Long ago, the attacks between the nations had been strategic, made with the aim of rectifying each Village's respective situation. There were a number of factors feeding into the unrest, but it was taught to the children of Konoha that the primary initial trigger was the decision of the Daimyo of the Land of Wind to begin hiring shinobi from the Hidden Leaf Village to do his missions instead of from the Hidden Sand Village. The Sand would claim that the Hokage lowered their prices to snub their competitors, the Leaf would claim that the Kazekage raised their prices out of personal greed. Most likely, both were correct. Leaf ninja would say that shinobi who came from the Sand grew up bitter and brutal. Sand ninja would say that shinobi who came from the Leaf grew up soft and dishonourable.

Soon, however, the reasons were lost to history and the attacks became personal vendettas between individual clans – a cycle of vengeance. The troubles between the nations had been this way for decades now, certainly as long as Shikamaru could remember. Sometimes they were bad enough to flirt along the edge of war, sometimes the attacks quietened, but there was never truly peace. Whenever the incidents came in rapid succession, taking many lives or prominent shinobi, the undercurrent across both nations was the suspicion that a war would end these feuds once and for all. That was the undercurrent that Shikamaru had felt in his work over the last few years.

This difference in attitude between the nations was epitomised by the modern leadership. Both Lord Third and Lady Fifth Hokage nourished the attitude that these troubles against each the Sand were a necessary evil, an essential sacrifice, and that peace was the final goal. But the Sand Village was lead by the Fourth Kazekage, Lord Rasa, and Rasa didn't care much for peace. Instead, he prized his own personal status and power and would happily continue to fight for more than he had, regardless of who – Sand or Leaf – got in his way.

There was something Asuma had taught Shikamaru over a game of shogi once, when Shikamaru had been young and Asuma had been alive… something about the true king of the Land of Fire being not the Hokage but the citizens; the next generations who would carry on the Will of Fire. Leaf Village shinobi were simply protectors of the civilian population, their power used to look after the nation and their sacrifices honourable. Everyone knew that the Land of Wind didn't hold such sentimentality. The Kazekage considered himself king, with his shinobi there to protect him, to sacrifice themselves for him. Recently, this concept had been solidified in Shikamaru's mind by the Leaf taking the Kazekage's youngest son captive in the hope that Lord Rasa would agree to peace in exchange for the return of his son.

He didn't.

The young man was still housed, heavily guarded, beneath the Kage Tower in Konoha. No one was quite sure what to do with him when he didn't give them the leverage they anticipated, so he was simply held while the implications of his release vs his destruction were considered. As the weeks passed, he had been largely forgotten about, but a decision would have to be made at some some point. As each nation continued to up the stakes, everyone knew that something would have to give eventually. So far, the wave of war hadn't broken. But it was coming. Everyone knew it was coming.

Even on the first day's travel, Shikamaru – beaten, bound and gagged – flattered himself to wonder if his kidnapping might be the final push that it needed.


It was mid afternoon and every possible part of Shikamaru hurt: his feet, his face, his stomach, his pride. The gag in his mouth made his jaw ache and made him drool unpleasantly. His hands were still bound in the device designed to prevent him from making hand signs which also had the side effect of preventing him from rubbing his bruises or swiping his hair out of his face. Occasionally, she would pull on the rope that was secured around his middle when he lagged behind and it would dig in to his waist. He felt underdressed in just a thin black undershirt, with no mesh armour or jacket.

The Suna ANBU wanted him next to her where she could keep an eye on him as they travelled. In between his fatigue and the residual fog in his brain from having been drugged, he tried to keep an eye on her too, studying her in hope of finding weaknesses. Her head was still veiled by the sandy-pale fabric of her gutrah, leaving only her eyes visible as she scanned the woodland around them. She was otherwise dressed darkly as he was, aside from a protective brown leather vest and mesh armour visible around her wrists. Despite her limp, she travelled quickly, her movements smooth and rhythmic, and held herself proudly - not as tall as he was but with the strength of presence that made him feel as though he were looking up at her. As well as her travel pack, she carried a long, black structure across her back. Of course, Shikamaru knew that many of the Suna shinobi were Wind users and that steel war fans were common, but he had never seen one up close. Even folded up like this, her tessen was huge. How she had been able to carry a tessen, her travel pack, and his unconscious form on zero sleep and with a nasty leg wound was beyond him. To her credit, she must have either been very strong or very strong willed. He hoped never to see that fan unfolded.

