Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

”How about a short training of Battle Royal?” Inojin asked that same morning. They sat on the edge of the bridge, feet dangling down towards the water. Shikadai had tried to nap somewhat, thought he was constantly distracted by Chocho’s munching on her chips. It was a new taste and a new brand, the chips were not the normal size and shape, they were twisty like fries. Chocho was excited.

She reviewed the chips as she ate, Inojin listened half heartedly and Shikadai tried to ignore her.

“A Battle Royale?” Chocho stops her reviewing of chips. “In the clearing downstream?”

“Yeah”, Inojin says. “I mean, Moegi-sensei said we should practise more and mum hasn’t dinner ready for another few hours.” He looks over at Shikadai, who has now his eyes opened. “And you should do something too, Shikadai.”

“What’s wrong with what I’m doing”, Shikadai asks.

“I’m going to beat you, you know”, Inojin says and he is smiling.

“Beat me”, Shikadai repeats, smiling back at his teammate. “I’d like to see you try.”

“I want to see Inojin beat Shikadai too”, Chocho says, earning an annoyed glance by her friend.

“Is it seriously that hard to believe?” Inojin huffs. “Just one good strike of Mind Transfer, and I’d have him bowing in front of me and calling me Lord Inojin.”

“Oh god, stop with your imagination”, Shikadai says and rises from the sitting position on the bridge. He can’t almost hold his laugh inside. “Come on then, Lord Inojin, beat me and I’ll treat you a soda.”

It had been fun and games. It was a Battle Royale, a formation in training they had worked on for a while, to perfect their teamwork and their chances to win future fights.

This time Chocho seemed biased by Inojin, however, since she too attacked Shikadai constantly.

“I still hear no Lord Inojin here!” Shikadai laughs when he hears Inojin creep around in the bushes. “Stop hiding.”

He hears Chocho prepare an attack and goes into hiding and Inojin jumps forward to paint an Ink Bird, successfully avoiding Chocho’s attack.

There it was!

Shikadai sees his chance to bring Inojin down, thanks to the strong sunlight and the shadow the Ink Bird casts in the ground and his shadow reaches just in time, and stops the Ink Bird completely.

“Woah!” Inojin yelps as he crashes down onto the ground. For a second Shikadai worries that he got hurt, but the wicked smile on Inojin’s lips tells him he’s okay.

“You forgot this is a Battle Royale?” Shikadai asks Inojin and Inojin laughs back.

“How about you?” he asks back and clearly has seen something Shikadai hasn’t seen.

Chocho comes attacking from the back and Shikadai is forced to drop his shadow jutsu around Inojin.

“I was sure you’d keep going after Inojin”, he says to Chocho after he had jumped away from her attack. She seems extremely satisfied at having surprised Shikadai.

“And I thought you might think that”, she says, smiling at him. “So I decided to outwit you.”

This is why Battle Royal is their favourite formation to train in. Because it is always so unpredictable. Anyone can be the enemy. Shikadai senses that both Inojin and Chocho will turn against him, and he can’t currently perform more shadows that to bind one of them. He backs away, trying to figure out a way to beat them both. Wind maybe? Anything to avoid being outnumbered and later ridiculed by calling Inojin “Lord Inojin”.

Luckily, Inojin is one step ahead of him, suggesting to call it a day. He is already hungry.

Chocho is not satisfied at all.

Oh, when the world was still okay and you could be dissatisfied by such small, trivial matters.

Suddenly the sound of a slow clap reaches the trio, and they turned around to see a stranger leaning against a tree, smiling smugly at them. He claps, claps and continues to clap.

Shikadai realise this stranger had been watching them for the whole game. Why hadn’t they noticed him? Why hadn’t Inojin noticed him, when he should be able to? Slowly, Shikadai turns suspicious. This doesn’t feel right.

That is of course before the suspicion turned into fright.

The man knows them. He knows they are part of the Ino-Shika-Cho-trio, he knows who they are.

The man asks for a lighter and Shikadai almost scoffs at the man to piss off, but he is still so confused by why and how this man knows them, so he doesn’t say anything. He hadn’t seen the man before, and, considering how good face memory he has, he is certain this man is not from Konoha. He is from somewhere else, a stranger, a possible enemy.

An enemy, Shikadai concludes in the heat of the situation.

“Who the heck are you?” he asks, and doesn’t care how rude he sounds.

The man comes closer and Shikadai feels unsure. The man walks straight towards them, similar to how predators close in to their preys.

