Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto nor anything but the Ocs.
Planting seeds
Chapter 3: Adjustment goes both ways.
Shikaku looks at him from the corner of his eye. "You do know you will need to pick a house in the compound eventually, right?"
He doesn't bother to smother a wince. "The old coots won't like that,"
"Though," Shikaku shrugs, "They have no say. You're a Nara, you get to live in the compound if you damn please."
Left unsaid is that Ensui had not pleased since he had been sixteen and made jounin.
He hates to ask but... "Do you think Yoshino would look after her while we have that taken care of?"
Shikaku pauses half a second more than necessary on his next step, "You want to move in now?"
"We will still crash at your place for a couple of days but there is no point in letting her get attached to my apartment," left unsaid is that he does not want to leave her alone in his shitty bachelor apartment, "I don't have much to move in anyways."
Shikaku lets out a snort through his nose. 'Understatement of the century,' he thinks but thankfully he does not say it out loud.
"You will have to buy a lot of things," his brother warns, "Children are expensive."
Ensui resists the urge to scowl. He knows. "I've been collecting my paychecks since I made chunnin," he has the funds and he is a damn adult, he doesn't need his brother paying off his debts left and right like he was a snot nosed brat right out of the Academy.
Shikaku does not say anything, but he nods and that lets Ensui relax.
"Do you need help picking out things?"
Ensui would want to say no. He really, really doesn't feel like owing Shikaku any more favors - he will be the one helping him pick out a house and handling the paperwork after all - but the fact is his brother does have a child of his own.
That's more experience than Ensui can speak about.
"Yes," he admits, the words tasting like failure on his tongue despite how silly it is, "Yoshino could make us a list, right?"
Shikaku nods and that is that.
.
.
.
Shikamaru has an uncle.
It's just a fact of life. He had known he had an uncle- he sent him plushies and the best pillows every birthday and a bunch of money in new year. He just had not expected to see the man like, ever.
He had asked about him only once and his father had done his thinking face, but his lips had turned downwards so Shikamaru had already known he wouldn't like the answer before his father explained that sometimes grown ups had fights, with words and not kunais, and that sometimes those wounds took a lot of time to heal. His uncle had been hurt so he doesn't visit the clan compound anymore, is what his father said, but Shikamaru had wondered if it had been his father or the clan as a whole who had hurt his uncle.
The thought was gone the next second of course. His mind ran, it ran and twisted and jumped in a hundred directions all at once and every thought was just as loud as the next and Shikamaru had been content with just that - a mystery solved - and moved into other things.
It came back sometimes, like on his birthdays and new year, but he hadn't expected it to come back today, just another lazy day.
Someone calls at the door and his mother yells at him to open, so he groans and does just that. Taking his time of course, his mother had ordered him to open the door but she hadn't said now.
He can finish his snack first.
When he is done he strolls to the door and opens it. At the other side is his father, and next to him is a man. Shikamaru registers his features, softer than his father's but close enough, the single signature ponytail and the green eye shadow surrounding his eyes, on the same time it takes his father to lift up a hand and muss his hair.
He doesn't fight it- he will just get a repeat if he does, but he does look at the stranger and comes to the conclusion that he can be nothing but a main line Nara. They have no bloodlines, but they have distinctive features and that forehead with those eyes are almost the same that will stare back at him in the mirror in a couple of years.
Shikamaru looks at his father questioningly and he lifts a lazy hand in greeting. "Shikamaru, this is your uncle Ensui, Ensui, this is Shikamaru."
They stare at each other in the front porch. A whole minute passes. Then Ensui snorts and messes his hair and Shikamaru thinks, 'Ugh, not another.'
He spoke aloud, but his uncle only chuckles and takes off his shoes. He is carrying something, someone he finds out later, when uncle Ensui takes off two tiny sandals off and places them in a pile near his father's discarded pair.
"Is that your kid?" he asks, mildly curious despite knowing if he doesn't want to answer then he won't. Only his father ever answers all his questions, on his way and with whatever he wants to, but an answer is an answer and Shikamaru needs to take some measure of this man that preferably does not come from unmarked gifts.