There was a large tear in the leg of her pants and through it the wound on her thigh had gaped redly at him like a sick grin. She had covered it in bandage now, trying to keep it clean, but it would need closing properly – whenever she decided they were far enough away from Konoha that they could rest a little, he presumed. He hoped that would be soon. Surely, she must be able to hear his gut rumbling.

The clouds had turned from sharp white to heavy grey as they moved south through the forests of the Land of Fire and towards the border of the Land of Rivers, the late summer air humid in the forests. Understandably, she wasn't taking him by any of the main routes away from the Hidden Leaf Village and the forests were thick around the pair. The canopies above them almost completely blocked out the sky and creatures kept moving in the depths of the trees.

Shikamaru liked forests – he liked the creaking of the boughs and crunch of twigs under his feet. He liked the sweet smell of rot when rain was due and he liked following the tracks of the deer and badgers and rabbits that he shared the woodland with. He knew the names of all the trees from their leaf shape and of all the birds from the sound of their calls. But the thief who had taken him was not at home here. To her, meandering under the trees was as alien as being at the bottom of the ocean.

She had stopped humming to herself now. He occasionally heard what he thought were grunts of pain or frustration but later realised they were actually expletives in the Wind Tongue. Shikamaru himself wasn't fluent and his vocabulary was based on what was useful for him in his political roles rather than colloquialisms, but he could infer her meaning from the context. The language was harsh, her voice taut.

The more irritated she seemed, the more he began to suspect that they weren't headed entirely along the route she had intended. His suspicions were confirmed when she stopped walking.

"How do you people navigate," she asked him in the Common Tongue, "when you can't see the sky?"

Above them, the clouds were a sheet of iron, barely visible between the treetops. Even if the question hadn't been rhetorical, he couldn't have answered her. He clenched his jaw against the roll of fabric in his mouth. Perhaps if he'd known a foreigner was planning on kidnapping him, he'd have done the gentlemanly thing and brought a map for her.

He watched her roll her eyes, frustrated, fists clenching around the other end of the rope that was tied around him. This was a good thing – irritated people make mistakes and the longer it took her to get them through the forests, the more chance there was of someone finding them. She had spoken of a rendezvous, presumably with other Sand-nin, and his chances of escape would be much lower if he was to be escorted by a full squad of enemies. She still hadn't told him why he had been taken, so he could only assume that he would be interrogated for his intel before being disposed of when they got to the Sand Village. Shikamaru was in no hurry for that to happen.

The ANBU swept herself up onto a low bough of an old beech and began wrapping her end of the rope around it.

"Tha gràin agam air craobhan," she said out loud to herself. He could translate that one well enough: I hate trees.

He stared upwards, watching her knot the rope as tightly as she could where she crouched above him. Their eyes met for just a second before she was satisfied that he was securely tethered and she left him to make her ascent. She need to get above the canopy; she needed to see the sky.

Shikamaru was left briefly alone on the forest floor. He let out a long breath, his body releasing some of the tension it had been carrying all day in her presence, before bracing against the rope and using his own body weight to pull against it. The bough didn't budge. He looked down at the knot she had used to secure it around him but with his fingers and teeth out of action, there was little he would be able to do to dislodge it. Still, there was enough slack on the rope that he could reach the trunk of the tree with his bound hands if he reached out.

He was in the process of grinding his bindings against the bark of the tree, working away at the cloth, when a noise caught his attention. The forest could be a loud place with the noises of the flora and fauna haunting through the air, but something was out of place. In fact, as he stopped moving to listen, his surroundings were unusually quiet. The birds had stopped singing.

