Nikki: So I kind of am trying something different this time around. The plot bunnies tackled me and forced me type up so many stories that I don't know what to do with them. Some of them are total crap and some are actually good. I think this is one of the better ones so enjoy!
Fragile chap. 1
"Mommy, why can't I play with the other kids outside?" I asked, looking through the window at the other boys playing all sorts of sports.
My mother glanced at me, before sighing. She stepped away from the stove and wiped her hands on a towel. She made her way towards me and knelt, placing her hands on my shoulders.
"Naruto, sweetie, you're fragile. More delicate than a porcelain doll, okay? You need to be careful, which is why you can't play with the other boys." Her red hair gleamed in the sunlight and I shrugged her off.
She sighed again, and straightened. "Naruto, you may hate me now but, when you're older you'll understand. I know you're mad and think I'm being unfair. Soon you'll see how fragile you are and be glad I kept you safe all these years."
I huffed and ran down the corridor.
It's not fair. It's not fair. It's not fair, ran through my head like a mantra.
I dropped onto the floor in my playroom. It was the place I spent all my time in, except when at school and with my parents. I smacked my hands against the carpet a few times before bringing my hands up to my face. I covered my eyes and starting to bawl like any other six year old who hadn't got their way would.
When I uncovered my sapphire orbs, my hands were shrouded with bruises… but they didn't hurt. I peered at my knees that hit the floor and they were decorated with bruises too. I poked them, just a few times to see.
And there was nothing. No pain, no ache, just blue and purple irregularly shaped swollen patches.
[*.*.*.*]
"Come here, blood-boy. We just want to play with you." It was that stupid teacher's fault. Iruka-sensei just had to go and introduce me as a hemophiliac the first day of school.
The three bullies stepped in closer and I was backed into a corner, literally. I couldn't fight back; my skin could easily break and endlessly bleed.
They started out lightly. Just poking my skin roughly and chuckling as bruises sprouted from practically nowhere. Then they got bold and started pinching and grabbing. They watched as red crescent marks easily appeared and even laughed when they broke skin. The cuts were small but they relentlessly bled. Incisions that would normally clot in a matter of minutes leaked red fluids non-stop. Fingertips littered my fore and upper arms too.
And they didn't care. They just laughed and laughed. The bruises didn't hurt. The punches, pinches, pokes and grabs did though.
I submitted to my fate nonetheless. I stood there while the pokes and grabs transformed into punches and kicks.
"Hey! Leave him alone!" The shout alerted me and my tormentors to a black haired fool. At least I thought he was a fool. Four bullies to one awfully scrawny kid? It wasn't logical.
"What are you going to do about it Uchiha?" The Uchiha fumed practically and I guess for the hell of it the main bully of mine decided to send a punch to my face.
My lip split and my nose cracked.
Blood gushed from my wounds and I gasped. I was bleeding. And that blood wouldn't clot at a normal rate. I would bleed until all the blood in my body drained out or my blood clotted quickly by some miracle.
What a horrible eulogy that would be. 'Uzumaki Naruto died from a loss of all ten pints of blood because he was punched in his face.'
I tilted my head back like my mother taught me. She said the main vein in the nose wouldn't be able to get the blood supply it needed to keep bleeding. But then again, didn't that pretty lady at the hospital say that I could choke on my blood if I did that? I couldn't even remember.
I could hear those boys yelling at each other in the background.
"Takeshi! Why would you punch the kid? What if he dies because his blood wouldn't stop flowing?"
"I didn't know that would happen! I barely tapped him!" I would have giggled at their panic but I – kind of – had my hands full.
"You morons! If I ever see you near him again I'll skin you all alive!" To this day, I wish I could have seen the looks on those boys' faces. I heard from the Uchiha that they were pretty hilarious.
"Hey. I'm Sasuke. Are you okay? You need help, right?" I shook my head at the raven furiously. I hated people thinking that I couldn't handle myself.
