Disclaimer: I do not own anything related to Naruto, all rights belong to Kishimoto-sensei or whoever owns them.
Chapter 3: Huh?
Slowly, ever so slowly, crystal blue eyes opened and peered up at the ceiling. A confused expression slowly appeared on the blonde's face as if he didn't understand where he was. He groaned as light flickered through the curtains covering the hospital windows and pierced through his sensitive eyes. His eyes slipped closed once more as he tried, in vain, to banish the headache that was starting to form behind his eyes.
"Gaki, you better have a good explanation for why you aren't healing as fast as you used to." The voice he heard was supposed to sound angry, but it held a lot of affection as well.
His eyes popped open as he recognized that voice. He was startled to see Tsunade-sama leaning over him, checking his vital signs, with a worried expression over her young-seeming face. He sat up, stifling a groan as the sudden change on position elicited a painful reaction from his body. This was a painful reminder that he was indeed awake, that what he was seeing was actually there, and that, no, this wasn't a dream.
"T-Tsunade-sama! What are you doing here?" His shocked voice was met with slight annoyance.
"What do you mean 'what am I doing here'? I work here, remember?" Her eyes narrowed slightly as she processed the honorific he had used.
He looked at her in disbelief for a few seconds, his mind telling him that it was absolutely impossible for her to be here. His first thought after coming to terms with the reality that this wasn't a dream was that this was a genjutsu, but any enemy he had wouldn't be so stupid as to use someone who had been dead for almost a year as a way to get any kind of information out of him. He decided that something had gone wrong with the jutsu that he had tried to use to escape his captors. He filed this information away as something to talk with Mika about later, and decided to see who else was with them in the room. His squinted eyes (in an effort to relieve the headache brought on by the sunlight) passed through the room. They widened upon meeting the gazes of Sakura and Sasuke.
"Whoa, what happened to Haruno-san? And who is that man?"
Sakura did a double take on being referred to in such an unfamiliar way. Sasuke blinked but gave no other show that his best friend had just asked who he was. Tsunade turned the blonde's head so that he was looking into her eyes.
"What on earth are you talking about? Sakura is fine and Sasuke's been your teammate for years." Her voice was firm, thinking that the young man was playing a joke on them. After all, he wasn't Konohagakure's biggest prankster for nothing, even if he had toned it down considerably in the past few years.
The blue eyes closed in disbelief and he rubbed at his eyes, thinking that he was, somehow, still asleep despite the pain from earlier. When he opened his eyes he was greeted with the same apparition as before. Tsunade-sama was looking at him like he was trying to pull a joke; Haruno-san was looking slightly worried, and the raven-haired man looked annoyed. Though if he hadn't been living with Mika since he was a small child he would never have been able to pick up on the subtle way the man's emotions were displayed on his face. He brought his hands up into a single seal and released a small amount of his chakra in an attempt to dispel what he thought was an illusion being placed on him. When nothing happened his eyes narrowed as he saw several similarities between the raven-haired man Tsunade-sama had called Sasuke and his wife.
The others were a little surprised at the obvious attempt at dispelling a genjutsu that the blonde made, although there was no genjutsu in place in the room that any of them knew about. When he spoke, his voice was more controlled than the other three had ever heard before coming from the mouth of their blonde friend. His voice was serious and a little suspicious; as if he believed that he was under a genjutsu and unable to dispel it and was being interrogated.
"What do you mean he has been my teammate for years? I have never before met this man in my life."
Tsunade blinked. Now she was worried, it didn't seem like the gaki was joking. He sounded serious when he said he didn't know the Uchiha. She sighed and rubbed her temples with her fingers.
"What on earth did those cloaked idiots do to you?" Her eyes snapped opened to stare into blue eyes. "That is, I assume it was the Akatsuki who had you--"
She was cut off by the younger blonde, "Tsunade-sama, though I do not wish to be rude, I am not going to answer any questions until you tell me who that man is and why he looks like Mika."
Sakura sighed, "Naruto, what are you talking about? Sasuke's been on a team with us since we were 12." Her eyes narrowed for a moment in confusion, "And who is Mika?"
The blonde's eyes narrowed in annoyance and…was that compressed anger they saw reflected in his gaze?
"Did you just call me Naruto?"
Sasuke spoke for the first time since the blonde had awoken, "Would you prefer the title dobe or possibly baka instead?"
The two women in the room only showed mild surprise at the fact that the heir to the Uchiha Clan had just made a joke. He had become a lot more easy-going since his stint in Otogakure, but every time he made a joke it surprised them. Whether or not they were becoming more or less used to it. They did expect the blonde to retort with his usual insult to the Uchiha, though, and were very surprised when it didn't come. Instead, the blonde blinked in surprise and then scowled.
"I'm going to pretend that I didn't hear that, because my mother taught me to have manners with someone that I just met." He turned his gaze towards the pink-haired kunoichi, "What do you mean 'who is Mika'?" His blue eyes began to look worried and he dropped the scowl.
He had subtly spread his chakra throughout the room, and it didn't feel like a genjutsu. He had confirmed, to himself at least, that the young-seeming blonde next to him was indeed Tsunade and the pink-haired kunoichi standing next to the raven-haired man was Haruno Sakura. His wife may tease him about his inability to use his chakra like she did, but no one could ever fool him about their chakra signatures. And he would recognize the signatures of these two woman almost as well as his own blood family on the basis alone that they were family, to him at least. The raven-haired man's chakra was familiar, but he couldn't place how just yet…
His question was met with silence. He was beginning to feel even more uneasy, if that was even possible. Well, might as well play it out like his father would…like trying a joke. That always seemed to work for the man that had oh so graciously donated half of his genes to create the whiskered young man that was currently sitting on the hospital bed. Man, he hated hospitals.
"What? Did I grow my tail back or something?"
This small attempt at humor only seemed to make the situation worse. The blonde was silent as he looked into the shocked faces of the three who sat in the room with him. His mind was still trying to figure out the impossibility of Tsunade-sama being alive, much less why Haruno-san looked much younger than he last remembered. He wasn't an idiot, but he knew that this was all real in a very frightening way. He massaged his temples for a moment in a vain attempt to relieve his ever-growing headache before he sighed.
"Naruto, you don't have a mother." Tsunade began, ignoring the question about a tail when she heard the subtle attempt at a joke being inserted into his tone. She was glad that the young man had finally done something to indicate that some part of this was a joke, albeit not a very funny one. "She died when you were born, remember?"
The young man blinked, "Why do you keep calling me Naruto? And what do you mean my mother died when I was little?"
His eyes widened as the slight fog that had accompanied the headache and, unfortunately, lingered over his thoughts since awakening in such a familiar place finally lifted from his mind. He paled as his eyes, once again, swept over those in the room with him, his mind finally clicking with that missing piece of information that he had been looking for since seeing Tsunade-sama leaning over him in bed. He leapt from the bed and darted to the window, flinging the curtains back completely he gaped at the sight of the Hokage Mountain.
He didn't register when three pairs of hands shot out and grabbed him from behind, pulling him away from the window. He didn't register the worried looks on the faces of the three who now stood in front of him as they placed him back on the bed in a seated position. His mind had stopped processing information with the shock of seeing only five faces carved into the mountain.
A/N: So, how was that? Any guesses on what's going on? I'm interested in what my readers think of my story. Alas, none have been so kind as to leave a review...yes, that was a not so subtle hint.