Something moved in the darkness to his right. Ordinarily, this wouldn't have been a concern, when he had his jutsu and his weapons and his skill to avoid any confrontation or kill what insisted on a fight, but right now he was strung up like bait on a hook. His mind echoed the word "bear", but what made itself apparent as it crept through the forest towards him wasn't bear-like at all. It scuttled along the ground, low but huge. It had too many legs.

Shikamaru froze, hoping the centipede wouldn't sense him, but no matter how still he was, his body was still hot, mammalian. It must have been as long as the trees were tall, so long that he couldn't see the end of it, but could hear all of those legs clicking and scraping against the undergrowth, crawling in quick, jerky movements. It's front end was searching, lifting off the ground to taste the air. And then it looked at him. Tiny black eyes, and jaws as big as a man's arms in front of mouthparts that churned wetly in anticipation of a meal.

His heart was in chest. He pooled chakra into his feet and fled the ground to crouch onto the bough the tree that he was tied to, but gaining height was pointless. The centipede followed him up the trunk, almost as broad as the tree itself. Fear and anger wrestled inside Shikamaru: one of the most prominent shinobi of the Hidden Leaf Village and he was helpless. If he wasn't to be allowed to die in his bed as an old man, he was supposed to die dramatically and heroically while fighting for his village. There was no way he was going to be killed and eaten by a fucking invertebrate. But he had no way of escape or defence. He needed help. He needed her.

The arthropod reached the bough and came along it towards him. He put as much distance between them as he could but the rope was restrictive. He stood, readying himself to kick it in the face when it reached him, but it never got the chance. Her blade cracked loudly through the hard exoskeleton of it's head, skewering it to the tree as she landed on top of it. It didn't die straight away, its jaws his clacking together in panic, the length of it's body snapping around like a whip, bucking underneath her. He could do nothing but watch her, eyes wide, muffling a scream into his gag, as she wrapped her arms around the body of it and twisted, hard enough that there was a tearing noise as the body pulled away in her grasp while the head was left pinned to the tree.

She threw the body to the ground and it flopped and twitched like the disembodied tail of a lizard before finally lying still below them.

Her attention turned back to her hostage. Her eyes were wild and she wasn't even breathing heavily, but his legs were shaking.

"Pussy," she called him, looking every bit as deadly as the monster who's head she now rested a foot on. "They're not even venomous."

She watched him try to catch his breath and cocked her head, considering him. She stepped over the dead predator's head and reached to put a hand on his shoulder, but he flinched away from her touch.

"Calm down, Nara," she said, her tone softer now. "I'm obviously not going to let anything happen to you. I need you."

There must be quite a bounty on his head.

Retrieving her blade, she untied the rope from the bough and dropped to the ground, ready to start travelling again.

She gave two little tugs on the rope to make him follow her. "South is this way."


The pair travelled southwards, downhill, until they reached a stream which his captor was eager to follow. Had it been flowing the other way, he could have used it to send a message home, back to the village – but of course it was headed the same way they were: south, towards the coast.

Shikamaru was desperate to rest, to sleep, to get his head straight and make a plan or at least get over the humiliation that was consuming him. But on they went, passing into lighter woodland where the going underfoot would have been easier if he weren't suffering from the worst blisters of his life.

And then it rained. Wonderful.

The broken Leaf shinobi tensed his shoulders against the feeling. The noise of the drops through the leaves was loud all around them and the whole world began to smell of grass and mud. He trudged forwards, staring at he ground, until there was resistance on the rope around his middle. Shikamaru looked up expecting to see his captor ahead of him, tugging on it. But he was wrong. She was behind him, stopped in the middle of the track. Her sandals were dirty and the bandage around her thigh was flecked dark with wetness, vibrant red forming a line along the cloth where blood was beginning to strike through.

He could see her face: her ANBU gutrah was in her hand, leaving her head naked to the air. She had the deep golden complexion typical of folk from the Land of Wind. Her head was craned back, looking up at the sky as it rained down upon her face. He saw for the first time that she was blonde, her thick hair held back in four short sections. Her free hand was reached out, palm upwards, feeling the raindrops. The rain splashed against her cheeks and wet her hair, making her honey-blonde bangs stick to her face. She had been smiling broadly but opened her mouth to catch the raindrops on her tongue.

