Hello dear-hearts! Here's another chapter, just for you! (Yes, you! You rock!)

This one was requested by Seashells1000 who said (once upon a chapter 78):

"You should do one about a night where she has a nightmare,"

Right before calling me her favorite writer (Thanks a bunches!)

So here we go!

It was dark. Not the usual kind of darkness where you can sense something there, where you can feel the reassurance of the ground beneath your feet and the comforting support of blurs of even darker darkness that gives shape to figures and forms.

This darkness was eternal.

It swallowed even the faintest and the dimmest of lights with an insatiable hunger, greedily stealing away frantic breaths until the air became too thin and your chest too heavy. Until all you could think about was just giving in, just falling back into the abyss and giving yourself up to the creature whose silent howls and bellows shook the entire foundation of your life.

But then the dark was gone in a single instant just before the weakness became too much, and everything thing that had only moments ago been nothing became a something that burned too bright, the glaring white burning itself into her retinas to taunt her whenever she dared to think that closing her eyes would bring respite.

Then they were there, leaning over her, cloaked righteously in white from head to toe. All but for their eyes. Their eyes frostily burned from darkened hollows, frigid and flat as they looked over her. They were eyes that glowed with an evil pride as they lifted gleaming metal claws that dripped with a poison that froze her blood in her veins as it burned through the flimsy veil of her flesh.

The monsters -demons cloaked in intentions they deemed to be right- lifted those claws, giving her barely a moment to wish that there was some way to tear herself free from all of this, some way to find some kind of reprieve.

And the claws zeroed in on her heart, slashing out in a movement that was too fast for her to comprehend before tearing back, deformed and depraved blood covered hands reaching out to hold her still furiously beating heart in front of her face as her wounds -so many wounds, too many- wept blood, body screaming silently in tortuous pain.

And as the claws lifted once more, menacingly gleaming in the too bright light, what used to be Temari tilted back her head and screamed out, begging for death.

She felt hands on her shoulders, rough and hard as they tried desperately to restrain her. Her throat ached in a way that made her wish for nothing more than a glass of water and her skin was slick and sticky with a thick covering of sweat. The taste of salt was heavy on her tongue, and she realized that it was from a cocktail mixture of sweat and tears. Her ears rang with the sheer volume of the screams that filled the room, and she had the distant thought that she wished someone would help whoever was making such noise. There was so much pain evident in that desperate cry, and that person obviously needed help.

Cracking her eyes open she saw a blurred form leaning over her, coming to her to give her more pain, more of the ugliness that filled her body now to the brim. Feeling the hard bite of the hands and seeing the menacing form above her, Temari did the only thing she could think of in that choking moment. She fought.

She fought like a woman possessed, and truly that was what she was. She fought back with a desperation that choked of her breath in her throat and guided her hands in ways that her terrified mind would not. There were no well placed punches or attempts of using the momentum of the attackers body smartly against him. Instead her nails lashed out, sharp and menacing as they latched onto skin and tore. She bucked up and kicked, thrashing desperately as she tried to move, to somehow get free.

Quite suddenly she realized that she was, in fact, the one screaming.

Hollowly, as if a distant voice was calling out to her from such a tremendous distance that it could not be heard properly, Temari slowly picked up on the words that were being frantically thrown her way.

"...Temari! Damn it, Temari! Calm down! Please Temari, calm down!"

For a moment, all she really wanted to do was tell the poor man to calm down. He sounded as if he were begging someone away from the brink of death.

Finally one of her knees managed to catch her attacker in the gut, making him lose his breath for barely a moment, but it was long enough for her to buck out of his hold, causing him to fall off of the edge of the bed to land with a resounding thud on the floor.

Breathing raggedly as her heart beat a shaking tempo in her chest, Temari suddenly felt the world slip back horridly into place. Sitting up she shoved some of her limp hair away from her eyes so that she could properly look down at her husband as he stared up at her from the tangle of blankets on the floor. Furiously red marks sliced through the skin of his cheek from right under his brokenhearted eyes down to his chin. More marks streaked down his throat and across his shoulders, and his split lip slowly let out a single tear of blood that rolled down his chin, leaving a streak of crimson that glared accusingly at her.

Suddenly she couldn't breathe again, though this time it was for completely different reasons than she had had before. Tears, bitter and hot, rolled quickly down her face, chased out by the self hatred and disgust that filled her so that she was overflowing with it, the boiling pool threatening to bubble out and hurt everything she held dear.

Choking and sobbing she brought her knees up to her chest and buried her face into them, wrapping her arms around her legs as she began to rock back and forth, back and forth, back and forth as her entire body shivered, muscles trembling and twitching without physical cause. Each of the scars dealt to her over those ten long years throbbed with pain as if they had just been re-carved into her skin, but the pain that speared through her heart at the sight of what she had just done to Shikamaru, the pain she had just dealt him, was far hotter and far more crippling than any wound the demons could have ever thought to have given her.

Sobbing brokenly she shook her head as Shikamaru reached out for her, flinching back at his achingly tender touch. He tried to gather her into his arms but she refused to uncurl, continuing to rock as if that were the only thing that could fix her broken life.

"I'm sorry," She sobbed as he sat beside her helplessly, staring at her with desperate eyes that were filling with his own tears, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry..."

So sorry...

Well, there we are!

And also, Hektols dear, I would like it very much if you could explain these things (the failures in my fics) to me (preferably telepathically) before I write out my chapters and pat myself on the back. Thank you, dear one.

Well, I'll just go sit in a corner now since I'm such a failure. Don't worry though, I'll be back with a new chapter soon! (though it will be bathed in the tears of my sadness).

Toodles!