A/N. Loving reminder: This fic is written from Temari's point of view :) Consequently, very little of Ino and Shikamaru in this chapter but they will be in the next. Also, this is the second-to-last chapter of this story.
Chapter Eleven
When they finally saw what they had come there to see even Temari froze, struck speechless.
In the middle of Sunagakure's main square stood a tree.
Its huge branches extended about one and a half meters from the trunk and were lined with thick, soft needles. In the dusty gold of Hidden Sand, it seemed both incredibly bright and incredibly out of place. Even from where she stood, Temari could smell the familiar conifer forest scent. She started at the sight of the familiar figure that stood next to it.
"Nara," Gaara greeted the unexpected visitor. "What owes us the pleasure of your visit?"
Shikamaru nodded at the Wind Shadow respectfully. "I bring greetings from Hidden Leaf and the Hokage's respects. As promised, she sends you this."
"A tree?" Kankurou's voice was doubtful. "What are we supposed to do with a tree?" His glance, where it flickered over Shikamaru, was more than a little incredulous.
"It's not merely a tree." The voice did not belong to either Kankurou, Gaara or Shikamaru. Matsuri stepped forward, appearing from the shadows next to Gaara which meant that either she had been there the entire time or she had moved there inconspicuously. Either way, Temari was impressed. "It is supposed to be a Christmas tree, right, Ambassador?"
Shikamaru nodded. "I also brought the necessary utensils to decorate it."
Matsuri's eyes were bright with joy. "I read about this. It is winter in Hidden Leaf, then, right? Is there snow? A lot of it?"
There had been a few shinobi in the square already and even more civilians. Every single pair of eyes was directed at the tree.
Gaara took a step towards Shikamaru. "I recall there is a tradition when it comes to decorating it, too." And, when Shikamaru nodded: "We should leave the ones whose happiness will give others even greater happiness to do the decorating. The children of the village will do the honors – tomorrow, before the sun sets. Spread the word."
The people scattered in all directions to pass on the news, talking animatedly.
"Nice trick," Temari said and grinned at Shikamaru. "How did you transport it?"
Wordless, he indicated at a scroll tucked into his bag. A second one was carefully put away besides the first – the decorations, most probably.
"Who had the idea?"
"Yes, who?" Shikamaru pulled a face. "Naruto, of course. He persuaded Tsunade-sama to send one over. I couldn't stop him; he was behaving worse than a child."
Grinning, Temari shook her head. "At least the season is right. I don't think it could have survived constant sand storms."
"I think he actually thought of that."
Mock-shocked, she looked at him. "No! You're telling me Naruto showed an anticipatory mindset? The world is coming to an end!"
"Troublesome," Shikamaru muttered and she supposed he was referring to the fact that his superior had had such an idea, not to her mocking him. "Anyway, it would be nice if I could stay here for one night. I won't bother you, I have to be on my way tomorrow at dawn…"
"Nonsense," she said resolutely and took his arm. "Have dinner with me and Hatori. The guest room is unoccupied. You can stay there."
"Thank you."
"How's Ino, by the way?"
Shikamaru looked surprised, then doubtful. Temari laughed. "I'm married, idiot. And besides, I've been exchanging letters with her for the past half year."
"She's doing fine. I think."
"You think?"
"She's fine. I don't know what you told her the last time you were in Leaf but she punched me afterwards."
Temari grinned. "And then?"
"What, then?" He echoed her, his brows raised. He was obviously giving her only a part of the story but that was fine with her. Temari could live with that as long as it meant Shikamaru was alright. She decided to dig deeper, nevertheless, and wriggled her brows suggestively.
"Are the two of you going out?"
"Oh God, this old story again," he sighed. "No, of course not."
"Of course not?" Temari echoed, feeling anger building at the bottom of her stomach. Anger at Shikamaru – for Ino's sake. "What does that mean? You don't see her as a woman? You think because she can't use her legs-"
He pulled his arm from her grasp rather forcefully. "Don't put words into my mouth, Temari. Ino's still Ino, no matter what happened to her. You know I never saw her like that. She's my best friend."
"And we all know that never works out."
"You watched too many movies."
Shikamaru turned towards the square again. A few children were still standing in front of the tall fir, gaping in wonder. It was strange, seeing the dark green she had always associated with Konoha in the main square of her home village. A relic of ancient times – something impossible suddenly made possible by one person who had thought of them; and one who had taken the pains to make a dream come true.
