Disclaimer: I hereby declare this chapter disclaimed.
Warnings: Refer to previous chapter
Chapter 01Naruto was laying still, his skin pale against the stark white sheets around him and it was only the slow rise and fall of his chest as he breathed that proved he wasn't dead as he lay in his hospital bed.
The coma that he had inexplicably fallen into two weeks before hand had everyone, even the Hokage, completely stumped. Sasuke had carried Naruto back to the village, he and Sakura travelling at top speeds to get there and arriving barely an hour after dusk, and had taken him straight to the woman that governed the Konoha village. From there she had proceeded to have absolutely no idea what was wrong with him, other than a hazarded guess that his spirit or consciousness had been somehow sealed within him; the problem was that she couldn't find the seal, and that there were no traces of whatever Jutsu the dead man had used on Naruto for her to follow. After a week of focusing almost her complete attention on the unconscious boy, the Hokage had finally declared that, unless they could find out something about the Jutsu that had been used, they would have to simply wait to see if Naruto would wake up on his own.
After that, team seven had been put on temporary stand down, and Sasuke had all but disappeared. For the first week, Sakura had visited the hospital every two days. For the second week she had come every three days. Now she had arrived because Kakashi-sensei had 'suggested' she put down her studies and come in with he and Shikamaru.
Pushing open the half open door, Kakashi, Sakura, then a bored looking Shikamaru stepped into the small room, blinking as the light brightened slightly in contrast to the dimmer hallway.
The only sounds in the room were the faint 'beep' of the heart monitor that kept track of Naruto's heart rate, and the light, occasional rustle of paper.
The source of the rustling paper was the first thing that Kakashi focused on as he entered the room, and his eyes narrowed.
"Iruka…" He said the name softly, so as to not startle the man who looked far too engrossed in his schoolwork to have noticed their arrival. Iruka didn't even twitch, simply carried on marking the sheets before him. After a moment though, he spoke.
"There's been no change; good or bad. He hasn't even twitched. The Hokage was here earlier to check on…him."
Kakashi didn't miss the slight hesitance before the last word and he flinched inwardly. What the other man was really saying was that the Hokage had been here checking on the Kyuubi, not on Naruto. With the boy's consciousness no longer in control of his body it was a very real possibility that the Nine-tails would take the opportunity to work away at the undefended seal and attempt to possess the body. The Hokage had no choice but to show up every few days and check on it.
"Just because there's been no change, doesn't mean we can't come visit." He responded lightly and gestured at Sakura who had been hanging back slightly, staring at Iruka's back with concern.
Hesitating, not really wanting to break into Iruka's concentration, the girl stepped forward and moved around the bed to replace the almost dead flower she had last brought into the hospital with the new one she had brought today. An Iris, for sorrow, hope and as a guide for his soul, wherever it was.
Iruka's pen stopped for a moment and he smiled up at the girl, for a moment the lines of worry and sleeplessness disappearing from his face.
"Thank you." He said softly then looked back down, seeming to retreat back into his own silent world of schoolwork.
There was silence then, filled in only by the continued beep of the heart monitor, the shuffling of Iruka's papers and the new uncomfortable sounds of fidgeting from Sakura's direction.
"You don't have to stay." Iruka said after a few minutes, his pen pausing in its work. "Thank you for visiting."
Sakura and Shikamaru both looked at Kakashi and he nodded slightly. Almost as if the floor was greased, Sakura slipped out the doorway and Shikamaru followed at a slower pace, looking back at Naruto for a moment before stepping out the door.
Turning, Kakashi moved to close the door and froze as Sakura's fading voice floated back into the room.
"…It's like a tomb in there, how can Iruka-sensei stand i…"
"Stupid…" Kakashi muttered under his breath and shut the door quietly, the soft click almost echoing off the sudden tenseness charging the air.
Iruka's back was stiff, his pen held in a white knuckled grip when Kakashi turned back and he decided it would be better to wait, then to try and offer any kind of speech.
