Why, hello again. Apparently a little inspiration fairy gracefully floated down from the heavens, which Kathy then captured and is now keeping in a small cage over a boiling pot so that we will be given more ideas.
Well, here we go, a chapter filled with fairy tears and and maniacal muse laughter.
The day started with a cough. A small cough that was followed by more, and a scratchy throat. And so Shikamaru grabbed some cough medicine and one of the plastic medicine syringes and sat down with Asuma to give it to him. But Asuma didn't want his medicine, and the toddler made sure to convey this to his father.
Crying and howling and screaming, he pushed his father's hands away and attempted to make a run for it, though Shikamaru foiled this attempt by grabbing the boy and dragging him into his lap. Thus the real struggle began.
His face turned red as tears rolled down his cheeks, screaming no repeatedly as he seemed to go boneless in his father's hold, bending backwards and forwards and flopping any-which way in an attempt to be as difficult as possible. He tried to crawl through his father's arms or slip around him, almost succeeding a few times, but when it didn't work he shoved against his father's chest with his entire body, surprising Shikamaru and actually lifting him up a bit.
"Maybe he doesn't need his medicine." Kyoko suggested as she stood by and watched, and it took everything he had not to glare or snap at his small daughter when he answered her.
"Yes he does." He grit out, tightening his hold as Asuma only continued to howl louder, kicking and pushing and trying his hardest to get free.
A few minutes more of this and Shikamaru finally let him go, allowing him to run away and grab his blanket and his sippy cup off of the couch, watching his father distrustfully as he drank and calmed down.
It was a little while later when the kids were watching TV and eating dry cereal that Shikamaru acted, managing to force the medicine into the boy's mouth when he least expected it, though he spit most of it out on his leg which made him start to cry until Shikamaru cleaned him up since he didn't like that one bit.
The kids started to play at this point, running around laughing and giggling as they chased each other while Shikamaru cleaned up the cereal and refiled their cups, picking up a few of the toys they had taken out earlier. It was at this point that Kyoko got bored with the running around and got one of the coloring books and crayons out.
Asuma, after running around a bit more, discovered that his sister was no longer playing and went to search for her, his eyebrows scrunching up as he tried to puzzle out where she could be. When he finally found her he made a sound of excitement and hurried over to her, grabbing her arm to tug and urge her to play again.
"No, Asuma, I don't want to play anymore." Kyoko told him impatiently as he continued to tug. "Asuma! Stop it! I just want to color!"
Seeing that she wasn't going to do what he wanted and seeing that the coloring was distracting her, Asuma came up with a very simple solution.
He took it.
Hearing the sounds of fighting and tears, Shikamaru made his way into the living-room from where he had been fixing the kids' lunch and managed to enter the room just in time to watch his daughter shove her brother down onto the floor.
"Hey! No pushing." He called, and Kyoko whirled to face him with tear filled eyes.
"But he took the coloring book and threw all of the crayons everywhere!" She whined as a crying Asuma raced over to latch onto his father's leg and search for some sympathy, one last crayon still clutched in his fist.
"That's still no reason for you to push him." He watched her sniffle for a moment before sighing. "I made you two sandwiches, they're in the kitchen on the table. Help me clean these crayons up and then you can eat."
Kyoko sniffed one last time and knuckled her eyes before staring up at her father cautiously.
"... Can I have chips too?" She asked, to which Shikamaru nodded.
Even Asuma helped put the crayons into their box, though he whined whenever someone apparently did it wrong. As they ate Shikamaru started to put all of the stuff he had used to make the sandwiches back up, and when the kids got done eating Kyoko decided to try and be helpful by getting Asuma off of his chair, which he really didn't want.
"Come on Asu! Let's go play!" She said happily, wrapping her arms around the pouting boy and forcefully dragging him off of the chair. Shikamaru was just about to say something when Kyoko successfully pulled the small boy out of his seat, but the sudden weight proved too much for her because she stumbled back a bit, tripping over another chair and sending it toppling as the both of them fell, the chair falling on top of them.
Shikamaru quickly hurried over to them as Asuma started to cry, lifting the chair off of them and checking for any injuries.
