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depressedhatakekakashi · 1 year

Text

Moving Forward

Characters: Tayuya, Shikamaru and Maito Gai

Words: 4179

For: @shinobimagpie who requested one of her favorite characters for this event

Fear wasn’t something that Tayuya was used to anymore.

When she was younger, more alone, she’d feared the world and all the things that could cause her harm, but then she met Orochimaru-sama. They had reached out a hand and offered her an opportunity to become stronger than any regular shinobi and she’d jumped at the opportunity, and Orochimaru had been right.

Tayuya was stronger than most normal shinobi. With her curse mark, she had been able to defeat Jonin-level shinobi as if they were nothing. She’d faced down Shinobi who should have been able to defeat her easily and beat them into the dirt.

She’d looked at all of those things she once feared and laughed. There was nothing that could stop her.

Until, suddenly, there was.

First, it was the trees.

Right when she was winning the battle, about to claim the life of her enemy and move on as the victor, backup appeared and buried her under a forest worth of trees. Blood filled her lungs, and as she closed her eyes Tayuya thought that she was free from her fear.

Fear cannot chase you into death, after all.

Except, death never came.

She opened her eyes again, days later, and found herself in an unfamiliar place. With white walls, masked doctors, and kind words.

She hated the kindness more than anything. A prisoner was what she was, and it should have been how they treated her, but instead, they smiled. They explained her injuries to her and told her that she would make a full recovery.

As if there was a life for her after she recovered, and not just a cold damp jail cell with her name on it.

She no longer feared the trees. At that moment, she feared life.

An empty, joyless existence in solitude.

Then that fear faded away in an instant. With a knife to her neck, and a promise to ‘keep her from giving up anything about Orochimaru-sama’, Tayuya found herself fighting for her life.

Clawing and screaming in the hopes that she wouldn’t bleed out in a hospital bed, surrounded by strangers.

The fear of life was nothing compared to the fear of death, and death didn’t terrify her nearly as much as the hateful, angry look in Kabuto’s eyes as he stared down at her. Suddenly her powers meant nothing. Her genjutsu was useless without her flute, and all she had to protect herself from Kabuto’s knife was hand-to-hand combat.

An area she was severely lacking in, and which would have been her end if it hadn’t been for the interruption of one of Konoha’s Shinobi. Hatake Kakashi, if she remembered the name correctly.

She didn’t care to remember, though. The man had never spared her a second glance. As soon as he laid eyes on Kabuto he shifted into fight mode, and suddenly she was alone again.

Her attacker and her saviour went out the window to have their battle while she sat in her bed struggling for breath as her chest compressed into itself.

A panic attack.

That’s what the doctors had called it when they found her minutes later, curled up into a ball fighting for her life against her overwhelming fear. They’d managed to calm her down, but the fear was still there.

Her life had been turned upside down in a matter of days and the worst of it all was that stupid Nara boy showing his face in her hospital room with offers of food.

As if they hadn’t just tried to kill each other days ago.

“Shouldn’t you be hanging out with your girlfriend?” she huffed, turning away from him as he pulled her little bedside table and set out the food he’d brought.

“Temari?” his hands didn’t stop, though she could hear a hint of admiration in his voice when he said her name. “No, she’d already on her way back to Suna.”

‘Good’ she ground her teeth, keeping her anger inside. It would do her no good to lash out while she was being watched from every side.

“She actually asked about you before she left,” finishing up with the food, Nara pushed the table towards her. “Of course, it included a few insults I won’t include, but she seemed genuinely worried when she heard about-”

“Don’t,” she hissed. “Don’t you dare say his name.”

Lifting his hands, he held them up in a sign of surrender. “I will not mention his name,” he promised, pointing down at the table without lowering his arms. “I know for a fact that hospital food sucks, so I thought you might enjoy something with a little more flavour.”

Glaring towards the offering, she huffed. It was true that the food she had been given so far was less than spectacular, but it wasn’t as if she was used to eating well. It was a little hard to enjoy good food when they were always moving from one hideout to the next, and Orochimaru-sama never let them eat when they needed to do experiments.

