Disclaimer: I don't own Shikamaru or the Naruto Universe, but I do own the particular member of royalty showing up in this one-shot. :D
Spoilers: for people who haven't finished the Hidan and Kakuzu arc yet.
The King of Konoha
Open.
Click.
Close.
...
Open.
Click.
Close.
...
Flame rose from the silver lighter only to die upon the fall of the lid.
The fingers lit it and smothered it, lit it and smothered it.
Besides the sound of the lighter clicking in front of his face, Shikamaru could hear birds and the wind, rustling through the trees, and children playing on the nearby street. He could hear voices, screechy and exciting, laughing and yelling.
Somewhere in the village, Asuma-sensei's funeral was being held, but Shikamaru was here in an alley.
He could see clouds from his spot on the dusty road, although a roof would unquestionably offer a better view. However, he had been looking at the clouds before, and now felt more like staying down there in the solitary secluded alley, hidden in the shadow of the house on whose wall he was leaning.
He clicked the lighter one more time and closed his eyes. The wind was light on his face, cool from the yesterday's rainfall.
He wanted to concentrate on nothing but the wind, feeling it touch him so lightly, and imagine himself as a cloud, being drifted across the sky, leaving its shadow on the ground as the only mark of its unobtrusive presence.
Shikamaru wanted nothing more, but the other thoughts would come through, spoiling the peace he was trying to make.
His eyebrow twitched.
„Shikamaru... Lean closer", the words from the bloody lips of his sensei.
„ASUMA!" he, running towards the kneeling man, running towards him, but somehow increasing the distance, his legs seeming to be filled with iron.
Smoke billowing up to his face from Asuma's last cigarette.
The sick, high-pitched laughter of a maniac wielding a huge triple scythe.
Shikamaru's eyes snapped wide open. He didn't realize he had started breathing heavily. He didn't want the pictures in his head, but they came anyway. The mere fragments of seconds, for he didn't allow them to last longer, but they were very clear.
Shikamaru leaned his head on his palm.
The pictures brought questions, they demanded him to think – and he couldn't think because he didn't know what to think. Heck, he didn't know what to do!
The Akatsuki's face would roll into his mind, blackened and deformed by some demonic, hell-gone-loose jutsu, and the twisted grin would smirk at him once more. He felt so helpless back then, and he felt just as helpless right now.
There was nothing he could do. There was nothing he could have done! But there should have been something he could have done! Did he have to do something now? Could he do anything?
He gritted his teeth and tugged at his hair. His face twisted into a painful cry.
He should have done something. He should have done something. Wasn't that what the IQ of two hundred was for? He should have come up with some plan, there or before, and not allow for things to go the way they did. It was his responsibility, Ino and Chouji weren't there. It was up to him to think up something that would have kept his sensei alive.
Shikamaru opened his eyes suddenly once more, because he had an absurd feeling that someone was watching him. He looked around, alarmed, and calmed a little when he discovered a pair of eyes peeking at him from behind a wooden fence partially closing the view on the neighbouring house.
'Just some child', he thought, while the owner of the pair quickly jumped back behind the fence upon realizing he had been detected.
Shikamaru closed his eyes again. He really shouldn't let himself get so worked up. It didn't do anyone any good. 'Certainly not to Asuma.'
Still, he sat in the shadow of the alley, back against the wall, clutching the silver lighter in one hand and supporting his head with the other. His face was still twisted into a sad and painful mien.
He didn't know how long he had been sitting there before a tappity-tapping sound of bare feet alarmed him once more.
Creaking one eye open, he found a child standing two meters away and staring at him. It was a girl, actually, and a very little one at that. Brown eyes were watching him steadily and seemingly unaware of the rudeness of staring. She might have been three, or four.
Shikamaru felt uncomfourtable.
Before he could think of something to say or do, the girl spoke up.
„Does your tummy hurts?" Except it sounded more like 'Daz yol tummy hults?' and it took Shikamaru some time to figure out what she was saying.
„Huh?... No", he stammered, caught out of balance.
„You look like it does." 'Yu look like it daz.'
