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Chapter Twenty-Nine
Sakura sat up with a start. her heart hammering steadily in her ribcage and her breath coming in short gasps. Her eyes darted around her moonlight lit bedroom and tried to find something that would bring her frazzled mind back down to reality after that very realistic dream. A blush spread across her pale cheeks as she remembered how she could almost feel the touch of Naruto's lips against hers and sense the very real taste of ramen on his breath. His hands that had held her so firmly and securely in his arms... She could still feel the gentle carress of his fingers on the nap of her neck.
'Dammit, Haruno,' Sakura chastised herself, 'You were just one scene away from a wet dream there. Get a grip.'
The reason she was so angry with herself was because that dream wasn't the first dream of its kind. On the contrary, she'd been having those kinds of dreams at least twice a month for the past sixth months, normally when a full moon was in the sky. As a medic nin and a strong believer in hard facts and logic, she was pressed to believe that the cycles of the moon had absolutely nothing to do with her dream content, but she'd read that the moon did have surprising effects on the minds of certain individuals. Granted, most individuals simply went insane and her only problems involved a blonde shinobi who she couldn't get out of her head at night, but there could be a link... If she believed in that sort of thing, that is.
She exhaled heavily and laid her head down on her pillow, closing her eyes although she knew it would probably be a long time before she was able to get any real sleep with that dream still fresh in her mind. She could already sense that tomorrow would be a very long, very tiring day for her.
"Dammit, Naruto. Come home so I can stop dreaming about you coming home," she grumbled into the empty air.
Sakura had been right the night before. Due to her inability to get back to sleep until around three that morning and then having to wake up bright and early at five for her shift at the hospital, she could safely say that she was exhausted. It wasn't even noon yet and she could feel her eyelids lowering over her seafoam green eyes whenever she got the briefest second to herself. So to keep herself from getting into trouble by falling asleep while working, she took the liberty of borrowing a couple of other medics' cases for the day to keep her busy and alert, which helped because Sakura was always at her most alert while she was working on a patient. As long as she continued overseeing the care of those who needed her, she was awake.
"Sakura, can I borrow you for a moment?"
Sakura winced right in the middle of checking a man's heartrate who had been having heart pains for weeks now, who looked frightened the second that the young medic prodigy winced while doing his exam. Sakura noticed and looked apologetic, telling him to pull his shirt back down as she turned to chastise whom had addressed her during her - self prescribed - busy day.
However, the words of admonishment died on her lips the second that she saw who was at the door waiting for her. "Shizune? What is it?" Normally her senior didn't grab her attention unless something was serious. "Is it an emergency?"
The black haired woman seemed to think over her words and try to choose them wisely. "It... depends on your definition of an emergency," she said carefully, her eyes glancing at the man sitting on the examination table. Clearly whatever she had to say couldn't be said in front of the civilian man. "Tsunade-sama wishes to see you."
Sakura nodded slowly, turning back to the man and patting his chest. "I'll have someone come in and take over where I left off, alright?" she assured him in her normally sweet tone. The man nodded and Sakura left the room with Shizune behind her.
"What does Lady Tsunade want at this hour? It's a little early in the day for a mission, don't you think?" observed the pink haired kunoichii simply trying to make small talk.
Shizune shot her a look that said everything that she needed to say without having to actually utter a word. They were konoha shinobi, there was no such thing as "too early in the day" for them. Whenever a mission arose for them to complete, they completed it. Especially as medic nin, it was their duty to be ready to be deployed at a moment's notice.
Sakura sighed, getting the hint and keeping silent for the rest of the journey to the Hokage tower. Once they reached Tsunade's office, Sakura knocked twice before allowing herself entrance with Shizune behind her.
"You requested me, Lady Tsunade?" Sakura began, glancing at her Shishou and not noticing the other group of people in the room at first, although it was only another moment before she realized she and her shishou weren't the only ones in the office. Glancing around she took note of the other shinobi standing against the walls and simply standing wherever there was room to fit: there was Kakashi, Sai, Neji, Tenten, Hinata, Kiba, Shino, Ino, and Choji. Just like her dream, the room was only short two familiar faces, other than Naruto who she never expected to see anyway.
"Ah, Sakura. Pleasure of you to join us," Tsunade greeted her, making her think that she was running a tad bit later than all the others and causng a light pink hue to spread itself over her face. "Now we can begin." In her legendary pose that suggested a subject of deathly serious proportions, Tsunade placd her elbows on the desk in front of her and bridged her hands together. "You each have been briefed on the topic of Uzumaki Naruto's resurrection, am I correct?"
