Unsung Story of the Inconspicuous

A/N: Hello! This took a bit longer than usual. I actually had it written a few days ago, and beta-ed, but then felt the twitchy unhappiness that made me not post it until I'd added quite a bit more. Thanks to Shana the Short, my beta, you get it today! She really is ... very fast. And thorough. My love affair with semi-colons will never end.

Also I accidentally deleted this chapter and reposted. If you get two alerts, that's why.

Don't own, won't profit.


The world hummed and Raiku listened carefully.

The electrical system of the Konoha hospital was large but antiquated in parts, evident from the weakness of the power running through those sections. The constant alternation of current was a rapid-fire motion that slowed the more it was examined, until it became a repetitive, consistent feeling, like the two-step beat of a heart, impossibly beating at fifty times per second. Over. And over. And over.

The sensation changed each time the electricity changed hands- from copper wiring, outdated now and damaged in places, to the newer conductors inside heart monitors and phone cables. And then, again, the alternation keeping pace and making time seem to slow until the world stood still, the power flowing at unthinkable speed.

Positive/negative.

Two monitors in the ICU that flickered briefly with a power surge, one ventilator, a metal mug at the nurse's station that vibrated slightly with the sudden spike in ambient energy-

Negative/positive.

Power bias in pediatrics, numerous devices running at full power and all beds hooked up, all lights on and heavy electric drag -

Positive/negative -

'Raiku?'

Raiku jolted violently awake and blinked, disoriented and found herself staring directly into a set of green eyes across the room.

Sakura smiled at her and waved from behind the elbow of Tsunade, who was eyeing Raiku with shrewd interest in the light cast by the -

Raiku looked at the window in a daze, not fully understanding what was going on. The light coming through was bright, but she had only just woken up? Had she overslept?

She looked down and found herself sitting up on the edge of the bed. Her side felt infinitely better, if still stiff and sore, and she was mercifully fully covered, but…

Tsunade cleared her throat and Raiku looked back at her immediately, still sitting in a way that minimized the parts of her that could be targeted. She raised her eyebrows expectantly and Raiku just blinked, unsure of what she wanted.

Sakura looked deliberately at the clipboard she was holding, and then back at Raiku.

'Do … you want me to ask again?' she asked tentatively, glancing at Tsunade for approval. She seemed unsure of herself, but that made sense, because what the hell was Sakura even doing in the hospital? Shouldn't she be out, uh, doing other things?

'Hello?' Raiku offered in an uncertain voice. 'It's good to see you again?'

A crease appeared in Sakura's forehead. 'Oh. It's, um, good to see you too, but I have to keep. Um.' She tapped the clipboard with her pen, giving Raiku a bemused look where Tsunade couldn't see her. Raiku returned it with a helpless twitch, not really sure why a pleasantry had prompted that confusion.

She desperately wracked her brain. Sakura had offered to ask again? Ask what again? When had she even gotten there? She had been asleep?

'Sorry.' She coughed a little to clear her throat. 'I'm a little nervous, so, please…? Again?'

Sakura nodded and spoke in a slower voice than usual. 'Have you been taking any medication since the commencement of or immediately prior to your mission?'

Raiku shook her head, fingers curling in the sheets by her side as if they could help get a better grip on her disoriented mind. 'No. I don't take anything, I never… I don't.'

Sakura ticked something off, and Raiku noted that it was over halfway down the page.

Had they skipped some? No, that wouldn't make any sense.

She had… been asleep?

Raiku tried to force her rising feeling of unease back down. She was exhausted and her condition was unstable. It would be the medication they had given her. Odds were that it was just messing with her head; she didn't exactly have a high tolerance. It had happened before. Probably.

'Um.'

She'd made a sound without realizing and found herself immediately the focus of both sets of eyes in the room. She went red under the mask and cleared her suddenly dry throat. 'I'm… hungry. If that's okay?' she added in a quieter voice, accompanied in stereo by the growling of her stomach.

Sakura smiled, thank god. 'Sure! As soon as we've finished the list, no problem.' She looked back down, reading off it more than she was addressing Raiku directly. 'Ha-ave you…' She paused and then went red. 'I think we can safely cross that off,' she muttered, but Tsunade folded her arms.

