A/N: look, did I expect for this series to be so long or have an intermission? No, but here we are anyway. Couldn't write this without asking what Shikamaru and Rei were up to the whole time. Hope you've enjoyed this so far~

Konoha is mostly quiet these days. Without Naruto, there's no one to stir up trouble. Without Ren, there is no one to rile Shikamaru up. Shikamaru goes to the parks, but he doesn't stay long, unable to sit still without hearing Ren's voice in the wind.

He's tending to the family's deer one morning when they all lift their heads and look over his shoulder. The deer flick their ears. Shikamaru turns.

A girl approaches him, and Shikamaru straightens. But she has wavy hair, ringlets of it framing her face. Her hair is too dark. She's too tall, the shape of her body too narrow. Her eyes scan the deer behind him, and she closes in, unafraid.

"You look like the prince of the forest," Rei says with a grin. "Very cool. Kinda hot."

Shikamaru scowls. Rei had introduced herself to him after he'd returned from his first failed mission as a Chuunin. Shikamaru recognized her from the exams and was on guard. After his experiences with Sound shinobi, Shikamaru didn't trust anyone who bore that crest.

Rei held her hands up in surrender. "I want to talk about Ren," she said. "Trust me, I'm a friend."

It was one of the few moments Rei had ever been serious with Shikamaru. He gave her the benefit of the doubt at Ren's name, wondering what kind of secrets Ren was keeping from him. And when Rei said, "Ren's gone. She left with Sasuke," Shikamaru realized there was a lot he didn't know about Ren.

Rei couldn't tell him more. They were in the halls of the hospital, outside of Naruto's room. "I'm keeping an eye on her, okay? Don't go after her, don't look for her. If she's with Orochimaru, it's too dangerous. I'm sorry," Rei said before he could ask questions. "I'm sorry, I have to go, people are coming."

She stayed true to her word and returned a few months later. By then, Naruto had also left the village to train with Jiraiya-sama, one of the legendary Sannin of the Leaf, while Sakura took an apprenticeship under Tsunade-sama. Team 7 had spread themselves out among the Sannin to take up their respective mantels. Shikamaru dreaded what that would mean for their future, but he held onto hope, if only because it was all he could do.

Rei met him in his family's deer park without warning, but with an idea: she wanted to buy antler.

"To lure Ren out," she said. "She's a medic. If we can provide a black market supplier with some deer antler and get records of who purchases it, we can track them."

Shikamaru didn't like this plan. There was no guarantee that it would fall into Ren's hands. If the antler did get to her, did that mean she would use it to help Orochimaru? It was a betrayal on multiple levels.

Seeing the reservation on his face, Rei said, "We'll pinpoint the markets that we suspect Orochimaru will use. If it's not one of his subordinates, we'll take it back."

"How will you know if it's one of his subordinates?" Shikamaru asked, skeptical.

"Orochimaru and his people have a very particular aura," Rei said as though that explained everything. "Trust me, I will be able to sense whether it is one of his people."

He gave her some of their supply, and she came back each month for more. She seemed excited during one return. Shikamaru expected good news, but Rei only smiled, took the supply, and disappeared again.

This went on for months. Each time Rei showed up, she would tell him she was closer. Once, she said that she almost figured it out – the next time she came back, she shook her head grimly. A new scar graced her face, tearing from her neck to the bridge of her nose.

At one point, Shikamaru refused to give Rei any more antler until she could give him more substantial information. She stood, solemnly, and listened. Finally, Rei mustered, "Please, just trust me."

Shikamaru doesn't lose his temper – but this was one of the few times he couldn't stop it. It had been a year and every village search had turned up nothing. All his friends were Chuunin now, and Shikamaru knew that each time they went on missions that took them out of the village, they would gather intelligence about Orochimaru, about Sasuke, about Ren. They would come back and smile at him, but he could see in their faces that they felt pity because there was never any news.

Rei let him yell at her. She pursed her lips and let him yell until his throat was hoarse and he ran out of breath. Rei stood there and listened as Shikamaru listed all his questions about Ren's disappearance, why she would go with someone like Sasuke when she had always hated him, why she would ally herself with someone like Orochimaru when he had debilitated their village, killed their Hokage, answers Rei had never been forthcoming with. Rei stood and listened as Shikamaru listed all his grievances with her personality, her technique, her process searching for Ren. Rei stood there and bore it all.

