many thanks to emma and carol for being so incredibly steadfast and brilliant through 2020
Chapter Twelve
Temari wakes up again, for the first time in a few months, to Shikamaru sitting on the edge of the bed with his feet planted on the floor, back to her and elbows on his knees. He isn't moving. His outline is exactly like it always was — his spine and his shoulders and the expanse of his back.
She watches him for a while. She has no idea what time it is or how long she has been asleep. It's pitch dark out though, and almost completely silent.
She falls back asleep facing him and when she does wake up in the morning, he is gone, and has been, she thinks, for some time.
Things continue on as normal.
They wake up, have coffee, argue over dinner plans and which days they should go out with friends or invite over the neighbors, and then generally go about their lives. She watches movies and he works. He sleeps odd hours of the day and, as it gets warmer out, he takes more walks down on the beach or around the docks.
Temari packs away their coats and boots and takes back out the dresses she'd put away last October. Shikamaru strips the heaviest comforter off the bed and she goes to buy rain boots.
They cook more than they eat out. Shikamaru gets closer to his classmate Chojuro and Temari goes out to a protest with the people she'd met at the university lecture.
Neither discuss the handjob she'd given him in that car. They don't discuss how she'd kissed him or what she'd wanted. They don't discuss Kazue Haishi.
Everything goes back to normal. There is no point in changing any of their habits for such a one-time occurrence.
By the time he comes home, she is already in bed.
She's laying under the covers, reading a periodical when he walks in. She doesn't move from her position, though she is well aware of his entrance. She's listened for the front door to open and listened for the sounds of his steps. She's been waiting, counting, since she turned off the live-feed half an hour ago.
Shikamaru pauses in the doorway, probably looking at her, but she isn't going to move her eyes off the text to check.
After a few seconds, he steps in and begins unbuttoning his shirt, walking over to the closet and hanging it up.
"How was dinner?"
Temari flips a page of the magazine loudly. She'd been out with Haku and Zabuza. "Good. They say hello."
Shikamaru has been gone all night with Kazue Haishi. They went to the same hotel as two weeks ago. Temari hadn't accompanied him this time. There was no need.
"And you?" She finds herself asking, keeping her tone light and only half-interested. "Everything went well?"
Shikamaru comes to sit at the edge of the bed shirtless. He bends over to take off his shoes. He waits before answering, untying his shoes, and then straightening. He stretches, arms raised to the ceiling, and then exhales loudly, slouching his shoulders down as though thoroughly beat. He pulls the tie from his hair and combs his fingers through it, wedding band catching her eye as it moves through dark strands. "Well enough." He says, still facing the closet, back to her. "Did you hear?"
She had. She'd listened to the whole thing, even though it was much longer tonight. While they went right to it this time without the pretense of dinner, the sex itself lasted longer. And then afterward they talked, for longer. He mostly complained about his marriage. Listening to it, even from the comfort of her home, made her feel dirty. But she had listened. Haishi wants to meet again in a few days.
"Yes," Temari says, trying for unaffected. She turns another page even though she hasn't read a thing. "Of course I did."
Shikamaru exhales deeply. He must have been holding his breath. And then, without a word, stands up and makes his way to the bathroom, closing the door behind him. She hears him turn on the shower.
Temari resumes her reading on this page, filling in whatever she'd missed.
"It concerns me," she says, arms crossed over her chest. "What happens when you have to run away from someone? Or after someone?"
"I'll run."
"Not fast enough."
Shikamaru shrugs, flipping the paper in half to continue reading an article below the fold. "If you say so," he answers absently, not giving her much attention.
"You must have worked out before this." She says this, thinks this, has thought about this for almost a year, but he doesn't look any different than the day she met him. "Back home. It was always so much. Most of what we did was physical."
"Sure."
She doesn't know why she is so stuck on it. She is trying to raise her mileage right now after she went down to only three miles all winter, which has her in a bad mood. And she's tired. And annoyed, for no real reason. And just now, when she'd walked in to see Shikamaru enjoying his coffee with the morning paper while she is dripping in sweat, with her quads cramping and lungs on fire, she wants to rough him up.
