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It’s hard to catch Temari by surprise.
She prides herself on this fact; it’s a testament to her prowess as a shinobi as well as a result of practically raising her brothers in the way that eldest daughters always seem to do. Her trained eyes and ears are equally sharp and always alert. Her mind is nearly impenetrable and always focused on the task at hand. Problem-solving is a skill that comes naturally to her, and when paired with her ability to think on her feet, she’s a force to be reckoned with in all regards.
It’s these qualities that led Gaara to select her as his right hand, after all. Who else is he supposed to trust with delicate intel? Who else should he want as company on the trips to other villages? Who else has repeatedly risked her life, not only for the village but for Gaara himself, and walked out alive every single time?
Temari knows others can feel her power and control when she so much as enters a room. She likes it that way. People don’t bother her with dumb questions after hours long meetings or tactical briefings because she is fierce, and only a fool would mistake her silence as an invitation to speak.
All of that falls to the wayside when, at the Five Kage Summit, the Hokage’s right hand arrives at the advisors’ meeting with a baby strapped to his back.
A baby. An actual human child. An infant in a sling with a dark head of hair poking over the young advisor’s shoulder.
Shikamaru sees nothing odd about his appearance and launches into business as usual.
Temari easily blocks out the low rumble of his gravelly voice; everything he’s saying right now is on the agenda in front of her, the details will end up in the meeting minutes, and she’ll pry the in-between straight from his mouth later. She’s infinitely more intrigued by the child.
Since when does he have a kid?
He’s practically still a kid, for crying out loud.
Judging by the looks of it, the baby is less than a year old. Pre-war conception, Temari rationalizes. In the build up to the war, the stupid genius had probably agonized over a long-overdue love confession to some kunoichi, or had the realization that he didn’t want to die a virgin, and had rectified both plausible situations with an interesting and obvious outcome.
Maybe he’d come home from the war to a pregnant fling or girlfriend. Maybe the child had already been born and was waiting in her mother’s arms to meet her father for the first time.
He probably cried either way.
I’d be a stepmother, Temari’s brain unhelpfully supplies, and she hopes the horror isn’t evident on her face to the others in the room as she banishes that unbidden thought.
She can admit to herself that she’s been seeing Shikamaru in a new light recently, but to even mentally make a commitment of that kind? It’s almost embarrassing.
Not to mention the baby’s mother. It’s a startling realization that Temari knows so little about Shikamaru when they’re off the clock. But she’s somewhat familiar with the way his brain works, so this probably was planned to an extent. She can almost hear the promise of a wedding when the war ends, likely made over a shogi board or something stupid like that. Though, she does know he’s not married. Whoever the mother is, he probably still loves her, given that he’s involved in the baby’s upbringing.
But he doesn’t love her enough to even mention her, since Temari thinks they’re pretty close at this point and she’s never heard him talk about any girls. Then again, getting him to talk about his teammates is like pulling teeth, and Temari knows how much he cares for them.
She idly wonders if he ever talks about her.
That thought joins the stepmother thought in the brain dungeon. The earlier thought hisses at her through the prison bars, you’ve always been good at caring for other people’s children. But watching out for her brothers, or even Yukata and Matsuri in recent years, is wildly different from learning to love someone else’s child as her own.
Especially someone she might be a little bit enamored with.
Might.
She hasn’t entirely made up her mind yet about that. And this new set of circumstances has yet to come into play as far as she’s concerned. She needs more intel, not as a potential mate but as a friend first and foremost. Something something, two birds one stone.
Naturally, she’s on his case as soon as the meeting adjourns. “Who’s this?”
Shikamaru doesn’t look up from where he’s sliding various documents back into their respective files. “This is Mirai.”
Temari blinks her annoyance at him.
Regardless of how much he may or may not love Mirai’s mother, she figured his daughter sleeping against his back would at least warrant more context. She’d slap him for his nonchalance if it wouldn’t disturb the baby.