"He's…he's going to wake up." Iruka said firmly, after a while, the tenseness in his muscles the only thing belying the words. "He's not the kind to give up over something as small as this, he'll be fighting with everything he has to wake up."
"Of course he is." Kakashi murmured, and moved forward a little and rested his hand lightly on Iruka's shoulder, "He's strong; he won't die so easily."
Iruka's grip on his pen loosened a little and he bowed his head slightly. "I just wish we knew what was wrong with him so we could do something."
"The Hokage is still searching for any information on what kind of Jutsu was used on him. If anyone can find it, she can…"
Iruka nodded slightly.
"When did you sleep last?" Kakashi asked suddenly, "Or eat?"
Iruka blushed at the suddenly changed topic, "I…I slept some last night, and I…uhmm… I'm sure I ate something this morning."
"Not good enough. Come downstairs and I'll buy you something to eat, then you can go home and get some sleep."
"No, I can't. What…what if Naruto wakes up and I'm not here? And it's getting late; I have to stay with him for the night so he's not alone. I…"
Kakashi tightened his grip on Iruka's shoulder; "You're not going to be any use to him if you fall down from exhaustion. He'll understand if he wakes up, so just do as I say. A nights sleep and a meal will do you good."
"But…"
"No 'buts'. Get your things."
Iruka held out his resistance for a few moments more, then relented; his own common sense told him that what Kakashi was saying was right. A few moments later he'd gathered up his things and let Kakashi lead him out of the room and downstairs to the hospital cafeteria.
Behind them the door swung itself half shut and five minutes later a nurse on her rounds poked her nose around the door and, seeing the room empty of awake occupants, switched the light off leaving the room lit by nothing more than the light of the dieing sun.
The room stayed silent for a long while after that. Outside the sun set, staining the sky with deep reds and purples before disappearing completely and leaving the half moon to cast its soft glow into the quiet room. After a while an automatic heater clicked on, keeping the room at a comfortable temperature for it's oblivious occupant, and after an even shorter while, it clicked off again.
It wasn't until the moon was finally getting into a comfortable position high in the sky that there was any movement in the room.
Slowly a window inched itself open and a small flutter of breeze sent the thin curtains that covered it to moving, and then a shadow slipped into the room and the window clicked shut again.
The shadow hovered for a moment near the window before moving across the room to check the door and then, finding it closed to satisfaction, the shadow moved over to the bed and looked down at the figure lying there.
The beep of the heart monitor seemed incredibly loud in the still room and the shadow glared at it in irritation for a moment before sighing and dropping down into the chair close beside the bed that Iruka had vacated earlier.
Everything went quiet again as the shadow sat there; blending into the shadows around the chair and watching the slow rise and fall of Naruto's chest as he breathed.
The shadow suddenly let out a breath and let their head drop down on their arms that were crossed in front of them on the bed.
"Sorry," Sasuke said, his voice muffled by the bed, "that I didn't come till now." He paused for a moment, "I was…trying to remember the Jutsu that man used. I was using my Sharingan; I should be able to remember the Justu… But I didn't see enough of it, any of it really. Not enough to do anything… Damnit! I shouldn't have killed him, I should have just knocked him out or…or something!"
He thumped his hand down on the bed in anger, "Those guys were small fry! We should have been able to take them out without a scratch. If I hadn't have taken so long getting some information out of the one that attacked me I could have been there faster. Damnit!"
"Oh sure. Like having mister hotshot there would have helped any."
Sasuke jerked his head up in shock, staring at where Naruto lay, with his eyes wide.
"N…Naruto?"
The body didn't so much as twitch…but a voice, one suspiciously like Naruto's, continued.
"Sakura must have told you what happened, that guy was ready to suicide so long as he took one of us with him. I have no idea what he did to me, but it sure as hell hurt and all he did was grab my arms."
Sasuke's eyes were still wide, but he'd managed to figure out that the voice was coming from behind him and he slowly turned around, his eyes searching the darkness near the doorway for anybody that could possibly be talking.
