Chapter Six

Gaara handed it to her ninth morning after her return from Hidden Leaf. The scroll was tiny, as all the messages sent by falcons were. Temari's hand started to shake when she recognized the small, staccato-like handwriting on the thin parchment.

She looked up to find Gaara watching her with determined eyes. "It's for me."

"I know."

Temari cleared her throat. "It is personal."

"I'm not leaving."

For a second she debated turning around and leaving the room herself. Don't be ridiculous, she told herself firmly and shrugged. "Whatever you want."

Shikamaru's handwriting was very much like himself. His words were so even more. She could almost hear him read out the tiny words on the parchment before her. Temari stared at the paper as the letters blurred in front of her eyes. Bastard. Idiot. Asshole. She closed her eyes and ran through a dozen of other rude names she had picked up in various places and continents. When she looked again, the words hadn't changed. That was Shikamaru for you: always honest.

…

Fall had turned out to be her favorite season in Hidden Leaf.

The trees slowly turned from green to gold and red, vibrant, living colors. The sun was warm but nights were cool, resembling desert climate though not as extreme; clear, starry skies and occasional bleeding moons.

"Sorry," Shikamaru had told her earlier. "I still have to complete a few request files. Go home already, will you?"

Temari had liked the way he had said home and meant it, and therefore had decided to prepare a small dinner for the two of them. Walking back, she was once again torn between the fact that she would be going back to Suna in a week – and was looking forward to it – and that their time together was cut short by that fact. Humming to herself softly, her hands in her pockets, she was looking into the sky when suddenly a chill ran down her spine. Poised, she gripped the small fan she usually carried with her instead of her larger one when inside a village with both hands, ready to attack. The figure that slowly crystallized from the shadows did so with an almost inaudible rustling of cloth and only then Temari recognized two things: that the person was a Konoha Anbu, and that he was injured.

"Are you alright?" Temari dropped her hands from her fan and squinted into the darkness that seemed to coalesce around the figure. The shadow took another unsteady step and supported itself by leaning against the next wall.

"I'll be fine." His voice was a toneless whisper that spoke of the strain he had to be under in order to hold himself upright.

"You're injured," Temari asked. "How bad is it?" Without asking for permission she stepped into his personal space, wrapped an arm around the Anbu's waist and led him a few steps into a spot of light a lantern cast over the otherwise darkened street. The shadow morphed into a person, clad in the dark, non-descript Anbu cloak. The light hit the porcelain mask and lit it up in an eerie glow, red, bloody lines on white. The man shook his head slowly, his voice not rising above its initial whisper. Either speaking hurt or he was trying not to wake the people living in the street. Temari strongly suspected the first.

"It's okay."

"It's not. You need to go to the hospital." Temari's arm was still around the Anbu's waist. It was a thin waist, she suddenly realized, despite body armor and cloak. The Anbu's figure was too small to be the one of an average man. Temari took another look at the mask. It was neither a bird nor a dragon, so she ruled out two people, but of course there still were enough other Anbu she didn't know- "Ino?"

The Anbu breathed a sigh. "Yeah."

"I'm taking you to the hospital."

"No." Despite her obvious pain, Ino's hand clamped around Temari's arm vice-like. "Just take me home. I'll be fine. I ran through the basic medic training, I can stop the bleeding. Please," she added, like an afterthought.

Temari couldn't say what made her cave. Every ounce of reason demanded that she take the woman to the hospital and see her checked in – and yet she sighed in exasperation, slipped her arm back around Ino's waist and tried to support most of the woman's weight by herself. Thankfully, Ino's small apartment wasn't far and nobody crossed their path. Temari opened the door and helped her to the bathroom where Ino sank down on the edge of the tub while Temari went to close the door. When she returned, Ino had stripped off the mask, her cloak and her chest armor, revealing a deep gash in her side. She already was holding a kunai.

"I'll do it," Temari said and took the knife from Ino's hands to cut away the material of her shirt. "What happened?"

"A shuriken," Ino said tonelessly and closed her eyes. "You'll have to pull it out."

"For the love of-!" Temari cursed. "Towels?"

"In the cabinet over there."

Temari stood and returned with a few clean towels and a bowl which she filled with warm water. "This is going to hurt. But you know that."

Ino's eyes were still closed. The only indication for her pain seemed to be her hands: they were curled up into tight fists at either side of her, resting on the tub edge. Her knuckles were white under the strain. Temari went to work.

Temari was no medic but as every shinobi she had been trained in basic field first aid. As quickly and gently as possible, she retrieved the foreign object from the wound, washed it and then used disinfectant and gauze to cover the injury. From the blue glow around the edges of torn skin she could see that Ino was using chakra to slow the bleeding and was glad. The last thing she needed was blood all over her, and Shikamaru to see her like that.

"Please tell me you refused to go to the hospital because you have it under control," she said wearily, not sure whether she was supposed to feel awe or anger. "You should let it get checked out by medics anyway, just in case."

