the gift
summary: naruto would do anything for sasuke.

a/n: this is NOT an ot3 fic, but sakura's fierce devotion to naruto and sasuke also rules. deal with it.

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I can't explain it because I don't understand either! I don't know how the seal works, and I don't know where the power's coming from or where the dumb ass brat got it, and I can't cut it off!

B-but if you did...

Sakura, she's not supposed to be here.

Please keep your voice down, shisou.

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"I'm going to make tea. Would you like something?"

Sakura head snapped up quickly, upper half of her body draped over the bed. Realizing she'd fallen asleep, she got to her feet. "I can get it for you," she insisted, "And you shouldn't be up. Please, your body shouldn't be pushed."

"It's all right," the figure in the doorway tilted her head. "I told you, I feel fine."

Sakura went to her anyway. She scanned a critical eye over the seemingly healthy woman before her. "You haven't had any headaches or blank outs, have you? I should probably take a sample of your blood to Shizune again, and maybe perform a examination of your chakra, and maybe just an overall--"

"Sakura," She was cut off with a gentle smile, calm as a lily pond. "No. Stay and talk to Naruto, his chakra gets so irritated when he can't reach you." At the flinch Sakura hadn't been albe to suppress in time, smooth, pale hands rested on Sakura's shoulders and looked into her eyes, as if to communicate just as stubbornly how fine she was. "Let me help. I'll be back shortly, if I need you or feel ill at all I will call you." She stroked pink strands of hair off Sakura's face softly, a sadness in her dark eyes, and Sakura wanted to cry.

But she was turned back around before she could blink, and pushed back towards the room. "Shoo! I'll prepare a late lunch, okay?"

Sakura sent a long look at the retreating back with an odd expression on her face. Then she turned and left the hallway with the same weary, miserable feeling in her gut. But she resumed her place at Naruto's bedside.

She was gonna wear a butt imprint in the floor. Lovely addition to the hasty effort to make the Uchiha compound livable.

She swallowed the thick sickness in her stomach suddenly catching in her throat. It didn't help. She focused on the sleeping boy. She put a hand over his heart and closed her chakra flared and she could see in her mind the inner mechanics; she lingered on the heart until she was satisfied the rhythm wasn't out of the ordinary. She wondered what the dreams were like, but that was a privacy she'd never breech. She opened her eyes to find him exactly as he looked two minutes ago. As he looked for two days, two weeks...

Soon it would be almost a month.

Tsunade said it wasn't the kyuubi trapping him, which terrified Sakura at first calculating Naruto's already cut life span. But the alternative wasn't much better.

Naruto, please wake up, she used to beg softly. You're not... being a great teammate oversleeping on me!

But time was wearing her down, the hope in her voice that he could hear her pleas becoming stubborn, angry will than true faith. She looked away from him for a moment, like the sight of his eyes closed was too unbearable. A few tears gathered in her own. She wiped them hastily before turning back to him again

"Naruto, I..."

She winced at a sharp noise, and spun around, but it was only pots rattling. She listened to cupboards she'd filled with groceries being opened, carrots she'd gotten from the market yesterday being pulled out, a knife chopping. She looked back at Naruto, and could almost see the continuous flow of chakra that hummed around his still body.

"I don't know how you did it; I don't know why you're still doing this to yourself. You brought back Sasuke-kun's mother, and she's... doing all right. Do you have any idea how big that is?

----

Mikoto grows stronger, and Naruto...

Is he...?

I told you. I don't know.

----

Theoretically, to bring back a death, you have to give one in return. Balance of nature. Balance of life.

Sakura found her quick temper flashing to the surface. It was times like this she wanted Naruto to just die already if he was going to. To stop this thing, where she's torn amongst monitoring the Anbu even though Tsunade picked them herself because her trust is as jaded as her heart; watching that Mikoto wouldn't suddenly return to dust and bones and Naruto's blood if she fell; pretending to the rest of the village but for a few that Naruto was still off on a mission; and hovering over each breath Naruto still gave, because if he was going to die she wasn't going to let him die with no one there to witness it.

She traced the whiskers on his cheeks, searching his face. He looked so different, but she narrowed it down to that he wasn't trying to do a million things at once and blabbering twice that all the while. Naruto was wild as a tiger, but here he was immovable as the ferocious, obsessive desperation that drove him to forbidden arts the fourth hokage himself hadn't been able to wrap his mind around; now he was as something made out of stone. And no one could know.

"But it's not enough is it? What are you, trying to resurrect the entire clan or something? What will it take for you see you've done all you can? That you're strong enough yet?"

As always, there was no answer.

Sometimes she liked to pretend Sasuke-kun would catch wind of what was going on here, somehow. He would burst in, alone, abandoning those new companions like he abandoned them. That he would see his mother and forget about everything from eight to seventeen. She liked to pretend that she could preserve such a dream for him, even if she had to beat up and threaten everyone in the village to do it.

She liked to pretend he would be the one to wake Naruto up, because she's tried for weeks with no response.

She reached over Naruto's body to clutch his other hand and buried her nose in Naruto's shoulder, eyes clenched tight, feeling as powerless as the moments she saw something large, and hateful, and old coiling around him on the bridge towards Orochimaru so long ago.

But Sasuke-kun was still alive out there, now. He would bring Naruto back. And... she couldn't think farther. It was only perfection in abstract.

"There's one good thing about this for now," she mumbled sadly, the smells of steamed vegetables and something fried beginning to float from somewhere. She stroked his blond bangs, absently wondering if she should give him a haircut next time she turned him over, massaged his muscles. "Because when you do wake up, Tsunade-sishou is gonna kill you, Naruto. Because... because you will wake up."

Right?

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Why would he do something like this, Sakura? I don't...understand.

Sai...