This guy is something else, Sakura thought.
It wasn't the first time in the last twenty-four hours that this thought occurred to her. It wouldn't be the last either, she suspected.
Putting aside all that happened between them and all her romantic feelings and even the mind-boggling realization that in the last five weeks or so she had been working in the lab alongside a living, breathing sex god and never even noticed until now, she was still astonished by the things he did naturally and without a question - and how he got away with them. The bloody cheek.
Right now they were lying on the floor, her duvet and a blanket and all her pillows under them and he was nuzzling her neck.
He just pulled down the blanket and rolled her over it without asking, then used his shadows to grab the pillows and now they were camping out on the floor. Any other time, with anyone else she would have pointed out how the floor was, by its very nature, unclean and unfit to lie on, unless it was an emergency, and how she had a perfectly good couch in the other room, and how all her pillows would get dirty... and she didn't. Say. One. Word.
Because Shikamaru was lying next to her and there was a look of total bliss on his face and if he wanted to lie on her floor she would do the same as long as he didn't stop touching her.
The world looked different from here. She could see a book behind a chair where it had fallen, unseen, and all their clothes in artistic little heaps around them, and...
"Uh-oh."
The window was open.
All the windows were open.
"What?" Shikamaru asked lazily, raising his head for a moment.
"The windows are open."
Shikamaru shrugged.
"Big deal. Now they know that you've got a new boyfriend."
Of course. She'd been screaming his name at the top of her voice.
She waited for the usual feeling of almost painful embarrassment, the blush, the bleak feeling of being ashamed that could only be pushed back by repeating to herself a thousand times that she was a grown-up woman and she had a right to have sex with her boyfriend whenever she wanted to.
Instead she felt a ridiculous little warm feeling in her belly. She was proud, proud of herself, proud of her man, like it was a stupid test that she passed with flying colours. She wanted to stand up and run to the window stark naked and shout at the top of her voice, "Did you hear that, Konoha? Did you? That was me!"
Tsunade would have me certified, she thought and snorted with amusement.
"What's so funny?"
She looked at him. It was impossible for her to be ashamed because he wasn't. Not a bit. He was lying on her floor as if it were perfectly natural and reasonable, the only place where he wanted to be. Locks of his hair were falling into his face, he was sticky with sweat and he was as far from a male model as possible. There was nothing glossy or artificial about him. He had a lovely body, yes, but it was full of scars and he was much thinner than he should have been.
It wasn't the first time that she noticed this but until now she always had something else on her mind.
He has practically no body fat. His muscles are like ropes under his skin. He looks good nevertheless, he's very sexy, but when we were in Tea he wasn't this thin. After that... I don't know. It's hard to see under that jounin outfit he usually wears. I never saw him in ANBU gear. Did he lose weight? Or is it because ANBU are always overworked? But that was weeks ago. It's easy to put on weight when you work in a lab, behind a desk. I had to cut back on the chocolate cookies three weeks ago because my shorts were starting to get a bit too tight.
"Have you eaten properly in the last few months?" she asked worriedly. "You are very thin."
He raised an eyebrow and didn't answer.
She felt her stomach lurch and her skin get cold and an awful feeling of foreboding rose in her.
"Are you ill?" she asked in a tiny voice.
God, please, no. Please don't. I'll do anything. I'll give my life in exchange for his if need be. I'm the best medic nin in the village, I'm better than Tsunade. There has to be something I can do, even if he's ill. Please God. Not something incurable like cancer. Not him. Not him.
Shikamaru sat up.
"What's wrong, Sakura? You went pale as a sheet in a second. Are you all right?"
She couldn't answer, she just repeated, 'are-you-ill,' like a little machine, a talking music box with a tin voice.
He must have understood her more than she realized because he pulled her in his arms and held her tight and in a very rational voice said, "I'm completely healthy, Sakura. Absolutely healthy. I had three check-ups in just as many weeks as part of the process of transferring from ANBU back to the regular roster. What did you think?"
He looked in her eyes and shook his head, slowly.
"You little drama queen, you," he said. "Nothing has an everyday, normal explanation. You live in a melodrama, everything is a tragedy waiting to happen."
She clung to him, trying to touch him everywhere, feeling his strength, his warmth, the life throbbing under his skin. He was here and he was all right and she never, never in this life would ask God for anything else, she would be so good and so kind and she would work so hard to make everyone else happy...
She looked up and said, her eyes full of tears, "I love you so much," as if that explained everything.
"Since when?" Shikamaru asked in a serious voice.
"I don't know," Sakura said. She wiped her eyes on the back of her hands. It was an interesting question. She didn't even recognize at first what she felt or she wouldn't have needed to go through all her romances looking for a half-forgotten sentence. Her living room was still a mess, she would have to clear that up.
Mess. Room. Window.
Shikamaru jumping through the window, a flash, a roll.
"What did you expect when you jumped in the window?"
Shikamaru answered at once.
"Enemy. I could sense your chakra so you were in there and alive but you could have been hurt or wounded."
"But you just came in ready to attack without being aware of the circumstances. There could have been more than one attacker, masking their chakra signatures. There could have been a trap. What if they were stronger than you? Wouldn't it have been more logical to get help?" Sakura asked, wondering.
Shikamaru just looked at her and Sakura knew in that moment that if he'd been certain that he would find in that room the whole Akatsuki team complete with Orochimaru come back from the dead, Shikamaru would have come through that window anyway to fight them without a second's hesitation.
He would give his life for me – no doubts, no hesitation.
"So there," Sakura said triumphantly. "Who's waiting for tragedy?"
Shikamaru snorted.
"You're Naruto's teammate," he said. "You have an innate ability to be a trouble magnet."
"I do not."
"I, on the other hand..."
"...are painfully thin and I'm going to do a check-up on you myself and I'm cooking you dinner tomorrow with lots of nourishing dishes."
They sat on the floor glaring at each other till the corners of Shikamaru's mouth started twitching and then Sakura looked away so as not to betray that she was trying to suppress a smile.
Shikamaru was the first to laugh. "God, we're completely crazy."
"Yes," Sakura agreed. She pointed a finger at Shikamaru. "You scared me. It's not your fault but you still did and you owe me. I want you to tell me all those things that we talked about before."
