Here's the beta-read version! Weeee! Arigatou V-chan!
Special thank you to DragonSoul. This chapter is dedicated to you for your wonderful suggestion on the reason of Haku being alive!
Enjoy!
BECAUSE YOU NEVER KNEW 12They crouched behind the pile of rocks, seeing the entrance of a cave that lead to some sort of tunnel. According to the information they had, the tunnel would lead to the headquarters lying several feet underground. Naruto had memorized the map by heart and so had Gaara. The gaping hole below them that had stone steps was not the only entrance. There was another way and shinobis who got that information returned to Konoha barely breathing.
"We'll go through route D." Gaara said. "It is less used and less guarded."
"Right." Naruto nodded, tightening the mask around his face. "Let's go."
They made their way down the rocky edges and got away from the site nearing the entrance. They made their way to the river, wading down silently, the water barely even rippling with their skilled stealth. As they neared the sudden plunging gorge that lead to deeper waters, both stopped and studied their surrounding for a while.
"It's risky." Gaara said.
"We don't have a choice." Gaara nodded at Naruto's words as they both positioned their hands and performed a basic underwater jutsu that was common to all shinobi.
They dove silently deep into the gorge and made their way around the sharp rocky edges. There were skulls that littered the rock's surface, with weeds and green muck attached to the smooth white surfaces of the bone. There were dying sea corrals and little fish that seemed to resemble a parasite rather than a fish. They swam around the rocky gorge, and then began a quick descend. A small hole, large enough for a person to wedge through greeted them. They paused and eyed it for a few brief seconds before making their way in. The tunnel required them to stretch their hands out and pull themselves forward by grabbing the rocky surfaces. It soon began to ascend and after a few minutes, both surfaced to open air.
They found themselves in a cave of some sort. They made their way to a corner and pulled themselves out, breathing getting back to its normal functions. Gaara gave the place a cautious look, before nodding towards Naruto, head tilting to the general direction of a hole in the wall. With quiet and trained footsteps, they made their way towards the hole, climbed in to it and began to crawl through a narrow passage way. Voices suddenly became clear and they found themselves peeking down into a long hallway with several doors. Towards the left side, the metal doors looked fancy. Naruto remembered the map clearly and the last four doors were the offices while the other dull looking doors with thick padlocks and chains along with incantation tags stuck on them were used for holding prisoners or hostages.
Gaara signaled with swift movements of his wrist that that there were a grand total of seven people in the place, two of which were in the office area, four right below them, standing guard upon the doors and one was outside, by the entrance. Naruto signaled him to take care of the four while he tackled the ones in the office. Gaara took out the pouch of sand from his back pocket and poured some on to his palm. Almost gracefully, he blew the sand towards the area below them, the light golden grains drifting down.
Naruto watched as Gaara disappeared in a swirl of sand while the sand that was but half a palm full was suddenly multiplying. Shouts of surprise and desperation began to fill the silent corridors. Naruto turned to look away, as the sickening crack and squish of the sand killing the four below him echoed in the corridors. Naruto dared not underestimate the ones guarding the door. They merely had their guard down. Naruto and Gaara didn't become Tsunade's prized hunter pair for nothing. But to Naruto, it was pure luck that Gaara managed to catch them off guard. He leapt down and crept towards the office area. Gaara had disappeared down the hall to take care of the last person by the entrance.
Trusting Gaara, he went about his own task. He pushed the first door open and found the room empty. He cautiously looked around and stood in the middle of the room, keeping his senses wide open. He looked for a mistake, a clue, a sign. He snapped his eyes open at the slight movement of his opponent and pulled out one of his short knives and flung it at the general direction to where his said opponent was hiding. He pulled out the other one and leapt in the opposite direction, dodging several long needles flung towards his throat. The walls suddenly turned into ice. Narrowing his eyes, he flipped to one side and charged quickly from behind the person that was controlling the ice. He gave the person a sharp kick on side, the sound of cracking ribs reaching his ears. Footsteps rushing towards him alerted him. He turned, just in time to block a swishing attack of a long sword with one of his short ones.
His opponent looked fairly old, maybe around his mid-thrities, with long brown hair streaked with a little gray. His amber eyes were burning, blood running down his cheek, caused by the sword that Naruto had flung towards him earlier. The other one was lying on the floor, unable to move one side of his body due to the broken ribs. Naruto was surprised that he didn't suffocate yet.