Which was almost always.

Still, it did smell good.

“Why?” she asked, surprised by her own question.

“Why, what?” Nara questioned, his brow furrowing with confusion.

“Why are you bringing me food?” it was difficult to keep herself calm, but she fought to keep the anger out of her voice. “I tried to kill you.”

“Ah, that’s just what enemies do,” he shrugged his shoulders as if she wouldn’t have put an end to his life if his friend hadn’t shown up out of nowhere. “But we’re not enemies now, are we?”

“We’re not?” she wanted to strike him. Scold him for being so careless around someone who tried to kill him. Someone who would have gladly killed him without remorse if given that opportunity.

“Well, I doubt you’re going back to Orochimaru after what just happened,” he grabbed the seat that the nurses had placed against the wall for visitors and pulled it to the bedside, flopping down with a groan. “I mean, he made it pretty clear he didn’t want you around anymore.”

She hated how right he was.

It burned her inside knowledge that all of her loyalty had been for nothing. She had given up her life and become an experiment in hopes of becoming stronger than anyone else, and when it turned out that there were still people out there capable of beating her in a fight, Orochimaru-sama abandoned her.

They had sent their favourite student out to kill her, just so she wouldn’t tell Konoha everything she knew about them. As if her words would even matter to them. By the time Konoha knew the location of Orochimaru-sama’s hideout, they would be gone.

She was alone again and no one was coming to save her.

“H-hey!” Shikamaru jumped to his feet, a hand reaching down toward the weapon’s pouch on his right leg. “I’m not here for a fight. You’re in no shape.”

Registering his words, Tayuya finally dragged her eyes away from the wall and stared at him. “Fight?” she asked, confused by what he had said. “I’m not trying to fight you, idiot.”

His posture relaxed immediately. “Sorry, it just seemed like, well,” he waved a hand toward her. “You look angry.”

She looked angry.

A laugh ripped its way out of her throat. Bitter and angry, it burned almost as much as the tears that gathered in the corner of her eyes. “I am angry,” she growled. “I’m furious. I wish Kabuto was here so I could rip his throat out myself.”

She’d make it a long, painful death. If she had her flute she’d put him under a genjutsu and watch as he cut his own throat out, just as he had tried to do to her.

“Ah, well,” reaching a hand behind his head, he buried it in his hair and sighed. “He’s not here, so maybe relax a little.”

“Relax?” she spat, seething at the suggestion. “I just lost a fight to some random Suna chick who didn’t even have the decency to introduce herself properly before burying me under a forest with her stupid weasel summon. And if that wasn’t bad enough, I was captured by your stupid village because a bunch of trees falling on me wasn’t enough to kill me, thanks Orochimaru-sama,” it had to be their fault that she survived. No normal shinobi could have lived through having their ribs crushed and their liver punctured multiple times. It was the experimentations they’d done on her that made her live, and for the first time in her life, she hated them for it. “And to top it all off,” her fingers curled into the blanket that sat over her legs, knuckles turning white with her grip. “That bastard managed to sneak into my room past multiple Anbu guards to try and kill me, and I couldn’t do a damn thing about it!”

Fighting for her life hadn’t been what saved her. Scratching and screaming hadn’t spared her from the end of Kabuto’s scalpel. The only reason she was alive now was because of a shinobi who just happened to arrive at the right time.

Had he not shown up, she would be laying in a pool of her own blood with no escape from death’s cold grip.

Konoha’s Medical ninja might have been able to save her from her injuries before, but Kabuto knew more about medicine than any of them. He would have made sure she died before they even got to her.

“Well, what are you going to do about that?”

Looking up at Nara, she frowned. “What-”

“You’re alive now, and you might have a chance to make a home for yourself here in Konoha if you want. It won’t be easy of course, but it’s possible,” he continued, ignoring the ridiculousness of his words.

A home, in Konoha.

The village she had snuck into and helped to kidnap Uchiha Sasuke from.

