"N-Naruto?"
The sound of his name startled him. He realised that hours had passed in which he had sat on the cold, hard windowsill while harassed looking medics carted the injured past him. Though the sky had darkened considerably and the moon was out, the base of the Shinobi Alliance was far from quiet. He could hear the cries of those in terrible pain outside.
Everything was a mess.
Warm hands on his shoulders made Naruto look up with tired eyes. A pale face hovered above his in the semi-darkness. Recognition was slow to come.
"Hinata?"
She was bruised and bloody to be sure, but unharmed and Naruto fervently thanked his lucky stars for this small mercy; that Hinata, who was probably the kindest, bravest, most beautiful girl he knew, was not lying in a small bed with her arm hooked up to an IV and looking for all the world as though she had nearly died. In his overwhelming relief, he flung his arms around her.
"Are you alright?" she asked softly, regarding him with anxious lilac eyes. "Kiba said you weren't doing so well."
That was true, he supposed. This should have been the best day of his life; he'd stopped the Akatsuki, ended a war and finally got his best friend back – but it was all going wrong. Kakashi was unconscious. Sakura had fallen into a coma.
Sasuke had been taken away.
The moment she had seen that her apprentice was settled into an available bed just down the hall, Tsunade had dragged his best friend off to be interrogated by Konoha's finest – and Naruto had been forcibly restrained from following.
"STAY HERE." Tsunade had yelled at him. "You're undoubtedly a hero Uzumaki, but I am still your Hokage and you have no business in this interrogation room tonight!"
That had been four hours ago now.
Still clinging to Hinata, he buried his face in her shoulder and concentrated only on the fact that she was here and alive and not fainting for once. Instead, she wound her arms around his back and hugged him closely.
"I'm so glad you're okay," he murmured, thinking of Sakura and her pinched, white face. "I was worried something awful had happened to you…that- that someone had-"
He couldn't finish the sentence, so horrible was the thought.
"I was worried about you too," she admitted shyly. Even in the dark he could make out the faintest of blushes across her cheeks, but she wasn't stuttering anymore. There was something different about her since Pein's attack on the village; it was as though she had stopped doubting herself and found a hold on the strength, the steely determination that had always been hidden under her gentle personality.
"Is it true that Sasuke has come back?"
"Yeah. At least- I think so."
She smiled for him. "He was always going to come back, I think," she said quietly. "Lady Tsunade knows it too. I think it will be okay, Naruto."
He glanced across the hall to the thin door that Sakura lay behind, comatose and ghostly pale. Every time he tried to enter the room, something stopped him. He couldn't seem to turn the handle and take that first step towards her bedside.
Hinata pulled back and took a seat beside him on the cold window sill and Naruto thought she looked tired. They were all tired; under the bright moon it was one of those endless, sleepless nights.
"But- how do you know?" he asked. For some reason he couldn't seem to find his usual optimism, the determination to make things turn out in his favour in the face of adversity. Everything had gone wrong, he decided, in that moment when he'd seen Sakura dying in Neji's arms.
Her fingertips grazed his and it sent helpless little flutterings up his arm and through his chest. He could feel a blush of his own warming his skin.
"Because-" Hinata hesitated for a moment, "You inspire people to change, Naruto. You bring out the best in them. I think… I think you bring out the best in himtoo."
By 'him' he knew she meant Sasuke.
"I don't know," he admitted in a whisper. "I don't think Sasuke's ever listened to me, Hinata. Three weeks ago he tried to- three weeks ago he would have killed us all. He almost did kill Sakura-chan. And now….now I don't know why he changed his mind, but I know it's got nothing to do with me."
"Oh," she said.
"What?" Naruto turned away from the moon lit sky and squinted at her curiously. Something he had said had made her suddenly sad. "What is it?"
"N-nothing," she replied, "It's just- you haven't really seen Sakura since you were…" she trailed away, flushing.
"Since I was sent on a bogus mission."
"Yeah. Umm, I didn't know-"
He sighed and cupped his chin in his hand. "It's okay."
She smiled at him then and Naruto found himself smiling tentatively back, the warmth in his cheeks growing by the minute. In a way, he thought absently, Hinata had been a lot easier to deal with when he didn't understand her reactions to him; now that he knew- now that he knew she loved him, he found himself acting in a strangely similar way. He just couldn't help it.
