Check and Mate:

Shikamaru mechanically continued reading and signing off on the after action reports, ignoring the loud warm up music and the raucous laughter filtering into the tent from outside. Parties just weren't his thing… Especially a blowout to celebrate the end of the Fourth Great war.

Even after he had dismissed them, his squad mates had still tried their best to convince him to join them in the festivities. Ino had practically danced back into the tent, her long blonde hair flowing behind her, giving him a forced, flirtatious wink. "Come with us Shikamaru!" she had teased, the smile beaming through her sorrow and trauma. "The war's over! We won! Surely you can forget the paperwork and live a little!"

Ino had been drowning in her pain. As a practitioner of psychic jutsu, she had constantly needed to shield herself from the death and injuries and horrors of war. She desperately needed an escape from the reality of things dragging her down. Not even the strongest psychic barriers could have withstood the onslaught of the loss of so much life. Her mental defenses had shuddered with every little candle flame of light that had been snuffed out on the battlefield. And then... well...

Ino had always been the social one, she drew her energy from being with others. Talking, laughing... and being admired. There were plenty of single men at the celebration. The last thing she needed right now was to be trapped in a stuffy tent reviewing mountains of forms... and he knew that in his current mood, he wouldn't be very good company. The optimal solution had easily presented itself.

His response to her cajoling was a simple shrug. "Parties are such a drag... Standing around talking to people you barely know and will likely never meet again... you go on, have fun, I'll take care of things here. Maybe when I'm finished I'll stop by."

"Thank you so much!" Ino gave him a quick hug and turned away. "If you want me to save you a dance you'd better hurry up!" she said with more joy than he had heard from her in days. "The boys are just lining up to talk to me!"

A few moments later his best friend Choji's bulk had filled up the entrance. "You have got to see this!" his perpetually hungry teammate had crowed, wiping a strand of drool from his chin. "They have at least thirty whole oxen on a spit! It's like I died and went to barbeque heaven!"

Choji was the kindest person Shikamaru had ever met. They'd been friends forever. He'd personally seen Choji go out of his way to rescue a butterfly trapped in a spider's web. Even though the all violence he had committed was to protect his friends, the war had taken its toll. Choji's normally round smiling face looked drawn and haggard. He needed to recover, build up his chakra. He needed to be reminded that maybe... maybe the world wasn't such a hard place after all. Maybe this war was the exception, not the rule. The problem here was that Choji's loyalty would never allow him to abandon a friend.

"You go on ahead Choji," Shikamaru said with a reassuring grin, briefly looking up from the desk. "I'll wander on through when I get hungry. I just want to finish this up. See you in a couple of minutes."

To tell the truth, he didn't feel much like eating either. As an official liaison to the battalion commander, he had seen more than his fair share of casualties in this fight. Corpses, which on some deep level, were whispering in the back of his skull, darkly muttering that their deaths were his fault.

Shikamaru was a genius. His IQ checked in at over 200. As a student at the Konoha Ninja Academy, the greatest challenge he faced was keeping his eyes open in the monotonously dull classes. He had the reputation of being the laziest boy in school. In reality, nothing could keep his interest. What's the point in studying or even paying attention when the the information was right there at your fingertips. What's the point of putting in extra effort when you only have to answer exactly seven tenths of the questions correctly to pass to the next level? Back in the day he would answer everything correctly in the first half of the term, and then sleep through the second half. It drove the instructors crazy. Shikamaru never seemed to show the slightest amount of enthusiasm in class, but he always managed to keep his grades just high enough to pass by a hair.

Back then the only thing that kept his interest were strategy games, like Go, Renju or Irensei. And then one day, his sensei, worried about his drive and his schoolwork, introduced him to Shogi.

It was love at first sight. When he was playing, the haze of boredom would drop away. The chessboard would become crystal clear, and one by one the moves would play themselves out, tiles rapidly clicking across the board. The possibilities were endless.

After graduation, he had earned a bit of a reputation for himself as a masterful tactician, besting opponents far stronger than himself using sheer wits and foresight. His sensei, Asuma Sarutobi the one who introduced him to the game, would often beam at him with pride.

