The seamy side of a ninja
Suddenly the entrance door creaked and the blunt blade slipped from the smooth half of an onion, slashing the tip of his thumb. He swore about the doubtful benefit of that vegetable diet, turned around and completely lost the hold of the kunai. It dropped all the way down, fortunately without sticking into his left foot. Following its drop, she fell on the floor, the one and only, for whose return he had been waiting for five nerve-wrecking days. She looked like a lusterless pale copy of herself, as though she had barely escaped from Sai's black and white sketches and run to hide inside the haven of his apartment.
She had managed to balance on the thin verge of self-control for about hundred hours and three additional seconds. He didn't catch her on time. Swifter than a shuriken, Naruto threw himself in Sakura's direction and knelt at her side. He happened to embrace her trembling form on several occasions, it was either a fit of ire or bubbling laughter. But he had never seen her being reduced to something so marginal, every part of Sakura was shuddering: from her chapped, bitten lips to his shaky frightened reflection in those glassy orbs. He remembered that kind of shaking, bad, nasty shaking. Granny Tsunade used to tremble in the same pathetic fashion. From the chilling deep-sea fear. It was easy to deduce the reason, he muttered: "Stupid promotion, that blasted mission…"
Naruto silently cradled her in his arms and, without questioning, lifted Sakura and landed both himself and the fragile kunoichi on the closest chair, then reached for the water jug.
"Here, Sakura-chan, drink… just several sips", he instructed her insistently, slowly leaning the vessel against her mouth. She obeyed the request and began swallowing, while the man diligently wiped her chin with his sleeve.
"Enough… I'm full, no more, I'm getting nauseous", she whispered finally and feebly pushed away the jug. The warmth, which poured from Naruto's body, and the calming rhythm of his breathing soothed her shivers. He had always been and would be forever her support pillar, on which she could rely and place the heaviest weight of her soul.
"I'm getting nauseous", Sakura faintly repeated and continued, pattering: "No more… I can't serve as a kunoichi any longer. The job… hideous outcome, soiled by liters of indelible blood… and I'm not a killing machine. I didn't want to slaughter them… they… there were children among them, it was their own fault. Naruto, I am not a murderer, am I? I wish I were not…"
Naruto clasped her trepidatious hands with his, rough and even more lethal, but currently protective and caressing. She grew quiet due to their more intimate contact, feeling too ashamed of her miserable attitude and fears, while nursing the blind hope that somehow he would disperse the thick oppressive fog of her mental state, dispel her anxiety with the help of a special secret spell. Except that Naruto wasn't uttering a syllable and it smelt… again, it smelt of…
"Now I seem to sense the odor of blood everywhere", Sakura confessed, wincing.
"Actually, it's not a trick of imagination. I accidentally cut myself instead of the onion, and the slit hasn't skinned over yet", he admitted absent-mindedly, unclenching his fingers. Sakura mumbled something semi coherent and covered his hand with her palms, performing the habitual healing ritual. He watched the greenish glow mend his epidermis, and concluded that she was definitely the type, meant to save lives from the ones, who tried to take them away.
"Sakura-chan, honestly, you've always been a bletcherous ninja", commented Naruto and slyly grinned. She arched her neck to glare at him and he kissed away the frown on the presented forehead.
"You too", Sakura instantly countered and pinched his unshaven cheek. "What kind of ninja would slice onions with an old kunai?"