Sakura lay in bed on her back, forearm beneath her neck, staring up at the ceiling.
She'd been in bed for twelve hours now. The thought registered dimly and pricked somewhere, still she did not rise. The weight of the world seemed to pin her to the bed. She pulled the blankets up, turned on her side and tried to curl in deeper, closing her eyes to the dim winter light entering feebly in through the window.
She awoke later. Checked the clock lying on the windowsill, noticed it had been fourteen hours since she had fallen into bed. She turned to the other side, mattress creaking, and closed her eyes, again.
The next time, her eyes opened to some noise outside her bedroom. She immediately closed them again wishing for sleep to pull her into unconsciousness. It was not meant to be.
Ino walked in through the door shattering the cocoon of quiet the room had gathered. She was loud and unwelcome. But she refused to stay away, even when all Sakura wanted to do was to stay in her bed with her eyes closed to escape the light of another day she did not want to face.
To her surprise, Ino was quiet- she did not start talking immediately. She did not try to pull away the blankets like she'd done before. She did not ask Sakura, yet again, to get out of bed. Sakura was immediately more awake than she wanted to be, mind already racing through thoughts she wanted to avoid. And when she spoke, her voice was low but edged in panic.
"What's happened Ino?"
"Sasuke and Naruto have returned from their mission." Ino told her, placing a hand on Sakura's shoulder.
Sakura sighed, "I suppose I need to get out of bed now."
"Yes." Ino said gently.
She didn't want to. She wanted to remain in the quiet room, to be left alone. She wanted to be forgotten. To not exist.
After Ino left, she sat up on her bed pondering whether she could move to the bathroom or not. She shrugged, lay back down on her side, mattress creaking and pulled the blankets over her head.
It had been exactly 1 month and 4 days since Kakashi had died.
Don't think of that. Don't think. Don't think, she chided herself feeling the familiar panic beginning to well up in her chest.
It was no use. Tears began to flow easily, like a tap left open behind her eyes. They pooled up in the hollow between her eye and nose and when that hollow was full, they continued down past the corner of another eye into the pillow beneath her head. Her breathing became uneven as her chest constricted as an invisible hand squeezed her heart.
She had never thought of Kakashi as someone who could fall. He'd seemed so infallible, so powerful. She'd relied on him to keep her safe and he was dead.
He was dead, dead, dead.
Because of her.
She could not get the image of his tall body collapsing to a side, as if he were a tree being felled, out of her mind. A wave of self-loathing rose inside her, so strong and so fast that she suddenly sat up in bed and clenched her fists in her hair, pulling at it, pulling at her skull. The pain of pulling her hair did nothing to counter the collapsing heart in her chest. She pulled harder. Her tears came faster. Her breath came in small gasps. She screamed at the base of her throat.
Nothing helped. Nothing took away the awful image of his body falling in front of her, a senbon in the side of his neck. Him standing between her and the masked hunter-nin, him falling because she could not move.
Him falling, falling, falling and then lying deathly still. No last words, no eye crinkled in smile. A stillness. An unbelievable stillness of a body that moments before had been so infallible.
All because of her.
Her fault. Her fault. Her fault.
If she hadn't been so useless.
If she had moved.
If she had not relied so much on him.
He gave his life to save hers.
And she was useless. Useless. Useless.