Legacy [ Naruto Reader-Insert ]

Bonds

You wake up from the dull ache in your ribs. You sit up but the warmth in your hand makes you do a double take. Shikamaru had held your hand while you slept. A small smile makes it way to your lips at the sight. He'd left his hair up, not bothering to let his hair down. You lie back down, closing your eyes.

What he talked about last night made you think- he'd called you out on not opening up to him and what he said had been true. All of it. You never told anybody about the personal things in your life. Why? You question yourself, mind deep in thought, thinking about all the reasons and occasions accumulated in your lifetime. All of them lead to one conclusion.

You don't know what exactly made you this way.

Perhaps it was the fact that Mother was never home and thus, you didn't have a need to try to reach out to anyone to talk about your day or your feelings. Perhaps it was the fact that the only family bond you had was your brother, who was kept under tight lock and key and had to go out of the village to perform frequent 'secret missions' with Hound. He wasn't even home long enough for you to have a constant in your life.

Perhaps it was the fact that the one person whom you willingly confided some of your secrets to just left you without any explanation besides 'I'm going to die soon.' Who the frick does that? He'd subjected you to multiple psychologically scarring scenes in genjutsu. Trained you black and blue. Sure, tough training but he was there. He was there long enough to be present.

Flashes of the fight from yesterday floods your brain and it is only now you remember that that boy had taken your ninjato. Pain sears through your heart, a piercing pain that seems to engulf your body and you don't even know if it was your bruised body that's causing it. Shit. He took your ninjato. You grip on Shikamaru's hand tightens.

Tears run down your face. Was this a sign? You don't think you'd get the ninjato back, you don't know how to find the boy. Maybe you could try whistling by your window, but you wince at the thought. You don't want to be beat up again. You had been cocky during the fight. You honestly thought you were strong enough.

You are weak. All that training you did seems like a waste.

Keirai said he saw something in you. Bullshit. You had nothing special. Just a weak little girl who can't do anything on her own.

You cry yourself back to sleep. 

____

Shikamaru doesn't know where the you that you used to be went. You had been more assertive when you were a kid. He remembers you demanding for him to teach you shogi. How did you turn out this way? Shitty parenting he guesses. He doesn't really know the full details behind your family situation but from what he gleaned from his dad; he understood that you'd had merely had been an oversight, that the village only needed your older brother and your father only cared for Ino.

Something about the thing that he and you have- the sword.

He looks at the fresh trails of tears on your face. What a troublesome girl. You are completely different from Ino- her long blonde hair and sky blue eyes, the boisterous attitude she puts up as a front, the determination she has when she has a goal that she wants to accomplish. She'd gone on weird diets, put in a lot of effort in the way she looks, the way she dresses.

Toobaditisntforhim

Relationships aren't for him honestly, he sees his mother nagging at his apathetic father who only seems to enjoy drinking in the afternoons. He drinks in the afternoons. When he isn't supposed to be drinking. Granted that he has a very troublesome job, and Shikamaru doesn't say this lightly. Being head of the SCI, his father must have seen some things that warrant his afternoon drinking habit.