A place she had helped attack just a few weeks ago under Orochimaru-sama’s orders, which she would have gladly watched burn if only they had won the fight.

“I have no home,” she whispered, repeating the words Orochimaru-sama always spoke to her. The gentle but painful reminder that she was alone, no matter where she went or what she did.

“You could have one,” he continued, reaching out and gently pushing her bedside table a little bit closer. “If you want.”

“Why?”

Nara shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “It just feels like the right thing to say.”

A home.

After all of these years alone, fighting for her place in the world, she might finally have an opportunity to find a place in the world that she could call hers.

“I could have a home,” she dared to whisper out loud, letting the words sit on her tongue. For the first time in her life, it didn’t taste like poison. Like a promise waiting to be broken.

For the first time since she was a kid being offered a place in the world by Orochimaru-sama, she felt like it was finally possible to find somewhere she could settle down.

A place that she could call home.

“Well, as I said there is some work to be done on that front,” Nara continued, shrugging when she looked his way. “But, if you were to try and find your place here in Konoha, what would you do?”

“Do?” raising an eyebrow, she waited for him to explain himself.

“What kind of things would you like to do,” he clarified. “If you could do anything tomorrow, what would it be.”

If she could do anything she wanted.

Something that would help her feel safer. More comfortable.

The answer struck her like a lightning bolt.

“I want to learn Taijutsu,” lifting a hand, she ran her fingers along her neck. Right over the spot where Kabuto had held his scalpel against her skin. That tender spot that could have been sliced open without an issue, all because she didn’t know how to defend herself without her genjutsu. “That’s what I would do.”

“Taijutsu, huh,” leaning back a little, Nara dared to smirk down at her. A smug look that she wished to reach out and smack right off of his face. “I think I know someone who can help you with that.”

Dango and a pair of coupons to Konoha’s local sushi shop.

Tayuya wasn’t exactly sure why Nara had given her these things, or how he had convinced Konoha’s higher up’s that she should be allowed to roam around the village. Though, it wasn’t as if she was alone. She was well aware of the Anbu operatives following her as she made her way toward Training field C, where he told her she would find the man she was looking for.

The one who could teach her Taijutsu.

She still wasn’t sure why she was doing all of this. Konoha was a new place to her and she had no reason to trust Nara, even if he did have a pretty smile.

Stopping in her tracks, she stared ahead of herself like a surprised deer. “I did not just think that,” she gave her head a shake, expelling such thoughts out of her mind. “Come on, Tayuya, pull it together. You have one job today.”

It wasn’t the easiest thing to do, but she had to do it.

Nara had assured her this was the best person to teach her Taijutsu. He’d even promised her that it was someone who would agree to train her without much hassle. That last part she wasn’t so sure about, but she was willing to give it a shot if it meant she’d be able to fight off an attacker better next time.

“Alright,” willing herself forward, she continued down the path with a new sense of determination. It was her goal today to leave with a new Sensei. One who would teach her, not just experiment on her. “You can do this, Tayuya. Just give him the gifts, tell him a bit about yourself, and ask for training.”

It wasn’t a lot, yet it was terrifying.

She had faced enemies in a battle that scared her less than this moment. The only thing that kept her moving forward instead of scurrying back to the safety of the makeshift room in Torture and interrogation that they had given her after three rounds of interrogation was the reminder of what would happen if she didn’t ask.

The fear ran deep inside of her just thinking about Kabuto paying her another visit.

“Just ask,” she whispered to herself as she made her way up the path, ignoring the hammering of her heart in her chest when she saw the opening into the training field. “Nara said he was nice. Nice means kind.”

Kindness was new to her though. She didn’t understand it nearly as much as she understood the cruelty and hatred that she had become accustomed to while undergoing Orochimaru’s experiments.

As she stepped up to the opening, finally getting a view into the training field, she felt all of her worries washing away. There was no fear to be felt as she caught sight of the man Nara had sent her to find, a giant turtle on his back, a bright green jumpsuit covering his body with awful orange leg warmers wrapped around his ankles and a smile stretched across his face that made her wonder if the man had lost his mind.

