An: I got a bit sidetracked by writing other fics (like my other SI, Sharpening stones, a male Iwa SI, if anyone's interested) and working on stupidly large art projects for my third year of university. I got double dog-dared to update though, so I couldn't let that slide

Also! Another SI Hana fic has popped up! You have no idea how happy this makes me, not being alone anymore! As they are now, they have a super fast update schedule and already have such an awesome word count, go check out Bloodless by Tavina, their Hana is super cool and they deserve more reviews

Wordcount: 6,749

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Chapter 28 - The Healing Process

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There was an old superstition passed on through generations in her clan about corpses whose eyes remained open while they waited for burial.

Tsume never put much faith in wives tales other than to acknowledge that they must have come from somewhere, as any shinobi worth their salt did. She could not deny the idea that some stories held weight to them, no matter how much they unnerved her.

Seeing Hana hooked up to a machine with a tube down her throat was hard. There was also no denying that.

Her little girl was dry to the touch. Her hands—somehow Tsume expected them to be warmer and colder at the same time. They were just… limp and wilted. She didn't sweat much. Tsume suspected it had something to do with the dehydration. She knew Hana as a girl with hands always fiddling; bunched up in her pockets or twitching about. That anxiety that she had kept tucked away always surfacing in the way her hands moved, sometimes on their own accord.

The skin around her wrists was starting to peel. Did any of the medic's care? Wasn't that itchy?

Hana's sunburn was finally starting to go down. Three days in the sun, burnt in strange patches and no medic was around to check if her daughter could have been aching to itch her face or her arms or anything—Tsume supposed that was what a mother was for, but…

God, what was a mother anyway? Just a person. A person who could lose track of her eldest child when they needed her the most. What kind of a parent was she? She was such a failure—a fool. How could this have happened? The things Hana must have seen...

Sitting by the little hospital bed for two weeks helped her forget the wounds she bore from the battle herself. At least she had the opportunity to strike the Kyūbi head on, (or heads on, man-beast transformation and all) but the fact that she could do nothing but watch as the doctors pulled her daughter away every time when a complication arose… or that Tsume couldn't do more than hold Hana's limp little hand and trace the callouses on her fingers… She couldn't brush her hair or help fluff her pillows for fear of making things worse.

The gauze wrapped around Hana's head was done perfectly. Tsume hated it with a dull, tired passion. She wished she was strong enough to stomach the ugly, raised stitches on the side of Hana's head or the fact the wound had to be re-opened for healing. She hated knowing that whatever it was that was causing the complications was beyond her scope of knowledge. She hated just sitting there, holding Hana's hand, being useless. It reminded her too much of how one of her brothers died. Hell, everything about this reminded her of her loved ones who ended up dying. Death was fucking everywhere. They had already lost Inuzuka during the Kyūbi attack. Hana couldn't be one of them.

(Please- please, god, don't let her be one of them.)

Tsume wasn't the religious kind, but she found herself praying a lot in the two weeks that Hana remained in the intensive care ward. It was cramped and humid underground with so many others suffering and in pain. Tsume didn't breathe a sigh of relief when Hana was eventually transferred to a larger medical bunker with her own room this time. Sure, there was some privacy allowed, but Tsume would not let her guard down until Hana was fit enough to run laps around the village. And maybe not even then.

They had many visitors while Hana slept. Or, well, was comatose. The doctors said it was only a matter of time before she woke up, but time kept slipping by, and the knot in Tsume's stomach only embedded itself deeper in her guts, eating away at her like a hungry growth. Twisting, twisting. She hadn't been this anxious since her first mission on the front lines.

"No visual response yet." Doctor Tanaka tucked his flashlight back into his pocket, scribbling down his findings on Hana's chart before making his way out of the room. It was a process Tsume had gotten used to by now. Tanaka was experienced and was one of the chief medics in Konoha, Tsume had to learn to trust his judgment. "It'd be best if she woke up herself sooner rather than later, you already know that there are other alternatives we could approach if that isn't the case. I'll keep you updated on any Yamanaka with the proper training if you feel like changing your mind, Inuzuka-san."