'It's important to be thorough,' she said, an edge of reproof in her voice as well as … something else…

Raiku squinted at her. Was she… was something funny? That couldn't be anything good. It was almost imperceptible, the glint of smug mischief in her eye, but she had had a lot of practice from Yamada. Still, she had to be misreading it. This was serious.

'Have you recently engaged in any sexual activity?' Sakura said, blushing so hard the red crept down her neck and along her ears.

Raiku stared, certain she'd misheard. 'I'm sorry?'

'Have you recently engaged,' Sakura began again determinedly, looking everywhere but at the suddenly cognizant Raiku, who immediately cut her off.

'No! No! I haven't! Never!' she yelped, waving her hands in a negative gesture so violent that it almost threw her off the bed. 'No! Next question!'

'Right!' Sakura said quickly, still bright red but obviously relieved.

Tsunade was the devil. Though her face remained straight, it could be seen in her eyes. She found it so amusing to watch Raiku squirm. And squirm she did, rather magnificently, just a little electric worm on a … a something?

So her metaphors weren't up to scratch today. She sighed and looked at the ceiling, feeling oddly drained. She slept and she slept and ate constantly and she still felt …

'Raiku? Raiku!'

She snapped back to attention at Sakura's surprisingly authoritative tone, automatically paying attention to the person who seemed the most in charge.

Sakura looked back down at the clipboard with a sigh of her own before looking at Tsunade. 'Shishou, I think maybe we should feed her before we continue.'

Shishou? When the hell had Sakura become the student of their Hokage? Since when did she want to be a medic? Raiku was stunned, but couldn't help the odd feeling of déjà vu.

Had she heard this before?

Frowning to herself, she was too distracted to be intimidated by Tsunade's cool, assessing stare. 'Go get some, then.'

Sakura nodded and quickly shot Raiku an encouraging smile before she darted out of the room, hair bouncing with each step. Raiku was surprised she'd let it get that long; wasn't its length symbolic? Wasn't that her thing? Was it no longer her thing? She was getting behind on the character development of her peers; she would have to study up. Was there a cheat sheet that she could borrow? No, no, she'd have to make her own, like always. God, she never understood the changes these people went through, wasn't it exhausting, such inconstancy?

Tsunade's sleeveless grey kimono suddenly loomed before her and Raiku flinched back instinctively from the warmth of a hand on either side of her head, from the unsettling, contrasting feeling of coolness inside the front of her skull.

'Tell me - do you often lose time during a conversation?'

Raiku tried to cower without actually moving, because she got the impression that wouldn't go over very well. 'What do you mean?' she asked nervously, her brilliant gaze darting all over Tsunade's face in a futile attempt to read her. She'd heard Tsunade called the most beautiful kunoichi in the world, heard it several times in fact. Raiku's opinion from the previous day was unaltered by the second encounter; she agreed that yes, Tsunade was lovely, but she found the sharp glint in her eye and the older woman's enormous presence too frightening to be able to say for sure. She couldn't glean anything from her expression, even at this distance.

Tsunade's gaze was a little distant, as though focused on a point beyond Raiku's physical frame. 'Do you lose time at random points in the day?'

Raiku gave the tiniest of shrugs. 'I … I don't know,' she mumbled, unable to bear looking at the older woman any longer. 'I don't really notice.'

Tsunade made a noncommittal humming noise that could have meant anything, so Raiku dared to ask another question.

'…Why?'

Tsunade dropped her hands, absently flexing her fingers a little before setting them on her hips. She didn't step away. Raiku dearly wished that she would. 'Nothing yet.' She scanned her. 'Do you find it hard to gain weight?' she asked in clipped tones. Very professional. Very competent. Everything Raiku found both admirable and terrifying. Raiku honestly was no longer sure if she had an enormous crush on her or feared her. Wait, no, she definitely feared her. So, probably both. She could live with both.

'Impossible, yes,' Raiku answered after a moment of confusion.

Tsunade nodded to herself, giving Raiku another quick once-over. 'Interesting.'

