"Love, which quickly arrests the gentle heart,
Seized him with my beautiful form
That was taken from me, in a manner which still grieves me."
She had read somewhere that being burned alive was one of the worst ways to die and she almost laughed at how fitting it was that they were subjected to such a painful death. He stood in front of her, his hands grabbing her shoulders and his eyes wide with fright. The flames were licking at their feet now, waiting for an opportunity to catch onto their skin and clothes. She tried to think of facts, if only to block out the fear that was leaving her immobilized.
"The fire will first burn and peel the epidermis - the thin outer layer of skin." she quoted to him, hoping that her voice sounded stronger than she felt. They were helpless, the ceiling was caving in and the wood around them was transformed into a bright inferno. When she looked around her, she only saw that the flames were getting worse, and her thoughts became muddled through the pain that engulfed her body-
"We'll be alright," he spoke loudly, trying to get his voice to reach her across the roar of the fire, "Someone will come to help. I'll get us out of here-" he kept looking around every few seconds, perhaps looking for an exit somewhere that he had missed somehow.
"You can't use chakra or walk and I have a hole in my abdomen," she explained rationally. He shook his head as the words echoed between them, she felt an indescribable pain on her right foot and she was sure that the fire was beginning to consume her body.
"Naruto will come-"
"Sasuke," she interrupted him, placing her hand on his cheek and guiding him to look her in the eyes, "I love you."
In Another Life...
Sakura Haruno became an emergency room nurse at the age of twenty-three.
She realized when she was in elementary school that she liked to help people, so her mother had helped her volunteer at the hospital in their small hometown. She spent countless weekends in that hospital bringing joy and smiles to the patients. In high school, she had practically begged to take extra science classes to get ahead in school. She didn't mind the jabs her classmates made or the whispers about the "special treatment" she was getting from the school. She had a goal and she needed to fulfill it.
She wanted to be like the nurses who snuck her candy on her shifts and helped the patients and the rosette wanted to have a kind heart and a strong mind.
She would later describe it as a need hidden deep within her, an innate desire, to heal people and to be a pillar of support.
During high school, her best friend was diagnosed with an aggressive type of cancer and Sakura watched the girl that had rescued her from bullies in first grade fade away everyday. The white blonde hair of her best friend began to fall out, her porcelain skin became fragile and yellowed, and her bright blue eyes dulled. Sakura continued to volunteer and visited the hospital everyday, despite the fact that looking at her best friend made her nauseated and haunted her dreams every night. Sakura Haruno knew that it was important to be with Ino because Ino had always been there for her.
"You're looking skinnier and skinnier everyday Sakura," Ino commented one afternoon as they looked through fashion magazines together in the hospital room. Sakura had frozen, her eyes wide and her mouth dry as her friend's comment rendered her speechless, "You think I can't tell that being here makes you want to throw up? You think our moms don't talk? I know that you haven't been able to eat dinner after seeing me and that you've lost a shit ton of weight these last few months. I may be sick, but I'm not dumb."
"I haven't lost that much weight, you pig!" She defended, her voice sadder than she intended.
"You look like a skeleton," Ino deadpanned, "And I know what that looks like, have you seen me recently?" Sakura smiled, despite the morbidity of her friend's humor. It was true, Ino, once beautiful and strong, was only skin and bones now.
"I know that it's not healthy, but after seeing you like this, I can't make myself eat." Sakura stated slowly, closing her magazine.
"Then don't visit me as much, geez!"
"Ino, it's the least I can do," Sakura pleaded, "You took care of me all those years ago that I owe it to you to visit everyday."
"You're such a sap Sakura," Ino had teased , "I have cancer and yeah maybe I am dying, but shit I can't believe that you still remember that one time I beat up the girls who bullied you. I mean that was so long ago, I barely remember it, but to you it was some monumental moment!" Sakura laughs freely as Ino continues to complain about Sakura's ridiculous memory and then the topic is dropped as Ino spots a new purse by her favorite designer.
