Morning came softly. There was no alarm clock dictating his rhythms, no walls to hide inside, no job to drag himself to. Despite the circumstances, there was no sense of dread in the pit of Shikamaru's stomach. A smooth breeze flowed through the trees, the air humid with a rising mist. The hostage opened his eyes to stare up through the canopy where the treetops swayed gently, reaching towards a lightening sky textured with lazy clouds, each one with lilac body and bright white and orange edges. The leaves around him shimmered and hummed as they moved against each other; the noise of pebbles under waves. Birds were already chattering as the world began to wake up. Each breath came easily: Shikamaru liked the forest, and he liked being alive.
He looked across to the guard who had stolen him and could see just the outline of her resting in her cot in the soft light of sunrise. She was still asleep, the other end of the rope around his waist still tied around her wrist. Any other captive may have used the opportunity to attempt to escape but such drama would have ruined his peace. It wasn't that he trusted her, far from it, but she wasn't as scary to him now as she had been at first. If all went well, he would follow her to the Hidden Sand Village, spend a few uncomfortable days in custody there, then be returned to the Leaf. So there was no point in worrying. If all didn't go well, and he never found his freedom, then that was all the more reason to enjoy the breeze while he could.
"We should cover the breadth of the Land of Rivers today and meet the rendezvous tomorrow if we make good time," she told him when they started moving again after a breakfast of dry, bitter food pills. They had camped in the south of the Land of Fire, not far from the border, and set off west now, parallel to the coast. The land here was less densely wooded and the Suna kunoichi seemed to relax now that they were further from the Leaf Village and closer to her home. She still lead him along under the cover of trees where possible, rather than through farmland, and avoided any real pathway where they might come across civilians or – more dangerously – shinobi.
His feet had complained at first, but his body loosened up to the idea of another day's travel surprisingly quickly. By the time the pair had unceremoniously crossed the border into the Land of Rivers, he felt strong. His hands were still bound, but today she let him follow her without the rope tether.
The only exception to this had been upon finding the first of the broad rivers of the day. It happened shortly after they had crossed the border out of the Land of Fire and she had looked at it with the same childlike expression she had when looking at the rain, eyes sparkling with a spring in her step, and had immediately tied him to a tree.
"Wait there," she told him – as if he had any choice in the matter – and began unfastening her vest as soon as she turned from him. If she had scanned the area for possible enemies before entering the water, she had done so quickly enough that he had missed it. Before he had realised what was happening, her clothes were in a pile on the grassy shore and she was nude, waist deep in the water, bracing against the lazy current. She had tied him so that they were still in each other's line of sight but was paying him no attention now. He sat patiently and stared at the ground so as not to violate the naked Princess's privacy, but could still see her form bathing in the water in his peripheral vision. Over the noise of the water, he could just about hear that she was singing to herself. At one point, she waded back in his direction to collect something from her pack, before returning to the depths and washing her hair with it.
He considered this wasn't exactly a way to "make good time" on their journey, but the interlude must have been worth it to her: he was beginning to understand these desert creatures and their water fetishes.
They got moving again when she was done, after taking the opportunity to refill their water skins and replace a dry bandage over her leg wound. The injury looked worse today. Shikamaru hoped there would be medical nin at the rendezvous.
Her good mood didn't fade as they walked. The pair seemed to cover more ground today, though whether that was due to the more open country or because they had rested, he didn't know. His entire self was stale and dirty, but she smelled freshly of something earthy and botanical, and kept wanting to run. Heading south-west, they followed what could have been described as an actual road: an old dusty track along the ground worn by years of boots and hooves and wheels.
As the sun gained height, the air became brackish and Shikamaru could hear gulls. The sensations stirred vivid memories in him: memories of taking missions near the coast when he was young and still working actively as a shinobi as part of Ino-Shika-Cho under Asuma's captainship. He might even have walked this very track with them, a lifetime ago. It wound through some agricultural land and would meet the coastal path running directly along the cliff-edge that rose and fell along this Nation's southern coast.
Close to midday, the wind became stronger as they flanked a hill and she stopped walking for a moment to sniff the tangy air.
