Happy New Year! (This is not a particularly nice way to start the new year but... whatever.)

I can't seem to understand this mysterious power he holds over her. With one look he can reduce a powerful, determined woman to a lovesick, defenseless girl. The transformation is heartbreaking. To see so much courage and hard-won strength ripped away with such ease: it would crush the weaker among us. But worse still is after he's left (and he's always leaving) and she's just standing there with nothing but shreds remaining of her honor, her dignity, herself. And she'll look up at me and her eyes will be filled with such terrible, crushing, hopelessness that all I want to do is reach out to her.

But I cannot.

I have killed before, in the heat of battle with a well placed jutsu to the heart, and in the dead of night with a knife to the throat. I have killed enemies and criminals which the world is better without, and I have killed my best friend and the kindest person I've ever met. Some would say that I am a killer at heart, but I do not relish in death. Even after the most justified kills I can feel nothing but disgust for the entire mess. I wish only to wash my hands of death, but I found out long ago that certain blood will never disappear. I do not seek out death and I do not gain pleasure from it (I never have). But in those moments, when Sakura's eyes are filled with pain and confusion and the loss of something she never really had, I know that I could kill Sasuke Uchiha and rejoice in it.

But I cannot.

She loves him. I can tell. Even after all this time and pain and hope and regret, even after all of that, she still loves him. You can hear it in her voice when she speaks. When she describes a surgery, or a mission, or her new outfit, no matter what she's saying you can always hear what she's thinking. With every breath in she says 'I love you,' and with every exhale she whispers his name. I can barely stand it. I want to scream, or shake her, I want to somehow knock it into her head that his is not the only path, he is not the best path.

But I cannot.

Sometimes, in the darkest shadows on the darkest nights, after drinking much alcohol and breathing much tobacco smoke, I let myself imagine what it would be like to deceive her. To open the eye that is not my own and catch her in it. It would be so easy: she wants to be tricked. I could let her live that amazing fantasy of hers: that he loves her. And I could, just for a second, imagine that it is my name on her lips every time she breaths.

But I cannot.

I cannot reach for her when she cries without tears because if I do then she will cling to me, like the last survivor of a shipwreck. But I cannot hold her against me, because if I do she might see right through me.

I cannot kill Sasuke, in the dead of night with no witnesses or evidence just a shadow in amongst shadows, because if I do, she will be devastated. She will cry and cry... and after awhile, she will get over it. She will live again and be happy again, if he is gone.

I cannot make her see the truth. I cannot tell her that there are other men who live and breath for her, because if I do she just might listen.

I cannot use this gift, this weapon, to show her that impossible reality because she just might see how inconceivable it really is and she just might turn away.

I cannot do any of these things because if I did then she would find out. She would see that I love her more than anyone else alive, and that she could, would, learn to love me in return. But that cannot happen, I refuse to let it, because even this terrible, destructive, poisonous cycle she's in is better than if she were to care for me.

Because I love her so much more than anyone alive, but there are so many dead. So many who died unduly young and so much of my heart –too much–has been stolen by those dead. And she, despite everything, is still so full of life. For her, loving one who's past and future is consumed by death is still better that loving one who is already dead.

And so, when she screams for death in the middle of a thunderstorm and thinks the rain will drown out her pleas. When she works at the hospital for days on end until her hands crack and bleed from the chakra being pumped through them. When she does anything she can to stop herself from thinking about him. When her eyes look up at me without any innocence or faith or joy left: I can do nothing but turn away.

And that, more than anything, proves that I am already dead, because otherwise I'm sure it would kill me.

Cheery, no? The title is referring to the nursery rhyme 'Pop Goes the Weasel,' because I suck as titles.

~Necessity