My my my, look at what I found drifting around my brain. This was inspired for the ever delightful jayjoan who reviewed all of my ShikaTema centered chapters. She said:
"...shikamaru and temari's relationship after the 10 years makes me nervous... I'd love to see just them in one moment, and learn more about how they've managed to fall in love all over again..."
So this is kind of a little piece of that (not really, but still), all for you!
Temari wished that life was easy and that she didn't have to give so much for a chance at the happiness that rightfully should have been hers without so much trial. She had been kept captive and tortured for years and had lived through the most excruciating physical and mental pain that one could possibly live through, sanity remarkably intact, and she had thousands of scars littering her heart and body to prove it.
And yet it seemed that whatever sadistic God that was playing puppet master with her life was not yet done with attempting to destroy her.
The nightmares were continually getting worse every time she attempted to get some sleep, the blinding light shining down on her exposed flesh, shining on her dripping scars with a stark clarity that made her want to become sick, shadowy demon claws formed as scalpels tearing her apart to leave her bleeding as their poison seeped through her like acid. The sheer pain that she swore she could still feel radiating from "healed" wounds echoing through her and forcing her awake, a shrill scream of horror and pain balancing precariously on her lips though the sound itself was wrapped too soundly in fear to be released.
She remembered the first time Shikamaru had tried to wake her up and she had ended up attacking him. The red marks from her nails on his throat hadn't faded for days and the black eye he had recieved from her fist had been even more stubborn. It had taken a few more tries and numerous more wounds before they had figured out that he couldn't try to wake her or restrain her, and the way her thrashing and nearly indiscernible whimpers had to continue on was tormenting them both.
Because of the continuous sleepless nights and stress there were dark smudges of half-moons painted beneath her eyes and they had had to make sure that her kunai were taken from their hiding spots around the bed in case she instinctively reached for them during one of the nightmares. Due to all of this her relationship with Shikamaru was straining against the delicate stitches that kept it from crumbling apart around them and she had no idea what to do to help keep it together.
And then there were her children. They were grown and were at the ages where they didn't need her to be there at every turn and it tore at her because she needed them so desperately. Asuma was better about it, helping her or talking to her when she got bored, telling her as many stories as she wanted so she could get some hint as to how her babies -and they had only been babies when she had left- had grown into the people they were. But Kyoko swung between the mindsets of happy that her birth mother was back and that they could patch up the ashen remains of their relationship and then sullen because she didn't know the woman who was trying to desperately fit back into her life.
Because Temari hadn't managed to get her physical or mental health back to the level that was needed to get back to work to take missions she was usually stuck in the house alone throughout the day, and though her old friends dropped by when it was possible to keep her company and bond it was just so unbearably lonely to sit in a house where the reminders of memories she had missed drifted through the halls like ghosts.
She looked through the photo albums Maria had lent her, studying each photograph as if it were scripture and she was a devout, needing to search for even the tiniest piece of the puzzle of what she had missed in their time apart.
She saw that Shikamaru had briefly taken up smoking again only to stop after about a year or two, probably from the urging of Maria or someone involved with the children. She saw that when Kyoko had been eight she tried to cut her hair, ending up with disastrous results, and that when he had been five Asuma had chipped his front tooth. She saw that there was once a time that Kyoko and Asuma didn't even seem to want to be in the same room as the other, and she saw that the same could never be said for Asuma and Ringo.
She saw that they had managed to hold onto a bit of happiness from the hand they had been dealt and it relieved her that they had managed to do this, even if it was without her.
But it also killed her excruciatingly slowly because it was all without her.
On one of the days where she was alone and flipping through the albums Shikamaru appeared as if by magic, looking down at her slightly slumped form before sighing and reaching down to pull her to her feet.
"Shika, what-"
"Go get dressed." He ordered, Temari instinctively and instantly bristling at the demand.
"Excuse me? What do you mean 'Go get dressed?'"
"Just do it and stop being so troublesome."
Practically growling but deciding to go along with whatever he was doing just to see why he was being so uncharacteristically insistent Temari stomped upstairs, tossing on a comfortable shirt and pair of pants before stomping right back down stairs to slip on her shoes, glowering at Shikamaru the entire time.
He wordlessly opened the door and allowed for his wife to sweep past him, waiting for her to pause when she realized that she didn't know where she was supposed to go before he stepped in beside her, a slight smirk on his face that only managed to piss her off even more as he led her to where he wanted to take her.
