Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto, neither the character nor the surrounding ninja-verse. I don't make any money from this story.
Summary: Sequel to 'Dreaming'. Kakashi's recurring dream takes up more and more of his life. And he doesn't know whether to be grateful for it.
A/N: In case the 'Sequel' warning wasn't enough for you: this story won't make any sense at all if you haven't read 'Dreaming' first. Otherwise: enjoy.
Waking
With a gasp, Kakashi nearly jolted off his bed. His eyes flew open instinctively, and it took him quite a while to realize he was staring at a white ceiling instead of a damp wall. Staring at a white ceiling with his left eye instead of his right. His sharingan. And nothing was red, and there was no chakra swirling in his vision, and there was no drain on his reserves.
Slowly, he relaxed again. He was back inside his strange dreamworld, where there was a country of Japan, a decided lack of chakra, and he in an asylum for the insane.
To completely reassure himself, he tapped his right eyeball with his fingernail. A hollow clink echoed through his skull, and Kakashi relaxed completely. Glass, painted with a gray iris instead of flesh and blood. Lost, according to the doctors, when he tried to commit suicide via shooting himself in the head.
Yes. He was there. Again.
Only then did the plethora of tubes going in and out of his body, signal that they weren't happy with him. By now, Kakashi was almost used to waking with several catheters taped in mentionable and unmentionable locations. However, it still hurt to jostle them like he just had.
For a while, he simply kept breathing, waiting for the phantom pains to abate. The surgical mask in front of his face fluttered slightly with every exhale, and the frantic pitch of the heart monitor stabilized into a slow rhythm.
The dreamworld. He rubbed a hand across tired eyes. Well, it was better than nothing.
With practiced hands, he removed most of the lines leading into his body – why had they hooked him back on an IV when they had long ago switched to a more permanent method of feeding him? – and didn't even look up when a well-proportioned, red-haired nurse entered. Keiko. She tittered and scolded him for not waiting for her, and did he really want to get an infection via unsanitary handling of his lines?
He ignored her, and instead looked towards the window. Everything was pitch-black outside, except for the lights illuminating the hospital grounds. A precaution in case someone from the high-security ward escaped. The lights made it hard to distinguish since he couldn't see the stars, but he thought it was about an hour before false dawn started.
"How long have I been out?" he asked curiously.
Keiko, the nurse, stopped briefly to look at her watch. "About five hours, I'd say. You collapsed at ten-thirty yesterday evening, and it's a bit after three right now. You should get some more sleep. I'll leave the heart monitor on you, in case you lapse again before the morning shift, but everyone's going to be very happy to see that you're coming out of it more and more often."
"Yeah, sure," Kakashi smiled blandly. If there was one thing he wasn't going to do, it was going back to sleep. Not that he feared it, but... just, no. "Who is on morning shift?"
Keiko thought for a bit, pursing her lips cutely. If she were a bit more well-endowed, she could be the main star of one of Jiraiya's novels. "That would be Nanako and Hikari. Be nice to them, and they might even let you go with the shopping group today."
"Groceries?" Once a week, about five or six people had to go shopping to get the groceries for their ward. Yes, there was a hospital kitchen that delivered all meals for the high security ward, but the one Kakashi was currently living in, the Sakamoto Ryuu Ward, tried to pretend as much normalcy as possible. Meaning, their ward had its own kitchen including kitchen duty, grocery duty, cleaning duty, budget, group excursions – all in all, like a big family of eighteen people.
Eighteen people, who weren't quite there mentally.
"Yep. And if you're awake tomorrow, too, maybe you can join the excursion to the zoo!"
Kakashi had no idea how someone could sound so happy about something so... trivial. Boring. Childish. He couldn't quite decide on a word, but staring at animals behind bars was pretty much the last thing he wanted to do. Especially since there were enough bars in his life when he was awake, thank you very much.
"We'll see," he smiled noncommittally.
Eventually, Nurse Keiko left. Eventually, it got lighter outside. Eventually, the artificial lights outside turned off.
Kakashi was merely sitting on his bed and stared through the window. It was strange how his thoughts went everywhere and nowhere at once, and when the morning shift arrived at six a.m., he had no idea what he had been thinking about.
With a yawn and a long stretch, he turned off the heart monitor, disconnected the wires leading to his chest, went to the bathroom, and then started on some mindless calisthenics.