He triumphed by visualizing everything as a game of shogi. A moment of relative peace was all he needed to picture the tiny little chess masters seated in front of the board he carried around in his noggin. The appearance of the mental shogi players he used as an opponent had changed over the years. In his youth his mental rival looked a little like the third Hokage. Immediately after Asuma sensei had been killed by the Akatsuki, the avatar changed, becoming a duplicate of Shikamaru's old teacher.

He used that image of the game to play out hundreds of possibilities. He used those pieces to plot out the systematic capture and destruction of the Akatsuki responsible. On that board he could test out possibility after possibly, come up with strategy, counter-strategy, and counter-counter-strategy. The inside of Shikamaru's head was usually filled with the metaphorical clicking of Shogi tiles.

But not now.

He finished the action reports, rubbed his hand to clear the cramping, and reached for the next escarpment of paper. He froze at the title. Official count of shinobi killed, wounded or missing in action.

There were many names he recognized on that list. There had been a singularly destructive attack on the Allied headquarters during the war. There had been no survivors.

Both his and Ino's fathers had been adjutants in that building.

Logically, Shikamaru knew there was no fault that could be placed on him. Despite his unindustrious nature, he really tried during the conflict. He couldn't have been everywhere at once. Everyone said he did an excellent job, he was a credit to the Alliance.

His soul screamed at him that he could have done better. The clicking of shogi tiles as he endlessly replayed every movement in every battle in his head, trying to work out the flaws, to fix his mistakes, kept him awake long into the night. The worst moment had occurred a week ago as he was turning in his cot, begging for sleep to come. His brain was once again taunting him, compulsively going over his strategy against the Ten Tails, when the mental image of his chess player looked across the shogi board at his opponent. He found himself staring into a tired, scarred face wearing a goatee... the spitting image of his slain father.

Ever since then, his internal shogi games were played solo. It wasn't as effective. He hadn't been able to plan out a winning strategy since then. For Shikamaru, it was like walking around with one eye closed. Everything felt slightly out of balance. Everything was... off.

It had been more than three weeks since the allied Shinobi force had emerged victorious. After all the ceremonies and memorials, the Five Kage and some of the other higher ups had decided that the entire army needed to celebrate their accomplishment.

He had shed his tears, been to the memorials, and said his goodbyes, but the only thing that really truly helped was droning monotony... keeping his mind distracted with other tasks. With almost steady hands, Shikamaru carefully put the casualty list off to one side. He promised himself he'd take care of it later.

She would never admit it out loud to anyone, but there was more than one reason why she was constantly checking the shinobi trickling in amongst the bonfires. Of course Gaara's security would be the primary one. Her brother was the Kazekage. A year ago, most of these shinobi were in some state of uneasy truce with her village… the kind of truce where you secretly sharpen your knives and wait for an opening. She was surreptitiously searching every figure, listening to every voice, and scanning every silhouette… diligently looking out for threats… and maybe… just maybe... as the merest touch of an afterthought, casually keeping an eye out for a certain Leaf shinobi. "Temari? Are you listening to me?" Gaara asked in his flat raspy tone.

"Yes... You said 'Blah blah blah... Peace... Blah blah blah... New age of shinobi co-operation... Blah blah blah... Love, harmony and dango for everyone.' Does that about cover it?" She knew for a fact that each of the Five Kage had given a joint order for all of their shinobi to attend, so where was he? Most of the Konoha crowd was mingling on the far side of the clearing, so why wasn't he there with them? Was he off being a lazy bum staring at clouds somewhere?

The Kazekage blinked in surprise. "I didn't say anything about dango."

Kankuro sighed. "Ignore her Gaara, she's just being sarcastic... Again," her other brother said, with a disapproving scowl on his painted face. "What's gotten into you?" he hissed.

The three sand siblings were holding an impromptu conference at the edges of the outdoor space where the feast was being set up. "Nothing's gotten into me!" snapped Temari. "I'm just wondering why we're standing around here wasting all our time and energy patting ourselves on the back like this? Don't we have better things to do? Instead of wasting our time with a party shouldn't we be..." She waved her hands vaguely at the crowd. "Taking action of some sort? Making a defensive plan? Figuring out some way to make this alliance last?"