His uncle halts, looking from his father and at him and then back again for a second before shrugging. "I guess? She'll be my ward from now on."
"A girl?" He frowns. Girls are loud and bratty and just troublesome. They demand more energy than he has to spend and they will yell if he doesn't do what they want.
"Good luck," he says with feeling.
And with that he goes back to the garden in the back, because the girl is sleeping and no way will he babysit if she wakes up. His mother will ask him to if he is there so he will avoid the problem by avoiding the house.
"I'm gonna go play," he informs his dad, and his plans are kind of obvious if his dad guffaws a laugh this loud before he even is out of the door.
'Troublesome,' he thinks, but thankfully this one is not his trouble.
(It will be, but he doesn't know that yet. Some troubles are just unavoidable. Family, it turns out, is like that.)
.
.
.
"Damn, that kid is so much like you it's scary," Ensui commented as soon as his nephew was out of hearing range.
Shikaku, true to form, simply smirked and went on his way to his office, leaving him to face down Yoshino on his own.
He would call him coward but Yoshino is a force to be reckoned with. He just hopes the child he carries literally in front of him will be enough of a deterrent.
"Ensui!" She says, a smile lighting up her whole face and making her look like the woman who had made his brother cry at the altar, "What are you doing here?"
Then she had blinked, and her whole face transformed. "What are you doing here?! I expected you here five years ago, you know! What did you think you were doing, disappearing in ANBU like that! Shikaku was worried, Mitsuko was worried, I was worried you silly man!"
He laughs at the last part, trust Yoshino to have trained herself out of cursing just because she had a kid now. Uh oh. He shouldn't have done that. Yoshino's eyes gleam and Ensui honest to god fears for his life.
"Yoshino, could you watch the kid?" Shikaku buts in, inserting himself in the conversation like he had never left his own brother to face the wrath of his wife alone and defenseless. What a cruel, cruel man, but he is taking Yoshino's attention out of him so Ensui can kind of forgive him. "We have to get a house ready before the week is up,"
"Kid?" Yoshino blinks and peers closer to the bundle on his arms. She truly is beautiful when she smiles, "Oh! You adopted a kid!"
She has the decency to be surprised. Really, she is his favourite relative, Shikaku be damned.
"Yes, of course!" She takes Akako off his arms before Ensui is ready and he feels kind of lost without her weight on his arms, but straightens before Shikaku has the chance to tease him. "You will need a lot of things- do you want a list?"
Ensui just- looks at her.
His eyes find Shikaku's and his brother nods sagely at him.
Truly, Yoshino is a blessing.
"Yes, please."
He follows her up the stairs and there are more toys, more books and small cloud drawings hanged on the walls, but the house is the same he had grown up in. At least in the surface- he hopes for his nephew's sake Shikaku had done something about the hot water.
"Where is Shikamaru?" She asks his brother from over her shoulder, not missing a single step on the stairs despite not even looking at them, "Is he taking another nap?"
"He went outside to play," Shikaku deflects, and Yoshino nods.
Ensui and Shikaku share a smile behind Yoshino's back. He would bet his headband Shikamaru's version of playing included no movement at all.
It is not a nap if you do not close your eyes.
Ah, the times he had used the same argument himself. Good times.
Yoshino puts Akako in the spare bedroom she has decorated herself and rearranges a lock of hair out of her face. When she looks at Ensui next, she is still angry and he has no doubts he will hear her out sooner rather than later, but there is something incredibly soft on her brown eyes.
"It was about time you came back," but it is a light reprimand, softer and truer than anything else his fellow clansmen will direct at him, if they bother to talk to him at all, "You will tell me all about this at dinner young man, now give me some paper. I have a list to write."
It is Shikaku who does, and she gets at work immediately.
She keeps writing for a worrying amount of time.
"That much?" He can't help but ask, and Yoshino laughs in his face.
"Of course! That's just for the house though- I will take your daughter shopping with me next week, for now she can use Shikamaru's old things."
