This is what happens when you simultaneously find something you wrote back in July and are avoiding NaNoWriMo like the plague.

Title: Up
Theme: 76; growing up
Summary: Children don't stay Children forever.

Up

Once-upon-a-time-therewasalittleboy

And he was a little boy, just a little boy to the world to the sky to the rocks, and he was quiet for a little boy but made up for it with energy and smiles and life, pure life and then one day his precious people died and he didn't smile anymore and-then-he-forgothowtoand

Once-upon-a-time-therewasalittlefairy

And she was a fairy princess because she wanted to be and she was brighter than the sun and couldn't seem to live without noise, lots of noise like noise of birds or people or nature or machinery at work, and then she lost some friends but smiled anyway because it-made-her-feel-better-sortofbutnotreally

Andthentheybothcriedalotandthenandthen

-

Once upon a time there was a little boy who didn't smile, and once upon a time there was a little fairy who only smiled on the outside.

Once upon a time the fairy met the little boy by accident, because she flew right into his lonely little room like a firefly when the moon was out because if she was anything, she was a princess and if you asked her the title would be Fairy-Princess of Thieves and All Machina Anywhere, and she was looking for treasure all by her lonesome because she couldn't find her friends and that made her sad

and the little boy saw her and then they talked.

They didn't have very much in common.

The fairy was so vivid that it made the little boy uncomfortable to be so close, and the little boy was quiet, so quiet, that it made the pretend-fairy-princess want to shake him around a little and his room was so bare that there wasn't much worth taking so she left, and the boy went back to bed

andthenshe came back

Because they were both sortoflonely lots and lots and maybe they could be friends, would you like that she asked and he tried to smile-but-couldn't-andshesmiledenoughforthebothofthem

And things were alright.

Once upon a time there was a little boy with a little fairy who would tell you she was a thief and a princess to boot and do you have any treasure she could borrow, only for a little while of course – and they were the best of friends, little boy and tiny little fairy, tiny, because she couldn't hold her human-like form for very long and soon left off trying altogether because they were comfortable and went on adventures together, lots of them, and the first time the little boy picked up a sword was the first time her smile dimmed a little, just a little and he noticed but didn't say anything and they both brushed it off and went home.

The little boy met other people because he was not afraid of company so much anymore and the fairy began looking for her friends again but they stayed close because that's what friends do. And they had many more adventures, countless and each one more daring than the last – reckless escapades and close encounters were laughed off, because we laugh in the face of danger she said and then went right ahead with 'hahaha,' and it made him smile because he didn't smile much but things were getting better.

The first time she heard him laugh was when she owed up and told him that no, she wasn't over twenty-bajillion years old and was actually twenty-seven, twelve-years-old in comparison and she shouted indignantly and repeatedly yelled that little fairy-princesses grew up much faster than silly old humans but he laughed and laughed and laughed and she thought that it was one of life's little moments that really make it precious.

The first time the little boy saw the fairy smile a full-out grin, dopey and sappy and real, was when they found a hard spot on the ground and brushed it off to find the top of a buried treasure box. They were so excited about what was inside that they spent an entire afternoon whispering and shouting and dancing around so happily that when they unburied it and found loose string and a bright yellow paperclip, they both stared dumbfounded. Then they started chuckling and giggling, turning to full out laughter as she swiped the bright big paperclip and announced loudly that it was their Special Friendship Ring-Thing and bent it likewise, and he thought that the princess-fairy's smile could fuel the entire sky for millions of years and they laughed and then he flopped onto the ground and she settled onto his little nine-year-old stomach.

-

Once-upon-a-time-therewasalittleboyandafairyprincess

And little boys grow up, and little fairies get restless. Soon he was twelve, fourteen and then seventeen and she had grown up some too but he was suddenly much, much older and wooden sticks were replaced with metal, and carefree days were replaced with training and grass bracelets were traded out for armor, and they tried to pretend nothing had changed because she braided his ponytail and he found pebbles small enough for her to skip across the ocean but it did, it did change and then one day the darkness came and she was handling her own when right before he killed it the darkness – the ant, monster-ant darkness yellow eyes – the darkness had claws and then his eye, oh gawd his dark wood eye was cut straight down the middle and bleeding, bleedingsomuchandhewouldn'tbeherlittleboyanymoreeveragaingainever