“Hey, hold it right there!” Shikadai says, angrily this time. When should he attack? Should he attack? “Konohagakure lies just beyond. State your business, mister!”

He knows he’s just thirteen and doesn’t look like a terrifying ninja, but he stands securely on two legs and tries to seem angry and threatening.

The man knows his name! He knows Shikadai’s full name. And wants to talk to dad.

Shikadai makes the decision to end this bullshit now. He brings his hands up, ready to paralyse the man, to stop him from coming closer to them, because now he begins to feel slightly afraid.

“Are you even listening to me!” she snarls. “I said halt! You are too sketchy!”

Sketchy? Who even says that?

He could’ve said: you are an enemy to me, but didn’t. He called him “sketchy”. What a splendid way to sound threatening.

The man allows himself to be swallowed by the shadow and Shikadai wants to smirk at how easy it was, but before the corners of his mouths move the man does something… unpredictable. A metal tuning fork exposes itself in his open palm and the second Shikadai registers what it is he has –

That noise.

Piercing, painful, sawing sound of Shikadai doesn’t even know what it is penetrates his eardrums and he can’t do anything.

Inojin and Chocho screams in the background – they are equally crippled by the sound. Shikadai wants do to something and when he looks down at his own weapon, he sees how the shadow thins out and snaps.

No!

Then something Shikadai didn’t even know was possible happens. His shadow, his weapon – his own shadow, turns itself inwards and climbs up his legs.

Shikadai knows what it feels like to be paralysed by a shadow. It was the first step in training with dad when he was younger – to know what the attack you are subjecting to others feels like. It tickles at first, then it feels like you can’t move, but it never hurts.

This doesn’t tickle. This is fright itself climbing up his legs, locking him in, forcing him to stand still and not move a single centimetre.

“Shikadai!” Inojin screams, surely he and Chocho by now realised what was going on. They were still too crippled by the sound to move, to help him.

Shikadai doesn’t hear the sound anymore.

His brain has frozen.

The only thing he hears is his own thoughts screaming oh shit oh shit run away run away SHIKADAI HE IS GOING TO GET YOU!

But he can’t move.

The man walks up to him and he looks at Shikadai with mild disappointment. Like Shikadai’s try to stop him wasn’t what he expected. Like Shikadai himself is a disappointment.  

“Hm”, the man says and takes something out of the big pocket of his jacket. It is a black, thick metal ring – a collar.

Shikadai eyes the collar the man has in his hands, then forces himself to look up in the man’s eyes, realising what the man’s aim is. Now he becomes scared for real.

“No”, Shikadai says, barely above a whisper. “No, no, please, don’t.”

He doesn’t know what that collar does, all he knows is that he doesn’t want that close to him. The man brings up the collar and –

CLICK.

Shikadai feels cold metal enclose around his neck. The metal is thick and heavy, not tight enough to strangle him, but not big enough to get it over his head. His breathing is secured, but in that moment he can’t breathe. He tries to bring up a hand to push the man away, to feel the black collar, to do something, but the shadow restrains him.

“Whether you survive past today or not depends on your father”, the man says calmly.

“Get it off me!” Shikadai screams and he still doesn’t know that the collar is for, but all he can feel is the symbol of ownership across his neck. Why would one put a collar around another human’s neck if not to wordlessly tell that you are now owned by me?

Having his integrity stripped of him and sheer panic going through his body, his chakra in his feet is drawn back and moves up to his head instead. The shadow around him fades into nothing and Shikadai pushes himself off the man and stumbles back.

He imagines he can’t breathe and grips around his neck with his hands. The metal has now become his own skin temperature and doesn’t feel as cold anymore, but the inside of Shikadai’s body is cold as ice.

Why did he do this to me?

The man scoffs, almost bored, and fiddles around with the cigarette he has in his mouth.

“It is a bomb”, he said. “The collar is a bomb. Play easy now, Shikadai.”

Shikadai’s fingers tense around the thick collar.

No, no, no, no, please let this be just a stupid nightmare.

He imagines the collar being filled with metal shards that will slice his throat once ignited, he imagines his skin melt off, he imagines dying –

“Mom!” Inojin yells after he connected to Ino via the Mind Body technique. “It’s Shikadai! He’s – he’s in big trouble!”

Big trouble? What an understatement.

