X-x-x-x—x-
Cold, is all she can think—feel (for thinking is a lost cause, now). Cold is her world; an entire universe comprised of burning freeze and haze, bitter, icicles, frost, sharp crystals, chilled sweat, and numbness. It is a terrible blue-white that snuffs out life without a moment's consideration, kills the stirring of warmth before it is conceived. She stares at the bed before her and the figure in it, half-concealed beneath the thrashed sheets. Only a hand peeks out, splayed innocently, the fingertips barely blue, those well-manicured nails with envy painted thereon in glossy polish.
The figure does not move (not a single twitch! how does it manage?). She is afraid to touch it, to look at it, to breathe upon it; as if her very breath might extinguish any flickering of hope. What if--?
But no, she cuts herself off. She cannot think that. She is not allowed to think that.
The cold gathers in her throat like a lump of ice. If she tries to swallow, she will most surely choke.
She watches the figure for a few minutes, and still it does not move. Something must be wrong. This must be a dream, and she a wisp of uncertainty.
And so she walks to the bed, in a dream (that is really a nightmare) and stops a hairsbreadth from the mattress, a mere millimeter from the well-manicured nails tinged with blue. Still it does not stir. She wants to shake it awake, throttle the slim neck with all the fury-desperation contained in her trembling body (enough to make her explode). Make it breathe! Make it speak! Make it scream, even! Anything is better than this nothing!
She almost does—almost. But fear stops her, the same gripping fear, and she cannot break the iron hold it has about her very own neck, the broad, square-nailed fingers wrapped about her lungs that squeeze and prod ever-so-gently. Her weakness is too great, her fear of the fear an unconquerable monster. It looms high, and the shadow it casts will never shrink.
So she stands and looks over, precariously, teetering on the edge of a cliff like a ballerina on wobbling toes, but, God forbid, does not touch. Just like a child who gazes at a piece of art hung on the wall of a museum; not allowed to touch it but only to look, and even then, the child does not see what he is looking at, cannot understand what is so great about this piece of junk? A dab of paint, the swish of a brush (a million hours of sweat and watered-down coffee and sleepless nights excluded), and what of that?
It is only a canvas and a frame, after all. No soul contained within—at least none that shows. And so the child turns and trots away with nothing learned; knowledge's embrace is a lonely one. While the soul concealed within the canvas withers invisibly…
For a moment she thinks she sees the figure stir. But she blinks, and she knows well that it was only her blinking that caused the movement in her mind's eye, and it was all a delirious affair to begin with.
Her fingers ache to touch the body. To seek something that is lost; maybe the touch will reunite a spark of dry tinder, a firefly of flint. But what is it that she looks for, this keen yearning? Warmth? Reassurance? Another Loneliness? A something that cannot be brought back? A dream? (But no, it is something more than that, for dreams are nothing but air and talk.)
Certainly she knows better by now.
She can do nothing; never has been able to.
She thinks of how tired her legs have grown from years of having stood in the background (she might as well have been a tree), how tired her eyes are from watching blurs of Naruto and Sasuke and Kakashi, and enemy ninja clashing and dancing like emperor cranes, and how tired her ears are from hearing, "Stay back, Sakura-chan!" and screams that should have rightfully been hers. Her screams are only of luxurious cowardice.
She thinks of the looks that Kakashi always used to give her when she was still his student, and not Tsuade's; that one eye that always managed to say so much, always managed to contradict itself. He'd always tried to smile at her, as if doing so would lessen the pity, make her less hateful. It never quite worked, though she had always secretly, selfishly hoped it might someday…
The woman turns finally away from the bed, dead-eyed, and walks on poison clouds to the door, feet numb with the venom. Halfway there she trips on a small capsulated bottle, empty when it should have been full. She kicks it aside, stumbling onward, latches onto the handle; heaves the door open and falls through.
There is nothing to catch her on the other side.
-
The way he looks at her makes her want to scream aloud. She clenches the table edge with deceptively white knuckles while she smiles that irony-tipped smile she's perfected over the years. Remember what you have practiced…forget the venom beneath it all. Forget. Savor the sweetness.
She smiles wider (the beautiful Cheshire grin) and he begins to frown, sunny brows drawing together in cloudy hesitance.
"Sakura-chan?"
The look. She hates it with a burning jealousy. She feels herself turning sour, half-expects to look down and find her skin bloated green. Envy may be ugly, but she wears it well.
She hates him and loves him all at once. Hates him for being who he is, loves him because he gives her a reason to hate, to live. It all works out in the end. That's all that really matters, she supposes.
He watches her uneasily, weight shifting from side to side.
"Yes?" she replies suddenly, finally, eyes widening. She seems to have forgotten what words are, what her voice is; she scrabbles to find it in the nick of time. His unease dissolves at the word and he grins widely. She laughs quietly to herself, hides it flickering in her eyes. Naruto is too stupid to know it is there. He's a funny boy, such an easy thing to play with, love, and hate, all at once.
He laughs to reassure himself. "Nothing. It's nothing, I just thought of something weird." He smiles broad again, baring his teeth and eyes and tender, inflated youth full of oxymoron and hyperbole. He isn't afraid of anything; she hates him for that, too. She hides behind his courage and fashions it as her own.
"Mm, is that so?" she asks, eyes flitting down to the bowl before her. The noodles are soaked and floating engorged on the broth, like so many bodies she's seen before. She pokes at them with chopsticks, fiddles with their torsos and lanky legs, like a woman contemplating the deadliest of poisons: whichever to drink? The noodles lie limp and helpless; oil swirls lazily about and she stirs their tails, rakes the draggled feathers with estranged wooden teeth.
"Yeah…" Naruto trails off, shrugging his shoulders awkwardly. The orange of his coat is blinding, even in her peripheral vision. The merest tongue of color sneers self-satisfied, and she is desperately tempted to shield her eyes (wouldn't that be nice?), but settles for turning her head the other way, so as not to be conspicuous.
She must not show her fear to him, lest he laugh, lest he sympathize. She stirs the oil more vigorously, watches it swirl frantically under her will. So this is what it is like to be in control. She allows herself a tiny smile, a china-doll smile of carefully chipped porcelain.
Round and round the broth spins, like a carousel. She makes herself dizzy watching it turn in frenzied circles; but it is a nice kind of dizzy, because she is the cause of that dizziness.
Naruto interrupts her suddenly. "Ne, Sakura-chan, are you going to finish that?"
She looks up and almost forgets to stop her eyes from narrowing. He stares back hopefully, eagerly, chopsticks in hand and clueless as ever. She almost lets him hear the laugh he should never hear. The laugh that scares herself sometimes, bursts forth from her lips when she least expects it, usually in the middle of tar-black nights. Sometimes she forgets that it is her laugh, it is so alien and beautiful. (Does she really sound like that?)
It is her laugh alone, and she will not share it with anyone. Not even him.
ahh..:kicks comp: needa upload before comp crashes.