By: roterritter
Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto the series or its characters.
Genre: Drama
Rating: T
Summary: Three years after a possible ending to Part II, Sakura is still dealing with the aftermath of the final battle. Despite losing an eye, she is determine to heal the damage to her special person with the help from a gift from Kakashi.
Timeline: This takes place three years after Part II. Sakura is 18.
A/N: It has been a while since I've posted a story, so I'm trying to break my crippling writer's block with this little story instead of trying to tackle where I left off in one my other stories. If this stops my writer's block, I'll finish off my smaller stories, then return to Snakes and Foxes, and maybe come up with something new.
Chapter One - Kakashi's Gift
Ramen for breakfast, ramen for lunch, and ramen for dinner.
It was strange how they picked up the bad habits of those who were special to them, as if to honor them after they were gone. It was also strange how they ended up enjoying it, even when they hadn't before. Then again, it wasn't as if their lives were normal…
Sakura carried two steaming bowls of ramen over to their table and set them down, forcing her quiet companion to reluctantly put down his copy of Icha Icha Paradise. The old book was showing its age, despite the careful care of its reader, as he set it away from any accidental spills.
"Ramen again? You of all people should know this can't be healthy."
She tried to ignore the comment as she sat down, but as a medical-nin of her caliber, it was hard to keep several bits of knowledge over the unhealthiness of just eating ramen from entering her head. It was no wonder Naruto was such a runt several years ago, after eating ramen non stop, and she wondered what healthy foods Jiraiya-sama must have forced him to eat for him to grow as tall as he did.
Before beginning to eat, she brushed a few errant strands of pink hair away, except for a veil of long bangs covering her left eye. She ignored her companion's subtle look, as he tried to catch a glimpse of what she hid.
Her companion put his hands together and said "I humbly receive" before reaching for his chopsticks. Despite his early complaint, he ate the ramen without argument. Whether he liked it or not, or was just eating it out of respect, she didn't know.
Sakura picked up her own chopstick and started eating, but they were both silent while her mind traveled to thoughts about their mission and memories of those who were gone: the one who died and the one who went away.
Three years ago, when she woke up on a hospital bed safe in Konoha, she was completely unaware of the changes that would affect her and her teammates, both old and new, forever. All she was aware of, was that behind the bandages wrapped around her head, there was a splitting pain in her eye as if someone had thrusted a kunai into it.
Unfortunately, what the pain felt like wasn't far from the truth.
Sakura's heart ached when she remembered what ruined her eye beyond repair, even beyond the skills of Tsunade-shishou. The intricate collection of nerves and a complex lens was badly damaged, at best the medical-nin could reconstruct a sightless eye.
She wanted to cry with her remaining eye, but she didn't bother to get up from the bed or even look around the hospital room. Not even a window overlooking a sunny day in Konoha could bring her hope.
Even worse than the loss of her eye was the feeling that despite her best efforts, Naruto was dead…
Before she could explore her memories of the battle, the hospital door opened.
"Thankfully no one else was killed. It is amazing given their opponents, but those kids are rather amazing themselves. Many of them should be Jounin. Luckily Shizune made sure none of their injuries were life threatening."
Sakura easily recognized the voice of Captain Yamato, but she didn't open her eyes yet. Instead, she pretended to be asleep, as she heard another set of footsteps approach her bed, but the other person didn't respond as Yamato-san continued to talk.
"I have a personal request as well. I would like to be assigned as the permanent leader of Team Kakashi. I realize after these latest events, it may be difficult to reassemble the team, but I feel it is the least I can do for him."
She wanted ask what about Kakashi-sensei, but she narrowly avoided it. She had no memory of the end of their attempt to rescue Naruto from the Akatsuki. All she remembered was they were too late for the extraction and she took out her anger and grief on a smug Deidara. The pretty, young man's last work of art took out Sakura's left eye. The most she could do was close the wound before she bled to death and the last she remembered was managing to crawl by Naruto's lifeless side and falling unconscious against him while the others finished their own battles…
A soft, feminine hand caressed her forehead and brushed away her hair in a motherly fashion. With the added scent of the other person's favorite perfume, it wasn't hard for Sakura to know who was by her side, but still she didn't open her eye.