"You haven't told me since when..." Shikamaru started, but Sakura glared at him. "And I'm not going to. It's your turn."
Shikamaru looked away. There were two bright red spots glowing on his cheeks.
"What a drag," he murmured.
"I want my story," Sakura said in a dangerous voice.
"This isn't a fairytale, Sakura."
"Yes, yes it is. Except that I already know the end. The heroine got her prince."
"That's me?" Shikamaru asked.
"Yes, that's you. Don't be daft. Now I want to know what happened until then."
Shikamaru fidgeted.
"So where should I begin?"
"I think we should stick to the timeline and go back to Tea. That's where we left off... before..."
Sakura's voice slowly faded to nothing.
"Before we found your bedroom. And your bed," Shikamaru said, licking his lips. "I wonder how is it even possible that you can concentrate your healing chakra into your sweet little..."
Sakura quickly put her hand on his mouth to silence him and growled.
"Back to the story."
Shikamaru scratched his neck sheepishly. The gesture was pure Kakashi after being late for the umpteenth time in a row, just before Sakura cracked her knuckles.
It seems that being a pervert is not the only thing that he picked up from Kakashi, Sakura thought. I will have to pay more attention to this in the future. Was Kakashi Shikamaru's sponsor or mentor or whatever in ANBU? Kakashi left ANBU when we became his team, yes, but sometimes ex-ANBUs are pulled back in as consultants. Did he have his finger in this particular pie, too?
She put these thoughts aside as useless. There was no way that either of them would tell her something like that. ANBU worked strictly on need-to-know basis. Anyway, she was more interested in the private life and thoughts of Shikamaru Nara.
Getting him to talk about all that would be hard work, she had no doubts. For men, talking about sex wasn't taboo.
Emotions, on the other hand...
Shikamaru was still gathering his thoughts.
"Ok, ok. So..."
"Did you want to ask me out when we came back from Tea?" Sakura asked for a starter. She was getting impatient.
"Yes," Shikamaru said.
"Then why didn't you?"
Shikamaru's face turned serious.
"I'm willing to tell you everything you want to know but you might not like the answers," he said quietly.
"I hate to be left in the dark," Sakura said just as softly. "Anything's better than that."
Shikamaru sighed.
"Ok. Well, you have to know that by then Temari and I had what is generally described as an on-and-off relationship."
Sakura nodded. Ino didn't exactly gossip about Shikamaru, but she did let a few snippets of information drop from time to time.
"Before we left for Tea, she spent a few days in Konoha. Things ended in a pretty big row and a sort of breakup. Not for the first time, I might add. She said I was a bastard, that she wished she had never met me, that she'd never set foot in Konoha again and if I ever decided to go to Sand I would end up in a sand coffin, courtesy of Gaara, and so on," Shikamaru said.
"My God," Sakura murmured.
"Oh, that was just a normal kind of goodbye – 'see you, and next time I'm here, don't come home late, not even if it's a tactical briefing with your team leader.' The thing is, I was free at that point, but I knew that it was temporary. I could ask you out, yes, but then I would have to decide pretty fast what course I wanted to take, because you and me and Temari together was an explosive combination," Shikamaru said. "I knew that you and I would get on well and there was a possibility that I would fall for you hard. At the same time, Temari and I weren't finished. Not yet. So either way I would have had to take a great risk. Either I would have had to break up with her for good in a hurry, but I had no idea how she would take that or whether she would accept it at all. Or I would have had to tell you after a few dates that sorry, I thought we could be good together but unfortunately I had previous obligations. So either way I was looking forward to a situation where things could get pretty ugly pretty fast, and I knew who would suffer most if anything went wrong."
Me, Sakura thought. But why?
It was as if Shikamaru heard her thoughts. He looked at her when he answered her unsaid question.
"Because I know you, Sakura. You already cared about me as a friend and if we started to date, there was a high chance that we would both go in the deep end, and in that case you were bound to get hurt if things didn't work out well. You are very vulnerable emotionally, I knew that even then. Also, it would have been a classic love triangle. There would have been gossip in the village. In that situation I would have had all the perks – two girls competing for me, both of them skilled kunoichi, both of them very pretty, clever, popular. A complete ego boost. I would not have been judged very harshly by others, either. Men are like that, after all. All the male shinobi would have given me a smile and a wink. Half the girls would have looked at me with thinly veiled interest. Of course, things would not have looked that good for Temari, but Konoha isn't her home. Any time the situation got out of hand, she could just trash my flat and curse me and go home to Sand. The only one who could have gotten really bruised if something went wrong would have been you."
Shikamaru sighed.
"I didn't want to take that chance," he said. "Gaara and Kankuro would have wanted to tear me into very small pieces if I hurt Temari but that was a given. But I didn't want to get into a situation where Naruto and Kakashi in complete agreement with each other would proceed to break all my limbs – and I would know I deserved it."
He shrugged.
"Don't misunderstand me. The decision didn't give me any sleepless nights. We flirted a little, you were cute, I had a few fantasies that I could remember fondly whenever I wanted to, and that was all. I decided to wait. You seemed to like me, but you didn't seem very keen on dating me or anything. So I thought, no foul, no harm."
Sakura nodded. She could understand the situation when explained like this. She could even respect Shikamaru for analysing the situation and trying to do the right thing instead of rushing into it headlong.
"Soon after that I got landed in ANBU unexpectedly," Shikamaru went on. "Like I told you. I had other things on my mind. I had to re-learn even the basics of my life – what I would eat, where I would sleep, how I would find the time to be by myself so as not to go mad. I saw you sometimes, mostly with Ino, but..."
"You were busy," Sakura said. "I understand."
"Yes. But then a few months after I got into ANBU, my relationship with Temari seemed to have lost its meaning. We could rarely meet and even then we were like strangers. We decided to break it off for a while. We were both free to see others. That was what she wanted. I was sorry but at the same time I was relieved."
I was dating Lee by then - that was an on-and-off thing, too, Sakura thought. They'd dated for a while, years ago, then they both decided to concentrate on work, then they got together again after a long and dangerous mission.
That was after Tea, Sakura thought. I realized that Lee still wanted to date me, that he still loved me, and that there was nobody else...
"So what happened then?" she asked, curious. The tale was unfolding, she was behind the scenes and she had a free pass to go to places where others didn't.