Her two younger brothers, Gaara and Kankuro shared what could only be described as a 'look'. "There is nothing more important than promoting the brotherhood that we have forged on the battlefield," stated Gaara matter-of-factly.

"Told you she wasn't listening," muttered Kankuro.

"I heard every word you said!" snapped Temari testily.

"Good. You are in complete agreement with our proposition then?" asked Gaara.

"Well... I... That is..." Shit. She had no idea what the hell her uppity little brother was talking about. Geez, make a guy the supreme leader of a village and the power all goes to his head. How do you remind the the Kazekage that yes, even though he is now the leader of your village and you are sworn to give your life protecting him if needs be, you did spend a significant chunk of your childhood changing his poopy diapers and stopping him from eating too much sand, so maybe he can toss some well-deserved respect your way once in a while. Promising herself she would make him pay for this later, she mumbled "What was the question again?"

"As I was saying," said Gaara clearing his throat in a slightly pompous way. "Similar to the trusting alliance we have forged with the Hidden Leaf village over the past three years, it is imperative that we also build closer relationships with other villages and our shinobi brothers."

Temari harrumphed grouchily and eyed a shifty looking Hidden Mist shinobi who brushed past her youngest brother. "And how do you propose we do that? Ask them pretty please to be nice to us now?"

"I happened to overhear that the best way to build closer relationships with other villages was to foment intimacy with shinobi from foreign lands."

Temari's barked a laugh. "Where did you hear that phrase? Did you find an Icha-Icha novel on the battlefield?"

"As a matter of fact, I heard it from the Mizukage herself," Gaara said smugly. "She pulled Baki-sensei to one side during a break in the council of all the Kage and I overheard her whisper that she wanted to..." His eyes bounced back and forth between his stunned siblings. "What? Isn't intimacy an important ingredient to friendship?"

Temari just stared at him, open mouthed. "Um... Gaara?" said Kankuro, taking pity on his younger brother, "I'm pretty sure that when Mei-sama said 'intimacy' she meant... well... she was talking about..." He leaned over and whispered quickly in Gaara's ear.

Gaara had the decency to look embarrassed. "Ah... I see... That is... very different than how I understood the matter." He paused and looked thoughtful, "I will miss our former sensei as he goes off to the Hidden Mist village to live in a state of marital bliss... But, we should not be afraid to follow Baki's example and be willing to try anything to maintain our new found brotherhood."

"Even when you know these so called brothers won't hesitate to turn around and stab you in the back at the earliest opportunity?" growled Temari, eager to avoid explaining to her youngest brother the miles of difference between 'marital bliss' and 'sweaty one night stand'.

Gaara shrugged. "Naruto taught me that kindness and friendship must be freely offered before one can expect it in return."

Temari gave a cursory look around the clearing, pretending to look for Uzumaki. "And where is that loud mouthed idiot hiding? I expected to see him jumping around telling everyone how amazing he is and how he is going to be Hokage."

Gaara frowned. "Naruto... has been sent on an important mission. He won't be here." He held up a hand to stop their questions. "I have been sworn to secrecy. I can say nothing else on the matter."

Kankuro frowned. "So Naruto's not going to be here? Wasn't he supposed to be... you know, one of the main guests?" During the war, Naruto's presence had been one of the larger morale building presences on the battlefield. His strength had unified them, bolstered them, and inspired the allied force to keep on fighting.

Gaara nodded once. "Yes... which is why the rest of us must do our part now. We must show everyone how even though the fighting ended, we will continue to be comrades." He coughed delicately into his hand, studiously avoiding his sister's eyes. "Temari given the... minor issues you have had in the past interacting with certain diplomats, I am sure that there are many other duties you could handle to occupy your time while both Kankuro and I handle the... more ambassadorial side of things. Perhaps you wouldn't mind taking care of a few bureaucratic details?"

Now that wasn't fair. Back when Gaara was still recovering from having the One Tails removed from him, the neighboring Land of Gold made a move to once again annex the northern mountain pass. She had only threatened to dip the ambassador to the Land of Gold in honey and bury him from the waist down in a nest of fire ants… It wasn't like she actually did it! And their troops did pull back from the border, didn't they? "You want me to do paperwork?" snapped Temari.