“I see,” she says evenly. “Well, I was about to go get something to eat, but it looks like you’ve got your hands full.”
Shikamaru grunts like a tired old man. “Didn’t know I was invited.”
She hadn’t explicitly invited him. She never does, and somehow they always find themselves tucking into the same booth at a restaurant in whatever village is hosting the summit or stabbing at take-out in a secluded office while poring over paperwork. She didn’t think she needed to invite him by now.
Then again, Mirai’s presence changes things.
“And thanks to this nifty thing,” Shikamaru tugs on the strap against his chest, “my hands aren’t full at all.”
He looks a little too proud of that quip. The urge to knock the grin off of his face is squandered, again, by the reason for the stupid sling in the first place.
“She can come,” Temari offers in a tone she hopes is more casual than anything.
A little hmph escapes Shikamaru when he rises from his seat. The files tuck under one of his arms, and his other hand slips into his pocket. “I should get her home. Kurenai’s probably ready to have her back.”
And, okay, Temari does recall hearing Kurenai’s name once or twice. For the life of her, she can’t remember anything inherently romantic about any of those conversations, or anything alluding to the fact that he has a whole daughter with her, whoever she is.
Shikamaru goes on. “If you want to come with me, we can get lunch after I bring Mirai back.”
Maybe Temari has given him too much credit. She cannot fathom that he’d be the type of man to drop off his kid at home and turn around to dine with another woman.
She folds her arms across her chest. “You’d do that?”
Shikamaru shrugs. Mirai rises on his back with the motion. “It’s not a problem for me.”
He says it like it’s a selfless act to postpone his own plans for the sake of returning the baby to her mother first. Maybe he’s not with this Kurenai woman any longer but is doing his part in raising Mirai. Temari favors that theory because it keeps her idea of his character somewhat intact.
“Alright then. Make it snappy or we’ll miss the lunch specials.”
He mutters something under his breath and bumps his chair under the table with his hip. “Hang on, I have to hand off these files before I go anywhere.”
Temari extends a hand. “Let me do it. I’ll be faster anyway.”
Shikamaru looks like he’s about to protest, but a babbling behind him stops whatever words were about to come out. Temari watches him fiddle with the sling, clutching and wrinkling the files under his arm in the process, and then Mirai is in his arms—
Oh.
More intrusive thoughts are rapidly sentenced to the brain dungeon.
His entire demeanor changes at once. “Hey,” he says warmly, features going soft. “You had a good nap, huh?”
Mirai pauses her babbling like she can really understand the words he’s saying. Temari watches the whole thing in awe. This is decidedly not the shinobi who’s fought alongside her— killed people to protect her, even— nor is this the same guy she tries to pigeonhole as a kid in her head, solely to convince herself that anything between them would be wildly inappropriate on several levels.
This is a man with a baby and she’s never seen him look so happy.
Then Mirai tilts her head, and Temari instinctively knows the wailing is coming before Shikamaru does.
When it starts, he has the audacity to look a little panicked. “Not again,” he groans, eyes flying over the crying baby.
Temari instantly knows what he’s doing— he’s trying to strategize the best way to address the baby’s needs. It’s ridiculous, really, that he knows so little about how to handle a situation like this.
“Give her here.”
“Huh?”
Temari takes a step forward. “Let me take care of her while you—”
Shikamaru recoils. “I can handle this—”
“—would you stop being so stubborn for one second—”
“—she’s my responsibility—”
Mirai wails louder.
The Tsuchikage’s advisor sends a glare in the direction of the mismatched trio for daring to disturb the relative silence.
Temari won’t stand for that at all. She reaches out expectantly. “Stop making a scene. You clearly need help!”
Shikamaru, evidently not done being audacious, takes another step away from her. “No, I’ve got this. And I’m not the one making a scene!”
One of the files slips from under his arm and falls to the floor. Temari’s face hardens. Why won’t he just accept her help?
