Author: Lady Icicle
Summary: Because she was the glue that held them together, and she would do anything for her boys.
Warnings: Character death, Angst, Hints of Team Seven x Sakura
Disclaimer: This story is not mine. I am just helping the real auth...
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His eyes widened in horror, the sight before him almost too shocking, too horrible, too devastating to comprehend.
Almost.
The hatred and bloodlust vanished immediately from his eyes, red melting back into sky blue (her favourite colour, she'd cheekily confided to him once, relishing in his resulting fire engine red blush-).
She was standing between him and Sasuke.
His first and only love, his most important person, the thing he wanted to protect the most, was standing before him, in between two lethal attacks.
She was going to die.
The certainty of that realisation took his breath away, as his insides froze, his brain refusing to compute it, even as he forced it to race, forced it to come up with something, anything, to save her.
But there was nothing. Konoha's number one most unpredictable ninja (he remembered her laugh whenever she remembered that title, her eyes lighting up with glee-) would fail to come up with an ingenious solution, right when it mattered the most.
He'd only felt something similar to this once before, in the exact same situation, when he had almost killed her, if not for Kakashi (Please, Kaka-sensei, please be on time, just this once, please save her again, I can't-)… And even that felt insignificant in the face of the agony he was feeling now.
He couldn't lose her. Not his Sakura-chan, the girl who had initially been his crush (for her sakura-pink locks, for her sparkling green eyes-), but who had evolved into something much, much more important to him. His motivation for training as hard as he did, the symbol of what he was ultimately trying to protect (because yes, the village was important, but the village didn't have such abundant beauty, didn't have that pure a heart, didn't bestow him with the prettiest, happiest smile ever whenever she caught sight of him-), the one who had so lovingly embraced him whenever he needed it the most.
He almost lost it as he remembered the way she had cried (for him!) when they'd sat together one night, when she'd listened to him spill the horrors of his past to her, when she'd raged at the villagers for their treatment of him, when she'd apologized so sincerely for her past treatment of him. (Because she'd never understood, that he never thought less of her for it, that he'd actually admired the way she had grown and matured so much in so short a time…)
As he remembered how she'd roughly shove a bento box at him every few days, grumbling that all her hard work at patching him together all the time would go to waste if he ate ramen three times a day, every day, head turned away to try and hide the blush that graced her face.
As he remembered the way he'd paused at the epiphany that he was in love with her, had always been, and always would be, in a way that was thousands of times more powerful than the infatuation he, and everyone else, had thought it was, and how it had just fuelled his drive to train harder, become stronger, so that she'd be proud of him, and so that he could protect her, so he'd never have to see her cry again, as he asked Ero-Sennin to up his training so that Sakura-chan would be super impressed when he returned to the village, dattebayo!
And yet, he wasn't strong enough to save her from himself, from his petty fight with Sasuke, and he couldn'tchangedirectionnow,ohgod,sakura,getoutoftheway-
She was going to die. By his hand.
His prized jutsu, the one he'd developed with her in mind, to protect her, to bring Sasuke back, for her, would ultimately be the very thing that took her away from him.
"Sa-" He tried to voice, tried to yell for her to get away, the horrified scream that was building up with every second that he drew closer to her catching in his throat, clashing with the words that wanted to spill out. Don't smile at me, Sakura-chan! I don't deserve it! Don't you know what's going to happen?! Why are you doing this? I never wanted this, please, someone-
But it was already too late.
His hand cut through her flesh like butter, as he forced himself to watch as her face twisted in torturous pain, even as his heart twisted in a similar way, bile rising in his throat.
He deserved this. Deserved watching this, the product of his foolishness, the ultimate price he could possibly pay.
He caught her in his arms as she fell, cradling her like she was the most precious thing to him in the world (which she was, had always been, and always would be-), barely registering the other pair of arms that also encircled her, his shaking arms stained with her blood (wrong, this was wrong, so veryveryveryverywrong-).
"Sakura-chan, please, I'm sorry, don't leave me, I love you, I-I need you so much, be-because…" He stammered, trembling uncontrollably, tears blurring his vision and dripping onto her face, washing away only a fraction of the blood that splattered it.
…Because she was the glue that held his resolve together…
