Kareru is a darling–I just have no idea what to write for him that isn’t just more of the same as You and Me and Baby (Makes Fifteen) but, like, a few years later.
But hopefully I’ll think of something, captainlibrarynerdstuff, unless you want to see something in particular with Kareru?
Nothing particular comes to mind, that was just SUCH A FABULOUS chapter I can’t stand it.
Okay then, I’ll see what comes up. Kareru has been on my mind so… 😀
i mean those soulmate aus where a guy is all afraid about the name on his arm bc it’s a boy’s name. like if it’s a world where everyone knows your soulmate is written on your body, like why would they be bad to two boys who’s very skin says they are to be together?? you know who writes aus like that? straight people
This! There was always something that bugged me about these kinds of AUs and I could never articulate it, but this!
Like… unless the phenomenon of soulmate-names-on-wrists is a very recent one (which, unlikely, given the usual premises) then cultures evolved around this phenomenon not the other way around.
Which means instead of two boys being together being “unnatural” or “bad,” its people who date other people who don’t match their name who are “going against what fate/god(s)/nature intended.”
Like if you very obviously have Jeff on your arm but you’re going around trying to date Annas or Megans or whatever, then clearly you are doing something wrong.
Alternatively, cultures might have evolved so that names are kept a secret–so no one can judge a person for dating people who aren’t their name–or, possibly, having a name is meant to be a platonic soulmate thing where they’re meant to be a sibling of sorts and dating them would be akin to incest… but at that point the idea that the problem is sexual orientation and not whether your names match up is baffling.
Kareru is a darling–I just have no idea what to write for him that isn’t just more of the same as You and Me and Baby (Makes Fifteen) but, like, a few years later.
But hopefully I’ll think of something, captainlibrarynerdstuff, unless you want to see something in particular with Kareru?
Since apparently Walking Around (Like Regular People)–or at least that particular spinoff universe–is no longer a one shot, I’ve made an ao3 series to collect the two current installments and any future installments.
Part 1 aka the actual Walking Around (Like Regular People) (+outsider!POV) will still be Chapter 13 of Dreaming One Shots, so I don’t delete the comments, but Walking Around (Sharing the World) is now a separate work and Part 2 of the series.
From @jacksgreysays AU where Shikako & Sasuke had this awesome af daughter who kicks ass and fulfills all my sweet, sweet Shikasuke feels.
Credit to @hereyougo-moretrash for the design. It was so perfect that I couldn’t stray from it after I saw it. (I couldn’t unsee her Sakako. what a cutie pie.)
OMG! SCREECHING INTERNALLY, THIS IS FANTASTIC! (I’d screech externally, too, if I weren’t at work)
This is a pretty cool idea anon! Let’s see… reaper is either kariirebito (刈り入れ人) or karite (刈り手) though I think this one is for the device that reaps while the first one is person who reaps.
… I just realized that in Walking Around (Sharing the World) I gave her a kusarigama which is a weapon that’s a sickle on a chain. A sickle is just a small scythe (actually it’s the other way around, the word for scythe in Japanese is oogama 大鎌 which literally means big sickle).
Anon, did you somehow analyze my writing to uncover my subconscious desire to make Sakako into the Grim Reaper?
(Probably not the same anon, but I saw these at the same time and so…)
Ooh, that does sound fantastic. I totally get what you’re saying, sort of like a montage with a lot of flashbacks to the last body hitting the ground interspersed with her mostly just staring off into space mid-action. To an outside POV, it probably looks like she has PTSD (and, maybe, she does) but what’s really bugging her is that she’s finally free and truly safe for the first time in her new life and she doesn’t know what that means anymore.
Consider:
The last body hits the ground. —
There’s a blank paper on the desk in front of her, waiting to be filled.
Her journals are bursting with ideas–seals she had to set aside for the higher priority things that would help keep her and her friends alive. Some are ways to translate technology from her old world into her current one, others are just interesting hypotheticals that came to her in kunoichi meetings or in class, and some, still, are the fanciful daydreams of a person realizing magic is, at least partially, real.
But it’s as if everything is just scribbles now. Words jotted down without the thoughts to give them context. She doesn’t know what she was trying to achieve, doesn’t know where certain trains of thought were leading. There’s a diagram–or a doodle if she’s going to be honest–that she can’t interpret at all.
She sits there, pen in hand, staring at the blank paper waiting to be filled.
—
The last body hits the ground, and the fighting is done.
