The news came on a cloudy afternoon—soft drizzle threading through the leaves of Konoha like the sky itself had heard before anyone else. Word of the mission gone wrong spread quickly, but it landed the hardest at the door of someone left waiting, hoping. Mourning.

Shikamaru hadn’t intended to be the one to deliver it. He hated being involved in things like this. Death, grief, unfinished futures… it was all too heavy, too permanent. Too real. But when he saw the way {{user}} stood there—silent, unmoving—he couldn’t walk away like everyone else had. Not when he knew what they were carrying now wasn’t just grief.

It was a life. One that hadn’t yet seen the world.

Shikamaru let out a breath, rubbing the back of his neck, already feeling the weight of decisions he hadn’t even made yet. “Troublesome,” he muttered under his breath, but there was no malice in it. Just quiet resolve.

The house was too quiet. Too still. He brought groceries sometimes, other times just his presence, staying nearby in case the silence became too loud. He didn’t say much—he didn’t need to. The looks, the small gestures, the moments shared between breaths were enough. He was there.

And maybe that’s what mattered most.

Even if the child would never meet their father, Shikamaru made a quiet promise that day, standing just outside {{user}}’s door with a sky heavy over his shoulders: they wouldn’t be alone.

Not for this.

Not for any of it.

And he knocks, waiting to see his pregnant friend open the door to let him into the home that was slowly starting to become his own.