"So you did exercise?"
There is a pause as Shikamaru, without looking away from the paper, reaches for his coffee and takes a long sip.
"Not unless I had to, no."
His general air of ignoring her makes her angrier. It always does. She thinks that's why he does it.
"But you have to now, don't you?"
There is another pause. Then he folds the paper into quarters and drops it on the table, pushing his chair back and standing. She moves aside to let him pass and he goes for the pot to get another cup of coffee.
"Do I look like I need to workout?" He asks after he's refilled his mug and has turned to face her, hips pressed back against the counter.
Temari scoffs, more at Shikamaru's raised eyebrow than the question itself. If anything, he's filling out, but it's a product of having so little fat and naturally larger muscles, nothing pointing toward actual, real strength. He always looks good. She knows this. So does he.
"You know aesthetics are mostly meaningless when it comes to that. You should do something. I am the one who needs to rely on you if something goes wrong."
He holds his breath, as though thinking about this, even though she knows he's already thought through all the answer choices.
"Okay," he concludes. "I will run with you."
Temari steps back, waving her hands. "No, no. Absolutely not. You'll slow me down."
"I thought you wanted me to be in better shape? Better for my heart. Show me."
She never should have brought it up. She has no idea why she had in the first place. He's never done anything that would make her doubt any of his capabilities.
"No." She shakes her head, feeling the surge on the tip of her tongue. "Running is the only time I have to myself." She imagines him running beside her down the block. She wants to shake him. Doesn't he see it too? "I wake up, you're there. I eat, you're there. I go to pee or take a shower and for one moment am by myself, but then the second I come out, you're there. You're always just there! Even upstairs," she gestures wildly above them, "you're still here!"
Shikamaru hums at her outburst and takes a sip of his coffee. He looks amused.
"What do you want me to do, Temari?"
"You were probably like this back then. Lazy and passive. Never did homework. Laid around all day. I bet you slept through class then too."
He shrugs.
"God," she takes a deep breath. "You're so annoying."
He tilts his head. "I was just enjoying my morning cup of coffee and reading the news. I think you're the one who's a pain here, interrupting me only to lose an argument."
"Not an argument. And I didn't lose — you said you'd do what I wanted."
"I didn't say that." He takes another sip and then licks his lips. "But what do you want, Temari?"
She doesn't like when he says her name like that.
"I don't know." She sighs, exasperated. She doesn't know why she's picked this disagreement either. She should go shower before work. Ignoring him, she begins back through the kitchen to the stairwell, throwing back, "do some push-ups or something." It means nothing and there is no point to even having brought it up, to having brought anything up, in the first place when it was always going to end this way.
Behind her, Shikamaru laughs. She supposes he has won.
"You're being blackmailed by us."
Temari lets the wind off the water brush her hair away from her face, whip against her cheeks, and cool against her lips. "Mhm."
"And you want to turn." He leans in, as though he is worried she is missing something, as though worried he doesn't have her attention. "You want to talk." When Temari doesn't respond, Shikamaru relents, leaning away and dropping his head to look down at the ducks in the bay. "In principle you're not a threat. But if they have any sense," he leans on the railing, letting the bar press against his forearms, "they'll realize they've been burned."
They're early enough to watch the freighters leave the harbor.
Temari turns around to face the other direction, letting her elbows fall back off the rail, face toward the low sun cresting above the buildings. "They haven't been burned," she mutters. "Not yet."
It's bright out and she closes her eyes against the glare.
"I mean—"
"—I know," she cuts him off. "But don't be unrealistic. They think I'm a secretary. Less — a cleaning woman. Not someone they'd expect to side with the west. They're just desperate for someone to turn. They know we have people here and they need a foothold. Trust me, they'll want to talk."
"And they have people too. They may already know it's a set-up." He sighs, hunching over the bar. "They should at least suspect."
Sure. But they probably won't. They probably don't.
"Not everyone is like you." She tips her chin up, facing the sky fully, letting the sun beat on her skin. She's paler than she's ever been in her life. Once it's warm enough to be on the beach, she'll go every day.
The beaches here aren't as nice (too crowded) as those in Jiro, but she finds herself missing them anyway; missing the water she'd never even really been around.
