Chapter Text
Ino absolutely adored her goddaughter. Granted, there were some things about her that were… suboptimal, but none of those were the baby's fault.
For instance, the name. Shikako was a great name, and Ino would be the first to defend the goodness of the name in general…. But it probably wasn't the healthiest one for Shikamaru to have given his first born, especially not one born nine and a half months after his twin died.
That led up to the fact that Shika was really far too young to have a daughter in the first place. Yoshino was practically murderous after finding out Temari was pregnant. Well, so were Gaara, Kankurou and Tenten, but the first two were because Shika had "defiled" their sister and the last because the bum hadn't officially broken up with her when he had knocked up Temari.
Sure, Ino could understand it. After watching Shikako sacrifice herself to save the world, sex as a form of celebration or grieving or some combination of the two was well within the realm of normal human behavior. Not that she stopped Tenten from putting some holes in Shika. She kept them to non-vital areas after all.
Shikako also wasn't exactly one hundred percent welcome in Suna. This was something that Gaara agreed wasn't fair at all to his niece. The problem was that his niece reminded pretty much everyone of her aunt. There was just something about the look in her eyes that seemed like it was taken from her namesake. For some people, like Ino, it just made them want to snuggle the baby even more. For some people, like Gaara, it made it hard to be in Shikako's presence.
Ino honestly didn't think that Gaara and Shikako would have made a good couple. A cute one, but not a good one. Heck, Gaara didn't think it would have worked out, but it hurt not to have the chance to fail properly. He tried not to take it out on his niece, but it was hard and would probably stay hard until Shikako developed a personality of her own.
At almost ten months, Shikako was a fairly typical Nara baby. She was quiet and could crawl, but largely didn't feel like it. She even babbled less than other Nara babies, but since that lazy bum was her father, Ino didn't think much of it. At least not until she was babysitting her adorable goddaughter and she clearly said "Ino."
"Your first word!"
Ino snuggled that baby as hard as she could, dancing around the living room. Then she realized exactly what baby Shikako's first word was and set her down nervously.
"Your mother is going to kill me."
"Ino. Mine wah." The baby scowled as if annoyed that she couldn't say what she wanted properly.
"Mind walk?" Ino cooed. "Oh! You know my clan's signature jutsu! Yes!" She tossed the bestest baby in the whole world in the air and caught her again. Then she froze. "Oh, sage. Now your dad is going to kill me too."
The baby tried to squirm out of her grip and Ino wondered if she messed herself. She checked her diaper and like usual, she tried to escape again. At this point they knew that Shikako really didn't like having her diaper checked and would let her get away after one.
"Ino!" Shikako said in what seemed like a frustrated voice. "Mine wah!" A very familiar seal blossomed under the baby's fist and she rolled away just as the floor detonated.
"Shikako?"
"Despite all my practice, it seems that I'm really bad at dying."
"Not funny."
"Who else do you know that's screwed it up this badly?"
Ino looked at the mental self image of Shikako. Just the fact that they were in a mindscape with a mental self image was proof that Shikako was familiar with the Yamanaka clan jutsu. Standing there was basically Shikako at thirteen, which made sense since mental self images often lagged physical age by a bit or a lot. Ino's dad looked like he was in his late twenties in his head. A few years wasn't surprising at all, especially since the clothes did match what she wore when she died.
"And thanks for making it extra awkward with the diaper check."
"Excuse me for being a responsible adult."
Shikako sighed. "Well, it's not the worst part about being reborn."
Ino fell on the floor of the mindscape laughing at the implications.
Shikako scowled down at her. "I wonder how hard it will be to convince Tsunade to give me back my sword."
For some reason that just made Ino laugh harder. "What's the worst part?" she finally managed.
"Last week I would have said figuring out that I'm wind natured now, which is doing all sorts of screwy things to my chakra control, but then I realized that I didn't manage to get out of being clan head."
"Bwa ha ha ha!" The sour look on her face was all the proof Ino needed that this was actually Shikako.
"I'm not sure I heard that properly," Temari said as she stared at Ino, who was holding baby Shikako. Normally she would have taken her baby back from the Yamanaka heiress already, but what she had said was so outrageous that normal habits were suspended for the moment.
Ino sighed. "Shikako says that she would appreciate it if you gave up breastfeeding. It's weird enough having you as her mother this life as it is. That and she's still a chakra sensor, so could you please drop her off somewhere else before having sex."
"What."
"Oh, and in the process of convincing me to mind walk her, she set off a touch blast on your living room floor."