I hope you're all having a nice week
Hear the Silence
Chapter Thirty Five
By the time they reached Konoha, Kyo was fairly sure she had a fever.
She was shivering slightly, her breathing was laboured and it felt like her head might detach from her neck to float off on its own.
It was a fairly interesting sensation.
So much for an easy first mission after half her team had died, Kyo mused dazedly as they re-entered the village, not slowing down much even to identify themselves before heading for the hospital.
Cool, Kyo had never used this entrance before.
All of a sudden, she was lying on a flat surface.
Where had Horse gone?
Shivering worse than ever, Kyo tried to spot him anywhere, but the only one she could see was Hawk, who stood off to the side, watching the chaos.
Why did they need so many people, anyway? It was just a shuriken. Stuck in her femur, granted, but still! It was just a scratch.
Or something. Surely.
Kyo blinked tiredly, turning to watch one of the nurses, who approached with a syringe. She didn't do a thing to protest when the needle was stuck into the exposed skin of her upper arm, and the substance in the thing injected.
Maybe it would hurt less now? Kyo was hopeful.
She was fairly sure her trousers had just gotten cut off of her, because she felt even colder, and fingers were prodding the skin around the wound on her thigh.
Doing her best to lie still so that the medics could do their thing, Kyo bit her lip when her wound was examined more closely.
Did they have to be so... rough?
It still didn't prepare her for someone to grab the shuriken and begin to pry it from the bone it had lodged itself quite firmly in.
Kyo screamed.
She was pretty sure she may have kicked someone in the face before she was successfully restrained.
"Why is she still awake!?" Someone hissed as they struggled to hold her down on the gurney she was lying on.
"Because I'm immune, you idiots!" Kyo sobbed, the words gritted out between clenched teeth. Her voice broke on the last word.
She was breathing so hard it was painful, her hands shaking so badly from the icy agony splitting down her leg, up her hip and clawing at her spine.
Words were snapped back and forth above her, but they were nothing more than indistinguishable noise.
"Is there anything that will actually work?" A medic snapped the question at her.
Kyo laughed. "I work with a lot of sedatives," she breathed roughly. Because she'd thought it could be really useful, and it appealed to the part of her that didn't like killing people.
And she absolutely had no clue how to deal with the fact that there were parts of her that didn't mind.
"Why isn't this in her file?" Someone hissed furiously, slapping something that sounded sort of like paper onto a hard, flat surface. "Anything else you're immune to?"
"Poisons," Kyo forced out, the word strangled as she tried not to throw up.
"Morphine," a voice right above her snapped.
Before Kyo could so much as open her eyes -they'd been clenched shut in response to the pain, tears streaming down her temples and into her hair- a syringe was jabbed carelessly into her arm and liquid warmth was injected.
With how fast her heart was pumping, it took what felt like no time at all before Kyo's muscles were beginning to relax, the pain fading to an uncomfortable, dull ache. It was loads better than the sharp, searing, icy agony that had been eating at her before.
Blinking dazedly up at the ceiling, Kyo took in the team of four working on her, their faces not registering at all.
She could feel them working on her leg, a sharp tug that almost lifted her leg off the gurney, and then a faint sense of foreign chakra entering her system.
Kyo was drifting in and out of it for a while, it felt like. She was still aware of the people flitting around, but it wasn't much of a concern of hers.
She felt pretty good, actually.
Kyo didn't realise she was still wearing her mask until Hawk walked up to her, placed his hand on her face and removed it with a pulse of his chakra.
She blinked dazedly at him. "Hi," she managed.
"How much did you give her?" He asked the closest nurse.
The woman sent Kyo a speculative look and shrugged. "As much as was needed."
Were they still working on her leg?
"Does this mean I disqualify?" Kyo wondered absently, gaze drifting a bit off course; she'd wanted to look at Hawk, but now she was staring at someone's crotch. Oops.
Consciously shifting her gaze back to Hawk's bird-like mask, Kyo peered curiously at him.
"No. You did pretty good," Hawk sighed, patting her head, as if he couldn't quite help himself.
Did he have kids?
"Yeah," Hawk answered, a reluctantly amused undercurrent to his voice, and oh.
Kyo had said that out loud, hadn't she? Oops, again.
Hawk shook his head, tucked her mask away beneath his body armour and talked to the medic for a while.
