a conductor, she is unrefined and raw, unsure how to control herself or cap the damage from her attacks.
But she's legendary for a reason, the daughter and sister of great and powerful shinobi, and she wouldn't be worth her reputation if something as simple as taking away her weapon left her vulnerable.
They are almost upon her, and so, with a reputation to live up to, she lets it out. The wind inside of her rips through her surroundings in a violent burst of razor-thin air, cutting up everything in its path in only seconds. There are screams, but her eyes are closed so she only imagines the blood and the horror forever inscribed as the last expressions upon her enemies' faces. For just a moment, with her eyes closed and the screams playing in front of her, her brain recalls a different scenario, bloodied sand and a little boy with tears littering his eyes and a demonic smile.
But her eyes open-she is too old to be defeated by these childhood demons, too awake to fall victim to old fears-and reality snaps back to her. Bodies in pieces, cleanly sliced through, still-beating hearts panicking as they run out of blood to pump, twitching fingers, toes, eyes as the life leaks out of them. Bare landscape in a perfect circle around her, no trees, bushes, or even grass to distract from the sight of their mangled corpses. She doesn't have to look to know it's all been pushed outside her range, to know whoever happens by here next will have no idea what happened.
That's what everything around her looks like, in thousands of tiny pieces, like shattered glass.
The sky is the only thing untouched, still blue, still masquerading as pleasant with wispy, white clouds, remarkably as though the horror she committed has had no effect its serenity. So her eyes get stuck on the sky, long enough that she watches an entire cloud pass over the horizon, onto other villages and other powerful shinobi with reputations to uphold.
If anyone asks her directly, she won't lie about the damaged landscape, won't tone down her ability to carve into people and mountains alike. She's a weapon, after all; her purpose is to serve, and to kill so that she may serve longer. Gaara is Kazekage now, but there is a part of her, deep inside her chest, where she keeps the particularly vicious storms and the scarred part of her innocence that doesn't care about destruction or murder because that same part of her fears that in the end it doesn't matter, that will always believe her purpose in life is not her own.
Her feet do not move when she commands them to, not to walk back, not to walk forward, not even to retrieve her war fan though it lies only a few metres in front of her. She is planted, heavy, like a tree herself, though there is no noticable life to speak of either growing from her or in her eyes, watching her victims' blood amasse long after their bodies have stopped twitching.
She is a monster, too-they all are. They are trained to hone their power from the age of five, a select group of individuals taught to be murderous and ruthless and above all how to survive, poorly-hidden among the peaceful folks in the Land of Wind. There is a reason Sunagakure is ninety-five percent shinobi, why it bears a distinct lack of civilians.
It is the gene pool, constructed from too many generations in a century, a rapid escalation of Darwin's theory: only the strongest were able to survive. Her chakra is not watered down, latent, or otherwise obstructed. She is a pure force of nature through which the wind demands fear just as fire and water; for whether burned alive, suffocated with heavy lungs, or sliced in half, all the chakra natures were bred to kill. She is the product of that, generations of shinobi amassing more and more power: she is a prodigy.
At last Temari regains the ability to tear her eyes from what she has wrought. But with this comes the price of losing her footing. Her knees crash into the soil, only the bottom layer of the earth was not ripped away by her wind, and a strangled sob leaves her throat.
Her fan is not a weapon through which she makes herself strong. Her tessen is the instrument which allows her control.
A sudden breeze, deceptively gentle, reminds her she cannot stay out in the open like this without a functioning ninja tool. So she picks herself up, wipes her eyes with her dirt-covered hands, and heads back to Konoha for no other reason than it is closer, and she does not wish to trust herself any longer than she must.
A day's journey back, in Konoha, Shikamaru's teacup shatters.
Not particularly baffled by the curious sight, his mother swiftly cleans up the mess. But for Shikamaru, who's never particularly believed in omens but can't quite help himself now that she's saved his life yet again, his eyes are stuck on the horizon.
He watches a breeze pass outside, ruffling his clan's canopy of healthy trees, but does not close his eyes when it comes to him. The breeze moves on quickly, but there is a dark feeling in the pit of his stomach now, where dread and concern have formed a dense ball of unease.
He doesn't question it when Temari shows up that night with her tessen in shambles and mud on her face. He simply offers her a shower, makes her up a cot, and holds her hand while she sits next to him in silence.
The cot is unused in the morning, and he realizes she never moved from his bed. When he awakens, he can't help but notice the way the sun illuminates her cheekbones, the absolute trust displayed in her slightly open mouth, and the steady rise and fall of her chest that comes with her peaceful sleep. He is proud to give her all of these things, but they are not accomplishments he can wave banners about or receive awards for. His memories are the only proof he has, so he makes sure to remember her well. When he'd fallen asleep last night, she'd been awake. She hasn't moved an inch all this time to make absolutely certain she didn't disturb him, so he does the same for her. She kisses him when she wakes up, they bump elbows, sometimes purposely and sometimes not, in front of the bathroom mirror, brushing teeth and hair, and exchanging a few more kisses.
She has breakfast with him and his mother, and he takes still more pride in every quiet smile she sends his way. Lunch is uneventful, and in the afternoon she walks with him to the Hokage's office, never once letting go of his hand. The dense ball stays put in his chest, despite, though perhaps because of, her continued, explanationless presence.
The second day, she starts a conversation with his mother about the Nara antidotes, which he happens to know Temari has absolutely no interest in. He is able to deduce that it is a move to distract herself, nothing more than a savle for whatever wound she received, but he is nonetheless happy that she chooses to administer it with knowledge about his clan. He is nonetheless happy she chose to seek healing from him.
The cot is still unused the third day. It is also the Shikamaru realizes how much he likes sleeping next to her-and looking at her in the morning. He isn't awake before her any day but the first, but her face is much the same. Now that she's awake first, his mornings have the added benefit of her smile. It's the first thing he sees every day she's with him; he's beginning to get spoiled.
A few days after that, he hears about a hole in the landscape, an unnatural phenomenon sometimes seen after strong tornados. He puts a violent and unceremonious stop to the rumor, for once tactless. It is likely he was not the first the excitable, misguided Chuunin told, but he'll give anything to stop Temari from hearing it, reputation be damned. Today is the first day she seems herself, cracking snarky jokes and properly smiling.
She's in the bathroom when he hears it, and he has plenty of time to make his threats to the Chuunin. The fact that he cares so much about Temari doesn't leave his tongue much time to form words, so his threats are sloppy and unspecific, but the look in his face is unmistakable. He is back at the a table a full two minutes and fourteen seconds before she returns from the bathroom.
He smiles at her when she gets back, without really trying to. She's filled with darkness and
courage, changed by what she endured as a young girl, but her power was always there, inside of her. He knows it was she who killed the landscape. The rumor is about her, and she has run from it; it seems hard to believe, but the only conclusion that makes sense is that he is afraid of the power coursing through her veins. He can feel it sometimes, too, he can feel himself slipping, the true extent of the abilities he has, when the shadows in the dark twitch without his will expressly demanding it. Power is a burden to control, and hers, like his, is not limited to nature's design. Hers, like his, occurs constantly.
Still, he is sure he has it easier than her. For despite his efforts at intimidation, a genin passes the rumor on loudly a few tables down and Temari hears it. He watches a light flicker out in her eyes and she turns toward him, pulling his arm around her and hiding her face in his shoulder while she regains her strength.
He's still amazed such a simple action from him can gift her so much restraint, and he kisses the top of her head to express his amazement that it does.
And he could swear, he can feel it, in the strong shadows cast by the afternoon sun, that her burden is a little less heavy with his acceptance, that she smiles.