Chapter Text
Shikaku loves his family very much.
His wife is responsible and knowing. She’s thoughtful and caring in a way he’s never been. She guides him to be a better person just by existing, and she can pull him back together just as easily as she can pick him apart. Before her, Shikaku never met someone who would use that skill to help rather than torture him. He loves her dearly.
Their son is brilliant and earnest. He's a gentle soul in a manner neither of his parents are, inquisitive and passionate and sensitive to the suffering of others. He fills their home with laughter and love, something Shikaku didn't know he was lacking until Shikamaru was born. His son is the single brightest thing in this life. He loves him.
Shikaku loves his family very much. He wants the best for them, whatever that may be.
As it turns out, however, his son’s idea of the best is not compatible with anyone else’s.
“Why do I have to be a shinobi to learn this stuff?” he frowns. He’s only just turned five, so the expression looks more like a pout on his freckled face. “Why can’t I just be me?”
Beside her husband, Yoshino’s frown looks like a frown. “I thought you’d be excited about training. Attending the academy means you’ll get to meet more kids your age and learn about chakra.”
"I want to learn about chakra, but I don’t know if I want to be a ninja.”
His son is going to be a ninja, whether he wants to or not. He’s too squirmy to survive otherwise, determined as he is to get as far away from them as physically possible. Yoshino claims he’s getting easier to manage, but Shikaku worries. There’s plenty of people out there who would jump at the chance to snatch a wayward Nara boy up. The Nara clan isn’t widely feared, but they are known. Shikaku himself is rather well known, close to the Hokage as he is.
After the Hyuga incident six months ago, when their heir was captured by Kumo and held for nearly four days without food or water… Shikaku worries. He worries for his son, who no matter how hard they try seems able to sneak off outside the walls and into some mess or another. It’s only a matter of time, now, that Shikamaru runs into someone who isn’t so endeared to him.
Shikaku has gone over his options. He’s come to the troubling realization that it would be easier to train his son to protect himself than to teach him to love them enough not to leave. He has not told Yoshino of this, but he suspects she already knows. Yoshino, after all, knows their son much better than Shikaku does.
He leans an elbow on the table, gathering his son’s attention. “You don’t have to make that decision now, but becoming a shinobi is expected of you as my son.”
The look Shikamaru meets him with tells Shikaku he couldn't care less about what was expected of him.
“Does everyone who learns about chakra have to be a ninja? What if they’re an architect?”
“You want to be an architect?”
His son shrugs. “Maybe? I’m only five, dad. I can hardly read.”
Shikaku deliberately casts a long look at the bookshelf on the far wall. It’s disorganized in a way Yoshino has never accepted but has grown used to and there's short stacks of dog eared books on the lower levels. His son was a menace and he’s been devouring books left and right lately.
“If you’re going to lie, be more convincing.”
“Maybe I just look at the pictures-” Shikamaru narrows his eyes. “You’re avoiding my question. Why do people have to be ninjas to learn about chakra?”
He sighs, leaning back in his chair. “Chakra has dangerous uses. It has a lot of potential to hurt its user, so the knowledge required to manipulate it is highly coveted.”
“But it has to have other uses, right?” he says, a furrow between his brows. Shikamaru looks like him, Shikaku realizes then, and it’s almost shameful how much pride swells in his chest at the notion.
Shikaku raises an eyebrow and refuses to bite that hook.
Shikamaru huffs, no doubt piqued by his lack of engagement. “Why do people throw fireballs at each other instead of watering their crops? The east plantations are going through a drought right now and they can’t afford to hire ninja. If they knew how to pull water from the air wouldn’t that fix everything?”
Shikaku wisely does not ask how his son knows this about the countryside. Suspecting that his son was escaping Konoha’s walls was one thing, knowing for a fact that he was meant Shikaku had to put an end to it. He would, but not right now.
“First, that’s a short sighted solution and you know it. Second, pulling water from the air also means you can pull it from a person. That’s dangerous knowledge to spread readily. The people trained to use chakra are soldiers who will use that power responsibly.”
