7. Reflection
"Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you." — Friedrich Nietzsche
The first shinobi they encountered slowly rose from the sand. They entered into the world as if they were blossoming flowers, and then they rained kunai down upon Temari and Shikamaru. It was midday, so the shadows weren't quite long enough for Shikamaru to do much more than counterattack with kunai and shuriken. When he motioned for Temari to swing her fan, he took advantage of the elongated shadow created by the weapon, and he immediately captured his opponents, all three of them. Temari eliminated them. The blood soaked into the sand, but left behind splotches of deep red. They had to bury the bodies a few feet down, just to keep the violent, shifting winds from uncovering the corpses. In the end, Shikamaru was covered in sweat, blood, and sand. He looked as awful as he felt.
The image from his apartment still haunted him. When they set up camp for a second night, he lay awake and stared up at the cloudless sky as if he were looking into the depths of a deep lake. A cigarette hanging from the corner of his lips, he watched the smoke blend into the night, turning from a grey, shifting line of smoke into absolutely nothing. On the other side of the fire, Temari watched him. She didn't comment on his unusual behavior, on the way he'd seemed more bloodthirsty or the way he hacked the bodies into smaller pieces. She knew he was going through something, something deeper than what she saw on the surface. Underneath the underneath, he'd fallen back onto more animalistic survival instincts, or perhaps he'd merely surrendered to new depths.
"What are you looking at?" Shikamaru finally tired of her staring and rose to the occasion. Moving his eyes from the sky to look in her direction, his dark eyes met her light ones, and she flushed an embarrassing shade of scarlet. "It shouldn't be much longer," he continued, thinking her stare had something to do with their camping. "I'm taking first watch."
"It's not about camping or about the watch," Temari frowned. "It's like I don't know you anymore." She took another moment to consider the weight of her words, but she didn't amend them.
"You're exaggerating," he said, waving a dismissive hand at her.
"You just dismembered three people." Temari held her own, quite used to the blood and gore associated with such acts. After all, she'd been through the war; she had Gaara for a sibling.
"We needed to bury them." Shikamaru ran his hands over his face and leaned forward, his posture horrendous. "This is because of what happened at the apartment. You're not sure how to decipher what happened, and now you're trying to factor in the kiss. They're unrelated. I kissed you because I wanted to kiss you."
"I hate that you know exactly what I'm thinking." Temari scowled, but she didn't continue with her harsh words, uninterested in starting an actual argument with the man. "If it's unrelated, then consider this curiosity. Why did you react so harshly at your apartment? I've walked in on Kankuro plenty of times, because he doesn't know to take it to his bedroom."
Shikamaru wanted to give an immediate answer, but he didn't have the answer—no, he didn't want to share the answer. Envy was unbecoming. Tenten had something—someone—he desired, and he reacted with sarcasm and outright anger. He shouldn't have reacted that way, not in front of Temari, not with Tenten nearby. The argument, the exchange, really, should have taken place in the privacy of their apartment, yes, but without other listeners. Shikamaru should have calmed down. And yet, what would that have accomplished? Both he and Neji had other goals in mind, ones dependent on a male-female relationship. Besides, Shikamaru thought too many steps ahead. He'd already reached the end of the game, captured all of the pieces, ran through all of the moves, and Neji remained at the beginning phase, just waiting for his turn. For a genius, Neji was a moron.
"I saved his life," Shikamaru sighed, his exhaustion blending into the short sentence. "I waited by his bedside while he recovered. We developed insomnia, so we spent our nights suffering through it together. He's the closest thing I have to a family, and even though my best friend is Chouji, I feel like Neji is the closest thing to that too."
"He deserves to be happy. His interest in Tenten doesn't mean your relationship with him matters any less. It's just different. You're his friend, his family," she corrected herself, "and she's his lover."
"Fiancée," Shikamaru quietly added in.
"Wow, already, huh?" Temari whistled.
"That was close to my reaction." Of course, Shikamaru lied, but he didn't think he needed to feed into Temari's thinking processes. He didn't want to lead her down the correct path, the one where she discovered Shikamaru had romantic feelings for Neji.
"I was angry when Kankuro introduced me to his fiancée. I didn't really know her, and I didn't want her involved with my younger brother. Our family is very important in Sunagakure, and the girl was a waitress at a nearby restaurant." Temari picked up a piece of wood, one from the nearby skeleton of a tree, and prodded the dying fire. Really, they'd been lucky to come upon the tiny piece of greenery located in the desert.
"I don't see how this compares to my story, but humor me. What happened?" Shikamaru finally moved to lie down on his sleeping bag and folded his arms behind his head. Across from him, Temari also lay down, but she lay down on her side, her cheek resting against her palm. "Did you beat her up?"
