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#1 Ring
His ring is cool against her cheek, a brand new sensation, and for the fiftieth time that day her heart leaps into her throat.
#2 Hero
Ninja and hero are not interchangeable; she would know--she grew up with ninja; but Shikamaru is a hero.
#3 Memory
She can’t remember the exact moment she fell in love with him.
#4 Box
Part of her is pretty sure it was over a box of yellowing and unfiled mission reports, when, instead of leaving her to do her job, he silently dedicated himself to doing half of it.
#5 Run
Like he’s finding the best things in his life are turning out to be, he doesn’t think before he runs after her and grabs her hand; all he knows is the overwhelming thought that he cannot let her get away.
#6 Hurriance
She is a hurricane because that is her jutsu and when you have one nature manipulation it lives inside you, not unlike chakra but a whole lot more visible; with him, it doesn’t matter what kind of storm she is.
#7 Wings
His friend Chouji is all about butterflies, but all Temari can think about is how fragile their wings are.
#8 Cold
There are frozen butterflies on her dahlias; Chouji is coming over later today, so she picks them off before he can see them.
#9 Red
Shikadai’s pajamas are red, and watching Shikamaru get their wiggling eight-week old son into them fills her heart with a joy she never knew existed; when he’s done, Shikamaru meets her eye, observes her biting her lip, and she laughs at the way his eyebrows shoot up and the shocked and excited way he mouths Really?
#10 Drink
They don’t drink; but when he does get drunk enough that it matters, he never fails to flirt with her.
#11 Midnight
Her labor starts right around midnight, and just over seven hours later, she gets to meet her son (no one is dead, everyone is happy, but oh god she’s so tired).
#12 Temptation
The day she stops resisting temptation is the day of their wedding, when he at last admits to seeing through her weak excuse to touch him and simply places her hands on his chest himself--his heartbeat is quick, and there’s a smirk on his lips.
#13 View
The view is spectacular , he thinks, when he wakes up in the morning and the first thing he sees is his wife, sound asleep, clutching their son to her body, equally as peaceful as his mother.
#14 Music
The links to the Ed Sheeran songs he encourages her to listen to are saved until the very end of the day, when she plays them alone in her room just before sleep and imagines him listening to the same songs two-thousand miles away.
#15 Silk
She prefers silk--everything she owns is silk, from underwear to her favorite not-work bra to the teddy she tries to conceal her baby bump in when she’s eight months pregnant and they haven’t had sex since before she could see her toes.
#16 Cover
Lights off , she commands, using the darkness of the room to cover her newly-acquired stretchmarks and the fact that until he starts kissing her neck she’s nervous he won’t find her quite as attractive as he used to.
#17 Promise
The difference between the sentences she’s listening to in her mind are immeasurable--the echoes of her father’s sad voice saying I promise you, I did my best, Temari versus her husband’s amused voice saying It’s a papercut--you’ll be okay, I promise, Shikadai .
#18 Dream
He isn’t in her Infinite Tsukuyomi--it’s her first thought upon emerging from the bizarre dream world; her second is hope that maybe , she doesn’t love him after all.
#19 Candle
They have a blackout in the summer when Shikadai is six, and instead of telling them he doesn’t like the smell, he comes over and blows it out, not predicting the total darkness that would encompass them for the duration of the night and their lacks of extra matches.
#20 Talent
Talented , they call him, to have developed your own jutsu so young --Shikadai’s confused face pulls a scowl, and he promptly informs him of the jutsu’s true inventor: kaa-chan .
#21 Silence
His father just died and she greets the news with silence; she’s standing alone with him, far off to the side of the camps from the one night everyone who survived is getting to rest, and all she can think about is the time he thought he failed his team and she looked at him the same way--maybe some things really never change.
#22 Journey
Three days is for the weak, she’s always said--even before they were dating it was two and a half for her, because she prizes efficiency as much as diligence, but now that she knows she can sleep in his arms when she arrives, she can make the journey in two.
#23 Fire
Fire country welcomes Nara Temari under the guise of a political union, simply stating that they are happy she has found happiness with one of their shinobi; it is not mentioned how she passes Konoha’s Jounin test with the most perfect score in four years (1 point better than her husband’s), and only Shikamaru ever brings up how much more comfortable it is to be in Konoha than in Suna.
#24 Strength
Strength has been prized all her life, by all of the people in her life, and for most of her it is what she has been called; Shikamaru is the first person in all her life to make her feel like her strength isn’t the most important thing about her.
#25 Mask
He gets an offer to join the ANBU, just until Naruto becomes Hokage--she’s surprised by the force with which the thought of Shikamaru willingly entering into such darkness again tears out her heart.