It was quite fortunate that he was alone in his room; apparently, it was bad practice to room someone not comatose with a coma patient. That way at least, he didn't disturb anyone with his exercises.
Nurse Hikari interrupted him while he was doing his third set of push-ups – this body was terribly weak, but at least he had progressed to doing them on his fingertips – and scolded him once again for doing exercises he wasn't supposed to. Apparently, it was not a good idea to progress to a heavy cardio-vascular workout straight out of a coma, no matter how brief the coma had been.
Kakashi didn't really care, and anyway, he had been awake for a full three hours before he had started. Nonetheless he didn't argue (much), and went to take a shower instead.
First was breakfast. Kakashi ate little, then picked up a book to read on his bed while he was waiting for the daily ward round. Even though the writing – a fictional recount of the Boshin War – had nothing on Icha Icha, it was still moderately interesting. Especially how the samurai of Japan resembled Iron Country's samurai quite a bit. Well, except for the chakra-enhanced techniques. But their mentality was very similar.
When Doctor Oda, head of the Sakamoto Ryuu ward, finally entered, Kakashi was quite engrossed in the story.
"You are awake again, Mr. Satou? This is very good. I saw that you came out of your coma at three-fifteen this morning? Excellent, excellent. You are showing promising progress."
Kakashi blinked and looked at the doctor. He had learned to respond to the name Hideo Satou, but it still sent a twinge through him every time. Doctor Oda was a short, energetic man with a strong chin and agile hands, hair going gray at the temples. Kakashi had once asked him where his callouses came from, and the doctor had told him he liked playing golf in his free time. Top of Kantou's amateur league.
In other areas, Kakashi wasn't that convinced of Oda's capability. With his case, at least. No, Kakashi didn't think he was making any progress at all. If anything, he was getting worse.
He set the book aside to turn his full attention to the other man.
"Really?" he said nonchalantly, his face a mask of polite curiosity. The doctor had known him for years already, and Kakashi knew that he was very much convinced of his diagnosis of Kakashi's issues. There wasn't much talking with him.
"Yes, Mr. Satou," Dr. Oda reassured him. "Your coma lapses have drastically shortened to only a few hours at a time. If you continue to improve like this, you will have a normal life very soon."
Kakashi cocked his head, detached. "And who says that I won't go back to my old pattern once whatever has caused this change, is over?"
There was a reason, and Kakashi knew the reason. But he couldn't tell the doctor. Or maybe he could. They all thought him crazy, anyway, with his firm belief that he was just dreaming. It would be fun to see how Oda tried to explain it away this time.
"Doctor," he began, trying to look more serious than amused. "You have read my file, and then diagnosed me yourself. You know that I think real life happens whenever I am in my coma and that I am only dreaming the real world. I have not changed my mind concerning that. So, what does that tell you? What does that tell you, when someone suddenly starts dreaming more? When someone prefers illusions over reality?"
Oda smiled, in that patronizing and slightly absent way that indicated he hadn't heard a single thing Kakashi had just said. "Ah, the story of your life, eh, Mr. Satou? I think that you are finally growing up, growing out of your phase where you fled into an illusionary world. I think that your mind is finally healing from the trauma of losing your family and the damage your suicide attempt caused. Maybe one day, you will wake up and discover you don't need that world anymore. That is my biggest hope for you, Mr. Satou."
Kakashi smiled back blandly. "Yes, thank you. That is very nice of you, Mr. Oda."
More of the usual questions followed – how he was feeling, whether he had dreamed anything, the works. Kakashi kept smiling and telling fudged half-truths that meshed quite well with Oda's expectations of him.
He watched the doctor's retreating back and thought of the dozens of ways he could kill Oda with just his bare hands and the lousy strength he had available in this strange world. No, he was not improving. Not at all. He was steadily getting worse, and if help didn't arrive soon, Kakashi didn't know what they were going to find.
He sighed and got up from his bed (the book was set aside to continue later on). He stretched a bit, feeling that he was getting old and rusty. He was 28, 29, barely out of childhood in this world, nearly at the average life expectancy for ninja in his other life. At least here, nothing hurt beyond the satisfying ache of his workouts during the last few days.
He went to the kitchen and made himself a cup of tea. Of course, he would have preferred sake, but alcohol was strictly forbidden.