"Right, yes, thank you for your time…" Tsume chewed on her thumbnail as the man shut the door behind him, tucking her legs underneath her as she sat and listened to the sound of Hana's breathing apparatus.

An old wives tale passed on from mother to child… Listless eyes with no life…. The hunters that their people descended from used to speak of spirits who stole the souls of the dead and twisted them to their wicked ways if they died with their eyes open. What sort of stories would Tsume's ancestors tell if they were here now? What would they think of medically induced comas or surgery? Would their stories still incorporate the same fear and unknowing?

God, this was really fucking up her head.

She found herself getting wistful over the stupidest things as she sat in limbo. The not knowing must have made her more desperate than she thought. She found herself missing Hana's long hair, even though the pup always kept it in a ponytail. She missed the smell of graphite pencils and acrylic paint. She found herself dreaming of rainy days of her and Hana and Tatsuo, nestled up on the couch, Hana tucked between them as Tsume drank in the smell of earth and Tatsuo's cigarette smoke, clinging to his shirt as Hana stirred in her sleep. Kuromaru by the fire stinking of rainwater and Tsume pressed her face into the crook of her partner's neck, his heartbeat a steady thrum beneath his warm skin—

"What are you doing here?"

He didn't answer outright. It gave Tsume time to muster up enough energy to drag her eyes away from Hana's face for the first time and look at the man she once wanted to share the rest of her life with. He looked sheepish (rightly so, the bastard) but he didn't look guilty for showing his face now. Somehow that only ticked her off further, but she waited until he had an opportunity to defend himself. It would make throwing his shitty excuse for not showing up sooner back in his face all the sweeter.

"I heard she'd be here."

Tatsuo Shibata had not benefitted from his service out on the border. Suna had leathered his face and deepened his frown lines that Tsume had once had a mind to smooth out. No longer. His beard had grown more unruly, hardly trimmed, that stunk of sweat and more—ugh—cigarette smoke. Back when they were teenagers, she used to like the smell. It was cool, he was a bad boy her parents couldn't stand because he smelled like nicotine and ash; the kind that lingered in the house long after he left. She could still smell traces of him in their bedroom. Or, well, she used to, before the Kyūbi attack. Now she wondered if there was even a home left for them to go to. Certainly, it didn't include him. He had shown her how shallow his loyalty ran.

(Some bad boy. Turned out, Tatsuo was pretty good at being bad at things in general.)

A small part of her hoped that the house they once shared was gone, wiped clean from the earth by one the Kyūbi's paws or scorched and burnt to cinders so she could start fresh again without him. But it had been her father's house and her childhood home once, petty weakness clouded her judgment and made her wish for foolish things that made her chest ache no matter what. There was no winner either way with what she wanted, Tatsuo included.

It was all so… exhausting. She was tired of struggling so much. She was tired of fighting for things she couldn't have.

"What do you want?" Her gaze drifted back to her daughter and she heard Tatsuo pull up a chair. She let him.

The two of them sat with nothing but the sound of Hana's heart monitor setting a steady rhythm to their silence. The longer it stretched on, the more Tsume grew agitated. When he spoke, it didn't make things any better. "Border patrol was called back to fill in the gaps left. I heard you fought when... when it all happened."

Tsume's good leg swung out from under her to tap the pair of crutches assigned to her. She didn't need them, really, the worst damage done to her leg had been healed and the muscles knit back together, but it was the demon chakra circulating in her system that kept the doctors worried. She and the other frontline shinobi had been exposed to the most, and while her system was more than capable of dealing with poisonous energy thanks to years of training, she knew other shinobi were still suffering the effects. Men and women dropping like flies, weeks after the fight. At least they knew what they were dealing with, even if was just a matter of waiting for the Kyūbi's chakra to dissipate. Sometimes it took months. The effects were there, Tsume wouldn't deny that—maybe that was why she was feeling so suspicious lately. The fox's little hooks had dug in her brain and were whispering things to her, trying to get her to turn on her neighbors.

