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and if you're still breathing, you're the lucky ones
cause most of us are heaving through corrupted lungs
setting fire to our insides for fun
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Shikamaru watched the smoke curl hot and whispy into the cold desert air. He rolled his cigarette between his lips and pulled it out, tapping the ashes off to the side with slow, methodical movements. He felt her eyes on him, more carefully than usual.
He always took a second longer to speak - the maelstorm inside of his head needed coaxing into softer winds that would not whisper madness into him. "Ino started training with Ibiki last week. Kinda scared shitless, but it's Ino," he said, verbally shrugging. "He's probably more scared of her anyway."
Temari snickered, low and honeyed down. "She could have half your pathetic village cowering in their sandals," she half teased, except it wasn't really teasing because Yamanaka Ino was more thunderstorm than human girl.
"As if that even counts as a joke."
The blonde shrugged, sobering up. "How is she doing?"
"Better than I am, I think."
It was just past one in the morning, with the brittle desert air seeping into the exposed faces of their skin. They were wrapped up in thick blankets, sitting on top of her apartment building's roof. The stars were vain tonight; they shone a pure pale light through the dark blue clouds and black sky. Shikamaru could trace familiar constellations he could see from the window of his bedroom in Konoha. But there were some new ones Temari pointed out each time he came - warriors and maidens and beasts etched into Wind Country legends.
Sometimes he let her speak because they were interesting, wondering where she learned all these stories, but sometimes he drifted off into a doze. More than once, he was slapped back into alertness.
He liked the sound of her voice more than he was willing to admit.
Today, however, when he strolled into Suna that afternoon with skin paler than she'd remembered, and eyes set into blackened, sunken-in half moons, Temari didn't tell him any stories. She tossed him a fresh pack of cigarettes and a couple of blankets and dragged him up to the roof.
He talked about how cold his toes were, and how his house was more quiet than he remembered, and how he hadn't felt this empty when Asuma died, and how his mother hadn't stepped foot inside his father's study since the war, and how she wouldn't let him go inside it either and it's almost been four months and he doesn't think he's coping well and he doesn't think she is either and the strongest person in his life might be worse off than him but he couldn't say anything because Nara Yoshino was too damn prideful for her own good and he's confused and watching her handle clan paperwork in the kitchen after the dinner she made him was as frightening as hearing her cry in the shower every morning and he couldn't fucking stand it and there was an entire village that needed stability so he didn't have the time to be an emotional idiot and it was all so terribly troublesome and-
Shikamaru's cigarette fell out of his mouth, between his legs and plummeting to the sandy earth.
"Fucking shit," he mumbled, reaching for the pack to his left and slipping out another one. His face was a bright red, flushed from ranting so much and so loudly. Temari stayed quiet. He knew she was just being respectful, but he was still embarrassed. Was he going to keep loosing his cool like this?
Shikamaru felt around for the lighter he tossed somewhere between their thighs, but he already saw a thin, tan hand holding onto it.
The blonde shifted into a kneel, the blanket falling from her chest to pool onto her lap. He looked at her stupidly while she reached over and flickered on a small flame, cupping it with her hands and bringing it to the fresh cigarette hanging from his lips.
"Hold still, stupid," she said quietly.
He held still.
Shikamaru watched her coaxed the flame for a minute, flicking the lighter twice before it caught flame against the end of the cigarette. It burnt the familiar orange-yellow flame that he looked down on for so long, filling up the very edges of his vision with the warmth of it.
"You're being too hard on yourself. Working through trauma is not you being an emotional idiot. It's a part of the job description," Temari grunted, pulling away from him and flipping the lighter shut. She tossed it up in the air and caught it in her palm neatly Her eyes went hard and her hands shook almost imperceptibly. Shikamaru swallowed at the sight of it. "Grief isn't...systematic. There isn't a formula for it."
He sighed and nodded. "I know."
"And you're expecting to grapple with it like some sort of battle plan?"
He rolled his eyes. "What else am I supposed to do?"
They went quiet for a moment as Shikamaru regretted the steel of his voice and the wind blew thick and cold onto them. Temari's hands shook a little harder, a little faster, as they clenched down onto the lighter between her fingers, and he hoped that she wouldn't break it.
It took her three minutes and forty two seconds to break the silence; he counted unconsciously as her mouth twitch and her brows slowly curl downwards. "I had nightmares about Gaara until I was seventeen," Temari said in a heavy voice. "Sometimes it was the same dream - I was nine when he slammed me into the ground with one hand and threatened to crush my eyes with his sand. I could always feel his fingers at my throat squeezing. Other dreams got worse. Torture. My father watching as he went through with it."
The dark haired boy's jaw clenched murderously, his entire body tensing as her words made him spark in hateful fury. The first moment she'd recounted her abuse from her youngest brother came back to him, the cold face of a survivor retelling her horrors as impassively as she could muster. The urge to find the young boy he'd witnessed at the chuunin exams so long ago and slit his throat came to mind a thousand times, the face aging and filling out with uncomfortable similarity to the Kazkeage's likeness.
