AN: I'm marking this story as completed, as this catches up to where I have read/watched the series. If it interests you, feel free to keep it on a watch list because I may continue this at a later time. For now I don't want anything that may have come later in the cannon to interfere with what I'm writing in my Belongs to Her storyline. ~AkaneNyx


Follows Liaison - 1


- 2 -


She'd been in town for almost two weeks: filling his time, filling his mind.

He didn't know what had come over Tsunade. At the end of their noon meeting to update her on the progress that they were making she had made a very unusual announcement, "You've both been working so hard on this; you're actually ahead of schedule. Take the weekend off. I'll see you two Monday morning."

Shikamaru and Temari exchanged a curious look.

"Get out of here. Relax a bit." Tsunade insisted.

They were both confused, but it was a nice afternoon and they weren't about to waste by giving Tsunade the opportunity to change her mind.

After grabbing a quick lunch and picking up a few groceries to restock Shikamaru's kitchen, they ended up lying on the roof of his apartment building watching the clouds. They lay side by side on the tiles, holding hands for a couple hours. The clouds slowly thickened and darkened, changing from fluffy and white to ominous and slate-gray. The breeze abruptly turned colder. She wondered at the change in weather, as any change at all was unexpected in Suna. He smelled the rain before it hit and quickly ushered her inside. They slid back in through the living room window just as the first drops were falling.

It was a gentle sort of rain, which was unlike anything Temari had ever seen. On the odd occasion that it rained in Suna it was torrential. Shikamaru watched her from the kitchen as she sat on the couch watching to drops splatter against the window.

She sat transfixed as he prepared something that Chouji had taught him to make the night before. Chouji didn't demand a reason for his sudden desire to learn his way around the kitchen. Shikamaru felt that Chouji had known more about his relationship with Temari than he'd ever let on. After all, he had been along on one of the Suna missions, and had willingly spent much of his time holed up in their room alone.

She only wandered away from the window when the smell from his kitchen became more interesting than the rain.

After dinner, they cleared the table and retired to the rug in his living room for a game of shoji. The storm turned violent as they played. Lightening and thunder were punctuating the howling winds. She found the storms here much more frightening than she would have at home. Perhaps it was something about the way the land laid or maybe being surrounded by trees made it worse. A storm like this in Suna would have blown itself out quickly.

A clap of thunder that sounded closer than any she'd ever heard made her jump. She pushed the board out of the way and wormed her way into Shikamaru's arms.

He held her tightly, waiting for the storm to let up. After a while it became apparent that they were in for a long night of bad weather. "Stay tonight, Love?"

She looked up at him, smiling. He'd called her 'Love,' that was new. Of course he'd told her before that he loved her, not often, but she wasn't the sort of woman who constantly needed to be reminded. The first time he'd said it was his first mission to Suna. She had taken him out into the desert to show him how much brighter the stars were over the sand. They were sitting with their backs toward the city, watching the moon play on the curves of the dunes and the stars twinkling brightly overhead. She was almost asleep on his shoulder when he'd whispered in her ear, "Only you could make such a desolate place so beautiful. I love you, Temari." It had caught her off guard, but not so much that he was unable to react. She almost smiled, remembering how he had complained about sand in his hair after she had all but pounced on him, kissing him.

But the implications of staying the night: that was new, entirely new and a little scary.

He correctly interpreted her silence. "The storm's terrible. I don't want you out in it. I'll sleep on the couch if you like."

"But people will know. They'll talk," she said carefully. It was quickly becoming an exhausting secret to keep.

"Everyone knows. Even Gaara and, I think, Tsunade. They're all just being polite since we've been discrete."

She considered it further. "If I sleep in this it'll be all wrinkly when I get up. I've got nothing to wear to bed."

Shikamaru smiled widely and made a mental note to thank his father for his foresight. "Actually, that's not entirely true." He could feel his cheeks get warm.

She raised an eyebrow at him and let him lead her into the bedroom where he pulled an old box from the top shelf of his closet. He sat it on the bed and left, shutting the door behind him, leaving her alone in his bedroom.

She looked carefully at the simple room. A door was along the and a large bed filled most of the rest of the space along with a small blue table with a white lamp and a white alarm clock. The walls and closet door were blue, as was the rug that covered most of the floor. There were two windows in the room, one at the head of the bed and one along the far wall. Both windows were covered by blue drapes that looked heavy enough to block out the midday sun. All of the blue was the same color – very nearly the same shade as the sky had been earlier that day. The bed was huge by most standards. It was the scale of something that belonged in a palace, in fact it was larger than the one she had in Suna. All of the bedding, from the pillowcases and sheets to the down comforter were white. She got it now. It was the sky, the bed a cloud. She looked up; the ceiling was a nearly perfect mural of a partly cloudy summer sky with big fluffy white clouds against the same blue backdrop. So this had been the 'one expensive, guilty pleasure' that he'd written about when describing his new apartment.