Maybe that was why she was humoring Tatsuo now too. That damn fox was meddling with her marital life, the bastard.

She found her throat closing up when she spoke about her daughter. "They found her lying in a pile of rubble three days after they sealed it back up down in the old market district. A slab of concrete hit her in the head when one of the buildings crumbled. The only reason she's alive is because of the Haimaru Brothers, but even then, the fact that the concrete didn't kill her completely is a goddamn miracle."

Tsume watched him digest the information and tried to read his face as he sorted it out. She didn't know why she wanted to torture herself, angsting over if it mattered if he cared or if he was just there to screw with her head. Evidently, it was working, because Tsume wasn't as hard-pressed to tear him a new one as she thought she would.

"What was she even doing out there?" He wondered aloud. His hand reached out involuntarily, and Tsume's heartbeat spiked, afraid he was going to touch Hana's hand. He tugged on a corner of her sheet instead and Tsume was caught halfway between relieved and disappointed.

She rested her head in her hands. "There was another kid with her. From what I could gather, they were trying to seek shelter after having a discussion outside of class."

Tatsuo's eyes roved over Hana's white cotton bandages wrapped around her head, his fingers twitching as if wanting to touch them and see if they were real. "Let me guess... which one drew the short stick?"

Tsume was immediately defensive. "It's not a competition," she argued. Tatsuo immediately sighed, as if already knowing exactly where this was headed. "It was an accident. We're all the unlucky ones in this situation. Then again I guess I forgot which one of us was an insufferable prick—I should have known better."

"I'm not here to fight," he pleaded, rubbing his forehead. "Can we just sit and talk like adults for a little bit? I'm not ready to deal with this right now."

A flurry of insults and jabs danced on her tongue but Tsume ground her teeth together and kept her mouth shut, just this once. Hana didn't deserve to hear them fight in the state she was in.

Tatsuo appreciated her silence. The bastard. "Thank you."

He sounded weary. She realized he had probably just come from the border the moment he returned to Konoha—his pants were streaked with mud and his jacket slick with water and sweat from days of solid traveling. He desperately needed a bar of soap. Tsume sunk back into her seat and drew her legs up to her chest and closed her eyes, trying to drown out the scent of earth and musk from her mind.

Fireplace crackling, baby by her side. There was a silence comforted by the sound of his breathing and the gentle rise of their chests as they dozed together, a family, the pitter patter of their hearts a gentle harmony—

Tsume shook her head and asked Tatsuo to repeat himself.

"I said, what happened to the other kid?"

Tsume held onto herself a little tighter. Hana's heartbeat monitor, a little war drum beating away.

"I don't want to talk about it."

How many times had she seen her daughter and Fu hanging out together? He had been her friend. He had hung out at their house together. The kid had barely been over twelve years old—she didn't know what she was going to tell Hana when she woke up. Would she blame herself? Would she blame the Kyūbi? What were they even doing out by the old market? How could she have let this happen...

"Are you alright?" Her thoughts must have reflected on her face, the amount of pity Tatsuo was giving off was enough to keep her from spiraling. He didn't get to try and sympathize with her, not after everything.

"I'm fine." Tsume pushed herself up onto her feet and grabbed her crutches, heading out to the door. She grabbed a little paper cup from earlier and started hobbling down to the nearby water cooler. Tatsuo lingered for a moment but followed her. Damn, she was hoping he'd stay put so she could leave, but then again, she didn't want to leave him alone with Hana. If she woke up and saw him, she didn't know how things would go down. She mostly just wanted him gone again.

"How long do you think she's going to be out?" she made him wait until she was done chugging her water, and then wait a second time after she filled up her cup and chugged that one too. She wasn't even that thirsty. "Tsume?"