"Analytical?"
She hums. "Pessimistic."
Shikamaru groans and turns around to copy her position leaning back against the railing overlooking the pier. "You should be careful." He exhales. "That's all I mean."
They didn't create the set-up. They didn't design it. This location, her confirmation code, the time — they didn't choose any of it. If they had, Shikamaru wouldn't be so nervous. But he shouldn't be. This will most likely play well.
"People are predictable." And it's not like they aren't taking precautions. "Watch. I'm not a threat to them. I'm too desperate to raise suspicion."
"Fine." He intones after a moment. "You're probably right."
They stay out like that for another twenty minutes until it's time to drive out to the far end of the docks.
Temari stands on the wood, the wind sweeping her dress and trench coat around her knees. She has curly blonde hair for this and large glasses and her calves, bare in the wind, are freezing even though it's sunny out.
She clutches a briefcase tightly to her chest and turns back and forth, nervous, on the lookout for the man who is supposed to approach her.
All in all, it is supposed to happen pretty quickly. Someone will come up, she'll give her script and he will give his, and then she will hand him the case. He'll take it and give nothing back. They'll be in contact later. And then Shikamaru will follow him. That's all. It's always easy like that, always something straightforward, when it goes wrong.
Someone approaches from the north, walking without looking at her, and then slows when he comes near. He's younger than she expects, and he looks wary. Above her, seagulls cry as they fly past.
"Good morning," he says, lowered. "You look cold."
"Don't worry, I have a jacket." She says, halting at the wrong parts, nervous, like she has never done this before.
The man keeps moving, like he might just walk past her. "Stay warm."
Temari exhales in a gust, as though greatly relieved, as though safe.
"Please," she breathes, extending her hands, "take this."
He does.
She's playing it fine, all the blackmailed-woman-who-never-meant-to-get-in-over-her-head.
"I, uh," she stammers as the man turns, "sorry. Uh. Good—"
But before she can finish the sentence, from his hip he's pulled an automatic and shot her. Three times in quick succession.
Temari falls down. Faster, she thinks, than last time. In some ways, it hurts more. Like a punch, sharp and strong to the gut.
When she can focus, hardly as the breath was knocked from her lungs, there are stars in the corner of her vision. She's on her butt on the dock, hunched over, clutching for a nonexistent wound, unable to inhale. It hurts so badly. Fuck.
And the guy is gone. She can see him, running down the pier, far now. Too far, by the time Shikamaru is bending over her. Wasn't he only feet away? What took him so long? He should be chasing the man!
He leans in, saying her name, but she waves her arm, pushing him away, trying to get enough air to speak.
"Hit — kevlar — go!"
And then Shikamaru is gone and Temari, as quickly as she can, stands up. The first few steps are hard, each movement of her leg vibrating up in her stomach, but she rallies soon enough and makes it back to the car where Shikamaru had left it running when he ran out to her.
How does this possibly hurt more than actually getting shot?
Temari has a gun strapped to her thigh and she pulls it out, dropping it on the passenger seat, before putting the car in drive and pulling off the clutch to follow the direction they'd been going in.
Fuck fuck fuck. Fuck!
Why did this happen? How? Everything was planned, it was supposed to just be an easy drop… the beginning of a new relationship.
God, this hurts. Fucking—
She speeds down the road, eyes trained on the pier and the boardwalk, but she sees no sign of them. Could they have run this far? She's in a more pedestrian area now. There are people out, more people on morning jogs or walking their dogs.
Ah, it hurts to breathe. She wants to close her eyes. But she keeps driving, trying to keep her gaze out for the cap Shikamaru is wearing, for the light hair of the man who'd shot her.
It's over five minutes before she catches Shikamaru. She's turned around, having driven further than they could have run, and is on the way back when she sees him climb up from a stairwell that leads down to the beach. He's surrounded by people.
He sees her and goes straight for the car. Temari grabs her gun and puts it in her lap.
"Lost him," Shikamaru breathes before he's even fully opened the door. He closes it quickly and she pulls out of there fast. "Are you safe?"