"She loves you," Temari said to Shikamaru, the words she had thought so often suddenly exploding from her like a waterfall. "Whatever you think, or do. She has loved you all the time, even when the two of us were together. She still does. Many things may have changed in the past years, hell, even we have changed. But Ino hasn't. Her feelings haven't."
"How would you know?" Shikamaru's shoulders were tense. But for the first time since she had gotten to know him, he answered her with a counter-question. For the first time that she could remember he hadn't no answer. "Has she told you or are you assuming?"
"I know."
"Intuition?" He chuckled drily, still not looking at her. "Never mind. Even if… It has been a long time. We're not the same people anymore."
"I don't think it would matter to her. She's loved you since you were children – why would she stop now?"
There was an obvious answer to her question and Temari knew Shikamaru knew it, was well. But he didn't ask anything further.
"Naruto also sent the transcripts of his last meeting with the daimyo of Shimo no Kuni."
Temari sighed, both because he was so predictable and because there always was more work to be done. "Let's go to the office, then." And, which a queer look at him: "Your presence, Nara, spells work. I was hoping for a day off."
"Sorry to disappoint," he said with a casual shrug and the corners of his mouth twitched.
Temari smiled. "Troublesome as always."
"Don't you use my words against me."
…
When decorated and covered with fake snow, red apples, golden globes and a myriad of small, white lights, the Christmas tree in the middle of the square was beautiful. Children had spent hours, aided by a few shinobi who took it upon themselves to climb up the ladders provided by neighbors, to complete the masterpiece. Now it stood, tall and beautiful, while night slowly fell. The sky was clear. The first stars would be visible soon.
"It truly is beautiful," Hatori sighed.
Temari shrugged. "I don't know."
"You think it's not?" Her husband turned to watch her carefully. He knew her well – he could see it wasn't the fact that she disliked the sight but something else. His warm, big hand touched her arm. "What do you think?"
"I think it looks strange," she confessed. "Like it doesn't belong here. Like when you are in a forest and suddenly see a sand dune, or are attacked by a trycht. It just… Doesn't feel right."
Hatori turned back to the tree and observed it critically. "I think it looks alien, yes. But there's nothing wrong with it."
"No." Temari sighed. "I guess it's because I have seen such trees in the forest often enough. I just can't see it as a singular thing here in Suna, I guess."
His brown and blue eye watched her warmly. "You've seen two worlds."
…
Temari's world was the desert. It was a stroke of luck – or fate, perhaps – that the happiness should return to her life was given to her by the desert, as well.
Two shinobi who had been on patrolling duty on the north-eastern frontiers of Kaze no Kuni carried in an unconscious man one day. Temari happened to be at the gate when they came into view, moving as fast as possible without shaking the burden they were carrying between them too much. Interrupting her talk with the captain of the guard she strained her eyes to see the two specs that were steadily moving closer.
"Temari-san," the captain said and handed her his binoculars. The specs were Suna nin alright. She recognized them as a special jounin and a chuunin whose name she did not recall.
"They're carrying an injured person," she told the captain. "Call for medics – and for Benika." She added the intelligence officer as a standard operation procedure. A stranger – no matter how injured he was – was not to be left unsupervised in Hidden Sand.
When the medics arrived with a stretcher, the two Suna nin had almost made it to the gates. The medics rushed outside, Temari, the captain of the guard and the intelligence officer hard on their heels.
"Report," the captain barked.
"We found him in the middle of the Red Sea," the senior shinobi reported, referring to a plain whose sand was of a dusty brick red and therefore had earned its name. "He seemed to have been attacked by sand pirates. He is wounded and already was severely dehydrated and hallucinating when we found him." Every desert-born knew the sighs of dehydration.
"We just couldn't leave him to die, Sir," the chuunin said anxiously. He was looking at his superior and back to the injured, back and forwards, and Temari recognized the signs of hysteria. The kid was barely fifteen. It probably had been the worst he'd ever seen. It served to remind Temari that the generation after hers had grown up without war and death. During her time, he wouldn't even have made it chuunin that early.
"You did the right thing," she told him, her voice kind. "Mira," she then addressed a third medic who was monitoring the examination. "Would you take care of him?"
The elder woman, clearly familiar with the signs of shock, smiled and led the boy away.
"Stab wound to the ribs, defensive wounds on hands and arms," the remaining two medics reported in the typical staccato of their profession. "Probably internal injuries. Pupil dilation normal, no concussion, severe signs of dehydration. One, two, up!"