Gaara gave her a blank look. "I was merely trying to suggest an activity you would be more comfortable with. If you feel up to it, I could give you another assignment. Earlier, I spoke to the Tsuchikage on the matter of strengthening the alliance between our villages. The issue of cooperation and treaties forged through marriage came up in our conversation." Gaara glanced up at his sister. "He was kind enough to suggest several of his eligible grandsons and nephews who would be more than willing to escort you to the..."

"What? No!" snarled Temari. "Did you get sand in your brain? You have to crazy if you think that I would suffer that treacherous little prune of a man to play matchmaker for me!" She turned her head in a huff. "I can only imagine what his grandson is like!"

"I did not specify anything about marriage or that you had to associate with any of them in particular... It was... just a suggestion." Gaara paused and folded his arms. "Although I would like to remind you…" He motioned to both her and Kankuro, "both of you, that the duties you carry out today will help your family and your village in the future."

Temari glowered at him. How dare he pull out that favorite phrase of their father's. Gaara of all people should know what a dirty trick that was. "Gee, that's a great point, I'll think about it," she said, rolling her eyes.

"Good," said Gaara, impervious to the sarcasm. "While you are thinking, do something that will help this newfound alliance grow. That was an order from your Kazekage. Now if you will excuse me, Matsuri said she had an urgently important matter she wanted to discuss me… in private."

"In private?" asked Kankuro, both eyebrows raised. "Woo-hoo! You go Gaara!" He held up a hand for a high five.

Gaara gave his brother a genuinely confused stare. "It's only Matsuri. She's my trusted student. We talk a great deal. I fail to see the need to celebrate such an occurrence." He nodded to them both, dismissing them.

Brother and Sister bowed as he walked away. "This is stupid," griped Temari. "It's nothing but a waste of time. We should be heading back to the village. We've left it under the authority of those idiots on the council for far too long." Her expression darkened. "The Gods only know what they've been plotting while we're away…"

Kankuro shrugged. "Probably the same stuff they plot while we're home… Will you just relax Temari? I think some of what Gaara said makes sense." He shrugged. "What harm can there be in just taking some time off and socializing for a bit?"

"What harm? Did you just ask what harm there could be in associating with our enemies?"

"Former enemies," Kankuro reminded her. "Former… like that Nara twerp you're always hanging out with." He looked around. "Speaking of which, where is he anyway? I was half expecting him to be lurking behind you with that scowl on his face."

It took a good chunk of her shinobi training to turn her startled jump into nonchalant shrug. "Why should I care where that little pain in the butt is hiding?"

"I thought he was a friend of yours."

"Friend? Him?! Ha!"

Kankuro tilted his head slightly. "What? You never hung out with him? Went out to lunch with him? Talked to him?"

"I associated with him because I was ordered to by my Kazekage," she said, frost coating every word.

Kankuro shook his head. "Sometimes I worry about you Sis… So you mean to tell me that after all that time you spent together, you never once thought about trying to get to know him better?"

Temari stiffened ever so slightly. "I have no idea what you are talking about."

Her brother sighed. "You know how after a mission, you sometimes... feel the need for a little human company? You just want to remind yourself that you're alive! You want someone next to you, to talk to you." He smiled wistfully. "Sometimes it can get pretty intense, especially after those really nasty missions where you know you're lucky to still be breathing… There was this one time, after a mission, that Maki and I found ourselves trapped in a cave during a sandstorm and..."

"I have been on over a hundred missions," interrupted Temari, not wanting to hear any more of that story, "and I have never once felt the need for 'a little human company' afterwards."

Kankuro rolled his eyes. "Of course you wouldn't, you've got a heart carved out of stone... but that doesn't mean the rest of us don't need to relax and have some fun." He grinned under his purple makeup. "There was this one Hidden Cloud kunoichi who I swear was checking me out earlier."

A wave of hostility for Kankuro rose in her throat. Of course she wouldn't?! How dare her bratty little brother suggest she was the weird one! "She was staring because you were having a conversation with Crow!" Temari barked. "How many grown men do you see around here talking to puppets?"

