Legalese: Because if I owned Naruto, I could pay someone to take mid-terms in my stead. Spring Break in two days! No more boring lectures! No more stuffy professors! No more discussion sections! Hurzah! Hurzah!
This IS chapter 181, so spoilers up till then…
In which I TRY for some semblance of stylistic writing…and in which I discover that I should probably stop that. Okay, next story will be written properly—I think…
Things She Knows
Sakura knows from reading psychology and human behavior that he will try to leave when no one is there to stop him.
She knows from calculations—angles, vectors, distance, obstacles—which route will bring her where she needs to be, when she needs to be there, how to get there before he does.
She brings no weapons, no kunais, no shuriken, for she could never hope to beat him into submission. She brings a far better weapon, forged of knowledge, not of steel.
She knows when he will leave, how he will leave, where he will leave, and partially why. She knows jutsu that will stop him, arguments that will convince him, consequences that will break him.
Her mind spins with information, weaving arguments like desperate nets to catch him, keep him here, rational, reasonable—logic learned, applied: ethos, logos, pathos—anything, anything, just so you don't go, say you won't go, just don't leave me here.
She hears his low words—thank you, he murmurs; no, she wants to say, tell me please, not thank you, please—feels them vibrate through her ribs (true, false, floating, her mind supplies helpfully, uselessly), wash over her shoulders (deltoid, trapezius, ball-and-socket joint), feels them dash over the plains of her scapulae (infra spinatus, terres major and minor) and rippling down the information highway of the nerves in her spine (forty-three centimeters long, two centimeters thick), lodging themselves tightly somewhere in between her throat and her heart (thoracic cavity), between her heart and her stomach (abdominal cavity), flooding warmth and sensation like a hot shower on a cold morning (cardiac cavity, see here it is empty where I have removed my own heart, offer it bleeding, beating, filled to bursting, to you, for you, take it, take me, it's yours, I'm yours, so please, not thank you).
But slight pressure between the ridges of her vertebrae and then the warmth withdraws, retreats, forfeiting its momentary victory to the bench's concrete chill.
When she wakes up, he is gone.
And for once, she thinks, her vast array of knowledge has not helped her at all.
: …the ways that i could heal you if only you'd let me try:
:owari:
Read and Review: Because I write to you in as much of a grammatically-correct manner as possible, I'd much appreciate it if you extended the same courtesy to me. Concrit as usual…
:O! MA! KE: (more song pimpage!)
My Sacrifice, by Creed (a NejiTen song, because you know he's never like that around anyone else)