She must have seen him staring in her peripheral vision, because she turned her face to him suddenly in a movement that made water shower from her hair. Maybe it was the circumstances, but her smile looked different when he could see her whole face as opposed to just those devilish eyes which were all he had known up to now.

"Isn't it wonderful?" she said.

Unable to speak or gesticulate, he did his best to tell her she was crazy with his eyes. But she wasn't watching. She had gone back to making love to the weather. What kind of ANBU behaved like this? Desert children were strange creatures.

When she finally did decide to carry on, she moved faster than before. She hadn't replaced her veil and the captivation on her face made him expect her to start jumping in the puddles that were beginning to form or shake the low branches to make all the collected raindrops fall at once. Her movement through the rain was childlike. He tried to remember a time when he had been this excited about the weather and failed to do so. She began still humming to herself again and he realised that it wasn't quite tuneless – just tunes that he didn't know.

"We'll rest now," she decided when they had put uncountable miles between themselves and his Village. The rain hadn't gentled but they found shelter under the overhang of a rock formation, where roots made the ground underneath them uncomfortable but it was relatively dry. She found where a section of a rout arched out of the ground and tied him too it. She must have overestimated him: thinking there was any possible way he might have enough energy left to run.

He sat down to lean against the rock and his body screamed at him. He tried to think of Konoha, but his gut was grumbling. She sat opposite him and he watched her pop a food pill into her mouth, then open a water skin to drink from. Her eyes caught his when she was done and she looked between him and the supplies in her hands a few times before limping over to him, bowing her head slightly to avoid hitting the rock face above her.

"Are you ready to start behaving yet, Nara?"

When she cocked her head instead of offering him a food pill, he realised it wasn't a rhetorical question. Still unable to say anything, he nodded.

She crouched down in front of him and reached to untie the gag. "Good boy."

The water was the sweetest thing he had tasted in a long time. She offered him a food pill also, which he took greedily despite them being far from satisfying.

"Aren't you going to say thanks?" she teased.

"Fuck off."

He rested his head back against the rock and lay quietly resting, making the most of the opportunity. They had many hours before nightfall and she would want to cover more ground before he was allowed to have any real sleep.

His daze was disturbed by the sound of her grunting. He opened his eyes to see her gritting her teeth, holding her leg. The bandage was removed, her black pants pulled down to expose her thigh, the large wound now glistening with something. She poured more of a clear liquid into it and groaned again with pain. Under different circumstances, he might have felt bad for wounding her, but she had clearly brought this on herself.

She flushed it twice more before putting the little bottle away and pulling a curved needle and medical thread from her pack. It always looked so clean and easy when medical ninja used chakra to heal people. This Sand ANBU was about to do it the old fashioned way. He couldn't watch.

"Suna," he got her attention before she began stitching herself up. "You need to sterilise your needle or the wound will break down."

If he thought her expressions had been mean when all he could see of her were her eyes, they were far worse now her full face was showing. She looked at him incredulously for a moment before gesturing around them. "We're in a forest."

"You can do it with fire," he said. "Hold the metal under a flame before you use it or the sutures will reject."

"I'm not building a fire," she verbally brushed him off. "Keep your mouth shut."

"I've got a lighter you can use." He was fairly sure it was true. It had been in the side pocket of his pants last night; it was probably still there today.

"Why are you helping me?" She didn't trust him. Understandable. She hadn't felt the panic that had taken hold of him when he would have been eaten had she not been there to protect him.

"I'm in the middle of nowhere, tied up with my hands bound. You die, I die."

She contemplated this for a moment. "Where is it?"

"In my right side pocket."

"Is this a dirty joke? Because-"

"No," he cut her off. "But if you don't want it, fine. Lose the leg, I don't care."

Maybe this was how to push her buttons. She yanked her pants up and stormed across to him, a kunai in her hand by the time she was crouched in front of him. She used the point of it to raise his chin.

"Don't," she commanded, "move."

