Sorry about the wait dears; it's been that kind of week.
Enjoy!
Chapter four: Sparring
Gaara stares at the cat-masked ANBU trembling on the other side of his desk. "Temari…did that?"
"Yes sir, Kazekage sir!" the man affirms, his voice strained.
That's it, Gaara muses, Temari's finally lost it. It wasn't unheard of for ninja to lose their grip on sanity after returning home from the field. No, it was only far too common; in fact, a man from the third legion had recently hung himself upon coming home. Another had decided to resign from the ranks, and now dresses up in women's clothing at the local bar.
Perhaps Temari is suffering from some kind of severe post traumatic stress? No, no, that's not it; Gaara knows what the problem is, and it's not some psychosomatic Zombie Plague—at least, not literally. Idly, Gaara brushes his calloused fingers over Temari's medical reports, his lips pressed together in a firm line. That Nara Shikamaru. Gaara could squeeze that man's windpipe until he turned blue; he could bury him under a mile of sand, but it still wouldn't solve the problem.
Just as the ANBU is starting to sweat and sway under Gaara's unflinching glare, the Kazekage finally speaks. "Tell Kankuro to take over my work, just for the morning. I have something I need to attend to."
"But sir—"
"I thank you, as the Kazekage and as a friend, for bringing Kankuro to my office and relaying my message." Gaara continues to stare at the man without blinking, until the ANBU bows and mumbles an affirmative.
Gaara shakes his head from side to side, and leaves his office as well.
"Kazekage, sir!" his secretary calls. "The dignitaries from the eastern provinces are due in less than an hour. Where are you going?"
"I have something important that I need to attend to personally," Gaara rumbles.
"But—"
"Kankuro will meet them in my place."
"But—"
"Thank you," Gaara says with a small wave as he strides down the staircase, leaving the red carpeted halls of his office suite behind. Kankuro is probably going to be angry at him, but there is something that Gaara must do; there is information that only he, as the Kazekage, knows. Thus, it is imperative that he take care of this matter personally and punctually, for the good of the Sand.
Gaara admits to himself for a fraction of a second that he is also looking for an excuse to escape his desk for the morning, and a way to piss off the eastern dignitaries. As the old saying goes, to kill three quail with the same stone; though his most important quarry is, by far, Temari.
Just as the reports had stated, Gaara finds Temari moving her few belongings into a guest room. "I heard your pipes burst in your bathroom," Gaara murmurs; despite his quiet tone, she jumps, as if startled. Gaara suppresses the urge to sigh; it seems he has this effect on people, even on his own siblings.
"Funny thing, that," Temari mutters with a fake smile, her eyes crinkling. "They just don't make plumbing like they used to, hey, little brother."
Gaara nods gravely. He knows that Temari is the reason for the burst pipes. The fixtures had been ripped off the wall, the tiles splintered from the force of her jutsu; he had felt her chakra flare from two stories up. "It might take a while to get it fixed," Gaara replies at last. "You know how it is, after a war."
"It's fine, I don't care. Hey, you don't need to do that," Temari protests as he carries a box inside of her new room.
"I want to," is all Gaara says.
"Tch. I'm strong enough to carry them all by myself."
"I know." Gaara chances a look at his sister's face; her eyes are a dead shade of green, rimmed by red and purpled underneath by lack of sleep. Her cheeks are no longer bronze, but have a strange pallor with a greenish tint. Her hair is frizzier than usual, her pony-tails coming free of their restraints and flying around her face like a frenetic halo. She looks like shit, Gaara thinks.
"Have you come to pry?" is Temari's reply. She holds a box in front of her warily, as if she can use it as a shield to ward off his attack.
"Actually, I came to ask you if you wanted to spar. I'm avoiding the eastern dignitaries, and I need a good excuse."
Temari snorts at that. "Those guys are total douches."
"Please help me, Temari-neesan? It's for great political importance—"
"Horse shit. You just want to piss them off, and use that to get leverage in the upcoming agreement. You sneaky bastard. Yes, I suppose I will help you." She gives Gaara a melodramatic sigh, then scrounges through the various boxes to find her uniform.
Gaara observes Temari as they exit the Kazekage tower. The sunshine seems to remove the heavy lines around her eyes, lends the kunoichi her more usual golden coloring. "I think I'm going soft," Gaara muses. "It's been three weeks since the war ended, and I haven't spared once."
Temari snorts. "Who'd want to spar with you? You're a beast."
"You do," Gaara replies quickly, "Because you are just as beastly." He moves in time to avoid her swat, though the sand shimmers in the air between them, braced for her attack. "Save it for the training grounds," he growls, though Temari knows he's teasing.
Then, just to stick it to her, he gathers the sand under him and practically glides through the city streets, forcing Temari to run after him. "No fair! No head starts!" Temari shouts.
Gaara shrugs, slowing his pace enough so he doesn't wind his sister, but still fast enough so that he still has a significant lead. "I'm the Kazekage. I'll do what I want, Wind-Stalker."
Temari sticks out her tongue, vaults herself in the air with a deft twist of her fan, and lands next to Gaara, availing herself of his transportation. "Ah, this is the way to travel."