"This is why I wanted to take the southern route," she told him, before breaking into a run again. She must have meant the ocean. He resigned to chase after her on the steady ascent to meet the cliff edge but found her not scaling the hill to the top, but climbing over a wooden fence that had seen better days and approaching one of a few dozen large trees which grew on the warm, green shoulder of the hill.
By the time he got close enough to see that they had fruit hanging from them, her tessen was out. He instinctively slowed, keeping his distance from her, but she wasn't bearing her weapon at him or anyone else but at one of the trees. The steel war-fan was open just a little, enough to reveal a single violet moon on its off-white face. She said something in the Wind Tongue and swung her weapon, and the wind it produced cut through the air to ravish the tree in front of her. He was glad that she hadn't used her tessen that night in the Nara compound – even if her intention had been to keep him unharmed, he didn't think that could have happened if she had used her Wind Style against him. It was precise and powerful – and he was only seeing it open to the first moon.
Thankfully, this time, her only victim was the tree. Fruits, plump and round, the skin just ripening from green to a rosy colour, showered from it, bouncing off the dry ground before settling amongst the grass. She raced to one.
"Mangoes," she told him as he approached. She was on her knees, slicing into it with a kunai to reveal the juicy, bright orange flesh inside. "Aren't you so sick of food pills?"
He joined her on the ground. "Yeah, turns out being taken hostage is kind of a drag. Who would have guessed?"
She slapped him across the face with a slice for his remark and the juice dripped down his cheek, warm and sticky as blood. It smelled delicious. His hands still bound, he let her feed him a few slices and his stomach groaned at the feeling of real food. This was one of the best things about resorting to food pills on missions: the first piece of real food to pass a ninja's lips after a few days on nothing but food pills was always heavenly.
"These are obviously being cultivated, you know, Suna," he told her, his mouth still full of the sweet taste of the fruit. "This is stealing."
"Shut up, Nara," she tutted. "Of all the atrocities I've committed in my time, I'm hardly about to get caught for stealing mangoes…"
He had been less concerned about them getting caught (there was clearly no one around) and more concerned with ruining some poor Land of Rivers citizens' crop, but there was no point in arguing with her. If this were a normal journey, he'd have left some money as compensation, but as it was, there was little he could do. And it was hard to feel guilty about anything here, under the southern sun by the coast, with juice on his lips and a belly full of fruit. He lay back on the grass, watching the sky.
She was looking at him, expectantly. She had asked him something while his mind was elsewhere. Shit.
"Mh?"
"I said, you're not supposed to enjoy being kidnapped this much." Her lips were wet.
"Just making the best of a bad situation."
"So this is your preferred pastime? Having a lie down, doing as little as possible?"
"Pretty much. I like the clouds."
She was sat up next to him and he glanced to her as she looked upwards, considering the sky. "We don't get many clouds in the Sand."
He supposed they wouldn't. No rain; no rivers; no clouds. He had heard that when it did rain in the Land of Wind, the ground was flooded with a year's worth of the stuff in the space of an hour. He imagined that didn't make for a very relaxing view. "I don't suppose I'll be doing much sky-watching while I'm there anyway."
She grumbled in agreement.
When it was time to go, she brought an extra fruit to eat as they ascended the rest of the hill. Her words came sloppily in between her chewing.
"What else do you do when you're not watching clouds?"
He imagined she wasn't referring to his job. "I used to play a lot of shogi. But it's been a while."
"I'm pretty sure there's a shogi board somewhere in the embassy," she told him, "a crystal one." Shikamaru had only ever played with wooden sets, but he figured that the Sand Village didn't have nearly as much access to wood as the Leaf did. "You can teach me to play." He doubted that. "Unless you're not any good at it."
He shrugged. He had been brilliant, but that was a long time ago. Asuma had compared him to a knight once – not the strongest piece on the board but uniquely able to maneuver around the enemy to turn any situation to his own team's advantage. Shikamaru didn't feel very much like a knight these days. "I was once. I used to play a lot with my Father but… he's not around any more."
She must have known that; he wouldn't be head of his clan at such a young age if something hadn't gone very wrong within the family.