Her free hand found the pocket and reached inside, close to his skin. Her stare bore into the side of his face as he avoided looking at her in the eye as though she might turn him to stone if he did. Her hand gripped around something and she let his chin drop again as she backed away from him with her prize. She flipped the top open and tested the flame. That lighter was precious to him; seeing someone else's hand use it – and not just any someone but a Sand-nin - made him regret offering it it to her.

It seemed to take a long time for her to stitch up the wound. He wondered if a flame-heated needle would be more or less painful than a cold one before realising he never wished to find out. He avoided looking until it was all done – the wound cleaned and closed, her leg rebandaged and her pants back on. She tested a few steps on the leg, wincing, before tossing his lighter back to him. His hands were still bound. It hit him in the face.

"Aren't you going to say thanks?" he mocked her.

"Fuck off."


When it was time to walk again, the Sand-nin didn't bother replacing Shikamaru's gag. His jaw was thankful for it. As afternoon turned to evening, he passed the time thinking about home. Konoha was so beautiful: the summer skies, the dappled sunshine through the leaves, his favourite cloud watching spots. Green with life. The streets full of laughter and the smell of ramen and dango, their local games and festivals. What was the Sand? Dust and blood. The citizens hardhearted, the shinobi brutal. The women abrasive, the children soldiers. A dry village of dry people. No respect for those they killed.

There was a game that the children of Konoha played, that Shikamaru himself had played when he was a kid, in sandpits in the playgrounds and on the sandy beaches along the riverside. They called it King of the Wind – they would build a sand castle and village walls and one kid would be the King and have to protect their sand castle while the others tried to destroy it. The King never won. The sand castle was always destroyed by the end of the game. It had been a little too basic for Shikamaru's liking; he liked riddles and puzzles and strategy and King of the Wind always got quite physical. It was before he was able to hold his shadows for long or lift them off the ground, but he had been able to incapacitate the King so that others could come in and destroy the castle. He always played a supporting role: useful to have around but never the hero. But that was when they had been kids. No one ever died playing King of the Wind.

He thought of what his family would go through, knowing he was to be tortured and killed. He thought of what Tsunade and the elders would think, hoping he could hold out against interrogation. There were seals placed in his psyche to protect the knowledge he held, but they weren't impenetrable. His mind ran through the training he had received in case he was ever unlucky enough to be tortured and he considered how he might kill himself cleanly before compromising his Village. This train of thought was… unpleasant.

As a Leaf shinobi, he was used to travelling with a squad who would pass the time by telling stories the whole way, but the Sand shinobi apparently didn't hold such a tradition. The silence between them was uncomfortable. He didn't want to give her a reason to take his tongue again but as they crept closet to the desert, his thoughts began to spiral. It would be a risk to voice his concerns, though by now he was beginning to suspect that his kidnapper wasn't completely heartless.

"You never answered my question earlier," Shikamaru ventured as they walked.

"Oh?"

"What are you going to do with me?"

She took a long breath that made him want to take back the question. In the Leaf village, they rarely needed to torture anyone for information seeing as they had the Yamanaka jutsu for extracting intel, but other Villages wouldn't be able to do that. Shikamaru didn't think he'd like to be tortured. Ibiki creeped him out enough, and they were on the same side.

"I want to sell you."

That was a surprise. He wondered what bounty this ninja might get for handing him over to the Kazekage. "To Rasa?"

She snorted a laugh. "No, idiot. Back to the Leaf. Why do you think I've been trying to keep you in one piece?"

His black eye and bruised body would beg to differ that she had been trying very hard. Still, the prospect of going home rippled exhiliration through him.

"For money?"

"For Gaara."

It took him a second to place to name – Gaara was the hostage that was currently being kept below the Kage tower: the Kazekage's son. Shikamaru's head spun. He had tried to have as little to do with the whole thing as possible, and had been furious about it at the time. He remembered Naruto telling him the story of what had happened: the Leaf-nin had been heading back east after a mission and had happened upon him by chance. There was trouble in one of the border Villages, some Valley shinobi raiding the citizens there and Gaara had presumably been sent to defend it. All the Valley-nin were dead by the time Naruto arrived but the locals weren't happy and Gaara was getting a little…. out of hand. Naruto had tried to talk him down but there had been conflict. If they hadn't had a genjutsu user with them things might have been bloodier, but once the Sand-nin was immobilised, Naruto had convinced his squad to bring him back to the Leaf alive.