Geruda, a tall pale woman with unkempt hair and sauce-stained clothes, was working on a big pot of something boiling on the stove. From the smell of it something with meat and tomatoes. Dinner for their group of social and mental retards.
Nurse Nanako was supervising her, but that wasn't really necessary. Cooking was pretty much the only thing Geruda was proficient in – even if it didn't always taste that good, she did it meticulously and without setting anything on fire, cutting off her fingers, or any other mishaps. He had learned to live with it, and it definitely was preferable to the instant meals other residents of their ward reheated when it was their turn at kitchen duty.
"Oh, hello Satou-san! How was the ward round?" Nanako asked. She was an affable woman in her mid-fourties, plump and always cheerful.
Geruda didn't give any hint that she was aware of anything but the pot in front of her. Her autism was so severe that she never reacted to anything that didn't concern her cooking.
Kakashi nodded in Geruda's direction, although she almost certainly didn't notice him or his greeting. Then he turned towards Nanako and crinkled his eye in what most assumed to be a laugh. Most of the time, they were right, too. "Well, he was quite pleased that I've been awake more often lately. Otherwise – as usual."
"Oh, he's not the only one pleased," she smiled. "Everyone here is happy for you that you are getting better. Takeru especially."
Kakashi had enough practice in pretending to be something he wasn't, that it didn't take too much to keep up this happy banter. "Oh, pish. You are just happy that you have less work now that I do my eating and my personal hygiene myself."
"Well, that, too," she laughed. "Then again, I don't have an excuse anymore to touch such a nice body." Her eyebrows waggled exaggeratedly.
Kakashi gave her a one-eyed look that spoke volumes. He had 'handled' enough unconscious and dead bodies to know that, no matter how physically attractive, the limp potato sack feeling made even the prettiest women unappealing.
"Too bad I'm never awake when you touch me," he retorted airily. "I'm sure I would enjoy it."
She snorted. "As much as someone can enjoy being washed and manhandled like a baby."
"Oh, you would definitely make it worthwhile."
Kakashi crinkled his eye again, even if he didn't really feel like smiling or joking around.
It had been several years already that he'd had a gastric tube inserted, as was apparently common for long-term coma patients. A gastric tube was a short tube through his abdominal wall straight into his stomach, where warm and pureed food was injected whenever he couldn't eat by himself. And, of course, food in his stomach meant wastes to eliminate. He really didn't want to know how they dealt with it; especially since there was little to no natural bowel movement while he was unconscious.
But Kakashi had long ago given up thinking about that part of his dream world. It was a dream after all, so why worry about anything like modesty or false shame?
"What's for dinner?" he asked to get away from the flirting (and the images of someone cleaning away his wastes).
Nanako shrugged. "Looks like Spaghetti Bolognese to me. Then again, nobody except for Geruda knows for sure."
"Definitely smells good. Wouldn't want to miss it for one of my lapses."
Lapses. That was what they called it, and Kakashi had taken to using the term himself. When in reality, it was an ungentle awaking to reality. At least, lately it had been ungentle.
"Don't worry," the nurse calmed him, "as much as you've been awake the past few days, I doubt you'll have one before dinner."
Kakashi nodded. "I hope so. I sure hope so."
Dinner was the usual affair – Takeru, a man about five years younger than Kakashi but with the mentality of a preteen, could hardly sit still; Keigo spilled his water all over himself and Geruda, who was sitting next to him; Nurse Nanako barely rescued Anzu's plate from joining several pieces of dropped food on the floor; and Youkou almost had one of her panic attacks when Kakashi reached over to prevent Daisuke from hitting her in the face while he was gesticulating wildly.
As he had said, the usual affair.
Kakashi decided to help out with the cleaning afterwards, seeing as Geruda had once again tuned out everything around her and walked off in her own daze. He absently listened to Takeru's excited chatter while he was washing the dishes and both Takeru and Youko were drying them.
Youko was an older woman, at least mid-sixties, who had had to watch her entire family get shot in front of her. Yakuza. Something inside her had broken that day, leaving her a timid wreck that had more panic triggers than a fully seasoned ninja. Sudden noises and quick movements were especially disturbing for her. So were younger, well-trained men. For some reason though, she never seemed to mind Kakashi or Takeru. He had heard that this was the reason she hadn't been transferred to a nursing home a long time ago: the chance that they might help her get better.
