Fic 52. Prompt 038. 'Touch.'
Naruto can't breathe.
He is choking and trying not to cry, and his hands are shaking and every part of his body is numb and empty, and Sakura bends over Gaara- he's always been so still, but this stillness is wrong wrong wrong- and cries and dips her pale, beautiful fingers in Gaara's blood.
Medics are everywhere, feet sloshing through the sand on the floor, and Gaara is staring blindly at the ceiling with eyes of shattered jade, his body clogged with poison and fear and fire.
Kyuubi is screaming, a long, rippling howl that could shake the world to bits if Naruto could only give voice to it, but instead he forces himself to move and stands by Gaara's bedside, holding the cold hand in his own, touching it and feeling the skin peel away from muscle.
And this would never have happened, he knows, if only they were young again, but they aren't; they are forty and Midori is living on her own, learning to make the best bombs in the village, and once not too long ago he found a gray hair in Gaara's mop of red. This never would have happened before.
But they are old and they are slowing and it is becoming harder to heal with every injury, with every mission, but Naruto knows that to ask Gaara to stop taking dangerous missions for the sake of the village that has given him a home would be the worst thing he could do.
So he watches, and brushes fingers wet with tears over Gaara's dusty, dry lips, soothing cracks and sunburns, and whispers in ears that can't hear him:
"Please, please, please- Gaara-" he chokes on a sob, hiccups, "-don't go where I can't follow."