The trees rustled around them: two shinobi appeared, knives raised. One glared at Shikamaru with a ferocity that Shikamaru would reserve only for his worst enemies.

"It's fine, Hiro-kun, Nao," Rei said, waving them down. "Shikamaru – I know how hurt you are—"

"How?" he said. "How could you know?"

Rei took a deep breath. "Because I believed in Ren, too," she said quietly. When she looked at him, her eyes were wide and glossy. "I believed in her. I believed her."

Shikamaru didn't get angry with Rei anymore after that. He still got angry, but not with Rei.

When Rei shows up this time, she has her hair down. It's shorter than it has ever been, and it poofs out around her head. Rei reaches for one of the deer, which immediately nuzzles her open palm.

"Where are Nao and Hiro this time?" Shikamaru says, handing her a bag full of antler.

She says, "Just giving us some space. They've suspected for a long time now that we're in love, Shikamaru. They wanted to give us a moment to figure out what this is. Come on, you can't tell me you don't feel it too."

"All you had to say was they're keeping watch," Shikamaru says.

"Yeah, well," she says, "you're so easy to tease, handsome. Shame you don't get flustered anymore. I loved it when your cheeks got all pink and rosy."

"Rei," Shikamaru says, pressing his fingers to his forehead. "Please. Do you have any news?"

"Yes, actually," she says, and Shikamaru braces himself. In the past, news ranged anywhere from we found someone who heard something vaguely about Orochimaru to we found one of Orochimaru's abandoned hideouts. But today, Rei says, "We found her."

Shikamaru inhales sharply. "Where?" Shikamaru says. Rikumaru, one of his family's oldest deer in the park, strides up to Shikamaru and nudges his arm until Shikamaru's hand sits on its neck.

Rei holds up her hands, and Shikamaru deflates. He's become familiar with this gesture, the way Rei's fingers would curl slightly, unwilling to yield the exact information he wanted. "I won't tell you," Rei says exactly as Shikamaru predicted, "but we might be able to intercept her with this next exchange."

"Intercept her," Shikamaru repeats. "You're going to engage with them."

"No," Rei says. "Even I'm not that reckless. We'll get her alone. That's all I can say for now—"

"If I gave you something," Shikamaru says, stepping forward, "could you give it to her?"

Rei frowns, narrowing her eyes at him. "Okay," she says uncertainly, "but I don't think a kiss is going to feel the same coming from me."

"No," Shikamaru says, backing away from her. He swears he hears someone snicker in the tree line. "No. I just want to give her – a note."

"Ugh, okay, boring but manageable," Rei says. She digs through her pouch and hands him a small piece of paper. Then, she reaches into her hair and pulls out her feather, giving it to him. "You'll have to do it now – we have to get going to make the rendezvous in time. You don't need an inkpot," she says when he lifts the feather. "It'll work, trust me."

Shikamaru stares at the paper. He had asked for the note, but he was hoping he'd have more time. He didn't know what to say off the top of his head. Shikamaru stares at the paper, imagines Ren's face. What she must look like now after two years.

Sometimes he has dreams about her. Shikamaru dreams that Ren is in the village, helping at the hospital or bragging about a mission she has completed, her short hair curling around her ears. He dreams that she's with him in the parks, laying in the grass and laughing. Shikamaru dreams that Ren wakes him from his naps and tells him it's time to go home, and then they walk home.

Shikamaru writes quickly. The feather writes fluidly, without interruption. He writes two sentences, and that's it: one truth he's known since the moment Ren left and another truth he's realized only in the years after she was already gone.

Rei snatches the note from him as soon as he's finished. He spins toward her only in time to see that she has it folded into a neat little square. "I won't read it," she says as he hands back her feather. "Though I can feel the energy it's giving off and let me tell you: it's perfect."

Rei waves at him from the edge of the forest and disappears. It's the most optimistic he's seen her, and Shikamaru holds onto hope because it's all he has.

He closes his eyes and presses his face to the wind. Shikamaru swears he hears her voice.