"It's day by day now." She got a look from a nearby nurse doing her rounds as the water cooler gurgled and went down further as she got her third cup. Tatsuo tapped his foot impatiently waiting for more answers, but Tsume just shrugged and told him she didn't have any. "I'd tell you more if I could."

"So we could be waiting forever, then." He rubbed his temples. "Fantastic."

Tsume looked at him warily. "There's no 'we'. It's just me—has been for a while now, and that's not changing."

"I know that, I just—" he grimaced and started backtracking. "I just meant... I'm aware, okay? I didn't mean it like that."

"Then why did you say it in the first place?" Tsume emptied her cup for the last time, turning it over in her hands as she looked at Tatsuo from the corner of her eye. She swallowed awkwardly as the same images of family and warmth came rushing back to her, and she had to forcibly cycle chakra to her head to quit the niggling sensation of demon chakra to get her thoughts back in order, but not before words started tumbling out of her mouth that he didn't deserve hearing. "We've actually been doing really good recently. Hasuki and I have been looking through my family's storage for when we can teach the kids clan stuff. Kiba knows all of our faces, Hasuki, Kuromaru, even the Haimaru brothers. He's adorable. 'Looks just like Hana did when she was little too."

There was a pause. It seemed like Tatsuo completely missed the pride in her voice and didn't catch her underhanded way of giving him a bit of information about their family—that he skipped out on—because the only thing he zeroed in on was his beef with Hana. "...does he act like her at all? You know, the stareing. The weirdness."

"Does it matter?" Tsume curled her lip at him, disappointed and not at all surprised.

"I don't know." Tatsuo glowered at her. "Why do you always have to be on the attack all the time?"

She crushed her paper cup in her hands and tossed it into the garbage. "I thought you said you didn't want to fight."

"I did."

"Then we aren't fighting."

She could hear him grind his teeth together as he shoved his hands into his pockets. "Fine, whatever."

Tsume grunted, turning on her heel. "Go pester someone else if that's what you want, I'm done here." She wrinkled her nose as she strode by him, giving him a very obvious once over, "and go take a shower. It's a wonder the nurses haven't kicked you out already."

She retired to her old chair and propped her tired feet up on the one he sat in, distracting herself from old memories of teenage rebellion and cigarettes and Tatsuo—god—by remembering the days when she and her brothers ran the streets of Konoha, pranking civilians and roughhousing in the backyard before they moved house.

Family, family family. Tsume felt like she was drowning, not by the foreign chakra in her system, but by her own hand. She was so sick and tired of seeing the cracks in her relationships. When Hana woke up—because she had to, Tsume needed her to—everything would be fine. Blood was what kept the inuzuka together, and it was family that kept her going even when everything else had gone rotten.

Tsume would do better this time because she had to.

She wasn't willing to start over. Not again.

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Heartbeat, breathing. Was this what it was like to be dying?

In and out, sore throat. Itchy itchy itchy—she felt like she was floating above her body, the world knocked out of its axis and put back in the wrong place. She couldn't open her eyes, couldn't breathe without choking. What happened? Her throat was so sore. God, if she could just have some water…

Thirsty. She a dying man in a desert, blinded by the sun. Sand prickled her fingers and plunged her scorching skin into a chill so cold Hana couldn't tell heat from freezing. Her mind did a hundred somersaults before she found the strength to open her eyes, and even when she did, her vision was fleeting and they fell closed again.

Her eyelids were so, so heavy. It was a battle to keep from drifting and she frequently found herself losing.

She… This wasn't how it was supposed to go, right? Waking up was supposed to be easy. Her chest ached, running on fumes. She was hurt. She was somewhere—someone had found her, that much she could remember. Sort of. Hana saw nothing when she opened her eyes other than blue cotton and tacky shower curtains hanging from the ceiling. She thought she was staring up at the sky, big square clouds hanging over her, unmoving.