"That was when I met Aoi," Shikamaru answered quietly. "You were with Lee, Ino and Chouji were slowly starting to get closer and not as friends, and I was free. I dated a few girls, but nothing serious. Most of my time was taken up by missions. Aoi was the daughter of one of my father's business associates. Her clan weren't shinobi, but they had money. I could see that she was interested in me. We went out a few times. It was very clear that this was... a possibility, so to speak. I started thinking about marriage and children and stuff like that. Just like I told you – I always knew that sooner or later I would have to get married, start a family. This was something I never had to think about, just like knowing since I was a toddler that I was destined to be a shinobi. I could choose to be something else, live in a different way, but I would have needed very serious reasons to do so. I didn't mind. I started to like the idea of getting married, to have something to look forward to. I hate to do anything in a haste. With Aoi I could take things as slowly as I wanted to. Plus, being with Temari was interesting and wonderful and fascinating and exciting, but toward the end I often thought that I could do with a bit less excitement and drama and a bit more of understanding. Aoi seemed to be perfect wife material. Do you remember her?"
"She was pretty," Sakura said vaguely. She met her once or twice but she couldn't remember her very well. This was the time when her own drama with Lee started to unfold and then finished with a break-up, so she had her reasons.
On the other hand – she had never thought about it, but if it had been Chouji or Kiba or Shino who dated Aoi, maybe she wouldn't have felt that jealous of her.
Oh hell. She remembered how Aoi always held on to Shikamaru's arm, dainty and smiling, a petite girl in beautiful clothes. She was a civilian and she seemed very proud that a shinobi of Shikamaru's calibre was dating her. She fluttered around him like a butterfly around a candle, and Shikamaru watched her with a forgiving smile.
Sakura admitted to herself that her smile went sour whenever she looked at them. At the time she thought that it was because of Lee.
"Yes, she was," Shikamaru said. "Pretty and silent and smiling and understanding. That's what I thought, at least."
"Then what went wrong?"
Shikamaru shook his head. "Nothing went wrong as such. What was wrong, was wrong from the beginning, only it took time for me to realize that."
Sakura watched him with narrowed eyes. He didn't seem unhappy or embarrassed once he started to talk. It was always like that, Sakura thought, even when they were children. You could get Shikamaru to answer but you had to be persistent. Not pushy, not obtrusive, but seriously interested in whatever he had to say. Shikamaru hated it when he took the time to answer a question and the person who asked it didn't listen. He considered that a waste of time.
One of the reasons why she always got on well with Shikamaru was that she liked to do things on her own and without help, but when she realized that breaking through Shikamaru's wall always resulted in getting not just an answer but the right answer, she started to turn to him if she wanted to be really sure in something. After a time he lost some of his wariness, maybe because she was generally shy around people and with Shikamaru she didn't feel the need to pretend otherwise. He wasn't a typical social butterfly either. She could talk to him and Shikamaru never mocked her or ridiculed her if she said something stupid. It was an easy agreement between them that never had to be put in actual words – if she went to him for help, she got it, but she only asked for help when she absolutely needed to.
"There were all those small things," Shikamaru said, thinking. "I couldn't really get her to state her opinion openly about anything. It was always altered to what she thought would be my point of view. I couldn't get to know her. She was hiding. She was a very reticent, reclusive personality."
A dose of your own medicine, Sakura thought with a smile.
"There were some other things that I noticed," Shikamaru said with a frown. "First of all, she was almost a child yet. I was used to being around kunoichi all the time and they are much more mature. I hardly know any civilian girls. I was surprised how immature and childish she was in a lot of things. And the other thing is, she idolized shinobi in general, but she hated most kunoichi. She hated Ino with a vengeance, I know that, and she didn't like my mother at all."
"Why?" Sakura interrupted. "You mother is really cool."
"Is she?" Shikamaru asked with raised eyebrows.
"Of course she is," Sakura said without hesitation. "She knows a lot about poisons and antidotes. Shizune told me once that if I wanted to know more about sleeping potions I should ask your mom. So I went and visited her and asked her a few questions. She was very sweet. She invited me to have tea with her and gave me her mango chutney recipe."
"Mango chutney?" Shikamaru repeated with a frown.
"Yes, mango chutney. The one that goes with the sweet-and-sour fish."
"When was this, Sakura?" Shikamaru asked. "When did this happen?"
"Two months ago?" Sakura said, unsure. "Or three months? I don't quite remember. You were still with ANBU."
"Hell," Shikamaru said with feeling. "Hell, hell, hell."
"What's wrong?" Sakura asked worriedly. "You sound like me on a day when Naruto is seriously in need of a dose of downers."
"Nothing's wrong. Except my mom has this way of uttering cryptic words of advice out of the blue whenever she feels like it. And I remember her saying exactly two months, three weeks and one day ago something that went like 'I know more of what you don't want me to know than you'll ever understand, what's more, I know things that even you don't know although you should, and a lot more things that I always knew but you never will,' see?"
"And you think she meant me? As one of these things?" Sakura asked.
Shikamaru sighed.
"If you'd like to take a wild guess at who's the person who likes sweet-and-sour fish made with mango chutney?"
Sakura looked at him with wide eyes.
"But that's not your favourite dish," she said. "That's grilled mackerel."
"How do you know?" Shikamaru asked. "We never talked about that. No, don't tell me. My mother told you."
They looked at each other, baffled.
"I don't understand," Sakura said. "I was dating Sasuke then."
Shikamaru shrugged.
"The mysterious ways of mothers. By the way, how will your parents react to the news that you're dating me?"
"They like you," Sakura said without thinking.
"How so?" Shikamaru asked, surprised. "The last time I visited you at your parents' house must have been when you were... twelve? Thirteen?"
"You were always nice to me," Sakura said. "And ever since we were on that mission where we had to find those stones..."
"The stones of Gelel, yes. What about them?"
"It's not about the stones. I told my parents how you looked out for me and Naruto..."
"I was your team captain. It was my duty," Shikamaru said.
Sakura leaned to him and kissed him. "All I'm saying is that ever since then they liked you. My father thinks you're okay."
"Good," Shikamaru said. "I really would have hated to get on their bad side."
"Have no fear of that. But let's get back to Aoi. So she didn't like your mom, more's the pity."