"Sakura, stop pretending to be asleep," commanded the woman. Out of habit, Sakura quickly obeyed, but regretted it as the sunlight nearly blinded her uncovered eye.
"Tsunade-shishou," she whispered.
"That's better," smiled Tsunade. It was a warm smile, with a mixture of sadness and relief. Sakura thought Tsunade was handling it well, given Tsunade's soft spot for Naruto.
"I'm sorry," she managed. The apology was more for Naruto than the Hokage standing next to her. It was suppose to be so wonderful. Naruto was supposed to wake up to find everyone had come for him. The entire former Rookie Nine was there, them and their former teachers, so was Team Gai and even a few Jounin that Naruto barely knew like Shizune and Genma. Naruto was supposed to open his eyes and see everyone he had inspired.
But that never happened…
"Sakura-chan?"
Her blood chilled as if she heard a ghost speak her name.
Yamato stepped out of the way of the door to reveal someone standing behind him. Someone who was on his feet when last she saw him was lying on the ground lifeless.
"Naruto!" she yelled as she shot upright in bed. She didn't believe what her one eye was seeing, Uzumaki Naruto was alive! Yet, there was something different about him. It wasn't the borrowed t-shirt he wore or his sad look as he couldn't meet her eye.
Tsunade walked over behind him and quickly pushed Naruto over to the side of the bed with a small yell of protest. He still wouldn't look at her. She thought it was her ruined eye. Even with the bandages it must been unappealing to look at. It wasn't an uncommon injury for a ninja, but for a kunoichi, it would end her career of infiltration and spying.
"Naruto?" she said, but her voice quivered. She was so confused and she didn't just waking up from the fog of the aftermath of battle to make her more uncertain about her feelings over someone she cared for. How much, she still didn't know.
"Why did he do it?" Naruto's eyes were downcast and his voice was soft.
"W-What?"
"Why did he do it!" he yelled. His blue eyes opened wide and she saw panic and uncertainty there. She felt an immediate need to calm him, but she didn't know what had made him in this state to start with. "Why did he sacrifice himself for me?"
Sakura studied his face as he frowned and looked away. It was then she noticed what was different. The whisker-like lines on his cheeks were gone. In there place was unblemished smooth skin as if they had never been there to begin with.
She blinked in surprise, trying to digest this information.
Naruto's whole body shook with emotion and she couldn't take it anymore as she leaned forward and wrapped her arms around him for the first time. She was careful to place her undamaged side of her head against his and held him tight.
"It's all right, whatever it is." She enjoyed the warmth as she felt his own arms wrap around her, but a part of her was unsure why she enjoyed being hugged back by someone she cared about for once.
"W-Whatever? You don't know?" he whimpered.
She didn't, her mind was too busy trying to wrap her brain around that Naruto was still alive when they were so uncertain he was dead. He had been dead like Gaara, a Jinchuuriki who had his Bijuu extracted died from it, but like Gaara, Naruto was alive again. She remembered when Chiyo-baasama used her reincarnation jutsu to bring Gaara back at the cost of her life. Sakura had watched it happen with Naruto and Kakashi with his Sharingan eye uncovered. Kakashi's Sharingan…
She gasped suddenly as she realized why Naruto was alive.
"Sakura," said Tsunade from behind Naruto. Her voice had a solemn tone, "There is something I have to tell you—"
"We'll find him."
Her companion's words shocked he out of her daydream of painful memories. She looked up and saw that he had finished his bowl of ramen. He rested his elbows on the table, intertwined his fingers, and watched her with brooding dark eyes.