She checks the mirrors again. She hasn't seen anything, but she hasn't been diligent.
"I think so," she looks around. "There will be more cars in the main lot."
"We should go further."
"Too business," Temari says, struggles to say, pulling a U-turn to head to the main beach turn-off. Right now there are a dozen or so cars parked, in stark comparison to the ten dozen that will be here this time of day once summer hits, but she pulls in here anyway and drops off Shikamaru.
He says nothing, slipping out of the car as easily as he'd come in and closing the door behind him. She doesn't watch to see which car he's going to choose. She leaves before he's even a step away, going straight for downtown where the nearest transit hub is.
It's over an hour before Temari makes it to the safe house. She'd switched buses twice and it'd taken her a while to find a payphone after that, so that by the time she gets there, everyone else has already arrived. She walks slowly into the house. If she walks too fast, she'll have to limp, which'll draw attention.
It hurts to untie her jacket, but she'd had to tie it up to hide the bullet holes. And it's worse to take off. She can't even lift her arms up to get the dress off and the doctor ends up cutting it away.
"Lay down," he says, and Shikamaru walks with her to the bedroom. It's a sparse house. There is some basic furniture. She wonders if, at some other point in the future, she'll ever need to come back here.
Temari lays down on the floral bedspread, legs extended. Her toes look blurry. Since when is vision-loss a side-effect of pain? In the doorway, Hinoto and Shikamaru watch silently as the doctor undoes her vest. It hurts to move, hurts to take it off, and she groans the whole time. It's her ribs, she thinks, that are bad. But her whole chest, her stomach… it all hurts.
"Here," the doctor says, handing her a pill. "For the pain."
Shikamaru has a glass of water. He must have been holding it and she just hadn't noticed, and he comes to kneel on the floor so his head is level with hers.
Temari swallows the pill and leans back.
Shikamaru puts the water down. The doctor puts his fingers on her body, prodding lightly on her belly, though the painkiller hasn't come close to kicking in. Temari shuts her eyes and grits her teeth against it. Shikamaru leans closer, bringing his hand to cover her face, pushing her hair back and holding his palm flat on her forehead, as though checking for a fever. He doesn't move it though, he just holds her down until she opens her eyes and is forced to focus in on him. His eyes are dark, his gaze kind.
She's sweating. It's cold, but she can feel the moisture on her face and her back and her neck. It's just the pain though. The pain of walking here. The pain of bearing through it.
"Bullshit," Hinoto is muttering from the doorway, and Temari looks past Shikamaru to her. She's shaking her head, taking short breaths, arms crossed over her chest. "This is bullshit."
The doctor presses, this time higher on her stomach and Temari makes a pained noise in surprise.
"What were they thinking?" Hinoto asks no one, words coming out quick. She looks glamorous as always, even first thing in the morning, wearing a gray pantsuit and her red pearl earrings that so often match her lipstick. "I'm furious." Her nostrils flare. She has sunglasses on her head and, as the painkiller starts to take some hold, Temari wonders, as she often does, what Hinoto actually does during the day. "I'm going to make some calls." Hinoto announces and turns sharply out of the room.
Shikamaru laughs and brushes his hand back over Temari's forehead, resettling in the same position.
He looks down at her stomach.
"You've broken two, maybe three ribs," the doctor announces. "From what I can see. We now need to know if any of them have punctured your lung."
"It's already pretty bruised," Shikamaru says to her, eyes narrowed. "I can see it, a bit. There is a bump on your side, coming out of your torso. They look badly broken, if that's your bone poking out."
"Yes," the doctor says as he readies his stethoscope. "I think at least two are broken straight through. Vests weaken with each shot. It's a fluke none of them went through. You're lucky."
Temari huffs and reaches up, bending at the elbow to push Shikamaru's hand away from her.
"I can't believe I've been shot twice now and you not once." He laughs again as he lets go of her forehead. "That's supremely unfair."
"Weren't you just saying something about people being predicable?"
"Mm," she says, getting less coherent now, things getting just a little fuzzy. "Yeah." Her eyelids flutter, but she works to bring him back into focus. "See? You're always the worst. Though," she groans as the doctor lifts her up a few inches to put the stethoscope against her back, "that's less predictability than just consistency."