"Yes. I started to have doubts about the whole thing. I mean, I started asking myself what I really knew about her – her tastes, her temperament, her way of thinking. The answer was, I knew precious little. I wanted to know her better, yes – but then I realized that maybe I already knew everything there was to know about her. She had no opinions, no views, no habits, no nothing. A clean slate. I could write whatever I wanted on it, or that was my first impression. I didn't like it. But the other possiblity was that she did have some well-defined opinions and very clear ideas about her life and my place in it – she just hid it well behind all that smiling bashful girlish behaviour. I liked that idea even less, so I started watching her and then... I started... well, orchestrating things around her."
"You laid traps," Sakura said disapprovingly.
"I'd rather call it baiting but it's true. My only excuse is that if I married her and it turned out to be a bad marriage, both of us would have suffered."
"What did you do?"
"Nothing special. Small things. I wanted to meet her friends and talk to them. I invited her to places that were out of her comfort zone. I asked her opinion about things in such a way that she had to answer truthfully. But she was very good at maneuvering around me. I liked the situation less and less. It wasn't a game – or to her it might have been, but I had a lot at stake. I wanted someone I could trust blindly and I could see that slipping away. The funny thing was, I never lied to her but I never opened up either and still she could play me."
Sakura thought of Aoi with admiration. To put one of the best strategists in Konoha in such a position! But of course, female logic was different.
I would have seen through her in a second. I bet Ino did, that's why Aoi hated her.
"What happened then?" she asked.
Shikamaru laughed, a short, bitter laugh.
"We could have played this endlessly," he said, his voice colourless. "My ANBU duties took up more and more time if that was even possible. I had tons of missions. We scarcely met. I was... for several reasons I was..."
He sighed.
"I don't know how to put this. The fact is, at the time I was willing to put up with a less-than-average relationship. I knew I wasn't in love with her and I didn't care. I loved Temari very much and it was a disaster in more than one way, so now I thought I would opt for a pleasant, easy life. I decided that we would go on dating for a while and when I quit ANBU, I would marry Aoi. I would have a family and my mother would have lots of grandkids and I would have a perfect wife. Oh boy."
He looked at Sakura and his face was full of misery.
"I never told this to anyone," he said.
Sakura wanted to open her mouth to say that if it hurt him so much, he didn't have to, but he shook his head.
"I want to tell you," he said. "I don't want to keep secrets from you. Not anymore. Anyway, it's part of the story. So, with all my high IQ and supposedly big tactical experience I couldn't get her to tell me what she thought about me and my ideas. Then one day I saw her sitting in front of a drink booth with a girlfriend, drinking tea. I had just returned from a mission and I was still in ANBU gear and, well, I wasn't the spitting image of an elite warrior. You know. I didn't want her to see me."
Sakura nodded. When people came back from a mission, they were usually dirty, their clothes torn, covered in mud and lots of other substances they usually didn't care to name in a hurry. Obviously not the way you wanted to appear in front of your beloved, not to mention that ANBU, when in uniform, usually preferred to come and go unseen. What was the point of meeting your friends if you couldn't take off your mask? What was the point of wearing a mask if people you knew well but who weren't part of your squad could identify you? It could only mean trouble.
"I just wanted to take a look at her, maybe come back later and surprise her. Well, the surprise was all mine."
He made a sad little grimace.
"To put it short, I overheard them talking purely by accident. They were talking about me. She told her friend that I was the most boring guy she ever had the luck to meet. She was only encouraging me because my family was prestigious and her father wanted a closer relationship with my clan and I was a good plan B if nobody better came along. A girl has to look out for herself, she said, and she didn't intend to work. Being a housewife was fuss enough, but thankfully I wasn't very picky. 'He's too lazy to be interested,' she said and she and her friend both laughed."
Sakura was fuming but she didn't say a word.
"She said a few things about Ino, too, but what really made me angry was the things she said about my family. I don't want to repeat those. Then she went on and gave a short analysis of my character and abilities. The mildest remark was that she couldn't understand why her dad was so keen on this marriage, she had no real intent to marry a gamekeeper who shoveled manure all day when he wasn't pretending to do oh-so-secret missions. That was one of the problems with her – she wanted me to tell stories about my missions and I just couldn't. It was..."
"...all classified information," Sakura finished his sentence. "I know what ANBU is, Shikamaru."
Shikamaru looked at her, waiting.
"What?" Sakura enquired.
"So, what do you think?" Shikamaru asked.
Sakura's temper never needed a good, hard prod to get the better of her but now even these few words were enough to push her over the edge.
"That conniving, two-timing, simpering little bitch! Did she say anything about your mom? Did she?" she hissed.
Shikamaru didn't say anything, didn't even move, but Sakura didn't need his answer to know the truth.
"If I ever see that bitch again, I'll stick her on the end of a broomstick and wipe the hospital floors with her from top to bottom! That's the only thing that she would ever be good for!" she said. Her hands curled into fists. "I'll take her to pieces and put her back together, only I'll put in her head the brains of a hamster and everyone will say 'oh, she's changed all for the better!' I'll kick her ass until it swells double, not that it wasn't fat as it was!"
Shikamaru smiled. It was a sad little smile but better than nothing, Sakura thought.
"Looks like Ino and you have more in common than I realized," he said. "When I told her that Aoi and I broke up, she just looked at me, didn't even need an explanation, she just launched into a big monologue of how she never understood why some men took the pain to collect all kinds of VD from different women when they could get them all in one neat package from pathetic little whores like Aoi, and it was a good thing that I got rid of her before she could give me all she had."
Sakura laughed against herself.
"I don't know if that's true, I know nothing about Aoi," she said. "But I know that Ino doesn't take it kindly if someone hurts her teammates. Aoi had better watch out."
"She doesn't live in Konoha anymore," Shikamaru said. "She married a paper-pusher in the daimyo's court soon after our break-up."
"Good," Sakura said with satisfaction. "That will teach her. A petty life for a petty mind."
"It can't be that bad," Shikamaru said.