He frowns. That doesn't sound right with him, he doesn't want her thinking she is less than Shikamaru just because she wears his old things.
"Is it that hard? Can't you give me her size? I'll just pick something up quickly. Just for a few days, until you can go with her."
Yoshino does not protest like he had been fearing, simply nods and walks down the corridor, coming back with a few clothes on her arm.
She sizes them against Akako's sleeping form and nods. "She is a smaller size. Look for any number 5 or S, but don't buy anything below five- that's for babies. A couple of shirts and pants should suffice. Let the shopkeeper help you with underwear."
"And shoes?" He will not make her use old shoes. It's just- no. He won't buy the whole store but he can give her a pair of new shoes. "Do you think a 6?"
Yoshino looks at her feet and thankfully doesn't comment on the cigarette burn on one of them.
"Yes, six." She straightens and hands the list to him, "Well? What are you waiting for? Those things won't buy themselves you know!"
Ensui grins. Gods, had he missed this.
"Yes ma'am." He salutes and gets back to the front door. No need to use the windows quite yet. It is early still and he has just asked Yoshino for a favor.
He pretends he doesn't notice them talking once he is out of the room, but figures it was bound to happen. They are helping him- them. It's enough for now.
"Well, we have three houses in the back, two down the street and one near the deer," Shikaku informs as soon as he is out of the door.
Ensui's eyebrows climb up. Three he could understand, four perhaps- but six?
"We've had some clansmen moving out when their company was not found suitable by the elders," Shikaku told him, his voice doing nothing to hide his disgust at them.
The Nara were not Uchiha or Hyuga, but some of the leftovers from the first and second wars were too set on their ways.
Anything that did not further the clan was to be discarded or quietly driven away.
Ensui would know- but he was the spare, the spare of the real spare at that, the third son. When he had been found lacking as a strategist there had been grumbles, but when his preference in partners became public knowledge the looks had been downright unbearable.
He didn't think he had a thin skin, but they were his clansmen. He had fought and bled with some of them, he just didn't see why he should endure their mocking and jests when he didn't need to.
So he moved out, stopped talking to them, and then the Kyubi attack came. Things had simply not gotten back on track.
He had no need for the clan- until now.
With that in mind, he felt the need to ask- "Who?"
Houses in the compound where free, given to those who paid their fees or where in active service, sometimes both. After a while, if a ninja lived long enough to retire they were given to them for free to live the rest of their days, with maintenance and services coming out of the clan funds.
They only became vacant when the occupants moved out or died.
"Sakebo's daughter moved out with her Yamanaka teammate- Inori? Inari? Something like that. Hitaru and Naomi were seeing foreigners.." and after the attempt in the Hyuga girl, foreigners were no longer welcome unless they were married into the clan. It calmed now that two years had passed, but it had to hurt for a young couple to be driven off so abruptly, "and Kaori, Aomaru and Shikane all kicked it."
He was less mournful of the last three. Wait- "Did Shikane leave Enchu in the council of elders?"
Shikaku's wince told it all. "I suppose that is the house near your own?"
"Yeah,"
"I think Akako will like the outskirts."
No way is letting her anywhere near the stink of self-righteousness that asshole left behind.
Shikaku laughed but dutifully lead the way. The houses were more sparce near this area, Ensui remembers using it as the perfect spot for playing ninja before ninja had stopped being a game, but he still has fond memories of the place.
The houses are well cared for, and he can see Maen's house, then Suzaku and his family, and finally a vacant house before the street goes back in. The compound is circular in shape, this is simply the outer layer.
There are plenty of trees and Ensui knows for a fact Suzaku and Maen both have wives out of active service, Suzaku has kids and even Matsumori, retired as she is, lives all her days in her front porch or serving tea to whoever walks by.
Defensible, populated and better yet- anyone will hear Akako if she shouts. He doubts she will, but they will be there to offer assistance if they see her struggle when he is not there.
His clansmen, whatever their failings, have never left children abandoned or forgotten.
It's only after they have grown that the problems come, but until then everyone agrees to let children be themselves.
"Who is at the other side of the street?"
