Naruto: Dreaming of Sunshine

The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now. – Chinese proverb

.

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If I had to play another game of shogi, I was going to scream.

I liked shogi as much as the next Nara. Well, maybe not the next Nara because that was Shikamaru and that was totally the problem. It was all he'd done since he'd come home. Just… hunched over the board and played.

We hadn't even done morning exercises.

I was actually going to scream.

My knee bounced with repressed energy. I didn't normally consider myself a restless person. I wasn't a restless person. The first few years of our lives had been pretty much this, every day. I liked calm, inactivity and not doing much.

But right now I wanted to be doing things. And I couldn't, because Shikamaru was here.

I couldn't leave him.

Shikamaru clicked his final piece down on the board. His victory had been coming for twelve moves, assured and unbeatable. I'd let it play out mostly out of inertia. Stopping the game to declare victory would have only started another one and there was no point.

"I win," Shikamaru said, dully. Everything was dull. Everything was grey. "Another one?"

He started picking his pieces off the board, awkwardly. One handed.

I swallowed. "Sure," I said, defeated. I picked up mine, so very aware that I had two hands to do it with. How much faster it went. How much easier it was. Even for something so simple as this. Something I would have never even thought about or considered.

His left arm – what was left of it – was bandaged, just enough to peek out of the sleeve of his t-shirt. I didn't look at it, no one had talked about it, but there was no ignoring it.

If you scream in the forest and no one hears it, does it make a sound?

"You know," I said, clearing my throat. "I should summon Heijomaru and thank him for helping us. Did you want to go down to Sembei-obaasan's place?"

"No," Shikamaru said, and didn't look up from the board.

I fell silent. 'He'll need you here,' Dad had said, but it didn't look like it. Didn't look like I was doing any good. The silence between us was heavy and oppressive and I didn't know how to break it. I was trying. I was trying but-

Shikamaru had shut me out.

I guessed it was only fair.

I didn't know what he wanted – his silences indicated he wanted to be left alone. I would have wanted to be left alone. But I'd been told to stay. And I thought that at any other time he would have wanted me to stay too.

"Are you… angry at me?" I asked, tentatively. It was the first time I'd referenced the mission and I regretted it immediately. This wasn't the time. It wasn't the place. Shikamaru was hurt and clearly still hurting – I couldn't be selfish enough to make that about me.

There was a long silence. I thought he wasn't going to answer.

"No," he said, finally.

I kept my mouth shut. Didn't say anything more about the failed mission. Didn't protest that he probably should be – that I'd been responsible for keeping him safe. That I'd made mistakes I shouldn't have.

Shikamaru was hurt. This wasn't about my guilt.

I knew how that felt. He didn't have to comfort me, right now. I wouldn't put that on him.

I retreated and let the endless click-clack of shogi wash over me.

We were still playing when Dad came home, accompanied by Kofuku and Igaku. It was pretty clear what the topic of conversation was going to be, when you brought R&D and the hospital into it.

Shikamaru had to guess, too. But he only looked apathetic.

They didn't jump straight into it, but I tuned out the small talk and polite lead up. My years of experience as a wallflower were standing me in good stead here, because no one really tried to drag me into it.

"I understand you've already turned down the transplant," Igaku said, finally broaching the topic we all knew they were here to discuss.

Though not quite. Because what. That was the first I'd heard of it. I'd assumed it was up for discussion. I hadn't realized it had already been discussed.

I tried not to feel hurt at not knowing. This wasn't mine. It wasn't about me.

"To be honest," Kofuku said, picking up the thread. "That's probably your best option. Our regeneration research simply isn't advanced enough to regrow an arm. We're talking years before we have working models."

"With a transplant," Igaku went on, "the best case scenario is that you'd regain about 80 percent functionality. You'd be back at combat readiness after a few months of physical therapy."

"I don't want," Shikamaru said, "some strangers arm just… stuck on me." He hunched forward a little bit, tucked his arm in closer like that would protect it.

It wasn't a rational objection – a gut level, instinctive revulsion. In a way I could understand it, the feeling of wrongness, of not mine that would come of it.

