They asked him to identify the body.
They asked him to identify her body.
They walked with him into the room, and it was only in later reflection that he realized they were actually helping him walking, supporting his body which threatened to crumble at any given moment. Truth be told, the trip into the morgue was naught but a blurry memory. The only thing that remained with him with an almost sickening clarity was the realization that came upon him with dawning horror.
He hadn't been able to protect her.
He had promised her, and he failed.
They entered the room, and his mind went blank. The only thing he felt now was a foreign sensation of fear. The kind of fear that crawled into your stomach at night, festering there, growing until it overcame your senses. The fear that perhaps they were right in their initial identification. Fear that it really was her.
They approached it now. The cold steel pallet, on which the outline of a person, undoubtedly female, could be made out through the white sheet. He felt the support under his arms vanish, and he staggered the last few steps by himself. Someone (Even later, he could not remember who it was) came up beside. He watched as the sheet was folded back enough to see her face, as if in slow motion.
For a moment, he considered how ironic it was that it looked almost like lifting a wedding veil.
Almost curiously, he wondered if he had gone mad.
The sheet came down, coming down and brushing her nose and lips as it passed. He let out a strangled cry as the sheet came to a rest above her breasts.
He had begged her not to go.
He leaned against her bedroom doorframe, watching as she moved around the room, gathering the supplies needed for her latest mission. His expression was stoic, and his eyes blank, though underneath his façade was a masked concern.
"Don't go."
The kunochi looked up from her bundle in surprise. Her surprise faded into puzzlement as she frowned and cocked her head.
"Why not?" She asked curiously.
"Because. . .-" His brow furrowed, trying to think of a valid reason. There was none, besides his uneasiness. "Just don't go. Tell Tsunade you have a cold or. . . Or something. Just don't go."
Stay here. He added in his mind. Stay with me and stay safe.
"I can't." She replied, returning to packing. She added a blank scroll into the medium sized pack. "The team's counting on me. I can't just not go."
There was a swish of air and she felt his arms wrap around her waist and his lips at the skin just under her ear. He pressed a kiss there and whispered. "Please don't leave."His hand moved down to her stomach, where he rubbed circles above their unborn child of three months.
She giggled and turned, pressing a hard kiss of her own to his lips. "I can't." She told him. But she smiled. God, he loved her smile. "But I love you though."
"I love you."
She kissed him again, longer, sweeter. A goodbye kiss.
She broke away, looking at him for another moment and giving him a reassuring smile before getting up, slinging the pack over one shoulder and disappearing. He immediately felt empty after she left.
And it was the last time he saw her.
He stood over her now, paralyzed with the agony of his heart ripping in too. His best friend, his lover, was dead. She had no family of her own, no loved ones aside from her teammates and himself, so they would make a family together.
And now she was dead.
She had a certain dark prettiness in death, a subtle difference than the pure beauty she had while she was alive and breathing. Her dark cocoa hair was ripped from it's twin buns and fell down to her shoulders, framing her face with a dark halo. Her cheeks held a rosiness she always had after a particularly good spar or whenever she would spend the night with him. The lips he had kissed so many times in the past were a dark, crimson red, as if she had been kissed by a creature of the night and he had stained her lips with the blood from his last victim.
Almost furiously, he ripped the sheet away from her. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he registered that the group behind him had respectfully turned away.
Vaguely, he noted that he fell to his knees, bring his shoulders level with the body. He took her hand gently and cringed at how cold they felt compared to his own skin. He looked at her palm, familiar with every scar and callus she had received while training with her weapons as if they were old friends.
He dismayed at how it limply fell as he let go.
He reached up to cup her cheek and faintly heard someone, hoarsely and hysterically, begging for her to open her eyes again. To smile at him one more time. Not to leave him here, like this. He realized with a start that it was him. His hand trailed down her cheek, neck, and chest, as if trying to memorize her. He traced her belly button a few times, the way he used to tease her, before laying his hand to rest on her stomach.
And when he couldn't feel the small, subtle heartbeat inside, the Hyuuga prodigy threw himself across her and wept.
She was his lover.
She was his best friend.
She was gone.
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Author's Note: I've never written a Fanfiction before. In fact, I wasn't even planning on writing a fanfiction, but I was reading Stephen King and needed to get this out of my system.I don't know if it's any good or not. So. . . Go ahead and review, and be brutal.
Oh, and in case no one knows, it's Tenten who died, and Neji was forced to identify her body. Neji is probably a little OC, but I thought it fit nicely.