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So I realize that this chapter sort of switches between a lot of emotions, and if it feels too quick for you, I apologize. I tried to make the transitions as natural as possible but I'm not sure if I was successful.
I know a lot of you have been asking for more ShikaIno, so I've tried to include a little of it in this chapter as best I could. But please be reminded that this is a story from Temari's point of view. This story is intended as a way to humanize and empathize with Temari while also giving you some ShikaIno. I'll do my best to add ShikaIno where I can, but only if I feel its natural to the story.
Sorry, rambling. Anyways, enjoy!
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My Boss The Genius
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PART FIFTEEN
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Hospital lights were too harsh, Temari thought. You'd think that a hospital would soften the lights for patients groggily waking up from unconsciousness caused by several harrowing days of captivity, but noooooo. Instead, she was greeted with a few blinding artificial suns and the disdainful face of - really? - Sasuke Uchiha.
His arms were crossed, and he stared menacingly down at her. He was probably trying to intimidate her, something she should have expected from an asshat like Sasuke. Someone ends up in a hospital bed by being kidnapped for a few days, and instead of sympathy, they are greeted with contempt.
"... is this hell?" she asked. He only glared at her. Luckily, she was spared from the scathing reply that would have been sure to come out of his mouth when the door opened and a doctor stepped in.
"Ah, you're awake," he said, totally oblivious to the sudden tension that took hold of the room. Sasuke silently stepped back as the doctor reached for her chart at the end of the bed. He flipped through it absentmindedly as he asked, "How are you feeling, Ms. Sabaku?" Temari shrugged.
"Okay I guess." She looked briefly around the room before asking," Where are my brothers?" The last time she woke up in the hospital, Gaara was stuck like glue next
to her bedside and Kankurou was practicing katas in the corner of the room. She had heard later from a nurse that they hadn't left the room since she was rushed in, so she had to wonder where they were now.
"Mr. Uchiha and Mr. Nara insisted on a no-visitor policy until you woke up," he told her, shooting a disapproving look at the Uchiha. "I protested, of course. After such an ordeal as yours, waking up to familiar faces would have been better for your psyche."
"Her psyche is fine," a voice said, and when Temari and the doctor turned, they saw Shikamaru standing in the doorway. His arm was bandaged and he carried a cane, no doubt to help him keep most of his weight off his bandaged leg. He gestured towards Temari. "Now if I may?" The doctor signed noisily through his nose, clearly against whatever it was that Shikamaru was referring to. The doctor turned to Temari.
"I'll be back in a bit to check on you," he shot a glare at the FBI agents, "with your brothers." Temari nodded gratefully at him, and he swept out the door. Shikamaru limped into the room, dropping heavily into the chair at her bedside. She eyed him critically.
"You're injured," she said. He snorted.
"No shit."
They sat in silence for a while, Sasuke still standing silently in the corner, appraising her.
"Thanks for saving my life," she croaked out, her voice a little scratchy from misuse. She reached for the paper cup of water that sat at her bedside, noticing it only the moment before. Shikamaru shrugged and she sipped from it.
"Part of my job." He looked at her then, piercingly. "I'm not one to beat around the bush," he said. Temari smirked.
"I never knew you to be otherwise," she told him. Shikamaru motioned for her to sit up, rearranging her pillows at the base of her spine. Temari's heart panged, recognizing that out-of-context, the gesture would seem so sweet and caring. She was his sick girlfriend, and he was her affectionate boyfriend. But that was not the truth.
She smoothed her hands over the blanket covering her lap as she sat up. "What do you want to know?" She dared not look into his eyes; somehow she knew they would be accusing.
"Are you or are you not affiliated with the Australian-based mafia Sunagakure?"
She tried not to wince. That question had been expected, but still didn't sting any less. She worked so hard for the past few years to separate herself from that name, and yet here it was, shoved right into her face once again.
"Yes."
"Is or isn't your brother, Gaara no Sabaku, the leader of Sunagakure?"
"He isn't that person anymore!" Temari exclaimed, her hands clenching her sheets, her face twisted in rage and objection as she lurched forward. "We gave that up when we came to New York." Shikamaru only cocked his brow at her, causing her to deflate against the pillows propped at her back.
"Do you really believe that?" he asked her. She gripped her blankets with white hands, her face paling. A feeling of foreboding started winding in her stomach as memories flashed through her. A small bloodstain at the foot of the bathtub, Kankurou's fondness of the night, Gaara's late nights 'studying'. Separately, they seemed so innocent but together they were incriminating.
But maybe she was just naive.
"I always suspected..." she said, trailing off. "I wanted out of that life when I came here. But somehow I knew my brothers couldn't give it up so easily." Shikamaru leaned back into his seat, expecting a lengthy conversation. (Or maybe he was just lazy; she could never tell.)
"So you admit that your brother is the leader of the Sunagakure?"
She sighed. "Yes." Obviously there was no real way out of this. This was probably the first time she would admit her past to someone who wasn't part of it. Somehow that made Shikamaru more special, but she tried not to think on it now. Chasing a ship that already sailed was pointless.
She played with the edge of her blanket as she considered what to say next. Would she just sit here and answer every question he peppered at her in total passivity? Maybe the New York Temari would do that. After all, NY Temari was willing to do almost anything to fit in. She craved normalcy and stability; regular friends and a regular day job. And most people were quite passive; that was why they spent their days at a regular office job, gossiping about people and events and drinking coffee and going on bad dates.
