blooming (clouds, dawn, love)

rating: g
genre: romance, bildungsroman
pairings: shikasaku
POV: alternating Sakura/Shikamaru
warnings: weird 2nd person nonsense
other notes: written for ShikaSaku Week 2017, Day 2: Goal/Dream
word count: 760

find shapes in the clouds,
(fanciful things, right on past the horizon)

Twelve years old and you are already dreaming of twilight years, arthritis in your knuckles, the high-lows of your youth so far behind you, grandchildren at your knees.

You carry a nostalgia too old for your bones, and for all that you are beginning to understand the weight of your future, you'd much rather something simpler.

too young still yet to know better.
(can't see the cumulonimbus forming.)

Twelve years old and you already know that the only thing you'll ever need is this boy with dark eyes who has forgotten how to smile. You could make him smile, you know, if you could just get him to look at you.

You are twelve years old and you dream of the soft dawn breaking that will paint his face the day you marry this boy with grief where his heart might have once been before it rusted away under enough blood to drown.

too young yet to understand the might of storms.
too foolhardy yet: run straight into the winds.
(have never seen what it is
to be torn to shreds and less.)

Thirteen and you understand now exactly what rests on your shoulders.

So easy, to lead your friends off a cliff. And you— You are something too cautious (too cowardly) to jump.

How many edges will you stand on, you wonder, looking down at the shattered remains of all that was not yours to risk?

None, you promise, and you kiss soft-amber thoughts of a soft endings goodbye.

don't worry, the world has never not learned
how to pare away softness.

Thirteen and the whole world has slipped through your fingers.

Never again, you swear.

Your hands will never again not be enough.

give it chance enough and time;
there'll be nothing left but the echoes of dreams.

It is war.

You'd pray that you all make it out alive, but you stopped believing in anything bigger than your bones a long time ago.

survive, though, and there will be nothing left to break.
(glue and bandages, chin up, stare the world down.)

Your nights are half-nightmare still, and maybe they always will be, but you are learning something softer once more.

You watch clouds again and, more days than not, you carry an ever less hazy silhouette behind your eyes.

Twenty-one and you are old enough now to return to childish things. Your palms tingle with the absence of the hands they are waiting for.

There is no life for you now that ends softly, but perhaps you could seize a soft middle.

You blink and the light behind your eyelids is pink.

maybe there will be enough to put back together.
(it will take even more strength than it did to survive.)

You stand on your own two feet and you have learned that you never needed saving, that no one can ever be saved who does not want saving. You have learned what it is to hold a hand out without the refusal of it putting a crack in your heart and you know now you are capable of building yourself up from the foundation of your own bones only.

You heal flesh and shatter earth and you are not confined wholly by your contradictions.

And you love.

Most importantly, you have learned this is not weakness, to love.

Twenty-one, and there is a boy with dark eyes who watches you carefully, like he understands the circumference of your soul. Your presence makes him smile and he has long learned to how to breathe through sadness, how to let grief fall away, how to reach up a hand and refuse to drown.

The both of you are old and tired enough that you know happy endings are no guarantee.

As you lie side-by-side, elbows bumping and grass tickling the backs of your knees, eyes up to the sky, you watch clouds pass by and dare to see a future spool out in the slow build and fall of water droplets.

When you turn your head to let him fill your vision, you feel the warmth of the dawn spilling in the hollow of your ribs, your heart beating strong.

and just maybe there will be enough.
that old dreams may be unboxed from under beds,
dusted gently, lifted up,
and placed back on shelves to be dreamt once again.
(the wind blows and clouds disperse and, always,
the sun rises and rises to kiss the sky.)