Kankuro turned up his nose. "There you go again, always assuming the worst about people! Maybe she likes puppets? Even if she doesn't, I'm sure we could work around any little difficulties!"

"I'm sure you just want to work your way around that huge bosom of hers," grumbled Temari. "Trust me little brother, anybody airing out her cleavage like that is most definately not interested in talking to your stupid puppet!"

Kankuro scowled. "I'll have you know... Crow is not stupid! He can be quite charming and witty when he wants to be… unlike some people!" He turned in a huff and walked away.

Temari rubbed her face with one hand. Men! Survive a little war and they instantly start thinking with the wrong head. And another thing... why did those two idiots always assume she was going to be the responsible one! "Oh Temari!" she grumbled under her breath in a passing imitation of Gaara's voice, "Kankuro and I are going to be busy flirting with bimbos, so could you please make sure the whole alliance doesn't come crashing down around our heads by taking care of business? Oh and don't forget to make goo-goo eyes at all our horny former enemies. It's good for the village."

She snorted with disgust. This ridiculous idea of Gaara's... mixing with shinobi from other Hidden Villages in order to ensure peace... The council of elders back home would have a collective stroke if they heard of the Kazekage ordering a Suna shinobi to be... 'friendly' with a shinobi from another village. What was her little brother thinking? They were having enough problems with the clan chieftains of Hidden Sand already. Her brother may be a master at combat, but he was a naive moron when it came to seeing how well-intentioned decisions could be turned against you. Fraternizing with the enemy... who had ever heard of such an... idiotic... thing? Imagine what that would be like...

She stopped guiltily and looked around the party one more time, searching for that telltale slouch and perpetually bored expression. He still wasn't there. She sighed. "Well if my dumb little brother won't listen to reason," she muttered to herself testily, " and insists that I have to go talk to shinobi from other villages, the least I can do is find someone who's sure to agree with me that this is a really stupid idea." She made a note of his teammate, the walking mountain known as Choji queuing up in the line for food and rubbing his hands eagerly. Temari squared her shoulders and started forward. "If that little weasel isn't going to have the common decency to show up here when I'm looking for him," she said fatefully, "I'll just have to hunt him down."

The party was starting to pick up and he was halfway through the requisitions and expenditures manifest, when the little shogi player in his head gave him a mental nudge and slowly materialized at the board. Thankfully, there wasn't any opponent on the other side this time, just the miniature copy of himself. Little shogi playing Shikamaru set down his bag full of tiles and tapped the side of his nose. There was a familiar aroma filtering through the tent. A hint of jasmine and sandalwood. Shikamaru found himself sitting up straighter, and put his pen down with a click. "And just how long have you been standing there?" he asked in a purposefully disinterested voice.

"Long enough to determine you've lost your edge as a shinobi," Temari chuckled in a throaty contralto. "I had enough time to come up with seventeen ways to assassinate you." He could hear the smirk in her voice. "Some of them were quite creative," she purred.

Shikamaru rolled his eyes and pushed away from the desk to face her. "Well, if you're going to kill me, hurry up and do it before I get any deeper into the missing inventory accounts. Making me wade through all of those first is unusually cruel... even for you." While everything about his outward attitude was one of annoyance, in his psyche, the chess master was rubbing his hands with glee and quickly setting up the board.

Temari lounged against one of the tent poles, idly cleaning her fingernails with a kunai, pretending to ignore him. She was from the Hidden Sand village, once a deadly rival, now an ally. She'd taken the time to change out of her battle uniform and into something more like her standard shinobi wear, a short black kimono with a red sash. He'd always wondered whether she preferred the short skirts because she liked the freedom of movement they offered or if she just liked showing off her legs. He never got up the courage to ask though, because along with her very nice legs, Temari had the unnerving reputation of being the cruelest kunoichi in the world.

Physically she was attractive enough. Although if one wanted to be critical you could say she had a few flaws, like her lips being a little on the thin side, her strong jaw, that cruel twist to her mouth, and mostly that way she would squint when she found something you said annoying. It was a squint that said: "The only thing preventing me from killing you right here and now, is that I'm not quite sure where I would hide the body."

