Chapter Text
Shikamaru doesn’t want to feel sorry for her.
He wants to be angry with her; pissed about having to be rescued from her, furious about being out-strategized by her. He wants to dump all the grief and guilt of seeing the team he was responsible for torn to pieces at her feet. He is looking forward, in fact, to debriefing her for exactly that reason and requests the task from the Hokage the moment he is cleared for non-combat duty.
Tsunade gives him a long wary look over her desk as if she is assessing if she can truly trust him to the task, before giving a heavy sigh at her scheduling book and nodding.
Maybe she lets him do it because she already knows what he quickly finds out...
Between her foul mouth and her cocky attitude, Shikamaru had thought of her as a grown woman, but up close the sound kunoichi is clearly barely older than he is.
He had prepared himself to see the monster he came up against in the forest, but instead, he stands over a skinny fourteen-year-old, bearing the ill-defined muscle of the underfed and overworked, panting with the effort of breathing beneath her oxygen mask.
Her closed eyes are sunken, red hair making her bloodless lips and cheeks all the starker. And the lower half of her body - shattered by the trees that had come down around her - is nothing short of arresting to look at. Both her legs are black and blue beneath the gaps in her dressings, tractioned to the rig at the foot of the bed by a half-dozen chakra strings apiece. A massive paper seal is plastered around her hips to stabilize the flow of blood and energy through her shattered pelvis, the kind of high scale reconstructive interventions Shikamaru has only read about in textbooks. It makes him feel a little queasy if he thinks about it too hard.
It makes sense, of course, to save her life if they can. She surely knows more about Orochimaru and his plans and abilities than they could ever find out by other means, for starters, and her skills as a kunoichi would be foolish to toss aside as well. Her squad had wielded the kind of Jutsu usually pulled off by far older shinobi.
And frankly, it was unexpectedly tenacious of her to still be breathing after such grave injuries. It would be unfair not to give her the chance to keep going after she had hung on for long enough on her own to be recovered. Her teammates certainly hadn't had that staying power. He’s a bit impressed despite himself.
Shikamaru swallows, frowning as he comes around to the side of the bed. He roughly pulls a chair from the corner, digging deep to try to find the anger that had been burning in his gut when he was still standing in the hall, but she looks too pathetic for him to muster much more than some irritation. The chair legs scrape and thump on the floor but she doesn’t so much as flinch.
Well, she’s certainly too deep under for any kind of interrogation then. So much for getting this over and done with.
He sighs, sinking onto the seat and folding forward to rub at the nape of his neck, trying to knead away the headache that hasn’t let up for the last forty damn hours since they made it back to the village. Maybe he should just go home and get some sleep. He hadn’t been able to turn his mind off last night but maybe by now he’ll be weary enough to just pass out...
But the nursing rounds are soon, and maybe she’ll become awake enough to talk when they check her over.
So he watches her sleep, watches her chest rise and fall, her mask filling with condensation with every laboured puff. The thought that this is just how Chouji looked when Shikamaru saw him a day ago comes unbidden to his mind and turns his stomach over.
He doesn’t want to feel sorry for her, but it’s difficult to look at the state of her and feel anything else.
He doesn’t envy her, certainly. It’s difficult to imagine how jarring it will be for her when she wakes, gravely injured and suddenly living on the good graces of an enemy village. He thinks of Chouji’s mother sitting stalwart at his bedside and wonders if she has a family who would be with her if they could...
The change of shift comes and goes a little while later. They check her over, reinforce the barriers on her body, but she stays limp and unresponsive despite all the noise and attention. Shikamaru sighs, and lets the medic-nin usher him out without complaint.
Maybe she’ll be fit to tell him something tomorrow.
When he returns to the hospital the following morning - still sleepless but at least having laid down for a number of hours - Shikamaru feels a wave of relief when he finds that Chouji is now awake. His best friend is too skinny and clearly not out of the woods yet, but he is already begging for something better than the hospital food, which is the first thing that has made Shikamaru feel that he will be okay.
He is only allowed to see Chouji for a few hours but the short time spent with him makes Shikamaru feel ten tons lighter. Checking around to see that Neji, Kiba and Akamaru are all similarly on an upswing takes off another ten. He manages a whole meal at lunch for the first time in days.
It catches him off guard, just how much looking in on the sound kunoichi again that afternoon knocks him down from the high.
He can hear how much worse she is breathing the moment he opens the door and despite himself, his stomach lurches. He comes to the side of her bed, teeth clenching as he takes in her visible discomfort. She is sweaty and shivering, the call button she is too unconscious to use lying just beside her hand on the mattress
The curse mark he had only seen from a distance before is burning brightly on her pale skin, activating and deactivating as her obvious fever spikes and falls. The molten lines of the pattern advance and recede around the edges of her now-flushed face like a lapping tide.
Her breathing pitches higher each time the power surges as if it is squeezing the shallow breaths she is taking right out of her.
