Chapter Text
I
The first time they meet, Shikaku is bleeding heavily from multiple wounds, Inoichi and Chouza are unconscious, and the enemy shinobi are just seconds away from finishing them off.
And then just as he is starting to realising that there was no way out of this, they were going to die, his brothers were going to die, she walks into the battle-ravaged clearing, looking for all the world like she is just taking a relaxing stroll in the forest before, casual as you fucking please and without even blinking, ripping the three Kumo shinobi to shreds.
And as he stares wide-eyed at the young woman, taller than most, black hair short fly-away curls, eyes green as emeralds and curious black dots all over her face, he can only think about how the little black specs resemble stars.
(He never notices the wisps of orange and violet that appeared when he thinks about his claimed-brothers dying, focused as he was on the enemy)
II
Their second encounter is just as random as their first.
This time, it is much less stressful, a simple mission to deliver a scroll to a wealthy client, and the sun has just disappeared below the horizon when they stumble upon the star faced woman deep in the woods they’re traveling through, a campfire crackling in front of her and a merry tune thrumming on her guitar.
She turns her head just as they drop down from the trees to the edge of the clearing, her green eyes sharp and assessing as she takes them in, never stopping in her idle playing.
He doesn’t dare venture further into the clearing and his men follow his lead, even if they are confused about why they have stopped.
Truth be told, Shikaku doesn’t know either. There’s just this nagging in the back of his mind, one that’s been there since their first encounter and has only gotten louder since, that if he rushes this… this thing that’s between them, that if he makes this wild and free creature (Free, free like the Clouds his Clan so adore, free like he can never be) feel like he is trying to trap her, to force her hand in any way, then she will leave, disappear, vanish, and he will never see her again.
And that is something he will not tolerate.
So he waits and waits and waits, ignoring the impatient shifting of his troup, until the woman’s intense stare shifts to a friendly grin and she cheerfully asks if they’d like to share the fire with her for the night.
(His mother isn’t happy with him when he demands his engagement to Yoshino be canceled. Neither is Yoshino. They both scream at him, plead with him, try to make him see ‘reason’, but Shikaku will not back down. He doesn’t know what it is he feels, doesn’t know why this woman captivates him so, but he knows that, now that he has met her and talked to her and seen the glimmer of mischief and intelligence in her green green eyes, there’s no way he’ll ever be able to settle for anything less than her.
For anything less than the woman with stars on her face and freedom in her veins.)
III
They continue to meet sporadically over the next couple months, sometimes in the middle of the woods, sometimes in cheap inns and bars, sometimes in the middle of fights, and with every encounter, he learns something new about her.
He learns that she is a traveling musician, exploring the Elemental Nations at her own leisure and suddenly the guitar makes sense. He then asks himself what the hell else it could have been for.
He learns she can play just about any instrument, from her ever-present guitar to piano to flute. Nothing seems out of reach for her, nothing too simple or too complicated. If it had to do with music, then she could play it.
(When he asked, torn between humor and curiosity, if there was any instrument she couldn’t play, she smiled and quipped “Well I never got to try out a harpsichord, so that’ll probably give me a bit of trouble. Also, I have yet to figure out how to work a ‘cat piano’.”)
(Later, he would wonder why anybody would want to make a piano out of cats.)
(He also wondered what the hell a ‘harpsichord’ was.)
He learns her mother was the sweetest woman to ever walk the earth, always ready with a kind word or a warm cup of tea for any lost soul that wandered past her home (Or she dragged there, she snickers one late night around the campfire, because she had a habit of seeing those that had been hurt by those that should have loved them and making sure they never felt that way again. Ever.)
He learns her father died when she was young, that she had to get to know him through her mother’s stories and what few pictures they had around the house. That she has his hair and freckles, as the dots are called.
(She tells him of the language of her father, the one she speaks fluently, and he wonders if he’ll ever get to learn it himself.)
He learns that, for all her cheer and easy sharing, his star faced woman is slow to trust, slow to share any truly important personal details about herself, slow to let him into her space without an intense staredown first.
But he is a Nara. They’re strategists, planers. They understand the importance of patience and so he endures the soul searching stares, the wary eyes, the songs that sometimes sound darker then usual and slowly, ever so slowly, he learns more.
He learns her favorite snack is Takoyaki. (He starts sealing some away every time he has a mission outside Konoha’s Gates. Just in case.)
He learns she is twenty. (Older than him by a year, but that’s fine, he never understood the need for your partner to be the same age as you anyway.)
