❛ i can feel this heart inside me and i conclude it exists. i can touch this world and i also conclude that it exists. all my knowledge ends at this point. the rest is hypothesis ❜

and she realizes, the beat of his heart in her hands is beating for her alone

(for springcourage who unknowningly led me down the downward spiral of naruto and because her writing is amazing)

It happens like this: with his heart in the palm of her hand, breathing air into his lungs, ice nipping up the bones of her spine, that Sakura first imagines a world without Naruto Uzumaki.

Her hands have healed his body a thousand times, and beaten it apart just as often; she’s traced the path of his bones through the warm embrace of his skin, and she’s mended tissue and muscle back together, like she was finishing up a puzzle. She’s seen Naruto, from the inside out: she’s put him back together, too. Sakura knows what his heart beats for.

But now his heart is still in her hands, and his skin is cool, and his bones are still, and his muscles are quiet, and Sakura thinks, even as she pours every breath of her body into his, that this might be it, this might be the last - and the thought strikes her like a knife to the heart, nearly sends her reeling, even as her fingers tighten on the organ in her hands.

A world without Naruto Uzumaki is not a world she wants to live in.

She lifts her head from his and examines his face, but there’s no teasing curl to his mouth, no dancing merriment in his blue eyes: he is cold, and lifeless, and Sakura would give anything, would give all of herself, if only he would open his eyes.

“Breathe,” she pleads, her voice cracking on the word, and her throat is tight with emotions she can’t even think to name. “Naruto, please!”

Nothing happens, but she won’t give up, she can’t. He’s never given up on her.

“Naruto,” she says again, soft as rain. “Don’t leave me.”

The heart in her hand beats.

And she realizes, even as she chokes on a sob of relief, of joy and of another emotion she can barely hope to name, even as Naruto opens his eyes and smiles, weakly, barely, but alive, that the heart she holds in her hand is beating for her, and her alone.