"You!" His opponent hissed.
Naruto pushed aside the long sword with his short one. His eyes flicked up briefly. He delivered a powerful kick towards the man, who blocked the impact of the sole of his boot with the blunt edge of the sword. Naruto flipped in the air and delivered a devastating kick on the side of the man's head, before using his other leg as leverage and pushing him back with another kick, just in time as Gaara pulled out one of his short swords from his position in the doorway. The man's back came into contact with Gaara's sword, instantly dying as the base of his spinal chord was cut off by the blade. Gaara emotionlessly pushed the man aside, flicking his blade to get rid of the blood before sheathing them.
"Where are they?" Naruto asked.
"Inside." Gaara said, jerking a thumb behind him in the general direction of the other doors. "I'll get them."
"Right." Naruto said, and approached the person lying face down on the floor. He knelt beside the gasping person and pushed him so that he was lying on his back. The person was wearing a black mask, much like what Kakashi wore, along with the long black cloak that most Akatsuki members seem to favor. Naruto took out a kunai and prepared to slit the throat of the man before him. His eyes opened slowly, staring at Naruto's masked face briefly. He began to choke, as his eyes widened.
"D-Don't k-kill m-me! Don't w-want t-t-to da-da-di -" A gasp of pain came out of the masked face.
Naruto blinked behind his mask. He reached out with his other hand and pulled the black mask down. He found himself staring at the person, all senses suddenly going numb. His lungs suddenly stopped working and his heart froze in mid-beat for a second. It was like thinking back to a memory. A memory that forever nagged him and sometimes haunted him in his times of solitude and even in battles.
"They're waiting outside. All five are unconscious and with clones." Gaara said from behind him, approaching him and staring at the now unconscious person.
Gaara's voice snapped his mind to work properly again. He sucked in a shaking breath and calmed his rapidly beating heart. "We'll need another clone." Naruto said, looking down the figure. "We're taking him with us."
Gaara did not question his decision and simply called up another sand clone to help lift the unconscious body as they made their way swiftly to the exit. Naruto burned the area, and made sure that the entrance was caved in with thick tree roots with the help of a simple earth-based jutsu.
Once they reached the borders of Konoha, Naruto stopped. "Take him home." He said, gesturing to the last figure in the arms of the sand clone, the trademark cloak of the Akatsuki organization now soaked with blood. "I'll handle these." He gestured to the five unconscious ANBU, and his eyes strayed towards Sasuke. Gaara gave an affirmative nod as Naruto called up five shadow clones to replace the sand ones.
He and Gaara parted ways, as Naruto pulled up the hood of his cloak over his mop of golden hair and headed for the private sector of the general hospital, where mostly ANBUs and sometimes the occasional Hunters were taken for treatment. Shizune was on duty along with Tsunade that night.
"Tsuande-sama is waiting for you in room E-five-two, Akatsume-san." Shizune said, bowing politely to Naruto's masked and cloaked figure, while medics took the unconscious ANBU forms on to stretchers and wheeled them away to separate rooms to begin treatment. He gave Shizune a polite nod and headed for the room where Tsunade was waiting.
Upon entering the room, he noticed Tsunade staring out the window, a pair of bloodied gloves on a metal tray along with some scalpels and blood soaked cottons and antiseptics beside her on a stainless steel table. "Where's your partner?"
"I sent him home." Naruto said.
Tsunade turned to face him. "Jiraiya saw you at the borders on his way back from the hot springs." Naruto did not like where the conversation was heading, but he stood his ground. "Your mission stated retrieving five ANBU members. Not six." Naruto refused to speak, and merely continued staring at her from behind the mask. "Who is the sixth person your brought back?"
Silence.
"Give me time, Hokage-sama." Naruto said. "I assure you that I would never bring danger to the village."
"That's not what I meant." Tsunade said, narrowing her eyes angrily. "Who did you bring back?"
"Three days." Naruto said, taking his mask off and allowing Tsunade to see his pale and rather haunted face. "Give me three days and I will tell you. I request that you let Gaara take leave from work to keep an eye on -" He thought of a word. "Our guest."