If she has to guess, it’s because he also knows how ill-prepared he is for this and feels the need to save face. Unluckily for him, thanks to Mirai drawing the attention of everyone in the room and probably the entire Leaf village by now, Temari also needs to save face.
“I don’t think your reports are going to survive if you don’t let me hold her.”
Another file hits the floor despite the way Shikamaru digs his elbow into his side in an effort to prevent it from happening. Reluctance is still written all over his face, but he hands Mirai off to Temari and sinks to retrieve the dropped files.
She effortlessly curls Mirai in the crook of her arm, bending her elbow to support the baby’s neck and swaying from side to side to soothe her. The crying doesn’t cease but it does lessen.
After all these years, she’s still got it.
Temari shoots a victorious smirk at Shikamaru. “Do you have a diaper bag or anything?”
“Yeah it’s- here.” He slides a bag from under the table to Temari’s feet. “There’s diapers and wipes inside, and half a bottle or something like that, and there should be a rag in the outside pouch if she starts spitting up again. Plus a bunch of other stuff.”
“I know what a diaper bag is.” Temari can’t hide the teasing in her voice, although she is mildly peeved by his assumption that she wouldn’t know of the bag’s contents even though she’d asked for it. Shikamaru stands and hands her the diaper bag, and Temari slips it over her opposite shoulder easily. “Hurry up and bring those reports to your Lord Sixth. We’ll be waiting.”
Temari steps into the hallway and begins her own quick assessment of Mirai’s needs. Some poking around proves she doesn’t yet need a diaper change. Temari doubts Shikamaru would have mentioned the spitting up if Mirai hadn’t recently been fed, so the bottle is probably useless as well. She continues rocking Mirai in her arms and hopes for the best.
With a bit more swaying, Mirai’s sobs settle to the tiniest little hiccups Temari’s ever heard, and then those come to an end as well.
Temari huffs but is pleased nonetheless. “You just wanted to be held properly, didn’t you?”
She takes the time to really look at Mirai’s round face: the fullness of her cheeks, the pale tone of her skin, the startling red of her eyes.
Gods, this is a cute baby.
“You don’t really look like him,” she muses, “but don’t worry. He’s a bigger crybaby than you are.”
If Temari didn’t know better, she’d question whether Mirai was actually Shikamaru’s daughter.
But she does know better. And even if she were to indulge in wishful thinking, the Nara crest is sewn onto the worn, faded onesie Mirai’s sporting. It’s probably been passed down for generations.
She absolutely does not think about Shikamaru as an infant in the same pale green ensemble, or a hypothetical child that looks more like him than Mirai does but maybe with sun-warmed skin and big green eyes.
Thoughts like that would mean something was seriously wrong with her.
Shikamaru returns several minutes later. “Sorry, got wrapped up talking to Kakashi, but we’re good now.”
He stops at the sight of Mirai calm in Temari’s arms. The worry he’d felt about temporarily leaving Mirai alone melts away. Everything Temari touches turns to gold. He doesn’t know how he ever thought this would be any different.
Probably because Temari’s, well, Temari. He’s watched her brutally slaughter enemies in seconds with the same hands she now holds Mirai with. Of course she’s capable, but he’s never seen her look so… gentle. Yeah. She looks gentle, maybe even peaceful, with a baby nuzzling into her chest.
He wonders if she ever wants kids of her own.
She’d be good with them, he thinks as he slowly steps closer, not wanting to break the spell. It’s not very different from the way he approaches the bucks in his backyard when he needs to collect shed antlers without startling the whole forest.
Mirai looks just as pleased to be held by Temari as Temari does holding her. Shikamaru studies her fondly.
Mirai, not Temari. He’s smarter than to openly evaluate her when she can see him.
The onesie is a little big on her, but she’d spit up on the change of clothes Kurenai packed, and Yoshino Nara hadn’t hesitated to pull out the old baby clothes when her desperate son made a detour home on his way to work.
