Work Text:
“…I can’t believe it! She—whenever she’s there on her own, they’re constantly pressuring her, act in accusatory ways—and when she reacts by keeping her distance, they whisper about how she’s away all the time, and criticize her behind her back! They act like she’s betrayed them by saving her teammate!” Shikamaru noticed that Ino had her eyebrows raised. “…What?”
“So… are you mad that they’re horning in on your territory, or what?”
“ What ?”
“Shika, that’s exactly what you’ve been doing ever since… well, for a while now.”
“No I haven’t, what are you talking about?” Shikamaru said—demanded, really.
“ Really , Shikamaru? Really?”
“I mean, I haven’t been great about this, yes, but—”
“Not just this , Shika,” Ino said exasperatedly. “You do recall all the arguments you’ve been getting in with Shikako, right? About her missions? And whenever she gets injured?”
“That’s completely different,” Shikamaru protested. “That’s about her safety, not about propriety and tradition .”
“I said nothing about your motives, just your actions,” Ino said. “She gets into dangerous situations, and she comes back at less than a hundred percent—and you berate her for it, tell her to stop going on dangerous missions, you make it clear that you want her to stop helping her teammates when it comes to their enemies, and you act like it’s a betrayal to you when she doesn’t . And when she starts avoiding you, you act like it’s her fault, when you’ve made her feel unwelcome in her own home.”
“I…” Shikamaru started. Unwelcome?
Was that really true? Surely not…
But then Shikamaru thought about it—it’s not like he hadn’t known she was avoiding home because of their arguments, and her team was important to her. Just as much as his team is to him, though he hadn’t really understood that, at first—he got that now, and just recently he’d come to understand that her team was priority one to her, but—
“I just—I wish she’d take better care of herself,” Shikamaru said. “And—I’m still not convinced that her team is good for her. They care, yes, but they don’t care enough to keep her out of their problems.”
“You’re still affected by the memory of how Sasuke reacted after waking up for the first time after being afflicted with Orochimaru’s seal,” Ino said. “I hope you’re aware enough to make the connection between that and my experiences without it being explicitly pointed out, but you’ve been awfully dense on these things for a while now.”
“Hey,” Shikamaru said, hurt.
“And you’re not respecting her choices very much. It’s not that they don’t care enough, it’s that they respect her. And it’s an awfully unfair thing, to expect them to cut themselves off of given support, especially since they didn’t have much of a support system besides her. And, if I’m understanding what went down correctly, she made the choice early on to try to give them access to her support system—her family , Shika, you , so it wouldn’t fall all on her.”
Shikamaru fell silent at that, processing the implications that Ino had blatantly laid out for him.
Shikako’s priority, in the moment that she jumped in front of her teammate’s attack, was Ino and Sasuke. And maybe she should have done something different, like—no, she’d been too drained for Shadow Paralysis, probably. But she’d gone down, trying to get through to Sasuke past a power high Orochimaru had specifically designed to be addicting.
Shikamaru couldn’t regret making sure, in the immediate aftermath, that Sasuke understood just how much of a mistake it would be to harm Shikako in such a situation again. But Sasuke had been shaken by how the seal messed with him, had listened to Shikako, and had avoided ever using it again.
And in the wake of that, rather than helping Shikako in her efforts to support her team, he’d started disapproving of those efforts, showing that he couldn’t be relied on to help if he disagreed with her choices.
And—the Tsukuyomi, how could he have missed that Shikako would consider Sasuke of lower emotional stability than her at the time—and if Ino had been sent out after just having been cleared to do missions after the tangle with Orochimaru’s seal, and he’d seen a psychic attack headed her way, wouldn’t he step in the way of such an attack?
(And Sasuke—his support, in the wake of the sealing, was so much more limited than Ino’s. How had he not made this connection earlier, when Ino was recovering? He felt so blind .)
“I have… a lot to apologize for,” Shikamaru said.
“Possibly the biggest thing is your lack of respect for Shikako,” Ino said. “I would like to show you my memory of Shikako’s fight with Gaara.”
Shikamaru sucked in a breath—it hadn’t been too long since she’d last strained herself with Mind Transmission.
“You’re sure?” he asked.
“Yep,” Ino said.
“Okay then,” he said, and readied himself.
As the image of Shikako stepping off a pedestal of sand and taking her place in the stands faded, Shikamaru couldn’t help but be astounded . He’d heard about that match, but he’d thought it was exaggerated, or… he just hadn’t internalized it, maybe.
And she came out exhausted, yes, but this was supposed to be a neutral village, the Hokage was there, there were Konoha jounin there to protect the genin looking to get a promotion. She’d left the battle on her own two feet, after pushing Gaara to the wire, over and over, and very deliberately not exploiting those moments of weakness.
(And given their current alliance with Sand, that gamble had paid off well.)
And this was several years ago . When she became chuunin . And nowhere in there did he see her use the shadow transformation—she’d done that well and she was hiding aces for when she’d need the surprise.
She hadn’t been irresponsible , she’d been calculated , and given the lack of intel on Grass’s civil war, it looked like a perfectly reasonable calculation. And… that wasn’t unusual, was it? The long history of upgraded mission ranks—even that mission had originally been a simple pet retrieval .
And her reaction was… to keep training. Get stronger, so when the next surprise came, she could make it out the other side.
( My sister was the first of our age group to become jounin, he suddenly remembered, hitting him in a way it never had before.)
And now… Shikamaru thought he maybe understood.
“Thank you, Ino,” Shikamaru said. “Excuse me, I have to go now.”
Ino nodded imperiously, and Shikamaru headed out.
Eventually, he found Shikako. “Hey, Kako? Can we talk?” he asked, body language as non-aggressive as he could manage.
Shikako looked a bit wary, which stung a little, but she nodded. He sat down slowly, taking a deep breath.
“I’m sorry,” he started. Shikako’s expression flashed through several emotions quickly—skepticism, then surprise, before landing on cautious hope. “I’ve not been properly supportive to you, and failed to understand or respect your position for a while now, and I intend to do better.” Shikako visibly untensed a little, and he felt himself relax somewhat as well. It looked like he wasn’t too late.
I also intend to look into what the hell is causing all these misrankings to happen to you more often than anyone else, he thought to himself.
It’s possible that resolution led him to later discovering that the mission desk ninja were collectively neurotic, superstitious weirdos who quite unfortunately might have a point, but that’s another story.