Twisted

Open Eyes

"Boruto, you need to sleep."

"No."

"It's been three days! Her condition isn't getting any better. You looking at her won't do anything."

"I... Refuse..."

Boruto moaned, blinking slowly at her still and lifeless face, his head smushed into the pillow next to hers. He refused to sleep. Not until she regained consciousness. He wasn't going back to the castle. He wasn't moving.

His remaining eye had been open for three days straight.

No one dared to try and pry him away for the first day. He held his sword in one hand and Sarada's hand in the other, gripping both tighter the moment someone approached. The second day, things looked rather bleak, but he stayed put, not daring to fall asleep no matter how much the urge dragged at his body and soul. He planked in bed to keep his energy up and moved his leg and arm in an exercising motion without taking his gaze off of her. He refused to eat and only consumed sips of caffeinated tea at specific intervals to ensure he didn't die of dehydration but he also wouldn't need to use the bathroom.

When the urge finally came and he could no longer suppress it, he requested the attendant to bring him a bucket, and he knelt behind the edge of the bed to empty his bladder, looking at her all the while. That was when the attendant truly understood he'd really do anything not to lose her and stopped pressuring him to go back to the castle and rest.

On the end of the second day, Sasuke came with news that the kingdom was in an uproar about what happened to the prince and why the ceremony was suddenly canceled. And then he looked at Boruto's face and nearly had an aneurism.

His blue eye was completely bloodshot, dry and crazed. His slashed eye had long since been wrapped up by Sakura, but that seemed to put him at even more of a disadvantage. He couldn't rest one eye in favor of the other. He just stared, unblinking for as long as possible until the whites of his eye were riddled with red cracks.

The attendant checked Sarada's pulse every now and again with a confirmation that it was still there. Boruto felt like he was the only thing keeping her alive. But Sasuke thought otherwise.

"You need rest. What good will it do if you die from lack of sleep and she wakes up to your death? Don't you think it would be just as hard on her as this is on you?"

"Uncle Sasuke... I... Would rather die with her... Then live."

With a sigh, Sasuke pulled the attendant aside. Boruto could hear their whispered conversation in the deadened silence of the tower.

"Replace his caffeinated black tea with chamomile. He needs to sleep."

"But sir, I thought you said to leave him until he naturally fell--"

"The kingdom needs a prince more than it needs my daughter... And at this rate, all he's doing is keeping them both in a vegetative state of pain and misery."

When the attendant brought his tea five minutes later, Boruto refused to drink it. He knew what Sasuke said was true, and even still, he refused to abandon all hope.

Five hours later, his stinging blue eye would no longer stay open, even when he pried at it with his fingers. Just as his last remaining tear dripped from the bridge of his nose, fading away into the scarlet sheets along with his ability to remain conscious, the limp hand that he clasped like his life depended on it finally twitched. She moved.

He couldn't find the energy within himself to do anything before he passed out other than hold fast to her in hopes that when he awoke, she'd still be by his side, alive.