Trying my hand at conveying new emotions. The two of them will see more familiar than usual, but they both don't notice it. Ghosts of their dreams, I suppose.
This also kinda came out angsty. Whoops.
Also enjoy Shikamaru's unresolved sexual tension. I will probably write more fics like this on a later date.
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[When Shika wakes up and the first person he sees is Temari. They pester each other for being weak and they tend the other's injuries. Slowly the truth of Shika's dream comes out.]
He groggily opens his eyes. The lids stick together as if he had been in a long, deep sleep. He might as well have been, he thinks, for he doesn't really remember why he's in the middle of a torn battlefield, lying on a mat, nor why his head is throbbing, when it feels like he had lived out an eternity.
The world seems blurry, unfocused; he wearily raises hands – hands that when he last looked at them, were beginning to wrinkle with age, but are now considerably softer and belonged to a seventeen year old. He rubs his eyes with the back of his knuckles. His jaw cracks into a yawn as he stretches, sore muscles aching as he groans both in pain and in satisfaction.
He slowly, finally, opened his eyes and, with a sharp inhale, focuses on the environment around him.
The first person he sees is her.
She's still on the mat by him, her hair pulled into the four pigtails he had almost forgotten about. He was used to seeing her hair down, something she'd eventually grow out of. She was smaller than he remembered; slighter, too. And she was propping herself up with her arms, but otherwise she looked just as tired as he did.
Who knows how long they were stuck in that dream?
He goes to get up but his muscles scream in protest, as if he had forgotten how to use them. Instead he sits hesitantly, trying to soothe feeling back into them. Instead he inspects what he's wearing and grimaces – they had changed him out of his uniform and into clean jacket. He ignores this and instead drags his head back up. He sees hers lift slowly, and he doesn't realize he's holding in a breath until her chin tilts up.
Their eye contact is electrifying.
It was like he had never seen teal before.
And he might as well hadn't, he thinks, because those eyes in his dream held nothing, nothing, to the beautiful colours hers were. Even though they're twisted in confusion, they shine like he had never seen before – or rather, they always did have a shine, just one he couldn't notice or appreciate.
They both don't seem content to break the contact.
So instead he pushes his fingers through his hair and he sighs. They aren't that far apart from each other, in fact perhaps crawling distance from each other. He pushes himself towards her, something about this disposition embarrassing to him but he ignores it, and ends up beside her.
He fights the urge to stroke her cheek.
She looks up at him, her eyes a little guarded but somehow warm, her lips soft and parted in momentary confusion before she breaks into a small smile. "S-Shikamaru," she says quietly, before she coughs once, her tanned cheeks dusting red as she tries to prevent her voice from cracking. He can't help but to find it endearing, put then he frowns because he realizes that this familiarity, while not artificial, is only truly spurred on by his dreams.
He wants to do with her what he had been doing to her in his dreams – to hold her hand, cup her cheek – but as she swallows and tries to regain control of her voice, he does the same with his feelings. This is going to be more troublesome than I thought, he thinks. She sits up groggily, stretching each leg delicately, before she looks at him again and cracks her neck. "I've never felt this stiff before."
"I know how you feel," he responds. As it is, words are hard to find for him, something that he thought he'd since resolved. It was like he was back to being a bumbling thirteen year old, unsure of what to say in case he put her off.
She grins. "You're not about to cry, are you?"
He rolls his eyes. "No, not really."
He doesn't miss when her eyes soften. She rolls her weight forward and somehow manages to partially get up. He's somewhat astounded because his muscles are still groaning, but of course, Temari's definitely more athletically fit than he is, and soon she's behind him, giving his shoulder a quick chop.
"You're remarkable," he grumbles as he rubs the pained area with a frown. She's chuckling behind him but he misses her blush. "It's no wonder such a terrifying kunoichi can move so quickly while the rest of us are even trying to will the power to move our legs."
The voice she uses is rough, rougher than the Temari in his dream but is otherwise still somehow bracing. "Not all of us are weaklings."
He allows a scoff to pass through his lips as she kneels down. "I thought we were over this," he says as her fingers begin to skim along his neck. He shivers at the touch and it feels stupidly familiar. He's not sure if it's because she's going through the same as he is, the strange ghostly feeling of intimacy left from his dream, but whatever the reason it relaxes him. "I'm not fourteen anymore."
"Thank God for that," she whispers, so quiet he almost misses it but she suddenly pauses as her fingers dance along the base of his neck. Her tone is darker, as if steeled, as she says with more conviction, "I never did get a chance to make sure you were okay when you-"
Her voice trails off.
But for some reason he's able to pick up on the nuance, and he knows it's not because of his intellect. It seriously feels like he had known her for a lifetime: his brain must've been always picking up on her signals and triggers because her genjutsu-self had them narrowed to a tee. He can't help but to grin. "Who's the weak one now?"
"Shut up," she rebuts, but there is frustration in her tone. There is a pause and she begins to ease his jacket off – one he doesn't remember putting on but after they all got rescued from the immediate battlefield once they were released from the genjutsu, the immediate medical team must've changed everyone's clothes. He lets the fabric slide off the shoulder and he feels her breath feather against the contours of his skin. "I… I saw you go down. I thought you died." Her voice catches in her throat and she swallows. She comes across louder now, less hesitant. "But you're still here. I thought I had lost someone else who's close to me."
He didn't miss her words but he doesn't really acknowledge it – perhaps this strange familiarity he felt towards her really was messing with his mind – but the rest of his phrase affects him all the same. "I…" he trails off, unsure.
When Asuma had first passed, he had at first felt numb. It took coaxing from his father for him to come to terms with how he truly felt.
But now his dad was gone too.
There were no tears, yet. But as she begins to rub his back (again with that strange sense of familiarity and comfort), he can feel a lump in his throat. He feels it starting but he fiercely tries to swallow it down, trying to instead focus his thoughts on the way his body reacted to every single feathered touch; every single sensation she left along his spine.
"I've been lucky," she whispers, her breath on his neck now. Her voice is soft, soothing, and he remembers that primarily before being a shinobi, she was a sister and in a way, surrogate mother. "I lost them when I was young. And there has been relative peace – some scares, sure – but peace. And it's thanks to you guys from Konoha." Her voice truly was soothing, when she wasn't mouthing off someone. And for when it felt like he had spent years just listening to her voice, he feels emotional. Maybe it's because he knows the comfort of it all was a fabrication (or perhaps, less of a fabrication than he'd like to think), or maybe it's because everything was catching up to him at last.
He feels a tear well up in his eye.
"So thanks," she murmurs. He feels the tear break away despite his attempts. Another one follows. He half waits for her to comment and he swears he can sense her mouth open to do so, but instead it close. She instead wraps her arms around his waist, carefully, almost hesitantly. It feels right, warm and comforting, as if his body had been craving what his mind was feeding him.
He holds her there.
"I still have you," he manages as his breaths start to come up short. She stiffens but he knows she understood the weight of his words. She doesn't pull away, however. Questions are on both of their minds, but they had time. There is peace. Whilst it may not be the perfect eternity that had played out in his head, they have each other.
He doesn't keep track of how long they remain here, her arms around him, tears rolling silently down his cheeks.