"Not for her," Sakura said. "I'd be bored crazy there. The only amusement in court is all the officials back-stabbing each other for promotion – I only know that because Tsunade sent me there last year with a diplomatic message. Boy, it was a sight. I thought I knew everything about betrayal and false smiles that I ever wanted to know, but that was a whole different level. I don't think Aoi is clever enough for that. She's a little viper, but she'll realize soon that even vipers are just meat and bones for some predators. Good luck to her and good riddance for you."
Shikamaru smiled again and this smile was real.
"So you don't think that I... that I was stupid to... to take her so seriously? To want to marry her?" he asked.
"The way I see it," Sakura said, thinking, "is that you fell for her trap but you didn't fall for her. You said you were never in love with her."
"That's true."
"Anyway, just like you said this morning, we don't decide whom we fall in love with. It's fate, just like you said. What's more, as much as I can see, Aoi had done pretty much everything in her power to seem a sweet, innocent little girl, a damsel in distress, and like all decent men, you have this weakness for girls like that," Sakura said. "Your heart softened when you looked at her but for some reason you didn't fall for her. Maybe if you did, she would have been kinder to you," she added.
"I don't have a weakness for damsels in distress," Shikamaru said curtly.
Sakura laughed.
"I remember when those guys from Sound laid out Naruto and Sasuke at the first chuunin exam in the Forest of Death," she said. "I wanted to protect them at all costs but I probably would have been seriously wounded or killed, had not first Lee, then Team Ten suddenly appeared and kicked their asses. Now, I also seem to remember that later I thanked Ino and told her how brave she was and what a great friend to risk her life for me, and she said it was you who..."
"I know what she said," Shikamaru said stiffly. "It was nothing like that. You were a Konoha shinobi just like we were and a race, even if it's part of an exam, is less important than one of our friends dying. Anyway, I can't imagine what kind of shinobi we would have turned out to be if we just sat there and watched them kill you, too scared to move."
Sakura watched him and tried not to show how amusing she found his behaviour. "You're such a sweet guy," she said.
"Whatever," Shikamaru said and turned his head away from Sakura, indicating clearly that, as far as he was concerned, this topic was finished.
There is something that he said, Sakura thought. Something that isn't quite... Wait. Did he say one of our friends?
She knew that if she asked him, Shikamaru would say something about Naruto being in a pretty bad shape then or something like that... but Sakura was sure that he meant something else.
It was because of me. Ino decided to get into the fight and her team followed her, but Shikamaru prodded her to do so, and not for the sake of Naruto or Sasuke or Lee, but for me.
Sakura didn't think that Shikamaru was in love with her. No. Not then. But he couldn't just watch a girl get beaten and hurt.
Stupid, chivalrous, old-fashioned, male-chauvinist ass. But his judgment was accurate. As always. There was no way I could have won against those Sound nin. No way in hell.
"You're digressing," Sakura said.
"It wasn't me who brought up these prehistoric memories," Shikamaru pointed out.
"Fine," Sakura said.
Shikamaru turned his head back and looked at Sakura. Sakura looked back. Shikamaru's eyes were so strange, so different from the way they usually looked. On the battlefield his eyes were usually scrunched, his irises black beads. Now they were wider, lighter, and showed so much of his personality, of his feelings.
It's because he trusts me, Sakura thought. He doesn't mind showing me his true face, what he really is.
"Ok, let's finish this part of the story," she said. "I know why things didn't work out with Aoi, and I'm glad that it happened that way."
"My feelings exactly."
"But you said she broke up with you," Sakura said, thinking aloud.
Shikamaru nodded.
"That was one of my small victories. I didn't want to confront her that I heard them talking about me, and I wasn't going to break up with her without a good reason and make it possible for her to play the broken-hearted lover."
"So what did you do?"
Shikamaru laughed. "I embodied the role that she set out for me. I became the most boring person in the world I could imagine. It gave me a lot of pleasure to play-act. I launched into long speeches on anything, lengthy, dry, politically correct speeches. I took her to places where I ordered things that I knew she hated, as if I couldn't remember what she liked."
"Petty vengeance," Sakura murmured. "I never thought you had it in you."
"I never thought I had it in me, either," Shikamaru said.
Petty vengeance was a special term for Ino's team. Throughout the years they all had ample chances to watch Ino as she made people's life hell if she thought they deserved it. These people were mostly ex-boyfriends. As Ino explained once, petty vengeance in its perfection was winning a free, all-expenses-paid vacation to a place which your ex-boyfriend wanted to visit all his life, and taking a friend with you that he always hated, and then, after you came home and showed everyone the photos, explaining how you already had a trip to this same place planned and already paid for as a surprise to your boyfriend just before he broke up with you, isn't life strange? Poor boy, of course you wish him all the happiness in the world, but it wouldn't have been such fun with him, he was so boring, but it wasn't quite his fault, with a family like his...
"I thought I had enough of drama when Lee and I broke up," Sakura said. "When Sasuke cheated on me, after the first bout of surprise and hurt passed, I just felt tired. But this... Wow."
Shikamaru shrugged. "I was angry," he said. "I never wanted to hurt her seriously, but since she never appreciated when I tried my best, I thought now I would show her my worst."
"And then?"
"After a time I got bored, and simply had less and less time for her, and she got the message and we broke up. I didn't care. At the time I already had other things on my mind. That was when... when I got placed in the seduction squad."
They were both silent. Sakura hugged him close, to make him understand that she was there and she would always be there, no matter what. He hugged her back and started to speak again, slowly at first, then faster and faster, his words hurried, strained, tumbling over each other, pain and desperation forcing him to get it all out before he had time to think, to edit and re-structure and change what he wanted to say.
"One day Ibiki wanted to talk to me. That's when he told me he would put me in the seduction squad, and he said, 'I don't want another young hero who can't keep it in his pants and wants to play the spy game. I want someone who thinks, Nara. Actually, it is simple enough. You make them love you. You make them tell you all their secrets. Then you betray them and kill them.' The thing he didn't say because it would have seemed mockery later was that it gets easier."
He looked away and Sakura felt that even though he was sitting next to her on the floor, he was far away in his thoughts.
"They actually went easy on me," he said. "I didn't get same-sex missions, because I'm not inclined that way, and Ibiki-san said he had enough people for things like that. And the other thing was, at first I never got missions where I would have had to decide. It was simple. Somebody else decided for me what had to be done, if someone had to be eliminated or brought in for interrogation or anything."
