I don't have a way back down
I'm stepping even further
When the daytime sky began to descend, Shikamaru once again started preparing himself for bed.
Temari used the same excuse of going to bed later than him, and he assumed that she planned on spending the night outside without rest once again. Once they said their goodnights to each other, Shikamaru lay on top of his sleeping bag with his hands behind his head, unwilling to sleep when he could still hear her rustling only a few feet away from himself. She was clearly not going to bed anytime soon, and did not intend on joining him inside either.
An hour into the darkness of the night and of course Temari was still wide awake. She had woken up late in the day which did affect her sleeping schedule, as well as the pulsating fear that the nighttime brought into her mind.
She became quite startled when she heard the flap of the tent open. Is Shikamaru still awake...?
"Oi, Temari," he called out to her. "Can't sleep again?"
Again? That comment irked her since even though it was true, she had told him the opposite the previous morning.
"Something like that." Temari responded slowly, licking her slightly chapped lips.
"Want to go for a walk?"
Temari raised her head. "A walk… where?"
"Just around," Shikamaru responded. "This is actually right around where we first found you."
She steadily brought herself to her feet, wrapping her arms around her torso as a shield from the chilling breeze. The lazy shinobi perceived that as an acceptance to his proposition, and waited for his friend to compose herself before they started walking along the dirt trail side-by-side.
Her sight was only scarcely aided by the faint moonlight. She asked, "Where was I?"
Shikamaru pointed to a group of caves a little ways off from the path they were following. "Around there. Did you want to go look?"
"Um… sure," Temari replied, uncertainty wavering in her voice.
"So, Temari…" Shikamaru began, an edge of nervousness present in his tone. "How are you?"
That's a pretty strange question, she remarked inside her head. "Fine. And you?"
He shrugged "The same."
She realized that was an irritatingly general answer, but obliged to save her breath in lieu of a comment. They paused at the glowering open mouth of the cave directly in front of them, Temari's voice pitching as she squeaked out, "Is - is this it?"
"I think so," Shikamaru answered, irking Temari as he looked like the epitome of tranquility. "But when we came here before, we were pretty convinced that you had been transported from somewhere else entirely."
She wondered if he could sense her unease as they stepped further inside the rocky terrain, almost completely devoid of moonlight. The darkness veiling over them made her entire body tense. She could remember the cold, stony ground directly beneath her, scraping up against her bare skin and leaving layers of wounds oozing blood puddles that coated the floor.
All she said was, "It was definitely a cave."
"Did Gaara ever follow up on that?"
"What?" Temari asked, abruptly being transferred out of her own dazed thoughts.
"He said he would try and figure out where you had been transported from." Shikamaru informed her.
"Gaara said that?"
Shikamaru simply nodded slightly in response. She could hardly see his lax movements through the dim lighting.
"I - can you light a candle or something? Please?" Temari requested timidly.
"Oh, yeah, sure," Shikamaru murmured. She could hear the sounds of his backpack unlacing, and the strike of a lighter going off. She faintly recalled him keeping one in the pocket of his trousers.
The cave walls became illuminated by the flickering flame of Shikamaru's lone candle. They were adorned a much darker and earthier tone than the ones she had been housed in, but her mind still managed to play a ruse on her as sweat began trickling down her spine.
"Well, my brother never followed up on anything like that," the sand kunoichi said, her voice wavering remotely. "He's... too busy with more important things."
"You're important to him." Shikamaru pointed out.
That idea was becoming less and less sincere to Temari as her distance from Gaara continued to expand. She watched the light illustrating their shadowy figures against the walls of the cave. It reminded her of the first time she had woken after being kidnapped, at the absolute volition of Madara as he spoiled her. She had kept her eyes focused on the walls, only barely bright enough to see the faltering blaze of candles he lit beforehand.
The memories came in white-hot, searing her mind with fear. Temari started to struggle, hiccuping inconsistently as she couldn't quite catch her breath.
"Are you okay?" the lazy shinobi had worry clearly apparent in his voice.
She wouldn't look over at him, she was just too frightened. Inside the darkness, the present and the past were swirling together, giving Temari a headache and watering her eyes so severely that her sight whirled inaccurately. She felt she was in a state of panic, alarms blaring everywhere from within her trembling body.
Temari felt a hesitant hand crawl up to her shoulder, causing her to double over onto her knees at the unwarranted contact. A stream of vomit erupted out of her throat, effectively purging her stomach from the oatmeal and granola bars she had eaten throughout their travels.
"What happened?" Shikamaru was asking loudly from wherever he was. She couldn't quite tell where he was located in distance to herself; his voice didn't sound very loud or quiet. But she simply couldn't focus on that. There was way too much going on within her head, too many things she could still feel within her body. It was overwhelming...
She didn't know long she stayed there, her head dizzy and tears seeping involuntarily down her face. But when she finally rose from her position the knees of her pants had ripped through, scraping the exposed skin and leaving a bloody mess on the ground.
Shikamaru led Temari back to their campsite after she had settled down, gently leading her by her fingertips since she was still pretty wobbly on her bleeding legs.
They had clearly been within the cave for a few hours, but daylight had not yet appeared. Shikamaru let his friend sit comfortably on top of her own sleeping bag, finding an extra blanket within his own bag and placing it gently over her shoulders.
He finally felt… that this was enough.
"Temari," Shikamaru addressed her softly. "Are you okay?"
She was still keeping her eyes away from him, her face scrunching up in discomfort. "Yes."
"You gotta stop being so stubborn," he lectured with a heavy sigh. "I'm not stupid, you know."
"I never said you were."
Shikamaru rubbed at the back of his neck sheepishly. "I know when something's up. You haven't been acting like yourself."
"Well, this is who I am now," Temari huffed out in response.