The door slid open and Sakura poked her head in, a tray preceding the rest of her. Raiku beamed, instantly rendered ecstatic. 'Yay!' she chirped, hands stretching out even as the rest of her awkwardly contorted so that she didn't impinge upon Tsunade's personal space. Thankfully, she was rather flexible, since this left her in a sort of Z-shape that would have snapped a stiffer human being into thirds.

Sakura shook her head and huffed a little, but it seemed fond. Which, um. That was new. Though, Raiku had noticed that people seemed more affectionate when she was horribly injured, so she chalked it up to that and dismissed it in favor of making grabby-hands towards the food. It steamed invitingly. Sakura hadn't gotten it from the cart; she had obviously gone to the cafeteria. She had paid money.

'You're my favorite,' Raiku cooed, talking in equal parts to Sakura and the tray, but Tsunade soon put a stop to that.

'Right. This is good practice for you,' she said to Sakura over her shoulder. 'Her side is almost completely healed, so you have a chance to test what you've learned so far and finish it up.'

Raiku blanched. 'What?'

Sakura beamed. 'Really?'

Tsunade quirked a brow and that seemed to be answer enough, because Sakura immediately began to advance on the suddenly concerned Gairano. 'I don't remember agreeing to this!' Raiku exclaimed, edging back.

Her shoulder blades hit the wall. She looked back at it like it would disappear under scrutiny, before looking back at Sakura with dismay.

'Okay, so hold still,' Sakura instructed, already wearing a look of intense concentration.

Raiku was pressed against the wall with no way out. With nothing left to do, she whimpered and braced herself, trying hard to keep herself under as tight a lid as possible, trying to make sure that nothing of herself escaped into the air Tsunade was witness to. She forced herself to focus intently on her breathing to keep it even as Sakura neared, seeming to move in oddly slow motion. Raiku dragged what she could under the safe layer of her skin so that she could keep her secret for as long as possible, her breathing carefully in place.

Out. In.

(negative)Out. (positive)In.

Out.

Out.

In?

Raiku inhaled sharply, lungs aching and heart racing in her ears at dangerous speed. She closed her eyes and put a hand on her chest to feel its comforting thud under her palm and tried to calm herself, still panting. To center herself, or to try to. 'Sorry!' she gasped out with her eyes still closed, dreading the look she would see on Tsunade's face. 'Sorry, I didn't… mean…to…'

She trailed off, breaths evening out but heart continuing to race for an entirely different reason.

The darkened room gave her no reply, obviously. The spotlight of Raiku's uncomprehending gaze moved from wall to window, from the floor to the bright slit where the door failed to completely obscure the light from the hallway in an otherwise completely dark space.

'Sakura?'

Raiku looked down at herself in her compulsive check, making sure she still had all her parts attached and covered even as a crawling sensation of panic started to take over what her confusion had started. In an attempt to keep calm, she took inventory. Her side didn't hurt at all but she was hungry, a sensation that was by now so familiar that it seemed to exist purely in her mind rather than in her stomach. Her hand, when she finally noticed, was gloved, rather than bandaged as she remembered it and she scrabbled at the cuff in a desperate attempt to confirm the truth of the matter. She managed to get it off after a few moments of audibly panicked pants in the darkness, the exposed skin immediately lighting up the otherwise black space with a faint glow when she exposed it to the air. It was completely healed, with nothing to show for her burns but pale, unmarked skin and her one and only freckle, sitting innocently and inexplicably on a ring finger that had never really seen the sun. Raiku tried to breathe in calmly through her nose and out through her mouth, but her chest ached from the effort of trying to stave off her inevitable hyperventilation and only served to make her feel claustrophobic inside her own skin, too full of a panic she was desperately trying to keep in.

She was constricted when she tried to move, which only made it worse, flashes of restraints and experiments flashing through her mind before she realized - there was only a blanket draped over her, tangled with her legs the way it usually was after she'd had more than a few hours sleep. Unable to stand it anyway, she struggled free and lurched across to the window, almost pressing her face to it in her haste to see outside.

Night.

The tree she remembered being outside her window must have been blocking most of the light coming from the streetlight and shopfronts outside, but there were orange and white flashes that lit up her face briefly as the branches swayed in a wind she could see, but not feel.