Kyo wondered if she could potentially share a room with sensei now that she was back in the hospital. Injured herself this time, but still.
Daru had been an asshole and she hoped sensei had thrown him out a window or something.
Before she could shape another disjointed thought, she drifted off into unconsciousness.
.
When Kyo woke up, she was pretty sure she was still drugged to the gills.
And she was lying in a real bed.
"You awake, brat?" A familiar voice asked.
"Sensei." Kyo smiled.
"You know," Katsurou mused idly. "When I told you to come see me when you came back, this wasn't what I had in mind."
Kyo blinked a few times, feeling like she was on the brink of falling back asleep. "Did you know," she said abruptly, managing to turn her head to peer at Katsurou-sensei, who raised an eyebrow at her. "I'm immune to sedatives, sensei," and for some reason, she was whispering to him.
Weird. She hadn't intended to do that. Probably.
"I know." Katsurou frowned.
"It really, really hurts when someone tries to pull out something that's stuck in your femur," she told him solemnly. "And with someone, I mean the medics," she added around a yawn.
Katsurou sighed. "Go back to sleep, brat."
"Don' wanna," Kyo mumbled, trying to lift a hand to rub at her face and failing quite pathetically. Her hand barely twitched, actually. "Tou-san?" She asked after a long pause.
"Came by to tell me he got a mission," Katsurou replied easily, no doubt eyeing her closely to try and gauge her mental state.
"Oh." Kyo blinked a little. "Did you know I murdered someone?"
The words just... slipped out of her mouth.
Kyo frowned, feeling perplexed. She hadn't intended to say that.
"Who hasn't?" A gravelly, sardonic voice she kind of recognized said. No doubt to point out she and Katsurou weren't alone.
"Oh, it's you." Kyo blinked at him. "Did you throw Daru out a window?"
The man stared at her for a long moment, and Kyo was pretty sure he looked amused, for some reason.
"They're having you on the good stuff, huh," was all he said. "Have fun with that, Katsurou."
Sensei just sighed.
Kyo frowned confusedly.
"We should be having this conversation privately, but I know both Seita and Watamaru are perfectly capable of secrecy," Katsurou said, shaking his head and sitting up a bit more properly. "You had your first kill years ago, Kyo."
"Oh, yeah," Kyo agreed easily, smiling a little. "Maki threw up," she informed sensei, who nodded shortly. "But this one was sleeping, you know?"
Katsurou sighed. Again. Pulling one hand over his short hair. "You got your first assassination," he concluded tiredly. "Of course."
"Do you think I can move my leg?" She asked abruptly, attention drifting to her left leg. It was covered by the sheets, why was it covered?
"Kyo, focus," sensei said, snapping his fingers.
...she'd never been able to snap her fingers.
"Aren't you going to ask me how I feel about it?" She asked a bit belatedly.
"I have a feeling you're gonna tell me anyway," Katsurou said casually.
"It was pretty nice," Kyo said, ignoring sensei's words. "Which feels a bit wrong."
"Explain it to me," Katsurou asked thoughtfully, tilting his head.
Kyo hummed, trying to concentrate. Not the easiest task when she wasn't sure she could actually feel her own body.
"It was peaceful," she finally managed, blinking to focus her gaze on Katsurou. "I used my kindest needle and he died in his sleep."
"Nothing strange about that, especially compared to the last time you killed someone," Katsurou said with a small shrug.
Kyo stared off to the side.
The last time... had been during the ambush.
"Less blood," she agreed absently. "It was very easy."
"It's what you've been trained for," Katsurou said. "Isshun taught you very well."
"Mm," Kyo mumbled and drifted off to sleep with little to no warning.
.
Kyo very much felt her body the next time she woke up.
Hands clenching in the blanket covering her, she groaned.
"Sensei?" She rasped, pretty sure that hadn't been a dream or a hallucination.
Kyo tried to shift to look for him, but gave up with a whimper.
"Sensei!" She almost sobbed.
"Already called for a nurse, Kyo," Katsurou said, leaning heavily against the side of her bed, placing one hand on her forehead. She hadn't heard him move.
His hand felt blessedly cold against her skin.
"Hurts," she breathed, managing to take a deep, trembling breath.
A second later, a nurse came barging into the room, leaving the door to the corridor open, which flooded the room with light.
Kyo hadn't even realised it'd been dark in here.
