A/N: Here's 21, later than anyone of us expected, but it's here!
According to your comments, some of you seemed to think I've abandoned this but nope. I was just really lazy and I also started two new stories. None of them are long-time-projects like this one, but I was in the mood for something fresh.

Anyway, I read every single review (I always do and they are absolutely lovely!) but some questions piled up since the update of 20. Going through all the pages would take me another day and I think at this point, we all just want an update. Don't hesitate to ask though, I'll answer the next time.

One last shoutout to my beloved beta ShadowedNara, who never leaves me standing in the rain, even after all those hiatuses. You're the best!

Cue to 21!

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Shikamaru woke up to the sound of rustling. Doors creaking, cupboards opening and closing and feet softly walking on the timber floor. When he finally managed to open his eyes, he was greeted with the sight of his fiancé's naked back. Her long, blonde hair was wet; she must have just taken a shower. He reached over to the nightstand.

"No smoking in my room," she called, her voice still scratchy from sleep. When they finally went to sleep yesterday evening, he had followed Naruto into her room and she hadn't objected.

He ignored her comment, but resisted lighting a cigarette. Instead, he chuckled lowly. "That's a sight I could get used to seeing in the mornings."

She laughed, grabbed a shirt and threw it in his direction. When he lifted the piece of clothing up to free his view, Naruto had already pulled on a sports bra.

He didn't feel bad about watching her. Shikamaru was mostly honest towards himself. There was no use in cheating yourself if you didn't want to cause additional problems. That's why he could freely admit that Naruto was a sight to behold; she was beautiful. Her healthy tan spread over her whole body, or at least over the parts he could see. Even though she was short, her legs were relatively long when compared to the rest of her body. Her little waist and the nice cleavage perfected the look.

It was strange. Normally, he didn't really pay attention to these kinds of things. He was usually able to detach himself from basic desires because when it came down to it, he was only watching body parts. It wasn't because Naruto looked exceptionally good that he liked watching her, it was because she was Naruto.

"You're staring," she remarked as she put some shorts on.

"It's hard not to." Naruto smiled and walked towards him. She only stopped when she arrived at the bed side. Before he could react, she was already on the bed on all fours, caging his body with her limbs. Her hands that she had used to prop herself up, moved from each side of the pillow to his loose hair, running through it and mussing it up.

Finally, she leant down to capture his mouth in a kiss, her tongue slipping into him. The initial haze of confusion quickly dissipated in favor of desire, as he moved his arms around her and ran his hands down the dip of her back until they arrived at her ass, at last. He couldn't say that he had a lot of experience groping asses, but instinctually he'd say that Naruto had a great ass.

She pulled back, a grin on her face. "You've got morning breath," she chuckled.

He pulled her back down for another kiss because he really didn't care.

Laughing, she climbed off the bed and stood off to his side. "It's because of those cigarettes. I did notice that you're smoking more than you used to."

He hummed. He had noticed, too. It had become a habit. He stretched his muscles and forced himself to sit up. "We're all going to die anyway. Might as well enjoy the small pleasures of life."

She scoffed as he stood up and pulled her back against his chest. He was so tired that he propped his head up against her left shoulder.

"If you don't let me go, I'll have to go to my fight without a shirt on."

He tightened his hold. "Half-naked? Only for me."

She laughed but eased her tense muscles, leaning into him.

.

Shikamaru was relaxed as he watched his fiancé from his place at the seating podium.

"You don't seem all that excited," Ino remarked from behind him. She wasn't the only one out of his friends who watched the Chunin exams regularly. Although not Shikamaru's ideal choice of how to spend his free time, they could be pretty entertaining.

He shrugged. "Why should I? I know she'll win. And I don't even know the rest of the contestants." He hadn't heard of anyone with homicidal tendencies taking part though, and Naruto was strong and had an unconventional way of forming strategies. She would manage perfectly fine.