"Is it the 'stranger' part that bothers you?" I asked, too fast. The words spilt out my mouth before they'd been considered.

Dad's eyes widened. Igaku and Kofuku exchanged looks. And Shikamaru turned towards me.

But it was too late to take them back.

"What?" Shikamaru asked, voice going even flatter. Like he knew what I'd asked, what it meant. Where this interjection was going to go.

"Is it the 'stranger' part that bothers you?" I asked again, resigned. I felt like a character in a play, compelled to say my lines. "Or the donor? Because if it is…" I paused, not because I didn't know what I was going to say, but because it was going to go over so badly. "You could have mine."

There was a chance that the Gelel stone – Shikako stone, heart stone, whatever it was – would heal me. It did, had, but I wasn't prepared to count on it after it had let me down so very badly.

"Why would you even think that's an okay thing to offer?" Shikamaru demanded, voice cracking.

I shrugged and didn't look at him. "Well, if your issue with it is that the donor is a stranger…"

"And you thought…" he paused, incredulously. "You thought that somehow that would be better?"

"I thought it would be an option," I said, calmly, carelessly, like it had been a perfectly normal back and forth. Like there was no more to be said about this, no reason to get upset.

It didn't work. Of course. But I gave myself points for having tried.

"It's not an option!"

I tried not to flinch back at the sudden volume of his voice. Yep, very much did not work.

"I would have to agree," Igaku-oba said, cutting in through the conversation with a calm but firm manner. She was trying to deescalate. "I could not, in good conscience, perform a surgery that left a healthy shinobi in a damaged state, willing donor or not. Konoha Hospital certainly wouldn't agree to such a thing."

That only presumed if I were in a worse state than before. And though I couldn't argue such a thing to Igaku, Tsunade herself might know the possibilities of the stone. And even if she wasn't willing to test it…

Well.

Once I turned up at the hospital with a spare arm…

But it was all a moot point if Shikamaru wouldn't take it. Totally and utterly moot.

"Of course, Igaku-obasan," I said, inclining my head, accepting her statement. She looked appeased.

Dad, I noticed, did not.

And neither did Shikamaru.

"You," he said, and choked on it. His hand reached out towards me, grabbing at my throat – at my neck. It wasn't fast, wasn't dangerous, but I fought down the instinctive recoil that the motion prompted.

He wasn't grabbing me, though. He was grabbing the thin black leather cord around my neck, pulling free the necklace from beneath my shirt.

"This is it," he said, dawning with horror as if he were only just working it out. "You kept it. You kept it."

Maybe he was only just working it out. He hadn't exactly been in a great state of mind when he'd seen it. Probably hadn't known what I was trying to do, simply because it hadn't worked and there'd been nothing to see.

"Why the hell would you keep it?" Shikamaru demanded. His hand tightened into a fist and pulled, slightly, drawing the cord tight around the back of my neck. It was a quick release knot – if he pulled harder it would come loose. "You know what it did!"

I curled my hand over top of his and stopped him. It was mine.

"I thought," I said, words carefully measured, "that it would be useful."

My words had to be carefully measured. This was an S-rank secret, family or not. And Shikamaru had better be careful too.

(Why did he always try and do this in front of people? Doesn't he know it's dangerous?)

I met his eyes squarely and unflinching, trying to project seriousness. "I'm sorry it didn't work, Shikamaru. But let it go."

He dropped it, like it was hot. Recoiled, like I'd said something terrible to him.

Shit. Shit.

Gelel was – obviously – a touchy subject for him. And that piled on top of this, which was bad enough in its own right… everything was going wrong.

And there wasn't really any way for me to fix any of it.

"What is that?" Kofuku-oba said, eyes eagle sharp. "Is that part of your research project? Let me see it."

I tucked it back into my shirt instead. "No. It's classified."

She gave a disbelieving snort. For good reason – if you compared the security clearances of all the people in this room, I was hardly the one to be telling people things were classified.

And yet.