"Oh. Did it happen in battle?" He knew what her implication was. She was asking if her own people had killed another of his loved ones. He nodded.
"That's a shame."
The pity was always the worst part. After his father was killed, Shikamaru had become reclusive not out of grief but in order to avoid the incessant sympathetic furrowed brows and "I'm so sorry"s from everyone who forced their commiserations upon him. It meant little to him coming from the Villagers but he had fantasised about instead having Sand shinobi begging apology under his shadows as he took revenge. Now, here was one expressing regret as she walked by his side. The sincerity of her tone was a surprise, but not as much as the lack of anger within him. He had hated everything about the Sand his whole life, and it had only intensified as the years rolled by. But he didn't hate her. They were both just victims of their situation.
"These things happen. We're in a time of unrest, after all."
She sighed. "We shouldn't be."
The point at which their path met the track along the coast came upon them suddenly. The Land of Rivers stretched out below them to one side, a high cliff with the waves of the ocean crashing far below on the other. There was something about the vastness of the sea that made Shikamaru feel insignificant; calm. The path itself was well worn and only a few feet from the edge, either designed to feel this exposed or perhaps having become so as the cliff face had eroded over the ages. As soon as the pair looked over the edge, the height provoked an uneasy silence between them. The wind up here was strong, whipping his hair around his face at it's changing whims and chilling his skin through his thin clothing despite the southern sun. His captor made him walk in front of her where she could watch him and they travelled like this, in silence, for most of the afternoon. As beautiful as it was, Shikamaru was glad when the coastal land began to descend, stretching down to sea-level where the mouth of another river met the ocean. The air between the pair relaxed again when the threat of a push or a jump was dissipated.
The path broadened and trailed slightly inland through some low wooded dunes, an odd combination of soil and sand and pine needles under their feet. She was teaching him some of the different words for sand in her mothertongue as they walked, and he taught her about different kinds of trees, though her knowledge was already impressive. The horizon on the water was just visible in places between the trunks and dunes. This wasn't anything at all like the Nara forests – he didn't even recognise most of the bird calls - but Shikamaru could still see evidence of squirrels. Despite their situation, this felt like being on neutral territory, equally strange and familiar to both of them, as if they were just any other pair of travellers. But the feeling of normalcy was short-lived.
His escort stopped. The expression on her face made him stop too and he noted her hand migrate smoothly to the strap of her tessen.
"Do you feel that?" she asked him.
He was silent, waiting… perhaps there was something in the air. A disturbance of chakra in the distance, hardly noticeable. Had she been this alert the whole time, despite her chatting and humming? In a slow, silent, liquid movement, she pulled her gutrah from her pack and pulled it over her head, veiling her face.
Shikamaru should have been nervous, seeing her immediately battle-ready for an unknown enemy, but he wasn't. The buzz inside him wasn't anxiety: it was hope. All he could think of was who might have found them; all he could think of was Kiba's nose and Shino's insects and Hinata's byakugan. He wanted them to find him. He wanted to go home.
They clashed eye contact for a fraction of a second, but it was enough for her to suck exactly what he was thinking out of his expression. Her hand was over his mouth in the space of a blink, the Sand-nin using the force of the slap to pull his head against her shoulder as she swept behind him, pulling his body backwards and down against her own.
"Don't you dare make a fucking sound, Nara," she hissed into his ear, letting a little of a Land of Wind accent snarl through the words to get her point across. Okay, so maybe he was still a little scared of her. Her company had been amicable enough that the lines between captor and captive had blurred, but now here they were in monochrome rigidity again. When his Leaf comrades arrived, she'd be nothing to them but a Suna ANBU. They'd kill her. But now was the not the time to analyse why the thought of that made him feel sick.
He listened to her breath by his ear, the fabric of her veil between her skin and his. She was pressing her hand against his mouth so hard that it hurt. Usually, at this point of anticipation of a battle, he'd be able to rein in the adrenaline sparking through his veins and use it to strategise, but this time there was little he could do until he could get out of his finger bindings. As a result, the fear and excitement within him churned unpleasantly with no outlet. All he could do right now was wait, powerless.
