Second Time's The Charm

Chapter 29

Shikaku stared dully at his four year old daughter.

She returned the gesture in tenfold – staring blankly at him, completely unimpressed.

They were both sitting at the kitchen table, silent and unmoving. Yoshino had taken her son out of the house, in an attempt to have a mother/son bonding day.

...Shikaku knew better.

He knew this was Yoshino's way of convincing her son to be hardworking and motivated, while also forcing Kanoko and Shikaku to bond.

A lot of good that idea was...

The two of them had been staring the other down for the last two hours. Shikaku started sweating at the idea that his four-year-old daughter was about to outlast him in patience, determination and pure laziness.

He just didn't know how much longer he would be able to just sit here and stare.

Sighing internally, Shikaku thought about his strange child. People thought Shikamaru was the odd child for his slothful movements and defiant nature. Sure, Shikamaru wasn't a troublemaker like Minato's kid, but many were witness to the way he just rolled over and ignored his mother's orders.

When others observed Kanoko, they saw a well-mannered, respectful and quiet girl. Many mothers patted Yoshino on the back, telling her how blessed she was to have such a perfect little girl.

Even Inoichi whined to him that Shikaku had it made. Ino was starting to become quite the handful – demanding her father's attention constantly: Hugging him, talking to him, pulling him around, demanding he play dress up with her and pick flowers together.

It took everything Shikaku had in him not to pull Inoichi's chair out from beneath him and watch him to fall flat on his ass.

The first time the doctors told him that he was going to have twins, he was worried. Two of them? Too much work. He'd love them, of course, but two boys? Two Nara boys?

But then, he was told one of them was a girl.

A girl.

Naras don't have girls.

They do, but it was rare.

And here he was, about to have a girl. A daughter. A little girl who would need him to chase away the monsters under the bed. A little girl to pull his hair into braids as he reclined on the couch after a long and hard day at work. A little girl who would run to him with tears in her eyes because she scrapped her knee. A little girl who would giggle whenever he did something funny – and he would do something funny everyday to hear her giggle.

A little girl to cherish every moment with.

His little girl, who would demand his attention at every turn – and he would give it to her and spoil her rotten.

.

Kanoko, his little deer, turned out to be nothing like other little girls.

Independent, cold, distant – these were the words used by her own twin when describing her. You can only imagine how she treated her parents.

Yoshino, of course, loved Kanoko's independent nature. Every time Kanoko asserted herself and preformed a task without the aid of her parents, Yoshino would nod in pride and whisper to him, "You see that? That is the making of the next Hokage. My baby, the next Hokage!"