"I've been dealing with this my whole life. I can take care of myself. Anyways, what do you care? It's not like we know each other." I brushed off his advances and brought my head back upright. Despite pinching my nostrils closed, an influx of blood flowed down my hand. I sighed, I assumed the blood flow had lessened to a trickle... it hadn't.
"My older brother has the moderate type of hemophilia. I'm guessing you have the severe type." He motions to how blood is still running down my hands. I chuckle and nod.
"Bingo. Yeah, on second thought can you help me find the nurse, or an adult?"
"Sure. I'm going to get Iruka-sensei. He'll probably freak." He turned serious and I had to wonder where the other kid I just saw went.
"Iruka-sensei! Something happened to Naruto! He's bleeding!" Sasuke said casually when we reached my homeroom. My sensei came scurrying out of our classroom quickly.
"What?!" He took my bloodied hands away from my nose and pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and pinched my nose tighter than I had.
I muttered a nasally "thank you" from beneath the rag and saw him nod his reply. Iruka then switched his gaze to Sasuke.
"Mind telling me what happened here Sasuke?"
"Some kids were bullying him and so I threatened them until they ran off. I'll show you who later." The kid beside me looked at me and I stared back at him.
"What?"
"Nothing... Come on, dobe we have to call your mother." He smirked and I scowled.
"Don't call me dobe, teme. I have half a mind to skin you alive for that!"
"Oh? Stealing my threats now, are we dobe?"
"You wish teme!"
"Can you two stop bickering? We have to go to the nurse."
Needless to say, we didn't stop arguing until dismissal.
[*.*.*.*]
I rarely wore my "bracelet". A simple tag that adorned my wrist, and I never bothered to wear it. It was a one-two-three step thing in the morning, but it was also so much more than that.
Everyone considered it a safety tag. It was a bracelet that could save my life in an instant. To me it was a fragility tag. It was a bracelet that laid all my weaknesses out for everyone to see and made people take great caution around me whenever they spotted it,
"Dobe, why don't you wear just wear your tag?" Sasuke asked me, in our freshmen year. Almost 14 years I had lived like this, and he still expected me to wear that stupid bracelet? After being friends for three years, it still felt like we hadn't learned anything about each other.
"Because I don't see the point in it. I already memorized all the info on it anyway."
"And if you're lying on the concrete unconscious and bleeding out, how do you expect to tell them all that?" He locks his dark eyed gaze on me and I squirm uncomfortably on my bed. His intense eyes could bring the strongest man to his knees.
"What do you mean teme?"
"If you get injured, and can't speak to paramedics, how are they going to know what kind of help you need? They aren't mind readers, you know?" He leaned back on his elbows, which were placed on my desk and gave me that "look".
"I'm lost… I have you don't I?" I tilted my head to the side.
"You're an idiot. EMTs aren't going to listen to me at the scene of an accident. And it's not like I memorized all your info, that's the point of the tag; so the medics can know for sure everything about your situation." Sasuke swiveled in my chair and picked up the bracelet in question.
It always sat on my desk, collecting dust. I only put it on in front of my mother, for doctor appointments, treatments and when Sasuke forced me.
The "medical condition ID bracelet" was the official name, but that was a mouthful for us. On the front it had the word hemophilia engraved and the back was all the info they needed.
It looked like this:
Full Name: Naruto Uzumaki
Condition: Hemophilia B
Deficiency: Factor IX
Blood Type: AB-
Allergies: N/A
"Your blood type is AB negative?" Sasuke said twirling my bracelet around in his hands.
"Yeah." I already knew what he was going to say.
"Did you know you can't donate to anyone except other ABs? Though you can receive blood from anyone?" I nodded; some people said I was seriously lucky that my blood type worked in my favor. I have to admit I was extremely grateful for that.
"Did you know that my blood type is also very rare for people of Asian descent?" I grinned and lay back on my mattress.
"Well that confirms it."
I raised my head and lifted an eyebrow at him. "What's been confirmed?"
"You aren't really Japanese." He said with his infamous smirk plastered across his lips.