Shikamaru smiles as he looks at her, only stepping away when Hinoto calls out for him.
Temari has to call out of work for a few days after that, which makes her bitter. Last time she was on bedrest, she spent those first few days (meaning those days of bedrest that legitimately meant not leaving the bed) so out of her mind, she had no conception of the passage of time. But now, she's on a much lower dose of medication and is mostly just made to sit in one position even though it makes her antsy. To move though, even to take too deep a breath, is painful and a strong reminder of why she is meant to stay in bed in the first place. The hard bandages wrapped around her entire ribcage help, however nominally, her newly set bones from shifting, but those too are uncomfortable and cut into her skin.
Shikamaru says it's more to actively remind her not to move, as without an actual cast to hold them in place, some bandaging isn't going to keep them from growing back incorrectly. Either way, it results in her being uncomfortable: a combination of lightheaded and lethargic in her limbs, and stupidly-rigid in her torso.
All she does all day is sit in bed. She reads some. Eventually, she spends hours endlessly on the couch, though even the movement up and down the stairs requires a lot of commitment and takes an embarrassing amount of time. She can't work from home for security reasons, so there is nothing for her to do. And she can't move enough to contribute to anything around the house or do any work for Hinoto.
So Temari sits. And waits. And grows bored. More bored than she has ever been in her life. Nothing to note. Nothing new and nothing interesting. Only time. And stillness.
When Shikamaru is home, even though he usually doesn't bother her too much, she tries to occupy as much of his attention as she can. She talks to him and keeps talking, saying nothing important. Sometimes he tells her she's a bother, but even then, he'll stay in the living room to do his work instead of going up to the office.
They play a lot of shogi. He wins, always, but she gets closer, she thinks (he doesn't seem to think so).
She spends a lot of time, especially when they're playing or when he is doing his work before her, watching his face. She knows it by now. She's seen him make all sorts of expressions. She sees him every day.
But she focuses more now, for extended periods of time. She watches the lines, watches the way he concentrates, the faces he makes and has always made since the day she met him. She spends a lot of time reflecting on their meeting and trying to remember what she thought and what he said as they walked through the sculpture garden. She spends a lot of time on that. She thinks about him all the time.
It's mostly a product of having nothing else to do. So when she thinks of the future or just the world outside generally, when she thinks of things she will say and things that may happen, she imagines how he will react and what he will find entertaining.
She thinks through the inconsistencies in him — and there are many; after all, he is full of them. He's meticulous and organized and likes things to be a certain way, but he is also lazy and reluctant to do anything. He's overly emotional and feels things strongly, but he is also hard to rile. He's too soft, but he's also too cold.
During the time she sits there, eyes sore from staring at the tv and too tired to read comprehensively, she closes her eyes and categorizes these out. She tries to figure him out, tries to make sense of the parts of him she doesn't understand.
Though it's not clean cut. She knows he too works hard to figure her out. She knows last week she was absolutely livid about how she had to see him every day and now she spends all day waiting for his appearance. And yet she still hates him.
If she were back home, if she were anywhere else, she might ask someone. She's always been very private with her private life. She's never really announced that she is seeing anyone or announced if she is interested in someone. But now, when she lacks that availability, she is desperate for a second opinion. There is no one in her life, really, bar Hinoto (who will never be an option), that knows about her and Shikamaru. It's isolating.
There is no one who can know her, who is even allowed to understand this relationship, except for Shikamaru.
It's because of that, and time, mostly, that she doesn't think of him as other anymore — that is something she realizes towards the end of the week. It used to be, for a long time, that she represented Suna against Kiri, and he, Konoha against Kiri. They had a mutual purpose, but they weren't together. She thinks of them as together now. She thinks of him as her ally. As her partner. She's said it before, of course, but she'd never really meant it. Not like this. They are in this together and she feels that now. Shikamaru is, in almost every way, the only person she can be herself around. The only person in her day-to-day life that knows she isn't Temari Nara.
She isn't sure when she started feeling this way. There is no ability to pin-point it — at one point, the only important thing they had together was a common enemy, and now, the most important thing they have together is each other.
