White
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Summary: So Eden sank to grief.
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Through a fever Hinata dreams sweetly.
A rough palm brushes her cheek. She feels warm and weak.
She stares into his eyes- so brightly blue.
He tilts her head back.
He kisses her chastely, softly, gently.
He is so hot against her that she feels as though she burning, rising as ash, and floating away.
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Hinata wakes and her room is dark and blurred. She catches her reflection in her vanity mirror. She is pale and her eyes are shadowed and hollow.
She begins to shiver. She feels hot. She feels cold. Everything that touches her feels as though it is bruising her.
She squeezes her eyes shut. Her jaw slackens and she cannot control the muscles in her face.
She leans over her bed to throw up. Vomit moves slowly and thickly up her throat and she expels it in a violent fit.
The acarid taste of bile causes her eyes to water.
She sobs, hiccups, and then begins to heave again.
"Help...," she murmurs. Her body shakes, wracked with fever and nausea. She dry heaves and it is so intense that stars explode behind her eyes.
She shivers violently.
"I need help!," she cries weakly.
She wipes her mouth. Her hand comes away bloody.
She stares at it in horror.
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"Ugh, really?," says Naruto in disgust as he opens his door. Snow is falling thickly, dusting the ground with soft powder. He wrinkles his nose in distaste and wanders back inside. He finds an orange jacket and shrugs it on.
He exits his home.
The walk to the training grounds is cold and quiet. Naruto thinks about milky sky above. He thinks about sleep.
Naruto does not like to be alone. His heart thuds deeply in his chest.
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There's not much left of the Konoha we knew as children. It's changed. Its a strange and barren place now, colder than it ever has been.
I don't remember snow from when we were younger. It was always warm and sunny.
I remember slick sweat and dusty dirt. I remember trees arching overhead, pure streams running thickly, clear skies and the scent of pine filling my nostrils as I left my house each morning.
In adulthood, this landscape has become surgical.
It is steel tools. It is starched white uniforms. And snow.
I am slowly fading to white.
Nothing can stop me from disappearing.
I am Sakura Haruno, and my name is the only evidence that I exist.
Begin.
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Hinata jerks awake. Her eyes quickly sink shut. She is feverish still. She does not know how much time has passed, she cannot remember the recent past.
Her throat is dry and her eyes water.
Her gaze is caught by the window. She stares at it without comprehending.
There is nothing but pale grey.
She doesn't understand.
She blinks.
A memory of Sakura's slurred, broken voice shatters her sense of detachment.
"... where the fuck is the bathroom, I need to take a fucking piss like no other. I swear to fucking god my bladder is like a fucking- um, a fucking-"
"Dumbass, its over there."
"What? Where? Oh. There. Alright. Ugh god."
Hinata looks down into her glass. She does not like alcohol. It tastes bad and gives her a headache.
Shikamaru lights a joint and puffs gently.
"Good shit," he murmurs.
He passes it to Kiba. Kiba puffs and passes it to Ino.
"Yeah, pretty good."
Ino puffs delicately and then coughs, before taking another drag, holding the smoke momentarily, before letting it drift out of her o-shaped mouthed. She sighs contentedly and leans back in her chair.
Hinata's eyes burn like the lighter Shikamaru is using to relight the roach.
She is alone.
Hinata smells rubbing alcohol and another unnameable stringent disinfectant. She smells herself- sick human smell. A cross between an unwashed body and a dying, wet dog.
She is in a hospital.
She will not wonder who brought her here. What she is suffering from. What will happen to her.
Hinata will sink back into fever- back into sleep.
She is too tired to worry any longer.
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Outside, the snow falls more thickly.
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My name is Sakura Haruno, and it is all that is left of me.
I am fading here.
There is no light that can wake me from this dream, no sound that can jolt me, no sensation that I haven't already tried.
I don't feel.
I don't taste.
I am blind.
Mute.
I take no breath.
I live in name only.
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Naruto spends hours training in the light snowfall. His eyes are burning so brightly it is as though he is taken with fever. Perhaps he is.
His skin glows with a sheen of sweat, but it is pale and his veins pop threateningly under his skin.
His mind races.
Battle tactics, Sakura, the kyuubi, Konoha, the council, his father, his childhood, school, Kakashi, snow, cold, cold, cold.
Hinata.
He stops, wipes his brow.
His heart is beating furiously. His hands shake.
He walks weakly back to his pack and pulls out a bottle of little pink pills. He pops the cover and swallows three.
His body and mind slow.
He sinks to the ground.