"Sasuke-kun," she whispered.
Outwardly, he hadn't changed much except growing taller over the years. He was still pretty enough to make her heart flutter, but she was older and knew better. Now he wore all black top and pants with a fishnet undershirt that could be seen underneath his wide sleeves. His eyes were still dark, still keeping certain intensity even now that he wasn't obsessed with power or revenge anymore.
As if those words were all that needed to be said, Sasuke reached over and picked up the Icha Icha Paradise book again and started reading where he left off, while waiting for her to finish her own meal.
Sakura frowned, "It's not polite to read a perverted book like that in front of a lady!"
"It never stopped Kakashi-sensei," he replied, while his eyes never left the page and ignored her folding arms, clad in wide sleeves of a red kimono that she wore in place of her regular ninja attire. Despite her appearance, Sasuke wasn't going to expend more energy than required to continue and argument that had lasted three years.
"I don't know why he left you those in his will," she complained. "He should have left them to Naruto, he was the perverted one of us…and it was Jiraiya-sama who wrote them in the first place. I don't understand."
She gave up and started to eat her ramen before it got cold. Knowing Sasuke, he would continue to read each and everyone, over and over in a determined fashion until he discovered some hidden message that their deceased sensei had left. Yet knowing Kakashi, there was no hidden message, only an attempt to make Sasuke not take life so seriously.
In a way, Kakashi-sensei had all left them gifts so that they continue to live their lives to the most of their abilities and she was determined to make him see that once and for all.
Out of the corner of her eyes, she studied Sasuke, wondering what other habits from Kakashi he had picked up. She had learned the most about Kakashi's childhood after his death, including that he had been an arrogant child genius whose personality changed after the death of his teammate, an Uchiha who had been more like Naruto than any Uchiha she knew.
Sasuke had yet to show up late, but Sakura had been tempted more than once despite tempting Tsunade's wrath.
After deciding she had more than enough, she put away her chopsticks and looked out the window to the sunny, busy street of a foreign city.
"It's been three years. Do you think he changed?" she asked thoughtfully.
"Do doubt," Sasuke muttered. "Everyone changes eventually, even you, but I imagine Naruto will still be an idiot."
Sakura smiled, knowing Sasuke didn't mean it as an insult. They both found Naruto's clueless nature endearing sometimes. Although leaving Konoha was not one of those moments.
"DAMN IT!" Tsunade yelled in frustration as she slammed a report onto her desk. "It is my worse fear. Naruto can't mold chakra anymore because his inner coilsystem has literally almost been burned out by the extraction. The chakra pathways are so damaged his chakra can't properly flow through his body."
"But what about Gaara!" Sakura's mind raced to compare Naruto and Gaara's similar situation and the different results. "He can still mold chakra after Shukaku was extracted."
Tsunade sighed as she sat down on her office chair, watching her student's frantic eyes. "Shukaku's chakra wasn't mixing with Gaara's own chakra like Naruto's. Yondaime's seal worked different from the seal on Gaara and the fact of the matter is, it was the Nine Tails that was extracted from Naruto, not the One Tail. The damage was greater. It was also a resurrection jutsu, not a medical jutsu. Even a medical jutsu can't repair this kind of damage, none that I know of."
Sakura practically fell into the chair setting opposite of Tsunade's desk. She felt the adrenaline from the argument rush out of her, leaving her exhausted. "This isn't fair."
"No, it isn't, but he's alive. He has that much."
"H-He can study taijutsu. I'm sure Lee-san and Gai-sensei would be willing to help train him!" she argued.
Tsunade sighed. "That won't work either. Lee is a special case and uniquely skilled in taijutsu despite is lack of ability to mold chakra. Naruto could never reach Lee's ability."
"But he would still be a ninja."
"A ninja who has no hopes of ever becoming Hokage!"