These are some of the things Temari notices on her days of bedrest.
When she isn't with Shikamaru, when she is trying not to think of him, she will spend the rest of her time thinking about Suna.
She misses it So Much. Especially when she is here, stuck in this house, in this home, unable to distract herself and fill her days with other things.
She has a fondness, in a way, for her street in Kiri, for her house, for the life she is building. She likes her clothes mostly, her refrigerator, the coffee shop she frequents; the mechanic who takes the same bus as her most mornings. These things belong to her (even as Mrs. Nara), and so she enjoys them, in some indefinable way. But when she thinks about the fact that this is it, this is all it will ever be — that's when she hates it.
All of it. Shikamaru. Her bed. Her clothes. The food she eats and the newspaper she reads.
She has never been away so long now. She spends hours and hours trying to remember things. She tries to remember her apartment. She remembers the academy. She traces out the layout of the building and remembers her years and years of walking in there, of some specific instances of walking in the main entrance (the ones where she had a conversation outside the doors or when was struggling to carry something) that she can recall.
It's a vicious cycle. On the one hand, the further she gets away from Suna, the more she pushes it from her mind, the more she will actually forget. And it's a memory that can never be jogged, something that, once forgotten, can never be remembered, solely because she will never come into a situation where she will be prompted to. She will never return to Suna — the people, the places, the culture, the life; she will never see the academy again. She will not run into an old friend and rekindle past connections and anecdotes over wine. She will forget all these things and then all of it will be gone forever. On the other hand, when she does forget, everything will be easier. She will be able to move on, perhaps, in a way she can't now.
She is torn. She wants Suna, so badly, but she also wants to stop the constant itch of it in her stomach, in the base of her skull, the feeling always crawling along her skin… the feeling of Suna. Everywhere she goes, in every person she meets and likes, in each good moment she has, she feels its absence like a hole in her heart. She's fine, she's fine. She doesn't spend every day in mourning. She doesn't exist in a constant state of grief. But it's still always there, like a light tug on her hair or a slight movement in the corner of her eye.
One morning, in a panic of how little she suddenly feels she remembers, she goes into the office and sits on the floor, pushing aside Shikamaru's papers for a blank sheet and then, quickly, manic, she writes down the names of every person on her floor on the Kiri desk. She draws a blueprint of the office. She writes down names and seats. She writes a manifest of her old classmates. She tries to think of one interaction with each of them. She works to picture them how they were, how they surely are in this moment, as she struggles to bring them into being while they sit in the same office hundreds of miles away going about their day. Some, maybe, have already forgotten about her. Or have hardly realized that she's gone. It's how life continues, of course. They will think of her, if they think of her at all, as just an old coworker, and, conversely, Temari will work to keep them close to her for the rest of her life as a lifeline to her home.
But she is already missing things (surely was even before she came to Kiri). She knows there are twenty people in her graduating class and yet she only has sixteen names.
But she also remembers some things with the trigger of recalling a name. She remembers a boy touching her lower back once, probably accidentally, as he passed her, and how she developed a crush on him after that. She remembers a woman who sat next to her during lectures, and though they never spoke outside of class, Temari still remembers that the woman always had beautiful handwriting that Temari wanted to emulate.
She writes down these things, these little comments and lists, until her hand cramps. She writes until her stomach growls. She writes until her pen runs out of ink, until her morning dose of pain medication starts to wear off.
She wants to put it all down. She thinks about how most people can see someone later in life and be reminded of a story from when they were young, and how she will never have that. She will never have anyone or anything from her past…. And so she does this. She writes and writes and writes.
And then, once she has put everything she can put to paper in this moment, she takes the sheets down to the kitchen and burns them each, one by one, over the stove.
Temari doesn't open the window or turn on the vents above the burners. She lets the smoke get in her eyes as she watches, attention rapt, while all her words, all her memories, disappear in the flames. Maybe she will do this again. Maybe she will remember different things. Maybe she will remember less. Maybe she will never want to try to remember again.
She doesn't clean up the remaining ashes for quite some time.