But the original Temari... she had been cut from a completely different cloth. So different that it wasn't cloth at all, it was steel, or iron, or bronze. And maybe she hadn't seen it at first, how much better her cloth was. But Temari thought she saw it now, as she stared into Shikamaru's dark eyes. It wasn't 9-to-5 jobs or awkward blind dates. It was kicking ass and taking prisoners.
She wondered at how stupid she'd been; at how scared she'd been. She thought she knew what she wanted, she thought she knew who she was when she landed in America, but in reality she had just been running from herself. And now it was time to stop.
"So who are you?" Shikamaru asked. She smiled.
"My name is Temari no Sabaku. I was born to Rasa and Karura no Sabaku in Sydney, Australia. I was the eldest born child, but I was a girl, so I couldn't inherit the family business." She looked at Shikamaru. "My family business was, as you already seem to know, in the black market."
She turned away, staring at the wall, lost in memories. "My brother Kankurou was born after me, and Gaara after him. Although Kankurou was older, my father thought Gaara had more skill for the... industry. My mother died in childbirth and my father passed away when we were fairly young, so we were brought up mostly by our grandmother, Chiyo."
Here, her thoughts turned even more inward as the words poured from her lips like a broken dam. She still remembered that day when she had finally decided she wanted nothing to do with the 'family business'...
"Gran?" she shouted out into the darkness. "Gran?!"
There was the sound of gunfire from her left, so she took off into the warehouse. Recently, Sungakure had gotten into some scuffles with the thugs hired by the Red Cloud. Apparently there was something of Sunagakure's that they wanted, but Temari didn't know what it was. Each scuffle had escalated until this night, when some of the main members of the Clouds broke into one of their long-untouched warehouses. Granny Chiyo lived the closest to it, so without even thinking she had dove straight in.
Temari was the second closest, actually having been on her way to her gran's house to do a little more training. Chiyo had a shooting range in her basement, so Temari liked to get a few rounds there when she had the time. But her plans went awry when Chiyo called her for backup. "We got a few cockroaches," she had said over the phone.
Initially, she didn't think it was a big deal. Since they'd had previous conflicts with the Cloud, Temari had assumed stupidly they would come out unscathed from this conflict too. But when she slowly, almost lazily, finally made her way to where her grandmother was, she realized she was deathly wrong.
"Foolish son of mine..." Chiyo had rasped, holding her bleeding stomach. She was kneeling in front of Sasori, a dark red-haired man Temari had only remembered from brief moments of her childhood. He had disappeared when she was very young, so her images of him were fleeting at best. But he was definitely familiar, and he was definitely dangerous.
"Gran!" she shouted, holding her gun up at him. "Run! I can handle him!" Chiyo scoffed, slowly standing up, her free hand also gripping a firearm.
"Don't be silly, girl," she said. "I taught him everything he knows." And it was unspoken, that underlying subtext in the air. I am the only one strong enough to beat him. So Temari, stupidly, lowered her gun and stepped back, even as she saw the trails of blood on the ground dripping from her grandmother's body. She saw all that and still stepped back.
"It was over in seconds," Temari said, her voice as soft. (She never knew it could get that soft.) "He was dead but... so was she."
Temari shook her head, clearing her head of the cobwebs and the memories. She didn't want to look at Shikamaru, knowing that regardless of what emotion was on his face it wouldn't make her feel better or worse.
"After we buried her, all I wanted was to be in peace. But the nature of our business didn't allow for that. I think Gaara saw what I needed, and he was kind enough to give it to me."
There was silence for a little while, and Temari wanted so desperately to know what Shikamaru was thinking, but was also scared enough to wish he wouldn't say anything at all. Maybe someone decided to smile down on her that day, because the door opened then and the doctor came through with her brothers. Sasuke made a move to stop them, but Shikamaru held up his hand.
'Let them be,' he seemed to say with his gesture. The two of them left the room as Gaara and Kankurou stepped in. The doctor immediately started checking her vitals to be sure she was okay, and her brothers sat silently as he worked.
When he finally left, Temari let her brothers have a moment of blissful silence before she screamed, "WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU THINKING?!"
Outside, Shikamaru smirked knowingly as Temari's voice filtered through the thin walls, her threats a great source of amusement for him. His phone vibrated then, Ino's text appearing on the blank screen.
Why didn't you tell me Temari was a princess?!
Ino. She's part of a mafia.
CORRECTION, SHE'S THE SISTER OF THE KING, THAT MAKES HER A PRINCESS.
Gaara no Sabaku isn't a king. He's a capofamiglia.
... what the hell is that?
It means he's the boss of a mafia.
SO HE'S THE LEADER RIGHT? And leaders are typically king's, which makes him a king which mAKES TEMARI A PRINCESS!
Shikamaru rolled his eyes and put his phone away, pushing off the wall. He had a lot of paperwork to do now, thanks to the three siblings in that hospital room. His phone vibrated in his pocket again, and he brought it out.
SHIKAMARU! MAKE ME A PRINCESS!
No.
WHY NOT?
He sighed.
If I take you to Disneyland and let you wear the Cinderella costume, will you shut up?
... Okay.
He smirked and pocketed his watch again. He had successfully made it all the way back to his car in the underground parking lot when his phone vibrated again. He readied himself for one of Ino's typical outrageous requests as he dug his phone out of his pocket.
... I love you.
Shikamaru smiled.
Me too.
(He ignored the next text that would blatantly denounce him as a gentleman, using an impressive variety of cuss words to inform him of his obvious deficiency in romance.)