“Just five hundred more laps!” He called out, speaking to himself as far as Tayuya could see. There wasn’t another soul in the field other than her, and he hadn’t even acknowledged her presence.

Watching him, Tayuya began to wonder if this was the man Nara had told her about. The one who could teach her Taijutsu so that she could defend herself better in the future.

“This must be the wrong field,” she muttered to herself, spinning around and moving for a quick exit. “It can’t be him. He’s to-”

Before she could finish her sentence, Tayuya found herself being blocked off from the exit. In a flurry of dirt, the strange Shinobi had burst out in front of her, his smile looking somewhat more deranged now that he was right in front of her.

“You must be Tauya.” her stomach flipped. If he knew her name, that meant he knew what she had done. Even if this was the person she was looking for there was no way he would help her.

She’d wasted her time coming here.

“I think you’ve stunned her,” hearing another voice, she shot down into a defensive position, ready for a hidden shinobi to come out and attack her. “Relax now, I’m not going to hurt you.”

“Where are you?” she growled, scanning the area around them for any sign of the hidden shinobi.

“He’s right here,” without warning the man standing directly in front of her spun around so that the giant turtle was facing her. When she opened her mouth to protest, the turtle turned its head towards her. “This is Ningame, my loyal summon.”

“Summon?” her jaw dropped. There were a lot of different summons in the world but she had never dreamed that someone would have a turtle. An animal that was known for being slow. “Your summon is…a turtle?”

“A Tortoise,” it corrected her with a huff. “I don’t know Gai, this one is rude.”

“You haven’t even given her a chance,” Gai laughed, turning around so that he was facing Tayuya once again. “I apologize. You caught me in the middle of my morning training. Asuma told me that you would be coming, but I was not expecting you until this afternoon.”

“Asuma?”

“Ah, you might not know him,” he grinned, blinding her with those brilliant white teeth. “Asuma is Shikamaru’s Sensei.”

Shikamaru. That was Nara’s first name. She knew that because one of his dumb friends had come to get him while he was visiting her the other day, and they had called him by that name.

It made sense that he’d been talking to his Sensei. The Jonin probably wanted to make sure he wasn’t getting himself into trouble hanging around her. After all, she had tried to kill him. It was only smart to be weary about her.

“Well, if you know why I came, then here,” shoving her arms out in front of herself, she presented him with the gifts that Nara had given her. “Nara told me that today was your birthday, so I should give you something before asking for a favour.”

She wasn’t sure why she was explaining herself. If Nara’s Sensei had told him about her he would know all of this. There was no need for her to explain it all again, but here she was, holding out gifts she hadn’t picked out, with her eyes glued on the Jonin and her heart hammering in her chest.

“This is unexpected,” his laughter didn’t do anything to ease her nerves. “I see Shikamaru is as smart as Asuma says. Dango is my favourite treat, and- oh, certificates to the sushi shop? How much did that set you back?”

“I…didn’t pay.” admitting such a small thing wounded her pride, but it wasn’t as if she had money to fork over for these gifts. Orochimaru had never paid her a single Ryo in her life.

“Ah, so Shikamaru must have bought them,” unphased by her admission, he knelt and let his Tortoise down off of his back, only standing once it was standing comfortably on the ground, and took the offerings from her and watched as she straightened herself up. “Perhaps Kakashi would like to go to dinner with me tonight. It has been a while since we’ve had the opportunity.”

“Does that mean-”

Focusing his attention back on her, he grinned. “Ah, of course!” He cheered, slipping the coupon’s into his right chest pocket for safekeeping. “I do have to focus on my team’s training, and I’m certain there will be some limitations to your movement for a while still.”

That was a fact that she didn’t want to dwell on too much. It made sense that Konoha’s higher up’s were being cautious about her. She had done everything to earn their watchful eyes on her back. Still, it sucked knowing that she wasn’t going to have a lot of freedom until they were convinced she wasn’t going to go running back to Orochimaru.