“Can you put me in touch with master Shikamaru, like, right now?” Inojin continues while eyeing Shikadai, who is sitting on his knees, clutching the metal collar around his neck with sweaty, shaking hands like his life depends on it.

A lot of things happen next.

Ink Lions, Earth Style jutsus.

Moegi-sensei and Sai arrive together with other ANBU-shinobi.

The enemy remains unaffected by the army. He looks at Sai with interest.

“Yamanaka Sai”, he says and then looks at Inojin. “Hm. Your son is untouched.”

“Don’t speak about my son”, Sai growls and Moegi-sensei moves to action, trapping the man in an Earth Style prison.

Shikadai feels some kind of relief. Now they can maybe make the man undo this – this mistake and take the collar off him, and he can continue his life like nothing bad ever happened?

“Listen closely, Kazamatsuri Moegi”, the man says. Shikadai can’t believe it – he knows them all! Who is he? “You see the object hanging from that tree branch behind me?”

They all look at the great chestnut tree behind the man. Around one of its branches a similar metal collar hangs. Shikadai feels anxiety storming around in his stomach, in his head, in his whole being. This doesn’t feel right.

“It’s identical to the one I put on Shikadai”, the man continues. It feels like time has stopped. “I’m going to trigger it to detonate now. Yes, without being able to move at all.”

Time truly has stopped.

“Boom”, the man says and he is smiling.

The lights, the sound and the smell of the explosion behind the man, who remains calm in the earth prison, get right up to Shikadai.

He is falling.

He falls down and wraps his hands around his head because the mortal fear, death agony, is real now. He feels someone touch his shoulder, but he doesn’t know if it’s Inojin or Chocho or Moegi or Sai or someone else.

Shikadai doesn’t want to hear what the man tells them next.

The collar around his neck is set to auto-detonate in 48 hours.

48 hours.

That is two days. Shikadai wants to throw up.

The man continues talking, telling them what his demands are and Shikadai sees how Moegi-sensei releases the man from the earth prison, but Shikadai can’t really take in what anyone is saying. The man claims he wants to defect to Konoha and Shikadai wants to yell at him to fuck off and at the same time yell to his father to let this man defect to Konoha, anything to get this collar off him.

He feels the collar around his neck – the bomb.

And there is only one thing that penetrates his mind.

I don’t want to die!

Chapter Text

“Where is he? Where is he?” Temari’s words echo in the corridor before she gets out to the yard behind the Hokage’s tower.

Shikadai hears her, prepares himself to stay calm and explain the situation rationally and truthfully for her.

But that changes the second his mother comes into view. Her hair is hastily tied up in four ponytails – Temari has had a day off and not even bothered making her hair before the news arrived.

Shikadai is in danger.

His lower lip trembles when he catches her facial expression and worried eyes, which twist into a furious glare as she spots the thick collar around his neck.

The bomb.

A real, ticking bomb which will make his body burn and his neck burst if ignited.

“Oh, Shikadai,” Temari lets out. Her steps increase in speed and soon enough she is in front of Shikadai, who is sitting on a stone bench. She doesn’t fear the risk of explosion the slightest as she places her hands on Shikadai’s shoulders, before touching the collar, as if to assess its weight. It’s heavy.

Tears rise in Shikadai’s eyes and all imagination to remain tough and rational crumble when Temari kneels in front of him. Mum is here.

He bursts out in tears, out of fear, out of lack of control, out of confusion. Life was smiling and going on and about just like normal a mere half an hour ago and now he has a bomb around his neck and no guarantee of how to get it off him.

Shikadai still doesn’t understand why this is happening, why he is punished like this or which gods he had upset to make him deserve this death agony.

“Shh, I’ll make him pay, shh, I’ll kill him, it’ll be alright,” Temari whispers in Shikadai’s hair as he sobs against her shoulder.

Neither of them is aware of the glances of pity Inojin and Chocho, and Sai who is to watch over Shikadai as long as he poses a potential threat, give them. In Temari’s world there is only Shikadai and Shikadai’s only his mother. She hugs him even harder, trying to make his shaking stop.

There are not many things in this world making Temari unnerved but seeing her son this distressed and scared is one of them. He kisses his head, buries lips in thick, black hair – hard.

After a few seconds of hugging, sobbing, and whispering Sai clears his throat awkwardly.

“If you’re going to stay close, you need to wear this.”

