But he should have known that Temari wasn't the kind of woman to give up so easily when she set her mind to something. And she had clearly set her mind to him. Sure enough, he heard her jog a step to catch up with him as he tried to leave and, in the corner of his eye, saw her reach out to take his arm. When had the thought of her touching him become so repulsive? He turned abruptly to shove her away.

"Get off me!" He scolded her, knowing his reaction meant that she had won. "What's wrong with you?"

She crossed her arms over her chest in that stubborn way she always did. "You might not want to talk, but I have things to say. So you can either speak to me like an adult or have me shout at your back as you walk away."

He had no doubt that she would have done exactly that. Infuriating. He pressed clenched a fist, trying to douse the fire that was growing inside him. "I don't understand how you don't get what it's been like." The words came through gritted teeth as he fought to avoid screaming them. "Do you have any idea how hard it's been to not be with you? To not even hear from you? You can't just waltz back into my life and expect-"

"You have a son, Shikamaru."

The flames within him snuffed out. She had cut off his tirade and he stared at her, unspeaking, until she continued.

"You have a son. I've spent most of this year pregnant, that's why I haven't been making the journey to Konoha."

The pieces didn't fit together in his mind. It couldn't be true. "You're lying."

Temari rolled her eyes at his ignorance. "Look at my tits. Do these look like the tits you remember? They're huge." He wasn't getting it. "Because I've just had a baby." He still wasn't getting it. "Your baby."

They stood in silence for a long time. Eventually, he narrowed his eyes at her, still disbelieving.

"Mine?"

"Yes," she sighed, exasperated.

"So, the last time you were here, you were-"

"Pregnant, yes."

Okay, so maybe the pieces were starting to fit together. "Why didn't-"

"I didn't tell you because I didn't know then."

This was a lot to take. The intellectual prodigy of the Leaf wasn't nearly done processing this revelation when she offered him a second one:

"He's in Konoha if you want to meet him. We brought the nanny; he's in our quarters with her at the Embassy right now."

If he wanted… Shikamaru didn't know what he wanted, but by now he was sure that he couldn't go home. She offered for him to follow her there, but he still could hardly bare to look at her, even at her back. Instead, he lead the way, staring at the ground, while she followed a few steps behind.

By the time they arrived, a part of him still thought it was a lie, or some kind of trap. A sick joke. But he stepped aside to let her unlock the door, and there was an older woman he didn't recognise reading a book by a dimmed light in the corner of the room. She looked up to them as they entered and put a finger to her lips, indicating for them to be quiet.

"He's not long drifted off," she whispered.

She had cocked her head in the direction of the first bedroom, the room that Temari now took a step towards, trying to take Shikamaru's hand to lead him forwards. He snatched his hand away. It was real.

"I can't," he spluttered, as quietly as the panic in his chest would let him. So much effort he had put into faking being fine without her, lying to himself and everyone around him, in the hope that some day it would become truth and he would feel like a whole person with a meaningful life on his own. All of that was undone now. "Temari, I can't."

But he did. After she laughed under her breath to herself at his weakness and took herself into the bedroom, and the nanny smiled warmly at him before returning to her book, and he realised that the entirety of the Allied Shinobi Forces could not have pulled him away in that moment.

The cot was in the corner of the dimly lit room, adjacent to some travel bags on the floor and a double bed that hadn't yet been slept in. Temari was gazing down into it and, after a breath to accept that his life was about to change forever, Shikamaru joined her.

He didn't look so scary. He was small, not quite newborn. He had a tiny little nose and mouth, and tiny little fingers on the tiny little hand which poked out from under the blanket. Black hair. He almost didn't look real, lying doll-like in the cot, until his face twitched a little as he slept.

"Does he…" Shikamaru tried to pull a coherent question out the spinning mess that his head had become. "Does he have a name?"

"His name is Shikadai."

Shikadai. How Yoshino would cry when she heard… Shikamaru's eyes prickled. He had promised himself a long time ago that he would never again cry in front of Temari, but she always had been the most adept person he knew at ruining his plans. He wanted to explain himself to her, but of course she knew. Of course she felt it, too – she was his mother. There was no doubt in him any more that this child was real and was his. It was a truth that had always been. He just hadn't known it until now. "I can't not be looking at him all the time. I can't ever walk away from this spot right here."

