The river is loud. Shikako can’t hear anything over the rushing of the water and the thundering of her heart desperately trying to beat for two.
His blood looks black on her hands, and Shikako’s chest hurts so much that she can’t breathe for them. Shisui’s face is covered in blood, his throat, his mouth, his neck, all of it wet and black with his blood, and he’s not going to make it.
Shisui’s blood glows a vivid, brilliant red as Shikako tries to heal him again, her chakra sinking into his wounds and sputtering out. The cuts are too deep, and he’s lost too much blood. Only the frantic beating of Shikako’s heart is keeping him alive.
His heart is in her chest, and hers is in his, but Shikako’s heart beats alone in her chest, cold spreading like winter under her ribs.
Shisui’s empty eye sockets twitch, like he’s trying to blink, and Shikako chokes down a sob, her hand pressed against his chest, feeling only her heartbeat inside it. Less than a year ago, Gelel had ripped open her chest and dropped another soul inside, but the solitary beat of her heart isn’t familiar, it’s killing her.
He smiles at her, and Shikako has a second of hope as fierce as her grief and fear--then Shisui wrecks it, of course he does.
I always...wanted to meet you... he mouths, the river too loud for her to tell if he’s got any hint of voice left. His hand twitches, like he's trying to reach out to her, but he's weak on borrowed life.
Raindrops are slowly cleaning the blood from his face, leaving craters and rivers of pale skin under the bloody ruin Danzo had left, and she should have revealed herself earlier. Should have met him instead of hiding in her grief and pain and loss. The Uchiha Massacre wouldn’t happen--Danzo’s heart was sealed inside her fingertips, and whatever soulmate he’d been born with wasn’t even trying to keep him breathing. But Shisui was--
“I should have said hi,” Shikako says, and it’s not enough, Shisui’s never going to know how incredibly not enough it is. “I’m sorry,” she adds, her chakra sinking uselessly through him, finding nothing left to heal.
Tsunade could bring him back, even now. Shikako can’t.