She heard people walking by her, once or twice asked for someone to give her some water to help her throat, but something was keeping her from forming words. Her gums itched. Her skin itched. Everything about her was in different states of discomfort. Her back stuck to the plastic sheets underneath her as the nurses changed her tubes and adjusted her pillows. Her eyes fluttered and threatened to roll back in her head when her delicate sunburnt skin felt a wash of cool hospital air—and then met once more with scratchy fabric pressing up against it, the pain was paralyzing.

They had her on some sort of medication or something that kept her drowsy and complacent as the nurses scurried around and did tests. That, or she had been hurt a lot more than she realized, since she didn't even have the strength to lift herself out of bed. Hana didn't know how long she managed to stay awake and she didn't really know where she was, but she had the lingering feeling like things should have gone differently. She had read so many novels back home that said she was supposed to have some sort of revelation while she was asleep. The doctors said she had been in a medically induced coma for the past while—wasn't she supposed to… like, meet her inner demons or something? Or have some sort of awakening of the mind? Or find some sort of resolve she didn't know she had? But—

…nothing?

In the end she was left with nothing but the sound of her heart rate monitor to carry her back off to sleep.

She didn't even dream.

She didn't have some sort of prophetic vision of the future, or saw the faces of her past family, she didn't get to say goodbye to her past loved ones or hear their voices. She didn't see herself reflected in any hypothetical mirrors or get to face down her own evil twin, as much as that would've made for a great story.

She didn't see anything, really. And she was a little too dead to the world to even care.

"Hana-san, I'm going to need you to open your eyes for me please, and then you can go back to sleep."

More tests to see if her brain was damaged. They got more frequent and annoying the more they kept waking her up. The fight to keep her eyes open was getting harder and harder, and she didn't have enough energy to argue with them when they started prodding at her.

She just wanted to fall back into the haze and forget anything bad ever happened. Pleaseeverything was so much easier when she was asleep…

"Very good, very good. Now, can you lift your left arm for me?"

Her body was mostly working on autopilot—chest rising and eyes open but not really seeing anything. She lifted one arm and dimly hoped that it was the one the nurse asked for, only vaguely aware of the tube in her skin resisting the movement. She hated needles with a passion, but the most she could muster up was a vague sense of disgust.

The nurse made a humming sound and scribbled something down in her notebook. "Thank you Hana-san. Okay, you can go back to sleep now. Your mother wants you to rest up."

Sure, okay, her lips mouthed silently, before her eyes drifted shut.

If she had been completely awake, she probably would've expected her mother to actually be in her hospital room, holding her hand or something, but she was too tired to argue. The nurse had pressed a little button on the side of her IV stand and her head grew tired. It was between consciousness and total surrender to the drugs in her system that Hana's mind let her see things that probably weren't there. She liked to pretend they were real at least, she didn't get to dream with the drugs in her system. She remembered daydreaming to the same effect while she had been trapped under the rubble, but the trauma of the event clouded by the same haze that clung to her mind now. It was a small comfort.

Wind kissing the side of her cheek...

Blankets wrapped warm and tightly around her...

The sun beating down on her as she lay by and garden she hadn't seen before…

Dogs barking by the beach… rough cotton on her arms as she ran after them… her feet digging into the sand..

The crackle of a campfire at night... when her friends..

Were all...

With her …

"Hana? Are you... still there?"

Sleep did not take her gently.

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The Haimaru brothers wouldn't leave Hana's bed long after she woke up—and stayed up, this time—no matter how much the nurses protested. They were doused in sanitizing and antibacterial shampoo and given little hospital booties for their paws. They didn't even put up a fuss so long as they could sleep by Hana's feet and keep her company. Kuromaru had visited few times with his partner, but he was too large to stay for long unless he wanted to sleep under the bed. Which he did, actually, several times while Tsume had to take care of clan matters and nurse her pup.

There was no wandering off anymore. In the few short weeks of Hana's recovery, they had stuck by her side and kept watch over her, eyeing up each person who came to visit as if her safety depended on it. To them they still weren't out of the woods yet. Though still small and pudgy, they were her guardians now. Hana had risked her life to keep them alive, and they would not let her sacrifice go to waste. Not now, not ever.