He stared, confused, at the little girl, looking at him seriously none the less. She might not reach up to his knees if he stood up.
„You know, you look sad and when I'm sad, I'm sad because my tummy hurts. Or because Nobu-chan take me something and doesn't want give it back."
„No, I'm fine", Shikamaru said, feeling moronic and wondering how to ditch a child. She ditched herself away on her own, however, casually walking back to the house Shikamaru assumed she lived in after some more staring.
Leaning his head back against the wall, Shikamaru let out a sigh. Seriously, does no one watch after those kids? How does anyone think of protecting them when...
His eyes abruptly widened and then slowly narrowed.
Protecting them...
„Shikamaru... Lean closer..." Sensei told him to remember their talk about the King. Then he asked him to dip his head and whispered his final words for the Nara boy. He told him who the real King was.
Shikamaru closed his eyes once more, withdrawing into that sad expression.
„The King of Konoha is... the next generation", the man whispered with an expiring, strangely conspiratory smirk. „Remember that... and tell Kurenai..."
He did tell Kurenai. But he had no idea how that was going to help her. Sure, she now had the last words of the man she loved, but what good would that bring to her and her child now that she was left alone to deal with the world.
He promised he would help her. Shikamaru promised that more to himself than to Asuma or her, but it bound him none the less. But how he was going to do that, he still didn't know. There were so many things he didn't know.
'That child...' How was he supposed to replace a father it should have had. He was just a fifteen-year-old student of its parent.
How would he protect it if he were dead or crippled by that psycho with the scythe, after he went to get... revenge... Should he go seek revenge? But how? He was fifteen and a Chuunin, and the man was an Akatsuki and bloody mental at that? How could he defeat such a guy, how could Ino and Chouji and he defeat such a guy, when Asuma failed?
Shikamaru didn't feel strong. He never felt strong or particularly capable until after everything would miraculously turn out to be okay in the end. He called himself „the number one coward", but never fully meant it... until this moment.
He felt like a coward. Finding excuses not to do the only thing that the honour and justice asked him to do as fair.
Sasuke's decision didn't seem such a stupid and traitorous thing to do anymore. He at least had the courage to seek out his revenge.
Protect...
How could he protect the King and what point would that make?
Risking their lives and giving their lives just in order for the next generation to reach the age when they would risk and give their own life for the future ones... and so as far as the eye can see. It was nonsensical. It made no sense. In the end, it would all be pretty pointless, bleeding their way into the future, existing only so that the others might exist and so on into eternity, while chuckling psychomaniacs ten times stronger than any of their efforts freely stroll around the world, killing everyone in their way...
What good does protecting the King make...?
The tappity-tapping feet were back again. Shikamaru rose his gaze from the tiny bare fingers in the dust to the cup lying in the girl's hands. She was back.
He stared at her, lost for words. Why was she back?
Except for being tiny, the girl was also pixie-like, and something in her childish features reminded Shikamaru of a bird. She had big brown eyes that were looking at his without the shade of shy self-consciousness, brown hair cut rather short for a girl, a tiny nose and a tiny mouth line. He also noticed her simple little dress was a bit muddy.
„Here's tea for your tummy", she informed him. And then, before he managed to mutter a proper refusal, she took the resuming few steps and nudged the plastic cup into his hands. It might have been a part of some plastic tea toy set. Involuntarily, he examined the liquid churning in it. It was light brown, like a mixture of water and dirt, with wet ripped pieces of leaves floating on the surface. It looked like something put together of the items of someone's backyard, and as something that should only rightly be nonchalantly spilled back into someone's backyard.
„Won't you drink it?" the little girl insisted impatiently and Shikamaru frowned at how bossy and troublesome girls could be even at the very beginning. The impatient look on her face still made him awkwardly bring the brim of the cup to his mouth, but just as he was about to take a fake sip, the girl sharply sucked her breath as if realizing some horrible danger, and practically snatched the tea cup right from his hand.
„Watch it, it's hot!" she yelled out and started to carefully blow at the mixture of water and earth in order to 'cool' it down. Shikamaru's eyebrow popped. 'Mendokusai.' Were all children so overly active with their imagination?