Sakura gasped. Tsunade's words seemed cruel…they would be cruel for Naruto, who only desired to be recognized. Even being an ordinary ninja wouldn't be enough for him. The irony was many villagers who believed that with Kyuubi, Naruto should never become Hokage, would also not accept him after the extraction because he could no longer perform a single jutsu.
The Hokage continued softly, "It's better if I cut him off now, remove him from the ninja ranks and let him live the rest of his life as a civilian. He can't mold chakra, perhaps even the secrets of his techniques have been destroyed, so the Anbu and hunter-nin won't bother him. He could even leave Konoha if he wanted. Perhaps that is better."
"No, it won't be, not for him."
"Are you sure the information is correct?"
Sakura ran her hand through her bangs after stepping of the restaurant, "Tsunade-shishou said it came from Jiraiya-sama himself. He's been busy keeping tabs on Naruto."
Sasuke walked into the street while putting his book safely in his pouch, "Too busy to write a new book I'm afraid."
"If you think Kakashi-sensei hid a hidden message for you in his books then why are interested in a new one that he never read?" she asked him playfully and smiled as he avoided the question by walking away. She followed him, with the smile still on her face.
"I wish we had Kakashi-sensei's dogs, even Pakkun," she complained. "Snakes and slugs aren't very useful for tracking someone down. He could be anywhere in this city!"
Sasuke looked back and shook his head. "I told you, we don't need any of that. The ability to send chakra to the nose to increase the sensitivity of the sense of smell isn't a bloodline jutsu. I can use it to track Naruto."
"You copied it from an Inuzuka?" she asked in shock.
"Of course," he answered as he dug through his pockets and pulled out a forehead protector attached to a long black bandana. "All I need is this. I'll track by smell and you keep your eyes open."
"Yeah right," she muttered as she brushed her bangs with her fingers again. She absolutely refused to tie her forehead protector on lopsided like Kakashi, instead she fussed with her hair constantly to make sure the left side of her face was still hidden.
They walked through the streets, Sasuke occasionally sniffed at Naruto's headband and leading the way, but Sakura had no idea if he actually smelled something or was just going in a random direction. They passed many booths and she wondered if Naruto had shopped there recently or in the past.
While walking behind Sasuke she thought back to how six years ago when her crush for Sasuke developed into love…a twelve year old's love, but love nonetheless. Then Sasuke left. She and Naruto spent three years of training so they could get him back.
Yet, while doing that she developed a crush on Naruto, which developed into…a fifteen year old's love, still more mature than before, but she was still just a girl. Yet, this time Naruto left. She and Sasuke spent years of training so they could bring him back.
Sakura knew she could never get Naruto back without making a ninja again and he couldn't do that without his chakra system being healed, so she spent three years learning how to do that. Sasuke spent his time earning back the trust of the village so that he would actually be allowed to leave it to help her find Naruto.
Without bringing Naruto back, she would never be able to decide what to do with the love that she felt for both of her boys.
Sasuke suddenly stopped, causing her to bump into him while lost in her thoughts.
"What is it?" she asked while rubbing her nose where it met his shoulder.
"This way!" Sasuke took off in a burst of speed that she barely kept up with until he finally stopped at a tall building that looked like a warehouse, where he stood with his back close against the wall.
She copied him and listened while he waited. All she could hear was several angry muffled sounds of voices.
Sasuke motioned upward before he ran up the wall, attaching his feet to the building as if he was running up a tree. With his black outfit, he looked like a harmless shadow until he found an open window and slipped inside. Sakura followed, but she hadn't prepared her vision for the darkness inside despite the rays of sunlight from the windows.
They both managed to crawl along the beams near the ceiling and once they found a shadowy spot, Sakura could concentrate on the conversation below.
"SHUT UP! DAMN YOU!"
The loud mouth male voice was someone still recognizable despite the changes of growing up further in three years. It was enough to bring a huge smile to her face.