At their count, they heaved the still-unconscious man unto their stretcher.
"Keep me posted," Temari managed to call to them as they started down the street in a slight run.
It wasn't actually her task to keep track of the stranger. She had almost forgotten about him by the time the report reached her desk two days later: the man had gained consciousness again and was on his way to recovery. After a three-hour surgery to remove all the splints of bones in his body, the report stated, laconically. He'd been able to identify himself as Shima Hatori from Ishigakure. Attacked at the edges of the desert, the only survivor of his cell, he had been left to die by the sand pirates. Injured and alone, he had stumbled through the desert until the Suna patrol had found him.
"Interesting," was Gaara's comment. Kankurou glowered. Temari went to visit him in the hospital.
If he was a spy, he had gone through great lengths to enter Suna. If he was a spy he was remarkably forthcoming with information, and his one blue and one brown eye looked at her directly. Temari sensed nothing but the truth from him.
Ishi was overjoyed to hear he still was alive. So far, everything spoke for him. Temari, spending a few hours at his side for questioning every day, found he was an intelligent, kind character who seemed like he had nothing to hide. She liked talking to him. She met him on the hospital corridor once, on her way back from a lunch meeting with Mika which the medic hadn't been able to attend because a major emergency had come up. Hatori invited her, rather jokingly, to a cup of the thing the hospital called coffee. The brew was abhorrent but the company was just fine. Temari stayed far longer than she had intended. Still, he probably would have disappeared from her life had not his health received a severe setback after two weeks. The Ishi shinobi came down with a double pneumonia and almost died and when he did survive he had to stay for another significantly stretched time for another recovery, and when he was completely recovered Gaara invited him to stay for an upcoming diplomatic event as an unofficial envoy to Ishi.
That was the moment when Temari asked herself if she would always fall in love with men who only travelled back and forth between her and their own homes.
When the time of his appointed leave drew closer, Temari did the only thing she was capable of: she stopped talking to him. Shikamaru would have let her be. Hatori hunted her down and asked her what he had done wrong, and what could she say: that she was too afraid of him breaking her heart? It made no sense.
"This isn't supposed to make sense," he told her. "Would you go out with me if I stay in Sand for a bit longer? Say, for another half a year?"
Temari stared at him, open-mouthed in a rather silly display of surprise. "You can't do that. They're waiting for you in Ishi. Your family…"
"Will understand," he interrupted her, his two-colored eyes gazing down at her steadily. "I'd like to see where this is going before I make any final decisions. What do you think?"
"What is going where?"
"We're going somewhere. I don't know where but I think I rather like it. What about you?"
She didn't look at him. "I think I like it, too," she confessed silently.
Hatori kissed her. Temari wasn't used to not being the one to take the initiative, but it felt right. It felt like the beginning of something new.
The end of something old.
…
"Do you miss Ishi a lot?"
Hatori looked at her, thoughtful. Sunlight played in his auburn hair, danced in his two-colored eyes. Temari followed the lines of his face with her eyes and was amazed at how familiar they had become to her: his sharp nose, the little laugh lines, the silvery scar above his left eye.
"I do," he said. "But if I went back, I would miss Sand." With a sparkle dancing in his eyes, he wrapped an arm around her and pulled her closer. "I'd miss your brothers, and your friends giving me lectures. I'd miss the sunset over the desert. And I'd miss watching it with you."
Temari relaxed into his embrace for a second before getting up and walking to the banister of the flat roof they were standing on. The last sunlight died. And suddenly the lights on the tree went on, one by one, until the entire plaza was bathed in warm, candle-like light. Automatically, Temari stretched out her hand and Hatori came to stand next to her, his warm hand closing around hers and tightening.
"I love you," Hatori said and she whirled around, looking at him. It still surprised her that he could put so much feeling into such simple words. "It's not bad, coming from different words. It makes you the person I love more than anything."
"I suppose." Blinking, Temari looked at the bright tree again, followed its contours with her eyes where the candle light bled out and the night began. It actually wasn't so bad. Perhaps she could get used to the sight, like she had gotten used to the forest and its ever-changing faces. "It is quite pretty, actually."
Hatori's other arm crept up to wrap around her again. She leaned back against him. "Don't go away."
"I won't."
It wasn't so bad, living in two worlds. Temari supposed she had gotten the best from both.