#but so far? sai and shikamaru are actually two men she genuinely GENUINELY does not raise any guard towards

[fightaers]

this is controversial ……… but i think the only men sakura feels like would never disappoint her or be disappointed in her but rather is completely fine to being completely open and genuinely working with her is……… only sai and shikamaru……..

[notquitejiraiya]

Chess [7] - {ShikaTema AU}

BEFORE ANYTHING ELSE HERE IS A WARNING: 

This chapter contains reference to (though not in detail and there never will there be further detail than what is given here) attempted suicide by overdose.

I said that this story would get deeper, and genuinely mention harsh topics that people may be sensitive to, and this one is the first that does this. This is one of the only few that will directly confront suicide, but others will mention it as it is integral to the character arc and backstory. I’m sorry if this is distressing for you, and if it is 1) I’m very sorry, and 2) I suggest you maybe steer clear from this chapter.

I’m sorry to spring this upon everyone, but given you read the first chapter if you’re here, I’m sure you understand. Still, I thought it inappropriate not to properly address the subject at the beginning here. I know I personally would’ve wanted to know beforehand if I were the reader, especially a few years ago.

I love you all, and I hope you all love yourselves, too! 

CHAPTER SEVEN

She took some solace in the thought she’d instilled a little hope into the troubled soul that sat before her, and while she had no idea the root of the evil that he dwelled upon, she wholeheartedly believed that if they worked, they could do it; fix him. It didn’t matter who he was or where he’d come from, or even whether he’d gone out of his way to piss her off two weeks ago, he was a human being, and a kind one at that. Irritating or not, that was all she needed to know how important this was.

For a moment she’d let her mind wander as she stared at him, agape, but as she felt slightly rougher skin absentmindedly trace across the back of her hand, she remembered that she’d never actually let go. And now, embarrassed as she was to have onto the comforting gesture far too long, it wasn’t nearly as intense a feeling as the conflicting she felt when it dawned on her that the thumb that was mindlessly caressing her hand, hand broken free from her grip to do so. One of his hands, colder and bonier than hers, sat atop Temari’s own, resting. Why exactly this change had come she was unsure, but she wasn’t nearly as bothered about that as she should’ve been.

“So,” she started, changing the heavy subject slightly, “you said you wanted to be a teacher, but since you’re wearing wacky shirts and selling flowers all day, so…” She cleared her throat, covering her mouth with her one spare hand, anxious to move the other from him. “I guess what I’m asking is why you didn’t go for it and become one.”

Shikamaru, with his eyes firmly shut, ran his thumb across her knuckles, tucked away in his own little world for a moment. He let out a soft chuckle. “It isn’t your turn to ask questions yet.”

A shiver flew across her shoulders. It was so haunting to watch him; so captivating yet so numbing. He instilled in Temari a feeling she’d never known before, and with everything in her she couldn’t decide if she actually liked him or not. It certainly wasn’t like her friends, for starters—while they could infuriate her, as he often did in such a short space of time, they never made her want to punch them in the face; something he had caused her to feel a couple of times now.

But Shikamaru? She went through minute long periods of loathing him, followed immediately by periods of pure fascination, then from wanting to smack him upside the head to wanting to throw her arms around him and not let go.

She felt sorry for so many of her clients—it was a given whens he knew they’d all suffered, one way or another—but Shikamaru made her feel different. It wasn’t sorry, as such, with him. More than anything, Temari empathised with him, even though she knew so little of him and his life.

Although she’d had her brothers for company always, she, too, had few friends growing up. She’d felt small and as though she was the only person she could trust on many an occasion. Temari couldn’t relate to many of the people who stepped into that room, but what she knew of him, she could personally understand, and it was enough for her to feel some sort of connection to him.

In him she somewhat saw her little brother, Gaara, and all of his struggles, and at first she’d wondered if that’s how it was: a brotherly feeling. But then, all she had to do was think of Kankuro—yes, she hated him and went through periods of wanting to punch him, or even going ahead and doing it, but she loved him for the sake of it. She was in no way bound to Shikamaru, and yet she felt stronger for him after two hours of conversation than she felt for her brothers. No, no—not stronger. That wasn’t right. Just differently. So freaking differently.

No, he shone—he stuck out in a very different way. She felt herself drawn to him in a foreign way, into his eyes and the smile that flashed like a shooting star every once in a while. It was so unprofessional, and in the moment it hit her she knew what she ought to have done: got up and told him to go and see somebody else—the man in the office next door or, if that was still too close to her, another practice…

But she couldn’t. her hand was too glued to his, too happily sat resting there, and her warmth too balanced by his cooling touch.