"Teme! I am so Japanese!" I shrieked angrily and threw a pillow at him. He caught it and smirked haughtily.
"Nice throw dobe."
"Bastard."
[*.*.*.*]
I fucking hated gym. I was the burden; the one nobody wanted to play with. I was good at sports like soccer, competitive swimming, and baseball. But I was completely useless in basketball and tennis. I was more focused on not getting murdered by the other kids than the actual game. I couldn't even participate in the sports with more physical contact because of the "high risk factors".
It was one of the days we played basketball. I had the option of opting out, of course. I just didn't want to.
The game persisted of a lot of elbows to ribs, smacking and pushing. My arms and torso were littered with bruises that wouldn't hurt for a long time. My right knee was swollen and red from when I was elbowed and fell onto the rough wooden floors.
I didn't really worry about anything until I returned home with Sasuke. By then my knee had transformed into a painful mess. It was tight, puffy and oddly warm. There was a massive black-and-blue there, but I was familiar with that.
"What the fuck is that?" I flinched at Sasuke's tone of voice. He was worse than my mother sometimes when it came to injuries.
"I fell during gym." He wouldn't have known, it was the only class he refused to take in our freshmen year. I really wished I hadn't worn shorts that day.
"I'm getting Kushina." He turned away from me and started walking to the door. I panicked so I pulled him by his wrist back to me.
"No, it's probably just a joint bleed. I'm going to take a treatment. It's fine." I stifled the pained groan that wants to free itself from my throat as I put pressure on my right leg. I wobbled to my desk and open one of the three drawers. I took out one of the tubes of Factor IX, a towel and a needle.
I sat myself in my desk chair and placed all the stuff on the desk carefully. Sasuke watched quietly as I found an area in my leg to put the factor in. I disinfected the area, the needle and my hands with disinfectant wipes my mom insisted I kept in my room.
"Can you stop staring so intensely? You're making me uncomfortable." I muttered when the eyes burning holes in my limbs wouldn't vanish, and the calculating yet astonished gaze didn't falter.
Sasuke blinked in response, though his eyes still followed my every move. I sighed exasperatedly and pressed the needle into my skin. I bit into the towel as it broke the protective layer and slithered inside me. I didn't bite the towel because of pain but because I hated the feeling of treatments. It always felt uncomfortable to know something entered my body and was moving around inside me.
I took the factor and put it into the slot at the end of the needle. Almost immediately the factor began flowing into me. It was almost like an IV drip, but more immediate.
Sasuke's eyes never left me, and I squirmed around in my place. The process took roughly 15 minutes to complete and I was awfully squeamish the whole time.
"See? All better!" I enthusiastically said when the tube was finished. Sasuke hummed.
It wasn't better.
[*.*.*.*]
It was pouring. It was raining cats and dogs, with lightning and thunder thrown into the mix. I hated days like this. It was gloomy and I wanted to sleep the day away. But that wasn't an option because it was also the last day of our first semester of sophomore year.
I didn't have my bracelet like usual. Even after our discussion about its importance, I didn't see the point. What was the chance of me getting injured enough to need an ambulance filled with EMTs? That thought was enough to laugh at.
It wouldn't happen to me. It couldn't happen to me, was the idea my mind was formed around.
Oh, but it did.
It was foggy, dank and damp that day. It was still morning. I couldn't see if the sun had risen yet or if it was scared away by the rain. Someone in the sky must have been having the worst day of their life, because rain came down on our town in torrents and the winds were strong enough to be caused by a typhoon.
Sasuke and I dragged ourselves down street after street to get to the school on time. We were dressed in our school's bland uniforms, white button-downs and black slacks.
We were engaged in deep conversation about something trivial and stupid. Sasuke stopped at the light and looked both ways before continuing. Once again, I didn't see the point. The light was red and the orange box gave the "walking man" signal. Maybe I should have been the more cautious one, considering I was the fragile one.
And then there was a flash of light. I was just walking and then there was light… and pain.
A scream. More pain.
