Naruto silently trudged along the worn dirt path, his hands stuffed deep into his orange pockets as he passed by the bustling vendors and the countless people filling up the streets. Although he was back in Konoha, he wasn't excited in the slightest. Sakura was walking beside him, shooting concerned glances his way every few seconds. Ever since that day at the hospital, when he'd screamed at Kakashi-sensei, nothing had been quite the same.
When Sakura had ran after him to see how he was doing, Naruto had completely refused to talk about his outburst, or any of his feelings regarding Kakashi's refusal to get treatment.
"H-hey, Naruto...Wanna get some ramen before we go get Sasuke?" Sakura asked lightly, her jade eyes glimmering with worry. The blonde made brief eye contact with her, before slowly shaking his head and moving his gaze back to the ground. He looked sad, to say the least.
Sakura sighed. It wasn't like Naruto to turn down ramen.
Currently, the genin were going to meet Sasuke at his apartment, hoping to go and visit Kakashi-sensei all together, as a team. Word had gotten out that he was doing worse than usual as of late, so they wanted to check up on him and see how his condition was for themselves.
The walk there was rather quiet and glum, their guilt at not visiting him sooner permeating through the air. Dread had filled their hearts, and it felt as if something was horribly wrong, as if their sensei's illness was reaching its precipice, a point of no return. Sakura readjusted her grip on the bag of fresh apples in her grasp, gulping, and hoping that nothing horrible had happened in their absence.
Having reached Sasuke's apartment, the Haruno knocked on the door with her free hand, the excitement of seeing her crush not feeling as apparent as it usually was. Naruto just stood there with an icy look in his downcast, cerulean eyes, his fists clenched tightly- he seemed to be deep in thought.
"Hey," Sasuke said upon opening the door, briefly looking at Sakura, and then at Naruto, who's aura seemed drastically different than he was used to. The dobe looked horrible, with dark shadows under his eyes, and a pitiable expression painted on his face.
Exhaling lightly, the Uchiha stepped out of his apartment, his stony visage hiding the genuine apprehension he was experiencing at going to visit Kakashi. Judging by the looks on his teammates' faces, and how uncharacteristically silent they were, he could tell that they shared a similar sentiment.
"Let's go," he said, starting towards the hospital, Sakura and Naruto following after him.
Before long, they'd made it to the front doors, walking through them and heading straight to the front desk, their anxiety having heightened significantly.
"We're here to see Kakashi Hatake?" Sakura spoke, stepping up to the front desk when she noticed how her friends weren't moving an inch.
The receptionist nodded with a smile, beginning to leaf through a large binder, before turning back towards them with a notably more serious expression on her heart-shaped face.
"I'm sorry, but Mr. Hatake can't have any visitors right now. He's in the ICU."
He woke up to a monotonous beeping noise, feeling lethargic and confused as to how much time had passed since he was last awake. His muscles were stiff, and his whole body was mercilessly throbbing with pain, as if he'd been flung against a boulder, or perhaps even struck by a lightning bolt—not that he knew exactly how that felt.
Bracing himself for the glaring lights, he opened his rheumy, burning eyes with a furrowed brow and a deep sigh, wetness immediately gathering in his tear ducts. Groaning huskily, he pushed his wobbly hands into the mattress and slowly brought himself up, feeling as if his forearms were made of jello.
Kakashi remembered seeing Obito, but couldn't recall much after that. Everything seemed vague, a complete blur. Why did his memory feel so muddled?
Touching his face, he noticed glumly that the large, bulky mask from before was back, replacing the nasal cannula. Scoffing, he realized that something definitely must've happened— it would explain the new mask, and also why he felt so disoriented, and achy.
His chest felt heavy and wet despite the extra help, and taking a breath felt painfully harder, more so than before. He coughed harshly, hoping that it would help clear up some of the uncomfortable tightness. However, to his disappointment, his hacks were dry, not producing any phlegm.
Clicking his tongue in annoyance, he put a hand over his aching ribs, looking around and noticing that nobody else was in the room besides him.
Though he didn't remember much, he still remembered the raging desire he'd felt to leave the hospital. It had been much too long since he'd been staying there, and quite frankly, he was a little surprised that he hadn't tried to leave sooner. Now that there was no one in his room, it was the perfect opportunity.
Kakashi didn't want to die under fluorescent lights. No, he wanted to die in his own bed, and preferably in his sleep, just like his mother had.