"I'm not always violent!" Her outburst seemed to echo across the vast expanse, but she lowered her voice to continue talking. "She turned out to be an assassin. She tried to kill Gaara. Kankuro was crushed. Even though I wanted to call him out for being an idiot, I didn't. He really loved the girl."
"You should have intervened sooner." Shikamaru shrugged his shoulders.
"The point is that it had to play out, Shikamaru." Temari gritted her teeth to keep from shouting at him.
"You knew it was a bad idea and you let it continue. You should have intervened and saved him from himself." Shikamaru didn't see any other point to the story, and he had no reason to say anymore.
"You're not listening." Temari grumbled, picking up a handful of sand and tossing it onto the fire. Immediately, the fire went out, leaving both of them in darkness.
"I'm right." He just had to add the words.
"Let Neji live his own life," Temari finally said, her voice coming through the darkness. He didn't try to turn and look at her. He knew what it meant to communicate in the darkness. "He has to learn, and if that means making mistakes, he has to make those mistakes."
Halfway through his watch, a sandstorm picked up in the distance. They had about twenty minutes to gather their things, hide the remains of the fire, and seek shelter. Temari led him to a cavern about two days outside of Sunagakure, and the two of them made another camp further into the recess. They set up their sleeping bags, but the howling winds and the whipping of sand against the exterior of the cavern made it impossible to sleep. The few hours of sleep that Temari picked up were the only hours of sleep.
"We try not to travel in the storms, but sometimes it's impossible." Temari's voice came from the other side of the cave. She had to speak up to be heard over the storm.
"What if I asked you?" Shikamaru couldn't help himself; the words just tumbled right out of his mouth. Temari gave him a confused expression, one he wasn't able to see, but he didn't elaborate. He didn't think he needed to dive into specifics. But he did need to add more to his question, to give some sort of context clue. When she failed to respond, he let out an exasperated sigh. "What if I asked you to marry me?"
"If this is your idea of a proposal, I'm not interested," Temari scoffed. He didn't say anything in response, so she released a heavy sigh of her own. "You're serious," she murmured. "I would say yes."
"Will you marry me?" The question came after a pause, as if he needed a quick moment to reorganize his thoughts.
"No." Temari narrowed her eyes at him.
"You just said you'd say yes," he deadpanned.
"I want a better proposal than that!" She shouted at him then, her voice echoing off the walls of the cavern. Shikamaru covered his ears and glowered at her, while she had her hands on her hips, her glare penetrating right through the dark to focus on his face.
"We're in the middle of a sandstorm, troublesome woman." He motioned toward the entrance to the cavern, where the sand had begun to pile up near the bottom corners of the opening.
"What did you call me?" Her voice was low and threatening, and he quickly took the words back.
"Nothing," he muttered.
The storm took hours to wind down and even longer to finally end. The two had to dig their way out of the cavern until Temari could blow the rest of the sand out of the entrance. Overhead, the sun shone high in the cloudless sky, nearly at its noon position. With two days to Suna and the heat rising, they started off at a steady pace. Shikamaru had never really enjoyed Suna, which was why his meetings with Temari generally took place in Konoha. Suna wasn't a bad place, but Shikamaru had grown accustomed to the greenery of Konoha. He didn't know any specifics about the mission, since they weren't included, but he figured he could just ask. It was Temari, after all.
"What is all of this for anyway?" His hands folded behind his head, he unknowingly slowed his pace, allowing the distance between the both of them to grow. When she glanced back and noticed his change in pace, she slowed.
"Paperwork," she answered. He gave her a bored expression and she sighed. "A treaty, trade agreements, chunin examination agreements," Temari listed off.
"Important paperwork," Shikamaru elaborated.
The rest of the day went on without issue. By nightfall, both of them were ready for bed, but they picked up four chakra signatures from within the dark landscape. Shikamaru took the front position, with Temari on his left. Neither of them had the opportunity to properly prepare. Shikamaru had kunai ready, while Temari had her fan prepared, and yet they were still ambushed.
"Follow my lead," Shikamaru managed to say, directly before the foreign shinobi emerged from the ground. Suna missing nin. Shikamaru eyed them wearily, his expression grim.
"Give us the scrolls," one shinobi demanded, the lower half of his face hidden by a cream-colored mask.
"Hm, it's of no use to you, so why are you so interested?" Shikamaru shifted his weight on his feet and let his gaze flicker to Temari. "Isn't that right?"
"Right." But there was a hesitation, just a few seconds too long that passed between his question and her ultimate response. "Don't look at me like that."
"You lied to me."
A series of wires burst forth from the sand and both Shikamaru and Temari were forced to jump into the air. If they'd moved just a moment later, they might have been cut into pieces.
A/N: For the next chapter, I'm upping the rating. This is a warning AND a reminder that this will be a slow burn.