She moved toward the box on the bed. It was a simple wooden box the word 'broken' had been written on the side but crossed out. She gingerly lifted the lid and looked inside. She gasped, the memory coming back to her. He had kept this for her, for more than two years? She traced the pattern on the back of the teal Nara kimono before putting it on. She had known what the embroidery on the back of the garment had meant when she wore it the first time. It didn't bother now any more than it had then. In a way she liked the idea of the symbolism. As if she was really his. She was touched, nearly to the point of fighting back tears as she changed clothes.

After hanging up her other clothes, she slipped out to the bathroom to take he hair down and wash her face. Shikamaru didn't seem to notice her slip by. He appeared to already be asleep, wrapped in a dark green blanket on his couch; his shirt and pants lay on the rug beside him. The little lull in the storm that had appeared as soon as she'd agreed to stay had passed and the thunder and lightening were as strong as ever.

She slipped back to the bedroom and buried herself under the covers but the storm just kept building. There was no escaping it. It was it's own sort of terrifying. She, who wasn't afraid of anything, was afraid of this: the weather of all things.

She gave a long sigh of resignation and climbed back out of the bed. She walked back into the living room and gave Shikamaru's shoulder a little shake. He looked up at her through sleepy eyes. She looked like an angel when she let her hair fly free.

"Come on. You don't really want to sleep on the couch, do you?" she asked innocently. "I think it's the only way I'll sleep through this storm."

He smiled as she took him by the hand and pulled him along. Always the gentleman, he was trying to think about nothing but how it would feel to wake up with her beside him.

He climbed into his bed, keeping much to his own half of the mattress. She would have nothing of it, and she pulled him toward the middle of the bed where she wrapped herself in his arms. He was too startled and too content to react. It wasn't very long until sleep found them both.


The storms had all but disappeared by the time he was awoken to the sound of someone beating on his door. He was alone, but his shower was running. It wasn't hard to deduce where Temari was.

"Shikamaru! Get up! We've got a big problem!" Kiba yelled through his door. Akamaru barked urgently.

He stumbled through the living room in his boxers just as the water shut off in his bathroom. He flung the door open. "What?" he demanded.

"It's your charge."

"What?"

"Temari."

"It's quarter 'til six. I'm sure Temari is just fine."

"I'm afraid not." Akamaru gave a little whine that seemed to punctuate what Kiba was saying.

Shikamaru looked at him, trying to not smile. As if Kiba knew anything of Temari's current condition. Akamaru seemed to be catching on quicker than his master; he sniffed the air and then laid down at Kiba's heels.

"The storm knocked down a couple trees," Kiba continued. "One of them fell into the guest house. It almost entirely demolished her room."

Shikamaru couldn't fight the smile anymore. He had protected her without knowing it. He didn't want to imagine what a falling tree would have done to Temari. That thought was enough to cancel out the flash of a smile that had escaped.

Kiba continued, "We've checked the hospital and what's left of the house. She's nowhere to be found. Tsunade is freaking out over how the Kazekage is going to take this. She's insisting that you organize a search party. I'm supposed to take you to…" He stopped dead in the middle of his sentence. His jaw dropped and his eyes bugged out.

Shikamaru didn't really need to look. He'd heard the bathroom door open. He hoped that she was wearing more than a towel. He followed his friend's gaze in enough time to see Temari disappear into his bedroom, her hips swaying slightly as she walked, the Nara crest standing out boldly on her back. He couldn't help but notice that the kimono was shorter on her than it had been the first time she wore it, a detail that he'd missed the night before.

Akamaru whimpered. Shikamaru found it to be a very fitting vocalization of the way he felt when he saw her wearing that.

Kiba fought to form complete sentences as Shikamaru stared dumbly after her. "You… She… Is that…?"

"We ate dinner and played shoji," the only one more surprised than Kiba with how calm Shikamaru's voice sounded was Shikamaru himself. "The storm got bad. It was far too troublesome to go out in the storm to take her home. So I told her she could stay."

Kiba's stare was a mixture of accusation and admiration.

"Don't look at me like that," Shikamaru said, pointing toward the living room. "I slept on the couch." The blanket that he had spent all of about fifteen minuets wrapped in and his pile of clothes seemed to verify his story.

Kiba's head cleared enough to form half-sentences. "But she was wearing…?"

"What I had."

"Why would you have…?"

"That is a long troublesome story."

Kiba raised an eyebrow, impatiently awaiting an explanation that he wasn't going to get.

"Go tell Tsunade that you found her."

"And you…?"