He has a bomb proof vest in his hand, which Temari hadn’t seen it when she came inside. She tosses her head towards Sai, and stares with disgust at the bomb proof vest. It feels like taunting – like mocking. Sai and Inojin are dutifully wearing them already, protecting their bodies from potential flying shards or nails embedded in the bomb.

Chocho is still holding the vest assigned to her in her hands, clutching it anxiously.

“He is my son,” Temari hisses.

“With that bomb –“ Sai tries, raising the vest in his hands in a meaningful way, wordlessly trying to nudge it towards Temari. It is infuriatingly annoying; the way Sai treats Shikadai as the object around his neck. As a safety hazard. Screw the safety of the village when the safety of Shikadai is the only thing Temari can focus on.

“That bomb is not going to go off!” Temari snaps, finding it hard to keep herself calm. Someone did this to her baby, someone violated his integrity and body by using it as walking mine. As an object ready to be sacrificed if needed.

Her fingers almost shake as she rubs her thumb against Shikadai’s cheek to dry his tears, trying to smile encouragingly.

“It’s not going to go off,” she says again, soothingly this time. Shikadai nods faintly and swallows loudly as a reply, his gaze still unsure. Temari could catch the sight of his Adam’s apple move just above the edge of the collar, before it disappeared beneath metal. She couldn’t resist forcing two fingers beneath the collar, as if to check how tight it was against his skin.

“I can breathe just fine,” Shikadai mumbles and leans away from Temari. He feels so uncomfortable by all the close attention the bomb is understandably getting. A technician from the village main lab has already overseen the bomb and tried to get a view of how it was built, but without taking it apart it proved to be too difficult to make assessments.

Taking it apart is too dangerous, as no one knows if it will trigger the fatal explosion.

Temari bit the inside of her lip.

“And why isn’t he wearing a vest, then? He is in the most danger of everyone,” she snarls. Poor Sai stands strong as an oak as Temari rushes towards him and snatches the vest from his hands, fuming inside of anger.

“I don’t want it,” Shikadai says and looks away. He knows it won’t help. It won’t protect his head and throat; it won’t protect from a threat attached to his body.

Temari doesn’t question him and throws the vest away. She chooses to ignore the small sigh Sai let’s escape from him.

“Where is Shikamaru?” she asks instead, every word dripping out of hatred.

“Inside with Amado,” Sai tells her.

“Don’t!” Temari interrupts him and slams her hand down beside Shikadai. Sai remains unaffected by her sudden violence and only looks calmly at her. Temari challenges his calmness by her mouth curling into a snarl. “Don’t say his name. I don’t care what his name is, I don’t care where he is from, I don’t care who he is. He doesn’t deserve a name. He is no one.”

“Inside with the enemy,” Sai corrects.

“Did dad check you up?” Temari asks Shikadai instead, ignoring Sai.

Shikadai shakes his head as his jaw continues shaking.

“I guess he is busy with… with…” He fails to say Amado’s name and Temari wishes nothing but death upon the man who dared to touch her baby.

“I’ll talk to him,” she says, trying to sound secure, though she simultaneously wants to hug Shikamaru and slap him at the same time for not coming to console Shikadai before going into questioning the man without a name.

Ino comes out of the door to the facility, wearing a bomb proof vest. Somehow, she makes Temari even more snappy and tense.

“And why are you here and not in the interrogation?” Temari snaps. “You could send my husband here instead and take his place.”

“I need to protect the village,” Ino says, voice professional and even. Temari bites back a snarl and decides to listen to what Ino has to say. “We know so little of this man and this ordeal is currently demanding the focus of our highest authority, leaving the rest of the village unsupervised.” Ino straightens her back, ready to fight Temari if needed over her decision. “I must protect the rest of the village. If someone attacks now, we don’t know if Naruto, Shikamaru or the rest can assist us. I’m keeping track of the dome, and I need to find out how this man came inside and from where. I have to be prepared for assault.”

Temari strengthens her grip around Shikadai’s shoulder, swallowing. Ino’s gaze is hard.

“That man had a point,” Ino continues, lowering her voice as if to protect Shikadai from what she is about to say, despite knowing Shikadai is hearing everything she says. “We have now done a huge investigation for a single chunin. If we show the outer world – possible enemies – that we stagnate as a shinobi village for one person, then we’re doomed. I’m sorry, Temari.”

Temari knows Ino is right. Her own village was forced to do the same when the Third disappeared – hell, even when Gaara was kidnapped she had to continue working on the defence and security of her village instead of going to hunt the criminals who did that despicable thing to her own blood.