Grocery shopping was an ordeal all of its own, seeing as Nurse Hinako, Hikaru's replacement for the afternoon/evening shift, was alone and had to rely on Kakashi a great deal to keep everyone in line. Kakashi wished he could have taken one of his dogs with him to help corral everyone in. But they were needed for one of the Animal Therapy groups, even though they hadn't looked too happy about it.
At least, Kakashi imagined that they wouldn't have been too happy about it. He didn't know for sure, since they were a lot less intelligent than his own pack. Regular dogs. Sometimes though, it was a true blessing that this Pakkun couldn't speak. Or use Sakura's shampoo.
Kakashi did some more exercises until supper, and once again got scolded for it. This time by Nurse Hinako. After supper, he helped Takeru balance the household book, as that was his job for the week. Takeru nearly went into one of his rages when, after the third time, the numbers still didn't want to add up. Although he calmed down before needing to be sedated, Kakashi was still glad for the cup he never went without. Takeru seemed to have impeccable aim – or luck – that way.
Bed-time came and went. Kakashi was once again hooked to his heart monitor, in case he fell back into one of his lapses while he was sleeping. But Kakashi didn't intend on sleeping, so that was alright. His book remained interesting, even on the second read. A pity it wasn't longer. He'd have to read it a third time before the night was out.
He never got to finish it though. A third time, that is. Nurse Keiko, once again on night shift, gave him a choice between lights out and outright sedation, and Kakashi chose to go with the former. While it was more boring staying awake in the dark without anything to do, it was definitely preferable to doing so while fighting against drugs. Not that Kakashi wasn't capable of both, but he simply didn't feel like it. Taking the risk that his eyelids got too heavy, that is.
It was curious how his lapses never seemed to happen while he was awake. Every single time, he had needed to close his eyes to switch worlds. To get from the real world to this dream world, he needed to be very deeply asleep. Or unconscious, as he had been figuring out during the past two weeks. For the other way around, even a light doze could be enough.
So Kakashi didn't doze and didn't close his eyes, and eventually the sky got lighter. A new day began, and Kakashi thought he'd set up a new record of hours staying in his dream world. Twenty-seven and counting.
Once again, he got scolded for exercising; this time mostly because his sit-ups were in danger of irritating his gastric tube. He hadn't even noticed the slight twinge at every contraction of his abs, but he supposed that he might lay back on those for a while.
At breakfast, everyone was nearly ecstatic that he was up and awake once again. The fifth day in a row, at that. He had to take care not to let his reflexes slip when Takeru hugged him enthusiastically. Instead, he patted the boy-man on his head and decided not to get squeamish at the smell of slightly burned bacon. (It really didn't smell too different from burned human skin, and he was becoming increasingly familiar with that particular scent.)
He picked at his food, and then decided to go back to his exercises. The complaints of overstressed muscles and burning lungs was soothing.
The ward round surprised him in the middle of his fifth set of push-ups. Since there were only five more left, he quickly finished his count of fifty and then got up.
Today, it was Doctor Machimura instead of Oda. On the one hand, Kakashi preferred the more open-minded man to Oda's stubborn head; on the other, Machimura tended to ask more questions than he liked. More intelligent questions, at that.
Machimura was only a year or two out of university, making him about Kakashi's age. Maybe that was one of the reasons Kakashi was so fascinating to him?
Using a towel to dry away the last of his sweat, Kakashi used the time to get his breathing back under control. Machimura used that time to draw himself a chair so that he could sit comfortably while facing Kakashi's bed.
"You definitely are becoming more active," the doctor commented.
Kakashi grunted. While Machimura's stare had nothing on Ibiki's, it was piercing in its own way. Kakashi still wouldn't have had any trouble fooling him, but he found that for once, he didn't want to. This was his dream, his way to relax from the ever-accumulating stress and horrors of the real world, and he was getting tired of pretending everything was alright.
He drew himself his own chair, and slouched into it as much as he could.
The doctor looked at him and raised an eyebrow. "How much did you sleep last night?"
Did he really look that bad? Kakashi threw a glance at the alarm clock he had wheedled out of Nurse Hinako yesterday for being such a great help on the grocery trip. "About thirty-one hours."