Sakura tensed while the room was filled with a silent yet understanding agreement from each of the shinobi. Sakura swallowed hard and tried to figure out why Tsunade would call for a mass meeting with all of Naruto's friends on such short notice. Her stomach plummeted into her feet and icy water filled her veins as she contemplated what something like this could possibly mean. Had something happened to Naruto during his travels with Jiraiya-sama? She didn't even realize that on the othr side of the room, Hinata had tensed up as well.
"Did something happen to Naruto, Lady Tsunade?" Sakura blurted out, her mental exhaustion making her inable to filter her thoughts and process the information that maybe - just maybe - now was not the time to interrupt the Hokage.
Tsunade's amber eyes snapped onto the Haruno, causing the pinkette to realize her mistake. Her eyes grew wide and her mouth opened silently to offer some sort of apology that would satisfy the irate Hokage while her mind scrambled to correct her error. Sakura had trained beneath Tsunade for years, she knew how angry she could get. But before she could stammer out an excuse, the curtains hanging in front of the opened windows of the Hokage office ruffled impatiently, the movements too jerky to be a mere flap of the wind.
"Oi, Baa-chan, hurry it up, will you? I'll be eighty before you finish!" A recognizable voice bellowed from outside.
Sakura's heart froze. 'Dear Kami, not again!'
Before she could even finish her thought, a blast of yellow and orange erupted from behind the curtains and entered the Hokage's office. And Sakura nearly fainted at the sight of the new arrival. Naruto, grinning as wide as a chestchire cat, stood directly behind Tsunade clad in a black and orange jacket that looked exactly like the one that Sakura had seen in her dream. His hair was longer than it was two years ago and now hung down over the black headband he wore in place of his old blue one. Absently, she wondered what had happened to it.
As she was watching him, she didn't even notice as his eyes scanned the room before finally landing on her shocked face. "Sakura-chan!" he shouted, "Did you get my messages?"
And upon his acknowledgment of her, Sakura really did faint.
Sakura woke up in her own home and in her own bed, tucked gingerly between the blankets. Her head rested comfortably on her sot white pillow, though there seemed to be one extra than she thought she'd originally had on her bed before she went to sleep last night. But she brushed off the feeling that something was out of place and climbed out of bed to get started on her day. But she paused when she noticed that she was already fully dressed, sans maybe her shoes.
'Now I'm sleep walking to go along with my Naruto dreams? I need some professional help,' she mentally groaned to herself. But at least being fully dressed kept her from needing to waste time changing into something presentable for work. She simply ran her fingers through her hair to get the knots out from her restless sleep and walked out of the bedroom to grab a quick breakfast onher way out the door.
But she paused when she saw who was seated comfortably on her living room couch eating a bowl of one of her instant ramens.
"Oi, Sakwa-chan!" Naruto bellowed around a mouthful of noodles. He must have realized how ridiculous and rude he seemed because he swallowed what was in his mouth before leaping from the couch and striding over to her. "You fainted in the Hokage's office! Are you alright? Shizune said that you were just surprised but I-!"
"You're not real, you're not real, you're not real," Sakura quickly started muttering to herself, grasping her temples in the palms of her hands. "I just need to wake up..."
"Sakura-chan, are you alright?" Naruto asked, clsoing the already short distance between them. He grasped her shoulder and felt her tense. Discouraged, he allowed for his hand to fall limply by his side. "Sakura-chan, what are you talking about? Of course I'm real. Why wouldn't I...?" His voice trailed off as something dawned on him - really, something that should have occured to him much sooner. She believed that she was dreaming and that he wasn't really there with her. He almost smiled at the joy of finding the solution to Sakura's problems. "I'm not a dream. I'm real, Sakura-chan! See, I'm me. Why would I send you another dream if I'm here?" he asked as if the mere suggestion was idiotic.
Sakura's ears twitched at that. She dropped her hands and looked up at the blonde shinobi stood beside her. "Send me... dreams? Naruto, what the hell are you talking about?" she asked, looking dangerously at the blonde. It didn't take her long to believe that her blonde former teammate was somehow behind the reason she couldn't sleep at night. Of course Naruto would find some way to cause trouble in her life, even when he wasn't in the village. Baka.
Naruto seemed to realize that he'd stumbled into dangerous territory. He backed up just enough to be out of range of her fury, holding his hands protectively in front of his face. "I-I ran into a Yamanaka a while back. He was an anbu and Pervy sage and I had kind of gotten in the way of his mission. But he wasn't so bad and after we helped him with his job a little, he taught me some jutsu. One being the...er...Yamanaka clan telepathy..."
Sakura narrowed her eyes at him. "You aren't from that clan, Naruto. You can't use that jutsu," she muttered matter-of-factly.