Temari pulls down a book from the shelf to see the rim of an ear, the sweep of brown hair back from a face.
"It is difficult," Tenten says softly, and Temari watches through the hole in the shelf she created as Tenten walks further down the aisle, stopping occasionally to glance at book titles. "All of it. Everything. What we do, what we're asked to do." She turns the corner, wandering into Temari's aisle, looking at books down the other shelf from Temari.
Temari pauses, looking at Tenten out of the corner of her eye. She wants to ask, but she feels it is too invasive, too naïve. She wants to know though. And she's never been hesitant, even when it comes to private matters which she generally believes are better left alone.
"Are you…?" Temari begins, turning her gaze more fully to the shelf before her. She doesn't finish the question, hoping Tenten can make sense of what she means without the impotence of verbalizing it.
Tenten takes a long breath. They're almost back to back in the aisle now, both looking toward separate shelves, though all of Temari's attention is on the impending words.
"You can't be." Tenten answers after a moment. "Not really."
It's what Temari has always known, it's what she has felt for a very long time. But, deep down, despite its irrationality, she was hoping for a different answer.
"I'd choose Neji any chance I got," Tenten continues, voice quieter. "At any point." Temari turns around in time to see Tenten smile, slightly, to herself. "He's the one for me." But then Tenten too turns around so they're facing each other. "When you have a partnership, in any way, you love them. Even if that love is the marriage, the partnership, itself — the work you've done and the children you will have — instead of love for that person." Tenten stop, looks down. "And I do worry, sometimes, that that is what I feel."
She turns back and pulls a book out with one finger on top of the spine. She holds it her hands and flips through a few pages.
Temari watches carefully.
She doesn't know what it is. She doesn't know what she wants. Shikamaru thinks, if he thinks about it at all, that once she got sexually frustrated and took it out on him. She's mostly sure that is his explanation for that time she kissed him, back when she climbed into his lap and jerked him off. The rest, the easy flirtation and the occasional sexual innuendoes, are all him just humoring her.
She knows she wants him more than that. She has known that for a long time. But she doesn't know what more she does want. And she does worry — she thinks about it all the time — how much of a decision it is hers to make. She thinks she would want him even if he weren't forced on her (she believes it, but she wavers too). Would it be this strong (how could it? it's never been like this before when she was able to choose) if it were anyone else?
"I don't know how honest you can be when you weren't given a choice." Tenten continues, closing the book and putting it back on the shelf. Temari hasn't said anything, but she knows Tenten must have thought the same thing. "But I also think that there is always some choice, even in him." She sighs, and walks further down the aisle, away from Temari, keeping her eyes down. "But honestly, Temari, I don't think I know any more than you. I mostly try to be a good operative and a good partner. I don't like to think about things that I cannot change."
"It's been over five years for you," Temari says, turning back to her own shelf.
"And soon it will be for you too. And then ten. And then twenty."
Tenten stops at the end of the aisle holding a book she'd grabbed a few paces back.
"Temari," she says gently, waiting for Temari to turn and look. "This is your life. Does it matter if you would feel otherwise in another setting? That you may? I know Shikamaru. I knew him before you did— when he was just a kid. He doesn't exactly fade into the background. Not academically." She tilts her head, pauses, and then blinks. "What I mean to say is, he's not easily swayed. He can make his own decisions. So you should do what you want to. Live your life, in the ways you can, how you want to. It's yours."
"You make it sound easy."
Tenten looks away. "It'll never be easy." Temari watches as she sighs again. "I'm sorry I couldn't be of more help." Then she smiles and looks back up, meeting Temari's gaze. "I'm going to go check out this book." They are in the library branch closest to Tenten's after all. "I'll see you later, okay?"
Temari stays another few minutes pretending to look at the shelves.
Things will change when they have children.
That part is hard to believe — it's no surprise, she's always known it, of course — but now that she stands before him and thinks about that part (the actual reality of the child), she is daunted.
There will be a child. A real child. A person, with thoughts and feelings and a perception of the world and of their home.
Shikamaru will be the father. And she will be the mother. This child will look to them as parents. This child will consider them a family.
How crazy is that?!