She's being too defensive… Shikamaru realized as he registered her reply. I can't be badgering her in this way.
"Sometimes I can't sleep when I start thinking about my sensei's death," he admitted, leaning back as he gazed at the top of their shared tent. "The months after it happened I would freak out whenever it started to rain. I would sit inside my room all day and stare at the ceiling because I knew that if I walked out and felt the raindrops beating against my back it would take me back to that time when I watched him die. And I couldn't take that."
She remained silent as Shikamaru continued. "My dad helped me through it. He called them episodes and he said they're normal for a shinobi who has been in high-stress situations before. He said they won't go away completely, but you can manage by having friends you can count on. It's not something you can run from…"
"I don't know if it's the same thing," Temari suddenly interrupted. "It's not like I watched someone else. It feels like… a part of myself has died."
"A part of yourself?" Shikamaru said, registering her words with a few slow blinks. "What do you mean?"
"What happened to me… has changed who I am forever," she admitted, a sad look of defeat glimmering within her eyes. "It's altered my life. And... I don't think I like my new life. I don't like how people treat me, and I hate the way I feel, the way I look now…"
"What exactly is different?"
"Everything." Temari exhaled, frustration filtering into her voice. "I miss the way things used to be. I would say that I wish the war had never happened, but that would be too selfish of me... I guess that I wish I had really been killed in battle, like everyone thought, or that I had been put under the genjutsu…"
She wishes she had died?
"I never thought that you had been killed," Shikamaru said. "I don't think Kankuro or Gaara did either. You're… too strong, for us to believe that."
"Gaara…" Temari furrowed her eyebrows. "He doesn't even know what to do with me anymore. He probably would be happier if I was gone, then he wouldn't have to be so ashamed of me."
"He has nothing to be ashamed of," the lazy shinobi told her. "He cares so much about you, that's why he asked me to escort you to Konoha."
"He no longer sees me as a shinobi. Nobody does." she spit out. "Now, I'm just… a poor woman that has to be protected at all costs."
Shikamaru offered, "I don't."
Temari bit down on her lip as she turned away, forgoing a response.
Shikamaru departed from their shared tent to grace his travelling companion with some time to sleep. She hadn't gotten any the night before, after all.
He didn't quite know how to feel about everything. He could tell Temari was in pain, and he knew he wanted to help her but… she was not an open book. Any information she offered was pried out of her hands after long periods of struggle, and on top of that it was a situation he was completely unfamiliar with.
Pieces of the story were falling into place and Shikamaru felt awful about the fact that he had extra information without her knowledge or consent of it being handed to him. He knew that her kidnapping was involved with Madara Uchiha since Kiba had picked up on the vile scent all the way back on their retrieval mission and Temari had mentioned the name while she was still in her dazed state. And of course he had overheard… the rumors, but didn't want to make any premature assumptions about that type of thing.
He found himself back at the entrance to the cave that they had resided inside only hours before. Somehow, wandering about aimlessly had only brought him back to where he began.
The stench of Temari's vomit was still ever-present inside the enclosed area and aside from the smell, something wasn't sitting well within Shikamaru's own guts.
He had noticed it first when they were in that exact same spot earlier, before Temari's episode; a rather large boulder that had previously been settled into the far right corner of the cave was now missing.
The only reason he had even remembered that specific boulder was because he'd actually stubbed his toe against it just as the group from the mission was exiting the cave a few months prior. Shikamaru had cursed out loud and in turn gotten scolded by Sakura in her irritable mood for his vulgarity around the ill, and then wondered aloud about the idiocy of nature creating such an unusually tremendous rock for an average-sized cave.
Now the boulder had seemingly vanished, and while the terrain looked more aesthetically pleasing an unshakeable doubt stained Shikamaru's mind. He again used his gifted lighter to illuminate the walls as he crouched down on one knee, examining the ground near wherever he had remembered that boulder. There was scattered, crumbled rock in place of it, looking fresher compared to the significantly darker stone right underneath his feet.
Using his bare hands and receiving a few minor scratches in the process, he ultimately transported the copious amounts of excess rock over to the side, unearthing a sizeable hole nestled up in the corner of the cave. Definitely wide enough for a person, thought Shikamaru, maybe even two…
His curiosity was unusually persistent for such a lazy guy. He began snaking his own body through the opening, feeling the rest of the passageway give out underneath his weight as he methodically continued to descend.
Eventually his feet reached out and landed on solid ground. After patting the dirt off of himself and relieving the nasally tension building up within his nostrils, he once again flicked his lighter and the cavern lit up.
It was a rather small, gloomy-looking area. Dried blood blemished the dark terrain and various weapons lay scattered among the ground. Shikamaru noticed a heap of disarrayed clothing gathered in a specific corner and upon further inspection realized it was a tattered uniform abandoned from the war. A Suna headband was tacked onto the wall with a kunai.
Shikamaru's mind was racing, his heartbeat pumping faster than he had ever remembered and nearly about to burst out from within his chest. As he began walking backwards to make his departure from the eerie region he realized something had made contact with his foot from the side. He cautiously lowered his open flame to reveal a lavender-colored candle, and once it was lit a particular scent wafted towards him.
He remembered the realization after stepping foot in the Yamanaka's shop, that blues and purples suited Temari the best.
He remembered gifting a bouquet of lilacs to Temari as she sat in her drab hospital bed.
He remembered her grimace as the smell drifted over to her bruised nose and a familiarity no doubt registered in her brain.
And then he looked over at the torn outfit, the blood on the walls, the headband, the candle he held in his palm, and everything became clear.
This story is slowly but surely coming to an end. These are the last few chapters coming out next!
Let me know if you would like me to do a double-post for the second-to-last chapter and then the finale, since they are both already finished.
Thank you guys so much for your feedback and support!
Have a great day!