Naruto continued to hold his hands in front of his body like a shield. "I-I know! I shouldn't be able to. But actually, the Yamanakas can give you the ability by touching your forehead. It's true!"
"You expect me to believe that you can now use a jutsu that only Yamanaka Inoichi has actually mastered? Ino can't even do that!" Sakura snapped at him. She was now fully convinced that Naruto was just a dream and her mind was underestimating its own intelligence. This was, by far, the most far fetched idea that her dreams had contained. Maybe she was going out of it.
Naruto backed away, nearly stumbling. For some reason, he no longer felt safe being so close to her. "I get that you don't believe me, but it's true! He touched my forehead and I could read Ero-sennin's mind! As long as he was touching my forehead."
"He touched your forehead just so you could use his clan's technique to send love dreams to your little girlfriend?" Sakura asked incredulously, not even realizing she made reference to herself.
Naruto knew he only had a short amount of time to come up with an appropriate response, otherwise Sakura would blow him off completely. "Well, no. Because the justu doesn't work that way. It isn't a dream infiltrator. But he did let me get a feel for it and helped me to develop a technique of my own. It was hard, but I just completed it a few months ago. And I knw you had to be worried about how I was doing, Sakura-chan. I just wanted to let you know I was alright. I though that you would understand what I was doing," he mumbled, looking down at his toes like a forsaken young child. The look didn't seem to fit him anymore. While he was still Naruto, he wasn't the Naruto that Sakura had said goodbye to two years ago. This Naruto was a full grown man, much taller than she was and probably even Sasuke was at this point. There wasn't anything childish about Naruto now.
Except the fact that he'd sent her wet dreams about him.
"Last night..."
Naruto smiled toothlessly at her. "I wanted to tell you that I was going to be home when you woke up," he said sweetly.
"I dreamed you kissed me. Did you have anything to do with that?" Sakura muttered, stepping dangerously close to the young blonde.
"I uh... I..."
"NA-RU-TO! You should know better than to invade other people's dreams, Baka!" She shouted, stretching her arm out far enough to grab him by the new jacket he wore.
"I didn't want you to worry, Sakura-chan!"
"I would have been just fine without you invading my thoughts and sexually harrassing me in my sleep!"
"I didn't think it would be harrassment if you were my girlfriend! I'm sorry!"
Sakura paused. She looked at the sweating and wincing expression of her knuckleheaded friend as he braced himself for the impact of her fist to his face. She slowly let go of his jacket, taking a step back from him. "Girlfriend? I'm not... Naruto we aren't..."
Naruto opened his eyes slowly, biting his lip. Unlike himself, he bashfully lowered his head and shuffled his feet back and forth. "I know that we aren't now. But I was hoping that if we were together enough in your dreams, it would happen. And even you just called yourself by girlfriend before!"
Sakura opened her mouth to dispute the allegation, but realized that she'd done exactly what Naruto accused her of. A blush spread over her cheeks. "I didn't mean literal girlfriend."
"Not yet."
The pinkette sighed. Her anger slowly faded in the presence of her determined and lovesick friend. "Naruto-kun, I don't know when I'd be able to be with you. Yes, I care for you, but I still don't know if I can truly trust you. You haven't been completely honest with me over the last five years, what with faking your identity and then stealing off in the middle of the night when you promised you'd stay with me. And not to mention you just tried to brainwash me into liking you back."
"I wasn't trying to-!"
"Regardless of what you were trying to do, you still decieved me. And I can't trust you. Maybe I can work up to it, but now isn't the time to ask," she said with such finality that Naruto dared not question it.
He simply hung his head. "Alright, Sakura-chan. I'm sorry."
Sakura bit her lip, staring at the poor guy. She did feel bad for turning him down. She couldn't deny that she did have feelings for Naruto, more than she cared to admit. But right then... she couldn't trust him. She hadn't been lying about that. Her heart was still wounded from his deception. Maybe one day she could look past it and trust him to be honest with her, but that wasn't today. Still, she didn't like him looking that way.
"Naruto-kun?"
"Yes?" he asked forlornly.
"Would you... like to go to Ichiraku with me? I'm a little hungry. My treat!"
A slow grin spread over the whisker marked cheeks. "Definitely!"
A/N To be clear, everything in that last chapter really happened except for Sakura seeing Naruto. That was the only dream part :) I'm sorry if its confusing.
Also, I would like to know when would be a good time to update. It would be helpful yo have a consistent time rather than just doing it when I feel like it. Cuz when I update too soon, I know some of you get lost in the chapter and then when I update too late, you forget where you were or you lose interest. So this would really be helpful if you told me a good time for you :P
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