"Guest?" Tsunade said rather sarcastically. "The safety of the village is at stake here! Who did you bring back, Naruto?" She demanded.
Naruto felt all blood drain from his face at the thought of the person waiting in his house with Gaara. "Someone who I thought died a long time ago."
Kakashi.
The effect of his thoughts were almost immediate. He felt boiling anger rise in him.
Tsunade frowned. "Who?"
Naruto stared up at her, suddenly looking much older and so very tired. "Please." He said. "Trust me."
Tsuande inhaled. "Three days. I will let you and Gaara take the day off. After three days, I expect to hear from you and possibly, see this person. Do I make myself clear?"
"Crystal." Naruto placed his mask back on and disappeared in a swish of mighty wind.
Tsunade stared at the spot to where Naruto was standing and despite her reaction to Naruto earlier, she was proud of him.
It was a wise decision to send him on this mission after all.
XXX
Naruto entered his apartment and found Gaara already out of his Hunter outfit and now sterilizing equipment with antiseptics and hot water. The thick curtains of his apartment windows were all drawn close and an illusion jutsu surrounded the place. Naruto could feel the slight unsteady beating of Gaara's chakra bouncing off the walls. Gaara didn't even look tired, but the unsteady chakra said otherwise. Naruto knew that Gaara was overworked, much like himself, but it couldn't be helped.
They were Hunters.
Naruto pulled his gear off and changed into different clothes quickly before washing his hands in antiseptic and pulling on some rubber gloves. He then headed for the storeroom made into some sort of clinic where the figure was lying stripped off from all forms of clothing, naked and pale under the white light glowing from the lightbulbs hanging from the ceiling. Gaara appeared seconds later, with all medicines and antiseptics ready.
"Five broken ribs, a concussion and minor cuts in both arms and forehead." Gaara said, and pulled on a pair of rubber gloves.
"Breathing is stable." Naruto said. He took a good look at the cuts on the figure's chest, the broken bones out of place and causing the skin to have uneven bumps.
"He should be dead." Gaara said.
"He's not." Naruto answered, injecting antibiotics and anesthesia in to the pale body. "He hasn't been all this time."
Gaara gave Naruto a long look before beginning the tedious task of fixing up the body before him.
As Hunters, they were trained heavily under the medical field. In desperate situations like these, they had to use the other version of healing with the help of chakra and medicine combined. In this case, Gaara had to rearrange the figure's bone structure with his hands while Naruto used chakra to heal the bones. Such healing techniques consumed too much chakra, hence the minor injuries like the cuts and bruises were dealt with the traditional way of bandaging and applying medicinal ointment. Once or twice, in the middle of fixing the bone structure of the torso area, the figure bucked and whimpers of pain came from the pale lips. It was not surprising since such healing techniques did have such an effect on patients even when they were unconscious. It was too painful to handle and usually involved a huge amount of morphine given to the patient because of the aftermath remnants of the chakra healing.
Three hours later, the figure was lying on Naruto's bed, under the covers, body kept immobile by a few nerve endings that Naruto blocked temporarily.
"No work tomorrow." Naruto said, as Gaara sat on his bed, staying on one side.
"Use that time to recuperate." Gaara said, staring at the window, while Naruto lay on the other side of the bed, throwing an arm over his eyes. "You'll need it."
"Yeah."
In seconds, Naruto fell asleep, leaving Gaara to watch over him.
XXX
Three days went by a blur and Gaara was the one going out of the house to restock on food supply. Naruto more or less remained in bed in those seventy-two hours of blissful rest. It was not until the third day, when just as he predicted, the figure lying in the next room would be amongst the living once more.
Shower fresh and clean, Naruto entered the room, Gaara already speaking to the figure.
"Nerve endings are blocked. Security purposes." Gaara answered the question the figure asked.
"I see." Came the quiet and raspy reply.
Naruto stood beside Gaara, staring into the dark chocolate orbs of the person lying on the bed, a memory so long ago flashing in his mind. He remembered him like it was only yesterday. The fight between him and Sasuke, the water mirrors, the pink kimono and the tedious task of gathering medicinal herbs from a field in the forest were swishing in his mind like a fast flipping picture book.
"You're not dead." Naruto said, and the figure on the bed, smiled. Smiled with joy and relief. "Tell me."