"I'll be along eventually."

"Eventually?"

Shikamaru pointed at the clock and then at the couch. He then slammed the door in Kiba's face and retreated to his bedroom.

Temari stood at the window in the bedroom, looking down at the town below and surveying the storm's damage. He wrapped his arms around her protectively.

"How did you know?" she asked in a broken voice. It was the same sort of vulnerability that she had shown him after he'd saved her life the first time.

"I didn't," he admitted.

She turned to look at him, waiting for the rest of his explanation.

"I just didn't want you to go. I felt you should be nearer than halfway across town last night."

"And you wound up saving me again," there was an undertone of wonder to her voice.

He kissed her softly, as though she might break. "We can celebrate tonight if you're so inclined. For now we've got to hurry. Tsunade is in an uproar and Kiba has an unusually big mouth."

She laughed. He took a change of clothes and headed to the bathroom for a quick shower. She changed into what she had worn yesterday and went to the kitchen.

Temari was leaned against the counter, eating an apple when he emerged from the bathroom. "It would have been embarrassing," she said.

He looked at her a bit confused, feeling like he had walked in mid-conversation. "What?"

"Being killed by a tree."

He laughed, gripping the counter for support. "You wouldn't have been embarrassed. You'd have been too busy being dead."

"But can you imagine what they'd say at the memorial service? 'She was a loyal ninja.

She fought bravely in several battles. She was murdered by a maple.'"

He snorted. "You've killed people with trees before. How do you think they felt?"

"I didn't much care at the time."

"Eh…" he routed through the refrigerator for a piece of fruit. "Let's go. Our weekend off just got terribly troublesome."


In the mean time, Kiba had made his way to Tsunade's office. By the time he burst through her door, he was panting harder than Akamaru.

"What is it?" she demanded.

"Found her," was all that Kiba managed. He was visibly shaken, his eyes still half-bugging out of his head.

"What is her condition?"

"Alright… I think?"

"You think?!"

He nodded vigorously.

"Where did you find her?"

"Shikamaru's."

Tsunade and Shizune exchanged a look. "Details! Now!" the wide-eyed Hokage demanded.

After about ten minutes of Kiba's babbling incoherently and pantomiming, she believed she'd gotten the gist of it. Kiba had been talking to Shikamaru, who was standing at his door in his boxers, when Temari had slipped from the bathroom to the bedroom. Her hair was down and she was wearing a short Kimono made for the Nara women. Shikamaru appeared to have slept on the couch. Kiba kept saying "Troublesome storm" and "dinner and shoji," but she couldn't quite put those phrases into context.


Shikamaru and Temari walked to Hokage tower side by side. "This is going to be troublesome," she said.

It was all he could do to not laugh at her choice of words. "It'll be fine."

They'd barely made it inside when they were met by Raido. He showed Temari into a room with Shizune and then led Shikamaru into Tsunade's office. She glared at him across her desk as he settled lazily into a chair.

"What were you thinking?" she demanded.

He shrugged. "She thinks that she's pretty good at shoji and we had to eat. So I was thinking that I'd make her dinner and then beat her at a game or two."

Tsunade just stared at him as he continued. "By the time that the first game was almost over, the storm had gotten pretty bad. So I offered her the bedroom and laid down on the couch. The next thing I know Kiba is trying to bash my door in.

"Is there anything else that I should know?"

"Not that I'm aware of."

"Kiba found her outfit rather interesting," Tsunade prompted.

"My father's lame excuse for a joke. It was a housewarming gift. He said that I'd need it eventually," Shikamaru laughed, giving his lie a leg to stand on. As if he would ever let any other woman wear that.

Tsunade rolled her eyes and shooed him from her office. Soon after he took a seat outside her door, Temari was shown to the chair opposite his. They sat there silently while Tsunade and Shizune conferred.

It didn't take long for the office door to reopen and the two of them to be called back inside.

"Against my better judgment, I'm not going to reassign you to another guide. Gaara specifically requested Shikamaru, though I have no idea why at this point." Tsunade sounded beyond mad, but she was quickly becoming curious as she watched the look that passed between Shikamaru and Temari. "I assume he believed that it would be far too much trouble to make a move on his sister."

Temari snickered and Shikamaru shook his head. They both saw the obvious humor. As if Temari had ever given him the opportunity to make the first move.

Tsunade cleared her throat and continued, "Go to the guest house and collect her things that weren't destroyed when the roof fell in. Then find her a room for the remainder of her stay. I want a list of belongings that weren't salvageable on Monday so that I can go about getting them replaced. If there's anything that you'll need between now and then, keep the receipts and I will see to it that you are reimbursed on Monday. Any questions?"