"Cheater."
Temari laughs at that, a harsh, rasping sound, like sand caught in machinery. Still, he's proud that he got a laugh out of her; he feels his lips ghosting upwards in a smile.
"What do you want to do first, neesan? We could spar, or we could blow up rocks on the outcropping." Gaara doesn't know why he asks; he knows what she'll choose.
A bit of light comes back into her green irises as they widen in anticipation. "Blowing up rocks. Then I'll beat your ass into the ground."
By the time they're done, they have destroyed one rocky outcropping and two training grounds. "This was a good idea," Temari pants, "but I think I need a break."
"Those dignitaries are going to be waiting for me," Gaara replies with an exaggerated sigh. "See that you get enough to eat, Temari neesan. I read that it's important to get enough to eat when you have Zombie Plague."
She blinks up at him, her eyes clouded with confusion. "You—you believe in Zombie Plague?"
Gaara nods gravely. "I've discussed it with Uzumaki Naruto; it seems that female wind users are especially susceptible to Zombie Plague."
"But Naruto—"
"The kyuubi is a female," Gaara replies. "He shares your sickness."
Temari imagines a pregnant kyuubi—a pregnant Naruto—and breaks down laughing. "It is a serious matter, I assure you," Gaara mutters. He waits until she has regained her composure to add, "I hear that oatmeal mixed with ginger and eaten slowly will overcome the nausea. Also, I suggest you go to the library and research the plague; you might find good information there."
Temari nods enthusiastically. "The doctors don't know shit, right Gaara?"
"The doctors don't know shit," he echoes in all seriousness, nodding his head. "You want a ride back to the tower?"
"Mmmm."
The two coast off for the city, this time in high spirits. They part ways at the tower, Temari to go find bland foods, and Gaara to his office.
"Here's the Kazekage-sama now!" cries a voice bordering on hysteria. Kankuro rushes out of the office and grabs Gaara by the lapels; Gaara is nonplussed. "What the hell, little brother! You left me here to die, to die I say!"
Gaara glides past a cursing Kankuro and bows to his visitors. "Excuse me. There was a matter of utmost importance that I had to take care of. I trust Kankuro attended to your needs?"
"Hardly," a thin-lipped dignitary sneers. Perhaps he hopes to get a rise out of Gaara. Gaara merely levels him an unblinking stare as he takes his seat.
"Good," Gaara rasps into the uncomfortable silence that has fallen. "And what can I do for you today?"
The three envoys turn a bit green around the gills, and Gaara remembers how much he enjoys his job.
Temari is in the library after having pecked at a bowl of oatmeal. Gaara was right; she was hungry, though she didn't manage to eat more than half a bowl's worth of gruel. Still, that was better than nothing, and more than she'd eaten all day.
She has two books in her hand: one, "What to Expect When You are Expecting," and the other, "Plague Victims of the First Ninja War." She checks the aisles with ninja stealth before slipping the dust jacket off of the Plague book and slapping it onto the volume on pregnancy. She finishes off her little subterfuge with a subtle genjutsu, and voila—her book on pregnancy is, to all unsuspecting onlookers, merely a history of the plague.
Why am I doing this? Temari thinks as she stalks back to her room. She's not even sure if she's keeping this parasitical life form, this alien creature gestating in her guts. She could just abort it; in fact, that's what she probably should do. It's not like she's never had an abortion before.
Her mouth settles into a thin frown at that; she places a protective hand around her abdomen. The other one was different. That hadn't been a baby; that had been a time-bomb planted by an enemy ninja, something that was set to explode and destroy her; it had been an act of war. The entity inside of her now is different, very different, she assures herself.
But is it?
Okay, okay, so she had told Shikamaru that she was a virgin, but that wasn't technically true. Like any kunoichi, she ran the high risk of being raped on missions. It happens, even to the best of us, Temari thinks, keeping her thoughts free of any inflection. It's not a big deal. I lived. I should be thankful that brute took my virginity instead of my life.
She pushes the unbidden memories away as quickly as she can, forcing herself back into reality. She's standing stock-still in the middle of the hallway, but she doesn't remember stopping. Some ninja I am. Spooked by an old, stupid memory. Get a grip, Temari, she chides herself before flowing back along the shadowed hallway.
She's just doing research, she convinces herself. That's all. Like any ninja worth her salt, Temari is doing reconnaissance before a mission. Perfectly normal.
Yes, it's perfectly normal to hide in the shadows of your own home so no one finds out you have a clandestine book on pregnancy. Perfectly. Normal.
"I hate my life," Temari mutters, rounding the final corner to her new room. She closes the door behind her quickly and bolts it shut. She closes the shutters and lights the lamp before flopping down on her bed with the illicit volume. She opens to the first page with trepidation.
The first month, she learns, is plagued by nausea and mood-swings. Temari snorts; no surprise there. She frowns at the pictures of happy mothers held by their plastic-looking husbands. Civilians, Temari thinks with caustic superciliousness. She takes a permanent marker off of her night-stand and crosses out their slap-happy faces; she gives the women mustaches and beards while she blots out the men's faces altogether.