"Nanami, her brother and Mitsuko-sama." He says the last bit with a hint of wariness, as one rightly should when speaking of Mitsuko-sama, but Ensui would pick her over any elder, and it's so far off that he doubts Akako will wander there anyways.
"Let's see that one," he says but his brother has already got the keys out.
It's empty, as he had expected, but some genin team must have been here lately because there is hardly any dust.
"How often do you request D-ranks?"
"Twice a month," Shikaku answers immediately, "I tried to lower it but Mitsuko-sama insisted."
He sends his brother a commiserating look, "Yeah, I wouldn't have fought her either."
Furniture won't be a problem- he didn't spend much time on his apartment but he made sure it was comfortable. He has a couch, a table and utensils.
It's stuff for a child were he comes up short.
"Do you think she will like it here?" he asks even when Shikaku has no way of knowing, he hadn't properly met Akako yet.
But his brother understands the spirit of his question if not the question itself, so he nods. "Yes, there's two rooms, a kitchen and a living room. What else could a kid ask for? I swear Shikamaru uses nothing but his bed and the couch- I'm not sure he even knows there are other rooms."
Ensui laughs because yeah, he could see the kid doing just that. There's sleep and then there's priorities.
Naps are serious business for Naras.
He inspects the bathroom and bless the past owners, it's a modern one. It's made in baby blue but he can live with that because there's hot water and it's actually hot, not the sorry excuse of a heat stove the Head House, carved from out of a Hashirama tree as it is, had boasted of. The water had been downright freezing if you got up too late in winter.
Ensui has never been an early riser, so until sixteen all he had known were lukewarm showers.
Come to think of it- "What's the matter with the tube?"
"Water user," his brother says and yeah, it explains a lot.
In ANBU it's something of a running joke to let water users the last on any shower breaks because they tend to hog all the water and damn the consequences.
Genma is, subsequently, banned from using the showers at headquarters at all.
It will be a pain to clean, but he likes it.
"I'll take this one," he tells Shikaku and the asshole already has the papers out. It's the only stack of papers he carries. He sighs, "You knew I'd take this one, didn't you?"
His brother shots him such a deadpan look Ensui would blush if he were any younger. As it is, he flips him he bird and begins to sign where he needs to.
"What is on Yoshino's list?" He asks next, even if at this point he would he taking a nap whenever he is out of duty.
Shikaku studies the list and, bless him, he already has a plan. "You have a couch?"
The look he sends his brother bears no mentioning out loud.
"Fine, fine. We'll go for a bed and duvets first, a pair of desks, bookshelves and drawers."
"Bookshelves?"
"Did she strike you as the running sort?"
"Ah," trust his brother to think years ahead, he doesn't know if Akako knows how to write her name, never mind read yet, "A mirror too, she's a girl, she will want to see herself sometime."
Shikaku starts to nod, then pauses, "What about those desk-mirror things? Inoichi's girl has one of them."
Yeah, he doesn't remember the name either.
"Let's get her one big mirror and call it a day," he decides, because two mirrors seem like too much.
"Good thinking. So Tomaru's first-" the table he got from him is alive still to this day and going strong, "then a mirror next door-"
"Then to the Yamanaka's flower shop? There's a children's clothing store in front of it," left unsaid is that Fu, Inoichi's wife, will see the two of them stride inside and take a peek herself. Free help is always welcome.
His brother smirks, thinking along the same lines, "Great, but do you know were we're headed first?"
Ensui's smirk is just as wide, "The mission desk?"
After all, why make all the work themselves when there were genin? It's not laziness if they are contributing to the economy, or that's what they will tell Yoshino anyways.
They take a leisurely stroll out of the compound, neither is in a hurry, and Ensui can admit he had missed this too- the quiet companionship, simply getting the other without too many words involved to tangle things. It's something he hadn't encountered anywhere else, not even with his teammates.
The day passes much in the same mien, and by the time they're back Ensui has laughed and cringed in tandem with his brother, needling the other out in front of Fu like they had not done since both were teenagers.
They are tired, but it's pleasant for once.