"Lady Tsunade, with all due respect," Shikamaru began. Tsunade inwardly cringed, knowing that it wasn't going to be good. "Most of the room are already booked during the exams. Temari is my responsibility while she's here and if she's going to narrowly avoid getting crushed by trees and the like, I want to keep a closer eye on her."

"What are you suggesting, Nara?"

"That I sleep on my own couch for the remainder of her stay, and she take my bed," he said it so coolly that it sounded like a tactical decision. Temari smiled.

Tsunade balled her hand into a fist and slammed it on her desk. Even Shizune, who should have long since become accustomed to such things, jumped. "How long?" she demanded.

"I don't know what you're taking about," Shikamaru said, looking genuinely confused.

Tsunade glared at Temari and repeated her question, "How long?"

"Unofficially… since the night that we came back to town after trying to retrieve the Uchiha," she said softly.

"That long?" Tsunade asked sounding very surprised. "Gaara knows?"

"Gaara knows everything."

"Who else knows?"

"Asuma. My father. Chouji at least suspects."

"Kankuro… he reads my mail when I'm away."

"I should have assumed as much," Tsunade lamented. She paused for a long moment. "Temari, you stay wherever you're most comfortable. I want you two to keep this to yourselves. You're dismissed."

They left quickly, before Tsunade's amusement could turn back into wrath.

"Lady Tsunade, I don't understand," Shizune admitted quietly.

"This could prove very good for the bond between Konoha and Suna. She motivates him. He calms her. They've saved eachother several times. It won't offend the Kazekage, he already knows. Let them take this where they will."


"She's not happy," Temari fretted as the left the tower.

"She's very happy. She's just hiding it."

"What makes you so sure."

Shikamaru just smirked.

"Well?"

He led her into a small empty alley. "Because, in her eyes, this," he said kissing her softly. "Is good for the treaty that we have with Suna."

"Oh. Of course," she smiled as they walked back into the street.

"So where are we checking you into?" he asked hopefully.

"You really have to ask?"


They arrived at the guesthouse and Temari winced slightly at the damage. Once they got inside, the mess looked even more overwhelming. Most of her clothing was intact, though they were soaked through by the rain and sake from the bottle that was stashed in the top drawer. Her pack was in good shape, as was her bag of toiletries.

Temari went downstairs to the kitchen only to find that none of her groceries had survived the power being shut off to the refrigerator. When she returned to the room, she found Shikamaru staring at her bed, which was crushed beneath a two-foot thick section of tree. She slipped her hand into his to pull him away from the scene.

As they made to leap from where the window had once been she took notice of the small fan that lay on her bedside table. It had been snapped in two. She looked at it sadly for a moment and then leapt down, leaving it there. Shikamaru caught the twinge of sadness in her eyes and quickly stuffed the fan into the pocket inside his vest before joining her on the ground.

They dropped her clothes at the cleaners and made for the marketplace.

The day had been a long one at best, especially after the amount of sleep that he hadn't gotten the night before and the stress that had begun just after dawn.

He'd had every intention of dropping onto his couch and sleeping until noon, or later. After kicking off his sandals, he moved to do just that. He heard Temari shut the door to his bedroom. He fleetingly wished that there was another bad storm, so he would have an excuse to be cuddled up in his bed with her for the night. He also wished that the cleaner hadn't moved her laundry to the top the list, as he enjoyed watching her walk around his apartment in the Nara kimono. It was too much bother to think about that, or anything else, as tired as he was, so he laid down on his back and drug the blanket up over his face.

He was almost asleep when he heard the bedroom door open. He made no attempt to move when he hear her walk into the kitchen.

"I thought we were going to celebrate tonight," she said.

"We went out for dinner," he replied.

"Sake?" she asked, ignoring his statement.

"Sure." It was tradition after all. He sat up with his back against the arm of the couch and looked toward the kitchen.

His heart stopped. He'd known from the start that she would be the death of him; he'd just never expected to go like this. She stood with her back to him, her hair hanging down across the shoulders of the Nara kimono. It hung loose, the obi nowhere in sight.

The clink of the bottle against the counter jolted his mind enough that he remembered to breathe. Then his mind set to racing. Was she really so bold? Did she know what she was doing to him right now?

He found his anticipation building as she picked up the glasses and turned toward him. He was nearly as disappointed as he was relieved to see her wearing the silky shorts and cropped tank that matched the stitching on the kimono. The little bit of silk was not enough to return his heart rate to normal, but it was enough to prevent him from stuttering.

She giggled softly at the expression on his face as she handed him his glass.

"You'll be the death of me," he said, his voice much huskier than he'd intended.

"Is that so?"

He nodded. "What are we drinking to tonight?"

"How about just 'to us'," she said, raising her glass.

He smiled. "I'll drink to that," he said, raising his glass as well.