Dad nodded slowly, eyes looking between the two of us. I didn't know if he knew exactly – didn't know if Tsunade had let him in on the whole mission – but there was only one mission Shikamaru and I had been on that would be unanimously classified to everyone regardless of level.

"Perhaps we should get back to the topic at… hand," he said, and blinked slowly, as if it had actually pained him to say it once he realized.

Shikamaru groaned and covered his face. "Dad," he whined.

It was such a relief. Such a break in tension, a return to some kind of normality. I didn't presume to think that any of this was over but… well. I was all for postponing arguments. I was happy to postpone this forever.

Dad cleared his throat. "Regardless," he said. "Are you certain you don't want a transplant?"

"I'm sure," Shikamaru said. And then glared, very slightly, in my direction. "Any kind of transplant."

"Keep it in mind," Igaku-oba suggested. "You don't have to decide now, while emotions are running so high. Spend some time thinking about it."

"Unfortunately," Kofuku-oba said, "there really isn't much in the way of alternatives. Hidden Sand has some great prosthetics but while they're not so complicated to replicate... they're operated by chakra strings so require a fairly decent grasp of the discipline."

A puppet master like Chiyo might be able to do it without a thought, but it would take dozens of chakra strings operated with precision control … from a stump of an arm. It wasn't exactly an easy beginner task.

"As far as non-permanent solutions go," she went on, "the most I can suggest is some form of Shadow Stitching Jutsu or Shadow Neckbind. Have you started on those already?"

"They have," Dad confirmed. "Though using them without seals…"

"Will be difficult," she agreed. "And draining, if you have to do it constantly. It's not going to give you anything near the utility of an actual arm, either, but if you're serious about refusing simpler solutions…"

They were talking about control and mastery of a jutsu that was definitely A-rank if not higher. It was a lot to ask.

It wasn't...

It wasn't exactly that I thought Shikamaru couldn't do it.

It was just that, right now, there was no indication that he really wanted to.

Shikamaru's only professed ambition had been to be average. He could still do his job in Logistics with only one arm. He could still manage the kind of Konoha-based desk duty that most career chunin did. He'd be average.

I wasn't…

I wasn't sure how much I liked the thought. It wasn't bad. Not really – if it was what Shikamaru wanted to do and what would make him happy…

But it felt so much less.

Less than he could be, than he should be. Like something would be missing.

And like I would never have Shikamaru at my back again. Not directly – every mission we'd been on together had gone terribly and I wasn't sure I ever wanted repeats of any of those – but a more distant feeling of knowing that he was there and could handle what was thrown at him.

I would move on to opponents that picked fights with jinchuriki… and he would be helpless.

And that –

That thought was like a knife in the gut, twisting.

Kofuku and Igaku picked up and left, leaving us in a heavily awkward silence.

Dad sighed and ran a hand over his face. "I think we all need to talk," he said gently.

I crinkled my nose. That was the worst idea. Talking had really not solved anything so far. Talking was only making things worse.

"Shikako," he said then then stopped, almost helplessly. "Shikako. No one wants you to be hurt. You understand that, don't you?"

I sighed, and obliged him. "I know that," I affirmed. "And I know that my suggestion wasn't really very helpful and that Shikamaru wasn't going to agree to it. I just… wanted to solve the problem."

That's all it really was, finding loopholes and solutions and zeroing in on it slightly too fast for common sense to catch up with. There had been solutions, if you regarded the whole thing as a purely intellectual exercise where people would do A if B happened. If 'spare arm' then 'transplant'.

"Good, that's … very good," Dad said. He sounded relieved.

Yeah, okay. Now that the rush of planning had faded a bit, I could see how plotting to circumvent the people stopping you from lopping off your own arm was a bit… faulty.

I wasn't exactly eager to damage myself, no matter what. It wasn't totally not an option, but there were probably better ones that could be explored first.

"Now what was all that about Shikako's necklace?"

I hesitated. "If you don't already know, we can't actually tell you," I said, when Shikamaru opened his mouth and looked like he was going to answer.

I was, at least, a little more used to keeping secrets. From our parents, even.