"…And you shouldn't beat yourself up over it." The words were begrudgingly said, "Not even that old hag Hokage knows about this Jutsu so it'd probably just be you laying there instead of me if you'd gotten to us faster. …And if you hadn't have killed him, I'd probably be dead right now." Silence again from the voice and Sasuke activated his Sharingan trying to find any kinds of hidden Jutsu that might be in the room. Immediately Sasuke spotted a distortion in the air near the doorway and he focused on it.
"But so you know, when I wake up I'm so gonna kick your arse!"
Barely even registering he was doing it, Sasuke responded to the taunt he'd heard a million times. "As if you could, dobe. But you're welcome to try it if you don't mind being humiliated…again."
Sudden, dead silence filled only by the screaming beep of the heart monitor fell on the room, and then it was broken as the automatic heater clicked on again, adding a faint whirr to the background.
"S…Sasuke?"
Sasuke kept his eyes pinned to the distortion in the air and glared, "Who are you? What are you doing here?"
The distortion suddenly leapt forward and Sasuke stared as it suddenly took a faint shape that solidified by the second.
"You can see me? You can hear me?!" The shape, now very obviously a see-through Naruto, was almost nose-to-nose with Sasuke, who had pushed himself out of the chair and had backed up against the bed. A quick glace revealed that yes, Naruto was still laying on the bed, still very much in his coma and not moving a muscle.
"How come you can see me, and the others can't!?" Sasuke moved his wide-eyed glance back to the see-through Naruto shape in front of him, "I've been talking to everyone that came to see me, I even tried poking a few of them and nothing happened! How come you can see me?"
"N…Naruto?"
The Naruto-shaped talker screwed up his face into a look of annoyance, "Of course it's me, jerk. Who else would I be? You're using the Sharingan, is that why you can see and hear me?"
It certainly sounded like Naruto.
"I could hear you without the Sharingan." Sasuke muttered and 'Naruto' moved back from him slightly, his legs going straight through the chair as he moved away.
"So you could only see me when you used your Sharingan. Cool. So you can tell everyone I'm still here, right?" Naruto turned back to Sasuke, his expression earnest. "You can tell Iruka-sensei that I'm okay and that he can stop worrying so much. He's been here the entire time you know, since you brought me back, he's barely left, except for classes. I kept telling him to go away and sleep and stuff, but he couldn't hear me. You'll tell him, right?"
"Su…sure." Sasuke glance back down at the Naruto on the bed and then at the Naruto in front of him. "How come you're…there? Shouldn't you be…" he made a vague gesture at the body, "in there?"
Naruto made an annoyed face, "I tried that! There's some sort of thingy preventing me from going back. I can't even touch my body, I'm just repelled."
"A seal?" That would explain a lot.
Naruto nodded, "So you'll tell that old hag Hokage that I'm here too, right? So she'll stop looking for me in there." He pointed over Sasuke's shoulder at his body.
At this point, Sasuke suddenly stood up straight. "No. This is impossible."
"What?!"
"It's impossible!" Sasuke insisted to the flabbergasted looking Naruto. "I've barely slept these last two weeks and so I'm seeing things, in fact I've probably fallen asleep and just think I'm awake."
"Sasuke, you jerk!"
"I'm leaving!"
"What?! You jerk! You can't leave! You have to tell everyone I'm still here!"
Naruto's angry shout fell on deaf ears as Sasuke firmly stopped using his Sharingan and all but hurled himself from Naruto's window and headed home. There was no way what he'd thought had just happened had happened. He needed to go home and get some sleep. And anyway, he'd managed to convince the Hokage earlier that day to take he and Sakura off of their temporary stand down, and they had a mission in the morning. After the mission he'd go back and see Naruto during daylight hours, when he'd had enough rest and until then whatever hallucination he'd just had would be ignored.
Firmly, using a tactic he'd perfected over many years, Sasuke put the incident out of his mind and by the time he got home he was quite ready to drop into an exhausted sleep, only pausing to set his alarm for the morning before he collapsed onto his bed, not even bothering to change.
End Chapter OneRead and Review – Or I'll cry ^_~