She swept him up into the boughs of a ragged, ancient pine, still immobilising him against her, still silencing him. She backed against the trunk, looking through the trees towards where the chakra disturbance was coming from though nothing was yet visible. They waited.
"There's six of them," she whispered to him as the company grew closer. He could hear them now, distant chatter and the soft crunching of pine needles under their feet. They weren't attempting to be silent or subdue their chakra: they mustn't have known the pair were hiding so close. He tasted the air for their individual chakras, eager to find one he recognised but the chakra signatures resonating from these shinobi weren't any that Shikamaru was familiar with; these weren't his comrades. He shut his eyes for a moment until he could accept the truth. No one was coming for him. He wasn't being rescued.
His priorities changed instantly. Any worry he had over his Leaf comrades hurting his captor evaporated as he realised he should be more concerned with how much damage she herself could cause. He had seen her get through the entire Nara compound, and that was without the use of her tessen. Whoever was approaching had no idea what was about to hit them.
He hummed into her hand. "Mh nhn mh." She loosened her pressure, giving his lips a few millimetres to move. "They're not Leaf."
"Are you sure?"
He nodded. Maybe if she realised they weren't going to take him from her, she'd let them live. "I don't recognise the chakra."
"Hidden Valley shinobi?"
"Could be rogue."
She shook her head. "Rogue are quieter."
Shikamaru hoped the two of them could simply sit tight and wait until these shinobi had passed. Maybe they didn't even know they were there and there needn't be any conflict at all. Most average shinobi weren't as sensitive at chakra detection as he and this Sand-nin were, but there were limits to how far chakra could be suppressed. If they were paying attention as they got closer, the group would feel them.
The woodland was quiet now - the approaching shinobi must have sensed them. Fuck. Shikamaru hoped she might just scare them away, but knew it was a naive thought. They couldn't be recognised, she wouldn't risk it. She would want to be thorough. It would be six against one, but this was no ordinary one.
"Free me," he implored her, indicating his bound hands.
"Don't be ridiculous."
"I can help."
"I won't risk losing you." The thought of taking on six shinobi by herself wasn't frightening, but evidently the thought of losing her hostage (and therefore the chance of bringing her little brother home) was.
"Would it mean anything to you if I gave you my word?"
At his side, her vibrant eyes, phthalo green, the only part of her face visible behind her gutrah, softened. "Nara, no one ever made me a promise that didn't turn into a lie eventually. I'll handle this."
His captor left her pack with him on the bough, taking with her only her steel war fan and kunai pack as she leapt, silent and predatory, towards the other shinobi. Shikamaru held his breath. Screams marked the moment when the hunter had reached her quarry.
Even impaired like this, he couldn't do nothing. The sun was strong and his shadow clean – he breathed deeply, feeling the sharp tingle of chakra flowing through his body, focusing power that had lay dormant within him. He pooled chakra into his feet, where his shadow was cast on the bough of the tree and willed it to work, urging his shadow to be manipulated, saying the words, believing it could be true. But it was no use: without hand signs, he couldn't use his jutsu.
A predictable disappointment, but he'd just have to go without his hands. He leapt between the trees in the direction of the noise and quickly came upon the scene, keeping enough distance that he wouldn't be noticed while he got a sense of what was happening. Two were dead already: one on the ground by her feet and another hanging limp over a high branch above its remaining teammates. Four remained: two were on the ground - one with a large blade drawn and a big guy in leather armour; and two in a nearby tree – a girl who must have been barely into her teens and a red-haired woman whom Shikamaru could see from his vantage point was concealing explosive tags from his Sand kunoichi. He could just about catch the symbol that was engraved into the steel band that the big guy wore around one of his biceps: they were Hidden Valley shinobi. Innocent, unlucky Hidden Valley shinobi.
A pair of kunai were lodged in one of trees behind his companion and Shikamaru was in the process of formulating a way to get to one and use it to cut his own bindings when a water-style attack was launched through the wood. It had come from the youngest ninja in the group and his escort dodged the attack but her movement wasn't effortless: she was slower than she had been when she fought him not two days previously. She was struggling on her bad leg; there wouldn't be time for him to get to a kunai.