One of the unfamiliar voices echoed up from below, "What are you, an idiot? This doesn't involve you. The gambling debt of Kitamoto-san is the sole responsibility of him and his family. Not some penniless punk like you!"
Sakura looked down and quickly tried to find Naruto. It wasn't hard, he was the only spiky haired blonde in the warehouse, but even from her bird's eye view, she could see he was wearing a peasant outfit…which was bright orange of course.
"Geez your rude," Naruto said in an ignorant fashion as three large men surrounded him. He merely scratched his head as if it were no trouble.
"I'm about to get ruder, guys…teach this punk a lesson."
Sakura didn't wait for the attack to start. Whether Naruto could defend himself or not, she hadn't come this far to watch Naruto be beaten to a pulp. She quickly reached into the wide sleeves of her kimono to release her secret weapon…hundreds of sakura petals that fell slowly down from her sleeves to the ground like feathers.
"What is this?" yelled the leader of the thugs.
She quickly performed a few hand seals before muttering her jutsu's name, "Sakura Illusion: Confusion Jutsu."
The mere smell of her sakura petals was enough to pull the thugs into her genjutsu, much like other common genjutsu that used sound of a flute or motion of a finger. She quickly controlled the chakra in the thugs' nervous system to make them see what she wanted them to see.
Two of the thugs quickly turned on each other, their fists managed to strike each other at the same time in an almost comical effect. The third quickly turned on the leader, who wasn't nearly as tough as the thugs and passed out after one bone-breaking punch.
Sakura turned and smiled toward Sasuke, proud over her quick and effective illusion, but frowned in annoyance as he had watched the entire thing with his Sharingan activated.
"Genjutsu?" Naruto said to himself after he quickly figured out why the thugs were beating each other into bloody pulps. "HEY! I could have taken them on myself! I don't need anyone's help!"
"Of course not," said Sasuke coolly as he jumped off the beam and landed on a cement floor covered in sakura petals. The only thug still conscious stumbled toward him and Sasuke pointed his wide sleeves toward him, "Hidden Shadow Snake Hand Jutsu."
Four snakes, impossibly long, flew out from the inside of his wide sleeves and hit the thug square in the chest with enough force to send him flying across the warehouse. The snakes were pulled back into Sasuke's sleeve before the thug even hit the ground.
"Sasuke? You bastard!" Naruto looked at him with anger in his blue eyes. "That genjutsu was yours."
Sakura surprised him as she jumped down, alongside Sasuke, "No, it was mine."
"S-Sakura-chan?" stuttered Naruto.
She stared at him, but her emotions were in turmoil. She looked him over, partly to ensure that he was still healthy and hadn't withered away from an unhealthy diet of ramen. The other part was to see how he had grown.
Her eyes roamed from his feet to his face, she almost smiled as she realized he was still in shape as if he was still a ninja, but her eyes widened in horror as they reached his face.
"What have you done!" she screeched in sudden anger.
Sakura rushed forward and while Naruto tried to back away, she grabbed him by the collar while she caressed his cheek with her other hand. Three years ago the whisker-like lines on his cheeks disappeared after Kyuubi was extracted. When he left Konoha his cheeks were smooth and unblemished, but now he had three scars on each cheek, mimicking the lines he once had.
Despite the years apart and the changes between the two of them, being wary of Sakura's fury had become instinct to Naruto as he tried to stand still and hide his own personal shame.
"Did you do this?" she asked as she softly caressed a puckered scar with her fingers.
Naruto grabbed her right hand by the wrist and pulled it away, suddenly aware that it didn't make things better, as instead of her touching him softly, now he had his hands around her slender wrist where he could feel her heartbeat pulse underneath her soft skin.
Naruto silently gulped before answering, "Yeah, I missed the lines. My face didn't look right without them, so I used a kunai one day and cut them back on."
Sakura looked at his tortured expression with sympathetic eyes. "Naruto."
"Geez," Sasuke said, "More reason for you to come back with us, idiot."