There was a bump in the night. The Haimaru brothers rose from their positions around their partner's sleeping form, eyeing the medic-nin who shut the door behind him, arms full of medical journals and charts for other patients. He neared the bed, giving Sekimaru a wide berth so the pup couldn't snap at him from under Hana's stretcher, and checked her intravenous drip.

There was a quiet, contemplative look on his face that put the dogs on edge. Hana's breathing was shallow, frail. She smelled like antiseptic and chemicals, and their eyes stayed fixed to the bandages on her forehead as the medic observed her chart. The reek of blood was strong enough to smell even under so many layers of medicine and cotton—they could smell it on the healer too; the whole bunker, even.

"Interesting…" The medic put her chart back in place and rounded the corner of her bed, taking note of the Haimaru brother's bristling when his gloved hands brushed her arm and took hold of the place where the IV drip met her veins.

Misuto got up from his place nestled by Hana's feet and peered into the young man's eyes, silently questioning why his partner would need a nurse's help so late in the night. The medic hardly seemed bothered.

"Doctor's orders," he answered, padding over to a nearby cupboard. He pulled out a fresh needle stored inside and took a small glass vial filled with clear liquid out from a pouch carried on his hip, before filling the needle with whatever medicine was inside and heading back over to Hana's bed. It seemed to smell different than the other liquids the other doctors injected her with.

Misuto looked at his brothers, conflicted on what they should do, before he backed down and let the nurse do his job. This wasn't the first time someone had needed to give her an injection, after all.

"There we go…" The nurse disposed of the empty needle and tucked away the vial back into his pouch. He didn't miss the half second his patient made a pinched, almost pained expression as the effect of whatever medicine he injected kicked in, but soon enough her face went slack once more and the nurse was out the door, turning off the lights again.

They trusted the doctors here to do the right thing and help their master. The only thing they could do was sit and watch over her, waiting for her to wake back up. Their absolute helplessness was not lost on them.

The Haimaru brothers watched the medic shut the door behind him, the glint of light from the hallway illuminating his circular glasses and silver hair.

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The wheezy rattle torn from Hana's throat as she woke up was enough to make a corpse blush. She was groggy, disoriented, and so not ready for visitors oh my god what were her doctors thinking?

"Hana!" The first thing she saw was the bright red uchiha fan when the door swung open. She expected Izumi or Shinko to rush towards her bed with such enthusiasm, but before she could open her mouth to say something, she found herself pulled forward into an incredibly constricting hug.

"Oof!" Honestly, the last thing she ever expected to experience was a fretting, incredibly concerned Itachi, actually initiating a hug. This was groundbreaking. This was incredible, this was—

"Adorable." Being his better half, Shisui hadn't been far behind his cousin, but had hung back to watch with an indulgent look on his face as Itachi practically made his own assessment of Hana's injuries. As if he didn't already know what went down just by looking at her. God, this had been a mistake.

"Okay, okay! I'm fine, really." Itachi was starting to freak her out, actually. When did the kid ever show affection? His eyes were big and wide, taking in her ugly head bandages, and suddenly she started feeling self conscious. She had to fight the urge to pick at them or hide under her blankets to keep the two boys from staring at her. "It's not… really that bad, I swear."

Itachi gave her some space to breathe, but still hung by the side of her bed. He gave her a long, flat stare. "You almost died."

"But I didn't! Everything's okay now!" She said with an energy she knew she didn't have. The Haimaru brothers shuffled under her bed awkwardly, and she pulled the arm with her IV to her chest. In truth, she hadn't had a lot of time to think about her brush with death or what happened. She remembered…a lot of fire. And wind. And the fox.