And really, since this was a dreamworld, he had to have been asleep the entire time. Actually, he was still sleeping. Dreaming. Whatever.
It took a while for the doctor to work out the math. Then he sighed. "You do know that you need sleep, Hideo. Now that you are spending less and less time in your coma lapses, you need to relearn how to let your body rest naturally. It isn't healthy staying awake for such long periods of time."
Kakashi looked at him blandly above his surgical mask. "It isn't?"
Machimura gave him a look straight back, utterly unimpressed. "Yes it isn't. And you are intelligent and well-educated enough to know it, too. I can imagine that it is very unsettling to have full control over your waking and sleeping hours for the first time in years. But you need to sleep sometimes. You can't go around anymore waiting for the next lapse to take your choice away of whether you get rest or not. What are you afraid of?"
Kakashi slowly leaned forward and focused all of his attention on the psychologist. He stared at the man for a long time until he became uncomfortable and started fidgeting.
"Do you know, Peter," Kakashi began quietly while using Doctor Machimura's first name, "what it feels like to have one of your teeth crushed inside your mouth?"
The man frowned a bit and opened his mouth, but Kakashi cut him off. "I am not talking about a doctor's appointment, or getting one knocked out in a fight. I am talking about taking pliers and squeezing until it crumbles from the pressure. Slowly, of course." He suppressed a shiver as the memory became more vivid than he would have liked it to. He clung to the white ceiling and the window and the slight murmur of other voices coming through the closed door. "Always slowly, because that gives you time to feel the pain and know that, whatever you feel now, it can't be compared to how much it is going to hurt in a few seconds. You know, teeth really don't take to being crushed. But it doesn't really hurt until the first crack appears. After that though..."
Kakashi spread his fingers and tried to shrug nonchalantly. He deliberately didn't break eye-contact, even though all his instincts were screaming at him to shut up and pretend everything was well.
"You have started remembering things from your past?" the psychologist asked, subtle tension lining his frame. Seemed that he had finally caught on that something was very much different this time.
Kakashi supposed that, yes, he might have come across as a bit threatening. He didn't care. He hummed in his throat. "Not exactly as such. More of the variety of experiencing them."
"Flash-backs?" Morbid curiosity behind eyes trying to work out how Kakashi's words fit into the picture.
"If it makes you more comfortable to think of it as flash-backs, then yes."
More calculations. "If it makes me more comfortable?"
Kakashi shrugged. "Well, since you don't believe that my lapses are me spending time in the real world, and that this one – including this conversation with you – is a figment of my imagination... Yes, I would say calling them flash-backs is purely for your benefit."
"Then what would you call it?"
"Mmh, something along the lines of forcible interrogation whenever I am in a 'lapse'?" Kakashi couldn't help his smile becoming more a baring of teeth than a real smile. His surgical mask though covered that brief loss of control. "One of the reasons I am awake so often. My body in the real world isn't strong enough anymore to support my consciousness for more than a couple of hours at a time. And to be quite frank - I prefer battling sleep deprivation here to getting tortured over there."
More calculation was evident in Machimura's eyes. He was apparently still trying to figure everything out, how the poor insane man could be convinced to abandon his delusions. "So you don't share Dr. Oda's opinion that your subconscious mind finally thinks you are ready to leave your imaginary world?"
Kakashi snorted. "Of course not. At the moment, I am somewhat inclined to believe that both worlds are real, but if push comes to shove, I will always side with the Ninja world."
"Because you have more control over your life there?"
"Because it is shittier."
Machimura did a double-take, and then tried to hide it. "What? Why that?"
Kakashi nearly laughed out loud at his poor acting skills. As it was, he had to smother a lot of near-hysterical humor trying to make its way into his voice. "If you have no idea which world is real, how would you go about determining the correct one?"
The doctor leaned back and brushed his hand over his mustache. "Interesting question," he mused. It was quite obvious that he was relieved at the break from trying to make sense of his patient. "I guess I'd go by which one feels more real to me."
"And what makes a world 'real' for you?" Kakashi cocked his head, honestly curious. Because every doctor so far had tried to convince him that their world was real, and Kakashi was wondering if this one had any new arguments.
"A world that follows physical laws, the laws of cause and effect. A world that doesn't have any illogical powers. A world where there is coincidence, where there is boredom, where I cannot exert any undue influence on events. A world where not everything is good or perfect, but neither everything bad."