Eliminated. Read killed, wiped out, eradicated, destroyed. Without a question, without feelings, without appeal.
"I was only the knife. The hand that held the knife was somewhere above me in the chain of decision-making. I had no responsibility. Then, after a time, I got more difficult missions. Find out if this person is planning a coup d'état. Find out if this family really paid someone to get rid of a business rival. Find out if this village is part of the drug-smuggling route and if anyone's involved. Find out. Retrieve information. Plot. Plan. If the information all points in one direction... eliminate. But first decide. Decide if you're right. Decide if they are really guilty. Decide if there is a way to do it without spilling blood, but if there isn't, kill. Not on the battlefield. Not openly. In secret. In the dark. In cold blood."
He looked at Sakura and his eyes were hard, unrelenting. Sakura nodded. She knew all this. But, of course, it was different to know something in theory or to do it in practice.
She always knew that there would be a moment on the battlefield when she would have to kill or be killed.
The first time she aimed to kill and not to hurt or wound or stop and she succeeded, she went straight home once they were back in Konoha and spent the next two days behind closed doors. She wasn't sad and she wasn't really upset, except that she couldn't talk. She couldn't say a word. Not one word.
She cut the other shinobi's throat without thinking, without remorse, and then spent two days in silence. She knew that being shinobi meant that one killed without remorse if one had to.
That was in theory.
Reality was something else - walking around in her rooms and touching her own throat again and again and all the time remembering the other shinobi's face.
Shikamaru had to walk the same path, except it was a rockier one.
"What I told you until now is common knowledge," Shikamaru said. "This is where it gets... personal."
Sakura nodded again.
"I slowly started to adapt," Shikamaru said. "Shinobi are raised to do their jobs in any given situation and adapt to circumstances. However, there were some side effects I was concerned about."
How strange, Sakura thought. The way he speaks about himself is so detached, so clinical. So cold. They really killed something important in him – or maybe he killed it in himself in order to survive.
It was a painful thought and for a second Sakura was filled with fury on Shikamaru's behalf. She remembered his laugh when they were children and how he and Chouji used to jump through the window with surprising speed and disappear from class while Iruka sensei was shouting himself hoarse. She remembered the cloud-watching, smiling child, the "number one lazy ninja", and her eyes filled with burning tears. Where did that child disappear?
"You don't have to tell me anything you don't want to," she interrupted. "I love you all the same. You don't have to tell me anything. Just... just promise me you'll let me love you."
Shikamaru watched her, his face inscrutable.
Sakura was sure he didn't understand.
"It hurts you to talk about this," she tried to explain. "I can feel it and I... I just don't want you to hurt. I don't want to see you unhappy. I don't mind if you don't tell me anything. I mind it a lot less than hurting you."
Shikamaru opened his arms and pulled her to him.
"You'd give up anything for my sake, wouldn't you," he murmured. "You never stop halfway, do you? If I told you I wanted you to give up being a kunoichi, you would do that, too."
Did he want her to do that? To give up being a shinobi?
"Could I still work as a doctor?" she asked. Her heart was filled with sadness. Sasuke mentioned several times how if he got married he'd want a full-time wife and mother for his family, like his mother used to be. He never understood why she loved working in the hospital. "It's full of sick and broken people," he used to say.
Sakura found it very hard sometimes not to point out that yes, a hospital by definition is a place exactly like that.
It seemed that all men were the same, thought the same.
"Those bloody fools!" Shikamaru said, his voice strong enough to be just short of shouting. He looked at Sakura, his eyes full of anger. "I don't want you to give up anything. Do you understand me, Sakura? Anything! For my sake, for anyone else's sake! Go as far as you want, do whatever you want to! Get your wings and fly, straight to the sky, if you want to, and as God sees my soul, I'll help you with all I've got and give you all I have! I love you! I told you I did, I distinctly remember that, and that means I'll never hold you back, never in this fucking life!"
Sakura swallowed.
"You'll let me go on working as a doctor?" she said.
"You don't need my permission, Sakura," Shikamaru said. "But yes, I want you to go on doing all the things you've been doing even when we start a family. I'd be grateful if you told me in advance if you intend to do undercover missions as those usually take months and I wouldn't like to chew all my nails to ragged bits and worry myself to death, so I would try to help with the tactical plans if need be, but otherwise..."
Sakura put her arms around his neck and Shikamaru hugged her, grumbling under his breath.
"And I want to tell you all," he said. "I never told these things to anyone because I didn't want to but I want to come clean with you, can you understand that? It's just... it took me a lot of courage to gear myself up to it. These aren't pleasant memories."
Sakura's brain was still processing what he said.
"Wait, wait. Start a family?"
"You don't want to?" Shikamaru asked back.
"Of course I want to, I just don't understand... I mean I wouldn't mind, Kurenai-sensei is managing all right, I could do the same..."
Now it was Shikamaru's turn to interrupt.
"Would you mind telling me what you're talking about? What has Kurenai got do with anything? I'll always help her, I promised Asuma, you don't mind that... or do you?"
"Of course not!" Sakura said, enraged. "What do you take me for? I just said that living like that would be all right for me, too... as long as you're there with us."
They were both watching the other, trying to figure out what the other was trying to say.
Shikamaru was the first to speak.
"Tell me if I get it wrong, but basically you're telling me that you would be willing to have my baby out of wedlock. Is that right?"
Sakura forced herself to speak without stuttering. "I'm sorry if I misunderstood," she said. "I thought that was what you were offering. I know that your parents wouldn't let you marry me and I thought..."
Shikamaru shook his head, his expression incredulous.
"Sakura," he said kindly. "You know very little about my close family and almost nothing about my clan, but you should know me better."
He put a finger on her mouth.
"Hush. Before you put your foot in your mouth again and start to chew, just let me say one thing. Don't-worry-about-that. Got it? My family, my problem. Just as a footnote I'd like to add that one, I know my family more than you do, two, they will adore you just like I adore you, three, my mom thinks the world of you and four, she would cuff me on the head if I ever dared suggest something like that to any girl."
He took away his finger from Sakura's lips and when she started to speak, he said, "No. You stop fretting right now. All this feminism stuff that Ino and Tsunade poured into your head is making you forget that men are usually good for other things beside carrying heavy objects around. I'll deal with all this. But I just don't understand how a strong kunoichi like you could be such a sweet, timid girl inside. The gist is, I'll never understand women, period."