(The building shook with an almighty roar as the beast's tails brushed over the roof, knocking the second story off it's support and shaving the walls down with ease

Dirt and drywall flying in every direction, blinding them to the vibrant red inferno of energy

"Fuck, fuck!" Hana desperately clung onto the Haimaru Brothers for dear life as more of the building came down around them.)

"Uum.." Hana roughly swallowed, and forced herself to think of something else to calm her spiking heartbeat. "S..so… How's Izumi? I heard from Mum how you guys got here."

Itachi poorly concealed a wince, and Shisui patted his shoulder, sighing. "She's been better. The clan has been taking care of her though, they expect her to make a full recovery."

"That's good…" Hana said quietly, gently touching the tubes connecting her to the machines nearby. She would have ripped herself free from her IV cord to go visit sooner if it didn't mean potentially bleeding out from the wound left behind. Izumi needed friends more than she did.

(The wind battered her from all sides and twisted her in every direction, forcing her down until she was tossed outside with an uncaring ferocity. She raised her head a moment later to look for where Fu must've landed, but he was nowhere to be found.)

"We just came from visiting her," Itachi said, picking up on her unease. "She wasn't awake for long though."

"We didn't actually think your doctors would let us in." Shisui added.

"You and me both," Hana muttered. She caught Itachi looking at the bandages wrapped around her had again and sighed. "Looks pretty bad, right?"

"All of your hair is gone," he said, a little dumbfounded. Shisui elbowed him in the side and he quickly backpedaled. "Oh, um, I mean—"

"Hey, I heard short is in style now. In a little while, it'll be fiiiine," the older uchiha smoothly said.

"In the meantime, maybe I should invest in some paper bags to cover up." Hana groaned. "Tell me the truth, how close to hamburger meat does my face look right now?"

"Honestly?" Shisui repeated, cringing. "I mean…"

"Hana," Itachi stepped towards her cot and placed his hand on the side of her bed. "What's important is that you're here with us, alive. A change in appearance won't change your worth as a shinobi, or take away from how we feel about you." he paused for a second, his brows scrunching up in contemplation as a certain memory came to him. The sudden change in tact caught Hana incredibly off guard. "Besides, didn't you say before that you thought scars were cool?"

He got her there, dammit. Hana's face flushed in embarrassment. "I—I... did I…? I mean.. I guess I did, huh."

This time, he actually did place his hand over hers, in what was supposed to be a comforting gesture, but felt a little awkward coming from Itachi. His hand was clammy and calloused, and she could tell that he was trying extra hard to mask his concern in favor of projecting confidence instead. "Then you're gonna be okay."

The way he said it with such conviction made her bite back whatever half assed retort she was going to say, and instead, she let her gaze drop to the floor and pulled her knees up to her chest. With her free hand, she gently patted the cotton gauze covering the stitches on her scalp, and muttered under her breath, "In that case, I'm gonna be the coolest idiot to get stepped on by a bijuu ever. The Kyūbi's got nothin' on me."

(She raised her head a moment later to look for where Fu must've landed, but he was nowhere to be found.)

"That's the spirit!" Shisui said brightly, slapping Itachi on the back, since he couldn't do the same to Hana on her hospital bed. The younger Uchiha winced, and quickly withdrew his hand in favor of rubbing the sore spot his cousin left on his shoulder blade.

Itachi sighed and backed away from her bed. "I'm glad to see that you're doing better at least, Hana."

"You—you said the thing!" When itachi blinked at her, she broke out in a goofy lopsided grin. It felt strange to smile after weeks of being stuck in a bed. "You called me Hana! That's wonderful!"

"I—Is it?" He quickly looked at shisui, who only shrugged and left him on his own. Channeling blinding optimism and being tactful hadn't made hana feel any better before, but simply forgetting to use honorifics somehow made her smile? He didn't seem get it. "Shisui, can you explain—?"

"I'll tell you when you're older," he shrugged. Itachi made a disbelieving sound.

Hana snickered at them—it felt so good to laugh again. "Hey guys, I'm glad you came by and visited. It's been pretty lonely here in the hospital, and to be honest, it's been starting to feel like i've been living in a bubble all this time."