—
“-kako? Shikako… Shikako!” Ino says, with just enough of the lieutenant’s edge in her voice, that Shikako jolts out of her reverie.
She blinks and her hand drops away from the bucket of dahlias, petals so bright and red. She turns to Ino, avoids meeting that inscrutable gaze, and tries to cover her mistake.
“Sorry, I must still be tired,” she says, skirting around the counter to put herself back on the customer side. She doesn’t know what she was thinking–or, well, she knows what she was thinking, she just doesn’t know why.
Ino stares at her for a moment longer, considering, before shrugging one shoulder, “Sure,” she agrees in a tone simultaneously disbelieving and nonjudgemental, “I’ve been waking up in the middle of the night–it’s wreaking havoc on my beauty sleep.”
Shikako smiles, grateful for the opt out, “As if you need beauty sleep.”
Ino smirks back, “Whoever said I needed beauty sleep? Just because I don’t need it, doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate an uninterrupted rest. A lesser woman would have bags under her eyes by now. Ew, can you imagine? I have standards to uphold,” she continues, and Shikako lets the soothing sounds of familiar chatter carry her away from whatever that was.
—
The last body hits the ground, and the fighting is done.
Something within Shikako stops.
—
The moon is full and somehow, despite everything that’s been done or threatened to be done with it, it’s still a beautiful sight.
Everything is so peaceful now. No dangers impending–overt or hidden–nothing for her to prepare for, nothing for her fear.
And yet.
Paranoia doesn’t just go away–it’s not a logical thing. She’s spent her entire life in this world hypervigilant and it worked, it was worth it, it saved her life and so many lives over and over again.
But it’s done now. The fighting, the war, the story that guided her so far. Everything is done now.
She knows what it must look like on the outside, a soldier adjusting poorly to peacetime–she wouldn’t be the first, and she won’t be the last–and maybe that’s what some of it is. But it doesn’t feel that way internally, not really.
She’s not a soldier coming home, seeing battlefields on everyday streets. She’s a prisoner finally released: she served her time, and she’s glad to be free, but she no longer knows what freedom means.
There’s a step behind her, familiar chakra, wind and sunshine and warmth and safety. She hasn’t dreamed in a long time, but she wants to so much it hurts.
—
The last body hits the ground, and the fighting is done.
Something within Shikako stops.
What does she do next?
edit: Now chapter one of Waking Up Starstruck on ao3 which will be the place I put all of my attempts to write NarutoxShikako. O_O Let’s see how this goes.
I… first off, have to go back into NaruSasu headspace–which, actually, there are some doujinshi I’ve been meaning to read, so that shouldn’t be too hard–but which I don’t normally equate with DoS as opposed to other Naruto fanfiction since, unsurprisingly, DoS is Shikako-centric so most of my recursive fic is also Shikako-centric (or Sakako, for next generation).
But I also… I don’t really… would Naruto and Sasuke even want a baby and would they want Shikako to be surrogate mother for said baby? I kind of figure they wouldn’t really want kids necessarily but if they did… wouldn’t they adopt? Given that a lot of their bonding/mutual respect for each other was the whole–we are both young orphans thing–wouldn’t they want to adopt?
Although, okay, even if they did want biological children, I kind of find it… not that Shikako would say no, but that Naruto and Sasuke wouldn’t ask her because they know she’d feel obligated to say yes even though she’d rather not?
Sorry anon, this is just going up against a lot of personal head canons that I don’t quite know how I’ll write around… Can I interest you in some Kareru Uzumaki fic with NaruSasu + Shikako instead?
Yeah, I mean I understand it’s kind of like a trust/vulnerability thing–you know, like “we would like to have a child and you’re our best friend and we want to involve you in this big step in our lives” and for some people it is an honor of sorts but it’s also… like… no thank you? Like, there’s a difference between being someone’s Maid of Honor and being someone’s surrogate and I can definitely see Shikako being one enthusiastically but the other not so much…
And it’s like… if this is, again, about reviving the Uchiha population (or the Uzumaki population for that matter) then there would be volunteers for such a program that would probably be okay with having someone else raise that child? Pregnancy isn’t a willy nilly decision, I agree, but there are definitely different stances on it and for Shikako it is, as you said, a sacrifice and a huge effort. For a different person who volunteers for this medical program it might not be such a huge sacrifice per se if they’re getting compensated for the effort outside of friendship.