"Yes to your question, and yes to your suggestion," Ino said and Temari was instantly reminded that she was talking to a woman. Ino possessed common sense, after all. "I'll have Sakura look at it tomorrow. I just didn't want to go there today." In the bright light of her bathroom she looked tired; her usually blue eyes an exhausted grey. "Thanks for helping me. Could I ask one last thing of you?"

Temari nodded, suddenly worried again. In her functional, black bra, her hair in disarray and deep rings underneath her eyes, Ino looked like a ghost. Still, there was a tiny smile on her face which told Temari the other woman was truly thankful. "Shoot."

"Tell Shikamaru I'm back and I'll report first thing tomorrow."

"Make it the second thing," Temari replied. "Go to the hospital first."

"Fine." Ino stood up from the tub edge gingerly and flinched in pain. "Damn."

"Do it right, if you have to do it," Temari told her and felt a grin spread over her face. "Say Fuck, or whatever."

"Don't make me laugh," Ino whispered and started to move back into the spacious room that seemed to serve as both living room, office and bedroom. "I apologize for not accompanying you to the door but I'm currently not at my best."

"Can I do anything else?" Temari felt she had to ask. She bit her lip. Thankfully, Ino shook her head. "I just need to sleep." She sat down on the bed carefully. "Thanks, Temari."

The blonde Sand nin nodded one last time and backed out of Ino's apartment.

Shikamaru was already waiting for her. He had prepared a small dinner, which made her instantly feel guilty about not having been there earlier.

"I ran into Ino," Temari told him. "She says she will report in first thing tomorrow." She turned around just in time to see Shikamaru frown one of his something's-not-right-here-frowns.

"Why didn't she report in immediately? I was in the office, she knew that."

"Maybe she was too tired," Temari offered and was rewarded a queer glance and another frown.

"Ino? Even if she'd been tired-"

"Fine," she interrupted him, her short, already strained thread of patience snapping rather abruptly. "She was injured. I saw to it and told her to have it checked out first thing tomorrow. She said she'd report in immediately after."

Shikamaru's frown increased. "How bad was it?"

"A shuriken in her side, just below the armor. She stopped the bleeding, I dressed the wound. She went to bed immediately. She looked like she hadn't slept in sixty-two hours."

"Or something like that," Shikamaru mumbled, his forehead still creased in worry. "She shouldn't have-" He interrupted himself. "Never mind."

"Classified information?" Temari tried to joke. It came out all wrong.

"Let's have dinner," Shikamaru said and turned away from her.

Sometimes Temari wished she could read minds. It would have told her what Ino thought, and Shikamaru. Whether her intuition was right and the blonde Anbu really loved him and whether he really saw nothing more than a friend in her. It would have helped her past the nights when she could feel the one presence that did not belong into their shared room at night.

The ghost in their bedroom was blonde.

Not blonde like Temari, all sun-bleached, sun-tanned and warm. The ghost was silvery-blonde, thin and very much substantial but never said a word. Perhaps that was the reason why Shikamaru never noticed it. Nevertheless it was undeniably there, right beside them, and Temari got to the point in which she could feel it staring at her, night after night. She felt jealous, sometimes, that Ino was able to elicit a reaction from Shikamaru when nobody else could, not even Temari herself. On the other hand she knew that Shikamaru loved her, so she felt almost sorry for the other woman. Pity was a terrible thing. Ino was a good shinobi and a loyal friend. Years of spending a few weeks of her time in Hidden Leaf and a few days of that designated time with Shikamaru's friends and family had taught her that. And still the veil hadn't lifted but nobody ever noticed. It seemed to Temari that there was an image everyone had created of Ino in his mind, so nobody tried to dig deeper. If Shikamaru really thought he had her figured out completely – was it even possible to know a person inside out, every secret, every flaw? She was inclined to think that such sort of thing was rather impossible. Shikamaru didn't know everything about Temari, and she didn't know everything about him. Why did he think there was nothing that could surprise him about Ino? Did he think the same way about Temari? She didn't want to think about that.

She brought the topic up once and never again. Shikamaru didn't understand her. Strange how he could be so perceptive in some and so clearly blind in other situations. And Temari didn't really want to go there again. Maybe Shikamaru and Ino weren't the only ones practicing denial.

…

Temari left the letter on Gaara's desk, crumbled into a tiny ball of paper. She didn't care whether her brothers read it or not. She suspected, though, that they would: she didn't blame them. In their place she would have done the same. Sometimes the need to watch over a loved one trumped the need for privacy. Besides, there wasn't much written on the morsel of parchment. Shikamaru wasn't a person to use many words, neither spoken nor written. He also wasn't a person to lie to make another person feel better, or to dance around an issue. He was predictable, that way, which made him unpredictable.

I chose you, the letter said.

Nothing else.