XXX
Tsunade was not happy. Jiraiya was not saying anything. He remained quiet, leaning against the window and watched the two argue.
"It was a mistake!" Naruto said tightly. "He didn't know Akatsuki was a complex organization! He didn't have a purpose! He was young! Naïve! Why can't you see that?"
"Listen to your argument!" Tsunade said, standing up. "You want him to stay here, as a shinobi, just because you once knew him, and thought he was dead? In case you've forgotten, Naruto, he is still an Akatsuki member. That point is enough reason to not let him stay!"
"He won't betray Konoha." Naruto said in a well-controlled, fury-induced voice.
"How can you be so sure? You said he was taken in by minor Akatsuki members, trained him to become a mere soldier for their growing organization, and his cause of agreement was because they told him that they could bring his precious someone back? What kind of a stable argument is that? The chances of him betraying Konoha are high!" Tsunade's voice was firm and authoritative.
"He won't betray Konoha." Naruto said.
"How can you be so sure? You're not telepathic, Naruto, with Kyuubi in you or not. What reassurance does the whole village have?" Tsunade asked.
"I didn't know what I was getting myself in to and then I couldn't do anything. No matter how much I wanted to leave the organization, I couldn't. It was too risky. Your arrival just relieved me of my duties. I'm yours. I will follow you no matter where you go. I owe you my life, Naruto. Don't send me away! Please!"
Naruto's eyes darkened towards Tsunade. "He will not betray Konoha. He will not betray ME!" Tsunade stared at Naruto for a while, his voice already striking something inside her that made her believe him almost immediately. "You can benefit from him. Konoha can benefit from him. Whatever, the remains of the headquarters are now nothing but rocks and ashes. They know he is dead. Whatever threat there may be, they are small ones."
"But they are there! It's not convincing."
"He has an advanced bloodline, maybe even as strong as the Hyuugas and Uchihas." Naruto said, narrowing his eyes some more. He was beginning to lose his patience. Tsunade was simply very stubborn and hard to crack. "He can make a good Hunter. He will be with me always. All he needs is citizenship and possibly a new identity. Akatsuki knew him as Yuki, not by what we know him as."
"We?" Tsunade asked.
"It's his fault!" Naruto snapped. "He killed him years ago! He even buried him! How stupid of me to fall for such a simple trick! All this time, I thought he was dead! Because I saw him die!" Naruto said, more to himself rather than Tsunade. Jiraiya finally shifted and stood straighter.
"Naruto." He warned, trying to get Naruto to control his growing anger.
Tsunade knew of the A-rank mission given to team seven by mistake. She knew what happened in the Wave country and she also knew of what Kakashi did. Taking the boy in would be all right, as long as he takes up his old identity. According to Jiraiya, who spoke to Tsunade before Naruto did that morning, Haku was not a registered Mist shinobi. The Mist Village didn't even have any record about a Haku being born. For some reason, Naruto's words ran far more personal than he deemed it to be.
"He never told me!" Naruto hissed.
"Naruto." Jiraiya repeated. "Calm yourself."
Naruto remained quiet for a while, eyes cold and hard. "I will consider the arrangement." Tsunade said. "He will have to be hidden for a while and a talk with your previous teammates will be needed since they will have to get used to the idea of having him around, even with the knowledge that he's been alive -"
"What?" Naruto asked, snapping his eyes up and looking at Tsunade.
Tsunade mentally kicked herself.
Jiraiya stepped forward this time, standing beside Tsunade. "Be quiet." He said and three knocks sounded from the door. The door opened and in stepped Kakashi.
"Hokage-sama, the daimyos has arrived. Securities are in check and -" Kakashi stopped short when Naruto slowly turned to face him, anger all over his face, and growled.
"You!"
TBC
8 pages! OMG!
I am an evil person! I am also open to suggestions to how Kakashi and Naruto could get together. Mind you, if I don't use yours, that doesn't mean I won't use it for other KakaNaru future fics. That, I will keep it in mind!
Again, I am an evil, evil, evil person! I'll tell you a secret! I am a crucial henchwoman of Orochimaru! I live to torture people from romance and hardcore Yaoi material! MWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Sorry, me ish sugar high. Gomen!
ToodleS!