Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.

So…not dead! Also, sorry. That's about what I've got for you. Good news is I've started working on the next chapter already so…hopefully something else soon.

I had actually started on what will be chapter 16 first before I realized that I need to address the issues in this chapter first. So hopefully I did this justice and I have a head start on the next part.

Anyway, onto the next chapter.

No Thanks Necessary

Chapter 15

Shikaku Nara shook his head as the boys all meandered back through the woods towards the house.

The minds of children were rather unpredictable weren't they? For all his supposed genius, even he could not follow the mental meanderings of his own child. He would never have thought that Shikamaru still had all of that guilt eating away at him. He would have thought that logic would have taken over by this point and the boy would have realized that he was not to blame for this whole fiasco taking place. But Shikamaru was so much like his father that at times the man seemed to forget that he was still just a boy, a child, and children can't always follow along to logical conclusions. They get hung up on emotions and fantasy and cannot move past it.

At the same time though, Shikaku felt a twinge of guilt of his own. He hadn't even realized that he was doing it, but he was ignoring his own child in the wake of figuring out the balance of the three additional ones that had been added so quickly to their household.

Hana was easy. In her later years of academy, she spent most of her time in class, training, or studying in preparation for becoming a genin. She mostly looked after herself, and only sought out the Nara parents for clarification questions and other small things. She was a hardworking and studious sort that applied her knowledge well in frequent and active training. She would make a fine ninja one day.

Additionally, she was not slacking off on her clan studies, if the seemingly endless piles of books of canine and other animal anatomy books he kept finding around her preferred study areas were anything to go by. She had jumped into veterinary studies in the wake of realizing her ease with chakra control in recent months and seemed to be enjoying the process very much, and somewhat enjoying having Shikaku carrying missives between her and her clansman that she was unable to contact until custody was returned to her mother.

The point though, was that Hana was set on her own and didn't require much active attention on his part.

Naruto and Kiba on the other hand - they required a lot more active participation. Someone needed to be physically on hand with them to curb where their impulses would take them, otherwise with them playing off of each other they would go to greater heights than they would be achieving alone. And considering one of the pair was the village's resident prankster and the Nara clan head had no wish to see his home in shambles in the wake of some disastrous prank, he was going to keep a stern and close watch on them both. Don't get him wrong, they have the possibility of being fine ninja one day but they needed instruction and guidance if they were to do so and a very hands-on approach with it to say the least. Alternate outcomes courses of action would result in…less than desirable outcomes.

But when it came to his own child, Shikamaru had always been just fine on his own, needing only a little nudging at best to see what his father was angling him to discover. Preferring to figure things out on his own and not have the interference, and he would undoubtedly interpret it, of his parents, Shikamaru was an independent child. He had taken to parenting his son in much the same way that his own father had seen to raising him. And in that he might have erred.

Yoshino was always telling him that Shikamaru was not just a smaller version of himself. Shikamaru was a child and would grow to be a different man than Shikaku. He needed to treat the boy like a boy and not like a short adult. But Shikaku hadn't listened. It wasn't just the women of the clan who could be stubborn. Nara men were smart, but they could get fixated on certain ideas just as any other man, and Shikaku had apparently mistaken his son for himself at that age.

Because he would have thought so, he had assumed that the boy would relish the time without the usually painstaking oversight that any heir, even of a clan as easy going as the Nara, would be under as they grow into the person that will be responsible for not only their immediate kin, but for every bearer of their name. The child was always ducking out of his responsibilities and lessons to go and lay on some random hill and watch the clouds go by anyway, just as Shikaku had done, as had generations before him.

But clearly he had made a mistake.

He swallowed thickly as their small group exited the shelter of the trees and they could begin to see the roofs of the houses of their clan members. Naruto and Kiba were jumping around at the front of their group and bolting towards the head house, where Yoshino could just be made out standing in the doorway, apron tied to her waist, indicating that there was food waiting for them when they came home.

He tapped Shikamaru on the shoulder and answered the questioning eyes with a small smile and a nudge towards the large barn where the doe would be birthed soon by the Nara clans own veterinarians. In Konoha, small animals were generally seen to by the Inuzuka clan, but large animals were looked after by the Nara. In addition to several pregnant doe that were currently being monitored, they had had a boar with an impacted tusk and an ill cow from out outlying village farm currently in residence for treatment.

Dropping off the now quite tired deer, Shikaku pulled Shikamaru along with him, away from any homes and questing ears, to have a conversation that need to be had.

Shikamaru had tense shoulders as he sat down, back against a tree, glaring at the ground and purposefully ignoring his father who sat down a few feet away with his back against a different tree and glancing up to the sky above.

"We need to talk son," his gravelly voice spoke softly in the calm afternoon.