"You should be in bed, Yamanaka-san," she said, before her eyes landed on Kyo. "What seems to be the problem?"
"Hurts," Kyo gasped, a shudder going through her body.
"That can't be right," the nurse muttered, grabbing the clipboard at the end of her bed. "You should still be under the influence of the morphine."
"You're too good at what you do, Kyo," Katsurou said evenly, leaning over the bed just enough to look her in the eyes. "You're adapting to the painkillers."
"It sucks." She managed a choppy, unsteady laugh that turned into an agonized moan.
"I'm administering another dose," the nurse said briskly, disappearing out the door for a moment. "I'll talk to the medic once I'm done here," she told Katsurou when she came back in, a syringe in her hand.
A second later, the pain began to fade and breathing was slowly getting easier.
Kyo eventually managed to let go of the bed-sheets, fingers aching from the force of her hold, to fumble for Katsurou's hand, which he readily enough accepted.
Sucking down deep, slow breaths, Kyo tried to make her heart calm down from the frantic gallop it'd been performing in her chest, as if it had been trying to run away.
"Let's not do that again, please," Kyo said unsteadily a minute later.
Katsurou patted her on her head with a sigh. "Your body's too used to handling toxic substances, Kyo," he told her tiredly.
Kyo blinked, raising a shaking hand to wipe at her eyes when she realised they were wet.
"I'll let the medic know we need to give you doses more frequently than usual," the nurse said, giving her a sympathetic look. "The medic on duty will come around for a check-up in the morning. Get back to bed, Yamanaka-san," she added, giving Katsurou a stern, though understanding look and then left, closing the door behind her.
"Try to go back to sleep," her sensei told her, squeezing her hand and then slowly letting it go, gently putting it back down on the covers.
Kyo blinked heavy eyes and did as ordered.
.
When she woke up next time, light was streaming in through the window and who was no doubt a medic was standing next to her, holding a hand over her injured leg.
"I heard there were some problems during the night," he said calmly when he noticed Kyo's eyes were open.
"If you want to call it that," she muttered drowsily. "How's it looking."
"Your fever's broken and your leg seems to be healing nicely, despite the fact you made the injury worse by running around with it," he told her briskly. "We're going to have to try and figure out how quickly you're adjusting to the morphine, so I want you to notify someone the moment your leg's starting to hurt again, understood?"
"Yes," Kyo mumbled, blinking slowly a few times.
"If all goes according to plan, you should be out of here in a couple of days," the medic gave her a small, thin smile. "Try to eat the meal a nurse will bring you shortly. Don't try to get out of bed," and with that, he was done, leaving her to stare at the door after him.
Kyo sighed.
She dutifully ate the meal a nurse brought her and then considered trying to sleep some more. She felt rather jittery, though.
"Hey there, kitten," Ryota's voice said from the direction of the door.
"Hi," she returned after a brief delay. "What're you doing here?" She asked curiously.
"Do forgive her, Uchiha-san; she's drugged up to the eyeballs," Katsurou said distractedly from his bed, reading files and important-looking documents again.
Ryota snorted and came into the room fully.
He picked up one of the chairs standing by the wall beside the door and carried it over, setting it down beside Kyo's bed.
"I heard you were in here, so since I'm in the village and Kou isn't," Ryota shrugged, taking a seat. "Of course I'm here."
"Why aren't you with tou-san?" Kyo asked once she had digested his words.
"Fucking Elders pulled some strings." Ryota snorted derisively. "They're stubborn assholes with too much free time, the lot of them."
"Do you want me to poison them for you?" Kyo asked with no hesitation what-so-ever and a heart-warming amount of sincerity. You know, for offering to murder someone.
"If they keep it up, I might just take you up on that." Ryota smiled thinly, giving her an utterly fond look.
"So tou-san got sent out with another team?" Kyo mused, eyeing the man curiously. "Did you know I'm immune to sedatives?"
"Yeah," Ryota said, shaking his head. "Isshun had something of a similar problem."
"Remind me not to get injured again, please," she requested idly. "It's not very fun."
Every shinobi in the room snorted with amusement, making Kyo blink at the lot of them.
"You know, it's funny because you're handling this much better than many Chuunin I've worked with," one of the other hospitalised shinobi chuckled.
Kyo peered at him, wondering if she should tell him she was a Chuunin or not.
-x-x-x-