Author: jacksgreyson

54) things you always meant to say but never got the chance for the Nara twins?

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Heart and Soul, 54) things you always meant to say but never got the chance

The transition happens too fast. One moment Shikamaru is dying, his heart destroyed, pain beyond imagining sparking along his neurons, blood clogging his throat in his death throes. The next, he wakes up, gasping, impossibly, his sister’s crying face the first thing he sees out of the void.

The next, her eyes go dark, expression flat. Her grief and relief erased, replaced by apathy.

Shikako dies instead of him, and Shikabane takes her place.

—

Shikabane plays the part, dutiful Konoha shinobi, dutiful Nara daughter, dutiful twin sister. It is a lie. Shikamaru knows this, but he still plays along because surely it’s better to have this fake than nothing at all?

But even in her new existence, the creature that was once his sister puts him first.

“You should say goodbye,” says Shikabane, tugging at his hand. His shadow hand, specifically. There’s some sensation in it, enough to tell there is contact, but not much in the way of detail. It can’t differentiate sensations: Shikamaru wouldn’t know if Shikabane’s hand is soft and warm like his sister’s would be, or if it’s as cold and hard as stone. As a demon’s lack of a heart.

“I,” Shikamaru hesitates. The face staring impassively back at him is still his sister’s. “I don’t think I can.”

—

It’s not as if Shikamaru wants to die. He very much enjoys living, thanks, he’s not that lazy.

He doesn’t want to die. He just doesn’t want his sister to hurt herself for him even more than he wants not to die.

But he cannot change the past.

He’s grateful to still be alive, he just wishes it hadn’t had such a high cost.

He’ll tell his sister thank you only when he manages to get her back.

Oh, could you also do 32 (Wouldn’t Understand), for basically any “from another world” person? I love seeing the ways having a remembered past life from another culture makes someone feel/appear separate from the people around them.

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32) things you said I wouldn’t understand

Viridescent: Or, Tetsuki Goes Feudal

“Consider me your private tutor,” says the girl seated at the table beside Kagome’s family. The weirdest thing isn’t that the girl is a stranger and yet has settled in as if she’s always had a place, or that she’s not far from Kagome in age and yet Mama and Grandpa look so trusting of her, or even that she’s wearing a sharp black suit more suited to business men than teenage girls in their very traditional shrine house.

No, the weirdest thing is the way that, when Kagome enters the house after an exhausting and filthy two weeks in the feudal era, Inuyasha just a few steps behind her, the girl doesn’t seem surprised at all.

She can definitely see Inuyasha–the both of them had been flat-footed, hadn’t thought to be wary of strangers in the house proper–but she keeps her eyes on Kagome.

“No worries,” the girl adds, after Kagome and Inuyasha have exchanged an entire conversation of looks, “I’m very discrete and very good at my job.” Mama nods, reassured.

“Which is… my private tutor?” Kagome asks, baffled. It’s true that her grades have been slipping what with all the absences in favor of time traveling, demon-slaying adventures, but getting her a private tutor seems ineffective at best and a hindrance at worst. She’s not entirely sure what Mama is thinking.

“Yes. We’ll make quite the warrior priestess out of you yet.”

—

The private tutor, Reborn, as she prefers to be called, is only more bewildering the longer Kagome gets to know her. She prowls around the shrine–looking for what, Kagome doesn’t know–barely bats an eye at Inuyasha even when he bares his claws at her, and has set up a makeshift archery range towards the back of the property with an array of targets and an alarming pulley and rope system.

“Traditional kyuudo is, of course, lovely and useful in its own way. An internal core of peace and discipline is nothing to scoff at,” Reborn lectures even as she physically herds Kagome toward the archery range. Kagome, who has just returned home from school after a grueling day of exams, is in no state to put up much of a fight. Nor is she in a state to go through with some kind of archery gauntlet, either.

“But it’s not terribly practical, now is it?” Reborn asks as she finally places Kagome inside of a small circle denoted by a rope braided with paper. “In a world of creatures much stronger than you, the only way archery will be able to do anything is if you’re fast and accurate.” She hands Kagome a bow and steps back to where a series of ropes hang down.

“Hit one hundred targets and protect your circle,” Reborn says, a bright, expectant, and somewhat sadistic smile spreading across her face. She tosses what looks like a water balloon up in the air and catches it; Kagome doesn’t think the water balloons are filled with water.

Kagome tries to back away, out of the circle, and finds that she cannot. “You didn’t give me any arrows!”

“One hundred targets,” Reborn almost sing-songs in response, “I won’t let you out a moment sooner.”

—

After a grueling several of hours of manifesting spiritual energy into arrows, trying and frequently failing to hit the moving targets, getting covered in slime that somehow reminds Kagome of that one fight against a slug youkai but far worse, Reborn finally breaks the barrier.

Then she breaks out the gardening hose even though it’s late fall, nighttime, and the water is no doubt barely above freezing. “It would be rude to track slime into the house,” Reborn scolds, “Mama already has so much to do. And plus, a warm bath will just be a quick sprint away; surely you’ve had much worse during your travels.”

True, but Kagome’s not used to having to deal with that in the modern times!

“Now, what was your first mistake?” Reborn asks pleasantly even as she blasts Kagome with frigid water.

She screeches at the temperature, “You’re awful!”

“Maybe,” Reborn acquiesces with an easy shrug, “But that doesn’t answer my question. If you really didn’t want to go through this entire ordeal, your first mistake was not breaking the barrier.”