Shikamaru grunted, his jaw tightening.

"This is part of the problem you know." Shikaku murmured, desperately trying to without a 'troublesome' that was fighting valiantly to be let loose. He cleared his throat, "You know, we Nara men are not big talkers, but I don't recall any of us taking vows of silence."

Shikamaru looked at his father with a raised eyebrow. "Huh?"

Shikaku smiled, "There we go!" He bore into his son's gaze in a way that wouldn't allow the young boy to pull away. "Shikamaru, we need to talk about this." He sighed, "I'm going to start by saying that I'm sorry."

His son looked startled, and jerked away almost reflexively, but his gaze still held. "You don't…"

"I do." He said firmly. "I was so caught up and trying to figure out the new dynamics of the three children coming into my home that I forgot to factor in my own child already in it." He bowed his head to his son in apology, finally breaking eye contact. "I haven't been the best of fathers to you in general, but in particular most recently."

"Old man…"

"Shikamaru," he tried to interrupt, but his own son shouted him down.

"No! You are a great dad! I swear! I just…" Shikamaru reached his hands out as though to find a far flung word and grasped at the air as he came up with nothing. "It's not your fault, I was just being selfish…"

Shikaku felt like he was being gut checked. His son's guilt over the whole situation was even overshadowing this whole interaction. "You are a child Shikamaru, and it is not selfish to seek the attention of your parents. Especially," he grimaced, "especially if you see others receiving it instead of you." He bowed his head again, unable to believe that he had lost track of his own child in the craziness of the situation. He of all people, an elite jounin of his village, should be able to keep track of the people under his own roof.

Shikamaru on the other hand was just being to look harassed by the whole situation. "Can we just agree that both of us were wrong and not do it again?" He had an embarrassed blush on his face and was once again studying the ground with seemingly deep concentration.

Shikaku chuckled at his son's unwillingness to discuss emotion. He was a true Nara through and through. And maybe that was part of the problem. He saw his son as a mini version of himself, associating all of the qualities that maturity and experience had granted him to his son in addition to physical and personality traits that were similar in nature. But he was still just a little boy, and this had been a sharp lesson to Shikaku to remind him of that. His son was still a child. An intelligent child, but a child nonetheless. And he would have to keep that in mind in the future and remember that maturity grows over time through experience and the lessons of life, this instance being one of them.

"We can go back to how we were before," he offered. "No after school training sessions, no…"

Shikamaru cut him off, "No, don't do that." His response was swift and determined and maybe even a little desperate. There was a forcefulness to his response that took Shikaku aback for a moment.

"But I thought that you didn't like them?" He asked his son in honest confusion.

Shikamaru looked up sadly and his father saw something odd in his eyes, an emotion that he hadn't seen there before and was having difficulty placing.

"Naruto…" he started, then bit his lip as he struggled to find a way to phrase what he wanted to say eyes drifting off as he focused on something beyond his father, "Don't take that from Naruto." He finally settled on. "He said…he said that it was like having a dad…" Shikamaru's voice was small, and wavered, and Shikaku wondered for a moment if he was going to see his son's tears. Those small dark eyes focused on his father once more and suddenly the man recognized the emotion in them, "Naruto doesn't know what it's like. I knew that…I really did! But I didn't understand it…" Shikamaru took a shaky breath. "I knew he was an orphan, but somehow I forgot that that meant that he was all alone…If he can know what a family feels like…don't…don't take that away from him…" His son trailed off, seemingly unsure if he was finished or not, but not knowing what else to say.

Empathy. It was empathy that he saw in his son's eyes. It wasn't sympathy, because though it was a small example, he now knew what being ignored in your own home felt like, and he couldn't imagine what it meant to Naruto, who had to feel that from the entire village for all of his life. Sympathy would not be accepted by Naruto anyway; it was too much like pity. But empathy, it was a new level of understanding upon which a relationship of trust could be formed.

"We could just…all do it together right?" Shikamaru swallowed and made a mindless gesture with his hand.

"You want training?" He asked incredulously. Up until this point, Shikamaru would rather have had a tooth pulled than attend training beyond Academy.

His eight-year-old shrugged and refused to meet his father's eyes, but the jounin felt pride billowing up inside. Shikamaru was taking the lesson of this situation to heart and well. His son would be careful in his use of words, and he would be empathetic to his teammates, giving him a better understanding of team dynamics and help him build a team towards greatness.

He reached over and tugged his son into his side, squeezing him tightly in a one-armed hug. "That sounds like a good plan son."

Both wearing small smiles, the pair rose and lumbered into their home, things beginning to look up for them all.

Sorry again about the long wait. I'm going to go work on the next chapter right now!

Please feel free to leave any comments in a review to let me know how I am doing.