"Anyway," she continued, sounding suddenly very flustered. "I was just thinking that…for a while now, Sakura has not been acting like herself. I- I was worried, Naruto. I didn't understand why, but now…something bad happened when you saw Sasuke that time, didn't it?"
He could still see it in his mind's eye; the brutal force of Sasuke's fingers pressing into Sakura's throat, the gleam of a kunai whipping through the air, the way she had trembled ever so slightly in his arms. Looking back on it, Naruto thought it was her eyes that bothered him most; that in that single moment when she had looked back at Sasuke over his shoulder there had been inside those green irises, a deep and bottomless loss.
"Yeah," he said, wishing he had not been sent away so soon after that disaster. "It did."
Hinata said nothing, but placed her hand gently over his in a gesture that expressed so much tenderness he felt like his face was on fire. It was only for a moment, but as she pulled her hand away, Naruto reached out and curled his pinky finger around hers.
They stayed like that, with their littlest fingers intertwined, for the rest of the night.
"…."
Given that he'd deserted Konoha pretty much as soon as she became Hokage it wasn't surprising that Sasuke knew nothing about Tsunade other than that she was a medic and appeared to have a somewhat volatile temper. But he was quickly learning.
As he had recounted his story (somewhat reluctantly, it was true), he had come to learn that the current Hokage was also condescending, vindictive and somewhat rude. Or maybe she just really didn't like him.
Sasuke wasn't sure how he had expected her to react to the truth about the Uchiha massacre; to call him a liar, he supposed, or to claim the elders had been perfectly justified in their decision.
"…I need a drink," she eventually responded, looking suddenly ragged. "Shikaku- there's a bottle of sake stashed in the bottom left drawer of the filing cabinet in the conference room. Don't let Naruto see you either."
The shinobi who had spent the entirety of the interrogation leaning against the wall by the door, quietly let himself out.
"Bloody Danzou," the blonde woman cursed, sitting with her head in her hands. "Bloody village elders. Bloody, bloody Minato for dying and causing Sarutobi-sensei to let this mess happen!"
She pounded on the desk between them and Sasuke was astonished to see it split in half as though she'd hit it with a sledge hammer. As if sensing his minute change in facial expression, the Hokage looked up and glared straight at him.
"I hate you," she told him. "Just so you know. Not because you're a Uchiha, but because you don't use your brain, you stupid boy. What were you thinking, letting Madara manipulate you like that? Idiot!"
Sasuke just stared at her as the door opened behind them and Shikaku handed Tsunade a bottle. Immediately she took a long swig from it and he couldn't help but feel somewhat miffed that she couldn't even be bothered to keep up the pretence of a semi-respectable Kage in front of him.
He didn't appreciate being called an idiot either; something about her tone and the words seriously rankled. No one called him an idiot.
Before he could get properly angry though, Tsunade finished what was left of the sake and threw the bottle against the floor.
"I guess the question is, what to do with you? Any suggestions Shikaku? No- don't answer right now, just have a quiet think while I get this sorted." She glared at Sasuke a little more.
"This had better be everything," she warned him, amber eyes narrowed dangerously.
Sasuke kept his expression blank. "It is."
"Alright. I've little doubt you're telling me the truth about Itachi and the elders, but Danzou is dead. You already turned on Madara. So what do you want, Uchiha Sasuke?"
Though he hated to admit it, her question startled him precisely because he had no idea how to answer anymore. In making the choice to save Naruto, it seemed he had also made the choice to abandon his plans to destroy his home.
"I don't know."
Did he want to go back to Konoha? Could he go back and take back his old life like nothing had changed? Just stroll along and rejoin their ninja ranks like he had never left?
"Well that's very helpful," Tsunade snapped at him. "I could do with a bit more than an 'I don't know' when I've got the Raikage breathing down my neck to have you executed for your activities as an Akatsuki member! If you want to return to Konoha –and by god you had better mean it if you do- then I can find a way to save your stupid skin. Probably. There will be consequences of course, but if you chose to leave then I can safely promise you will probably be dead within a year. You've made a lot of enemies during your three years abroad- I bet you don't even know how far your reputation has spread, do you?"