No, there was no chance in hell she was letting him go. She had been told, been trained, to set aside her emotions so they wouldn’t interfere, and that was just something she would have to do if it meant he got to stay. But she wouldn’t, not under any circumstances, give up the greatest joy of her career so far, the most intriguing and important patient to her, if she could set aside those emotions.

Yeah, fuck professionalism, she concluded, staring straight ahead at the man. If I can help him feel better, that’s better than nothing, and it’s better than shovelling him off onto someone else to make him more unhappy.

“It isn’t my turn,” she agreed after a long pause. “But, humour me. I’m interested.”

Finally, his eyes fluttered open, settling on the bundle of hands in his lap. As he forced himself to move them, so slowly, it felt to him like ripping a plaster that had glued to his skin. “I didn’t ‘go for it’ because I never got the qualifications, that’s all.”

“Why not?” She retracted her hand and, flushing red, fumbled behind her for her notepad. “You’re clearly really smart. Surely you passed  everything. Surely you could’ve got into university.” She rolled her eyes with a slight smile. “Or did you not try?”

He chuckled. “I did,  in the end, enough. I passed. I was ready to go—I did go—it’s just the actual degree bit never came to pass, you know.”

“What? Why not?”

“I did go to uni,” he sighed. “I went for a week and a half, and then, since it was September and it was my birthday, and I went back home to see my parents and Choji. They wanted me to.”

Temari nodded, tapping her fingers on her notepad and finally hoisting it into her lap. “Okay.”

“When I got there and had been welcomed and all that jazz, I went out for a smoke and my Dad followed me.” His gaze lifted and set on Temari, finally. As cold and dark as he felt in his head at that moment, the determination in her eyes made it feel a tiny bit brighter. “Anyway, he hates that I smoke—even though my mum’s told me he used to before I was born, and frequently has the odd one nowadays—so, despite his insane hypocrisy, he always looms when I do, knowing it’ll make me finish my cigarette as quick as possible.

“You see, usually he’ll say something about my smoking—Nara’s are the definition passive aggressive when we’re pissed off,” he chuckled, raising his eyebrows, but he didn’t seem to find his own comment funny. “Yeah, I was just sat on the doorstep and he stood in front of me, staring at the sky, and I knew he was going to give me a talk. Like, a proper talk.

“He said, ‘You know, Shikamaru, for six generations, Nara men have joined the forces. In some way, shape or form, they’ve contributed—they’ve helped. But you,’ he told me. ‘You’re sitting there doing calculations. Quite the shift, eh? Who’d have thought it?’ Then, as expected, he told me I should quit smoking, but it didn’t matter. I could see his point; the damage was done.” Shikamaru sighed and rubbed his eyes, desperately trying to stop the itching behind them; not allowing Temari to see how he truly felt as the memory surfaced. “I’d let him down. By wanting to be an academic, I’d done the opposite of what I was suppose to do. I’d stopped this inter-generational pattern, and even somewhere in me that was upsetting. I couldn’t imagine how it felt to him.”

“So you just gave up?”

He nodded. “I gave up. Or gave in, at least. I quit smoking and enlisted, like I thought I should’ve, but I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t stomach it, so after a week I ran; I came home, bought packet upon packet of cigarettes, and cried my eyes out.” His Adam’s apple shifted as he gulped. “So I started working in the flower shop, so I didn’t feel like a waster.”

Temari was blown away by the way he spoke. His voice, while so calm and consistent for the most part, was a complete mismatch for the look on his face. She could tell how desperately the man was trying to hide his feelings; disappointment, shame or whatever destructive feelings they were, but she could see his eyes. Rubbing them didn’t change anything; it didn’t take away the soul behind them that was hungry for something better—desperate not to feel like he did in that moment.

“Don’t be embarrassed for being scared,” she mumbled, fully aware the pressure of her notepad brought to some people and placing it down. “Everyone gets scared.”

“I wasn’t scared I just didn’t want to hurt anyone. I didn’t want to hurt, or even save. I don’t want to be anyone’s hero, you know? All I wanted to do was help out kids; especially kids like I was, ones who struggle to connect with things.” Shikamaru tapped his knee before, at long last, letting his knight hop over the pawns in front of it. “But enlisting…it just made me sad.”

Temari reached out to the chess board and made her next move. “You should just go back and get your degree Shikamaru; nobody’s stopping you, and it’s your choice.”

“I know that,” he sighed. “I mean, what’s especially shit is that Dad didn’t actually care. He was impressed that was at uni, he just had a dumb way of showing it. And so now I know I’ve thrown that away because I couldn’t properly interpret one conversation.” A loud groan erupted from him. “Fat lot of good an IQ over two-hundred is, eh?”