She shook her head,somehow seeing Itachi concerned, trying his best to make her feel better just made her want to burst into tears. She was suddenly overcome with stupid gushy feelings about friendship and love and dammit she was just going to blame this on her painkillers.

"I… I know I'm the one initiating it but I'm in this cot right now, and… if you could just lean forward so i can properly hug you back, I'd really appreciate it because in all honestly—" She pulled Itachi into a lopsided hug, which she was shocked and relieved he actually returned. He smelt like woodsmoke and kunai steel, a welcome change compared to her hospital room. "—I really would have missed you if I ended up dying."

When their hug ended, Itachi drew back and awkwardly scratched the back of his head, looking everywhere but her face as he fought the tiny indulgent smile on his face. Adorable. "Well, um. I'm glad that you didn't, still. I'm not going anywhere."

Shisui was hiding a smile behind his hand, but he perked up a second later when Hana pressured him into an awkward hug as well. He was careful not to bump any of the wires hooked up to her arm, and made an indignant squawk when she ruffled his hair.

"Metaphorically, though. We do actually have to get going," Shisui explained, elbowing Itachi in the side. "Sorry to cut the cuteness to a close, but Fugaku-sama wanted you back at the bunker before for and we still need to pick up that formula mix for your brother, so— "

"We'll come back soon," Itachi said quickly, giving hana a quick farewell. He nodded his head towards the Haimaru brothers and gave them one last wave before disappearing out the door, waiting for his cousin to follow after. She didn't miss the fact that he now had a fresh, clean forehead protector wrapped around his neck as he left, and made a mental note to ask someone if their class had somehow graduated while she had been out. Surely, someone would have told her, right? Stuff like that was important.

Shisui lingered in the room a few more moments, humming thoughtfully to himself. "I'm really glad you two became friends. I'm almost jealous." He smiled at her, sliding both of his hands into his pockets as he leaned on the doorframe. "I know we haven't known one another for long, but.. You're a good person, Hana-san. You didn't deserve this to happen to you, but at the very least, I'm glad you're doing better now. Itachi has been making me nervous with all the worrying he's been doing, his scowling looks just like his old man's, it's freaky."

Hana snorted, trying not to picture the image Shisui put in her head and failing. "Well, I'm happy I could help, I—"

("Hana!"

There—! His orange hair was swallowed up by the light of the Nine-Tailed Fox, and she reached out to grab him once he cleared the remains of the building, but he was taking so long, and couldn't maneuver right with that bad shoulder of his, and—)

She winced, a pinching in the back of her head hitting her with full force as the memory faded from view. She thought she could still feel the ash and smoke in the air, but when she looked back up, expecting to see ginger hair and yellow eyes, all she saw was Shisui's concerned expression.

"Are you okay…?"

"Uh… yeah.." Hana pursed her lips. She could tell from the nearby machine that her heartbeat had picked back up again. "Though, one thing's still bothering me," she confessed, her hands crumpled up in the folds of her hospital blankets. The lightheartedness from their visit somehow draining from the room. "You guys have been visiting everyone else… um, who got caught up in the attack, right? C—can you tell me how Fu's been doing?"

She looked back up and her breath caught in her throat from the expression on his face. Pale, shocked, confused. A heartbeat passed and she could see him fight with the shinobi training kicking in, forcing him to stay neutral in a situation where facial expression could let information slip. But why would he need to do that when all she asked was—?

(The Kyuubi's tails lashed out behind him, striking the building and sending bricks falling everywhere, in every direction. The last thing she saw was orange hair and falling bricks before she too was swallowed up by falling debris.)

"Please," she said, her voice strangely calm despite the ugly twisting her stomach was doing. "Tell me the truth."

He closed the door behind him before gently coming to sit by her bed. "I thought you already knew."

"Shisui."

"Hana… I'm sorry."

"Shisui—"

"He didn't make it."

.