She had been forced to prioritize the village and now everyone is forced to the same.

Another person comes through the doors, pulling a wagon behind him. The wagon is filled with sacks; sacks filled with sand.

“Commands from above,” the chunin pulling the wagon sighs. “The victim is to be surrounded by a protective wall to stop eventual fire and shards from hurting his environment in case of explosion – “

“Will you shut up?” Temari yells. “He is hearing what you say, for fucks’ sake!”

The wet streaks on Shikadai’s cheeks have more company now by even more tears. Why is this happening to me, he thinks, though his head is mostly blank. The intense emotions cancel each other out, resulting in a head not thinking clearly. What did I do to deserve this?

You are Shikamaru’s son. That’s why this is happening to you.

I can’t choose my parents! Why, why, why…

“I can take care of this,” Sai says and ushers away the other chunin. He throws a glance at Temari. “You can find Shikamaru if you need, Temari. Inojin, Chocho and I stay here with Shikadai until we get further information.”

It is clear Sai is uncomfortable with Temari’s aggressive emotional response.

“You better know you’re damn lucky it’s not your kid with a bomb around his neck,” Temari hisses to Ino and Sai. She knows she is being unfair, especially with Inojin listening to her, but right now she can’t control herself.

Not when her blood – her baby boy – is under threat. Just this morning he was his usual self and now a shaking mess she barely recognises. Shikadai has never been part of something traumatic, never had his life in real danger before. Now he is crying and shaking, and Temari cannot make the bad good again, like a mother should be able to.

She turns to Shikadai one final time.

“I’ll kill him,” she says. “Everything is going to be okay. Fuck the sandbags and the bomb proof vests. It won’t explode. It won’t.” She could still not hold back. “I love you, Shikadai. I love you so much.”

Just in case.

Just in case her son dies tonight.

Temari slams her hand against the door to the interrogating room she knows the man without a name is in. Maybe she can break the jutsu proof glass with enough raw muscle strength and anger? Maybe she can kill him before Naruto can stop her?

“Temari.”

She turns around to see Shikamaru. The bags under his eyes are dark and the wrinkle between his eyebrows ever so present on his tense face.

“Why the fuck is he still alive?” Temari asks, taking a bold step in front of Shikamaru. “Why haven’t you killed him yet?” Her words may sound threatening, but her voice fails its strength for every second when she is in the same room as her husband. The final words are voiced with a distinct quiver.

“Because…” Shikamaru says. His voice is equally hoarse and distressed. Temari recognises on his tired face that he has shouted, growled, and threatened – that he has used all angry emotions, all rage and fury, against the man already. Seemingly all for nothing. “We don’t know what will happen to Shikadai if he dies.”

“Make him take it off then,” Temari pleads. Her voice can’t keep up with her anger. Oh, how pathetic she sounds, make it stop, make it stop. Make this nightmare become undone.

“According to him the bomb is set to auto detonate in roughly 47 hours,” Shikamaru says, each word hurting his tongue. “He claims it can explode without him moving, as if he controls it with his mind. Even if Ino tries to attack his mind… we don’t know if the bomb will detonate as a punishment, or as a self-protection method. And we can’t kill him before we know if the detonation is true or false, and if true, how to disarm it without hurting Shikadai.”

“Is the lab filled of incompetent idiots who don’t know how to disarm bombs?” Temari hisses. “The village is filled with equipment and technology and god damnit, it can’t be that difficult to disarm technology they create at this lab!”

“Temari,” Shikamaru gets out in a try to interrupt her emotional turmoil. “Tem, Tem, you are not thinking now.”

“How dare you?” Temari bites back. Shikamaru’s hands on her shoulders are heavy and feel almost infantilizing to her. She wants to throw his hands off her, but she stays where she is, suddenly feeling so heavy and drained.

“That man’s bag was filled with technology we have never seen before,” Shikamaru tells her. “He seems to be a master engineering of a level unknown to us. Out technicians are working on identifying what tools and gadgets he has, and the insides of those gadgets have never been seen before here. The chances the bomb is designed and encrypted in a way not even our best engineers cannot crack without trial and errors are too huge to even be considered! You know what happens if one tries to disarm a bomb and it fails. The bomb explodes. It… explodes!”

The bomb will explode and Shikadai will die.

