She watches him, silently, awed by the many shapes played out by the shadows on his face. She is aware of his subtle breathing and of the rhythmic rise and fall of his chest as if he were keeping time to a slow waltz. He sleeps without nightmares this night, and she knows because when he does have them—the occasional images of blood red eyes and bloodier hands, of fading smiles and heartbreaks more painful than a thrust to the chest—she sees his brows knit closely together and he cannot stop his cries.
On those nights, she watches him, silently, crying softly to herself as well. It is at those moments when she feels the most helpless; because she knows she cannot ease the pain despite the many acclamations she has garnered in the field of healing.
It is ironic that she remains useless to him when an entire people depend on her each day. His wounds are too deep, she tells herself. She cannot heal what she cannot see with her eyes and chakra scans.
She is too rational for that.
And so she watches him, silently, hoping that on some random chance—if she is patient enough to wait—she will see with her eyes something concrete enough to diagnose and ultimately, to heal. Because she is a healer by nature; by profession and by choice, and she can find no other role to play in his life or in hers but the one that she has practiced and familiarized.
She watches him, silently, fingers lingering inches above roughened cheeks and scars she has long thought of as whiskers. She wonders vaguely if she can heal those too, but she does not try it this night. He is certain to wake, being quite sensitive to foreign chakra, and she does not want to waste a peaceful night when reddened moons could rise the next. She is content to know that it does not bother him.
So she watches him, silently, for really, that is all that she can do.
And as the sun rises, she knows it is time to turn away and leave. He is an early riser, she notes, and she does not yet wish to be caught in questioning stares and grips a little too tight to be playful and yet far too loose to be dangerous.
He is never a danger to her, in any case.
But she leaves just the same, her eyes lingering a little longer than they did the night before, and the night before that, and the one before that as well, just because she still isn't too sure. She knows—as a matter of fact—that he will never hurt her. He had promised to protect her, had he not?
But beyond the rationality of concrete promises of worldly protections, there is something inside that threatens to break whenever he moves closer to white eyes and shy smiles and away from her often rough—for lack of anything more familiar than that—touches and careless words. She knows that it is a wound too deep to heal, even for the Gondaime's skillful apprentice, because it is perhaps the same as his wounds.
She sighs and heads towards the hospital. There, she will heal wounds that she can find with her eyes and her chakra scans. There, she can be rational once again, and for the briefest moment, she can pretend that the inexplicable breaking does not exist.
Author's notes: Honestly, I can't write anything short to save my life! My poor attempt at a drabble! R&R if you care to.