"Hey!" the Leaf-nin called through the woods and all four enemy faces turned towards him. He saw his captor roll her eyes at his gamble under her gutrah but she used the break in their attention to draw a summon scroll and sweep a bloody thumb across it. An animal sprang into existence and immediately made for the enemy – a white weasel carrying its own blade. This was the summon that had scouted through his home the night he had been taken, the one that had poisoned him. He never imagined he'd be happy to see it again.
With the Valley shinobi distracted by a new foe, the Sand kunoichi leapt to Shikamaru's side.
"What the fuck do you think you're doing," she growled at him, feral.
"Unbind me, Suna."
"No!"
"I can't help you," he tried to spell it out for her, his tone forceful as if she were a petulant child, "if you don't let me. You die, I die, remember?"
She stood her ground. "I won't lose you."
"No," he agreed firmly, "you won't."
After a second of consideration, she took a blade from her kunai pack and put it to the cloth bindings around his hands, showing her distaste for the situation by spitting strings of expletives all the while. With enough of the cloth cut through, she pulled away the metal device that had been holding his fingers in place and he was free. His fingers were stiff, aching as he tested their movement after being bound for so long. He could make hand signs again. No weapons or armour, but he didn't them. All he needed were his shadows, and her. The pair swept down to ground level to fight together.
The battlefield they returned to was a mess of broken branches and damaged earth where the weasel had been running amuck distracting the enemy shinobi. His kunoichi had her tessen out again now, two moons showing. The part of him that was scared of her was interested to see it used in battle.
The big guy in armour immediately set his sights on Shikamaru. Chakra seethed inside him as he formed his handsigns and could finally manipulate his shadows again – the feeling familiar and reassuring as his father's voice. His shadow shot out long across the ground, searching. The armoured man watched it, clearly unfamiliar with the Nara clan's jutsu, as it headed not for him, but for his teammate. Shikamaru didn't have his trench knives, he had nothing that could have cut through this man's armour: but the man's own teammate did. His shadow caught the Valley shinobi with the long blade who fell instantly under Shikamaru's possession, giving him control of this man's body. He had faced enemies who were strong enough to pull against his Shadow Possession Jutsu, or – when he was just a kid - break out of it completely, but this man was a doll under his control. It was almost sad. He tested the sword, forcing the Valley shinobi to swing it a couple of times, getting used to the weight. By the time the big guy realised what was happening, Shikamaru had forced his comrade's hand to slice down through him like butter, collar to gut, asymmetrically bifurcated. The man fell.
Something coming fast towards him in his peripheral vision made him lose grip on his shadow possession, but when the swordsman was freed from the jutsu, all he did was drop his weapon and scream at his own hands. Shikamaru rolled out of the way just in time to avoid being hit with a water-style attack, but it's caster kept running for him. It was the young girl – she had a long ponytail of blonde hair, reminiscent of how Ino used to wear hers when she was young. Keeping his head in the game, Shikamaru shot out a shadow towards one of the kunai he had spotted before that had been lodged in the tree trunk. A shadow slipped through the ring of one and pulled it back across the battlefield into Shikamaru's hand, but before he could aim to defend himself with it, the weasel was around the girl's throat. The scythe it carried met with her carotid and its fur was red before she hit the ground.
His original target taken care of, Shikamaru put the kunai to use by aiming at his possession victim who had now picked up his sword which was shaking in his grasp. The clang of metal on metal rang through the woodland as the man managed to deflect the incoming blade, but he leapt away from his attacker and retreated behind the trees instead of coming in for another attack.
Shikamaru turned his attention to his comrade. She swung her tessen and he felt the ground shake as her Wind-style cut through the air towards the red-haired women. No… not the red-haired woman… a clone of the red-haired woman. A clone with explosive tags under it's shirt.
The whole world rocked with noise and dustclouds as the attack ignited the tags, but Shikamaru's shadow was already at his Princess's feet, taking hold of her. He leapt backwards - and her body was forced to follow - away from the explosion, away from where the real red-haired woman was dropping down from above onto the spot where his comrade had just been. As soon as she was at a safe distance, he released her from his Possession and joined her where she crouched.