It was embarrassing enough to need his mom’s help. Maybe that’s why he hadn’t wanted to leave Mirai with Temari, if only for a few minutes. No, he knows his hesitation hadn’t been fueled by embarrassment at having to ask for help, or by Temari’s qualifications to watch over a child. His heart clenches at the thought that, even at this age, there’s already someone who sees more of his back than his face. He may not be a father yet, but watching Mirai is a trial run of sorts. He wants to do it right when the time comes. He will do it perfectly.
He looks up from the crest on the onesie to where Temari smiles down at Mirai and—
Oh.
Temari holding a baby in that outfit.
That’s definitely a thought to unpack at another time.
“Hand me the bottle,” Temari suddenly orders, snapping Shikamaru out of his head.
“Huh?”
“She’s looking for something she won’t find,” Temari grits out awkwardly, wiggling away from Mirai’s searching lips against the front of her dress. “The bottle, Shikamaru. Now.”
He rifles through the bag the best he can with it still hooked over Temari’s shoulder. “She barely has teeth,” he mutters while he searches.
Temari whips her head up to glare at him. “Well they’re still real teeth and they hurt.”
She waits rather impatiently for him to uncap the bottle and hand it to her. Once Mirai finds the rubber nipple and happily starts sucking down the bottle’s contents, Temari looks up to find the dopiest expression she’s ever seen on Shikamaru’s face.
“What?”
He hides the look and straightens up. “It’s nothing. C’mon, let’s get out of here.”
Now isn’t the time to grill him about it; Temari’s been ready to go and she’s hungry, too.
She follows him out of the building and down the village streets. As they move toward more residential areas, their surroundings become less and less familiar to Temari.
They’re not headed toward any clan’s grounds, Temari realizes; the neighborhood they’re approaching is modest but still beautiful, each lawn well-kept and each garden abundant. This Kurenai woman must be fairly well-off to afford a place like this at their young age.
When they finally approach what must be the house, Temari finds that her feet won’t move anymore. “Is it okay for me to be here?”
Not that she’s the other woman or anything like that, but she also doesn’t want to give anyone the wrong idea. That wouldn’t look good professionally or personally.
Shikamaru’s completely unphased as he treks toward the door. “Yeah, Kurenai loves company.”
“Are you sure she’ll want to see me?”
“Why wouldn’t she?”
Temari can’t spell out everything for him. If he’s stupid enough to bring home someone of Temari’s caliber, he can deal with the consequences.
She follows him, but the nagging thoughts won’t stop. “Maybe you should take Mirai back,” Temari quickly suggests as Shikamaru steps onto the porch.
“What? No. She’s been happy ever since you took her.”
“She’s happy because I fed her. Take her back.”
His fist raises to the door. “Can’t. I’m a little busy.”
“Shikamaru.”
He sends Temari a defiant grin over his shoulder and knocks on the front door.
Temari’s going to kill him if Kurenai doesn't beat her to it.
The door swings open before Temari can rattle off any of her death threats.
It’s a woman older than them, but not an elderly woman. She must be Kurenai’s mother. Temari wonders how she feels being such a young grandmother.
The woman smiles warmly at Shikamaru, and then it spreads impossibly wider when she sees Mirai in the arms of a girl she’s never met. Temari thinks the whole thing is bizarre. That certainly wouldn’t be her reaction if she were in this lady’s place.
“Is this Temari?”
Temari freezes because she can’t very well employ any of the other biological responses to adrenaline right now. And just how does the woman know her name?
She watches Shikamaru’s spine straighten. “Yeah, uh, this is Temari of the Sand. She offered to help when Mirai got a little fussy. I didn’t think you’d mind, Kurenai.”
Temari’s halfway to reminding him why she offered to help when she catches the last part of his awkwardly formal introduction.
This is Kurenai.
Oh.
She knew Shikamaru had mommy issues but she never imagined that he’d shack up with a certified MILF.
It’s hard to catch Temari by surprise, but somehow Shikamaru manages to do it time after time without even trying.