Tsunade had assumed that the Kazekage would be desperate to get his son back and would have offered them some kind of peace agreement in exchange for his release, but Rasa had refused: Lord Fourth Kazekage wasn't interested in having Gaara released back to the Sand village.

But this kunoichi was. This kunoichi wanted it enough to risk her life and lose comrades for him. She wasn't in a position to offer any kind of peace agreement, so she was going with a different plan – trading a hostage for a hostage. She must have chosen Shikamaru hoping that his worth to Tsunade was as much as Gaara's worth to her.

"The young Prince must be very well thought of in the Sand Village to have you go to so much trouble," he pried.

She shrugged. "Not really."

"But you're obviously very dedicated. Is he a boyfriend?"

"He's my brother."

Oh.

Oh.

Shikamaru swore. This was why she was so strong. This was why she was so driven. This was how she had been clever enough to break into the Village and past the Nara compound's security. "That would make you..."

"The Kazekage's daughter, yeah."

He risked a sideways glance to her as they walked, trying to make the pieces fit together in his mind. With her wounds and weaponry and sailor's tongue, this one didn't look like a princess. But in fairness, Shikamaru didn't know very many princesses.

They continued to walk mostly in silence. The days were long in the summer and as they travelled further south and the clouds lightened, Shikamaru fancied he could already feel it getting warmer. Moisture steamed off them clothes dried with only body heat. Maybe they would be able to smell the ocean soon, but that would be tomorrow's revelation. Today's travels must surely be nearly done: she might be nobility, but she wasn't inhuman. They would both appreciate a good night's sleep. She was walking easier how her leg wound was attended to and his general being was calmer having had some of his questions answered. Unfortunately for Shikamaru, more knowledge always seemed to lead to more questions.

So the Sand ninja didn't intend to torture him. That was a good thing, he decided. But he still suspected his time with the Sand nin wouldn't exactly be comfortable: he had heard the stories. Would his pride allow him to be used in this way so that the Leaf have to give up their hostage? Would Tsunade even agree to the trade? There was no point in worrying over the details when he had such little influence over any outcomes but Shikamaru's mind was not one that could easily be stilled. It took about three days to travel between Leaf and Sand on foot by the most direct path – but the pair were taking a southern route, less travelled. He would have plenty of time to dwell on his concerns.


By the time they stopped to camp for the night, it was nearly dark. She wouldn't build a fire so as not to draw attention and he shivered, though more from exhaustion than from chill, while she used a pair of tarps from her pack to hang sleeping cots between the boughs above ground. Soon enough, the hammocks were hung and shrouded, so as to be almost invisible from the ground. They weren't exactly comfortable, but the captive was too tired to care at this point. It had been a very long day.

"Who's A.S.?" Her spot was adjacent to his, about three feet away and slightly above his own. The rope around his waist was also fastened around her wrist, in case he tried to move in the night.

He had been drifting off and her voice dampened his thoughts. "Hm?"

"The initials A.S. were engraved on your lighter. Is it stolen?"

He really didn't want to talk about this with her. "It belonged to my sensei... before he was killed. Asuma Sarutobi."

"I see." She spoke softly. "Was it Sand forces?"

He had been so young when it happened. The stories they told of Asuma now were flattering, but Shikamaru knew the truth – he had been there when it happened, kneeling in a pool of Asuma's blood as he died in front of him. The truth was that his sensei had been scared. Shikamaru had been so young, he hadn't been strong enough to save him. He and Ino and Chouji had seen off the enemy shinobi but Asuma was gone and he had never got retribution. "It was."

He steeled himself waiting for her pity, but it never came. She simply harrumphed through her nose.

"I thought it might have been from a lover or something."

"Konoha shinobi don't take lovers. We vow not to - it's one of the prohibitions." And with good reason: it was a vow that Asuma had broken which had lead to no end of heartache for the ones he left behind.