He took a look around the stadium. "It's unusually full," he remarked. It reminded him a little of his own Chunin exams. At that time they had Sasuke and Gaara as the most prominent participants.

His father nodded. "Most of them are from Konoha. If I had to take a guess, I'd say some of them are here for Naruto."

Shikamaru lifted a brow. His father turned towards him. "She became a Konoha shinobi in an unconventional way. She's also marrying into one of the bigger clans. There is not much going on in town and people are eager for gossip."

Shikamaru rolled his eyes. Something needed to happen to pull Naruto and him from the town's focus. He turned back towards the arena. His fiancé was standing confidently in her usual attire: Black top, orange jacket, dark shorts and boots. Her hair was pulled up in a high ponytail.

In front of her stood the girl she'd be fighting against; Setsuko Fujimoto, a girl from Ame.

Even form this far distance he could discern how tense Naruto's muscles were, ready to exert herself. Sure enough, the jonin finally lifted his arm in a sign for the fight to begin. The word 'start' had barely left his mouth, when Naruto had already rushed forward, the seemingly harmless little fist punching into the other girl's gut, the force of the simple attack sending her body on a collision course with the hard wall of the arena.

Shikamaru could hear the audience muttering like they usually did when something major happened. "Damn, she's fast," Kiba remarked from behind him.

Shikamaru fidgeted, remembering what he had found out only a little while ago. The Yondaime's death wasn't so long ago; and as soon as the topic of speed came up, the association with Minato Namikaze wasn't far away. "Probably the strategy she and Kakashi have planned out."

"Have you asked her?" Choji asked.

Shikamaru shook his head, his eyes fixed on his fiancé who hadn't let up, storming towards her opponent, firing away punches and kicks in rapid succession. She had summoned some kage-bunshins that were complementing her motions.

"Wasn't necessary. She isn't allowed to make use of her fuinjutsu abilities and she sucks at genjutsu. She could use ninjutsu, but the majority of the techniques she knows are wind-based. Her opponent is from Ame, making the probability of her mastering water-techniques relatively high. Wind isn't weak against water, but it isn't extremely effective either. The best way to handle this fight would be to rely heavily on taijutsu."

The plan reeked of something that Kakashi would come up with. Shikamaru had worked often enough with him to know that the man had a way of approaching problems in a smart and efficient way. "I bet it wasn't all that hard to improve upon her abilities either." Before he could hold himself back, the words tumbled out of him. "Speed should come naturally to her, after all."

He could feel his father stiffen beside him, the obvious dig not lost on him. The sharp eyes quickly lost its initial confusion in favor of fixing his son with a hard glance. The man subtly placed his hand on Shikamaru's left shoulder. It was an order and a warning.

He had always been given a fair amount of leeway, despite the fact that he had been the clan heir. But on the rare occasions his father had used his authority over him, he had obeyed. This time was no different. Besides, he knew that exposing the relation between Naruto and the Yondaime in the middle of a huge crowd wasn't a good idea either.

He rummaged in the pocket of his vest, pulling a cigarette out and lightening it up. It was his first smoke of the day.

In the end, the fight didn't last all that long. After battering the other girl up, Naruto's doppelgangers had held her tightly in place, while his fiancé had placed a rasengan into her opponent's core. The girl didn't stand back up again.

When Naruto arrived at the tribune and sat down on the free seat next to him, she was slightly exhausted. The next battle had already started as Shikamaru slung an arm around her shoulders, not minding the sweat on her skin or the other people's looks when he placed a kiss on her lips.

.

They had barely returned back home when he was called to his father's office. Shikamaru knew exactly what he had been ordered here for and he regretted not keeping quiet earlier. He should've known better than that.

But his reaction had been a result of the anger that had been building in him for some time now. Of course, he knew that secrecy of it went hand in hand with being a shinobi. However, he was gradually starting to realize just how much he had been fucked over.

The whole arranged marriage business had been sketchy to begin with. What he had discovered about it ever since made him wonder what else he might find out in the future.