Sakura knows that it is not just duty that brings her back to Ino's hospital room every afternoon. Sakura loves this girl, loves her best friend so much, and wants to be with her even if it makes Sakura sad. Sakura's mom had told her one day that she gave away love too freely: perhaps it's the love that she gives strangers on the street, or the kid in the back of the class who doesn't talk to anyone, or the ex-boyfriend that cheated on her. Sakura forgives and loves and gives everything she has to others because she wants to and she will continue to do this for the rest of her life.
In the end, Sakura's love doesn't make a single difference and her best friend, Ino, dies a week before high school graduation.
Sakura hates wearing black and Ino always swore that her funeral would never be drab and dull and that her mother "better dress her in that new purple dress she bought," but Sakura still wears her black sweater dress and Ino's mother buries her daughter in a grey dress.
Sakura devotes the next few years of her life striving for perfect grades and memorizing anatomy and pathophysiology so she can get into nursing school.
"Your hands are for healing, dear," her mother had told on her first day of nursing school. Two months later, her parents are killed in a car accident, leaving her completely alone. She gets through school though, despite the cloud that hangs heavily over her head every day and even though she couldn't help her parents, she hopes that one day she will be able to help someone else's parents.
She gets her dream job at a trauma center in downtown Konoha, with the condition that she will work night shifts for six months before being transferred to days. She complies knowing that her social life has been nonexistent for years and another six months of her life consumed totally by work isn't a routine she is unfamiliar with.
On her second shift at the emergency room, a helicopter flies in around three in the morning with an urgent trauma patient. A nurse across the room yells for clearance in an operating room and Sakura doesn't flinch when alarms sound throughout the hospital. She finishes wrapping gauze on her patient, an old woman who had cut open her hand slicing tomatoes, and heads to the entrance of the emergency room as the team of medics rush in.
She sees him, laid out on a stretcher, his clothes dyed with the bright red blood that continues to spurt form his chest. His chest heaves, his skin is pale and sweaty and his dark hair sticks to his forehead. There's a tattoo of a dragon that curls up his right arm and the colors that dye the man's skin seem dull compared to the crimson that continues to pool around him.
"Gang fight again, this one was the only one alive…" someone recites as another nurse and doctor take report, "Patient's name is Sasuke Uchiha, 24 years old, multiple stab wounds through the chest and abdomen…" She tries to pay attention, but to Sakura, the words begin to become muffled as his eyes flicker over to hers.
-I KNOW YOU I KNOW YOU I KNOW YOU-
Onyx. Dark, endless onyx eyes meet her scared, wide eyes and for an instant time stops. She feels a sort of pull, like gravity, towards the wounded man.
She remembers, for a single second, the all-consuming fire that once overtook her body. There were endless onyx eyes, searching her face for an answer, an explanation. She remembers screams muting out the roaring of the fire. There was another person, a boy with blonde hair and blue eyes and an infectious smile, who had tried to help her-them- but the fire was too much. The fire was aggressive and all consuming and malevolent. She remembers calloused hands clutching her face as the heat drew closer and closer-
He opens his mouth to speak, but only a watery gargle comes out and he winces. Bright, red blood pools from his mouth he begins to gasp. His eyes leave hers and roll to the back of his head as his body begins to seize on the stretcher.
Her heart constricts in her chest as she stands and watches his body jerk.
The world comes back into focus in that instant. She wants to move towards him and help because she's supposed to be helping, to be healing, but a sharp pain in her chest blooms and she finds her feet glued to the floor. Someone, another nurse, pushes her aside and shouts begin to fill the room.
She watches, breathless, as a team of medics wheel him into an operating room. She prays, for the first time in years, that this man will recover. She doesn't know why her heart begins to pound fast and faster in her chest with every passing moment that he spends in surgery nor does she understand the feeling of emptiness that bloom in her chest at the thought of the stranger dying before she can talk to him.
He dies on the operating table.