Chapter 11
"No, the kiss won't do. Not, when you don't love me," a voice in her head grumbles at him but for all her bravado, she can't say those words out loud.
With both her hands dropping to her side, moving away from him is the next step...and the next step after that, now that she's back to her normal self, is to make sure that—
"I really thought that would work," grumbles Shikamaru, sounding like he really thought he had a brilliant plan and he is just coming to terms that it failed. "This means..."
"Yes."Temari's answer is clipped, final, not open to any other possibilities.
Shikamaru takes a deep breath, his chest expanding, and as he visibly tries to accept Temari's meaning he exhales, the air whooshing loudly out through his mouth.
Temari utters, "About your father..."
"What about him?" Shikamaru interrupts, giving the woman a sharp look. Her words remind him of his family and it dawns on him that the change in his appearance has other repercussions other than make him so damn itchy.
Temari shifts her gaze. "Nothing."
"I—We should head back now that I have what I came for." Shikamaru swivels around, about to return to their make-shift camp to collect his things.
"It's already late." Temari gestures at their darkened surroundings, stopping him in acting on his plan as the night has already claimed the forest. "Tomorrow."
—o0o—
The next day, in their camp situated farther away from the river bank, Shikamaru wakes up with his body aching everywhere and shivering from the cold.
All that remains of the fire from last night are charred wood and soot under the kettle. Temari should have fed it more dried twigs to cook their breakfast.
"Temari?" Shikamaru calls. It's still dark but she should be awake. She's always is before him.
When she doesn't answer, he grumbles to himself while trying to sit up. Craning his neck so he can surreptitiously look in the direction of her bedroll, positioned several feet from his and partly hidden by low growing shrubs. Expecting her to be still sound asleep, instead his eyes fall on broken twigs and flattened grasses marking her place last night.
She has lain there but now everything that is hers is removed and her bag gone.
Shikamaru feels a prick of foreboding creep up his spine.
Hastily scrambling to get up, ignoring his aching muscles, he then runs to check the river banks, convincing himself that perhaps she's only taking a bath or fishing their breakfast. However, when he gets to his destination and sees the undisturbed tranquility of the waters, he isn't surprised not to see her there.
Not surprised but angry...
Sometime in the night, a large animal laid down on the mud near the river and before it disappeared back into the cover of the trees its body left a heavy imprint on the ground. Now, water has collected and pooled in the crater. The unbroken shimmer of the liquid surface can and will reflect anything that looks into it even in the dreary light of the early morning.
Shikamaru approaches the pool of water. For a moment, he stands still beside it hesitating, contemplating whether to look down at his own reflection.
While he's dead to the world, deeply asleep, Temari must have gazed at his new appearance and it must have been that that has spurned her to go.
Shaking his head in disappointment, Shikamaru takes a step back and then another away from the makeshift mirror without looking at it.
Returning slowly to their—his camp, his shoulders slump, he sits back down on his bedroll, deciding next what to do. Realizing the train of his thoughts, he sneers to himself. There's really nothing else to do but to go back home. He doesn't need the woman to do that.
He stands up and kicks the kettle off the three stone tripod before collecting his things. That doesn't take him long as his possessions are few. Finally done, he doesn't bother to bend down to retrieve the kettle as the kettle is hers. It will stay amongst the shrub and rot there.
He slings his bag then he sets off, not bothering to look back.
—o0o—
Shikamaru, for the whole day and then part of the night, has been travelling in a rush, trying to shake off the heaviness he feels in his heart.
He has not eaten anything and has only stopped twice for a few minutes to catch his breath. He knows he's pushing his body to its limit, with the way he's running, trying to reach his home as soon as possible.
As he sets his camp, making a fire with the collected dry branches nearby, he sits down on his crunches.
Every muscle in his body complains of the punishment he put it through. Drinking from his flask and eating from a tin can that is refilled with berries, he finally scrutinizes the back of his hand. It's the first time he does so since he woke up this morning.
With his heart hammering, he groans at what he sees in the firelight.
—o0o—
Looking towards where he has just came from to the direction of where he's going to, he groans again.
Shikamaru must move forward in haste to save his father, now that he has what he needs to do so. He opens his bag with the intention of taking out the deer's horn tips.
Rummaging through the bag, he can't find what he's looking for. Furthermore, the satchel bearing his father's knife is also missing.
Panicking, he shakes his bag upside down. The utensils clank down and extra clothes tumble towards the earth but no horn tips nor heirloom knife fall down.