After a brief, contemplative pause, he decided he was going to escape. He knew that using the teleportation jutsu might be dangerous at this point, but he didn't want to risk escaping through the window either, not to mention walking all the way home—he knew he wouldn't be able to make it in his current condition.
Sighing decidedly, and sensing that there were no approaching chakra figures nearby, he took a hefty chance for his health, and began to pull off the large mask, finally wrenching it off with some difficulty. He felt a distinct change in the quality of his breathing instantaneously, and almost wished he could steal the equipment and take it back to his apartment.
Next, he wrapped a clammy hand around all of the wires littering his wrist and tugged them out in a single motion, wincing at the pain, and the copious amount of blood oozing onto his forearm and spurting on the white sheets. Maybe he shouldn't have taken them out so carelessly, but he'd also be lying if he said he actually gave a shit.
With no time to waste, he hooked the pulse oximeter off of his index finger and yanked the electrodes from his chest and midriff, immediately producing a droning flatline.
Feeling nurses beginning to approach, he sprung off of the bed and made the correct hand signs with profusely trembling fingers, hoping he could pull it off in time.
He heard a familiar poof, and within a second or two, he was standing outside of his apartment, the blood from his head rushing down to his feet and leaving him incredibly dizzy. The copy nin put a hand on the door to steady himself, his head drooping as he tried to ride out the stars in his vision.
Blinking repeatedly as he attempted to power through the lightheadedness, Kakashi fumbled for the key hidden underneath his doormat, almost losing his balance in the process. He jammed it into the doorknob carelessly and rattled the door open, closing it behind him and immediately looking for something to collapse onto.
Kakashi was able to make it to the general area of the couch before his world began to tilt dramatically, forcing him to slump onto it with an exhausted groan. In the back of his head, he wondered how pathetic he looked at that moment, almost fainting from a simple teleportation jutsu. But at the same time, he was just glad to be back home. The relief of being away from the hospital, his personal hell, definitely trumped his ongoing self deprecation.
Wheezing roughly as he adjusted to breathing without support, Kakashi leaned over the side of the loveseat his head was resting on and coughed in an unpleasantly rough manner. After several wet hacks that completely racked his feeble, shivering form, the man surprised himself with the bile that began to ride up his throat. He clumsily pulled off his mask and vomited onto the wooden floor, staining parts of his area rug.
"Oh...shit," he muttered under his breath, clutching the front of his black hoodie and closing his eyes as he continued to lose his nonexistent dinner, making peace with the inevitable damage to his carpet. Honestly, he should've seen it coming.
Inhaling raggedly, the Hatake pulled himself back onto the couch and stared at the ceiling, his forehead beaded with sweat. The man turned onto his side and curled up into a ball, completely drained. He was so tired of his miserable life.
Kakashi knew he should probably clean up the vomit, and that people would soon be here to take him back, but he didn't have the energy to deal with any of that in that instance. A part of him hoped that at least Gai, out of all people, would respect his decision to stay home. But he knew that was just wishful thinking— none of them would care about what he wanted for himself, that was the truth. Perhaps it was too much to ask of them.
As he contemplated moving to his bed, Kakashi let his eyelids shut, allowing himself to forget his worries and drift off into a dreamless sleep.
Gai walked into the hokage's office without knocking, his head bowed with worry. Since Kakashi wasn't allowed any visitors, he didn't really know what else to do to dissipate his unease. He was there to talk to Lady Tsunade about his latest concerns, especially regarding the hallucinations.
The hokage looked up from the pile of textbooks on her desk, her eyes glossy and heavy with exhaustion, as she hadn't had a proper night's rest in what seemed to be ages.
"Gai," she acknowledged, putting down her pen, "What can I do for you?"
"I...um…" he started, shifting his weight nervously, not knowing where to start. It seemed almost impossible to sift through the flurry of thoughts in his head, and say one of them out loud.
"Take a seat."
He pulled out a chair with a quiet screech, settling into it uncomfortably.
"It's about Kakashi...there's something wrong with him," he spoke uneasily, finding it hard to look into her eyes.
The hokage frowned, finding his behavior to be subtly uncharacteristic.
"Well, I think we could all agree that there is something wrong with him," she replied, looking back down at her work.
She was currently studying the biological pathways that may contribute to the regulation of chakra, or in other words, the mechanisms that took cellular energy and transformed them into metaphysical energy.
It was hard for her to wrap her head around, and whenever she thought she was getting closer to understanding, she found that there was so much more to consider. Gai being there certainly didn't help; she needed to focus, because frankly, there wasn't much time left.
