Shikamaru and Shikaku were both startled to hear a voice from the house, but it was Yoshino who broke the awkward moment.
"Who was that? You two, come back inside!"
Shikaku looked at the other ninja – in the calm moonlight, the darkening of the marks across his son's cheeks gave him a devilish appearance – then the older man headed back into the house through the front door. The two open windows were inviting to the younger one, but he decided they needed to discuss the issue now, even if he would be more comfortable hiding in bed till the morning (hoping to be able to deny the Kyuubi's influence then, and pretend that nothing happened). No. He followed through the door his dad had left open.
Yoshino was in the kitchen, preparing tea despite the lateness of the hour. It was an automatic response to uncertainty, (and Shikaku understood that behaviour, he was guilty of it himself). He took his customary seat at the table, ignoring the fact the kitchen was dark – their bedroom light was on, and it was only from that that the room had some light. Yoshino went through the motions of the ritual without noticing the darkness.
Shikamaru hovered in the door to the kitchen. He'd ducked into his room to pull a shirt on, and he had seen a flash of his reflected face – blood-coloured eyes, scar-like marks down his cheeks. He'd moved on quickly, but he didn't want his mother to see his current appearance. Had he stopped channelling chakra from the demon? His own chakra was flowing in his system, having moved out of the self-induced halt. The fox's chakra was present as well, but less strongly – was it fading? He couldn't tell. Kages, he hoped he'd go back to looking like himself.
"Who was that out there?" Yoshino asked at length.
"Sabaku no Gaara" Shikaku spoke detachedly, accepting a cup of tea.
Yoshino straightened and looked at her son, who was standing awkwardly in the door-way, face turned down. The slashes across his face looked thick, like a brand across his skin.
"Shikamaru, tea for you." She held it out. Tentatively, eyes lowered, he took the mug; taking a seat in a chair that was pulled a little out from the table.
Yoshino moved over, reaching for the light switch. Shikamaru looked odd in the shadows; hair down and sheepish, she reminded him of how he'd been as a child seeking comfort after a nightmare. But the marks across his cheeks and the glimpse of red in his eyes spoke differently.
She turned on the light: Shikamaru bought a hand up reflexively, pupils dilated in the dark suffering in the sudden illumination. Yoshino saw thick, curled fingernails, and lips pulled back from canine teeth, and for a second she thought her son had been replaced by a savage changeling. But Shikamaru immediately looked down, then up at her through his hair with wide crimson eyes. And the awkward gesture reminded her of when he'd spoken to her about Gaara before (scared of the world, like a little boy again not a demon or even a ninja), so she smiled at him.
Shikamaru shifted awkwardly, drank a sip of scalding tea, hand tense around the mug.
"Shikamaru, did he come here to attack you?" Shikaku spoke, giving his own tea a brooding look.
"Yeah" Shikamaru found speaking a little strange, "He said I threatened his existence. So he wanted to kill me."
Yoshino made an angry noise.
"He's gone now." Her son replied.
Shikamaru drunk his tea, Yoshino doing the same. After a silence, comfortable to those two but not the father, Shikaku chunked his mug down on the table.
"What did you do, Shikamaru?" He asked.
Shikamaru looked at his hand, the tendons prominent as the fingers curved around the cup. The fingers were wider but almost flattened, the nails curved and pointed at the ends, the thumbnail extending a full centimetre past the digit's end.
"I channelled the fox's chakra." His voice sounded hoarse that low, and then he justified himself to his mother (not looking at his dad, which was a good thing, because Shikaku couldn't meet those red eyes) - in a rush, he shouted the words "Gaara would have killed dad!"
"Are you, going to stay looking like that?" Yoshino was hesitant, nervous, but not condemning.
"I don't know." Shikamaru hoped not.
Yoshino understood the fear backing that statement, and got up and smoothed her son's hair back. His face was more angular, or perhaps it was just because the whisker-marks followed the curve of his cheekbones, emphasising them. His eyes were startling like this, but beautiful close-up, fibrils of flame-orange through crimson to maroon giving the irises a depth and elegance that was not immediately apparent. Yoshino stroked a thumb down his cheeks, feeling that the whiskers now had texture, like scars, where they had previously been just a change in pigmentation.
"You look fine to me", she said. "Go to bed, we'll see how you are in the morning."
That was what she'd said to him when he was ill, and hearing it them reassured him illogically but immensely.
Shikamaru lay peacefully, the senses heightened by demonic chakra receding to normality as his tired limbs pressed into his mattress. Tired, he found it easy to lie still, and his heartbeat left the focus of his mind as he fell out of instinctive awareness into sleep.
Shikaku rested his chin on interlinked hands, pensive.
"Doesn't it scare you to see him look like that?" He asked his wife.
"Not, I think, as much as it scares him to see us react to him like you are." Her voice was cutting, but not acidic as it could have been. She knew why Shikaku was behaving like he was, and that he didn't want to hurt his son. He was hurting him, though.
Shikaku slid one hand up over his face, in a vaguely tragical gesture. He stayed like that for a second or two, then leant back in his chair, making a small but emphatic exhalation, disgust written on his face.
"You're right, of course."
"But of course." She responded unnecessarily.
He grimaced, poured more tea for both of them.
She read his moods easily, and grinned without real humour, "You know I am, when it comes to our son."
He nodded, then sighed, exhausted by the long day.
They sat there quietly for a long time together. Rumiko hadn't come back yet, and she didn't that night. Yoshino stood outside Shikamaru's door, listening to his even breathing, before heading to join her husband in bed.
In bed, Shikamaru dreamed of fire and a forest sunk in red chakra, and a fox's face. But the dreams would be forgotten before he woke.