“But you said–”

“I said I wouldn’t let you out until you hit a hundred targets–which took far longer than I would have expected, we’ll work on that–but I didn’t say that you couldn’t let yourself out.”

“But I don’t know how to,” Kagome argues, teeth starting to chatter. Futilely, she wraps her arms around herself for warmth.

Reborn raises an eyebrow at that, an almost disappointed look gracing her face. Then she sighs, shakes her head, and tosses a towel directly at Kagome’s face. “I guess we’ll have to work on that, too.”

—

After a bath and dinner, right before Kagome tries to speak to Mama privately about the whole Reborn situation–namely, how to get rid of her–the devil herself stops her.

“In comparison to my predecessor, I’m being kind,” Reborn says, in pajamas and bare feet, hair soft and loose and slightly damp–the soft hallway lighting of Kagome’s home and no slime balloons in sight–she really does look like a normal teenage girl and not the youkai sent to torture her in modern times.

The smile Reborn gives this time is rueful, regretful, “I suppose such a standard isn’t hard to beat given he used to literally shoot us with guns–” an alarming statement that she brushes right over, “–but the thing that he messed up from the beginning was never telling his student the intent behind every awful, cruel lesson. I won’t make that same mistake, mostly because I don’t have the luxury to do so.

“He could follow his student in his adventures and if things really got tough, not only beyond the limit but beyond capabilities, then he could step in and help,” at this Reborn meets Kagome’s eyes, “I can’t do that with you. I have to make you strong enough to stand on your own. And I know you have your friends, your own guardians, but they shouldn’t have to worry about protecting you all the time. If anything, you should want to be stronger so that you can protect them, too. Lead them, even.

"If that’s not something that you want, then go ahead. Tell Mama to send me away. I wouldn’t want to teach someone like that anyway.” At that, Reborn steps back, bare feet padding towards the spare room, leaving Kagome alone to process her thoughts.

She talks to Mama.

—

The next day, Kagome–with only a little complaint–steps into the circle, bow in hand. Mama and Grandpa and Souta all watch from a safe enough distance away, the remains of a  picnic set up as they get ready for the main event.

And Reborn, smiling, bright, expectant, and somewhat sadistic, says, “Because you’ve had a nice rest a good lunch and your wonderful family to cheer you on, now you have to hit two hundred targets!”

~

A/N: … I’ll be honest, lionheadbookends, this prompt was pretty difficult? I started and stopped a lot of different ideas and I’m not really all that satisfied with this one nor do I think it matches the prompt but I got about halfway through and decided this was probably the closest I would get so… here it is. Tetsuki in the Inuyasha world, training Kagome to be a better warrior.

Ooo~ “Things you Said”, you say? I feel like Shikamaru/Shikako are stuck in 24 (clenched fists) right now, so maybe you could contrast that against 6 (under the stars and in the grass) for them?

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canon Dreaming of Sunshine, 6) things you said under the stars and in the grass

Shikamaru listens to the rustle of a page turning, feels the prickle of grass against his skin, breaths in the spring air. He enjoys his day.

Shikamaru is young, only a first year student at the Academy, and does not yet know what terrors await him and his sister. (Shikako knows already, though not every one, but that is something she will keep to herself long after those terrors have passed.)

For now, the twins are but children, calm and content in each other’s presence enjoying a pleasant afternoon.

Another rustle of paper, another page turned, a soft excited gasp from beside him.

Normally, curiosity is something that will just lead to more work and so Shikamaru usually squashes it down, but in this moment, fleeting and bright, he decides there is no harm in following it.

“What are you reading?” Shikamaru asks, sliding one eye open and turning his head. Shikako doesn’t like it when there’s too much attention on her, doesn’t like to feel as if she’s inconveniencing anyone even the slightest. Shikamaru has learned to be subtle.

He is rewarded when Shikako turns toward him, book held in her hands, both of them with their backs on the grass and side to side. She holds the book aloft so they can both see the pages.

“The declassified mission record of Tetsuo Utsugi,” Shikako says, indicating the black and white etching of a vast landscape, a small figure standing in the foreground as contrast.

Shikamaru stays quiet, but internally he thinks he doesn’t like it very much. The figure of Tesuo Utsugi is alone in the picture.

“He was a special jounin from before the times of the Sannin who traveled around the continent having adventures,” his sister enthuses, unaware of Shikamaru’s growing, mystifying unease.

“Is that something you want to do?” he asks, because he honestly doesn’t know. Shikamaru’s future is tied to the clan, to the village–his future is set, Shikako’s isn’t. But the only time she’s ever expressed a preference was to join the Academy instead of Shogakko.

Shikako shrugs, their bony shoulders bumping into each other. She lowers the book so it lays on her belly and joins him in staring at the sunny sky.

For a couple of hours, Shikamaru considers the conversation done. They go home, do chores, have dinner, and go to bed; sky long since gone dark, studded gently with stars.

But only a few minutes later, Shikamaru hears his door open, the soft glow of Shikako’s chakra lighting the room. He shifts to make space for her and after a moment she joins him under the blanket. At first she is silent, but Shikamaru is patient.

“If I do want to go on adventures,” Shikako starts, hesitant, “You’ll be here when I come back, right?”

Shikamaru frowns, “You don’t want me to go with you?”

Shikako shakes her head, cheek pressing into the pillow, “They might be dangerous.”

“Then it’s better to face them together,” he responds. The conversation falls into a lull, the quiet and the dark and the warmth lulling the both of them to sleep.

Nearly a decade later, Shikamaru will remember this conversation and realize that Shikako had never actually agreed.