It has been a terrible day, so here's to a angsty snippet collection.
Besides, it has been a while since I last wrote ShikaTen... IT WAS TIME I INDULGED!
THE THIRD HOKAGE
After the funeral, Shikamaru followed her because she didn't cry.
(He also didn't cry, he recalls. Ino cried softly, then noisily, and Chouji hugged her, also crying. Comforting and crying. A team. They sensed it somehow, how he was more shadow than man, but they still turned their heads toward him, expecting, wanting him to join in. Extending a hand, a shoulder, so he could cry. Let go.
He left.)
The sky fell, in small droplets, then in heavy smashing drops. The clouds lurked heavy, monstrous grey, barely moving. It let it sank into him, ice, extinguished wind.
She didn't slow, wide open, palms toward the sky.
He didn't stop, hunched back, hands in his pockets.
Her buns bounced, wet, and strands slipped out of her hair ties. She skipped, kicking at rocks, jumping in puddles. Mud dripped down her naked legs. It stained her black robes.
She slowed when she reached the training grounds of her team.
Instinctively, Shikamaru also stopped, and he looked up. His shoulders shot up, shaking from the cold. He wiped at his wet face, returning his gaze to the ground.
She took out a scroll from her robes.
Shikamaru watched her for a moment, holding his breath, drinking in gulps of rain. He wondered if he should tell her something.
(There was nothing to say.)
She summoned weapons across the grounds. In numerous successive poufs of smoke, they scattered, digging in the softened ground or merely lying on top of it.
She jumped toward the sky, fast.
He sat on the ground, nonchalant.
She blurred. She threw kunai toward the sky, never missing a mark. She threw herself up and down, faster. He sank in the ground, panting and shivering from the cold.
The sky split opened, grumbling, cracking, turned violet by thunder.
("Were we angry?" Shikamaru asks her, years later, in a hushed whisper. Soothing rain drips down the window, but he hears the clunk of her weapons in the sound. He hears the splash of pounding feet after she lands. "Were we angry kids?" he repeats and flattens his hand across the shadows on the bed sheets.
Her place is still warm.
Tenten grunts and rolls further away in the bed, awake now.
"Isn't it what we always do, though? I throw weapons. You look up at the sky."
She smirks in the darkness, out of reach. Always out of reach. Sky-bound.
"I just wonder if we should have reacted differently," Shikamaru mumbles and closes his eyes.
And he wonders if it would still work, the two of them, if they had cried then. If they had felt loss. If they had been normal children, part of their team, confused and scared.
Not attracted to the sky. How it fell. How it was unattainable.
"You think too much with that big brain of yours," Tenten grumbles in reply.)
"Who are you again?" she asked and bent over him, her hands on her hips.
Shikamaru startled. He hadn't noticed her approach him.
She dripped on him, part of the sky. She expanded, grey eyes, full mouth, her skin slippery and raised by goosebumps.
"Shikamaru," he said through his chattering teeth.
She nodded to herself, solemnly, and there was a flash of metal ripping through rain and sky. Shikamaru didn't move his head. He felt the burn of the kunai ripping through the water.
There was a challenge in her eyes.
She clicked, steel and iron. She carefully weighed another kunai in her hand.
He still didn't move.
"Tenten," she introduced herself with a frown of concentration.
(The sky, heaven. He already knew.)
Tenten aimed and threw another kunai past his head.
Just so you know: Update will probably be every two days, and there will be 4 chapters.
Thank you for reading! Please take the time to review if you can. :))