"Damn it, woman!" he shouts, disturbing the serenity of the night.
—o0o—
Temari runs, as fast as her feet can carry her, but without her monstrous vigor, she's now slower than before.
She has left the camp as soon as her mountain trespasser is deeply asleep. Before she could go, she hunted into his bag to take the horns and his knife. She will take the items to his father and save Shikamaru from seeing his family's dismay over his appearance.
It will definitely break his heart if his family rejects him.
She has told him she loves him and he doesn't believe her because he thinks she will be swayed to unlove him once he totally changes his appearance, once he becomes the monster.
She'll prove to him that she's not fickle but first she must take his father's medicine and she needs the knife to prove that it really came from Shikamaru.
She has left him a note, beneath one of the stone tripod supporting her kettle. The fire is gone and he will have to pick up her kettle to start one. Shikamaru will find her message then. He can't miss it.
Her message says:
I took the horns and your knife. I will deliver it to your father and he will be well, I promise.
I will be back. Just wait where I left you as you might change beyond recognition. Don't make me look for you.
She has then signed it with her initial, hoping he's not too angry that he will ignore her request once he read it.
—o0o—
Temari doesn't know how fast or slow Shikamaru's transformation will be. Or how disfiguring. The old Sasori is so different from the actual, young version that she can only hope that once she returns to the camp, something still remains in Shikamaru's features that is familiar to her.
If not...How will she know it's him?
Maybe she's wrong to leave him and with no real explanation at that but somehow she's aware she won't be changing her mind and he will be just as adamant in coming with her.
If he does, by the time they reach his home, his transformation will be complete.
Judging by the black hair sprouting from the back of his hand, the beard on his chin and cheeks, he'll be covered all over by dark as night fur soon. And as his nose has started to change, his hands and feet should be next.
She can't decide which is more unbearable...to watch him as he changes or to see him already changed.
Shikamaru has told her that he has a sick father and a troublesome mother. He, without a doubt, cares about his father and despite him calling his mother in less flattering terms, he must hold in his affection the older woman.
If his father sees him...with the sick man's weakened state, he may not believe that the monstrous Shikamaru to be his son. And if he do believes, it may cause the older man's health to deteriorate further.
As for his mother...Shikamaru already likens the older woman to gray clouds hanging over his head. Once his mother sees him, won't she react in a hurtful fashion? It's not difficult to imagine, the older woman denying furiously that the monstrous Shikamaru is her son.
Years ago, when she herself transformed into a boil infested, ugly witch, Temari didn't have the courage to face her own family.
Her home wasn't softened by a mother's hand. Her family is known throughout the village to be a tough one. Unfeeling hardness is a virtue her father taught her and her two younger brothers—Kankuro and Gaara.
So rather than face her father and brothers' scorn, she ran away, suspecting that whatever little affection they have for her would surely be replaced by disdain because of her disgusting appearance.
Before she could be thrown out of her village, she left her village.
She left like a fugitive in the night and she had been hiding in the mountains ever since.
How she hated Sasori that no amount of imploring on his part could change the fact.
As punishment, she even demanded from him his word that nobody would know what truly happened to her. Sasori was to tell Kankuro that his sister was attacked by a beast and that her body mangled beyond recognition was discarded far away.
While exacting this promise, Temari had seen the sorrow flashed through Sasori's eyes but her heart burdened by her own plight, took his pain and stepped on it. At the time, all she could think about was how to protect herself from ridicule, from the pain of nonacceptance.
Without letting them see her first, she had decided on her own that it is best for her father and brothers to think her dead and she proceeded with that plan.
This time, she's deciding for Shikamaru, as well.
She remembers how Sasori appealed that she forgive him.
Instead of pleading for forgiveness from Shikamaru, she will do everything in her power to make him love her.
Her love is not fickle. Once she returns to him, she will do everything for him to believe in it.
But Shikamaru...he's got a mind of his own, a brilliant one. If she decides for him, he can't just automatically accept her decision.
Temari bites the inner side of her cheek, worried. Shikamaru may at this time already be going after her or rather after the horns she has in her possession.
Unlike her, he may not want to run away. Instead he may want to face his family despite his awful appearance.
If that's the case...where does that leave her?
Temari's step falters.
—o0o—
~12 13 13AF P1 3 13~
A/N: I haven't updated Intertwining Fate in a long time...I hope to do so after this...okay?
Review? Good or bad, it's food for the muse.