Three days ago he would have given almost anything for her to make that strangled sound with his shadow hand gripping around her neck, but today Shikamaru can only tolerate the horrible noise of it twice before he punches the button to summon someone from the nursing station.
Like lightning, as if she were waiting for it, her shaking fingers seize his hand and squeeze.
Shikamaru startles, frozen, his index finger still on the call button. She doesn't look at him or otherwise acknowledge his presence, clearly not fully conscious, but she grips his hand harder, rasping painfully again as the mark flares up her neck. Instinctively he grips back.
A medic-nin responds a few terrible wheezes later. Although she is clearly busy and a bit frazzled by the unexpected summons she still clicks her tongue in concern at her patient’s distressed state and swiftly sorts out an extra dose of painkillers, politely saying nothing about Shikamaru’s hand being anchored to the unconscious girl the whole time. He thinks of pulling away, embarrassed, but her grip is so… desperate. The medic departs once she’s satisfied with the arrangement of the IV, telling him to ring again if the patient doesn’t seem to improve any.
The medicine takes some of the heat out of her face and makes her wheezing less pronounced. The mark still flares and fades but more slowly, and then not at all. Her breathing levels out and finally she sighs, as if drifting to sleep, and her hand relaxes around his.
Shikamaru realizes once she has calmed that he has sat with her for almost an hour, paralyzed by a single needy touch. He curses softly to himself as he finally pulls his hand back, flexing the feeling back into his fingers. This is what he gets for being raised by his mother, badgered into chivalrous manners since he was small. Just like his father he’s now manifested a total inability to deny a woman a favour, even an unconscious and deadly one.
He sighs heavily, leaning back in his chair and tipping his face to the ceiling, staring with tired eyes at the tube light glowing above him and feeling his exhaustion in his bones. He should go home and sleep himself, but there’s a strange knot in the pit of his stomach as he thinks of leaving, wondering if her fever and pain will return once he’s left her be.
Before he slips out the door he puts the call button firmly in her palm and closes her fingers gently around it, hopeful that if she grips it the way she did his hand it will work as intended.
Shikamaru sleeps, at last, that night, but not well.
For the first half of the night, he could be more accurately considered unconscious - he hits the mattress and promptly blacks out for five hours.
But in the still-dark morning, he wakes, desperately thirsty, and by the time he has made it to the kitchen and back for water, his mind has wandered too far for him to get back to sleep despite the burning weariness in his body.
He thinks of the sound kunoichi again, wonders if she is resting any better, and then there he goes, down the rabbit hole of their fight, reexamining his every move and hers, puzzling out the logistics of how she must have survived her injuries, how badly he really might have fared if it hadn’t been for...
He wants to just shut his brain off but can only stare in exhaustion across his pillow at the hand that she had held with such tenacity, time passing in a syrupy haze until somehow sunlight is pouring in his window again.
Maybe he'll visit her in the morning this time.
Damn it all, she probably slept better than he did, from the look of her, Shikamaru thinks with jealous irritation. They've traded out her mask for a thin tube beneath her nose at some point in the night, and she looks rather less lifeless than when he had left her the afternoon before. Her fever must have stayed broken at least.
He pulls the chair over from the corner in the same noisy way he has done twice before but this time he is startled to find hazy amber eyes peering up at him when he sits down.
She isn’t entirely present; confusion knits her brow and she squints at him for a long second, trying hard to recognize his face before her eyes lose focus and her lashes flutter down again.
“Hey...” he says, reaching forward to carefully touch her hand, his voice soft with surprise and caution. “Can you hear me?”
Her eyes stay closed but she squeezes his offered fingers in acknowledgment.
“Do you know where you are?”
She licks her dry lips to little effect and makes a ‘nuh-uh’ sort of noise, giving an almost imperceptible head shake.
Shikamaru slides his chair closer, hoping to hear her better, and her eyes crack back open, pinning him with that puzzled gaze again.
"You're in a hospital in Konoha. You’ve got a lot of barriers on you so don't try to move alright?"
Her eyes pop wide at that, clarity seeming to flood over her as his face finally registers somewhere in her cloudy memory. Her breath sharpens with alarm and her hand goes slack in his, jerking away as if his touch were hot. Shikamaru can’t help but feel vaguely insulted by it after how she practically clung to him in her sleep the day before and he sits back with a huff.
“Relax, I’m here to talk to you not finish you off,” he says tersely, crossing his arms over his chest. “If we wanted you dead we’d have just left you in the forest. You’ve been unconscious a couple of days already.”
Her eyes dart around the room to confirm his statements, anger descending over her horror like a shield. She snaps her head back toward him and tries to say something to him - he’s pretty sure a ‘fuck’ is involved - but all that comes out is a rasp of breath and a cough that shakes her whole body, making her cringe with pain.