She rested her forehead against the glass but didn't dare close her eyes, staring blindly instead into the black as she tried to collect her abruptly scattered thoughts.

It had been a dream?

She almost snorted at the ridiculousness of it. Absolutely not. If anything it had been a nightmare.

Wait, a nightmare?

No. She'd definitely learned her lesson about assuming that. Besides, she could count on herself, on that disembodied sense she had gotten so used to so quickly, to tell her when she was awake. The metal window frame humming almost imperceptibly under her hands was real. The electricity in the walls, now a much fainter presence with most of the ward at rest, was real. The taste of copper was real, though when she probed her mouth with her tongue, she found she hadn't bitten herself and so had no idea where it came from.

Raiku felt a presence on her foot and didn't even need to look to know it was her Plot, making an appearance that was, by now, rare. It didn't help this time; it didn't comfort her to know that this was all part of some plan. She had been so afraid when she had thought she was going to die, and then again when she looked the reality of her ability and nature right in its unforgiving, terrible face. It had been a reassurance, then, that it was all to be expected. But in the dark, in the thick of it, it occurred to her for the first time that in a lifetime of trying to understand Plots, she had no idea what her own entailed.

What if this was part of it? What had Tsunade asked her - did she lose time?

How much had she already lost?

She had to know.

Seized by a sudden sense of urgency, she crossed the room and yanked open the door only to be momentarily blinded by the bright light of the hallway searing into her unprepared eyes. Covering them with her arm she made her way out anyway, colliding with the opposite wall and then keeping her free hand on it to trace her way towards the largest concentration of energy she could feel nearby.

After a few seconds of staggering she heard a male voice say her name but it felt fuzzy, almost as though it were happening far away rather than so close she could feel air displacing around the stranger as he moved. A female chimed in, higher and faster and Raiku pushed at the first hand that reached for her, surprised by her own weakness. 'How long have I been here?' she tried to demand, but her question came out small and plaintive instead.

'What?'

She dropped her arm enough to squint through the painful white light at a dark blur, features wavering in and out of focus where the person's face should have been. 'When did I get here?' she asked, and realized she was speaking far too loudly, as though over a noise that was no longer there, over the throbbing in her head.

'When did she-,'

'Day before last,' the man told her, slowly becoming more humanoid as her eyes finally got around to adjusting. It wasn't as bright as she had thought, just lit up by fluorescents bright enough to make everything clearly visible, but not glaring. He was holding her arms and she remembered trying to shove him, but she focused hard on his words.

Day before last.

She could have cried with relief and instead just sagged in place, which made the poor nurse's hands tighten on her to the point of bruising, but she could have kissed him.

Day before last.

She had lost the day, and that was all. Perfectly explicable, in a hospital. Perfectly explicable in the light of the nurse's station, instead of the more introspective dark of her room and solitude. 'What did you give me?' she asked, on the verge of breaking down. She couldn't handle this, the sudden terror and release, she needed to ground herself.

Comprehension seemed to dawn on him; his eyes softened with newfound understanding. 'You were sedated,' he said gently. 'It's normal to be disoriented.'

'I'll page the doctor,' the other nurse said somewhere behind them, but Raiku ignored her.

'It's normal?' she repeated, feeling her throat burn with tears she steadfastly refused to believe she was capable of.

He nodded. 'I promise.' He carefully traded grip on her arm to pull her up to stand under her own power, steadying her carefully. 'I'll take her back to her room,' Raiku heard him say over her head, and for once couldn't even bring herself to care that he was talking about her like she couldn't hear.

'Did Sakura come and see me?' she asked, so exhausted from her emotional ordeal that she felt herself losing focus again, but in the familiar, drowsy way that preceded sleep. She had to know.

'Saku- oh, Haruno?' He smiled down at her even as he carefully steered her back the way she'd came. 'Yes, she did. She's pretty good for a novice, isn't she?'

Raiku nodded to herself, practically collapsed onto a complete stranger and too tired to care.

'Oh, good,' she said to herself, almost giddy. Or maybe that was just light-headedness, but she'd take either one.

