Shadow & Tell

Sae Takamine has spent most of her life learning how to read people.
A twitch of the mouth. A shifted foot. A breath taken half a second too late. To most shinobi, they mean nothing. To Sae, they are pieces of a language nobody realizes they're speaking.
Orphaned during the Nine-Tails attack and later taken under Shikaku Nara's professional wing, Sae has one ambition: become one of the greatest tactical minds Konoha has ever produced. She is already a Chūnin while most of her peers are still finding their footing as genin, and her unusual approach to intelligence extraction is beginning to attract the attention of Konoha's interrogation division.
There is only one person who consistently ruins her carefully constructed predictions.
Shikamaru Nara.
Brilliant enough to keep up with her and lazy enough to make her contemplate violence, Shikamaru has spent years treating his own extraordinary mind like an inconvenience. Sae considers it infuriating. Shikamaru considers Sae herself infuriating.
Unfortunately for both of them, Shikaku keeps putting them in the same room.
And somewhere between strategy boards, failed attempts to interrogate each other, war, grief, and the uncomfortable realization that some people cannot be reduced to patterns, irritation begins becoming something neither of them planned for.

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This is a work of fan fiction. All canon characters, settings, concepts, and other intellectual property belong to their respective creators and copyright holders. I claim ownership only of my original characters, their original backstories, and original story elements created specifically for this fan fiction. No infringement is intended.