A Nara Shikamaru Love Story [AU]
Chapter Three - Lost and Lonely [3/6]
Rated: Teen - for language, anger, and extreme
SADNESS.
Hell YES for two chapter updates.
Go Attack ModaWhoIsCoolerThanYOU and read her story
"Chasing Waterfalls" because it's amazing. (So much
better than anything I've ever written.)
And it's about Sasuke.
(Which I'm sure Aiko, if she was real, would enjoy
VERY much.)
Onna= Woman in Japanese.
"No offense, but you look like shit."
Shikamaru sighed and tilted his head back, exhaling
sharply through his nose. That's what happens when
you're stuck in a house with a half-crazed father bent
on perfecting his only son to the point of nearly
killing him. Plus, that whole
Aiko-sneaking-in-house wasn't exactly something that
had rolled over with his parents too well. The
brunette had spent the remainder of his punishment
replacing windows equipped better locks and setting up
a state-of-the-art home-security panel.
"Our village is practically oozing with little
monsters!" his father had said, in a near damn
panic frenzy, "If one, not even properly trained
girl can get in then anyone can!
The only monsters Shikamaru knew of were the
Sasuke fan-club girls when they couldn't find their
idol.
"If I give you the rest of my ramen, will you shut up,
Choji?"
The heavy-set boy grinned evilly, a line of drool
suddenly running from the left side of his mouth and
down his chin, "HELL YEAH!"
Nara knocked the half-filled, slightly steaming bowl
of noodles in front of his teammate with the back of
his hand.
With chopsticks seemingly materializing into his
flexed fingers, Choji attacked the bowl fiercely,
almost as though his life depended on ingesting the
contents.
And to Choji, Shikamaru thought with a half-smile,
that was more than often the case.
"What's up with you and Aiko?" he asked, in-between
large bites of food, "I haven't seen you guys together
in a few days."
Shikamaru, again, sighed, begging the clouds mentally
to swoop down from the sky and fly him somewhere less,
his eyebrow twitched, less troublesome.
"Nothing's up," he said, slowly, throwing Choji is
best "I'm-bored" look.
"Something is sure as hell up, that little red-haired
girl has been stalking Sasuke-kun more than ever!" Ino
yelled, smacking the brunette across the back of head,
making him slump forward. "Do something about it,
Shikamaru!"
"Why are you asking me!?" he asked, his left
hand instantly going to the back of his head to
massage the already rising bump on the back of his
skull. "You should go talk to her!"
"Well, you're practically her boyfriend,
stupid!" Ino yelled, her hands on her waist as she
cocked her head to the side, falling silent for a
moment, only to throw her head back and laugh hard,
"Wait! Shikamaru? Have a girlfriend? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
I crack myself up!"
"Hardy, har, har," the brunette growled, rolling his
eyes, "You're hilarious, Onna."
"No, but seriously," the blond said, her sudden fit of
hysterics ending abruptly as she dropped down next to
Shikamaru at the bar of the Ramen Shop. "Tell her to
get away! It's bad enough I have to fight off that
forehead!"
"Ino, why don't you juss go tell Sasuke you like him?"
Choji asked, looking over the brunettes shoulder and
over to the blond.
"I COULDN'T POSSIBLY DO THAT!" Ino yelled, making
fists.
"What's the big deal, really? He's just a guy. Like me
and Shikamaru!"
"HA!" Ino laughed, again, "You? Guys? Like Sasuke!? No way!
He's much cooler than you guys. Cuter too. He has more
maleness in him than pony-tail does in one strand of hair."
Oh, the insults.
"Did you wake up on the bitchy side of the bed this morning?"
Choji asked, angrily, his eyes becoming just as wide and crazed looking
as they did whenever he saw a piping hot, extra large bowl of chicken flavored
Ramen.
Shikamaru managed to duck forward before Ino punched in his and Choji's direction,
her fist colliding with the heavy-boy's face.
"WHO ARE YOU CALLIN' A BITCH!? BITCH!?" the blond nearly screamed, causing
everyone in the shop to freeze-mid bite, and stare in her general direction.
"How troublesome," Shikamaru whispered, faintly hearing the manager of the shop's loud and
rather deep tone yell from the back, promsing to ring the necks of "whoever-had-started-the-ruckus".