And she cried while she healed him, fixed him up nice and good and then she dug up the stupid old Special Friendship-Ring-Thing and unbent it a bit and twisted it to latch onto his shoulder armor, over a red coat he had taken to wearing, one with lots of pockets that she had ridden in so many times, lots. And then one day he pulled her out of his coat-pocket as dawn came willy-nilly, gentle like rice paper and sand and he held her in his palm, in his palm that used to be real small in comparison and told her it was time for him to go fight for his world with the rest of the village men – boys, they were only boys pretending, to her, but he had to and one eye looked at her and she nodded and it hurt, it hurt lots because they had needed each other and that was nice so she smiled big for him and hugged him round the neck, hard as she could and kissed his nose for good luck and then finally left that world as he hefted his sword onto his shoulder to walk

and neither looked back as Rikku disappeared and darkness swallowed Auron whole.

-

"I don't remember our world," Yuna stated once, licking the ice cream off of her fingers thoughtfully as Paine amused herself by carving the bare wooden popsicle stick into a sword and Rikku finished her own bit of the treat.

Aerith was sitting near them at Merlin's house as Cid and Leon sat at the computer and Yuffie was god-knows-where, and she said, she said, "do you wish you did?"

And the fairy shrugged good-naturedly, Yuna-esque. She was a little less demure and still always so willing to go with the flow, and she was less quiet which made Rikku real happy and real sad at the same time because it reminded her of something that she couldn't quite remember until it all came back again like it did so often and she tried not to think about quiet little boys little men and then just quiet men not so little.

"I remember Rikku," and that was a little surprising and then she went on, "but Rikku disappeared. For a long time. We met so many years after that."

Nobody said anything after that and Rikku licked her own fingers and trying-not-to-think-isharderthanitlooks.

-

They both forgot.

No, not forgot, but Rikku's head filled more and more with thoughts of treasure and she finally found those missing fairy-friends and they went on more adventures that were never the same in the end.

No, not forgot, but Auron really was swallowed up and spit out into the underworld and he didn't even get much of a chance at life because it felt like everything was taken away from him in the end.

And little girls forget easy but young women's minds are stronger than that, and Rikku grew up a little and night skies and shooting stars, especially those, made her think of little boys and little men and what friendship must really mean in the end.

And little boys at battle have preoccupied minds but men who feel like they're five hundred years old have all the time in the world to think and those memories were the only ones in all the worlds that could make him smile.

Auron met a boy named Sora, once.

Good kid. Big blue eyes, not green, not green like his fairy-friend because nobody had green eyes anymore, because he like remembering and always wondered about what happened next, and he was tired but belatedly realized that he didn't want to rest, so the next time the child with the hair like a starburst popped into the underworld the man said, 'take me with you.'

Rikku met a boy named Sora, once.

Happy, she thought. Always smiling, smiling little boy, not like hers, but warm and she was fine with her friends but she had to ask because this boy had been everywhere, a traveler by right and she had never found out, never known and some days she didn't care much and others it ate away at her very core, what happened to her little boy little man, so once when he was visiting she asked, 'you ever met a grump named Auron?'

And the boy said

'Sure, boss'

And the boy said

'Sure do, he's in my airship'

And things evened out, and Auron was asleep on a bunk in the back of the airship. When he woke up, the first thing he noticed was that his cheeks were wet with little droplets that were not his, and that there was a little fairy sitting on him and they stared at each other stupidly before she punched his nose and told him that he bent their Special Friendship Ring-Thing out of shape and should be super-ashamed.

And then they both laughed and laughed until they cried and cried and Rikku-even-showed-off-the-magic-she-couldn't-do-beforeandtackledhimhumantohuman, and then she kissed his eye because she-didn't-do-anythingandwasstillrealsorry.

And then they were quiet for a long, long time and just sat.

-

"I don't remember our world," Yuna stated once, licking the ice cream off of her fingers thoughtfully as Auron sharpened his sword and Rikku sat on his shoulder, fiddling with a little, tiny piece of metal that was cut long ago by a rusty sword that she was bending to make a bracelet because it wouldn't bend small enough to make a ring.

Aerith's lips were upturned and pretty as she said, she said, "do you miss it?"

And Yuna smiled and asked how could she miss something she never had in the first place? And maybe that was a little ironic because Rikku and Auron shared a Look, despite the eye on that side of his face being closed and boy was she still sorry as ever about that, and he put his sword down and Rikku slipped into a coat pocket and Auron said in response, "how do you find things you never really lost?"

"Fate," Aerith offered simply, and it was good enough and they went outside to enjoy the summer.