"Mmh," Kakashi nodded, pleasantly surprised at how Machimura had tried to approach it from a philosophical point of view and only made a single dig at the existence of chakra. "About what I consider 'real'. I'd add something along the lines of being able to feel, emotions and pain and the likes."
"You think you don't feel emotions or pain here?" And the calculating psychologist was back.
Shaking his head, Kakashi dug a fingernail into his forearm until blood flowed. The doctor looked alarmed, but Kakashi waved him off. "This hurts. I do feel pain and emotions; it is just that everything is more immediate in the ninja world. I am more invested there. Not to mention that I can remember having a past there before my fifteenth birthday. This – this feels like a dream, a vacation from life in the ninja world."
"So you've said on several occasions." With a frown, the doctor got up and walked over to the small medical cabinet in the corner of the room. He pulled out a couple of drawers until he had apparently found what he wanted – some iodine and some band-aids – and motioned for Kakashi to let him dress his forearm. Kakashi humored him, although he thought it a bit ridiculous to bandage something that couldn't be called a scratch, let alone a wound. It wasn't even bleeding anymore.
Once everything was put away again, Machimura refocused on Kakashi. "That doesn't change though that you need rest, need to sleep."
Kakashi rolled his eyes, starting to get exasperated. "How well could you sleep if you knew that you are going to have some more torture heaped on you as soon as you close your eyes?"
"I can give you -"
"No!" Kakashi cut him off, anger flashing dangerously behind his paper-thin facade. "No drugs. They don't help at all." And he didn't want to take the chance of being forced to remain asleep. Awake under the less than tender mercies of his current jailors.
"Well, then what would you suggest, Hideo? I am sure you can see as well as I can that things can't go on like this. I am surprised that you aren't more out of it already from sleep deprivation."
"Training. I'd say I can handle two or three more days. Especially since I expect another lapse within the next ten hours. If it doesn't come by tomorrow, I will think about it."
Yes. If he didn't wake up for more than forty hours, chances were good that he was never going to wake again. His injuries were too severe, and his captors weren't the sort to expend any medical aid when their victims became too broken to give any satisfactory response. It was a miracle that Kakashi had lasted the past two weeks. Seigo had told him more than once that he was pleasantly surprised at his resilience.
But he was reaching the end of his rope. Quickly at that.
"Give me until tomorrow," he repeated. Absently, he stilled his trembling fingers.
It wasn't the first time that he was wondering what would happen if he died in the real world. Maybe he would just go to sleep and never wake again. Maybe he would really become Hideo Satou then. Maybe everyone here had been right, and the ninja world was nothing more than a dream.
Maybe, maybe, maybe.
Eventually Machimura agreed, on the condition that Kakashi didn't put up any fuss when the next morning came, and he still hadn't slept.
Time went by slowly and quickly at once. The visit to the zoo was loud and smelly, and it was a good thing that they let him take Bull with them. Somehow, Takeru managed to wander off and get himself lost, and it was only thanks to Bull's formidable nose that they found Takeru so quickly again in the crowd. He didn't think that Geruda had seen a single animal, even though she had stared at the lemurs for a very, very long time. Just as people were staring at Kakashi. Apparently, a one-eyed albino was just one more zoo attraction. Kakashi ignored them.
Thirty-eight hours and counting.
Supper tasted like dry cardboard, and he ate barely enough to satisfy his caloric intake. They allowed him to give his dogs an extra training session. He gave himself an extra training session afterwards, too, for the first time not caring if he showed off his taijutsu or not.
Fourty-two hours and counting.
By now, not only the nurses but also quite a few of their motley crew of mentally disturbed individuals realized that something was wrong with him. For once, Takeru remained quiet as he clung to Kakashi's footsteps. He didn't complain when Kakashi refused to tell him a story. Youkou gave him worried glances, and even withdrawn Geruda frowned once.
Fourty-four hours and counting.
Bed-time meant lights out half an hour later. To his surprise, nobody disturbed him during his third and fourth reread of the History of the Boshin War. It would be so easy to just let go and let himself fall asleep.
Fourty-eight hours and counting.