The three ran, Choji holding his bruising cheek.
"HOLD STILL!"
The couple - young, blond, and seemingly carefree - pursed their lips in unison,
gazing at the crazed girl in front of them, their eyes shining.
Aiko threw the two a forced grin, "If you don't want the painting to look like crap,
stay still and keep those giddy little smiles on your faces."
The two smiled, sweetly.
"The painting is going to look horrible, Aiko, if you get all tensed up
before you imprint the chakra," Shino muttered lazily.
"What do you know, bug-boy?" the redhead sung, sticking her tongue out at her elder brother,
"You have bugs, I have pictures. They're polar opposites."
"This is why I continue to insist that you were adopted little sister."
Aiko mocked him, in a small voice, making a face at the man and woman who
looked like they were ready to literally blow up from the physical strain of remaining as perfectly still as they could.
"We really need to be going, Miss," the man said and whose accent made his words loopy and almost flowery,
"If you're busy we could just come back..."
"Oh, hold on, sir," the redhead spoke the formality through her teeth, positioning herself
center between the two a few feet away.
"Now, don't move," Aiko warned, yet again, closing her eyes.
Mute colors danced along the insides of her eyelids -colors of all different hues,
and all different combinations - tingeing the normal blackness of her eyelids. Muttering a soft incantation under her breath, making slow,
calculated movements of her fingers to create three handsigns that seemingly floated mid-air, the color then burst
across her vision, blinding her for a moment.
She opened her eyes again, finding her visual world filled with the familiar hues and tones of Chakra.
"Hey look, her eyes---" the man exclaimed.
"Be quiet! Don't move!" Shino scolded from somewhere behind the redhead.
Aiko ignored the small exchange of words and concentrated on the two blobs of color
obscuring her vision, the left red, the right a pale-yellow.
"Kai," she muttered, "Cut."
The colors imprinted in her mind, only to revel another set of colors, these ones accenting the
basic shapes of their faces and features, only a darker hue of the original color the redhead had seen at first.
"Kai," she muttered again.
The next set gave away more complex features, such as the upturned shapes of their eyes,
the creases at the corners of the mouth, the nearly unnoticeable dimple of the man's chin.
"Kai," Aiko whispered.
Finally came the true colors, the colors that were not of chakra but of nature, placing the shadows and light
where they appeared on the face, on the shoulders, on the hair. With this, Aiko would even see the faint, half-millimeter
of black that played just at the roots of the woman's hair.
So, Aiko thought with a faint smile, she wasn't naturally blond.
"Kai," she almost laughed.
The redhead closed her eyes again, making the same three hand signs with her fingers as she had before, but in reverse
order. The exact replica of the figures in front of her sat at the front of her thoughts, and with another, three worded
incantation, the picture was imprinted on her mind. The way someone with a photographic memory remembers pages of book,
or a scene of some sort.
"Done," Aiko muttered tonelessly, opening her eyes again, "You'll have the painting in two days. Bye."
She turned on her heel and was almost out the door when the woman nearly yelled, "That's it?!" After all,
the entire process had only last less than a minute.
"That's it, sillies," Aiko said, forcing yet another smile, bowing her head down shortly at the couple
in a half-assed sign of respect. "I have stuff to do, and people to see. Shino! Show 'em out, would ya?"
And with that, Aiko left the drawing room of her home - where all the clients came - and went to her own, sitting down
with a huff on the stool that sat in front of the easel at her window.
She hated this.
Doing paintings for people who didn't even know her first name. People who only knew her as
"The Aburame Artist," and not as simply Aiko. Her parents had partly pressured her into it, not wanting their un-bugged
child to live with talents that would be wasted otherwise. Had Aiko had her choice, she'd paint Sasuke
over and over again. But, Sasuke -unless a fellow fan girl was interested- wouldn't exactly make her family any money.
And without any money, the compound would fall.
Her father was sick, despite the fact wasn't too well known in the village, a illness that was something like the
flu, but must worse, had struck him hard and fast. His destruction bugs - which often helped fight harsh diseases such as
that - had been weakened by a fight her father had to partake in, in the Third Hokage's name, and so along with him, the
Insects were perishing as well, seeing as her father's chakra levels had dissipated drastically.