Dad narrowed his eyes and I suspected that certain records were going to be examined very closely again tomorrow, before accepting that with a nod. "Is it dangerous?" he asked.

"No," I said.

"Yes," Shikamaru said.

Right, of course. Clearly we agreed on everything in our lives.

"It killed you!" Shikamaru said, starting to sound a little outraged. Again.

"It saved me," I countered. Which was probably veering too close to saying too much. "It's not dangerous," I reiterated.

"I think this is something that the two of you need to sort out," Dad pointed out.

I looked at him blankly. And how did he think we would do that when we were clearly on opposite sides with neither having any inclination to budge? That sounded like a real productive use of our time.

"I think we've got bigger things to worry about," I pointed out.

"Like what?" Shikamaru asked, derisively. "My arm? It's gone. It's not like we can do anything about that."

"It's not like we can do anything about this, either," I pointed out. Fairly. In my opinion.

He went dangerously quiet and still, anyway. "It's not like I can, you mean," he said. "You tried to use it. You've been using it."

That had to be a guess. But he wasn't wrong, so it was an accurate one.

"It's not dangerous," I said, again, which was probably confirmation in its own way. I was pretty sure that the intention behind that was 'you should stop' and I was just… done listening to this.

This was old news. Why did we have to keep rehashing this? We had newer things, bigger problems to fry.

Screw your 'we can't do anything', Shikamaru.

"I'm going to R'n'D," I announced, standing. "I've got research to do. Don't wait up for me."

I stood and walked straight out.

.

.

I didn't come up with a solution overnight.

Hadn't really expected that I could, really, but I'd spent the time scribbling down any hint of idea or knowledge or memory that would let me tackle the problem.

Transplants were out, obviously. Shikamaru wouldn't take them. Whatever regeneration techniques Kofuku-oba had mentioned were clearly under development already. There was nothing I could do to add to or improve that. But prosthetics… not so obviously dismissed. They couldn't be Hidden Sand ones – even if we could build them, the trick was in operating them.

It had to be something easy, something that didn't take mastery of a jutsu he didn't have any experience in. Had to be something almost without thought, for best results. Something you didn't have to pay attention to in order to use.

Kinda like a real arm.

That was the thing. I was no expert, had never had anything more than a 'that's neat' passing interest in the subject – but I knew that you could build prosthetics that would recognize action potentials and muscle impulses to function just like a real arm did. And maybe my world had still been in the early stages of building those things too – but surely there was a way to do it.

I had seals. They could substitute for electricity and machinery and operate in ways those never could.

So yeah, it was a solid avenue to explore.

At dawn I slipped back to the silent house and started cooking breakfast. Mum was still asleep, more tired than normal these days, and while I couldn't do anything to alleviate the stress that was happening right now I could at least make some things easier on her.

Granted, it was also much easier to do from this side of dawn, rather than waking up earlier.

I was still cooking when I sensed a presence approach the door, and since everyone was still asleep, I went to silently open it rather than wait for them to knock.

"Show off," Ino said, good naturedly. But she hadn't even raised her hand, so she'd obviously felt me coming, too.

I gave a semi-shrug. "Everyone's still asleep," I said. She looked rough, but not terrible. Not straight-from-a-mission or worried-to-death.

"Oh." She rubbed a hand across her face. "Of course. I didn't realise it was so early." She grimaced in apology. "I've been up for ages making arrangements for the shop."

I waved it off. Sometimes when you were awake it seemed like everyone else should be too. "Just means you have to help cook breakfast," I said, motioning her inside.

"Ah, I see your cunning ploy now," she said, sliding off her sandals and padding after me. But she tied on a spare apron without protest and picked up a knife like it was only natural.

"Less work for you."

"You know it," I said, resuming where I left off. "You just get back from your mission?"

"Yesterday," Ino said. "More like last night. Dad told me all about…" she waved the knife a little loosely. "Stuff. Chouji is probably going to come over early, too."

"Probably not till after breakfast," I said.

She huffed, but it sounded like a laugh. "Yeah, probably not. Although if he can get two breakfasts out of it…"

"Maybe we better make extra," I said, straight faced.