When he said nothing, she continued. "I can't promise you life will be perfect. It won't. You've hurt a lot of people and angered many others. But if you want justice for your clan, as you said…well. I can give you that at least."
"Is that a promise?" He stared at her intently, looking for any signs of deception, any hint of a lie in her weary face. To her credit, she gazed back unflinchingly and there was only hardened resolve in her eyes.
"A promise conditional to your return."
He had not forgotten what Konoha had done to Itachi, or to his clan. He had the feeling he would never be able to forgive it either, but his family was owed their justice. And he owed to them to see it through, even if it meant spending the rest of his life in the place that had destroyed everything he had ever known. The clan came first, always. In the absence of any other purpose, this was the truth he clung to. He would deal with anything else that his return would entail, as it came.
"Is that a deal?" Tsunade asked, eyeing him beadily.
Sasuke made his decision.
"Yes."
Tsunade leaned back in her chair and fixed him with a piercing look – one that was a mix of both intense dislike and reluctant sympathy. He did not understand it at all.
"You'd better not hurt them again, Uchiha," she said slowly and clearly, so that he could perfectly hear every word. Something lurched in his stomach. "I'm tired of picking up the broken pieces you leave behind you."
He thought of Naruto's anxious look as Iruka-sensei held him back, the sudden fear in his blue eyes and of Sakura's screams reverberating through the heavy wooden doors that hid her from view. He wasn't sure when it happened, but at some point between their last meeting and the moment when he turned on Madara, the proof of their pain had ceased to please him.
"Sakura will be alright," he replied monotonously, as if stating this as a fact could hide the fact that he was even acknowledging her critical condition.
"Madara tried very hard to kill her," the Hokage said. "And you know better than everyone else just what he was capable of. I would be very surprised if she comes out of this 'alright'."
Blink. Starbursts of light filtering through her eyelashes like lightning bolts. Nothing was discernable; everything was a strange, white blur.
It felt better in the dark.
She blinked again, eyelids fluttering open without her permission. It was the scent on the air that caught her; dust and alcohol and blood. A stale combination.
Blink. Slowly the light took shape and made some sort of sense again. Her arm was on fire.
Sakura, someone was calling. Sakura you're okay – you're okay, stop doing that! Leave your arm alone-
Someone's hand was on her wrist, fingers pressing into her skin and she flailed wildly. Thoughts were scattered and incoherent inside her head and she didn't know where she was. The person leaning over her with the mismatched eyes was unrecognisable. Her lungs burned and she had to put the fire out.
She could hear a strange, desperate wailing sound somewhere close. It was reverberated through her so intensely that she was shaking.
"Sakura."
Who was Sakura? She lashed out at the silver haired man who had been sat by her bed, but he caught both her wrists easily and held them in his gloved hands. Why wasn't the fire burning him?
"Sakura."
The wailing sound was coming from her. She became aware of the heart pounding painfully in her chest and the strain in her ribs. Something scraped in her throat when she swallowed.
With awareness came reason, filtering slowly through the hysteria clouding her mind. Sakura stopped struggling.
"Do you know who I am?" Kakashi asked, looking down at her with concern in his eyes. One of his orange books lay spine up on the floor where he had dropped it. There was an orange jacket hanging over the back of the chair.
"…K-Kakashi…"
Though she could feel her mouth moving, she didn't sound like herself. Her voice was so far away, like it was coming from somewhere else entirely. The light hurt her eyes.
Her arm wasn't on fire anymore, but it was still burning. In her terror she had raked through the thick bandaging and reopened the gashes on her forearm. Her blood was slowly soaking the bed sheets.
"Look what you've done," her teacher scolded softly, letting go of her wrists. Sakura was not hallucinating and incoherent anymore, but she was still dazed. There was a big, black empty space in her head where time had disappeared. Why was she crying?
"You're okay now, Sakura," Kakashi said, "You're safe. Madara is dead."
Madara.
The name sent such a spasm of terror through her that her vision went white for a moment – white and grainy. Sickening images rushed up before her eyes, nightmarish things that he had created and unleashed on her within the confines of her mind.
"...he killed me," she choked.
She thought she saw him frown and realised belatedly that his forehead protector was not covering his sharingan.
"No. You're alive. You've been in a coma for three days, but you're alive." He paused and then ruffled her pink hair. "You saved me, Sakura."