Sakura opened her mouth again but when Shikamaru looked at her and shook his head, she only said, "I don't understand you, either."
"Then it's a fair deal," Shikamaru said happily. "I can see that being with you will be nothing short of a rollercoaster ride, each day, every day, and I do so love a peaceful life, but at least I won't be alone in my misery."
Sakura couldn't help but laugh.
Shikamaru still had something to say.
"And you don't have to worry about what you told me on the meadow, either," he said more gently. "The Kuramas won't bother you or anyone else again, I assure you."
Sakura's hands went cold.
"How do you know? Tell me!" she demanded. "I hid the letter in..."
She bit her tongue so as not to say more.
"In where?" Shikamaru asked in a dulcet tone.
Sakura eyed him warily and didn't say a word.
"Never mind, I'll figure it out," Shikamaru said.
"You don't have to," Sakura said. "I'll give you the letter."
Shikamaru looked at her, interested.
"What, no long speeches on your rights to privacy and your capability of handling things in general? Surprising, to say the least."
Sakura shrugged. "What would that be good for? I asked for your help. There would be no point in withholding information. It's not only about me, you know."
"Why did you hide the letter at all?" Shikamaru asked quietly.
"You know how overprotective my team is," Sakura said with a sigh. "And Naruto has no sense of privacy. In fact, I doubt he knows the meaning of the word."
"And that's not the only word," Shikamaru murmured. "By the way, is there a reason why I'm still alive? I mean, I thought by now they would be swarming like bees over your place and demanding to know if my intentions are entirely honourable."
"Soon," Sakura assured him. "It's just they usually go training together on Saturdays, too, and ever since Sasuke and I broke up, he's trying to make himself scarce at my place, so they don't spend all their free hours here. But don't worry, I'm pretty sure that Naruto or Kakashi will drop in sooner or later and you'll get your well-deserved beating for seducing me without their preliminary permission in writing."
Shikamaru nodded. "Good to know."
"Tell me how you knew it was the Kurama clan," Sakura said.
"It took me the biggest part of the afternoon to figure it out," Shikamaru said. "Then I remembered that Kakashi once told me that originally you were a genjutsu type. The other thing is, the Kuramas used to be a prominent clan and they still have a certain influence in the council and in the daimyo's court, but they gradually lost their power because the number of clan members dwindled. In some clans marrying within the clan is encouraged to maximize the recurrence of bloodline limit, but in my opinion that's a big mistake. The Kurama clan is a good example. Creating this type of genjutsu is a serious strain on the body and the most talented genjutsu users are usually frail, so their children are often sickly, too. Anyway, make it a rule that clan members should marry their first cousins for a hundred years or so and then you can present each newborn kid with a new padded cell to live in."
"Like Yakumo," Sakura said, frowning.
"Like Yakumo," Shikamaru agreed. "What happened to her, anyway?"
"She's feeling better now," Sakura said. "She's stabile enough to lead a normal life, but she'll never be shinobi. And she'll never..."
She looked away. "I can't share that information with you. It's confidential."
Shikamaru nodded. "She'll never be strong enough to bear children," he said gently. "I see. And there is the connection I was looking for. The only thing that was missing was how the clan knew that genjutsu was one of your special traits, like chakra control."
Sakura thought it over.
"I probably discussed things like that with Yakumo over the years," she said.
"Yes," Shikamaru said. "I don't think she betrayed you or anything," he added. "I even doubt now that they meant to harrass you. That was just an opening bid. Since you weren't willing, they would have upped the offer if Uchiha didn't put a spade in the works by coming back and asking you to be his girlfriend. And I also don't think that they would try this with a lot of girls. There aren't many women in this village who are strong genjutsu types with a healing skill as extra and so perfectly healthy that they could give birth to a healthy child even if it carried the Kuramas' kekkei genkai. So don't worry. But I still want that letter. I'll give them hell for scaring you."
Sakura hugged him. He was true to his word and was willing to take care of this all.
"Fine," she said.
"Fine," he repeated. "I'd like to finish what I started to talk about. If I don't tell you now, I doubt I can scrape up the courage again."
"I'm listening."
"Where was I?"
"Side effects," Sakura said. She remembered because it sounded something that she would say, a medical expression.
"Yes. So the most important thing I was concerned about was that I didn't want to turn into something I never was, something I'd never want to be. A bad apple."
He stopped for a minute.
"I met someone like that in ANBU," he said. "It was only once, but that was enough. We ate in the same mess, slept in the same dorm. When people in the squad came back from a mission, you could always see the strain. The grief. The pain. The weight of decisions. It got easier as time went, but it would never disappear completely. But this guy... I saw him after a mission. Too many wounds on the corpse and too little explanation. And he was flushed and grinning, as if..."
He shook his head.
"What happened to him?" Sakura asked.
"He died on a mission. No concern of us anymore," Shikamaru said in a colourless voice.
It was Ibiki's expression. No concern of us. She could almost see the scarred, silent shinobi, addressing his men. He's no concern of us. He's dead and gone. But if I catch any of you like that, you'll just disappear without a trace just like he did. Beware.
"I soon realized I'd rather die than go that way," Shikamaru went on. "But being normal is a relative term. It can't be used when the circumstances aren't normal. You have no measuring sticks. For a while I thought I was managing all right, but..."
He shrugged.
"The first time I lied to Ino without thinking and she didn't notice I felt strange. The first time I lied to my father and he didn't notice I didn't feel anything but I knew I should. It got... it got even worse than that. It's creepy enough when you can't trust anyone, but when you realize that you don't trust yourself... So I started thinking about how people I know would behave in a given situation. People I used to trust. And the strange thing was, after a time my thoughts sort of crystallized around three persons, and they weren't people that I would have chosen on a purely logical basis. It could have been someone like Kakashi or Ino's father, who know how to deal with problems like that. But it wasn't. Nor was it my father. Not even Asuma, which would have been logical."
He sighed.
"The first one was Chouji. He was... friendship. The second one was Naruto. He stood for benefit of a doubt. And the third one was you. Right or wrong."
Sakura could hardly breathe. This was something else, something different, not what she counted on.