"You okay?"
"I told you I could handle this."
A laugh escaped him. "Yeah, you had it totally under control."
Just as the red-haired woman reached to her kunai pouch for another weapon, Shikamaru sent a shadow in her direction. She leapt away from it at first, getting wise to his technique, but it followed her off the ground. It was quicker than she was, and this one wasn't his Shadow Possession – five little tendrils, like fingers, found her neck and wrapped around it. Shikamaru squeezed his Shadow Strangle Jutsu. The woman clawed at it but could gain no purchase on the darkness that bound her. He tightened his grip as his companion stood from where she had been crouched next to him and walked serenely over to their victim. She stood in front of her for a few moments while the power drained from her being and she became weak under Shikamaru's strangulation. Before she could suffocate, the Princess gutted her.
"That was unnecessary," he scolded her.
"She tried to explode me, Nara."
So, she had taken two down before he had arrived, and they had since gotten rid of the big armoured guy, the young water-style user, and the red-haired woman. There was still the swordsman. He was in the trees somewhere, still hiding, but Shikamaru could sense his chakra in the air like a shark can sense blood in the water. He was still close-by.
The Sand-nin gave an exasperated sigh and drew her tessen again. "We don't have time for this."
Two moons showing, she swung it. This time, her attack wasn't cutting towards a single target, but swept a whirlwind through the woodland, striking down tree after tree after tree. The noise of the destruction was deafening. By the time the ground stopped shaking, she had cleared an acre of woodland.
Shikamaru pressed his lips tightly together in frustration. He was about to call her out for being melodramatic, but she indicated to a spot in the new clearing where a hand raised up from the midst of the destruction.
"I found him."
The weasel reached him first, light and agile enough to speed over the felled branches. It wouldn't make a kill without being instructed, however, and leapt around playfully while the shinobi picked their way on foot through the splintered mess.
Finally, they reached the guy who had, at one point, been armed with a sword. His pelvis was crushed. He was groaning loudly, and reached a hand out towards them as they stood over him. He wore a wedding ring.
"Mercy," the man pleaded in the Common Tongue.
Shikamaru couldn't bring himself to move, but he didn't have to. This was his companion's quarry. He looked away as she used the sharp edge of her steel fan to gift him death.
It wasn't until they were alone together in the silence that the immensity of what had just happened sank in: not just the taking of life and environmental vandalism but his physical reaction to fighting again. There was a feeling pulsing through him that he hadn't felt in too long. Not exactly enjoyment - he had never found combat fun, especially when death resulted from it on either side - but there was something that his body craved in using his skills this way, something adjacent to pride, to hunger. He should be coming down from an adrenalin high but fire still flowed through his veins, the afterglow of combat making him feel strong and alive. This feeling was something a ninja could become addicted to. Had he not cursed being stuck in the rut of office work? His conscience wrestled but Shikamaru was a shinobi: his body had missed this.
The Sand-nin whistled her summon back to her side and scratched it under the chin before sealing the white weasel back into its scroll. She took off her gutrah and joined him in surveying the situation. The conflict had put them behind schedule but they couldn't just leave a mess like this, could they?
"That was unfortunate," he offered. She had been right – it was easier to consider shinobi from other nations as nothing more than enemies. It was no wonder the Leaf and Sand were so hated by the other nations; these Hidden Valley shinobi had nothing to do with their conflict but still lay dead because of him.
"They were shinobi," she shrugged. "It's what they signed up for."
In a sense, she was correct but the notion didn't settle his head. If only they'd just kept moving, if they just hadn't sensed them… He threw his hands through his hair, pushing it away from his face.
"It was interesting to see you in action though," she told him. "You're quite good."
Quite good… he was one of the most prominent shinobi of his Nation. She was warrior nobility in her prime and he'd just saved her ass. He was fucking good. "I'm better when I don't have so much hair in my face."
"You usually have it up?"
"Yeah."