“Chefs use knives. They’re probably better at it than most ninja. They don’t go around killing people in their free time.” He counters, the pout back on his face, “and of course it’s short sighted- they need a solution now, not in twenty years, dad.”
Yoshino places her cup of tea on the table with a small clink. Both father and son straighten their backs.
“This is clearly a complex issue,” Yoshino says, putting an end to the debate before it can take root. By the look on their son’s face, it already has, but it was worth a try. “Let’s focus on today. Today, you get to decide whether or not you want to attend the academy and learn about chakra.”
“I still don’t get why I can’t do that somewhere else,” he shrugs, “like in a chakra school instead of ninja school. I’d rather learn about chakra as just a thing that exists than a weapon.”
Shikaku is reminded that Orochimaru said something similar, years ago. Minato had just become Hokage and the three men were in his office. Orochimaru had claimed no interest in running missions, instead focusing on his research. “As it stands,” he said to the young Jounin Commander and the younger Hokage, “I’m much more interested in chakra as a science than as a means to destroy.” The snake sannin went on to perform hundreds of grotesque procedures on innocent men, women, and children.
With the money they gave him.
“Only ninja school exists today, Shikamaru.” His wife knows how to debate their son much better than Shikaku does. She pulls him from the hypothetical and into the present with a practiced method. Today. Focus on today so you can fix yesterday and bring tomorrow. Shikaku finds himself dwelling on the past, while his son is busy dreaming up the future. “Would you like to join?”
The boy’s face scrunches up. “Will Choji be there?”
“Yes, he got to decide on his fifth birthday. Just like you are now.”
“Will Ino?”
“Yes,” Yoshino huffs out a laugh. Shikamaru and Ino haven’t been getting along lately and it showed in how sour the boy’s tone had turned. Their relationship tends to turn on a dime. Shikaku doesn’t remember ever fighting with Inoichi in such a fierce manner. “She decided well before her birthday. Her parents and her are probably discussing the details of her attendance.”
Shikaku watches his son tumble through his options. He doesn't have Shikaku’s diamond hand sign tell, though he had taught it to the boy, but he has his own signs of being deep in thought. Mainly, the way his eyes unfocus as he stares, and the way his hands twitch as if they want to press together, but he won't let them.
His son is stoutly determined to not be like him. He's not sure when the abrasive edge to their relationship formed, probably during one of the many, many nights he spent in the Hokage office instead of the clan lands, but it's here and now Shikaku has to deal with it. Yoshino has a great relationship with their son. Shikaku… feels like Shikamaru doesn't know him. It's troubling. So much about this kid is troubling.
“I'm not happy about it,” their son says finally, looking at his mother. “But okay.”
Yoshino grabs his hand under the table and squeezes. Shikaku lets out a breath he barely registered holding.
Slow and steady. The academy will ease him into the shinobi lifestyle and Shikamaru will learn to protect himself-- how to survive in this cruel world of theirs. Once he's a genin they'll be able to move forward with the issue of his heirship. Shikamaru already understands that he, by nature of being Shikaku’s son, has certain responsibilities. Making him acknowledge and pursue those responsibilities is another thing entirely. It'll be a long process, but it'll keep him safe and in the village.
Hopefully, he'll even make some friends.
Haruno Sakura is very grateful to have a friend like Ino.
Ino is pretty and smart and nice enough to share tips on how to be a great ninja one day. Sakura doesn’t know if she’ll make a great ninja one day, since the pink haired girl has always been much better at reading than fighting, but she knows for certain that Ino will be very strong. Ino has been nothing but nice and helpful, if a bit pushy, since they met at the beginning of the school year five months ago. Ino stood up for her against a few bullies, and even gave her a ribbon to tie her hair with. Sakura has no reason to doubt her friend, who has been nothing but a great friend since they met. Well… almost no reason.
There is one thing.
“Shikamaru? What are you doing?”
“Having a midlife crisis.”
Ino is friends with Nara Shikamaru. And Nara Shikamaru is… weird.
“We’re five,” she says and crouches down. Shikamaru’s in the process of burying his head in the ground, so his words came out a bit muffled. “I don’t think that’s mid-life.”
