Chapter ONE
Jiraiya enters the hospital room accompanied by Tsunade and Shizune, Tsunade's own apprentice. Apart from the younger woman, who technically falls under 'medic', everyone else is Tokubetsu-Jounin or higher in rank. He can sense at least half a dozen ANBU hiding around the room and as he nods to acknowledge the Tokubetsu-Jounin who had led him there, he thinks this is overkill.
Especially when he moves the curtains surrounding the bed and his gaze lands on the doll like girl lying on the bed, not even twitching. Jiraiya frowns at the chakra suppression restraints around her wrists and ankles and the tracker collar around her neck.
She isn't straining or struggling. All in all, she looks dead.
"She's uh...alive, right?" He asks sheepishly.
Tsunade rolls her eyes exasperatedly. "Of course." She says. "You're starting to make me regret agreeing to leave her to you."
Jiraiya's eyes flicker to her eyes and has to strain to see the rise and fall of her chest. "Uh...right." He glances around. "Can I have Minato-kun's notes?" He takes the notepad offered out to him and inspects the seal Minato had incorporated into her bandages. "He made it an absorbing type?" He notes to himself.
"If Tsunade-sama can make some sort of breach with the antidote, he said he could adjust it to make the poison vanish upon leaving her skin." Shizune explains. "But at this point, this is all he can do."
Jiraiya nods to himself. "That's kinda true...I'll add a reaction seal, so we'll know when the bandages are at their limit...maybe a self destruction seal after she takes them off so no one has to touch them?"
Tsunade whacks him over the head in what he think she thinks in a light tap but is actually a punch. "Not entirely useless, I see." She says.
"I will be if you keep punching me." This time, he receives a stronger punch. "Okay okay, sorry."
Tsunade huffs.
Jiraiya sighs and rubs at the bump on his head. "Are you planning to leave after this?"
Tsunade pauses in her act of reaching for the girl's file and nods firmly. "This was an emergency." She says curtly. "I'll be leaving when you set off."
Jiraiya sighs but does not press the topic they have gone through a countless number of times. "Okay."
Tsunade turns, deeming the conversation over. "Do you want her file?" She asks.
Jiraiya shakes his head. "I probably won't get a thing written there." He says, then remembers something. "Actually-" He leaned over to look at the file again. "So it wasn't me..."
"What?" Tsunade asks.
"We kept calling her," Jiraiya gestures as the restrained girl on the bed "'Her'. Does she have a name?"
Tsunade shakes her head. "Not at this point." She says. "We haven't gotten that out of her yet, though I doubt she'll have an actual name."
Jiraiya winces. "So like, can I name her?"
Tsunade's eyes flash dangerously. "If you name her after one of your porn characters, I will shove that book of yours-"
"I won't! Really!" Jiraiya frantically waves his hands as Tsunade advances. "I won't! I-I-uh-yeah! I'll name her now and you can see, okay? Um, I-Kimi-WAIT-I didn't mean that-Uh-Ha-no-uh-Sa-right-Sakura! She's Sakura. Sakura's safe, right?"
Tsunade pauses but after one last threatening fist clench, she draws back. "I guess that's acceptable."
"It fits her." Shizune chirps helpfully.
Tsunade snorts and replaces Sakura's folder in its holder above the headboard. "Well, I guess we'll leave you here for a while." She says."
"Uh, right." Jiraiya waves over his shoulder then takes a seat on the chair beside the girl's bed. He looks up when Tsunade and Shizune leave alongside their Tokubetsu-Jounin escort. "Hey, can you hear me?" He asks.
The girl blinks once before her eyes move mechanically to look at him.
"I'm Jiraiya." He says, grinning. "Jiraiya the great toad Sannin." He realizes that she probably has no idea what that is and he rushes on. "I'll be taking care of you from now on. I think." He adds, because he is beginning to sound out of character. "Do you have a name?"
There is no reply but he decides to take that as a no; he is beginning to like the sound of 'Sakura'. "Then I'll call you Sakura, okay?"
The girl blinks but apart from that, she doesn't acknowledge him.