"I know, right?" she laughed softly. How he had missed her laugh. "There's no pressure, Shikamaru. I know we didn't talk about this, it was my decision, I take full responsibility. We don't need your money or your time, you don't have to be involved if you don't want to be. This doesn't need to mess up your life. I just thought you needed to know that he exists."

"Temari," he said. "You messed up my life a long time ago. And then again, more recently. Third time's the charm, right?" Her body seemed to relax at his words and he was compelled to hold her. So he did. "I need to be a part of this."

He pulled her body close to his own and she buried her face into his shoulder. Even this wasn't close enough – he wanted to envelope her completely. He never wanted to let her walk away again. Her body began to make little shudders in his arms and he realised that she was crying.

"I'm sorry," she snivelled, clearly trying to calm her breath between sobs. It was very un-Temari of her. "I'm so hormonal. I didn't know how you were going to take this."

They passed a little time holding each other, reacquainting themselves with the touch they had once been so enraptured by, before the baby began to make noise. He was waking up and Temari took him into her arms, hushing him. Shikamaru knew what her next question would be before she asked it.

"Do you want to hold him?"

He had held babies before; Mirai being the first he had really been involved with, and then Boruto and Inojin more recently. On those occasions, he had always been scared of dropping them, of accidentally hurting them. But not with this one, not with his own child. Not with Shikadai. This felt easy, like it was what his arms were always intended for. The only fear was knowing that he would at some point have give him back.

"I can't go home tonight, Temari," he told her, unable to tear his eyes away from his son. It wasn't a question.

"That's okay," she reassured him. She must have anticipated this reaction. She always was one step ahead of him. "You can stay here."

After a while, the baby stirred again and began to cry. Temari took the little one into her arms to nurse and he fell asleep in his cot again shortly after. She got ready for bed, brushing her teeth and changing into her nightclothes. Shikamaru, of course, had no night clothes, but it wasn't as though she had never seen him in his underwear before.

Delicate was not a word he had ever associated with Temari, but as she climbed into bed with him, she did so delicately. There was a tenderness between them, a hesitancy that hadn't been there before, the very air between them was bruised.

"When are you going back to Suna?" His voice was a whisper in the low light of the room, his face close to hers as he held her.

"I'm not sure yet. There's something I need to ask you first." He had missed the feeling of her warm breath against his face. "I need to ask if you want to try again. The three of us, here in Konoha."

Shikamaru was on fire.

"You don't have to answer right-"

"Yes," he gushed. His lips thought the answer was simple, even though his gut feared otherwise. "Yes, of course I do, Temari. But I'm still really angry with you; you have to know that."

"You're not exactly my best friend at the moment either, Shikamaru."

He tensed against her. "We'd fight."

"Yeah, probably."

"You'd miss the Sand."

"Horribly."

"If it didn't work and you left again…" he almost couldn't finish his sentence. "Temari, there'd be nothing left of me."

"I know," she mouthed to him, voicelessly.

"It's a terrible idea."

The smile that crept across her face was the same smile as when they were young: beautiful and dangerous. "Yeah, it is. So are we doing it?"

Shikamaru took a long breath. "I'm in if you're in."

"I've thought about it a lot." His ex-girlfriend, the mother of his child, nodded slowly as she spoke. "Suna is a pretty brutal place to raise a kid, and I could still take him to visit his uncles regularly. It wouldn't be a problem to find work here, and I already know the Village and have friends here. Well," she tutted, "that's assuming they don't all hate me now for leaving you."

"Some of them do a bit, yeah," he admitted. They would come around though. He was lucky to be surrounded by such supportive friends, and knew that they would welcome two new additions to the Village if that was what he wanted.

"I think Shikadai could have a good life in Konoha. But the main thing is… you're here." She squeezed him close to her. "I've really missed you, Shikamaru."

The words weren't enough. "I've missed you, too."

He kissed her on the forehead, then lifted her chin to put his lips to hers for the first time in far too long. He would never be away from these lips again.

Shikamaru awoke alone in the dark of his room. Immediately, a feeling of beautiful warmth dissolved into a sense of profound loss. Then, in the space of a single breath, the details slipped away like sand through his fingers. He knew only that he must have dreamed of her again.

Author's Note:

My hand slipped.

Forgive me, Father, for the closing paragraph of this fic.

Cinder x