Still, some training was better than nothing.

“But perhaps a spar first,” her head whipped up, eyes bulging out as she stared up at him, unsure if she had heard him correctly. “I do need to get a feel for where you are so far. Though, you did just get out of the hospital. Would you be able to handle it?”

“I can handle it,” she insisted, charged with a sense of determination that she wasn’t used to. “Besides, if anything happens one of those guys-” she jabbed a finger over her shoulder towards the tree line where she was certain some of Konoha’s Anbu were watching over her. “Will just carry me back to the hospital. It’s not like I have anything better to do.”

Her words were greeted with a frown. An expression that she wasn’t sure the man could make until this very moment. “I appreciate your youthful determination, but overextending yourself after such a serious injury will only end poorly.”

Tayuya rolled her eyes.

“Are all Konoha Shinobi so… cautious?” She asked.

“When it comes to the health of our comrades, yes,” her new Sensei confirmed. “And like it or not, until you’re free from your Anbu guards and choose your path outside of Konoha, you are my comrade.”

Comrade.

That was a weird word to hear.

No one in Orochimaru’s group would dare to consider her a comrade. That was a word that meant they cared about her, and if they cared about her then it meant she was more than just an expendable pawn in Orochimaru’s plans.

“Comrad…” she tested the word on her tongue and cringed when she heard it. “No, that sounds gross.”

A hand came down on her shoulder and squeezed, a small gesture that set her on edge immediately. “Comrad,” he repeated himself, a smile making its way back onto his face. “It might sound gross to you right now, but you’ll get used to it.”

Not seeing any way out of this conversation, she sighed. “Well, if we’re not going to spar today,” her eyes darted to the side, mind wandering to thoughts of that empty, plane room waiting for her back at the Torture and Interrogation building. “I guess I should go back.”

“Nonsense,” releasing his grip on her shoulder, he glanced down at the Tortoise still standing by his side. “What do you say, Ningame? I did promise you a swim in the river after morning training.”

“A promise that I intend to hold you to,” the Tortoise nodded. “I don’t mind if you bring her alone, as long as she learns some manners.”

Tayuya stuck her tongue out at the summon, swiftly earning herself a glimpse of a jumping tortoise, and a foot to the top of her head. “Ow!” She exclaimed, covering the wounded area.

Turning himself around, the Tortoise huffed. “It’s only natural,” he grumbled as he began walking away from them. “You couldn’t have all nice students, I guess.”

“Why you-”

“Here,” a stick of Dango appeared in front of her face. The exact stick that she had presented her new Sensei with just a few short moments ago, was now being offered back to her. “Dango helps to heal all wounds. Especially wounds sustained by the Ego.”

His words made no sense to her, but Tayuya wasn’t about to argue. For weeks she had been stuck in the hospital eating the worst food imaginable, with occasional reprieves thanks to Nara.

Now she was being offered a treat that she would never have the opportunity to have while stuck in her tiny bedroom, and she wasn’t going to pass it up. Claiming the Dango stick, she chomped into the pink ball at the top and savoured the flavour.

Not too sweet and not too bland.

“A fellow enjoyer of dango, I see,” her Sensei chuckled. “Well, come on….I’m sorry, I seem to have failed to ask for your name.”

Swallowing her bite, she examined the stick in her hand, wondering if all of the dango balls tasted the same or if they had their little flavours. “Tayuya,” she answered without much thought. “My name’s Tayuya.”

“Well, Tayuya,” he grinned down at her. “I am Maito Gai, Konoha’s great green beast, and I would be proud to train you in Taijutsu.”

A dorky nickname for a dorky man.

Whatever Tayuya had gotten herself into, she was intrigued to see how it all played out. Even if it did mean surrounding herself with lame Konoha shinobi for a while.

#Tayuya #Maito Gai #Shikamaru #This ended up being longer than i planned #whoops XD #Gai’s Birthday Bash #Gai’s Birthday Bash 2022 #maito Gai’s Birthday Bash

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