“Maybe for you,” he says through a mouthful of dirt.
Sakura waits for him to stop choking on it before she replies. “I’m going to tell Ino you’re trying to bury yourself alive again if you don’t start making sense.”
Shikamaru’s head pops up and Sakura cringes at the dirt collected at his scalp.
“If I jump in this hole will you bury me?”
Sakura turns over her shoulder. “Ino! Shikarmaru’s gone crazy again!”
“Shi-ka-ma-ru!” Ino yells, drawing his name out as she sprints over. “Stop trying to kill yourself!”
“I wasn’t!” he yells defensively. “I was just going to bury myself in a hole! That can’t kill me.”
“Being buried alive can actually kill you,” Sakura corrects. “You can’t breathe underground. There’s no air.”
“Don’t worry,” Shikamaru beams at her determinedly, which only makes Sakura worry more. “I’ll use chakra to breathe in my own carbon dioxide and convert it back to oxygen. Like moles do!”
“...I don’t think that’s how chakra works. Or moles.”
“Won’t know until I try!” He shouts and sticks his head into the hole.
Ino grabs him by the ponytail and yanks him back out.
“I can’t leave you alone for one minute!”
“Ow! Ino let go-”
“Stop trying to kill yourself!” She repeats and Sakura cringes at the force she uses to pull Shikamaru away from the hole. By his hair, no less. “My dad would kill me if you died on my watch!”
Shikamaru reaches behind him, swinging his hands wildly in Ino’s direction. By sheer luck, Ino’s grip is hit with a sound smack and she lets go. The boy ducks away from her next grab, crouching with his hands flat on the earth to leverage himself up and kick Ino in the stomach.
The two exchange elbows and knees and kicks and shoves for the longest minute Sakura’s ever lived. She sits crouched, watching as the two clan children wrestle with a mix of unfamiliar kata and instinct. It makes her stomach twist, seeing them fight. Iruka-sensei explained that they aren’t allowed to use their clan techniques or fighting styles in group training, but… watching Ino grapple Shikamaru, going to toss him over her shoulder just for him to twist and flip off her own back… Sakura feels something akin to shame pool in her stomach. She’s jealous. Fiercely so. They’ve only just started training and they’re so much further ahead.
“Ha!” Ino shouts through a pant, one hand pressing Shikamaru’s shoulders to the ground and the other winding his arm behind his back at an uncomfortable looking angle. “Pinned you!”
Sakura glances over at their sensei, but Iruka-sensei is so busy keeping Naruto and Kiba from fighting that he didn't even notice their scuffle. By the time she glances back Ino is seated proudly on his back and Shikamaru grumbles half-heartedly into the dirt.
“What was that?” She demands, leaning her weight off his shoulders just a tad.
Shikamaru pops upright and Ino tumbles off him with a shriek.
“I said I wasn’t trying to kill myself,” he repeats, glaring at her. “I’m way over that phase.”
Ino looks less than impressed.
Sakura looks between them and feels a bit like she’s missing something.
“Um,” she starts cautiously, “were you trying to kill yourself?”
“Hm? No, no, I was trying to enter a near death state to return to my old world, you feel? I figured if I got close enough to death that the universe would see their mistake and fix it. Maybe even send me back to--”
Ino smacks his dirty scalp. “You’re not allowed to! Planet stupid already closed its gate so quit trying to go back!”
“I’m not from planet stupid!”
“You sure act like it…” Sakura mutters, looking at the head-shaped hole in the ground.
“Sakura-chan!” Shikamaru gasps, looking wounded.
“You’re weird,” She shrugs, well versed in the Nara’s wounded looks. They don’t phase her anymore. “Are you still trying to, um, not kill yourself?”
“Nah,” Shikamaru says, flopping back into the grass. “My theory was too flawed. There’s just too much junk out there to capture attention, and even then, due to the balance of things, taking me out of this life might be more detrimental than keeping me, regardless of whether I belong or not. Equilibriums are not so easily broken, especially on a scale as grand as this. In the grand scheme of things I’m just one grain of sand on the beach of the universe.”