Jiraiya resists the urge to sigh. "Well, I'll give you think to think over it." The silence continues and wanting to give himself something to focus on, he quickly flips through his seal notes. "We can take this slowly." He says quietly, half to the girl and half to himself.
The girl does not twitch even a limb.
Jiraiya remains there for the rest of the day. While there are visitor hours, he has permission to stay for as long as he wishes. This is a special case, after all.
A nurse brings in a tray of food Jiraiya knows to be easy on the stomach. "She doesn't eat." She tells him. "We've been injecting her with the minimum nutrients required for the healing process but it might be bad if she doesn't start injecting physical food soon."
Once she is gone, Jiraiya puts down his seal-planning pad and grabbing the plate, he leans in towards the girl away. "You heard the nurse, Sakura-chan. You gotta eat soon, or you won't be able to adventure with the awesome me."
Her eyes flash in his direction for a split second and encouraged, Jiraiya presses on. "You'll get better sooner and we can get those restraints off of you, yeah?"
The pinkette stares at him with those haunting eyes of hers. The bandages around her mouth shift just a little and Jiraiya leans in encouragingly. There have been a couple of times where a similar thing had happened, like the girl had wanted to speak, before she had changed her mind.
He holds out the plate a little closer and from the way she twitches just a little, knows she wants it.
Finally, after a few more minutes of silence, the girl looks down. "What...do I have to do?" She whispers. Her voice is husky and a little cracked, as though she hadn't used it in ages.
Jiraiya frowns, confused. "Huh?"
"The food. What do I have to...do for it?"
It takes Jiraiya a second to register this in his brain and his anger once again surges. The implications are obvious and while Jiraiya has no idea what the living conditions for this girl has been up to this point, he really wants to gut the person who did this to her. He holds back for the girl's sake, though. The pinkette eyes are hooded, as though to protect herself from meeting his gaze. She is glancing swiftly between his hand and the plate, shoulders drawn up in an instinctive way to protect her throat.
It is then Jiraiya notices how underfed she must be to not show hunger after days of not eating and suddenly feels guilty for baiting her like this.
"Nothing." He says, voice uncharacteristically gentle. "It's yours." He places it within arms length of her, so that he does not have to get too close. He then leans back into his chair.
Green eyes glance at him warily and her hand flashes out, drawing the plate towards herself. "I don't have any money." She says weakly. "Money is the main method of payment, right?"
Jiraiya firmly shakes his head. "I don't want anything in return." He tells her. "It's yours. Eat as much as you want. If it isn't enough, I can get you more."
The girl quickly shakes her head. "This is more than sufficient." She says.
They sit in silence while the girl picks the food apart with her fingers and nibbles on the minuscule pieces.
"You don't have to force yourself." He tells her. "Tell me when you're done, Sakura-chan."
The girl curls in on herself a little and tilts her head up a little. "Sakura...?" She asks.
Jiraiya sheepishly grins. "Well, we didn't know your name and...yeah. Unless you have one?"
"My name..." The girl's voice is quiet, like she is testing out the words. "My name is...Sakura."
Jiraiya plasters on a smile but on the inside, it is as though someone is squeezing his chest. He will give the girl to restart, though, and he will give her what has obviously been deprived of her. "Well, Sakura-chan," He grins. "Eat up."
Here's chapter two~
Just a note; 'First Time to see the World' has been completed (Our second complete story, yay~) If you haven't checked it out, please do so :)
Our most 'First Chapter follows' as of yet (120, one more review than 'The Gift of Sight' Chapter one first time round:)).
Darque: A little Sakura/Jiraiya bonding...not much...but yeah.
Raven: I wouldn't really call it bonding.
Darque: Oh? What would you call it then?
Raven: Uh...buildup-to-bonding-bonding?
Darque: I guess that works.
Raven: It does?
Darque: Yup. Anyways, we first thought about having a time skip to get straight into the main sotry part thing but we then changed our mind and decided to include a little back story first.
Raven: It is sometimes difficult to include backstory as the main part.
Darque: Mmhmm.
Raven: Well...yeah.
Read and Review~