'And here we are,' she distantly heard him say and she looked up to see her room, her disheveled bed and it was so much smaller than it had seemed in the dark. She nodded and gave a crooked smile that he couldn't see, staggering through under her own power.

Sinking down onto the bed felt like a weight being lifted; she felt weak and shaky in the aftermath of the adrenaline, like she did after Yamada had demanded something more physically grueling than usual or a particularly powerful electrical surge. The nurse was still talking but she didn't listen, sluggishly and awkwardly pulling the covers back over herself, struggling back into a nest. He crossed the room and started pulling leads free from the monitor Mayuko had tucked into a corner, but Raiku batted at him unhappily when he tried to attach them. This earned her an exasperated look but she persisted, emitting a high whining sound until he finally backed off.

Raiku settled back and she was so tired, drained and she couldn't keep her thoughts in order under the persistent hum of energy around her, the power itching by inches under the sensitive skin of her fingertips, aching through her jaw and temples. The building's electricity was used differently at night and she drifted into it when she closed her eyes.

Not drifted.

She fell and the power was so fast-

Negative/positive.

The sound of her heart in her ears seemed to slow down into an agonizing crawl, her every inhale and exhale taking an age and impossibly loud until her breath, her heart, was a dull roar of background noise she no longer noticed-

Positive/negative.


'I don't understand why she can't just go home, if her side is better,' Ryuu maintained stubbornly. Daisukenojo rolled his eyes and restrained the urge to try and wrap his hands around the idiot's neck, just like he'd been doing all the way to the hospital that morning.

'Because she's still sick,' he gritted out, feeling a muscle in his jaw twitch.

The yellow-eyed demon snorted at him. Snorted, like he knew more about this sort of thing than Daisukenojo! Daisukenojo ground his teeth together a little bit, even though his dentist had told him he shouldn't do that any more. It was filing his teeth into sharp little edges, but hey - maybe he could bite his bastard teammate some day. Then it would come in handy.

Almost unwillingly, his mind lingered on the thought of his team, which he'd been trying to avoid for the three days since they had returned. Raiku was still in the hospital. Her side was better, as Ryuu had so helpfully observed, but for some reason, they still hadn't been allowed to see her. So, today, they would break in and see her anyway.

He sniggered to himself and stuck his hands in his pockets. Poor little thing. She was probably so scared of Tsunade. Her face must have been hilarious.

It was an especially warm day in Konoha, even with the breeze, so it was a relief to step through the automatic doors into the air-conditioning of the hospital. Even if it was accompanied by the smell of disinfectant and less savory things, he was glad to get inside. Wind made him nervous, now; he didn't like the thought of Ryuu knowing what he was doing at any given time, even when Ryuu was right there to see it for himself. A lack of privacy was a terrible thing for someone his age. The lights flickered as the doors closed behind them, making Daisukenojo jump a little.

Ryuu shot him a narrow look. 'Yeah, real inconspicuous,' he muttered. Daisukenojo hated that he could feel a violent flush rising from his neck, but Ryuu just had this innate ability to get under people's skin and then itch, like a ... like a-

Ryuu jabbed him in the ribs. 'Stop trying to think of a comeback and concentrate.'

'What? It's not my fault the lights are bad!' Daisukenojo muttered.

'It's been happening a lot.'

Daisukenojo almost jumped out of his skin but managed to stay in place. Not just because Ryuu's hand had clamped down on his shoulder the second the woman had started speaking, he told himself sullenly. Because that would be stupid.

'Nurse Gairano,' Ryuu greeted over his head, because the inconsiderate jackass probably wouldn't ever stop growing, just out of spite. Like the world's most evil beanstalk.

There. Nailed it.

Daisukenojo's moment of smug and silent triumph at his perfect metaphor was interrupted by a belated surge of relief at the realization they'd been caught by a member of Raiku's family, who'd probably let it slide even if they did suspect what the two of them were up to. He turned to see the same nurse that they usually ended up talking to whenever Raiku was in hospital. Mariko? Masa-something... no, that was wrong. She had the same steady grey gaze as Raiku's dad, so it was probably her aunt.