"Are you alright?" He asked as he checked them over, and Kyoko huffed out a small yes that allowed him a small moment to give a relieved sigh.
And then he was furious.
"What were you thinking?!" He shouted at the small girl, "You could have cracked your head open or his head, and you almost broke the chair! You both could have gotten seriously hurt!"
"Sorry..."
"Just leave him alone! If he doesn't want to do something, then just let him do whatever he was doing in peace!"
Kyoko, her chin wobbling in the effort not to cry, stared up at her father for a moment before she broke.
"I wish mom was here!" She cried before turning and running out of the room, managing to hit him in a place that was far too sore and still bleeding profusely.
"SO DO I!"
The kids were upstairs napping, so Shikamaru had a few precious minutes to himself. Time to clean up a bit or maybe look over that packet that detailed the job in the tactical intelligence unit that Naruto had offered him since he had retired from taking missions. He could just relax and take a few minutes to himself before his children demanded everything and more from him.
But instead he only sat on the couch and buried his face in his hands.
Temari had been gone for over three months, nearly four now. One hundred and twelve days. A group had been sent to search for her after ten days, six days after she was supposed to be home or at least contact to explain what was taking her so long.
On the eleventh day they had found signs of battle and the broken remains of her fan. And blood. So much blood. They were told that most of it had been the one boy's, but still, too much of it had been hers.
The kids had been asking him at least three or four times a day when mom was coming home a few days after the realization had hit him that he might not have a living and breathing and fighting wife anymore, and he had broke.
He didn't remember yelling, he couldn't remember the words he had thrown so hatefully at them, but when he had come out of that painful haze a moment later and had seen their tear-streaked broken faces, he knew that he had told them something so unforgivable that he would do anything to go back to that moment and cover their ears and give them back that slice of hope and the sliver of innocence that he had destroyed.
He had told them that their mother was never coming back.
Asuma had stopped talking the choppy partial sentences he had been so proud of spouting off, and they had started to cling so desperately to him, crying so readily. They no longer slept in their own beds and instead kept a firm grip on him during the night, and the one morning he had gone to sign the paperwork to take him off of active duty and had his parents stay in the house so that the kids would wake up to a familiar face had not gone well.
When they had woke up and found him gone, after they had tearfully searched the whole house for him, he had been told that they had both been inconsolable, thinking that he was never coming back. They had made themselves sick from crying, and he couldn't stand to do that to them again, especially knowing that he was the reason. He really didn't know how he was going to be able to work or get them to handle it, it had been hard enough to get Kyoko to go to school after he had yelled at them and told them about Temari.
He missed her so much. He missed her every time their small hands reached out for him in the middle of the night, calling for him or her with tear-filled voices as they struggled to get as close as possible to him. He missed her every single time they looked at him with dark shadows in their bright eyes and questions balancing on the tips of their tongues that they refused to ask.
He wanted her back so badly. He wanted to grab her and hold onto her and never let her go, no matter how many times she would call him stupid or a crybaby. He wanted to grab her and shake her and demand to know how she could ever leave them when they needed her. He wanted to hit her, to hurt her as much as they had been hurt, and to tell her that he hated her even though there had never been a bigger lie because the only reason he hurt this much was because of just how much he loved her.
He was drowning, and he had no idea what he was supposed to do.
He heard the door open and close, but he didn't bother to raise his head. The kids were still upstairs, and he knew it was one of the rotating people who came in every day to check in on him and make sure he was okay.
He felt the firm hands of his mother rest on his shoulder and smooth back his hair. He lifted up his head to look at her, but found that she was blurred by the tears. He hadn't even realized he was crying.
"I don't know what to do." He sobbed, wrapping his arms around her waist and burying his face into her stomach, seeking comfort and the affirmation that he was doing something right. He wanted to know that everything was going to be fine and that his kids would heal.
As her hands smoothed his hair, he just wanted his mother to tell him that everything would be okay.
All of the stuff that happened with the kids happened to me last week while babysitting, though instead of a chair it was a glass top coffee table with cereal all over it that ended up on the floor. Oh, and the medicine was just a pumpkin patch of fun.
See yas latas!