"I'm not going back!" yelled Naruto.
"Yes…you will," Sakura said in a determined tone as she reached up with her left hand brushed away her hair to reveal her left eye.
"What the?" said Naruto in shock as he tried to pull away, but couldn't move his eyes off the red pupil of Sakura's left eye, marked with three tomoe, that started to turn like a wheel. "How did you—"
"Sleep," she ordered and the word was more than just a command as Naruto's body went limp. Sakura supported him and slowly knelt down with him, holding him against her. "Sleep and when you wake up, this nightmare will be over."
"Don't blame Shizune," said Tsunade as she stood behind Sakura as the teenage girl examined her left eye in the hospital room mirror while in shock. "Kakashi ordered her to implant the Sharingan…I'm not sure what the man was thinking."
Sakura was barely listening as she touched her cheek underneath the eye. Shizune did well enough to remove any possible scars. It was hard to tell that Deidara's last explosive had ruined the side of her face. The only sign was a man's eye staring back at her.
"Why?" she asked, but wasn't really expecting an answer.
"I don't know," Tsunade sighed and crossed her arms. "Perhaps he didn't want you to be half-blind for the rest of your life or maybe he just didn't want a part of Obito to die. Either way, I'll make sure you're trained with it. No use for it be useless for you and we happen to have a Sharingan master locked up, we'll consider it part of his rehabilitation."
"Rehabilitation?"
"Of course, I'll make a good ninja out of Sasuke eventually," she said. She uncrossed her arms and smacked a fist into her palm. "Even if I have to beat everything Orochimaru ever taught him out of him."
Sakura giggled at Tsunade's idea of rehabilitation, but she returned her attention to the dark red eye. Part of it felt like a stranger's eye, she knew nothing about Obito except perhaps that Kakashi blamed himself for Obito's death and perhaps that Obito was his friend as well as a teammate. Obito was the bases for much of Kakashi's belief about helping his teammates.
"Who knows about this?" she asked.
"Everyone who was at the cave except for Naruto of course. He was out of it even after Kakashi used that jutsu," answered Tsunade.
"Don't tell him," she told her teacher as she started brushing her hair over her new eye. "Naruto is having a hard enough time about Kakashi's death. I don't want him to know about the eye until I'm ready. Okay?"
"Sure."
Sakura looked at her reflection and gave herself a sad smile. "I'm sure Kakashi-sensei felt that as long as he lived, a part of Obito-san lived on through his eye. So for me too, I feel a part of Kakashi-sensei still lives. His only original technique is with Sasuke-kun, his only friendship is with this eye that is now with me, and his life is with Naruto. I'll make sure we all live on and treat what Kakashi-sensei had given us with respect."
With some effort, they managed to drag a still sleeping Naruto back to their inn. Sakura personally wanted to summon a horse-sized slug to take care of carrying Naruto, but Sasuke rejected the idea, as it would have brought too much attention. So instead, they managed to drag Naruto, heavy with compact muscle, to their room.
"Perhaps you should have waited to use your Sharingan until we got here?" complained Sasuke as he fumbled with opening the door while supported Naruto.
"It's not like he would have come with us willingly," she argued. Sakura had forgotten when she and Sasuke had stopped calling her left eye "Kakashi's Sharingan" and started referring to it as her own. For three years in-between medical jutsu research she had studied underneath Sasuke to learn the same abilities that he had mastered the three years before.
Her biggest break through when Jiraiya-sama told her to stop trying to learn to use it as Kakashi would, but to use it in her own way with her own unique skills. She quickly found between her aptitude for genjutsu and her medical jutsu, she found her own way that was very successful.
"Put him on the bed," she told him and he glared at her as if it was obvious.
Naruto landed with a thump from a not so gentle Sasuke just letting him just drop despite Sakura's careful attempt to lower him down. However, once he was down she sighed with relief.
Now came the hard part.