After she cooled it enough in her opinion, the little girl offered him the cup back, staring at him with her big brown eyes and tight little mouth line. He took it, not knowing exactly why but concluding it had something to do with her intimidating female bossiness, and finished that long fake sip.
She was looking at him with a bit of helpless sympathy, the look reserved for people who understand nothing and to whom you'd like to help, but who were unfortunately born with a brain slightly on the weak side and there's nothing you can do about it.
Not liking the look one bit, Shikamaru attempted to return the cup to her: „Thanks, I can't drink no more." She stared at him with those big, strangely intelligent and strangely straightforward eyes none the less.
„If you don't drink eeeeverything, you'll have to go to the dotcor, and the dotcor will give you an ijection." She spread her arms at 'eeeeverything' and nodded a few times, not breaking the disturbing eye-contact, as if confirming that her words were serious and a result of experience.
„When my tummy hurted, I drinked tea, but it didn't help, so mamma taked me to the dotcor and he give me an ijection, and he saided it won't hurt, but it did." She whispered the last word and leaned a bit toward him to emphasize how important that was to remember.
„I think I'll live, but thanks for telling", Shikamaru said, starting to feel slightly amused.
The girl stared on. It was rather unnerving.
„What is your name?" she wanted to know.
Shikamaru sighed. His name was too long, she wouldn't get it. He told her anyway.
The pixie face crumpled into a frown. „What?"
Shikamaru sighed louder and repeated it.
„Shikamari", she repeated to herself. For the first time, Shikamaru gave her something of a half-smile. It was close enough.
„Didn't your mamma tell you not to speak to strangers?" he asked her, amused, waiting for her reaction at that. She got puzzled and a bit alarmed, all emotions written clearly on her face, and he could practically see little wheels in her mind mulling over the problem.
After thoughtful consideration, she told him that, since she knew his name, it was alright.
The silence lasted shortly.
„So, why are you sitting here?"
The wry smile got lost, as he remembered the reason. „I was thinking", he shifted uncomfourtably.
The girl pursed her birdie lips while considering that and continued, tilting her head aside: „About what?"
Shikamaru lamely shrugged, not knowing what to say, and the little girl shrilly concluded on her own: „Somebody maked you mad, right? When Nobu-chan make me mad, I sitted and thinked, veeery long", she was nodding again and her intonation rose with the 'eee' in 'veeery', as she was very engaged in telling her story. Her little arms started waving and gesturing. „... and then I remembered where Nobu-chan had his toys and I find a sword and it was veeery long and cutty and you know what I did with it?" she leaned towards Shikamaru again and whispered the last part, as if revealing a huge secret. „I throwed it through the window, and now he can't find it."
She chuckled for the first time, revealing a tiny set of milky teeth, and it was unexpectedly loud and heartily. While he listened to her merry, tinkling laughter and followed it quietly with his own, Shikamaru couldn't wonder how both evil and kind little girls could be.
„Is your tummy better?" she was serious once more.
Shikamaru considered. It did feel better.
„Better."
She nodded and would have carried on with the staring if it weren't for a grown-up female voice calling for someone from the house. „Ami...! Ami!" the grown-up voice vas rising with panic, and the little girl quickly turned her head towards the fence and the house behind it.
„Kami, Ami! I have to go make dinner!" the little girl yelped sincerely in a very grown-up–like manner, and accompanied the cry with a very loud smack! on the forehead. The scene was so comical Shikamaru had to bite his gums not to burst out laughing.
She ran away without looking at him. Shikamaru smiled after her scuttling feet.
Alone once again, the young shinobi rose. Putting the lighter into the pocket, he stretched and gazed at the sky.
'Asuma, I met the Queen I'm supposed to serve.'
He kept his eyes at the drifting clouds for some time more, and jumped to the roof, setting on the path that would lead him home.
A/N – Hehehe, Shikamaru had tea with the Queen!
This was inspired by an interesting conversation I've recently had with a three-year-old. Kids are great!