When they finally stopped Temari found that all of her irritation slipped away as if it had never been as she stared at the front of a little restaurant. It was obviously a bit older than she remembered and the once grey and weary roof had been replaced with sturdy brown shingles and the door had been painted an eye-catching red but she remembered the place as clearly as if she had never left and it had never changed. It had opened many years ago on one of her working trips to Konoha and they had gone on one of their first dates there, and it had become something of a favorite for the both of them.
Calmed and curious Temari stepped into restaurant as Shikamaru held open the door for her, peering around and noting that they still hadn't figured out how to water the little cactus plant that resided on the table by the door and that they had, however, finally fixed the glitch light that always flickered whenever someone opened the door.
They were led to a comfortable booth over in a quiet corner and Temari waited for the waitress to take their orders for their drinks before she turned to look at Shikamaru.
"So why did you bring me here?" She quietly asked, glancing around to try and pick out everything else that was familiar and was not.
"We need to talk." He answered simply and Temari felt a small but viciously hot lead ball of dread settle into the pit of her stomach, knowing that those words couldn't lead to anything good.
Maybe he had gotten tired of all of the stress she had added to his life and wanted to ask her to leave him and the kids so that they could go back to their stress-free and happy life with Maria. He was probably tired of not getting any sleep because of her nightmares, and how could she tell him that it would get better when she had a feeling that it wouldn't? The psychiatrist she had been seeing hadn't even bothered mentioning those empty words to her because they both knew that there was no way that such a wishful phrase could come true.
She knew that the words he had just spoken were a sign of the end of everything she held dearly, and the most pitiful thing was that she couldn't be angry about it. All she could do was miserably accept it because a small piece of her whispered that this was the best course of action and she believed it.
"Then talk." She demanded bleakly, not wanting to hold off the inevitable.
"The way things are going isn't working." He started, pausing to tell the waitress that they weren't ready to give their orders yet, unable to hear the sound of Temari's heart shattering to pieces around them. "We're trying too hard to get things to fit in a place that they just don't want to go and it isn't working."
She didn't want to hear it, not when she had been trying so hard, but she forced herself to remain in place and fisted her hands in her lap her nails digging into her palms and the miniscule pain forcing her to calm down.
"So what?" She muttered harshly, "Do you just want to take a break or are you looking for something more permanent?"
"Neither." He said simply as if he hadn't heard the vicious bite that her tone held, "We've both been trying to make everything go back to the way it was ten years ago and we need to stop before we ruin everything. It's putting stress on you when you don't need it, and we're both different people from who we were back then. What we need to do is realize that this isn't our old relationship but something different and we need to work with that."
Temari blinked and then blinked again, wondering when exactly Shikamaru had gotten so good at emotions and analyzing relationships because he was right. They had both been trying to settle into what they once had instead of realizing that that just wasn't possible anymore. They had both changed in their years apart and they had to learn each other again before trying to move on with each other.
"So… Is this supposed to be a date?" She asked, relaxing back into her seat as he sent her a disgruntled look that made her smirk.
"If you want to think about it that way then you can." He said, and Temari easily translated that into a yes.
"Hmm… You know, I generally have a three date rule about sleeping with people." She could, if she looked hard enough, catch the tiniest hint of red on his face that took her nostalgically back to when they had first started everything all those years ago.
Really, he was still so cute.
"Though I guess I could make an exception if we get dessert. Do they still have the caramel truffle ice cream here?"
Shikamaru huffed out a sigh and she heard him mutter his ever familiar troublesome, but neither of them could even bother to hide the smirking smiles that grew on their faces.
Oh! Also! This goes along with what my beautiful little Hektols said about chapter 54:
"...It's nice to see that the couple resumed their life like never happened."
And I just kind of wanted to show that they actually didn't. They were separated for ten years and went through so much when they were apart and when they finally got back together they had changed and had grown up without each other. They hadn't grown apart-they held on to each other too desperately for that- they had just changed and their relationship needed to change too.
Also! Also! I'm finally bringing Kiba and his lady into the story! It has been requested and I said somewhere around thirty chapters ago that I've had someone figured out for him but I just didn't have everything figured out about that. I know some people said that there were people in the filler episodes for him (I don't watch the animea so I wouldn't know any from that), but I couldn't remember and from the manga and I got the idea of my OC stuck in my head and she just wouldn't go away.
So... yeah.
I also got my hair cut off (about a foot) and it's now flippy and around an inch or two above my shoulders! I'm rocking it like a sassy sexy hippo (really, I come up with the weirdest things).
See you soon, my pretties!