#26 Ice
It’s the first time she’s lived in snow in her life; she swears--boasts--to Shikamaru that she won’t fall, but her first step outside has her landing on her ass.
#27 Fall
Her first Fall, although she quickly decides it’s her favorite season, between all the colors and the cooler temperatures that ensure she can see her breath every morning and evening, all she can think about is how the trees don’t hange in the desert.
#28 Forgotten
None of them, the siblings, will admit it, but they all know what their biggest worry is; shared mutually between all of them, they’re all deathly afraid of forgetting each other.
#29 Dance
They’re surrounded by family and friends, and far too many diplomats neither of them know personally, but all she remembers from the moment is how good it felt to finally be married to him, swaying in his arms, with her face buried in his neck, to their wedding song.
#30 Body
“ You’re perfect ,” she swears she hears him breathe, as his lips attend to every inch of skin they can reach.
#31 Sacred
It’s sacred , the war art of tessenjutsu, only those who are one-hundred percent of the desert can learn--this means she cannot teach her son.
#32 Farewells
Saying goodbye to her brothers is the hardest thing she ever has to do; she can’t stop leaking tears, and by the discomfort on both of their faces and the smile on Shikamaru’s, she knows more deeply than ever has that she made the right decision.
#33 World
They must be trying to assure the attendance of the entire world, the wedding is taking so long to plan--in their mind, they’ve already been married for months.
#34 Formal
“You’re formal,” he tells her, brows knitted together as though he’s truly never heard anyone speak perfect Japanese, and when she demands if it’s a problem, she takes his disinterested shrug to mean that it isn’t.
#35 Fever
“It’s a fever ,” she assures him, sticking her cool hand on her cheek; “I think I’m coming down with something,” she assures herself, desperately trying to remain convinced that she isn’t falling for him and that the way he leaned in to pluck a stray hair off her shoulder didn’t make her think for even a second that he was about to kiss her.
#36 Laugh
Shikamaru has the best laugh--it’s deep and scratchy and quiet, and most importantly she never really heard it until she said yes; it’s a sign, she believes, that they’ll really be able to get married.
#37 Lies
“It’s not like I’m moving to Konoha, or anything,” she lifts her shoulders in a shrug she didn’t learn from anyone in Suna, “it’s just a shirt.”
#38 Forever
The word is in her vows four times-- I’ll love you forever, I’ll be yours forever, this will forever be the best thing I ever decide to do, and--forevermore, I am Nara Temari .
#39 Overwhelmed
She snaps at him, overwhelmed by the helplessness she feels at her inability to do anything right now, even go to the bathroom on a reasonable schedule.
#40 Whisper
When she hikes up the stairs ten minutes later with tears in her eyes, Shikamaru holds her as tightly as he is able--as tightly as he did before--despite her gargantuan belly and whispers that he isn’t angry, or hurt, that he forgives her and that he’s so sorry he made her cry.
#41 Wait
Wait , it was all she could do; wait and watch while he pushed her away, denied that he felt any which way about her, wait for her heart to learn how not to take it personally when he did.
#42 Talk
“Talk,” she says, gesturing with a tilt of her head at the mike, “you wanted to handle the exam portion, so get to it.”
#43 Search
She watches him search for something in her eyes for a minute or two, and then he resolutely nods and taps into the mike, giving the instructions--there’s no hint whatsoever of how nervous he just sounded when he was talking to her in his voice.
#44 Hope
There is a distinct moment in which she loses all hope; it comes when she asks him what’s wrong, and he ignores her, tells her he cannot use her, and stares at her long enough to let her know he’s lying.
#45 Eclipse
There’s a lunar eclipse when he’s there, three weeks before they return to Konoha to finish planning the wedding, and she takes him out into the desert, braving the possibility of storms and the giant beasts that lurk there, because the blanket of stars that was her first home is something he can’t never see.
#46 Gravity
Gravity, fate, destiny , what-have-you, it is a force of nature that causes her to fall in love with him before they have so much as kissed.
#47 Highway
The highway they build between Suna and Konoha isn’t something she tries because she wants to go back, but it’s brand new and Shikadai is curious and she finds it enormously difficult--even more so than returning--to deny him the train ride.
#48 Unknown
The cause of her mother’s death is ultimately unknown--was it the demon inside her, was it the stress of an early delivery, or was it simply complications of normal childbirth?
#49 Lock
“It’s locked,” she reports, though they could see the giant lock from several yards away, though they suspected as much when they were sent to checkout the warehouse, but it’s been that kind of day for Temari, and just because they reassigned Shikamaru at the last minute and it was the final straw, she decides the door doesn’t need preserving.
#50 Breathe
"Breathe ," she instructs him, resting her hand over his heart, " it will pass," and when Shikamaru does so, when she can see the tension leave his body, she, herself, breathes easier.