Her eyes widened at the number, but she tried her best to stay on topic. “You might’ve known if—“

“If Id talked to my mum. Yeah I know.” His shoulders drooped. “But I’m not good at that. I’d rather just stick with the way things are.”

“But things can get better if they change.”

He didn’t respond, instead taking to his feet. Sluggishly he fumbled over towards the one window her office provided, his hands lifelessly hanging in the pockets of his jeans. The shuffling of his boots across the floor was driving Temari mad—how many damn pairs of boots did he get through a year walking like that?—but she couldn’t take her eyes off him.

From behind, with light flooding from the windows and creating his silhouette, he looked like something from a movie scene. Not the fancy man walks into the bar kind of movie scene—Temari wasn’t that deluded by his mere presence, yet—more the, see a shadowy figure sipping whiskey in the corner up against the wall kind of movie scene. Despite the way she’d seen him break his veil of cool, it would be a lie to call it a rouse. Shikamaru certainly was cool, and he seemed to realise that to some vague extent, too.

But he didn’t. Even further than that, he didn’t care. As he dragged his feet across the wood, his eyes set on the sky like a predator to it’s prey. Envy rushed through his veins and sent tingles up the back of his neck, feeding his brain with exactly what it didn’t need. However, as much as he tried to stop it, he couldn’t stop staring up, and as his shoulder collided with the wall and his leaning began, he couldn’t help but think aloud.

“You know, I was telling Choji the other day about how great it would be...”

“To be a teacher?”

“No,” he batted back, blunt and simple. “How great it would be to be a cloud. Clouds don’t have responsibilities. Clouds just float along, going with it all, and then they just get to disappear into the atmosphere, forgotten.”

Temari found herself growing hot, and her palms becoming clammy again.“You don’t want to disappear and be forgotten, Shikamaru. Trust me.”

“Choji said something similar. You two would get on.” He paused for a moment, and started to run his fingers along the window. “Actually, I’m not sure. You might think he was a pain. He kinda is. He’s not as us. He’s with it and his heart is so big, yeah, but he can just ramble on and on…”

“Shikamaru—“

“Anyway, if I were a cloud, I wouldn’t have to work, or even have a brain.” He chuckled. “And nobody would care what I was doing of if I was aliv—“

“How on earth do you do that?” Her voice was growing angry, and she hauled herself to her feet, adjusting her blouse.

“Do what?”

“Don’t act like you don’t know, buddy,” she snapped. “You talk constantly, and almost passionately, too, but you don’t care. You don’t put any effort into it, and yet you thwart what I’m saying.”

His eyes stayed glued to the blue sky outside. “I don’t ‘not care’ I just...well it’s hardly riveting conversation, is it?”

He didn’t have to turn. The gentle tap of her boots across the floor were warning enough that she was sneaking up behind him. It almost made him turn, but where he was leaning provided something stable. He needed stability, not shaky legs.

“Shikamaru, what you’re saying is worrying.” Temari’s voice was low and calm. “Come on, please sit down again.”

He stayed put. “I’m alright thanks. We can talk like this.”

“Stop being difficult.”

He chuckled. “I’m not. You’re just not handling it properly.”

“I want to punch you in the face, you know that?” She had laugh to stop herself balling her fists. “I want to help you more than I want to do that, but gee, you can be an ass.”

“You barely know me, yet.”

She blushed. “And I’m almost grateful for that. Come on, please. Sit down and stop saying you want to float away and disappear from everyone’s lives.”

“Tell me something,” he muttered, out of the blue. “What did my file say?”

Temari froze. “I’m sorry?”

“I want to know what she put in there.” His shoulders fell as he began itching the back of his neck. “I want to know if she had the stomach to say it.”

“To say what?”

Shikamaru shook his head at first, but began nodding slowly, continuing as if she didn’t exist, which of course drove her insane. “Nah, she won’t have. She hates to admit it to anyone.”

“I’m sorry, Shikamaru,” Temari interrupted with a heavy groan. “I’m not following you.”

“Word for word, what does it say? Look for me.”

She frowned.

Finally he looked her in the eye, false smile plastered and eyebrows raised expectantly. It was as if he was trying, once again, to rile her up. “Please,” he sighed.

“I don’t need to look, it’s not extensive.” Temari crossed her arms, unamused but undoubtedly interested. “It just said ‘highly depressed and will not take medication’.”

He nodded slowly. “As expected.”

“What?”

In the exact way Temari hated most, the young man turn around and blanked her again, picking mindlessly at the chipped paint on he windowsill. “I wanna go on the record that I have no problem with taking medication. I’m just not allowed. She won’t say it to any of you guys, but I’m not…trusted with it anymore.”