He learns she has a pet spider named Tomomi. (Who is much bigger than any spider he has ever seen before. Were it not for the fact she doesn’t have more chakra then the average Genin, he’d think the spider was a Summon.)
He learns she can conjure up some strange violet flames. (Something in him sings when he sees them, that same place that told him to never push for more than he was given by his star faced woman, and he relaxes for reasons he doesn’t understand, holds back the urge to reach into the fire. Not yet.)
He learns she is strong. That she loves to fight, loves to feel her punches and kicks shatter bone under the flesh, loves the feeling of blood on her skin as she literally tears her enemies to bloody, gory shreds of meat, revels in the danger of a high stakes battle. (Learns she is possessive, that she claims things as hers and refuses to let go. Even if those things are people.)
He learns her name is Akatani Mikumo. (There is no pause when she says it, no tick to indicate she’s lying, but something in him tells him that that is not the only name she’s gone by.)
(But he doesn’t doubt that it is her name now. Because she is free, free as the wind and wild as the forest and such a person does not see why a name defines you. Merely sees it as an extra chain.)
(His mother still won’t end the engagement, but that’s fine, for now. He doesn’t need her to, he simply takes as many missions as he can in order to see her. To see his star faced woman. His Yamikumo.)
IV
They’ve been meeting like this for two years when she first comes to Konoha.
At first, he is surprised as hell and doesn’t bother hiding it. After all, he never expected his star faced woman to ever want to set foot in a Shinobi Village. She’d certainly done her best to disappear whenever they got close to one.
But then he realises, through a combination of his brothers’ light teasing and her ‘Are you stupid?’ raised eyebrow, that she came here because of him. Because he was here and she didn’t want to leave it up to chance when they’d next meet.
(Although, to be fair, after that second time it had never been ‘chance’. They were drawn to each other, however faint, and she always found him whenever he was out of the village, regardless of who he was with.)
It made that part of him (The one that had appeared so suddenly and inexplicably that he should probably have worried, but which was now as much a part of his life as his chakra.) swell with glee, and he has the sudden and overwhelming urge to go to the nearest rooftop and shout his victory for all the village to hear.
Because she had come to him. This wasn’t them meeting in the woods and sharing stories to the tune of her music, wasn’t a blood filled battlefield where they fought side by side and left death in their wake.
This is her, his star faced woman, his Yamikumo, coming to Konoha because this is where he is and so this is where she wants to be. With him.
(He knows she will not stay and she knows that he knows she will not stay. But she's still here and for him, that’s enough.)
(Because he knows that even if he gets what he wants, even if the engagement is nullified and she is willing to take his name, she will always be as free and wild as the wind and he never wants to deny her that. Never wants to see her wither away chained to a place that can never hope to hold her.)
V
He had never hidden her existence from anyone.
She never shied away from him, even if he was with teammates, so pretty much everybody knew that Nara Shikaku spent at least five hours of every mission he took conversing with a young woman who somehow always managed to find him, no matter the mission.
That, however, only fueled the collective curiosity of Konoha’s shinobi about who this mysterious woman was and why she held the newly appointed Jonin Commander’s attention so thoroughly he was willing to work past the infamous Nara laziness in order to see her.
Which, of course, means that almost every shinobi in Konoha is stalking them as he shows Mikumo around the village.
Luckily (For them) his star faced woman only finds their entourage amusing, and takes great glee in leading them around on a merry chase whenever she’s off exploring the village on her own.
And somehow, she bumps into Hatake Kakashi.
(“He’s alone,” she tells him, her eyes sad, and he wants to find whatever put that expression on her face and rip it to shreds.
He doesn’t voice his violent thoughts, though judging by her expression she knows what he’s thinking, and instead asks, “Who is?”
“The white cub,” she answers, propping her chin on his chest and looking up at him with soulful eyes. “He’s sad and so very lonely and the Rain is starting to pull him under.”
“The Rain huh?” he echoes, lifting a hand and letting it erupt in orange and violet flames so he could study them.
She makes a happy sound and wiggles so she can snatch the hand, watching as her violet and his orange mix and dance and she sighs, falling into a boneless heap as a warmth unlike any he’s ever felt before erupt in his chest and spreads to the very tips of his toes.
It feels like Home, she feels like Home, and he vows then and there to never let anyone harm this magnificent creature.
“Yeah,” she sighs, all but purring her contentment as he runs a hand through her curly hair. “The Rain.”)
(He finally got the engagement ended. His mother had tried to speed up the wedding once she saw Mikumo was in Konoha and his star faced woman had not been amused.
It took three months to repair the damage to the compound and everyone now had a healthy free of ever angering his new fiancè.)