The shadows around him flickered and flexed around him, quivering along with his rage. Shikamaru took his cigarette from his lips, tapped the ash off the end, and put the images away from his head.
Temari breathed deeply, calming herself far better than he did. "The way he changed into the person he was...I couldn't believe it for most of the time. I was waiting for the other shoe to drop. It was easier to trust him after the bijuu was extracted from him," she recounted to him, unclenching her fists and letting the lighter lay in the middle of her two palms. "So long. I spent so long trying to heal."
She laughed aloud, throaty and chargined as a smile took over her face. "I can't even look at them as the same person anymore. I couldn't be bitter about it," she said, biting down on her lower lip. Shikamaru let out the breath he was holding unconsciously. "So I don't expect you to handle coming home from a war easily and you shouldn't expect yourself to either."
Shikamaru closed his eyes, taking the cigarette out of his mouth and bowing his head. "I'm not Ino - or you. My teammates are busy taking up clan head positions and I still can't sleep through the night without screaming," he hissed. He bit the inside of his cheek and felt the blood pour into his mouth as the smell of rotting corpses filled his nose. "I just...I just can't afford to be a mess right now."
"No one said being a shinobi would be kind on our minds," Temari murmured, her hands finding it's way to his overheated neck. Her cool fingers coaxed him into relaxation, regulating uncoiling his muscles almost immediately. "But you won't stay this way forever."
"And if I don't?"
"Shouldn't we cross that bridge when we get to it?"
He laughed aloud, the echo of his own words from the night before the soldiers were sent into the frontlines calling back to him at all her questions and worries that would not let her rest the night.
Shikamaru raised his head and looked at Temari and really, really wanted to tell her that she was probably the most amazing person he had ever met in his life but she might punch him and walk off. She stared back, quietly shifting back into her usual disposition with a frown and a raised brow.
For all his genius, she was always a mountain when he turned into a storm; the intense feeling of raw thankfulness swallowed him whole with just staring at her. He reached over and put his arm around her neck. His fingers found her collarbone and his nose found her hair, breathing in the thick scent of her skin and flowery shampoo. Shikamaru gave himself a moment to commit it to memory as her arms wrapped around his middle with strong fingers clenched into the material of his shirt.
They stayed like that for a long time, unmoving until Shikamaru pulled away from her to sneeze loudly, rubbing at his nose and staring up into the night sky ruefully.
"Don't get sick on me, bastard," Temari drawled, a tired grin on her face. He watched her out of the corner of his eye as he half-focused on the stars above. "Find Tomoe's bow."
Shikamaru blinked. "What?"
She pointedly smirked. "Find my favorite constellation."
He groaned, fully focusing on the sky for a few minutes before pointing upwards towards the cluster of stars above that formed one long, thick line curving into a thinner one, long and almost imperceptible against the disarray of light.
"That one?" he asked.
"Tell me the story."
"Do you think I'd remember that?"
Temari rolled her eyes and slapped his arm down, and it fell onto his lap. The other still held his burning cigarette, which he'd put back between his lips as she began to speak. "Tomoe the Warrior. She was a skilled kunoichi of the Gozen clan. She was famous for her archery skills and fuuton," she started, the familiar story looping back into his head as her eyes shone happily. There was a certain satisfation that gleamed in her eyes when Temari spoke about her favorite legends. "When she was mortally wounded in her last battle against a rival clan, a god of the desert took pity on her. He'd watched her throughout her battles and took a liking to her immediately. He set her soul into a constellation after she died so she could look over the battles of mortals for all of eternity."
Shikamaru frowned, pulling the half burnt cigarette from his lips. After a final, scrutinized look, he tossed it off the ledge and into the sandy depths beneath his feet. "What kind of a god is that? Couldn't he have saved her?"
She scoffed aloud, waving him off as she began to stand. The blanket fell to the ground, but she picked it up and wrapped it around her shoulders gingerly. He stood as well, and together they made their way across the roof and towards the door of the top floor's stairwell. "As if. Wind Country legends are much different from those in the Fire Country. The divine always keep at an arms length in the affairs of man. We reap what we sow. There's almost no intervention from them," Temari said, shifting in the blankets. A long sigh escaped from her lips. "Besides, if I got myself into a mess, you're damn sure I'll be the one to get myself out of it."
He snorted. "You wouldn't be saying that at the last minute."
The blonde smirked, looking over her shoulder at him as she opened the door to the roof stairwell and stepped into it. "Maybe, but...but we're- humans are good at saving themselves when there's nothing else to rely on," Temari said. Shikamaru followed behind, blinking slow and watching the back of her head bob as she went.
Her words echoed through him as they walked and followed him into bed.
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A/N: Because I have a bunch of Shikamaru and Temari headcanons...and I love ShikaTema...and I listened to a lot of the "All We Know is Falling" album so of course I'm going to write something sad goddamn it. Honestly I'm not sure about this but I do love it and I hope you all love it too. Remember to review!