Sakura bites her lip. She knows that Shikamaru is smart, both because Ino said so and Sakura knows he reads just as much as she does. Sakura is also pretty smart, her parents say so, and Ino agrees. Still, she really can’t grasp what Shikamaru is trying to say here. Was he trying to capture the attention of the universe? Is the universe sentient in this situation? Were these all hypotheticals?
“I, um,” she starts, worrying her lip in the way her mother usually scolds her for, “I don’t think I understand.”
“You don’t have to.”
“Hey,” Ino snaps, “be nice to Sakura-chan, she’s trying to sympathize with you.”
Shikamaru’s face scrunches and seems to be displeased by the notion. A part of Sakura wants to shrink down and apologize, but Ino holds his gaze. Sakura isn’t trying to sympathize so much as she’s trying to appease Ino, but she’s not going to correct her friend’s misunderstanding. Especially not after Ino stood up for her again.
After a tense silence, Shikamaru turns away, looking up at the sky instead. He sits for a moment, eyes strewn shut and visibly wrestling with whatever’s going on in his head.
“Think of it as like, hm, like a shogi piece, sort of?” he tries, actively searching for the words that would make them understand. “If you lose one and don’t have a replacement, you might carve a new one as a temporary piece. But then you get used to it, and when you get the chance to buy a proper replacement you just… don’t. I mean, it’s not a perfect fit but it’s good enough, so why bother changing it out after all that time?”
Sakura feels her eyebrows raise up and into her hairline. “Are you the shogi replacement?”
“Yes,” he nods, “and I am making peace with that. Sort of.”
“Are you, like, adopted?”
“What? No, why would you--”
“Then why are you a replacement?” She asks, bewildered. At Shikamaru’s mirrored look of bewilderment, Sakura feels her words catch up to her. Her face is beat red as she stammers. “Not that adoption is, um, replacing, but in clans I heard, well, if a child is lost they, well, um, you know what I mean.”
That Shikamaru doesn’t seem offended is the only reason Sakura doesn’t bury herself in the half-dug hole. Instead, he seems just as displeased as before. Sakura gets the impression he doesn’t like explaining himself.
“I’m a replacement for the universe not my-” Shikamaru cuts himself off and groans, gesturing from Ino to Sakura. “See? This is why I don’t bother.”
“I’m your best friend and I don’t understand you,” Ino stands up, brushing dirt off her dress. She holds a hand out to Shikamaru and hefts him up. “Sakura is smart, so I thought if anyone could make sense of your baloney she could.”
“My existentialism is not baloney.”
“Baloney,” Ino asserts and Sakura steps up to walk with her. “Any time you use a word that I don’t know I just assume it’s baloney.”
“That’s a terrible strategy.”
She rolls her eyes. “You don’t know the first thing about strategy. Remember our shogi match?”
“That’s different!” he whines, kicking a rock as they meander back towards the entrance. “I keep forgetting about captured pieces! It’s really similar to chess but it has so many extra rules!”
Ino actually seems to consider this. She taps her chin in thought before grinning at him, a light bulb above her head.
“Maybe you're the reincarnation of a really old man! Maybe you were born before all the new rules were added. That would explain why you think it’s called chess.”
“I don’t know enough about the history of shogi to confirm or deny,” Shikamaru admits, for some reason not thinking the suggestion is as absolutely insane as it sounds, “but I guess it’s worth looking into.”
“Do you two play shogi a lot?” Sakura asks. She doesn’t know how to play, but her dad has offered to teach her before. Maybe if they had more in common Ino would invite her over to play?
Ino turns her smile to her, laughing. “Shikamaru’s dad likes it a lot, but Shikamaru isn’t any good yet. He keeps forgetting the rules, so he makes me play him when I come over.”
“Ino’s my practice dummy,” Shikamaru says plainly, ducking under the punch Ino throws at him for such a comment. “It makes for good exposure therapy. Plus, it’s interesting to see what the average mind is capable of.”
“Who are you calling average!?”