He stares up as the snowflakes fall down.
Suddenly his world is flipped. The snowflakes that have collected on the ground are drifting down into the bottomless pit of the milky gray sky.
He coughs and closes his eyes.
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BEGIN.
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The explosion rattles the city of Konoha down to its bedrocks. The area is leveled in minutes. As Sasuke steps into the ruins of the place he once called home, a strange satisfaction fills him.
In this moment, he is complete.
Now what was inside him was outside him as well.
A physical manifestation- a chaotic burst of colored paint across a canvas.
It was art.
It was beautiful.
The blast scene stretched for miles in all directions.
Sasuke's eyes glittered maniacally in the weak sun.
It was over.
He stepped forward and walked through the destroyed streets of Konoha, blood singing in his veins.
Amid the rubble stood Danzou.
Sasuke smiled and rushed forward.
Vengeance was coming on swift wings.
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Prologue
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The moment was immortalized.
He fell, body a graceful arch, a testament to the poetry of physics.
There was no impact-
Only a soft blackness.
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Uchiha Sasuke's fall was reflected in the depths of Haruno Sakura's eyes.
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Nature's first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf's a flower; But only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay.
-Robert Frost
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There was a point where Sasuke realized something had gone terribly wrong. Somewhere along the line the paradise he was seeking had disappeared over the horizon: dipped low like a setting sun as darkness raced forward, and simply faded behind the world.
Sasuke was conscious. He remained aware that he never hit the ground- that something had shielded him from the impact.
He was aware that by laws of physics, he should have hit the ground.
He was aware that by laws of biology, he should have felt pain.
Instead, he hung in limbo.
His mind slowed.
He relived his life.
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He was 3 years old. He received his first kunai for his birthday. His father's only gift to him his entire life. His mother cried. His brother was already a warrior.
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He was 5 years old. It was his first day at the academy. He learned to spell "katana" in school. He wrote the word over and over in all of his drawings. He brought them home to show his father.
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He was 6 years old and didn't understand why his mother was crying again. It made him angry that she was crying. She was an adult. Adults didn't cry. When he was an adult, he would never cry like his mother. He would be strong.
His father hit his mother again and Sasuke cringed beneath the table.
He would never cry.
He would never be weak.
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He was 11 years old. It was two days after the massacre. He wanted to die.
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He was 13 years old. He was afraid of every shadow. He was wary of every breaking twig. He would never admit to the depths he had dived to gain power.
Would his family be ashamed of him if they knew?
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He was fifteen years old. He was still searching.
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He was seventeen years old. He was desperate. He was blind. Itachi was dead. His search continued.
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He was nineteen years old. He faced the new Hokage, Danzou, from Konoha in battle.
He won.
His vision blackened.
He fell.
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Sakura moved forward. She was underwater. She had waited her whole life for this moment.
She caught Sasuke as he fell, lowered him to the ground with empty eyes. Shock had made her ignorant to sensation- she felt neither the soft, moist cotton of Sasuke's shirt, nor the smooth warmth of his skin.
Two of her ribs were broken.
She felt no pain. Did not feel the weak snowfall melting on her fevered skin. Did not hear the cries for help floating around her like a disjointed song.
Sasuke's eyes were closed.
"Pulse at 50 BMP and fading fast-", she murmured.
Diagnostics raced through her head. She spoke them aloud in the crumbling remains of Konoha.
"Subject remains unresponsive. Possible spinal injury- compaction of spinal column or injury of the lumbar region."
Twisted metal stretched into the sky. Jagged debris bit into the cloudy horizon. The smell of smoke and the desolation of destroyed infrastructure blinded one to the observation of the finer details of the scene- missing limbs scattered in the chaos, a child's toy beneath a heap of wood and plaster that was a home.
"Subject's lungs are flooded- unresponsive to emergency CPR. Defribrillation out of the question. Beginning emergency resusciatation via chakra."
In the distance, a man's voice called out. Shifting wood clattered as it settled. Fires still burned. Light from the flames danced in the coming darkness.
"5, 4, 3, 2, 1...", Sakura murmured as she shocked Sasuke's body with an explosive amount of chakra.
"Subject remains unresponsive."
She was empty.
There were no questions remaining in her mind. She did not exist in this moment, or the next. She had not existed since he left her years ago.
Her time had run out long before. She had been waiting, breathless. She was begging for an end.
Her hands formed the seals, her mouth the accompanying words. She closed her eyes.
With her palms face-down on his chest, she gave her life for Sasuke's.
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