So, you know, if Naruto and Sasuke really want a biological child there’d be others who would be better choices for surrogate than Shikako.
If I’m going with my One True Head Canon for Shikako re: kids, I’d have to agree that I don’t think she’d ever actively want children. Her dream future doesn’t involve having children–with Kareru and the NGSS they were more like her stepping up to be their parent as opposed to her actively seeking children to adopt, if that distinction makes any sense. Sakako’s existence I already sort of went into here, but tl;dr Sasuke was the initiating party while Shikako merely agreed to it (and went through with the pregnancy which is no ‘merely’ about it).
I suppose being an SI might be part of it, but I don’t think it’s the majority of the reason, you know? Like… even now (especially after the Gelel arc) Shikako is pretty firmly entrenched into this world. When it was still early days–Academy age, maybe–the reincarnation thing may have weighed on her mind, but especially now that it’s in the time skip I don’t think it’s at all a priority or anything of hers. It’s still an important secret, yes, and it is at the root of all her foreknowledge and thus her other secrets, but its not really the most vital or fraught secret she has anymore.
And except for in the Gelel arc I don’t think she ever wondered much about what might happen to her when she died. As far as she knew, she’d end up in the Pure Lands like other Naruto world people who have died–once is an incident and as far as she knows, it’s only been the once. If this were already her second or third reincarnation, then I can see her taking it as proof that she’s stuck in some kind of reincarnation cycle, but I don’t think it’s at that point yet.
If she were the kind of person who wanted children, I don’t think the possibility of being reincarnated in a world without them would stop her from having them. Especially since that would be after her own death, not theirs, so as far as she knows they’re still living their lives just without her while she’s starting a new one elsewhere… so long as she’s not reincarnated into the future of the Naruto world, where it’s fact that everyone she’s ever loved has died. She takes comfort in knowing that, even without her, her the people she loves are still living.
Ah, a Team Seven!OT3… I didn’t really interpret it that way, mostly because in my head Shikako can’t really see Naruto in a romantic/sexual way even less so than she can with Sasuke. With Sasuke it’s more believable because… actually… vice versa for Naruto, too? Like I just realized my set up of Shikasuke is Sasuke is in love with her and Shikako isn’t in love with him yet / opens her eyes and realizes he’s in love with her / her epic trust and friendship is beginning to turn into love. Whereas I don’t think Naruto feels that way about Shikako so there’s nothing for her to reciprocate in the same way there is in a Shikasuke relationship?
Which would mean Sasuke the point in their polyamorous V, but he himself isn’t poly–so while for him Naruto and Shikako are (in either combination) his “one and exception” it’s still not in his character to be polyamorous. Like… of the three, he’s the only one I hardcore head canon as mono while the other two are possibly/probably poly and having him be the point in their V wouldn’t really work… I mean, he’d probably be over the moon if his “one” were in a relationship with the other member of Team Seven because at least this way he knows and trusts and likes the other person (as opposed to his issues with Gaara) and since his “one” is poly in a relationship with his “exception” there’s no way he can have a problem because he’d just be like… yo, exception, live with us and you can be in a relationship with my one and we can be friends. Probably the happiest he will be in a relationship with a poly person while letting them have other relationships. But him being the one with multiple relationships doesn’t really jive.
Which means it’d have to be either Naruto or Shikako at the point of their polyamorous V which…
The only way I can see a romantic relationship between Shikako and Naruto is after EVERYTHING has been finished. No more Pein, no more Obito, no more Madara, no more Kaguya. Because Naruto is the hero of the story and Shikako can’t do anything to turn him away from victory–if she distracts him or somehow becomes more important to him than certain other people–then she’s putting the entire world in danger. And, in a way, once everything is done she’ll probably stop seeing him as that vessel for world peace and start seeing him as a person.
I do think, depending on what SQ does for the Team Seven post-timeskip reunion, that I might be more inclined to see a Narukako (Shikaruto?) ship but as is… I only see something starting after everything is done and she’s been away for months, on a research trip, and she comes back and sees him doing something innocuous for him but mind-blowing for her. Like… one of those he’s-in-training-to-be-the-next-Hokage-and-he’s-actually-fantastic-at-it sort of things. While for him it’s kind of like… Shikako has always know what to do, but now that the crisis is over she’s kind of adrift, and he’s finally seeing the real her and not the stressed out and paranoid kunoichi he grew up with.
… ah shit, did I just talk myself into shipping it?
JackSGreyson Says 