Sakura loosened her forehead protector, swept her bangs back, and retied it so that none of her hair got in the way of her Sharingan. She then got out a long red cord and tied up her kimono sleeves so her arms were free.
Sasuke spoke up, "Are you sure about this? Not even Tsunade-sama could heal him."
"She hasn't spent three years training and researching for this," she argued. "She hasn't spent three years mastering this Sharingan so she could use it help heal her special person. I'm going to do this…it will happen. If I can heal Naruto, then I can live knowing I sacrificed my original eye for this knowledge."
"But I don't see how!" Sasuke was a master at the copying abilities of his Sharingan and knew full well of the damage that the Mangekyou Sharingan was capable of. He didn't understand how she could use it to help her heal. "It is his inner coil system that is damaged, if you had a Byakugan then you could see the chakra pathways and the pressure points, but the Sharingan can only show you the chakra flow."
"Exactly," she answered. "The chakra flow is all I need."
Sakura shoot out her hand with two fingers extended and struck Naruto's chest where a bit of blue chakra erupted out.
"What the—that wasn't a chakra scalpel," he said in confusion. "It was a Gentle Fist. Did you copy that from a Hyuuga?"
"Of course," she said, mimicking his earlier answer to her similar question.
"How? Hyuuga are secretive about even that jutsu."
"Hinata-chan let me copy it after I told her why I needed it for. She was also very helpful teaching me what the Hyuuga know about the inner coil system…most of their knowledge is used for their fighting style, but none of them thought about the medical application. I actually learned how to heal a chakra pathway. Something that's not even in Tsunade's books."
"Even so, you can't see the inner coil system. The Gentle Fist can decrease or even increase the chakra flow through the pressure points, but how can you do that without seeing them?"
Sakura calmly answered him with a professionalism that Sasuke hadn't seen before. "I can cut the nerve of his leg without seeing it. I can heal his heart without cutting open his chest. I won't have the accuracy of a Hyuuga, but my intent isn't to hit a pressure point, but to heal his chakra pathways. By combining the Gentle Fist with healing chakra I can effectively rewire the damaged parts of his chakra system until I see a normal chakra flow return."
"Sakura," he whispered as he watched her. He activated his own Sharingan to watch the delicate work. Sometimes she hit a chakra pathway, sometimes she didn't, but the Sharingan always showed her the chakra flow. When she could see that, she knew where to spread her green colored healing chakra with the soft touch of an open palm.
The process took hours, so long that even her perfect chakra control couldn't prevent the Sharingan from exhausting her, but she wouldn't give up and after several hours, he finally saw Naruto's chakra flow return to normal.
"Sakura, that's enough! You should rest now before you damage yourself," he warned her. He didn't know if she heard him or not as she drifted out of unconsciousness and fell toward the bed and practically onto Naruto.
He sighed with relief. Naruto was healed and Sakura could finally give up this obsession with healing him. As someone who knew about obsession, he knew that it was time for them to rest.
Next Chapter - Sakura's Promise
Author's Note: This idea started when I started thinking about Kakashi's Sharingan eye might be inherited by someone else. Kakashi and Obito both have blood type O. The only one of his students with O is Sakura. The story grew from there from the characters' reactions.
In the first scene, I use one of several translations I found for Itadakimasu. It didn't seem right for "Japanese" characters to start eating without it, but I wanted it to be subtle for readers who don't like too many Japanese words in their fan fics.
In the last scene, it may have ended suddenly, but I felt it was more dramatic than to let it continue to a weaker resolution.
Version 1.3
1.0: Original
1.1: Fixed some grammer mistakes and added some more notes.
1.2: Changed a few notes to reflect that it is no longer a one-shot and will be continued.
1.3: Changed a few wordings to match the terms I've found on a few information sites. Nothing too seriously different, but I wanted to be accurate as I continue forward. For example: chakra system, is now the inner coil system, which is to chakra as blood vessels are to blood.