Everything will change. They will have so many more responsibilities than their day-to-day lives right now.
There are things parents do — things she will do, things he will do for their child: helping with homework after dinner at the table, driving to after-school clubs and to friends' houses, putting sunscreen on skinny backs and pulling splinters out of toes, saying something and having them look at her and Shikamaru as though nothing is not in their purview, as though they are everything.
They will be real people. Real people with real experiences. And she will be their mother.
But kids are a cover. They'll come first, of course — she'll send the children back to Suna and they'll always be taken in if anything happens to her — but they are a cover. That's foremost. She really has no choice in them.
They serve multiple purposes — they are less suspicious as potential spies if they have children, but it also binds them together. It reinforces some old conception that, because of their children, she will not betray Shikamaru, and thus, she will not betray Suna.
But they will be her children. They will come from her body. They will be made up of her.
And while that is both daunting and wondrous, she is also horrified. They will be sons and daughters of Kirigakure. Of the Water Lands. They will think of her — of their mother and father — as citizens of Kiri! She hates that! She hates it here. She wants to be home. She doesn't want to raise her children here. She doesn't want them to think that this is good.
Or worse, maybe — they'll think of Suna as bad. And it's not as though children can be trusted (especially children from here, children who will never understand real consequences and hardship) for her to actually teach them well. Shikamaru must maintain a government position. She can't teach them in secret, can't sway their beliefs correctly. Not only can she never show them the wonders of her home, she can never tell them about Suna either.
It's not a surprise. It's not. But now that she sees that possibility, readily acknowledges its near future, she feels sick.
How much of a parent can she be when everything she does is a lie? Her children will be, her marriage, her job, and her name — all of it is false.
Temari stops. She's been thinking this way too often these past few weeks.
She needs to leave the house. She needs to get away from white walls and stupidly paved driveways and un-smeared lipstick. She needs to get away from Shikamaru and from Hinoto and from stupid cryptanalyses messages and from Kazue Haishi and from her job.
She is mad at everything. She hates everything. She wants to go home. She wants her own children. Her own husband. Her own family and her own choice.
It's so hard to fight for something you struggle to remember.
With her ribs still healing, it hurts too much to sit in the bath and to move in and out of it, so she showers. She can wash her own hair, only it hurts to move too much, so once she lifts her arms, they stay like that for a long time, washing the shampoo in and then back out, long enough that they ache.
She stays in the shower for a long time once she is finished, standing there, leaning her shoulders against one wall, and letting the water spray on her skin.
She hopes it'll run cold. She hopes that Shikamaru comes back soon so that when he showers, it will be ice on his skin. He'll still shower, probably, but he won't enjoy it.
In her week at home, he hadn't gone to meet Kazue Haishi once. But now she is back at work. And so, he is too.
It's only work, she knows. But she still thinks about what he is doing now. She'll listen to the recording later. Or maybe she'll just pretend she did until Shikamaru brings it up, which he won't do unless Haishi has said something of interest. He's been there for a long time. They're probably fucking by now.
Absently, Temari puts her fingers to her lips, remembering what it was like to kiss him.
It doesn't take long for the water to get cold. She gets out when the water runs lukewarm no matter how high she turns the dial. There is no point. Shikamaru could be home at any time. And she isn't that petty. Probably. Mostly.
She does stand in front of the shower in her towel and, although well used to closing the curtain now at his pressure, she purposefully pulls it back. She looks at it, opened and cramped in the corner of the shower, and feels satisfied.
When he comes back hours later, the lights are out and she pretends to sleep. But she listens as he walks through the room, quietly slipping off his shoes and undoing his buckle, pulling off his pants. She listens, breath paced, as he walks into the bathroom where she hears a muffled, "fuck, Temari," and a sharp closing of the shower curtain before he turns on the water himself.
a/n:(long line reimagined from pow)
happy happy new year!
thank you all so much for reading! you're all unbelievable and i'm so incredibly happy to have you
(p.s. i haven't been getting pm notifications on ffn forever, but specifically apologies to those few i left hanging forever. also, i you don't see it here, but for those who never look at the ao3, just a head's up that the story has sixteen chapters total!)