Yes. The memory was there, somewhere between two eternities stuck in a nightmarish world; her frantic dash across the clearing, the descent of a gleaming silver dagger. It felt like a dream.
She didn't understand anything.
"The war is over," he started to speak again, after she slumped down into her pillows. She didn't recognise this room. "We're all going home soon- the first wave is heading out today with Tsunade-sama."
"Oh."
"Shizune and I have been left in charge of organising Konoha's remaining troops and the injured, in her stead."
Even in her state, Sakura did not fail in her duty to give him a baleful look. Kakashi hastened to scoop up his book of debauchery and hide behind it.
"Slacking off again," she muttered, clumsily summoning chakra to her fingertips so she could repair the damage she had done to her already shredded skin.
"You wound me with your unfounded assumptions, Sakura-chan," he said. "As it happens I am under very strict instructions to watch over you until a certain knucklehead comes back from his search for ramen."
At that Sakura bolted upright and was rewarded by the screaming agony in her ribcage. "Naruto's here?"
"Why do you always assume the knucklehead is me?" Someone demanded from the doorway.
Wide eyed, she looked at Naruto's anxious face and felt like she'd been kicked in the stomach. It was the first time she had seen him in weeks; his blonde hair was sleep mussed and there were bruise like shadows under his eyes. His smile, when he looked at her, was tremulous.
"You look terrible," she croaked.
Naruto strode into the room with measured steps. Hesitant, she would have said, if she didn't know better.
"It's cos there's no damn ramen in this place! I've- I've looked everywhere Sakura-chan and not a single pot! I'm dying here!"
The moment the word 'dying' left his lips, Naruto clapped a hand over his mouth. Kakashi eyed him beadily over the cover of his book, but said nothing. Sakura thought she understood how he was feeling; too many times she'd had to visit her reckless team mates while they were confined to hospital beds, choking down the panic with a well practised smile. Naruto had never had to do that, she supposed. He never handled role reversal particularly well.
"I'm guessing I have you to thank for our victory," she interjected hastily, in a vain attempt to bring some of the colour back into his face. "Naruto to the rescue, as always?"
It didn't work. Instead he sank into an empty chair on the other side of her bed and buried his face in his hands, shoulders trembling.
"Sakura-chan," she could hear his voice wobbling dangerously, "I'm so sorry….I- I didn't get there in time to- to save you…I didn't know."
Was it cruel of her to roll her eyes just then? She glanced at Kakashi, only to find an empty chair and snorted quietly. Of course. Trust Kakashi to bail the minute someone started to cry.
"Naruto," she murmured. "Shut up."
"W-what? Sakura-"
It was like kicking a dog, she thought. But at least he was actually looking at her now, even if he could not seem to meet her eyes.
"Look at me." He complied as best as he could, large blue eyes staring vaguely at a spot over her right shoulder.
"This was a war, Naruto. People get hurt in wars- they die. That's a fact. So you need to shut up about not being able to save me from- from whatever this was, okay? I did what I had to do; what everyone had to do because this – this is what we are."
Tears were rolling down his cheeks now, but her eyes were bone dry. Her voice was flat and unwavering.
"It shouldn't have been you," he choked. "Sakura- it should never have been you…"
Gently, mindful of her healing ribs, she hugged him- this warm, energetic boy who was almost her brother- and budged over so that he could lie down beside her. His hair tickled her neck and he sniffled in her ear like a frightened child. He held her like he was terrified that she would break.
"Shut up," she said again, but softer this time. "I'm not going anywhere, you idiot."
"You nearly did," Naruto mumbled. He really did sound tired. She wondered if he had slept at all in the last few days.
This is what we are, she told herself, staring at the ceiling. We are shinobi- death and blood and violence. That is all there is for us.
"Sakura-chan," Naruto mumbled, clearly struggling not to drift into sleep. Softly, she wiped the tears from his whiskered cheeks.
"I'm sorry," she said very quietly, knowing he wouldn't hear her. There was so much that had happened that she hadn't had a chance to apologise for.
Sorry for lying to you. Sorry for giving up on our dream to bring Sasuke back.
I'm sorry for telling you I was in love with you when I didn't mean it. You deserve so much better than that.
She wouldn't apologise for ending up in a hospital bed though.