Still, he wasn't looking forward to the upcoming conversation. He was pretty sure his father wasn't either.

The man sighed, sipping from a cup of tea that his mother had brought him. "So you know." He got straight to the point.

"Yes," he answered simply.

"How?"

"Does it matter?"

The man grinned. "I don't know whether to be exasperated or proud of you."

Shikamaru couldn't share his pride. Looking back, all the signs had been there. It shouldn't have taken him as long as it did to find out that the Yondaime and Naruto were related.

"Regardless," his father carried on, "I don't have to remind you not to spread those facts."

Shikamaru nodded. Being related to the Hokage only brought benefits on a genetic basis. Even in peaceful times, assassinations were far from unheard of. He resisted the urge to crease his forehead. It was apparent that his father only knew that Shikamaru knew of Naruto's relation to the Yondaime. He had no idea that his son was also aware of the fact that his fiancé's body caged a bijuu.

Shikamaru contemplated whether he should admit that he had found out more than his father thought he did. However big the revelation of the Yondaime being Naruto's father was, it didn't top the fact that that her body inhabited the Kyuubi.

He decided to risk it. If he let the depth of his knowledge be known, there wouldn't be much of a point to keep up the secrecy around him. In the long run, it may be the more benefitting path to take, because the higher ups wouldn't see any harm in sharing additional information with them.

"What about the Kyuubi? I take it that's something that shouldn't be spread either?"

Shikamaru could count the number of times his father Shikaku Nara had been genuinely surprised. The man was extremely clever. Even Shikamaru couldn't keep up with his intelligence. Yet.

However, at this moment he watched his father's facial muscles freeze, his dark eyes widen, staring into a void. He took that picture in, enjoying every little moment. It felt good to be one step ahead again. For all these years, the man had had the power of superior knowledge, but finally, he had managed to get the upper hand. It was a delicious feeling.

Eventually though, Shikaku gathered himself. "I have to admit, I had always thought your reaction would've been more extreme when you found out. I was preparing speeches to calm you down." His father smiled. Shikamaru felt a little reassured. Although the man was a constant reminder of what he had to live up to, he was still his father. Shikamaru was glad that he made him proud.

He shrugged. "Not much we can do about it, no?"

The Nara head chuckled. "How did you find out?

"She told me," he answered. Sometimes the simplest ways lead to the solution.

The look on his father's became thoughtful. "The relationship that you've developed with her is quite strange. Before she had arrived in Konoha, I was catching up on what she was doing and what I was hearing concerned me. I thought you and her were as incompatible as two people could possibly be. That you've come as far as you have that she trusts you with something like this…" He let the sentence hang in the air.

Shikamaru didn't get embarrassed. He was beyond the point of blushing about what he had with Naruto or how much people knew about it. He knew what he felt towards her and finally had firm footing. People could think whatever they wanted to think as far as he was concerned.

His father drank the last of his tea before fixing him with a firm look, all thoughtfulness yielding in favour of strictness. "Shikamaru, you know that this is a matter of top secrecy. You are not allowed to tell anyone about it. Not to your friends, not to your superiors-"

"Don't most of them know anyway?" he interrupted. He had always had the suspicion that Asuma-sensei, Kakashi and the rest of that generation had known something about Naruto that he hadn't.

"It doesn't matter," Shikaku argued in a strict tone. "Whether you suspect somebody to know, or even if you are absolutely sure that they know, you won't talk about it. This is very important, especially for the safety of Naruto. Jinchuurikis are sought after and even if we have an agreement not to lay a hand on each other's jinchuurikis, I know better than to rely on the other villages' words."

Shikamaru frowned, understanding his father's implication. "They- Jinchuurikis," he tasted the foreign sounding word on his tongue, "are being used for their power?"

The man nodded.

"What does that agreement you've mentioned entail?" He thought he'd have to push much more to get some information, but his father seemed to be in a rarely benevolent mood.