"Here." She untied her own hair and shook it free so it bounced around her shoulders for a moment before rearranging it into just two ponytails. Two ties left over, she put one in her pocket and went to him with the last remaining one. Facing him, she put her hands through his long hair and gathered it behind his head. He dared not tell her his hands were free now and he could have done it himself, in case she bound them again.
"Like this?" Murderous fingers moved delicately through his hair.
"Yeah."
He didn't know where to put his hands, so they stayed in his pockets. He could feel the musk of her chakra radiating from her, hot with use, as power throbbed through the air between them. It was an effort to keep his breath steady, his lungs filling with the essence of her prowess, the primal feeling of having just killed making him salivate. She was done, but didn't back off from him straight away. He watched her bathing in the feeling of power that oozed from him, learning what his chakra tasted like. Her hands were still on the back of his neck and she looked up at him, eyes flicking around his face before meeting his gaze. When she spoke, she did so softly.
"What was that thing you did to me?"
He narrowed his eyes, unsure what she meant, so she elaborated. "When you… took control over me. When you kept me safe."
Oh, that. It wasn't wise to give the enemy information about a secret Jutsu, and he reminded himself that was still what she was: an enemy ninja. She had already seen too much. "That's just... what I do. That's how it works."
She didn't press any further but nodded slowly, appraising him.
"I'd like to fight you, Nara."
The words shocked a small smile from his face. "You already fought me. I'm your hostage, remember?"
She stepped away from him then and returned her expression to its usual arrogance.
"That doesn't count – at night in a confined space, we were both crippled. No, I want your shadows against my tessen. You'd be the darkness and I'd be the gales. We'd make a pretty good storm, don't you think?"
As if another storm was what the shinobi world needed.
They hadn't buried the bodies. She had suggested it in order to cover their tracks more thoroughly but Shikamaru's arguments against it were twofold: firstly, the brand new clearing she had made in the woodland would be enough of a giveaway regardless of how well they hid them; and secondly, the deceased shinobi should be allowed to be returned home to the Hidden Valley Village.
The pair collected all six of the ninja they had killed and lay them out at the edge of the felled trees. Shikamaru attempted to make them look presentable for the benefit of whatever poor fool might be the first to stumble across them (which was easier with some than with others) and by the time he had given up trying to keep the red-haired woman's organs inside her torso, he was surprised to look over and see his Suna companion crouched over the body of the young water-user. She was cupping the girl's cold cheek in her palm, speaking quietly, something rhythmic that he couldn't quite catch – something about heartbeats and home, breath and earth. It seemed like an intimate moment so he didn't interrupt but simply stood watching curiously as she sprinkled a handful of soil on the girl's forehead before blowing it away and moving on to the next body to repeat the ritual with what was left of the swordsman.
He had no idea that Sand shinobi held this tradition. No one had ever told him that they could be so respectful; so human.
When she finished with the last one, there was nothing left to do but hit the road again. Her tessen was next to her travel pack, leaning against one of the old pines that remained standing, closer to him than it was to her from where she crouched at the end of the row of dead shinobi. By the time she stood from her final ritual and turned to him, he had sent one of his shadows to retrieve it.
He saw her expression harden as she realised what he was doing, the discomfort in her face as he used his shadow to lift her weapon from where it rested. It was heavier than he'd imagined. He might have used this moment to steal it from her or make his escape or attempt to use it against her; she was disarmed while he had the full use of his jutsu back. She lifted her chin and stared him down, daring him to try something. But Shikamaru had no intention of doing so; she might not have accepted it, but he had given her his word. He extended his shadow towards the Suna kunoichi, carrying her tessen through the air with it, offering it back to her. She didn't break distrustful eye contact for a moment until she took it in her own hands and watched his shadow recoil back to it's natural place at his feet. The tension in her visibly dispelled.
"Let's get moving," he said. "We've got a rendezvous to make in the morning."
Author's Note:
I need to have a nice cup of tea and stare out of the window for a while after editing this chapter...
Hope you're all looking forward to next time when we'll enjoy watching Shikamaru having a horrible time in the Land of Wind and making a terrible first impression in front of his future brother-in-law
Cinder x
