All For Her…
Description: People thought he loved ramen, orange, and Sakura because that was who he was. But in truth, it was always all for her…
Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto, nor am I making any profit by writing this story.
Naruto grinned and waved goodbye to Iruka as a nurse fussed over the Chuunin's bandages, making sure the shuriken wound in his back was properly tended to. It had been an eventful night to say the least and Naruto, once a three time failure of the Konohagakure Academy, now wore a hitai'ate proudly, marking him as a Konoha shinobi.
As he walked down the hallways of the hospital, he smiled and gave slight nods to the various hospital personnel. In most of Konoha he was either ignored or glared at, but here he received faint smiles in response and the occasional nod, not to mention the one nurse who called "Congratulations on graduating, Uzumaki-san" as he passed her station. Most people would chalk this up to the famous impartiality of Konoha med-nin, but they too had once felt anger towards the young blonde, but that had faded during his many visits.
The genin's feet followed a path he had walked many times now as he reached a familiar area, one he had come to more often than his own Academy class. Waved through by the attendant, he continued down the hallway to a room he knew like the back of his hand. Slipping inside and closing the door, he quietly called out "Tadaime."
He received no answer, but he hadn't been expecting one, though he would have gladly welcomed it. Heading over to the blinds, he adjusted them slightly to let light in without making the bed uncomfortable while talking to the occupant of the bed. "So guess what I did last night? I managed to graduate by beating up Mizuki-teme. I know, I know, he was my teacher at the Academy, but it turned out he was a traitor. I failed the test because they used the Bunshin no Jutsu again and then he tricked me into stealing the Forbidden Scroll from Hokage-jiji. Heh, you should have seen him, the Kami no Shinobi, felled by an E-rank ninjutsu used by an Academy student, it was great!"
Turning to a nearby table, Naruto went about shifting a few items around to tidy up the place and then set to watering the various plants he had brought in. Some of the nurses and doctors had joked he was attempting to turn the room into a greenhouse, but she loved plants, and so he had learned to tend to them and had set about filling the room with greenery for her…
"Anyways, I managed to get the Scroll and made my way to the place where he claimed he would rendezvous with me and I got to learning a jutsu from the scroll: Kage Bunshin no Jutsu. Talk about irony, eh?" he chuckled, scratching the back of his head. "I thought for sure I would mess it up just as bad, but something told me it would work. Just like you, I didn't give up and kept working on it, and boom, I got the hang of it in two hours flat! Not bad considering it's a jounin-level technique, ne?"
With the plants finished, Naruto headed over to his usual seat next to the bed and he took her hand in his, giving it a gentle squeeze. "Anyways, that was when Iruka-sensei showed up and he realized almost as soon as I mentioned Mizuki that I had been tricked. When the teme attacked, Iruka-sensei protected me, not once, but twice, even though he got hurt in the process. I always thought he didn't like me all that much… but I guess I was wrong! He even said that I was one of his best students…" He sniffled slightly and wiped away a small tear. "That was when Mizuki-teme told me about… well, you know what. How he was the reason I was hated since Yondaime-sama sealed him in me. And even though Iruka-sensei lost his parents to him… he still protected me. And so I did what you would have and beat the snot out of the traitor using a thousand kage bunshin! He screamed like a little girl, hehe."
And so it went for the next two hours, Naruto recapping the escapades of the days since his visit, even presenting a picture he had taken of his paint job on the monument; he'd been so busy preparing for the exam after that he hadn't been able to show her yet. Eventually he saw the time and realized he was going to miss his ramen binge with Iruka and gave a quick goodbye and a kiss on the cheek. As he headed out the door, he paused and looked back, his once jubilant face suddenly downcast as he looked at her silent form.
Her favorite color was orange. He had learned that on his sixth birthday and promptly demanded all of his clothes be orange or at least have some orange in them. His orange jumpsuit, topped with blue across the shoulders and waist with a white fleece about the neck, was a direct result of those demands and his drive to become a shinobi. He didn't hate the color but even he knew it wasn't the best clothing for stealth. Still, it was for her…
She loved ramen, and he had made sure to keep a fresh supply of instant ramen in the room. Often he spent the night and ended up eating a heated cup of his own, eventually developing a liking for the instant food. He checked the many restaurants that served it and soon found that Ichiraku's served the best in town. If she ever asked for good ramen, rather than the junk they served in here, he could easily get the best in town for her…
She was in her mid-thirties, an average build and endowment with lightly tanned skin like his own, though it had become paler over time. Her face was somewhat drawn, but still somewhat rounded and beautiful, framed by long red hair which Naruto knew she liked to keep long, all the way down to her ankles. Though she wasn't looking at him, he knew her eyes were green, and he hoped to see them soon. Whenever he looked at Sakura he would see a faint image of her there, and he couldn't help but feel a little closer to the girl because of it. Even though she always turned him down, he would see a ghost of the woman in the girl and would come back for her…
He smiled sadly at the woman and quietly whispered "Please wake up soon, kaa-san. I'm doing my best to make sure everything's just right for you…" Then he walked out of the coma ward, dreaming of the day when he would be able to show her everything he had done for her… because really, everything he had ever done, from the doodles of a blonde and redhead stowed in a drawer of the room to the hitai'ate he now wore on his head, had been all for her…