Notes: Eheh. I think if I don't write a second part to the previous chapter, I'll get hurt, so, here it is by popular demand. I'll re-label the chapters to specify that this drabble is in two parts.

It was a coma now.

The Godaime Hokage leaned back from her inspection of the young man in the hospital bed and reached up with a bandaged to brush her bangs from her hard hazel eyes.

"Tsunande-sama?" her student's voice was cracked and worried and strained, but hopeful. "Is there any change in his condition?"

You could say it that way, the older woman grimaced and turned to the pink-haired girl. "…It's safe to say the poison is moving very slowly, seeing as it's been nearly a month and his condition has just now started to change." Sakura's teal eyes widened. "At this rate, I can't give a definite calculation, but Naruto should hold up pretty strongly against it for a while."

"A while?" Iruka spoke up softly from his corner of the room. He was leaning against the wall with his arms crossed over his chest, his sad brown eyes never leaving his former student's face even as he addressed the hokage. "Please, Tsunande-sama, estimate. How long--" does he have left?

"A year, at most," she sighed, standing with some difficulty. Her injuries from the battle against her former teammate still had yet to heal completely; he may have been gone, but it wasn't as if he'd let himself be forgotten.

A tainted prodigy that is a vessel for all your secrets , two of your former comrades lucky to be alive, and the next one in line for title of hokage in a poison-induced coma. You left no holes to slip through, Orochimaru.

"It'll take him that long to recover?" Sakura yelped, her strained mind misinterpreting her teacher's words. Tsunande shook her head and spoke slowly, as if trying to comfort a scared child.

"That's how long he's got to live, Sakura," she explained softly, "unless we find a counter-jitsu for the anti-chakra."

The younger woman blinked, as if she had misheard the hokage. Then she began shaking her head. "No," she said sternly. "I refuse to believe that."

"Jiraya, Kakashi, and a few others are reviewing the scrolls confiscated from Orochimaru's labs for some sort of cure--"

"He's not going to die!"

"Sakura…" Iruka tried to cut in.

"No! Naruto would never allow himself to die from something as pathetic as this!" she stomped her foot, hot tears rolling down her cheeks now. "He has a dream! He wanted to be the next hokage! He's so close! He won't die from this! Right, Sasuke?"

The brooding ninja in the chair directly across from her said nothing and gave no sign that he had heard her speaking, or any of them for that matter. He had his hands locked together and his thin mouth pressed against his thumbs, his elbows on his knees, his eyes dark and sharp on the blond man's face. She looked helplessly at him, then back to the unmoving figure on the bed, whimpered as more tears came to her eyes and she ran from the room as she started to sob. Tsunande bit her lip and looked to Naruto's lax face, then glanced up at Sasuke's impassive one.

"Iruka," she turned her eyes to the man in the corner. "I have to return to the office to help Jiraiya and Kakashi search for that cure. Please, go look after Sakura." He opened his mouth to protest and she stared him down, the grim look on her face saying it all: "He's not going anywhere. You can come back tomorrow."

Iruka winced and took a last look at Naruto, then nodded and went out. Tsunande started to follow, but stopped at the door and half-turned, so the black-haired man could see her face as she addressed him.

"I know he forgives you, and that's reason enough to let you back into the village," she spoke slowly, as if choosing her words carefully. "But if he dies, I will hold you personally responsible, and the hate-filled faces of the people of Konoha will be the least of your worries, I assure you." She left the room, closing the door behind her.

Sasuke hadn't moved since the first night in the hospital when he had cried. He hadn't ate, or slept, or spoken a word to anyone, whether they were addressing him or not. He didn't care about them, or anything else, so only half of Tsunande's threat remained in his head the rest of the day: "If he dies, I will hold you personally responsible…"

"It is my fault, isn't it?" Funny, how he wouldn't say a word when there were multiple people in the room visiting the blond, but alone at night, it seemed that he had to talk, because somehow, Naruto was still listening. Sasuke shook his head and shifted out of the position he had been in all day, flexing sore muscles that screamed in protest and which he ignored. He reached over hesitantly and lay a pale hand on one of Naruto's lying above the sheets. "I didn't mean for any of this to happen to you," he continued, speaking in a sudden rush. "In fact, I left all those years ago because I didn't want you to be hurt. I thought if I left, I wouldn't have to follow the path my brother took and I could find another way to obtain the power to defeat him. I didn't think you would follow me so far, I didn't…" His voice cracked; he ignored it. "I didn't think you wanted me by your side that badly. If I had known, if I had just tried to understand a little more, then you wouldn't be…you wouldn't be…"

And he felt it, but it didn't register right away. He blinked and looked down at the hand that was laying atop Naruto's fist. Clenched fist. Shaking fist.