She hated this.
For a hour or so, Aiko let the colors of Chakra control her mind, and her nimble fingers to sketch over the
placement her eyes had them her mind-picture. Within that hour, the outline and base color painting had been completed.
Her mind ached and her shoulders were tense.
The sudden urge she had to run outside was unquenchable.
Dropping the brush, she went to head for the door when her mother appeared in the same spot she was going to. She was
a beautiful woman, with black hair that brushed her shoulders and caressed her cheeks. Her eyes were the same golden-brown
as her daughters, but seemed more mature than the redheads, more wise.
Aiko sometimes hated her mothers eyes, because they knew and saw things which she did not. Things that a girl of her age
naturally wouldn't be able to. Things that would sometimes hurt Aiko, and make her want to be the simple five-year old
she had once been. Harsh realities that had been set into place by fate...
Things she hoped she'd never know.
"I can tell you, darling, that every time I see one of your paintings I'm amazed." She was by nature a soft spoken person,
like the wind talking with the sea, "But there's something missing, Aiko. But I'm not exactly sure what."
"Sometimes you're like a broken record, Mom," Aiko groaned, rolling her eyes, "It's fine. The customers will love it."
"Love has to be felt, not seen or assumed. How can someone love something that is lifeless?"
The redhead huffed, "I don't know, okay? Can go now?"
"Don't be back too late, and stay away from that brown haired boy," the woman pursed her lips, "He's trouble."
Aiko bit back a laugh.
"Yeah, sure mom," she promised.
If only the redhead knew how right her mother'd be.
"NARA! I've missed you!"
"Ino says stay away from Sasuke," Shikamaru muttered half-amused, half-pained, seeing as the bruise on the
back of his head still ached.
"Yeah, well, she can't make me!" Aiko said in a determined tone, punching the air,
"Mine and Sasuke's love will never die!"
Shikamaru shook his head, standing next to the redhead and lifting his chin to share in she sky-staring,
"You're ridiculous."
"Am not," Aiko retorted, throwing the brunette a dirty look, "Don't kill the mood, mood-killer."
"Talk of Sasuke ruined the mood," Shikamaru muttered under his breath, crossing his arms over his chest.
"I'm just saying that I love him, jeeze, you're being mean, Nara."
"Mean? I'm just telling you the truth. I bet Sasuke doesn't even know your name!"
"He does too!" Aiko retorted yet again, becoming a little more defensive, "Shino introduced us."
"That doesn't mean he remembers you," Shikamaru said with a sigh. "You're childish for actually believing a bastard
like him would love you. It's really just stupid, Aiko. You're only going to end up feeling troublesome in the end."
Aiko felt the anger rise in her veins, and in one breath she nearly yelled,
"Don't say such mean things because I love someone! Not all
of us are as unloving as you are! It's not my
fault that you're alone!!!"
Shikamaru's eyes widened, the words spinning in his
head. Actions, yes, may have been stronger than words, actions were
what mattered... but, by God, how words hurt.
"Nara, I didn't," she whispered, her voice cracking,
"I didn't mean that-I-I wasn't thinking!"
"So that's how you feel?" his voice was liquid,
monotone. He laughed in his breath, shaking his head
as he turned away from her, "I knew it."
"Knew what?" she asked, softly, narrowing her eyes.
"That you never really did care," the brunette
explained, squaring his shoulders, "I was foolish for
actually believing that maybe you could care for
anyone other than yourself and that damn Sasuke."
He knew he was being unfair, ignorant even, but he didn't care.
"Nara, don't say that!" the redhead pleaded, stepping
forward and reaching out her hand to touch his
shoulder. "You know I love you!"
"Don't use the word so freely!
Especially when you mean everything but
it," he scolded her, jerking away when he felt her
fingers caress his right shoulder blade. "You'll never
know how to love anyone, Aiko, until you grow
up a little."
The redhead clenched her fists, "How can you know what
I feel? What I can feel?" she asked through her
teeth, "You're so stupid! You think you know all these
things but you don't! You don't know anything, Nara!"
"I know more than you," he said, loudly, turning so
suddenly that Aiko took an instinctive step back. It
didn't take a ninja's training to feel the rise of
charka around the boy, or to see the predatory glint
in his eyes, "I know that caring deeply for someone
is based on more than just looks. Unlike you."