Temari knew instantly what was coming next, and she didn’t want to ask. Despite her job and her desire to help him, she couldn’t help but feel unprepared to tackle this. So she simply let her silence do the talking and fell back into her chair, knees so weak with the shakes she could barely stand.

“Three times.” His eyes squeezed shut. “Three times...”

“I’m so—“

“No, I wasn’t allowed to be sorry about your mother. You’re not allowed to apologise for something that’s my fault.”

“But it isn’t!” she insisted, thoroughly upset and trying her best to hold back. “Don’t say that. You know it isn’t, really.”

“Three times. It’s just the fact that the first failed go wasn’t enough to stop me trying the exact same thing a second time.” She could see him pulling at his own hair. “And then a third. Somewhere along the lines my will just gave in, to the point that my natural instinct that’s whole purpose is to make me want to live fucked me over.” Shikamaru bit down on his lip and finally turned to face her again, it quivering between his teeth before he spoke. “I was meant to die, Temari. For twenty seconds body almost let me go.”

Temari couldn’t help how she felt in that moment. It took every ounce of her being not to let the flood gates open and rush down her cheeks, and each syllable she tried to voice got hitched in her throat as she struggled for the right ones. But more than the sadness, more than the confusion, she felt disappointed in herself. It wasn’t just how unprepared she was for this moment, but the fact she felt uncomfortable—something that she knew was so unnecessary. She’d felt the same with Gaara back then, knowing he was suffering but herself feeling discomfort both in knowing that, and in thinking about such ordeals.

It was her job, she knew that, and she had to pull herself together. But she couldn’t lie, she knew that one thing right now.

Before she even opened her mouth, she stood up and edged closer to him , trying her best to ignore the whirlwind in her head, and the storm surely inside of his. Finally, once again, she reached out to him.

Carefully she threaded her fingers underneath his, drawing him away from the peeling pain and holding his hand tightly. “I’m going to be really honest with you, because I haven’t had to do this for real before, and I’m scared. Not of you,” she clarified, “don’t ever think I mean of you. I’m just scared of being insensitive, accidentally.”

Shikamaru turned to her, eyes brimming with tears and forced a smile. “I get it. No big deal.”

“It is, Shikamaru,” she forced out, though her throat was almost closed as she fought back tears.

“So I’m your ‘suicide guinea pig’?”

Temari felt her knees go weak and her stomach churn, and she squeezed his hand so tight. “No, don’t say that. Please, please don’t freaking say that.”

“Why? I don’t care that it’s true. I’m your first patient like this, right?”

Weakly, she nodded. This was the first time she’d felt so insignificant in this room; and the first time she’d start to discover  the real extent of his pain. “You’re so casual about it, I don’t...I just don’t...”

“I can imagine it’s unsettling,” he whimpered. “Listen, I don’t mean to sound so blunt and I don’t mean to sound so careless. It’s just hard to think about it in any way other than from a distance. I try to talk about it as if it wasn’t me. It makes me feel like it isn’t my problem.” His hand squeezed hers back for a second. “But I can’t do that here, and bluntly is the only way I can do it.”

“Well, I don’t want to dwell on it, either,” she began. “The action itself needn’t be mentioned in this room more than in passing, okay? What we need to talk about it why you felt the desire or the need to and uncover what that is that caused that. Because finding the root of it all and tackling it will help you get better. But before that, I need to know two things. Just quick.”

Silently he nodded.

“I assume you, um...”

He coughed, uncomfortable. “Overdosed, yeah.”

Her gut wrenched. “And when...”

“Eighteen, twenty-one, twenty-two.”

Temari had to stop herself pulling him into her arms, but she pushed it down and tried to be professional. “There could be many things going on, but I’ve got two main ideas. It might be that your brain produces less serotonin than average and so your emotions are constantly unbalanced. That would need to be combatted in such ways as with external joys, and methods to cope with…” She took a deep breath. “With those overwhelming feelings of depression, given that you aren’t going to be able to have antidepressants.

“However, it could always be the case that you aren’t ‘wired’, as you said, in a certain way, but rather you’ve habitually got into a destructive thinking pattern over time.” Temari regretfully let go of his hand and rested her palm on his back, looking up into his dark eyes. “Either way, Shikamaru, I won’t let you feel that way again.”

“You definitely know what you’re talking about, don’t you?” He smiled, genuinely this time, and Temari felt warmth flutter through her body. “But nobody else spotted any destructive ways of thinking.”

“Have faith, Shikamaru,” she mumbled. “Just have faith in me, okay?”