"Sakura-chan," he mumbled again, already three-quarters asleep. "Sak-ra….I have….have to tell you…S-Sa…."
His voice tailed away mid-sentence, but Sakura didn't care. It couldn't have been that important anyway.
When she next woke up, the room was pitch black and the sky outside was a blanket of impenetrable darkness, lit only by the faint beams of moonlight that occasionally peaked through the clouds.
For a moment Sakura didn't know where she was- but then Naruto shifted next to her, snoring thunderously in her ear and she felt safe.
They're just dreams, she told her thundering heart as her eyes adjusted to the darkness. Dreams can't hurt me.
She was thirsty though and wide awake. Carefully, she disentangled herself from the blonde's clutches and got to her feet. Her legs shook beneath her and she felt a little nauseas, but she made it to the door.
"There has to be a bathroom around here somewhere," she murmured, feeling her way down the hall. It was very quiet; half the troops had gone now and everyone left was probably sleeping. Only her muffled footsteps convinced her that she was not, in fact, still stuck in the Tsukuyomi.
Just thinking about it made her feel sick to her bones; the knowledge that Madara had tried very hard to destroy her mind before he killed her. It was that, more than anything else, that made her afraid.
Eventually she stumbled upon a small bathroom; the harsh glare from the bare light bulb stabbed into her eyes and made her head ache, but she was able to run a glass of water from the tap.
Sakura was thirsty, but the cold from the water radiated through her bones until she was shaking with it. Her hand trembled around the glass and she slopped water down her front.
"Damnit," she whispered, looking up to stare at her reflection. Someone had cleaned her up a little, she supposed because she was wearing a baggy blue t-shirt and dark shorts. Her hair was clean and the cuts and abrasions on her face had been tended to. Her arm was swathed in heavy bandages, making it feel stiff and clumsy.
She looked small and battered and haunted – a sight that did not endear her to herself. She was supposed to be stronger than this, wasn't she? So why did she suddenly feel like she was six years old and terrified of what might be lurking in the shadows, terrified that the darkness wasn't just playing tricks on her mind?
Turning to put the glass down, she saw a gleam of red out of the corner of her eye. The glass slipped from a numb fingers and shattered on the floor as she screamed –
But there was no one there.
Sakura retched over the sink then, petrified and exasperated in equal measure. "You're seeing things, Sakura," she told herself, gasping. She shivered in the cool night air and buried her face in her hands for a moment.
"You're going to open your eyes and walk back to your room, where you will get in to bed and fall asleep to the sound of Naruto snoring. You won't see any figments of your imagination. You won't have bad dreams."
Clumsily, she gathered up the glass pieces with her hands and dropped them in the wastepaper basket before getting to her feet. She made her slow, tremulous walk back down the corridor to her room, passing door after door and windows that cast in the pearly moonlight.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Sakura froze, every nerve in her body screaming at the sound of footsteps nearby. It was coming from somewhere up ahead, she thought, but she couldn't see anything in the shadows.
Her heart was thumping traitorously in her chest, banging against her ribs like a drum. Her breath came in short, shallow gasps.
Stop it, she thought, trying to regain some sense of calm. You're freaking out over nothing, Sakura. It's probably just Naruto coming to find you.
Slowly, stiffly, she put a foot forward – and another- and then halted as she caught the briefest glimpse of the person's silhouette.
Disarrayed hair, sinuous walk, sloping shoulders –
There was a scream in her throat but she couldn't seem to open her mouth to let it out. The person stepped into a patch of moonlight and then Sakura knew she really had gone insane. Madara had unhinged her after all because the boy who stopped in front of her was none other than Uchiha Sasuke.
A/n: Ahem. Chapter Ten people - I managed to pace myself. Sort of.
Couldn't resist a little NarutoxHinata scene there at the beginning...I like them together :) I admire Hinata as a character because she has become someone who perseveres even at the risk of failure. I myself am the girl who does not even try. Think back to PE class - I am that girl who would let the ball sail past their ear rather than make a fool of themself trying to catch it. You know the one.
1. My mother suggested to me today that I talk to a therapist.
2. Found a really cool, 1-of-a-kind jewellery store today cos it's all stuff made by a load of artists. Hello, pretty, one of a kind ring :)