There is so much more she has to "look forward to," as the plague book so blithely tells her: a crushed bladder, an aching back, flattened feet; eventually, she will waddle like a duck. The strange-food-craving-thing sounds okay, though; Temari looks forward to the time when food will be appetizing again, even if the combinations—pickles and ice-cream, tomatoes and anchovies, pizza with pineapple—will be strange.
Temari flips to the chapter on delivery; in a moment, she wishes she hadn't. Even the book cannot gloss over the faces of women, all red and twisted in pain. She's seen ninja dying on the battlefield that look exactly like that: screaming, cheeks pinched, eyes wide with horror. "Hell. They better drug me for that part," Temari exclaims with a shudder.
She turns the page and looks at the pictures of the babies, wrinkly, blue-eyed alien life-forms. "That's supposed to be cute? They look like a bunch of pink prunes," Temari mutters at the book. She isn't sure if she wants one of those things; they look creepy.
Temari closes the book with a sigh and rests her hands on her belly. She's not very far along. Her stomach does not protrude, or if it does, she cannot tell the difference. She's always been a more heavily-built woman, and the addition of the nebulous zygote is not noticeable.
"Well, what do you think…you?" she asks her stomach. She isn't sure what to call it. She certainly doesn't want to call it "baby." She's also not comfortable giving it a proper name; that, too, makes everything seem too real. Perhaps 'Critter X'? Or maybe a name you'd give to a pet, like fluffy, or mooks? No, that doesn't seem quite right, either.
"I'll just call you Zombie Plague. Plague for short," Temari muses to her stomach. "Maybe Plague-y-chan when I'm feeling generous, or motherly." Temari feels her gorge rise at that; she hops off the bed and begins pacing around her room.
Temari does not have a single maternal instinct in her entire body. She has been bred, born, and trained to be a lethal killing machine; she has never even held a baby. The last time she interacted with a kid under the age of ten, she almost killed him. Granted, the kid had been a genin named Konohamaru who had threatened her with a giant Rasengan, but still.
"I don't know, Plague. What am I supposed to do with you? I can't keep you," she mutters to her abdomen. "I don't know what to do with babies. I'd probably suffocate you by accident. Or drop you. Or poison you. I'd leave my kunai lying on the floor and you'd gouge out an eyeball."
Temari sighs and sits down on her bed. "Still, I don't want to get rid of you. You're probably relieved to hear that, aren't ya, you little fucker." She puts her hands on her stomach and smooshes folds of belly fat together. No, an abortion is not going to be an option; this little bundle of cells was created by an act of love—oh gods, that sounds so cheesy, but it's true.
This thing inside of her is a moment frozen in time, when she and Shikamaru had fucked in a grimy, standard-issue army tent in the middle of the barracks, surrounded by hacked up zombie bits and the jubilant cheers of the Joint Shinobi Army. It's something small and shiny and infinitely more valuable than the badges for excellence in the field she has received.
It's a little piece of herself and Shikamaru becoming one, like a virus infecting cells, or a mushroom blooming on a rotten log. She means this in the best way possible. She is the blood and he is the pathogen; she is the mud and he is the fungus. His mycelium are strung up around her guts like festival lights, and he is sending out a fruiting body into the hollow place inside of her.
"Aw, I'm having a tender, nostalgic moment," Temari coos down at Plague. But the moment doesn't last long. Temari starts thinking about what she is supposed to do with Plague once it's born. How will she raise it? What is she going to do with it?
How is she going to tell Shikamaru?
"No," Temari growls. "It's mine. My Plague." She wraps her arms protectively around her stomach.
Shit. She hadn't really thought about Shikamaru. Gods, he had thought they were dating just because she had slept with him; if he finds out that she is pregnant, he'd shit a brick. He'd demand that she marry him and move to Konoha.
It ain't ganna happen. Shikamaru does not own Temari. She will do what she wants, where she wants, and how she wants. Fucking bastard. She's not going to dress up in a party dress and high-heals, vacuuming with one hand while jerking him off with the other. Aw, hells no.
But how long can she hang around Suna without someone recognizing that she is getting fat? She has to get out; go on an extended D ranked mission for the next nine months, then come back with the baby and say she just found it. That's right, she found the baby in the gutter, poor thing. She'll adopt it and no one will be the wiser—problem solved.
But…what if Plague comes out looking like Shikamaru, with dark hair and brown eyes? What if Plague starts playing with shadows instead of wind-jutsu—what then?
Sorrow washes over Temari; she collapses on the bed, suddenly dizzy. But before too long, the sorrow leaves; instead, she can feel her blood boiling, her skin flushing, her body filling with the need to kill the son-of-a-bitch that put her in this impossible position in the first place.
She hadn't wanted to get pregnant. She was out of her element here, out of her league, out of her freakin' mind. And whose fault was it? Who had given her Zombie Plague to begin with? Shikamaru, that's who. And the fucker wasn't even here to help her figure it out! Nevermind that she was the one who broke up with him, because dammit, it had been his fault in the first place!
Possessed by righteous rage, Temari storms out of her room and heads to the training grounds. There are a few training posts with Shikamaru's name on them that need to be decapitated.
a/n thanks for reading! Please review:)