'The power's been coming and going. After tonight, we'll be running on generators until the problem's fixed,' she told them, and Daisukenojo thought it was ridiculous that that bland, blank gaze should make him feel so intensely as though she was looking just past his skin. Raiku had the same thing - they knew when she looked at them; they could feel her bright blue gaze on them like a physical touch. It felt as though she saw right through people whenever she looked at them, something about the focus of her eyes just a little off, just a little too intently on something behind their faces on the rare occasion when she actually dared to look at someone for more than a few seconds.

God. The Gairano were weird as hell.

Ryuu nodded in understanding and his tight grip steered Daisukenojo away, digging in a little too tightly. Daisukenojo grimaced and cast out his senses, probing the field for the familiar, if faint, feeling of Raiku's chakra. It was hard to pick up at the best of times, but they had to make sure-

He stopped dead. 'She's not there!' he hissed to Ryuu, who responded by tightening his fingers in so much it would probably bruise.

'Where else would she be?!'

'She's probably off for tests or something, you asshole!' Daisukenojo said a little too loudly, making people across the crowded reception room turn to stare at them.

Ryuu immediately propelled him towards the doors, which opened with another flicker and a rush of the warm breeze. It smelled slightly like damp earth, like rain coming, and Daisukenojo had a moment to feel relieved at the thought of a break in the heat before he stumbled out into the humidity and sun under a heartbreakingly clear sky.

'What the hell!?' he exploded, rubbing his shoulder irritably.

Ryuu glowered at him and pushed him a little further away from the hospital. 'Nice work, genius! Now we have to wait, or find another way in!'

'Yeah, remind me why we can't just wait until we're allowed to see her!?' Daisukenojo demanded, feeling himself grow hotter from anger as well as the smothering heat of the sun.

'Because!'

'Because what!?'

'Because she could die!' Ryuu snapped, the force of it sending Daisukenojo back a step in surprise. Daisukenojo looked at Ryuu, stunned for a moment by the display of emotion on the taller boy's usually composed face, anger clear in his bright gaze. It made Daisukenojo reel, made him think about what he had tried so hard to put from his mind until now.

She could die, he thought with guilt. She could. If the medics didn't find a way to help her, her side wouldn't matter. She'd just shut down, which seemed an impossible thought to him. Raiku was many things - wimpy, awkward, strange - but she was also happy and so undeniably alive that it seemed unthinkable that she could just... fade away into nothing. So he hadn't thought about it. But, he realized, looking at Ryuu drag his composure back together with deep breaths, that didn't mean Ryuu hadn't been. And he'd been strange about Raiku's health, this time; had been oddly quiet and guilty, which was ridiculous, because they would have told him if Ryuu had done something, right?

No, actually. Ryuu would want to hide it and Raiku never told anyone anything unless she was confirming what they already knew.

Daisukenojo sighed heavily, rubbing the back of his neck. 'Sorry.'

Ryuu glared at him but couldn't keep it up, instead choosing to look up at the sky. It smelled like rain and ozone, but there wasn't a cloud in sight, except for pale white wisps in the distance. There was nothing for him to focus on, so Daisukenojo kept talking.

'I'll keep trying, and when she's back, I'll come and get you.' It was as close to a peace offering as he would ever get and Ryuu flicked his fingers dismissively in his own equivalent.

'Fine.'

They nodded at each other but saw no reason to stick together for the rest of the day - it was too hot to train, too hot to fight, so they'd just tire each other out. Ryuu slouched away down the street that would take him home and Daisukenojo turned back to the hospital for one last look before he went back to help take care of his flu-ridden siblings. A flash of white caught his eye in a window in Raiku's ward - or what he thought was Raiku's ward, but it was gone too quickly for him to focus on. Just to make sure, he checked it once more and found only the varying strength of chakra from civilians and shinobi, nothing so distinctive as Raiku's strange, muffled chakra presence.

He looked back down to where he had to go and set off, trying to remember what his mother had wanted him to pick up from the store on the way home, trying to shake off that strange, familiar feeling, of someone looking through him.


A/N: Merry Christmas! I got you a cliffhanger, sort of. Or maybe not, maybe I'll have another one up before then.