“I don’t mind at all,” Kurenai says brightly. Her red eyes shine in adoration.
She reaches toward Temari, and Temari maneuvers Mirai into her mother’s grasp. Once Mirai is secure, Kurenai extends her hand to Temari again.
“It’s a pleasure to finally meet you. I’ve heard so much about you.”
Huh. Maybe the Leaf doesn’t single out their war heroes when retelling the tales of battles past, and that’s how she knows her name. It’s definitely not because Shikamaru talks about her— that thought is still locked away in the brain dungeon, after all.
Temari firmly shakes Kurenai’s hand, then hands off the diaper bag. “Thank you,” is all she trusts herself to say.
“Thank you,” Kurenai replies, “for taking care of both of them. I know they can be a handful.”
Kurenai says it like it’s an inside joke of sorts, but Temari is definitely not in the loop.
“Hey now,” Shikamaru starts, but Kurenai cuts him off with a look.
“Don’t try to deny it. I may not have been your sensei but I did fall in love with him, and I heard all about you over the years. And from what I’m hearing now, you’re still too hard on yourself. Honestly, with everything on your plate, I can’t believe you talked me into letting you keep her overnight.”
“It was no trouble,” Shikamaru assures her. “Besides, I promised Asuma I’d look after you guys. You need your sleep.”
The final pieces click in Temari’s mind.
The timing is far from appropriate, but she feels like she could burst out laughing at how stupid she’s been, jumping to every conclusion but the obvious.
Mirai is not Shikamaru’s daughter. She’s his sensei’s. His sensei, Asuma, whose name Temari definitely knows by now even if she hadn’t known Kurenai’s.
Something like relief washes over Temari’s whole body.
“Look at you,” Kurenai coos over her daughter. “You got a new outfit today!”
“Yeah,” Shikamaru’s hand flies to the back of his neck. “Mom’s washing her other clothes. I’ll bring them here when they’re clean.”
Temari does let out a soft laugh then at his sheepish nature, visibly releasing all of the tension in her body.
“Be sure to thank your mother for me. And this is for you.” Kurenai reaches into her apron’s pocket, and then she produces an envelope.
Shikamaru holds up a defensive hand. “I’m not taking your money, Kurenai.”
Kurenai’s not having it. “It’s less than what I tried to give you last time. Don’t think of it like I’m paying you. I’m just treating you and your friend to lunch.”
“I can’t.”
“You will. You’re welcome.”
“Kurenai—”
Kurenai gives him a stern look. “If not for me, then for her.” Both shinobi in the doorway freeze awkwardly when Kurenai nods at Temari. “She deserves a nice lunch at a nice restaurant for helping out today. Wouldn’t you agree?”
He can’t really argue with that. He knows what Kurenai thinks she’s doing, but he can’t call her out on arranging a date with Temari standing right there. And with the look Temari’s giving him, she definitely agrees with Kurenai about deserving a meal right about now.
Apparently this was a battle he’d never win.
Defeated, he sighs and takes the envelope. “I’m bringing you the change.”
Kurenai shifts her attention from him to Temari. “Make sure there’s no change.”
“Yes ma’am,” Temari politely answers. She grabs Shikamaru by the arm and ignores his startled gasp. “I’m starving, Nara. You promised me lunch almost an hour ago.”
“Hey, you’re the one who asked if I wanted to go eat!”
“Because I was hungry. And I still am. Come on.” She tugs him toward the porch steps, visions of Leaf cuisine dancing in her head.
Kurenai lifts Mirai’s hand and waves it at the departing young adults. “Say bye-bye to big brother and Temari!”
Mirai does no such thing because she’s not capable of speaking yet, but Shikamaru and Temari pause their bickering long enough to wave back at her regardless.
Kurenai can hear them going at it all the way to the street. She chuckles and holds her daughter close to her chest. “I’m glad you liked her so much, Mirai. You’ll probably be seeing a lot of her in the future.”