o11. nov.
"Tsunade-sama," Sakura calls into the small gap of the door shielding her mentor and Sasuke from view, drumming her bitten-fingertips against the wood and hearing Tsunade sigh from behind it.
"Yes," the older woman exhales, jadedly. "What is it, Sakura?"
Sakura's palms press to the door, and she pushes it forward just enough to poke her head through the opening. She takes a breath. "How's he doing?"
After Tsunade waves her over, Sakura enters the room, joining the other woman at Sasuke's bedside. She lets her seafoam gaze run over him, his seemingly resting form clothed in pale hospital blue, tucked under a blanket of white. He could have been sleeping, had it not been for the dark bruises and splotches of dried blood creeping from the small amount of exposed skin at his collarbone, up his neck, and onto his vacant features.
The sight of him in such a condition pulls Sakura even closer, her hands gravitating toward his. She kneels beside him, running her fingers over his like she is rainwater and he is the smooth, eroded rocks at the bottom of the riverbed. Like water, her hands change shape to fit with his, but like the rocks, he is constant, unfazed, and unmoved. She whispers his name, and for the first time Sasuke does not answer.
Haruno Sakura has never felt more alone.
She runs her thumb over his skin in a slow circle, as she remembers him doing for her numerous times in the past. She feels a sad smile rising, though its presence is never bright enough to show.
"A coma," she supplies, to fill the silence that Tsunade has yet to break. "He's in a coma, and it's been…two days?"
Sakura hears her mentor take a single step forward, the sound of her heels against the tile sharp in the quiet. "Exactly so. We don't know when he'll come around—it was a terrible accident," she says, and her voice seems jagged. She clears her throat. "I was told there were rose petals everywhere."
At the latter words, Sakura looks up to Tsunade, eyebrows lifting in confusion. "Rose petals?"
Nodding, Tsunade gestures at the small table by the windowsill, basking in the morning sun's new light. On its surface sits a shaken bouquet of roses, tattered but still beautiful. There is something familiar about them, and Sakura notices her best friend's family name written across the clear plastic in purple typesetting. 'Yamanaka Flowers' the plastic reads.
Her grip on Sasuke's hand instinctively tightening, Sakura breathes out a broken 'thank you, Sasuke-kun' before leaning forward to brush her lips over his forehead and then rising to stand.
And for each day after, she went on to visit Sasuke in his slumber, once at daybreak and once again at the first signs of night, repeating the cycle throughout the month, all the time wishing, praying for him to return home.