"So you call it the Land of Fire and yet you have no fire in your bellies." The moment of gentleness was over and her cruelty had returned. "Suna shinobi take what we want. It's better to be satisfied than to have the distraction of temptation."

"Do you find yourself distracted often, Suna?" he jibed.

"Watch your mouth, Nara. Remember who is who's prisoner tonight." He heard her turn over in her bed, the sheets the shuffling against each other. The night was quite still. "How do you produce heirs with such prohibitions?"

It didn't feel like she was interrogating him; it felt like she was simply curious. Still, he was careful with how much he told her. "Some of us marry after we retire as Shinobi. Sometimes clans are passed down by indirect lines. And not all of us take the vows very seriously."

"Do you?" It was a strange and uncomfortable feeling to be spoken to by a ninja from another nation like this.

"Yes. I'm a tool for my Village. Anything else is just a complication."

She sighed. "A village of prudence. And here I was thinking that the Sand was traditional with such things."

"I suppose your brother would be Rasa's heir?" He reasoned there was nothing wrong with having an actual conversation with his captor. It might yield some valuable intel.

"No, both of my brothers are younger."

"But you're a -"

"I'm a what?"

He could hear her voice raise a little as she challenged him. "Nevermind. He expects you to take over after him?"

"He expects nothing. I think we both accepted many years ago that I'll die long before he does." If she was willing to take on ANBU missions like this while the Kazekage stayed safely in the Sand, they were probably correct. "And when he is finally killed, it'll be by one of the groups who believe they have their own claim to his title and kill him to take it for themselves."

Shikamaru was glad that the Leaf wasn't so brutal. They had their disruptive groups and rogue ninja, just like any nation, but the Sand was known to be particularly vicious. He thought of the Leaf now, the village that he had called home for all his life, and wondered if he would ever see it again.

"Our Hokage are elected on merit, not by killing the previous one. It's about skill and strategy and strength of character. Our leaders are respected for their integrity, not only their bloodlines."

"The Leaf sounds boring."

She was deflecting because she knew he was right.

"It's not." He thought of his clan's home, and of his forest. He thought of the Kage Tower and of Hokage Rock and the Academy and the training grounds. He thought of Yakiniku Q and of Irchikaru Ramen, of his comrades and friends and the kids of the Village. He was filled with the memories of his missions and adventures, with loved ones who had been lost either to death or the natural drifting apart that came with years passing. Just twenty-four hours ago, he had indeed been bored by the Leaf, but now missed it terribly.

"I'll show you one day," he told her, though of course it was a fantasy.

"I don't want to see it."

"Why not?"

Her tone was cooler than the night air. "It's easier that way. My father would blow the whole Land of Fire away if it meant he could reign over the dust that settled in its place."

"You mean it's easier to see us as nothing but an enemy state?" He wondered how much of his opinion of the Land of Wind was routed in the same assumption.

"That's just the way things are under his rule."

He tried to be diplomatic considering his company. "The Kazekage is… a firm leader. He has strong…"

"The word you're looking for is cunt. My father is a cunt."

His mouth curled into a smile at her honesty. Still, a part of him pitied her. If Shikaku was alive, he'd have moved the heavens themselves to bring his son home is he had been in Rasa's position. Shikamaru couldn't imagine what kind of person could sit back knowing their child was taken captive – or how Rasa's daughter must feel knowing how little he cared about her and her brothers.

There was silence between them again. It was late, but sleep seemed a world away.

"Your brother is safe, Suna."

"What?" Her voice husked. He hoped he hadn't woken her.

"Gaara. He's okay. He's not seeing much sun, but he's comfortable and fed well. Konoha guards aren't violent when they don't need to be."

"Why are you telling me this?"

Why was he telling her this? "I don't want you thinking he's been left beaten and bloody on a cold dungeon floor this whole time. He's safe."

He waited for her to respond, to tell him that Suna's captives were offered the same degree of safety and respect, to tell him that he would be okay. She didn't.

"Thank you, Nara."


Author's note:

Sorry this chapter is so info-dumpy! I'm still obsessed with this story, so thanks to everyone who's still reading/interacting so far - I appreciate you all SO much

CR x