Gai exhaled loudly, shaking his head. "No, no...that's not what i'm saying. This is different."
Tsunade looked up, her brows furrowing.
"He was hallucinating before his most recent seizure. Seeing Obito. I mean, it's like he was hardly there...He was emotional, and rambling on and on...It's not like him to do that."
"I think that can be explained, Gai," she said with a sigh that was more drawn out than she'd intended, "He was having a simple partial seizure, which would account for the hallucinations, the confusion...the uncharacteristic behavior. After this, the abnormal electrical activity shifted from just half of his brain to both hemispheres, which would explain the convulsions."
She broke eye contact with him, reading something intently, and then underlining it, acting as if she wasn't in the least affected by Gai's distress.
He watched her scribble down whatever it was she was writing onto her textbook, at a loss of what to say. He knew something was different.
"Do you seriously not think that he's getting worse?" he told her sharply, his voice cracking with hurt, "How can you just not do anything? Kakashi is going to...die and you're not doing anything!"
Gai slammed his hands onto the table, breathing laboriously, his eyes watery with unfallen, frustrated tears. He was stressed, and not seeing clearly, not understanding that he was yelling at the hokage herself.
This got Tsunade's attention, as she put down her pen, and snapped her book shut, folding her hands into each other.
"Yes, he's getting worse- there's no denying that," she replied coldly, numb to his display of emotions, "But I'm trying harder than you think, Gai."
"How? Please, tell me!"
The hokage glared at him, finding it somewhat difficult to conceal her anger. He'd dealt a low blow, that was for sure. She was trying, and he wasn't allowed to tell her that she wasn't.
"Shizune and I have been conducting research. We've found that the cause of Kakashi's tumors is due to a mutation, likely a congenital disorder," she told him with a surprising calmness to her tone, "We know what gene was mutated, and sure enough, it's responsible for the production and regulation of chakra."
Gai blinked, processing this new information. He took his hands off of her desk, letting them loosely fall to his sides.
"We believe that this mutation caused Kakashi's chakra to be compositionally different than normal, which may have contributed to the formation of tumors around some of his major chakra pathways- around his brain, and his lungs, to be exact."
"Okay, but...what does this mean?" He asked her quietly, falling back into his seat, "Kakashi still has cancer, right? Does this even change anything?"
"Well, actually, it does. You see, this gene in question produces a cofactor, or a protein, that binds to a TEAD transcription factor, along with other proteins of different biological pathways, one of which is the hippo tumor-suppressor pathway. This forms a complex that, in turn, activates the transcription of chakra."
He looked at her blankly, having completely lost track of what she was saying. It sounded complicated, to say the least- he was no scientist, and definitely didn't know the first thing about genetics.
"In short, if we find a way to suppress the formation of this complex, we may be able to stop the tumorigenesis. But that's precisely why this is so hard. There are a lot of possibilities, and with Kakashi refusing any form of testing, it's almost impossible to even confirm this theory. Of course, we've been studying his DNA, and also this gene...But we still need more information—a biopsy, at the least."
Gai nodded rapidly, feeling a surge of hope emanating from within him. "Ok...ok. But can't you just drug him, and test him anyway?"
They shared a look, knowing that they both had no ethical qualms about the idea.
"That's not how medicine works, Gai."
"I know, but what if you could say that Kakashi was unfit to make decisions like this on his own? I mean, his judgement is clearly impaired, we've all seen it."
At this, she went quiet, putting her elbows onto her desk as she considered the possibility of going forward with such a plan. It really did have a chance of working, as it acted as a loophole surrounding the laws that protect patients' rights.
"You know what, that actually might—"
The door jarred open abruptly, interrupting their conversation and forcing them to direct their attention towards the intrusion. Shizune hurried into the room, her hair a mess, face pale and beaded with sweat.
"Kakashi's escaped."
A/N: Hellooo. I promise this is about to end, to those of you who are annoyed at how long this story is LOL. I just want to be thorough yk? Anyways, the hallucinations from the last chapter can be explained by the seizure; it wasn't anything to do with Obito, or the sharingan (which would've been interesting tbh). At this point, I hope you've noticed a shift in Kakashi's behavior- this was intentional, and has to do with his brain tumor, which is in his temporal lobe (controls judgement and emotions). Also, as you can see I've incorporated some genetics into this chapter, which I hope will make the future chapters more plausible. I've never been okay with just giving him a magical herb to cure him, or saying that this is a "chakra illness". I like to go in depth, but also not TOO in depth. anyways, enjoy! The story will end soon:))