Shikamaru hissed his final words, almost spitting them
onto the redhead's face.
Tears formed along the base of her eyes, making her
irises shine more golden than brown. Inhaling sharply,
Aiko whispered, "I don't know what's wrong with you.
You've never been this cold to me. But if this is way
you're going to be then," she looked down, "I can't be
friends with you anymore."
Shikamaru felt the muscles in his face twitch.
"I won't sugar coat the truth for you anymore."
"Fine," the redhead spoke, pursing her pale lips as
she leveled shoulders, "Then I guess this is
good-bye."
"Whatever," the brunette said with indifference,
jamming his hands into his pockets as he turned of his
heel and walked away from her. "Being your friend was
only troublesome anyway."
Aiko's knees gave out from underneath her weight and
she collapsed to the ground. Her arms braced in front
of her, her palms pressed into the ground, her heels
were under her bottom as angry tears threatened to
fall from her eyes; she fought the instinctive,
childish urge to scream at him. Scream for him to come
back. Scream for him to just come to his senses and
stop being so mean.
"I HATE YOU!" she yelled, finding her voice
come out straggled and hoarse, "I HOPE I NEVER
SEE YOU AGAIN, STUPID!"
"Fine by me," she somehow heard him whisper,
considering the distance between them was great.
Though his voice was only faint, the pain that
accompanied the words was just as strong as they would
have been had he screamed at her.
Shino stood by the front door of his family's
compound, eyeing the darkening sky from behind his
already dark-tinted glasses. Shifting his weight, he
growled under his breath, mentally hissing at the
chakra-bound bugs inside of him. They were rallied up,
and he could feel them crawling along his insides at a
quickened pace - which was very odd, seeing as an
Aburame usually never felt the insects inside of them
after making the pact. Shino knew the bugs were
affected because he was nervous. And he
was nervous because Shikamaru had yet to bring
his little sister home.
Surprisingly enough, the bug-master had faith in the
"hidden-genius" brunette. He had always taken good
care of Aiko ever since they were children. When she
scraped a knee and he was busy training with their
father, Shikamaru would bandage the wound. When the
redhead got in fights with Ino and/or Sakura about
Sasuke, Shikamaru had always been the one to keep his
little sister from punching the daylights out of the
two. Shino, though he didn't like to admit it, had a
great amount of respect for the boy. Yet, for some
reason, he felt burdened by an overwhelming wave of
worry. Had something happened to Aiko? Had
something...
That's when he saw her, walking up the hilly path by
herself, her arms pulled around her abdomen as her
shoulders shook lightly. Shino couldn't see her face,
only the mess of red-tinted hair, but he knew by her
posture, her slow, dragged steps, and the absence of a
certain brown-haired boy that something was seriously
wrong.
He jogged down to her, falling into the path she was
walking.
"What's wrong?" he asked, watching her take another
step towards him.
She didn't answer.
"Aiko, what happened? Where's Shik-"
The redhead flung her arms around her brother, sobbing
into the cloth of his shirt as she mumbled
half-whispered words to his chest. Shino caught her
around the waist, surprised with her sudden action.
His sister rarely liked to touch him or any of their
other family members because of the pact they had made
with the bugs she feared so much. For her to hug him
like this was a big step for her... almost too
big...
"What did he do?" Shino asked, dangerously low, but
with enough emotion to sympathize with her.
Aiko tried to clear her throat but only broke into
another hit of hysterics. Inhaling sharply through her
mouth she half-cried, half-spoke, "He really hates
me, Shino, he really, really hates me."
There was no child-like undertone, or hype to her
voice, like she was whining immaturely as usual. No,
her voice at this moment was filled with unadulterated
sadness, pure emotion, something Shino never
thought his sister would achieve.
His grip tightened around the redhead as her sobs
turned to light sniffles and nearly silent, shaky
inhales of air.
"I'll kill him." He stated, gritting through his
teeth.
"God, Shino, no!" Aiko protested, gurgling, her tone
only half there because of the mucus in her throat.
She laid a hand on his chest, since his grip around
her would not falter. Clearing her throat, and
sniffling, she looked up and whispered, "Don't hurt
him. We're both to blame."
