Title: Breathe Darkly
Author: Killaurey
Word Count: 500
Rating: T
Warnings: Suicidal Thoughts & Assisted Suicide
Written for Day 26 of the Last Fan Standing Challenge on KakaSaku's Dreamwidth community.
Prompt: Killing Me Softly
Sakura knows hundreds of ways to kill herself. She stares up at the ceiling and tries to decide which method she'd use today if she had access to her chakra.
Kakashi sits on one side of her bed and Naruto on the other. Them, she ignores.
It's not a disease, though it acts like the later stages of one. It's a new poison, they think, paired with an equally new jutsu. Incurable.
She can't sit up on her own. She can't breathe on her own. Her chakra pathways have collapsed. Her wrists are restrained so that she doesn't try to kill herself. (Again.)
Sakura is dying, slowly and painstakingly.
She wishes someone would just pay attention to what shewants instead of chaining her to life and waiting, waiting for her to leave naturally.
How natural can it be when she's hooked up to machines that force her to breathe, that feed her nutrients, that monitor her every second?
Normally the rage, the anger, at this thought would be worse. Kakashi and Naruto are two of the worst. She loves them for loving her, she does, but she wants to go.
Normally she would glower. (That only upsets them though, like she's the one who has done something wrong in wanting this over with.)
Normally isn't today.
Two nights ago, after weeks of struggling to write with uncooperative hands she managed to get a letter off to Ino.
They've been best friends for a very long time.
In many ways, Ino was Sakura's first love.
Whenever Sakura has needed her, for anything, Ino has always come through. Perhaps it's selfish, she thinks, to have requested what she did. It's why she held off for so long, for months, then a year, now almost two.
Sakura wants out. Her note, nearly illegible, said as much to Ino. Do you remember that song we loved back then?
As if in response to her thoughts, the power in the room goes down. The lights, the machines-everything. Sakura can feel each breath as a new struggle as she's left to do it on her own and knows this is Ino's work when the backup generators fail to kick in.
Naruto and Kakashi are gone, rushing out to see what they can do-like either of them know anything about wiring-and Sakura tries to smile when she tilts her head and sees Ino as a paler shadow in a dark room.
"I remember," Ino says and sings softly the chorus. "Oh my darling, set me free, it's easier than killing me softly."
That's the song.
"You're sure?" Ino asks quietly, a lifetime of friendship in the question.
Sakura nods shallowly.
"I thought so," Ino says simply. It's a refreshing thing to have one friend who still trusts her to know what's best for her. "I… Goodnight, Sakura."
Sakura doesn't know what jutsu, if it is one, that Ino uses. All Sakura knows is spinning darkness and then…
Then there's no pain.
There's nothing.