Title: Boxes and Strings
Prompt: Mind

Sakura arranges her thoughts in boxes. In her mind, there is a box of her family memories, a box for mathematics, a box for all the things she learned from Kakashi-sensei, from Naruto (it happens), from Tsunade-shishou and Shizune-san. There is a box of ninjutsu techniques, of her memories of Sasuke (it's getting smaller, slowly but surely. The thought saddens her, but she is tired of waiting), and there is a box for physics and chemistry and of everything she knows about poisons. There is even a box of the language of flowers she still remembers from when she was little. She likes to pretend that she's putting information in boxes, that she's opening them every time she recalls something.

She's weird like that.

One day, as she watches Shikamaru fight a group of jounin-level missing nins without even batting an eyelash, a million steps ahead as always, she wonders how he thinks. Does he think in boxes too? Or did he think in another different way?

"Troublesome," he says when she asks him on their way back. She fought in the skirmish as well, but being the designated medic-nin, she couldn't waste chakra. So she spent majority of the time watching his every move, fascinated, throwing a few chakra-enhanced punches here and there. He doesn't say anything for a while, and she thinks that maybe it's just her, she's just really weird, who would think about boxes anyway, what does that even mean-

"Strings." She turns to look at him and he's staring straight ahead, a little embarrassed.

"Huh?" she asks. He sighs and rubs the back of his head.

"Strings, woman," he says, annoyed. He glances at her before turning his gaze to the front. "I think of my thoughts as being strings that I follow. Sometimes it's one string that splits into a million different ways, and they tangle with other strings, but other times it's a bunch of strings all converging into one." He stops and looks at her again, gauging her reaction. She tilts her head, trying to wrap her head around it. Strings? That was new.

"Alright…let's say if I was going to try your way of thinking," she says slowly. "How would I go about doing it?" He puts his hands in his pockets and relaxed.

"Well, say I got poisoned during my fight," he explains. "To find the antidote, you'd look at the key components that made it first, right?" She nods. "Well, aside from that, you could take into account the hidden village they're from, because usually, they take the base poison from their village and then modify it, and then you can unpack your little boxes-" she punches him on the arm.

"Are you making fun of how I think?" she asks, irked. He laughs, his voice deep and comforting and warm.

"I'm not," he says, raising his hands up in surrender. "It's just…I'm imagining you in this little room surrounded by boxes and humming under your breath while you're unpacking them." He laughs again and this time she kicks him in the shins. He dodges and tries to stifle his laughs. "Alright, alright, I'm sorry." She grumbles under her breath about men and not answering the question and who knows what else.

"Okay, okay," he says after composing himself, "If you arrange things in boxes, then your way of thinking becomes limited. You can think of it as…using time and energy packing and unpacking your information instead of using it for something else. Tedious if you try to think holistically. With strings, I take a lead and I follow it, see where it takes me."

"How can you be a hundred steps ahead, though?" she asks. He shrugs.

"You anticipate their next moves, and you base your decisions on your assumptions. It's more guesswork than anything, really. You use all the information available to you, figuring out which ones are useful. For example, knowing the village the missing-nins came from, the method they used in getting the poison into your system. You calculate the probability of how they're going to react based on their body language, their dexterity, that sort of thing, and then you exploit their weaknesses. The strings that get tangled are probabilities, other possible outcomes if I do a certain thing. Eh, it's like a big giant cobweb." He makes a giant gesture with his hands. He stares off into space before sighing. "I don't know. What am I even saying? I guess I'm pretty weird, too." She laughs.

"Yeah, you are," she says. "Still, if it works?" He shrugs.

"How does your 'boxes' work?" he asks. She turns red.

"You're just going to laugh at me!" she says, frowning. He rolls his eyes.

"Just answer my question- I answered yours." She sighs and pouts.

"It's not as good as yours, though," she points out. He shrugs, putting his hands back in his pockets and slouching. "Well, when I'm in a new situation, I wipe my mind clean. It's like what you said- it's tedious to unpack and rifle through boxes, so I tend to focus on one thing at a time, although, I do try to look out for my surroundings. When I'm analysing the antidote of a poison, for example, I try not to think about anything else because then I start unpacking unnecessary boxes. I usually let Naruto and Kakashi-sensei worry about everything else, especially if we're in a fight."

"You should try and fix that."

"I know!" she says, frustrated. "You should help me."

"Alright." She stops walking.

"What?"

"What do you mean, what?" he says, annoyed. "You said I should help you, and I just said I would." There's a slight tint of pink on his cheeks. She grins.

"Wow, the genius of Konoha's gonna help little ol' me?" she asks. "You do realise I'm going to hold you to that promise when we get back?" He rubs the back of his head.

"Troublesome," he mutters. She laughs.

"Let's start by getting some dango on the way, alright?" she asks, skipping ahead of him. "And then while we're eating, you can teach me your ways, oh wise one."

Woo! Finally got this down!

This is my first fic in this fandom! Aaah, I'm so nervous! This is set in the time-skip…I guess? A little ShikaSaku for you guys! :)

Thanks for reading! Please review!