"When I thought of Chouji, it was always about how far I would go for a teammate or someone like that if it were Chouji instead," Shikamaru said. "A friend. How far? After a time that wasn't hard to answer. Naruto... he was always willing to trust strangers, you know? Even if they seemed really evil or strange or anything. Sometimes he was wrong, but often he was right, because as a rule, things are never as simple as they seem. So that helped me often, too. But you... When everything else failed, it was always you there in my mind. I remembered when we were on a mission together and found two orphaned kids, lost and hungry, and Kakashi and I were discussing the battle plans and you just said, 'the children have to be fed first'.You were always like that. The children have to be fed. You can't tell that girl that her mother died, just like that, it's inhuman. You can't leave an old man sick and frail alone in a hut. It won't do."
"That's just common sense," Sakura said. "It's what everybody would do."
Shikamaru smiled. "Sakura, I love you so much," he said in a whisper. "You have no idea. Anyway, I usually thought of the three of you when I had to make a decision. And more often than not you were the decider. Is it right or wrong? What would Sakura say? You were there with me almost all the time, helping me. But I wasn't in love with you. Your presence was more like a friend living in me. Someone I knew and trusted, a worthy advisor. Whenever I thought of you, life was easier, more bearable. But it wasn't love. Not like anyone else would mean it. You were with me like a photograph all those months. I tried to remember all you said and did in the years I had known you because I found it gave me courage. It gave me hope. I was lost and spent my days in darkness, but there were other people like you around, doing their job and making sure that others walked in sunshine. You were that sunshine to me."
Sakura had been trying to fight tears for a while but now they spilt over and started to fall. She couldn't remember anybody ever saying something this beautiful to her. He carried her around in his soul, like a part of him, his heart, his conscience.
"Don't cry, sweetheart," Shikamaru whispered. "I love you. I didn't want to make you sad."
"I'm not sad," Sakura said and for the first time since they were together she wasn't ashamed of her tears. "I never even heard anything so touching and sweet. You make me feel so proud."
"Really?" Shikamaru asked. "I thought you would think it weird. I thought you'd want a psychological evaluation that I could still distinguish between reality and cloud cuckoo land at a pinch."
Sakura looked at him and now she saw in a blink how this was unnamed, uncharted territory for him, too. He was just as scared as she was by all this. The river that she dreamed of carried her far away, yes, but when she waded out to the shore he was already there, but he came through the forest, bloody and bruised, breaking through the jungle, losing his way a thousand times and finding it again just to be there to meet her.
There was nothing else to say, no common tongue, no lingua franca to express what she felt, only those three words that are so overused that they mean nothing to most people and have to be given a new meaning by acts and emotions each time – just like one has to clean an object from all the mud and dirt that it had accumulated in centuries to see its real beauty.
"I love you."
A little later they were lying next to each other and listening to some distant radio music drifting in through the window, a song about rain and tears when Shikamaru looked at all the clothes lying in heaps around the room and said, "I know you said you weren't breaking the furniture anymore and we've both seen what happened. Now as to emptying the drawers which you also said you never did any more..."
Sakura punched his shoulder.
"Anything you break you're going to heal before I leave this room," Shikamaru said.
"Stop making fun of me. I'm sensitive to criticism."
"Yes, I can see that. But why is it that none of these clothes are suitable for a date?"
Sakura was biting her lower lip.
"So?" he asked.
"You just don't understand," Sakura said. "It should be something that you never saw on me and that would simply take your breath away and..."
Shikamaru shook his head.
"I saw you going out with Lee and Sasuke and a few other guys, too. I don't think you ever put that much effort into your looks..."
Sakura cut in, "But if it's someone important..." then she suddenly stopped and buried her face in Shikamaru's chest.
It's just a joke. He'll smirk and make fun of how ridiculously smitten I am with him, she thought.
His fingers were stroking her hair softly.
"I can see that this situation requires my skills for tactical planning," he said. "There's a very simple solution to this. We're going to buy you a new dress. Something that I want to see on you, something that – how was it? Oh yes, something that I find sexy, irresistible and wonderful on you."
Sakura looked up.
"But you hate shopping. Ino said that whenever she asks you..."
"Correction," Shikamaru said coldly. "I hate shopping with Ino. But you're my girlfriend and now I'm saying that we're going shopping. Take a shower, then get dressed and get your purse. End of discussion."
Sakura found herself obeying without a question. It felt good. Shikamaru was taking the lead and it felt good. If anyone else did the same, she would have a few things to say about how she was her own person and free will in general and such, but this was her man and she trusted him.
She went to the bathroom but didn't close the door. She was sure Shikamaru would come after her.
She looked in the mirror. At least her hair didn't need washing again.
She thought about what to wear for the shopping expedition and felt a little pleasant excitement. Shikamaru was offering to help her choose a dress for their date, now how cool was that? Sakura suspected that she would never admit to somebody else that she could be so shallow and flimsy, but she couldn't deny that she felt flattered.
It was just like chocolate. Sasuke bought her gifts dutifully for each and every occasion when it was required.
But never sweets. Those were useless. Extra calories she would have to work off.
It was always Ino who brought her chocolate or icecream when she felt lonely or brokenhearted. Once when she had a double shift at the hospital and had a particularly ugly row with Sasuke as a result (he hated it when something upset his plans), somebody started banging at her door when it was all over and she was sitting on the floor in the dark, too tired to think.
When she opened the door, it was Ino and she had a covered plate in her hand. 'Is he gone?' she asked curtly.
Sakura said 'yes', too tired to understand, too tired to care.
Ino thrust the plate at her, said, 'Pancakes. Eat them till they're hot,' and was gone without any further explanation.
It was something they never talked about again, but each time Ino said something bitchy or was even more irritating than usual, a little voice in Sakura's mind whispered 'pancakes' and she felt understanding welling up in her.
Yes, a long friendship was like that.
"Is there a reason why you are standing there, watching your shower instead of getting in?" Shikamaru asked. "I don't think it's going to perform anything interesting."
"I'm waiting for someone to wash my back," Sakura said with dignity.
"Oh I see," Shikamaru grinned. "I think we'll have to clean you very, very carefully. Those salesgirls are very finicky about customers."
He gave a little push to Sakura and then stepped in the shower after her.