He deliberately didn't think of what it meant that he hadn't regained consciousness for more than two days. For some reason, he still couldn't bring himself to close his eyes and will himself to sleep. Cracked teeth and burned bacon probably played a role in it.
Fifty-one hours. Six a.m. The beginning of morning shift the next day.
When the door opened and a perky-eyed Nurse Nanako asked him whether he had slept at all, he remained silent. He also remained silent when her smile fell and she fetched a syringe. He never flinched when she slipped the sedatives into his veins.
With a tired sigh he watched the world fall away from him.
The team of ANBU did not hesitate to kill their way through the encampment of rogue ninja. They got a couple of hefty bounties out of it, too. Like Five-Hand Moki or Kochi the Tiger. A couple of injuries, too, like the long cut down Cat's leg, and a fractured elbow for Rat. Their main goal, however, lay elsewhere.
With a tightly controlled explosion, they forced their way into the formerly abandoned bunker that said group of rogue ninja seemed to have appropriated as their headquarters. It was a relict of the Second Great Shinobi War, an outpost of Kirigakure. Probably the reason Kochi the Tiger had known about it.
Why nobody from Intel had known about the Tiger though, that was still a mystery. Otherwise, the mission never would have gotten assigned to a single jounin. And then ANBU wouldn't have had to go rescuing said jounin after he never returned.
If there was anything left to rescue after two weeks. But they couldn't let the Sharingan fall into enemy hands. Falcon didn't only carry medical gear, but also a sealing scroll to remove all evidence.
A couple more bounties – amongst them Seigo the Butcher – and they found their target. What was left of him, anyway.
Falcon cursed quietly and bent down to see if there was anything still to be done. Cat and Horse were standing guard, while Rat took great delight in sawing off the Butcher's head. They all knew who was responsible for the state their target was in.
To Falcon's surprise, he found a pulse and a nearly undetectable breathing pattern under all that blood. His curses grew louder as he desperately tried to dress horrific wounds, bandage and stabilize everything until the human being beneath could be detected. IV against dehydration. Blood pill. He probably wouldn't survive the shock of a Soldier Pill to go with it. So – make sure the Sharingan was covered. And hope for the impossible.
He was no Tsunade. Then again, he didn't have to be. He only had to see to it that the body survived the way home.
When Falcon finally felt it safe enough to move things to the stretcher Horse had unsealed, nearly an hour had passed. Falcon thought it a great testament to his skills that nobody had died yet. A status he intended to keep that way. He threw Cat a roll of bandages and snarled at him to wrap up his leg before he fainted from the blood-loss. Imbeciles, all of them.
"Let's go. Double-time."
Nobody protested.
Nobody protested, either, when Falcon ordered them to a halt although they were still a hundred miles from Konoha.
"I don't believe it, but he's regaining consciousness. I can't give him any sedatives to keep him out of it with his overtaxed system, and I don't think it's a good idea to strap him down. Anyone know how he'll react?"
Cat hummed vocally, just like his entire body was humming with tension. Just like all of them were humming with tension and exhaustion. "I've run some missions with him. He's left the Spiral (1) eight years ago, but it never really left him. He's going to come up fighting."
Nobody needed to mention that someone of the Copy-Nin's reputation was lethal even a hair's breadth away from death.
"Alright, put him down." Falcon commanded like he knew what he was doing. He direly hoped so, at least. "Cat, as the one most familiar to him, stay with him. Everyone else, stand back. He's waking."
(1) The Spiral: Just like SAS-guys call the SAS the Regiment, I thought it would be a nice touch for ANBU to call themselves something else.
A/N: Once again, I tried to blur the boundaries between reality and dream, between waking and sleeping. The question of what is real has always fascinated me, and both Dreaming and Waking are the result.
I hope I didn't confuse and irritate you too much with all the names and OC's. They aren't important, merely a prop to have a complete, functional world. Their occupation (like doctor, nurse, patient) is the most important bit, and I hope there wasn't too much confusion about that at least.
Another point of this story was to give me some practice in writing a continuous story that spans more than a single scene. I think I'm still bad at it, because it came out quite detached. On the other hand, that is Kakashi's way in his dreamworld, so I didn't bother to fix it.
Last but not least: how well did I do in hinting at what must have happened in the ninja world? Is Kakashi's reaction plausible, or do you think I'm totally off the mark?
I'd love to hear your opinions!
Sakiku