The bug-master raised an eyebrow. She sounded so much
more... mature. The Aiko he had approached this
morning when her first customers had come for their
painting had been so irresponsible and whiny, the Aiko
he knew this morning never took the blame for anything
even if she was the one at fault. The Aiko he knew
this morning was immature and lacked a sense of
empathy for other people. The Aiko he knew this
morning...
Was not the girl he was looking at right now.
Shino's lower jaw dropped slightly as he whispered,
"You both said some horrible things, hm?"
Tears filled her swollen eyes again, as she bit her
lower lip. She nodded, quickly.
"Come on, lets go inside," he said, softly, releasing
her completely, only for a moment later to pull an arm
around her shoulders leading her to their home.
Both were too caught up in the emotion of the
situation to see a pair of dark eyes shine in the
moonlight, narrowed sadly.
Aiko listened to the static that came from the small
earpiece she held to her ear as she lay on her bed, on
her back.
Her heart lunged her chest as she squeezed her eyes
shut, turning onto her side as she dropped the
earpiece, letting it fall to the floor. Little rays of
color danced across the inside of her eyelids
something usual for her, seeing as the faint
silhouettes of living chakra still lingered in the air
and objects of the room she searched the room
through her eyelids carefully, looking for something
in particular... a color...
She smiled, lightly, slightly confused, finding a
familiar hue of violet that clung to something on the
other side of the room that she couldn't quite tell
was from this distance away. Opening her eyes,
she pulled herself to her feet and bounced off her
bed, walking over to the small desk and chair-set that
the color had radiated from. Pursing her lips, she
pulled at the chair, only for a soft forest-green
trimmed and light-gray blanket to fall to the floor.
Aiko laughed aloud, feeling tears prick at the backs
of her eyes.
It was Nara's quilt. The one she had stolen from him
last week.
The redhead kneeled down on the floor, pulling the
terry cloth onto her lap. Smiling, she traced her
fingers along the black, outlined circle cut in half
that was woven into center of the medium sized
blanket. It the Nara family symbol. And somehow, at
this moment, she found it so much more appealing than
the red and white paper fan that Uchiha's sported.
She envisioned her best friends face, feeling a tear
run down her cheek as her mind dawned on something.
Something that made her heart break into a thousand
tiny little pieces.
It was so cliche, and she knew that, and she
knew that she was stupid - a troublesome girl, as Nara
would call her - but she couldn't help it.
After all, she had fallen for the Kohana cliche, why
not this one as well?
Aiko stood, taking the blanket with her as she paced
over to the drawing easel that stood tall against the
bay window mounted into the outer wall of her bedroom.
For a moment, she stared at the half-finished painting
she had done this morning for the couple that
had traveled all the way from the Hidden Village of
the Sand. She frowned, finding it childish and messy,
despite the pinpoint accurately it had to the looks of
the man and the woman she had drawn.
"...There's something missing, Aiko. But I'm not exactly sure what."
The answer to her mothers question came slamming into
her skull...
Mentally promising to re-do the painting tomorrow, she
removed the canvas and replaced it with an empty,
white one. The redhead opened the container of her
best watercolor paints after running from the bathroom
that connected with her bedroom with a small pail of
tap water in hand. She tossed Nara's blanket onto her
bed before changing into one of his old shirts that he
had given her to wear when she painted
Brushing her hair from her eyes, Aiko sat only partway
on her stool, eyeing the blank piece of painting
cloth, watching the first color of her own chakra
dance across the white as it set in the places that
outlined the piece she knew deep inside she wanted to
create.
After wetting her paintbrush, she dipped it into color
she knew would haunt her for days to come.
Violet.
SHIKA'S A JERK. BUT THIS STORY IS SO AWESOME! I wonder what's goin' happen next! Who's Aiko painting?
I have no idea why I'm reading this. It sucks SO badly.
was done by Eyevan.net
Shika's a meanie face. But adorable non-the-less.
I had a really fun time writing this chapter, despite the sadness. I hope you enjoyed reading it.
Rate/Message/Love Me?
was done by Eyevan.net
Shika's a meanie face. But adorable non-the-less.
I had a really fun time writing this chapter, despite the sadness. I hope you enjoyed reading it.
Rate/Message/Love Me?