Temari doesn’t even register the tear that falls down her cheek. Shikamaru notices it and seeing his wife cry triggers the same emotional respond inside him. He snivels, and the eyes turn redder and redder under a shiny, wet surface of tears, and before they both know it Shikamaru has Temari captured in a hard, deep hug.

“I can’t lose him,” Shikamaru sobs against Temari’s hair. “He is ours… he has his whole life in front of him… I can’t lose him.”

Too many of their family has already lost their lives. Temari’s parents. Shikaku. Asuma. They can’t lose their son, their baby. How does one get over the taunting emptiness of a room that once was a teenager’s room, the empty chair by the table and the silence, never to hear him laugh again? Shikadai dying is not a choice. It’s not a possibility. It can’t be.

“I don’t know what to do,” Shikamaru admits. “I can’t decrypt the man; I can’t decode him. He wants to defect to Konoha – “

Temari stiffens. This sounds bad.

“Defect to Konoha?” she parrots. “Why the fuck?”

“He claims he is under threat, and this is the only way he could get us to listen,” Shikamaru explains.

“That has to be a lie,” Temari says. “There has to be more to this than that.”

“I’ve tried to see it,” Shikamaru says.

“Will he take the bomb off if you agree to whatever his demands are?”

“Yes.”

Temari takes a few seconds to let the information sink in. She turns to look out of the window, towards the direction where Shikadai is.

“Shikadai is scared of all the safety precautions you’re taking,” Temari says, tone bitter. “It makes him believe he will die. And possibly kill others at the same time.”

“As much as I hate that as well…” Shikamaru sighs deeply. “But we have a village to think about. We don’t know if it will explode. And before we know if it’s a fake, or if we get it somehow magically disarmed without complications, or if we get Amado to take it off, Shikadai is both dead and alive right now. We don’t know which outcome it’ll be, and we cannot ignore the most painful outcomes. It’s irresponsible for the village and for us as well.”

Temari doesn’t want to think of the most painful outcomes. That is Shikamaru’s curse, to have to think of all outcomes and all solutions, both through his hard-working mind and his authority in the village. The village demands him to be unbiased in questions of safety.

That’s also why Ino can’t work with interrogating the enemy now and had to work on the village’s safety, because there is more to the village than one chunin. Chunin are expandable, and always has been. There is an entire military service, a reputation, and a culture at play against one thirteen-year-old boy’s life.

Shikadai had turned into a pawn of a political and psychological power play. Temari wants to snap Amado’s neck, but at what cost? At what cost will Shikadai die?

Can they sacrifice a village for their son?

Oh, Temari is tempted to. Tempted to burn Konoha to the ground if that means she can watch Shikadai grow up.

“I won’t bury my child,” is the only thing Temari can say. Her façade is slowly breaking down.

“I won’t either,” Shikamaru says, suddenly finding the courage and strength to fight against the unknown. The worry that was in control over his face – with those eyes and that frown – switches to determination, anger, and power. His eyes turn sharp, his frown deepens, and he lets Temari go. “I will make sure he’ll get that bomb of Shikadai. I will make him pay.”

He looks over at the door, knowing Amado is there behind it.

“Let me come with you,” Temari says, hand already on the handle of her fan. She knows a good verse of threats that will make any man cry for his life.

“No,” Shikamaru says. His hard gaze turns once again soft for the one he loves. “Shikadai needs you. He can’t be out there alone. While I trust Sai with my life, I think Shikadai needs another adult to keep him company. And you are the best adult there is for him. You’re his mum. He needs his mum now.”

Temari knows Shikamaru is right. Shikadai is scared and distressed and Temari doesn’t have the right authority in Konoha to do as she pleases. She nods. Shikadai is the most important here. He needs her.

“And…”

She turns back to witness a little tear form in the corner of Shikamaru’s eye. He swallows.

“Tell Shikadai I love him,” Shikamaru finishes. “Just in case…”

“I will,” Temari interrupts him, not wanting him to finish his sentence, though the words barely leave her lips. Shikamaru rubs the tears away from his eyes, snorts deeply to rid any snot from his nose and now the angry gaze is back. Naruto comes from around the corner.

“Are you ready to continue?” he asks and Shikamaru nods. “Ino told me everything is clear as of now.”

“Good,” Shikamaru says. “Let’s make sure the bastard speaks the truth.”

Temari decides to begin walking back towards the yard where Shikadai is being hold before the door to Amado opens. She knows she will snap if she even gets a single glance of the man and Shikadai needs her more than ever now.

Just in case he dies tonight.