He joined the Anbu two months after the war ended. It wasn't like he had any say in the matter or at least that was he had told himself. Joining the Anbu was never about whether you wanted to or not, it was a matter of if the Hokage handed you a scroll and asked you nicely to do it or if you preferred to be castigated to a desk job and be branded incompetent for the rest of your life.
Shikamaru initially had no qualms about being branded an incompetent bum after all he had breezed through his life on shougi, clouds and being labelled an incompetent bum. His academy test scores would be testament of his apathy to being branded as a lazy slacker.
Hence, Kakashi would choke on his whisky laced coffee when Nara Shikamaru, knocked on the door of his office and told him that he would be 'happy' to become part of the Anbu. Not that he was 'obligated' to or he was 'forced' to become part of the elite squad but that he was 'happy'. He immediately forced the boy to undergo psychiatric evaluation.
It normally took three years to go through Anbu training, Shikamaru took two. There were different modules one had to memorize by heart, how to kill using untraceable jutsus, human anatomy, torture and interrogation, all of which the boy learnt in record speed. He seemed hardened, impenetrable by the violence around him. His instructors attributed it to the war, he knew it was not.
During his sojourn in the training camps, he never stopped learning. Fighting styles came naturally to him, his brain simply took them as part of a formula which he remembered and forced himself to accept. In the nights, he would feel his muscles scream in agony, his lungs on fire from chakra exhaustion, sometimes his vision went hazy on the field as he fought. He ignored all this to think of wind and her citrus smell.
"Stop pushing yourself so hard," the dark haired medic nin at the camp told him, "you might die like this."
Nodding silently, he would accept the stitches or the bandages that came with his wounds and return back to his training. It was easy and mindless, there was no need for strategy when it came down to an Anbu fight. It was just simple kicking, punching and reflex. The one time he had paused to think about his next move, he found his instructor's kunai to his throat. "I'll fucking slash your throat to ribbons the next time you stop to think," the man spat at him.
The Anbu was soulless, thoughtless. As Anbu, you were agents of the state, soldiers with more power but less freedom. They were the drones which the village sent to annihilate all possible problems. He stopped looking at clouds, he didn't want the freedom they had.
His hardest module was interrogation. Yugao, that bitch, had known about her, and decided to bring in a girl with the same sandy blonde hair and dark eyes for him to experiment on. The girl had been nothing like Temari, she had cried and begged for mercy. Temari would have never done that, she would have spat and cursed and lied and tempted but she would have never begged. He still had to torture her. As he slit her pale skin, he felt her squirm underneath him, he heard her screams. His brain replaced them with images of the girl who had saved him during the war, smirking through the blood which ran down her face. He stopped. "What the fuck are you doing?" screamed Ibiki, "continue."
He couldn't. That night he received three lashes for his disobedience, the blood coursed down his back. The dark haired medic nin at the camp clicked her tongue and went to stitching up the marks. He heard from her that the girl had been killed anyway. He hoped that it was an easy death.
The module after interrogation, torture was a cake walk. They essentially strapped him to a chair and tortured him until he spoke. They cut him and he remained silent. Scars already littered his body and Temari had once said they made shinobi look attractive, he smiled at the memory. Ibiki took the smile as rebellion and the knife they used became blunter. They shocked him, whipped him, almost drowned him. Through it all, he remained silent, he thought of wind and her dark green blue eyes glaring at him, warning him not to make a sound.
He passed the module with flying colours.
By the time his training was over, it had been two years. He wanted to sigh with relief at the thought or do something cliché and human, mutter troublesome under his breath, to show how happy he was. He found himself unable to. The mask he got, did however make him laugh. The weasel face which stared up at his, made him smile at the irony. He wondered if she still remembered him, he had already forgotten what she looked like.
Initially he had been posted as part of the assassination squad. Kagemane was prized because of its ability to trap and hold people down, it was the perfect technique when working with a partner. His shadow sewing was even more prized because of the neat and seamless way it could conduct kills, they would literally be no blood on his hands. He wondered if Temari minded such distance between her and her enemies, she seemed to wild and too carefree for such mechanical procedures. He wondered why he still thought of her.
His bunkmate, Wantanabe had been assigned to Suna. He liked Wantanabe, he was quiet, decorous and relatively intelligent. Shikamaru had played shougi with him in camp. Sure it had been a training exercise but the restraint that Wantanabe showed impressed him and reminded him of Chouji. When he slid the blade of his tanto over Wantanabe's throat after learning how he could replace Wantanabe as the assignee to Suna, he wondered if the dry and arid weather would suit his skin better.
It did not. Suna was hot and dry, it cracked his lips and scalded his skin a bright red. Wordlessly, he followed Konoha's new ambassador around day after day, a silent ghost dressed in a white robe. It would be his third month in Suna that he would see her.
Something stirred within him when he looked upon that defiant face and those rebellious green blue eyes framed by untidy blonde hair. For a moment, he stood breath taken by the sight of who he had initially deemed to be a stranger. Then he recognized her and wondered if he had ever felt so alive.
She was beautiful. It had been two years but she still remained sharp as a sickle, vicious and intelligent. She was Technicolor, focal point from the shades of grey that Anbu had taught him to appreciate. He didn't think he could deal with an grey Temari. "A
nbu eh?" she laughed, looking over the ambassador's shoulder, "I see Kakashi's still as paranoid as ever."
That night, he climbed into her apartment. Hidden behind the Kazekage tower, it was a nondescript block painted beige and white. He crept in through her window and a kunai whizzed past his face. Temari stood before him, her fan unfolded, a hand upon a jutted hip. She hit him with her fan, the metal club slammed into his ribs and he felt them crack. His shadows cut her, they slashed at her skin and opened the stitches that had been previously closed.
"Another fucking assassination attempt?" She cried and slammed her fan once more towards his figure, he blocked with his tanto.
"Temari, stop," he drawled and she stepped back, shocked by his voice.
Her eyes narrowed, "Shikamaru, what are you doing here? Are you here to kill me?" There was no hint of betrayal or anguish in her voice, just plain pure irony which she often used. This was Temari, the same old Temari he had fought at thirteen, the Temari he had escorted around his village at fourteen, fallen in love with at fifteen.
"No," he replied and took off his mask. Her eyebrows quirked at the animal he had been assigned with. "I'm here to protect you?"
"Protect me?"
"Two months after the end of the Great war, you had four assassination attempts on your life. In the past two years, you've had fifteen." He remarked.
She snarled, "if you don't remember from your reports, I killed most of the idiots who came after me." Her knuckles were white from gripping her fan.
"The last one that came left you with four broken ribs and poisoned you." He recited, his eyes closing from the effort, "you could have died."
"I still don't need you to save me," he could hear her gritting her teeth in anger. "I can do that by myself."
He sat down on the windowstill, wincing from the pain emanating from his ribs and watched her in the moonlight. She almost looked like her mother, just vicious and feral.
"A man is meant to save a woman after all," he repeated the chauvinistic adage which he often used to justify his actions to her. Temari rolled her eyes. But the derision in her face drained as she beganto smile with nostalgia, all trace of anger erased from her face with youthful remembrance. She still liked purple, he noted, her dress was a light lilac fringed with navy blue. He wondered if she still hated flowers and liked tofu soup.
"I'll make you some tea," she said, breaking him out of his reverie. It was her peace offering, she moved past him to the kitchen. Shikamaru leaned back in his seat. There were so many words unspoken. Like how he had meant to initially save her but now needed her more than ever to save himself.