All that aside, with her honey blonde hair, her sea green eyes and her athletic figure, she was definitely categorizable as comely, but then again, there were a fair number of other girls one could hypothetically add to a hypothetical list as being pretty before one would reach Temari's name... Not that any of those other girls would want to have a single thing to do with one Shikamaru Nara.

In fact Shikamaru found most women to be... troublesome. At the top of the list, reaching down from on high like some sort of wrathful, demanding goddess was his mother, Yoshino Nara. Oft times it seemed that the moment his mother pushed him out of the womb she immediately started bossing him around. She certainly did that to his father, who appeared to have spent every available moment trying to avoid her. With his father Shikaku constantly engaging in what his mother called 'My good for nothing husband's worthless hobbies' Yoshino's one remaining target was her son. He didn't understand why she just couldn't leave him alone.

Shikamaru thought it might get better once he entered the academy, and indeed his first year teacher, the kindly faced Eriko Fukada, had praised him for a full ten minutes when she asked everyone to practice writing just the vowel sounds of the hiragana alphabet, and instead, he had turned in the whole thing.

She had been slightly perturbed the next day when he decided to stare out the window instead of working on the 'T' series with the rest of the class. After three more days of him napping, drawing, or humming quietly instead of wasting his time practicing something he clearly already knew, she had sent a note home asking to meet with his parents.

As he grew up, it became a noticeable pattern: everyone he knew with two 'X' chromosomes seemed destined to being a pestering annoyance.

Until he met Temari, that is. She was the first girl he met that exceeded being classified as 'merely' an annoyance and actually frightened him almost as much as his mother. First they fought during the chunin exams. Later she saved his life. Fate kept throwing them together time and time again... enough times that he actually began to look forward to their subsequent meetings.

That didn't mean she didn't nag... Temari was the epitome of badgering. To Shikamaru, what made her... tolerable was her personality. Every conversation was a new challenge with her. Her tongue and wit were honed to a razor's edge. Temari lived every minute of her life as if was a sparring match and she was constantly trying to score points. Whenever she was around, she was always harassing, always haranguing him. He had to be constantly on his toes with her or else she'd leave him verbally sprawled in the dust.

"Was there something you wanted?" Shikamaru asked after the silence had gone on long enough. "Or did you just stop by to admire my genius?" On the mental shogi board, a pawn was slid forward. A safe opening gambit.

Her four blonde ponytails rustled as she tossed her head, amused. There was the forest green flash of her eyes as she glanced at him and quickly looked away. "I stopped by because I heard the most amazing rumor... Shikamaru Nara was hard at work." A smile played on her lips. "I simply had to witness this miracle with my own eyes." Her knight hopped out and threatened the pawn, a strong offensive counter. "I was so sure you'd be at the party," she continued teasingly. "Going seemed like a great strategy to get out of doing mountains of paperwork."

And suddenly, there it was… a sickening drop in the hollow of his stomach. Just like that, Shikamaru didn't feel like playing anymore. He didn't feel like he could play anymore. He quickly turned back to the desk. "Yeah... well... it's a drag but... It's my duty." Inside his mind the chess master pushed himself away from the board.

There was a rustle of silk. "It is your duty... But so is going to this ridiculous thing. Your Kage commanded it, as did mine," came her voice from right over his shoulder. Her words gently tickled the fine hairs on his neck. For the briefest moment, he considered putting it off.

But the dead were still watching. From the depths of his mind, he heard his father sigh. He hunched his shoulders over his work. "I don't... Look, I just need to finish this, okay?"

There was a long silence, broken only by the gentle scratching of his pen. Just as he was beginning to wonder if she had left. There was an explosive scrape as she pulled up a chair. "Fine. Where can I start?"

"I don't need your help. I can..." Shikamaru's voice faded away under her glacial stare.

"We are going to tear our way through this bureaucratic nonsense, and then you are going to take me to the party," she said adamantly. Temari glared at Shikamaru until he closed his mouth. "What? I'm not going to be able to find anyone else to go with me if I'm wasting all my time here with you, am I? What are you waiting for? Stop staring at me! Get to work!"