"You know that the Kyuubi isn't the only bijuu. There are eight other tailed beasts. As of now, each one is sealed into a human body. The people whose bodies cage the beasts are called jinchuurikis. Those beasts have an enormous amount of chakra which can be used by its vessel."

Shikamaru felt disgust well within him. "They're being used as weapons." The way his father talked about them was so distanced that Shikamaru would have adopted the same stance if he wasn't aware that the girl he was in love with, was one of those people.

"In the most simple sense, yes," his father confirmed.

The younger Nara's eyes widened in realization as he contemplated the issue. It was a sudden notion that struck him, and as soon as he toyed with the idea, he knew it was true. "Gaara…"

His father nodded. "He is the vessel of Shukaku."

The power, the psychoses, the relationship with Naruto… Adding one more piece to the puzzle, suddenly the whole picture seemed to make sense.

"The power of the bijuus are evenly spread across all the villages to prevent imbalance – but it isn't like anyone played by the rules before." Shikaku's frown eased a little. "I take it you understand. No talking about this to anyone. Same goes for what you've found out about the Yondaime. Not even to Naruto."

"What?" It hit him like a whiplash. "She doesn't know?"

"And it would do good to stay that way. Every person that knows about it, is one person too much."

"She is not some random girl. She is his daughter."

"Shikamaru-"

"No," he interrupted. For the first time in his life, he decided to disobey his father. "You cannot expect me to keep that from her. And I won't."

His father's frown returned. "We are shinobi. Secrecy is in our job description. Honesty is something we cannot expect."

He had the childish urge to shrug and argue with a simple 'I don't care'.

Instead he collected himself, gathering arguments. He couldn't let this escalate into a fight. He rarely had arguments with anyone – it was too tiring; he'd never had one with his father. For all the man's own laziness, he could be stubborn and Shikamaru didn't want it to go as far for him to experience what the Nara head was capable of.

"She'll keep quiet about it."

"I know that Naruto is a goodhearted girl with the best of intentions, but I can't be sure of that. I don't know her well enough to be able to say that."

"But you trust my decisions. And I trust Naruto."

Shikaku sighed, tiredness seeping into his expression. Yet he remained wary. "I don't think that I can trust you when it comes to her, Shikamaru."

"What do you mean?" he asked, managing to keep the indignation out of his voice.

"You're not following logical patterns when the matter concerns Naruto."

Shikamaru evaded his father's eyes. Was it true? Was his affection for her clouding his common sense? He was starting to doubt his own arguments. Maybe his father was right.

But this wasn't just a small matter. He didn't even want to imagine Naruto's reaction when she eventually found out that he had known the identity of her father, but had never bothered to tell her. She wasn't one to hold grudges, but the amount of credibility he would lose…

"Please," he argued, because it was the only thing left to bring up. "I don't know whether what I have with her can work if I keep something this important from her."

His father's eyes softened as he sighed and ran a hand through his hair in a manner that reminded Shikamaru of himself. He could see the guilt in the older man's expression in a rare unguarded moment. It was during moments like these when he was reminded that his father didn't agree on arranging the marriage lightheartedly. After a few moments of contemplation he nodded in surrender.

"Alright. But make sure that she keeps it quiet." And with that concession, the man forwent giving into the urge to follow logical patterns.

A/N: So what did you think? How did you like it?
I don't know if any of you guys expected a huge fight during the chunin exams but I couldn't bring myself to write it. It was part of why the update took so long. I was struggling with orchestrating this huge battle, but I couldn't come up with something. In the end I decided, if I ever wanted this chapter to be updated I would have to leave a grand scene out, even when it felt wrong to do so.
I hate fighting scenes. When reading, I skip them, when writing, I dread them. So a question to you: How do you feel about fighting scenes? I'll definitely include some, but depending on your answer, the number might vary.

And how did you like the rest of the chapter? Not much romance in this one (although the ending of the first scene made me all sappy) but that's the natural flow of things.