Shikamaru rolls his eyes and rises from his chair, fetching a glass of water from the small sink and bringing it back to her bedside. It’s less trouble to do it himself, the staff are busy, and she’s not going to get talking otherwise. (He can’t stand listening to her struggle for breath, either, but that’s beside the point...) He slips a hand behind her head to nudge her upward, pressing the rim of the glass to her lips.
She looks at him with alarm at first, then utter surprise, but she is still too weak to lift her arms completely and clearly thirst takes over when the water touches her mouth. She takes one cautious mouthful, then another headier one, and seconds later he’s cautioning her to slow down.
“Not so fast, do you want a stomach ache too? Jeeze.” he scolds, but he doesn’t move the cup until she’s drained it. The effort of drinking has put some colour in her face at least. He lets her settle back to the pillow, sets the cup on the side table and retakes his seat.
She makes a first real assessment of her condition as he sits down again, alarmed by the extent to which her body has been damaged judging by her furrowed brow and her sharp inhale. But she clamps her jaw shut hard the moment that her lip trembles, clearly determined to give no satisfaction to anyone who wants to see her suffer or despair.
“Let’s start over, yeah?" He says when she looks back to him. "I’m Nara Shikamaru, and you are…” he tips his hand toward her to prompt an answer.
She seems to think hard about whether to give one, and her eyes flicker to the empty cup and back before she lifts her chin and sets her jaw proudly, hoarse but understandable.
“...Tayuya of the Sound.”
“Okay. Good start.” Shikamaru nods, leaning forward to place his hands on his knees. “You’re lucky to be alive you know.”
“I would have gutted you like an eel if it hadn’t been for that bitch with the fan,” Tayuya says with a sneer and Shikamaru gives her a grumbling look of acquiescence.
"At least your memory is intact then...” he mutters. The reminder smarts more than a bit, but he isn’t about to let her play mind games with him about it. Let her be proud of her near-win if she likes. He might have failed on a larger scale but between the two of them, he’s not the one with his legs in traction.
“Anyway, you’ve been here almost four days now. You’re on some pretty serious painkillers already, I imagine, but if you need more or anything else there’s a button.” He points at where it has been left beside her hand. “This is a combat hospital, the nurses and doctors here aren't civilians, so don’t try anything dumb. And don’t be nasty to them either, they've done nothing to you but work their asses off to save your life."
Tayuya scoffs, golden-brown gaze burning with fury as she stares back at him. She seems almost affronted by the suggestion that she should be grateful.
“So, what?" she snorts. "Now I’m going to tell you everything I know just because you were too stupid to kill me when you had the chance? I would never betray Lord Orochimaru so easily.”
“He’s that great, is he? Attacking villages and kidnapping kids to steal their bodies? Roaming around accumulating power for his own sake?” Shikamaru says derisively.
“He offered your friend power in exchange for his fealty. That’s not kidnapping, it’s a fair trade.” Tayuya says, vehement despite her voice growing hoarse. “To gain anything in this world you have to be willing to sacrifice something, that’s the way of things, and Lord Orochimaru made him a better offer than your pathetic village could. No need to be bitter about it.”
“So, nothing to tell me then?” Shikamaru clarifies, sighing as he gets up from his chair.
She looks back at him with pursed lips, stubbornly silent.
“Alright then, Tayuya of the Sound. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
The bafflement that comes over her face is more than a bit satisfying and Shikamaru smirks to himself when he turns his back to put the chair in the corner again.
“...That’s actually it?” she asks with a rough laugh as his hand is on the door. He shrugs as he turns toward her again.
“Look, you don’t want to talk and you’re probably not going to be awake for long when you’re still this injured,” he says with a bored look. “Why waste your time and mine when I could be doing something fun and you could be resting? When you’re ready and you realize that it’s your best option, you’ll tell me what my superiors want to know. There’s no sense rushing things.”
She makes a face like he’s shoved a lemon in her mouth at the suggestion that she will see sense. Shikamaru rolls his eyes.
“Yeah yeah, Orochimaru and loyalty and all that. Just get some rest for now alright?”
He has one foot out the door when he hears her quiet - “Wait.”
"Mmm?"
“Do I get to ask any questions?”
Shikamaru raises a brow at her before nodding slowly, bracing himself for a scathing remark or a nasty joke seeing as how she's certainly set him up for one. Instead, her brow knits again and her throat works in a hard swallow.
“My teammates?”
Shikamaru's shoulders drop at the hopeful note in her voice. He shakes his head.
“It’s just you left.”
She looks swiftly away, but he doesn’t miss the flash of anguish on her face. Her whole body tenses as she stares stalwartly at the far wall, jaw working like she is grinding her teeth.
“I’m sorry,” he offers, instinctively, and she flinches like he’s dealt her a physical blow.
“Just get the fuck out if you're going,” Tayuya snaps, her voice strained, and Shikamaru is glad to.
He absolutely hates it when women cry.
He sleeps that night, but he dreams about her; about hearing her flute song lilting through the woods and hoarse sobbing echoing after.