Bright lights. Even more pain.
Lots of yelling. An onslaught of pain.
And then a conversation I could barely make out behind a pain-filled foggy mind.
"His name is Naruto Uzumaki. He's a hemophiliac! His blood doesn't clot easily!" Sasuke was yelling. I couldn't recall Sasuke ever screaming at anyone. He was always so stoic and collected. I vaguely felt a comforting weight on my side.
"Where's his medical ID bracelet? Why isn't he wearing it?" A voice rings in my ears not too far from me.
"He forgets it all the time. He says people look at him differently. It's at home, but I know the info."
"What type is he?" The calm voice drawls on.
"He's…" Sasuke deep voice paused for a second. "He's type B, severe! He's deficient in factor IV!"
"Any allergies? What's his blood type?" The paramedic, I deduced, asked my best friend. I was being lifted onto something by this point.
"He's not allergic to anything. He's AB negative." Sasuke sucked in a deep breath, before taking a turn questioning the EMT. "Will he live?"
"I don't know, depends on how fast we can get him a transfusion, treatment and into surgery for internal bleeding."
"You can have a transfusion right now. I'm clean, I had a healthy breakfast, and we're the most compatible with each other. He won't react differently to my blood." Sasuke sounded desperate yet confident; he obviously didn't want to lose me. I was very important to him, I was so happy. We were moving quickly in the ambulance.
"Sir, we can't do that. The blood needs to be screened for diseases, its protocol. I can't make exceptions, no matter how sure you are that you're clean. The hospital has a blood bank, he'll get it soon enough."
"Please – " I couldn't hear the rest because we hit a bump in the road and, despite being strapped down; I felt the pain and conked out.
[*.*.*.*]
When I came to I was lying on my back covered in unadulterated white sheets. The walls were beige with tacky wallpaper and ugly furniture littered the room. The TV in the corner was muted and turn onto some English soap opera I never heard of.
God, I hated hospitals.
No one was lying beside me when I woke up. It wasn't like those cheesy romantic comedies where the man woke up and the girlfriend's head is in his lap and she's sleeping. The only thing in my lap was my own mangled arm. If you can call a bandaged hand attached to an IV drip mangled.
The sun wasn't shining through my window and I didn't feel like someone who was hit by a… whatever it was. I felt drugged. I felt like someone had slipped something into my drink and had their way with me roughly. In simpler words, I was fucked up.
"Naruto?" When my door opened, I struggled to sit up to see who it was.
My mom appeared at my bedside and tears filled her eyes to the brim. Sasuke was in the doorway still.
"My idiot son!" Tears ran down my mother's cheeks and plopped onto the floor. She smacked the bed next to my hand repeatedly, murmuring about the "idiotic son" she had. She moved herself into a love seat near the dirty window and promptly passed out from exhaustion. Sasuke came in to take her spot, but instead of standing he sat on my side of the bed.
He looked completely relaxed. I would have thought he went home and slept in his comfy bed every night, but he was still in his blood-stained uniform from that day.
How long had I been knocked out anyway? Was it a couple of hours, days, weeks or years? Well, that's exaggerating, but who cares?
"You're lucky I was there. You could've died, you moron." Sasuke said just loud enough for me to hear.
"I'll wear the tag from now on, if that's what you're getting to." I tucked strands of hair behind my ear with my good arm.
"Your injuries aren't that bad; just a lot of blood loss. You could've had a brain hemorrhage, you idiot." He glared at me before sighing and closing his eyes. "You really scared me. I almost died when in the ambulance you went limp against the stretcher. Don't do that to me again."
"I can't promise that." I answered leaning back on my pillows.
Sasuke's eyes snapped open and that always intense gaze is fixated on me. "And why can't you, dobe?" He fisted the sheets beneath his hands.
I wave him closer to me until I am sure only he can hear. A grin pulled at my lips and I let it settle on my face.
"Because I'm fragile, remember?"
Nikki: So I hope you enjoyed! You know the drill; read, review, and favorite!