XVII: Culmination
"I have a question I'd like to ask," Temari said as she sat at the restaurant table. The rest of the kunoichi sitting at the table, a group consisting of Sakura, Ino, Hinata, Tenten, and Karui, all turned to look at her.
"Are we done with the Year of the Weddings, or does Tenten have a steamy secret romance she has yet to tell us about?"
The other women all began to laugh save for Tenten.
"No!" she exclaimed, waving her hands frantically in the air. "I have no interest in that, I promise! I spend too much time chasing after Guy and Lee anyway!"
"So what you're saying is that you are, in fact, already married to two men," Karui commented with a smirk, holding up two fingers for emphasis.
Tenten blushed as the rest of the table laughed.
"Ah," Sakura let out as the laughter subsided. "You know, I guess we all did get married within a year of each other."
"What, you didn't notice?" Karui asked before taking a sip of her drink.
Ino waved her hand dismissively. "Oh please, Karui, you can only say that because your wedding was the last one and you were only a guest at the others. I mean, between our normal duties and helping to prepare for each and every wedding, it was just one thing after another! We could barely catch our breath!"
Hinata nodded solemnly. "It was quite a rush, wasn't it? I thought after Naruto and I said our vows we could take things easy for a while but we ended up just getting roped into helping set up Shikamaru and Temari's wedding."
"Hey, at least ours was smaller than yours," Temari said. "We got home from your ceremony and the only thing Shikamaru would say was 'too loud, too big, and too much of a drag.' The worst part was, I couldn't even disagree with him!"
The other ladies all giggled at Temari's imitation of her husband.
"You can't really call your wedding small though," Hinata chidded Temari with a good-natured smile. "I mean, you involved two villages and it was easily the second biggest reception of any of them."
'Well the, the two villages part was kind of unavoidable," Temari mumbled out in self-defense. "Ours is kind of a...diplomatic relationship."
Ino let out a short, breathy laugh and shock her head with a smile. "Yeah, I'm grateful me and Sai had the leeway to have a small celebration after that."
Sakura smirked, leaning closer to her childhood friend. "And you had always bragged about how you were going to have the biggest wedding ever when we were kids."
"You guys big weddinged me out," Ino complained. "Besides, you barely even had a wedding, Sakura. We didn't even hear anything about it until the day of."
Sakura returned to a normal sitting position, retreating from Ino's verbal barb. "Hey, don't look at me. It was everything I could do just to convince Sasuke that we needed to actually invite people to our wedding."
"Yeah, that was kind of awkward. But at least it wasn't the last wedding we got to put on," Tenten commented before turning to Karui.
The Cloud kunoichi looked at the weapons specialist before shrugging her shoulders. "I mean, yeah, I guess."
"When did Choji even find time to woo you, Karui?" Ino asked. "I mean, I thought I had a pretty good grasp on my friends' love lives and suddenly you show up at Naruto and Hinata's wedding hanging off Choji's arm."
Karui blushed as she responded. "Believe me, sometimes I don't even know."
The girls all laughed at the comment, laughter which died slowly as they all came to the realization that their time was coming to an end. Being a wife and being a kunoichi left precious little free time, and that was soon to become even more precious.
"Well, I guess somebody is going to have to go the counter and pay," Tenten commented. "Whose turn is it this time?" She looked around the table to find that all the other ladies were leaning back in their seats and holding their stomachs, signaling that they were otherwise indisposed.
With a grunt of annoyance, Tenten got out of her chair. "OK, fine. I guess it's me, but I have a question. Why the hell did you all decide to get pregnant at the same time?!"
The other five ladies all looked amongst themselves, each of their bellies swelling with child to varying degrees depending on far along they were.
"That...is actually a really good question," Sakura said.
"I think it's sweet," Hinata commented. "All of our kids will have a chance to grow up together, just like we did!"
"Yeah, all of us. Together," Karui said, voice laced with sarcasm.
"Oh, you know what she meant," Ino admonished the fellow soon-to-be mom. "Besides, I think Hinata's right."
Temari looked down at her stomach, rubbing her belly and feeling the little life she was nurturing within. "Well, that'd be very...um...different from the way I grew up."
"What would be different?" a familiar voice asked from behind her.
Temari looked over her shoulder to see her husband.
"Oh, nothing," she said. "A lot of things," she added, amending her statement.
"So I imagine," Shikamaru commented. "You paid yet?"
"Tenten's got it," Temari answered as she started gathering her personal effects.
Shikamaru looked over to the weapons expert. "I can pay you back," he offered.
Tenten dismissed the notion with a wave of her hand. "Hey, it's alright. What's a favor between friends, anyway?"
"Well, thank you regardless," Shikamaru said. "Ready to go?" he asked his wife.
"Yep," Temari answered as she started climbing from her seat.
"You guys got something special planned?" Sakura asked.
"Hmph, hardly," Shikamaru replied with a good natured chuckle. "We're just going to pick out a paint color for the baby's room." Temari was standing up as he said this, and the Nara Clan Head put his hand on his wife's back once she was on her feet.
"Whatever you pick, I bet he'll love it," Ino commented.
Temari eyed her fellow blonde warily. "He? What makes you think It'll be a boy?"
"Oh, trust me, he'll come out exactly like Shikamaru in every way," Ino said, grinning.
"Not if I have anything to say about it," Temari said, returning Ino's grin. Putting her hand dramatically on her stomach, she added, "oh wait. I do."
"Alright, alright, that's enough," Shikamaru said, placing his hand on his wife's shoulder. "We need to get going, or my mom's going to pick a color for us."
"Ah, jeez, we can't have that," Temari replied, treating it with the same seriousness with which she would a minor diplomatic incident. "Thank you for the lunch, ladies. We'll have to do this again sometime."
"That we do," Hinata agreed.
"And once those babies start popping out you guys are paying for the next hundred!" Tenten called out from the counter.
"What?" Shikamaru asked, confused by the call back to a part of the conversation he was not present for.
"Don't worry about it," Temari said with a smile, pulling gently on her husband's hand to remind him that it was time to go.
The pair left the restaurant, hand in hand. They went in the direction of the store they were going to, neither leading the other. Out of the corner of her eye she kept noticing the great stone faces of the Hokage, with their silent but ever so prominent vigil over her home. She stopped in her tracks, letting go of Shikamaru's hand.
"Hm?" he vocalized, noticing the absence. "Something wrong?"
Temari shook her head. "No. The opposite really." She chuckled, trying to make words come out of her mouth. 'I...what I mean. It just hit me that...this is my home as much as the Hidden Sand is."
Shikamaru smiled softly, walking over to his wife and taking her hands in his. "I know. But I'm glad to hear it regardless."
Temari let out a little giggle before putting her forehead against Shikamaru's shoulder. "Sometimes, I think about how close I've gotten to you and this whole village, and don't know if I've done exceptionally well in my work as an ambassador or if I failed spectacularly."
"Hm," Shikamaru voiced as he considered this. "The former I think. If the point of diplomacy is to bring disparate people together, then I would say our diplomatic relations are as fruitful as any in history."
Temari chuckled at her husband's answer. "I like the sound of that."