He looks at Shikaku and thinks about how could he convey this- gratitude and happiness and 'no, he does not think he had been in the wrong', but he has missed his brother damn it.
And Shikaku- his brother leans in and ruffles his hair, like he had done with Shikamaru, like Ensui himself has done with Akako.
It's forgiveness and gratitude and a tired sort of 'yeah, I get it, can we go on with life?' just like every time Shikaku has used up all the hot water in the house.
It's not an apology, but Ensui doesn't need an apology. He's an adult and he could have damn well chosen to speak to his brother - if not his clan, his brother, who had never turned his back at him - before Ensui had needed a huge favor out of him. It's dickish and in poor taste but that's the way things turned out and Shikaku gets it.
So Ensui endures it for two heartbeats before shrugging his arm off like any good brother ought to.
At the end of the day, a house is not the only thing they had gotten back in order.
.
.
.
"Don't we need to pick Shikamaru up?" He asks, looking at the position of the sun, "It's kind of late."
"Nah, he must be back by now. Yoshino always makes dinner around the same time," left unsaid is that there would be hell to pay if any of them were absent.
"You don't always make it, do you?"
A pause. "I try to. I'll pick Shikamaru up from the Academy too."
Ensui smiles at his brother. For all the havoc his brother's strategies can make in a battlefield, Shikaku is a good man.
He glances at Ensui from the corner of his eye. "Do you think that will be enough?" and there is a genuine fear there.
Shikaku fears his son will know nothing but his back. It had been their own older brother, and not their father, who had shown them the clan techniques and trained them.
Nara Shikano had been more of a father to them than their progenitor had ever wanted to be.
It is a valid fear, but Ensui can not conceive the image of his own father repeating itself on Shikaku in any way.
Yes, Shikamaru had been born because the Nara Clan needed an heir, but that wasn't all there was to it.
Shikamaru was wanted. Is wanted still. There was no mistaking Shikaku's love for his son when he had greeted him early.
To make a comparison is difficult, but if Shikaku is absent- "Can't you take him with you to the office?"
Shikaku shots him a look, one would think Ensui has declared his love for paperwork.
"I'm serious- who is actually above you? The Hokage and his advisors," anyone else is below in rank or another clan head, "The Hokage won't care and if his advisors moan he will feel guilty and give you some time off. You can't lose."
Shikaku's eyes are moving, mind flying, "Do you think so? He could use it to weedle some favours,"
Ensui had considered that already, "Fill it under clan training,"
He shots him a look, "Clan training?"
"Of course. Shikamaru's shadows needs adjustment and just you can do it."
"That's bullshit,"
"Yes, but can they prove it?" The main line has a special kind of training, not disclosed to anyone but the heir, but Shikano had been paranoid and taught both of them. The fact is- if Shikaku says Shikamaru's spiritual energy needs adjustment no one can say otherwise because they can't prove it's a lie. Secret jutsu left juicy loopholes like that. "He will know it's bullshit, you will know it's bullshit, but he won't be able to say anything. Hell, he might even be amused by it- he actually likes you."
Shikaku snorts. "True enough. I'll give it a try."
They walk in silence after that, but Shikaku's posture is looser, more relaxed. His brother is deep in thought and Ensui is happy to leave him like this. It will benefit his nephew in the long run.
And if Shikaku isn't there.. "Shikano never left us alone," he says, and knows his brother can read between the lines.
His brother had never left him alone. If something went wrong, if Shikaku wasn't there- Ensui would take care of Shikamaru.
He will take care of him like Shikano had done, not limiting himself to training and calling it a day, but being there on the worst parts- for his first kill, his first break up, his nightmares and yes, his dreams too.
The clan wouldn't like it. The elders wouldn't like it.
But Shikamaru is his nephew so Ensui would teach him to be the best man he could and damn anyone who says he is not man enough for it.
He will be there, he vows, to fill in the gaps Shikaku's job might leave behind.
Shikamaru deserves better than either of them.
They share a look, and all of this is communicated in a single decisive nod.
By the time they reach the house, the sun is long gone.