Work Text:
“Would you like to hold her?”
“Huh?” Temari glances up from baby Mirai’s face, embarrassed to have been caught making faces at the infant. “Oh, um, I – if you-”
“You can say no.” Kurenai reassures her and not for the first time Temari remembers that this is the woman who drew the Hyuga clan heiress out of her shell. She’s immensely reassuring. “Babies aren’t for everyone.”
Temari’s ears come down from around her shoulder and she relaxes, going back to smiling at the baby. “They’re are just so… squishy.”
This makes Kurenai laugh which makes Kiba and Shikamaru look up from the other room where they’re busy repainting the ceiling. It’s not a sound that comes often these days. Kurenai catches them looking and her face falls a little flat, recognizing and understanding their surprise. Temari glares at the boys until they go back to work. Really, leave it to men to remind a woman that she’s supposed to be grieving.
“So,” Temari draws the word out a bit, pausing to refill their teacups from the pot and trying to think of what to say to her not-boyfriend’s dead teacher’s not-wife. “Do you plan to send her to the Academy or tutor her at home?”
Ninja topics seem like a safe bet that pays off when Kurenai smiles fondly at the bundle.
“I’ll send her to the Academy.” Kurenai says, smiling as she thinks of her baby’s future. “It would give me a chance to do more of my own work again. If she decides she wants to be a ninja, of course.”
“That’s nice.” Temari says, blinking with surprise. “Giving her a choice.”
“Is it?” Kurenai asks, looking up with her curious, intense eyes. Temari wants to swallow, but also doesn’t want to show weakness. In front of her not-boyfriend’s dead teacher’s not-girlfriend. Who has just served her tea and is gentling rocking a baby in her arms. Temari steels herself against the urge to flee and shrugs.
“It wasn’t really a choice in my family.” She admits. “It’s not that I didn’t want to be a shinobi – I did; I do – but it was definitely an obligation. I never considered the possibility of doing anything else.”
As she forms the words, she realizes just how true they are. She has never considered the possibility of doing anything else. Never imagined herself as a teacher or a shopkeeper or princess in a fairytale tower. So much of her identity is wrapped up in being a shinobi she wonders if she could understand herself in any of her other roles – sister, friend, not-girlfriend – without it.
She only realizes she’s frowning when a gentle, calloused hand runs across the lines of her forehead, smoothing them out.
“You’ll get wrinkles frowning like that.” Kurenai tells her, pulling back. “You certainly have a choice now if you want it. You are an adult after all. If you wanted to choose something else you could, or you could choose to continue being a shinobi. But by your own power instead of someone else’s.”
Temari thinks about it. Taps her chin and looks at Shikamaru, who is working without complaint, for absolutely no reason. “That’s very good advice, Kurenai. I’ll have to think about it.”
“Good.” Kurenai nods, “Can I give you one more piece of advice?”
“Shoot.”
And then her gaze falls to the baby, slowly falling asleep in her arms, and her eyes are full of that depthless pain that is hard to look at straight on. Temari tenses.
“Whatever you decide. Don’t wait.”
Temari lets out a breath that rattles on the way out. What was it with Konoha shinobi and their feelings? And why, after so many years of back and forth, was she still not immune to them. She swallows around something in her throat, does not look at Shikamura, and then asks, “Actually… do you think I could hold her? If it’s not too much trouble?”
Some of the sorrow – always present, but swelling and receding like waves on a beach – leaves the woman’s eyes and she nods. “Of course.”
The baby is passed across the table without complaint. She’s used to many hands and helpers holding her, one more stranger is no concern. And then she’s a warm, soft weight on Temari’s chest and in her arms. Soft, Temari thinks absently, Not squishy at all. Huh.
She lets herself sniff the impossibly fine hair on top of the child’s head and it’s as nice as people always say. Kurenai, hands free, adds sugar to her own tea and doesn’t interrupt the moment. Temari lets herself risk another, much larger, bet and glances into the living room once more.
Charcoal-dark eyes are already on her but for once she doesn’t look away. Shikamaru’s handsome when he’s not complaining. He’s also rumpled and a little paint splattered and looking at her like she’s capable of dragging the sun across the sky for herself if she needs to which are all nice, too. The baby gargles against her neck and she starts to rock her gently, not letting go of Shikamaru’s gaze.
A choice. She thinks. I could choose something else.
And for the first time, she believes it. Not right this instant, despite Kurenai’s warning, but someday and with the right eyes holding her up, she might have the strength to become something else.
“Hey, Shika, check it out!” Kiba loudly whispers, shaking Shikamaru’s step ladder to emphasize the point.
Shikamaru grumbles, at the rocking as well as the nickname, considers flicking paint on the idiot’s face until the next words are whisper-shouted at him, “Your sand princess is gonna hold the baby!”
Shikamaru doesn’t even respond, just feels his jaw drop slack as his eyes flicker up to where he can just catch a glimpse of his teacher and his friend sitting at the kitchen table. Temari hadn’t even been invited, technically, they just hadn’t stopped following each other for the day before it became the time when he’d promised to come over and help Kurenai with the painting. He knew she was ambivalent at best about babies and – after a childhood spent ersatz raising her two brothers – she was, by her own admission, ‘fully out of nurturing instinct’. If she’d ever had it in the first place.
And now she’s holding his niece in her arms with more care and softness than he’s ever seen in her before. And he knows exactly how hard that is for her, what it must cost her to offer that to another living thing. And when her teal eyes glance up and catch him staring, he can’t even look away.
It was supposed to be a nice girl. He reminds himself for the thousandth time. Not too plain and not too pretty. How on earth am I going to convince this one to marry me? How could I live without her if I failed?
“You could totally tap that tonight.” A voice, still pretend-whispering cuts through the fog in his mind. “Seriously, when women like that get baby-crazy they don’t wait around.”
Shikamaru will apologize later for wasting an entire can of paint. Seeing Kiba dripping head to toe in thick, white paint, sputtering and outraged but unable to do anything without flinging more paint around, is totally worth it.