"Na…?" Sasuke couldn't get the rest of it out, he could only stare down at the trembling fist beneath his palm that suddenly relaxed and became what it had been just a few seconds before. "No!" He seized the limp hand convulsively, his voice rasping hoarsely in protest. "Again! Naruto, come back! You did it! You fought it! Do it again!" But it didn't happen. Sasuke gritted his teeth and lifted himself onto the hospital bed, his free hand gripping Naruto's opposite one, his knees supporting him on either side of the blond's hips. He squeezed both hands harshly, hard enough for his own fingers to vibrate from the force. "Come on, you damned usuratonkachi! Again!" When he shouted the last word, his chakra unconsciously flared up in the sudden wave of anger and shot into the unresponsive hands. And they twitched.

Sasuke thought for a long moment and then flexed his hands, slipping his fingers into Naruto's and clasping their palms together. He activated his Sharingan and flinched as his dead mentor's curse seal flared up as well, trying to latch onto the anger and transform it into hate. If there was a such thing as a mental backhand, Sasuke did it right then; the seal abruptly deactivated and Sasuke squeezed his eyes shut, shifting through the various medical jitsus he had seen Sakura and Tsunande use on Naruto in the past month. He recalled one instance when Sakura had to be physically stopped from an attempt at a chakra transfusion jitsu. He focused on that.

His dark blue chakra field flared into existence around his body. With his Sharingan he could faintly see the dull outline of Naruto's own chakra: bright orange. While Sasuke's aura extended a little over a foot from his body, Naruto's just barely covered his. Seeing the hand seals for the jitsu in his mind's eye, Sasuke replicated them easily and one-handed, feeling suddenly nauseous as two openings formed one in each palm and his chakra funneled into a spiral, boring into Naruto's cold hands. They were joined now, Sasuke's own lifeforce pouring into Naruto by their connected hands, and the black-haired shinobi swayed over the comatose figure and dropped his head onto the other man's shoulder, closing his eyes.

At first, Sasuke thought he had been suddenly exposed to a hailstorm at its highest peak. And when something grazed his bare arm, leaving a cut behind, he reasoned that it wasn't hail that was swirling about, but tiny shards of the sharpest glass. They were trying to cut into his flesh with their jagged edges, but he ignored it and searched for something, anything that would tell him how to help Naruto before it was too late. He didn't know the counter-jitsu, and didn't believe there was one, so, this was their only chance. And if he died trying, so be it.

Naruto, where are you? he kept feeling around in the hectic darkness, searching for something that would tell him how to help, where to find him. And dully, faintly, far off, there was a flicker of orange that sparked up through the whirling glass and wind.

Sasuke…

Clenching his jaw, Sasuke began to walk into the heart of the storm. The winds howled at his defiance and tried to shove him away from the light that was now steadily burning in that far-off distance. He let the glass slice him, he let the jitsu drain him, and he kept on moving, head down, hands in his pockets, shoulders hunched. The glass pieces got bigger and fiercer as he got closer to what he could now make out to be a figure sitting by themselves in the very center of this calamity, rocking back and forth as they hugged their knees to their chest.

Naruto!

He was ravaged. His hair was wind-swept and wild, his eyes were dull and dead. Sasuke ran toward that light, toward Naruto, for all he was worth. The chaotic storm slapped at him, screamed at him, but at the same time he reached a hand into that orange aura that somehow shielded Naruto from the worst of the storm and his own blue aura kicked into it eagerly, making it larger, pushing the darkness and insanity back and circle around them protectively. It swirled comfortably in a counter-rotation, humming softly. Naruto looked up at Sasuke, startled.

Sasuke…?

I've come to bring you back, he grabbed onto that cold, trembling hand. Time to go home, Naruto…

His blue eyes opened. Sasuke, panting harshly, dispelled the jitsu and collapsed onto Naruto with a grunt. Naruto yelped painfully and Sasuke tried to roll off of him, but he found he couldn't move. Before he could slip away into unconsciousness, he nuzzled into Naruto's neck slightly and murmured:

"Welcome home, Naruto."

Naruto tried to move but found he couldn't. The alien chakra still lingered in him, but would fade away by morning. The clean, gentle blue of Sasuke's life force raced through him, pushing away the darkness and death. He heard the whispered sentence before Sasuke relaxed completely against him, and smiled, drifting into a sleep which he knew he would awaken from tomorrow morning. And Sasuke would be awake too.

"Welcome home, Sasuke."