“Shikamaru! Ino!” Iruka-sensei shouts, cutting off Shikamaru’s reply. “To your seats. Now.”
The two glance at each other before scurrying off to their places on opposite sides of the room. Iruka-sensei separated them within the first week of classes. Privately, Sakura is grateful her time with Shikamaru is cut back because of it. She only has to interact with him during recess and demonstration-based classes, when Ino insists on comparing their ability at any given skill.
“Ugh. What a butthole,” Ino grumbles, ignoring how Kiba giggles at the insult as they pass. “He’s so mean sometimes.”
Sakura settles beside her on the bench and casts a worried look across the room.
The Nara sits on the window side of the class beside Choji, an Uchiha boy named Sasuke who was particularly talented, and Sasuke’s cousin Kota, who was not as talented. Sakura and Ino, meanwhile, sit next to Kiba, who always has his dog with him, and a quiet boy who Sakura was never introduced to, but who always seems to be buzzing.
Shikamaru, for all that he bothers Ino, looks like he’s already moved past their spat. He’s now trying to ignore Kota as he brags about something or another, huddling into Choji’s side as the bigger boy eats his post-recess snack.
“Is he?” she asks, blinking at what looks like a boy trying to be something close to polite. She’s curious, but she doesn’t want to step on her friend’s toes. Ino had called Shikamaru her best friend… Sakura doesn’t like Shikamaru, but she doesn’t want to make any more snap judgments. They’ve gotten her in trouble before.
Ino rolls her eyes. She does that a lot.
“Trust me, Shikamaru’s mean. He tries to be nice, but I don’t think it comes naturally to him. He just does his own thing whether we want him to or not.”
“Like what?”
“Like-” she stops herself short, biting the inside of her cheek. Ino’s eyes snap to Sakura’s and she tries not to wilt under how intense her gaze is. Ino and Shikamaru don’t have a ton in common, but they both wield an intimidating aura of self-assuredness. It sets them apart from the others, but it seems so ingrained in their character that Sakura doubts they even know the sway they have over the class. How everyone seems to gravitate to them, bending over backwards to impress. Like Kota, looking for Shikamaru’s approval. And like Sakura, already devoting herself to be someone worthy of rivaling Ino.
“Never mind,” she grumbles.
Sakura frowns and lowers her voice to a whisper as Iruka begins his lesson. “Like what?”
“I’m not supposed to talk about it.”
“About Shikamaru?”
“About what he does,” Ino hisses, her face pinched, “I told you-- he’s mean.”
Shikamaru doesn’t seem to be the type to kick puppies or push people into puddles. Sakura’s seen him spend a whole break period carefully gathering waterlogged worms off the sidewalks after a particularly rainy day. He trades the parts of his lunch he doesn’t like, and he’s never made fun of someone for how they look or talk. She’s also seen him exchange greetings with Naruto, who is loud, annoying, and slower to pick things up than the rest of them.
To Sakura’s eyes, Shikamaru is just a little weird. He’s strange, sure, but Sakura wouldn’t say he’s hurting anyone. Even the troubling conversation about him, um, attempting a near death state seemed like a misunderstanding more than anything else.
Maybe it’s because Ino and Shikamaru knew each other for so long? She can’t imagine Ino lying--not to Sakura, at least--but she also can’t imagine Shikamaru going out of his way to be cruel. Maybe-
Ino elbows her side and Sakura snaps upright, grabbing for a pencil and pretending to write a note down. Iruka-sensei narrows his eyes at them but continues his explanation on the village history nonetheless.
She decides, a cold sweat on her neck from Iruka’s glare, that musing about Shikamaru can wait. She’s got to close the gap between Ino and her before she worries about anything as silly as boys.
Once she’s a great ninja, she’ll just make Shikamaru apologize to Ino. Whatever he did can’t have been too bad, and when she’s stronger than him he’ll listen to what she says and do what she tells him to. Plus, she’ll be an awesome ninja and Ino and her can hang out more because Ino, obviously, will also be an awesome ninja.
Sakura tunes back into the lecture with a new determination.
Watch out world, Haruno Sakura is here.