"Shousen Jutsu!! SHOUSEN JUTSU!! SHOU-SEN JU-TSU!!" shouted Sakura, all but slamming her hands down on Naruto's chest, glowing emerald with healing chakra. Try as she might, nothing changed. Nothing helped. Naruto, whom she loved like a brother, was only continuing to get worse.
"Sakura-san...!" Strong hands clasped over hers, holding her.
"Let go of me, Lee!" She cried, tears streaming down her cheeks as she struggled vainly against him. Hopelessly, it was. Even without Lee's considerable strength against her own, she was weak, exhausted, and nearly drained of chakra.
"I cannot do that, Sakura-san," he replied calmly, still holding her down. "If you continue this you'll burn off not only your chakra but all the life left in you..."
"I don't care! I have to save him!"
"You will... but not like this..."
Unable to struggle, unable to argue, Sakura collapsed, sobbing, against Lee, who held her in his arms and stroked the back of her head, doing his best to comfort her. But even he watched in concern the poor form of Naruto lying on the cot before him. Already the lesions were starting to form on his skin. They'd remove his jacket and t-shirt, setting them on a nearby table. Naruto was unconscious... he hadn't even noticed when he'd been sick, right up until he'd collapsed.
"Stubborn idiot," muttered Sakura, choking back another sob. "Why did you... why does he have to...? To...?" She sobbed again heavily, tears flowing freely.
And Rock Lee just held her. He didn't have any answers either. No one did. All he could offer was his comfort, and even that seemed painfully insufficient at the moment. But she took it and held onto it for dear life.
I fear this is one danger I cannot protect you from, he thought, feeling her shudder against his wiry frame. His eyes glanced up at the body of his teammate, and he grimaced at the sight of the hyperactive blonde so quiet and still. Lee and Naruto had quickly become some of the closest of friends after the chuunin exams. Both outcasts, both dropout losers (as Neji would have said... back then, at least), both fiercely determined to prove themselves. Even united by their protective feelings for Sakura... which might've resulted in a painful rivalry if Sakura hadn't unequivocally chosen someone who wasn't either of them.
Naruto-kun, you had best get better, he thought. And not just for her sake.
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Sakura was sitting atop of the hut's roof when lunchtime came around, but she couldn't eat a morsel, despite Lee's insistence she take a break for lunch. He was out securing more herbs in the forest at the moment, and he'd been returning soon. She knew he wouldn't rest until she'd eaten something, so she'd dusted off the riceballs, nibbled at the ends. It didn't help. The food tasted like ash in her mouth.
She barely even noticed when Lord Tekka came to find her, climbing up with a ladder and some great difficulty, he confessed. She hadn't even heard him coming. His humor evaporated as soon as he saw Sakura's sad eyes. Her teammate was dying. Her closest friend. And she could do nothing to stop it. It was happening again.
"This isn't the first time you've lost someone dear, is it?" he asked, with an unusual insight into the situation.
She shook her head. "No... I've lost two people now... the first was... was..."
"... someone very close to you, right?"
She glanced up at him, and in that instant, she realized why he was suddenly so attractive to her. He looked almost exactly like...
But he wasn't, her inner self reminded her. He's not him. He never will be. Lord Tekka wasn't like her childhood crush in a lot of ways, save appearance. He wouldn't have made a good shinobi, for one thing, he wasn't very strong or fast or agile. He was kinder, too, more eager to laugh and joke and smile. And his resemblance was vague at best, his features clearly weren't the same. But she realized, the more time she spent around him, the more she could see Sasuke in Lord Tekka.
Or maybe, the Sasuke she'd always wanted to see in Lord Tekka.
"And the other was quite recent, I'm guessing," he continued.
Startled a little by his perception, she studied him closely. "You lost someone as well, didn't you?"
He nodded, settling down on the rooftop beside her.
"My big brother... he was a shinobi, like you all... he perished on a mission far south of here. Something very secretive. They can't give out many details," he relayed with a sigh. "I miss him."
"... I lost a patient recently. An older man... he'd had a heart condition long before he came to the hospital..."
She closed her eyes, but the images came anyway.
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"Time of Death... three am from heart failure."
Sakura collapsed, dimly aware that she'd fallen into a seat at the back of the room. She couldn't believe it. She just couldn't. She'd been around the dead before, of course, with her training in the medical arts it had been inevitable she'd had to learn the mysteries of flesh and blood through cadavers. And she'd seen the living, she'd known the old man here for many days, giving him comfort and helping him to rest.
But now was the first time in her life she'd seen death.
And like most mortals, she stood in awe and trembled in fear at its awesome power.
Not twenty minutes ago the patient had been alive. Old, in pain, his heart failing him, but alive. Now he was dead. And no medic-nin in this world could bring him back from such a state.
And she was responsible.
"This wasn't your fault, Sakura," said Tsunade with a heavy sigh, pinching the brow of her nose. Even for an older, experienced medic-nin, this sort of thing never got any easier. "Some people we... just can't save. No matter how hard we try."
In her head, Sakura knew this was true, and she nodded numbly. In her heart, however... well the heart wasn't so easy to convince. She'd already lost one person important to her because she hadn't been strong enough, she couldn't bear to go through that again.
Dimly, she became vaguely aware of Shizune taking her shoulder and guiding her out of the room, as the full-time hospital personnel covered the body in a black sheet. She got some water, but barely noticed when she drank it. She wasn't even crying... not yet, at least. Tonight she would, after she bid mom and dad goodnight and went to her room. Then it would hit her all at once and she'd fall into her bed sobbing, wondering where her innocent childhood had gone.
She would find a way to save those she cared about.
Even if she had to climb down into Hell and personally kick the Death God's rear herself.
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Armed with fresh determination and a full stomach, thanks to Lee and Tekka, Sakura dried away her tears and pushed her fears into the back of her mind. Naruto wasn't dead yet, and he wouldn't die if she had any say in it. And as her friends testify too, once Sakura set her mind on something, you did not want to get into her way.
Returning to Naruto's bedside, Sakura beckoned over Lee, remembering her earlier hypothesis and wanting to confirm it now.
"Lee, I had any idea shortly before you two came back, I wanted to confirm it with you..." she explained. She pointed out the lesions positions on Naruto's bare chest and stomach. "Does this pattern look familiar to you at all?"
Rock Lee took a moment to study it, wondering idly what she was getting at. But the instant he did, his wide eyes blinked in shock, and he silently praised the wisdom of his beloved Sakura.
"It looks like..."
"Tenketsu, isn't it? It is..." she said.
Rock Lee nodded, reaching into the pack at his side for his little handbook, where he kept vital combat information and other such tidbits from Gai-sensei. It also included, on one page, a complete tenketsu chart that Neji had helped him make. Having been on the receiving end of it once or twice, Lee was anxious to learn more about his rival's abilities, and Neji had been interested in a practice dummy to seal, since it didn't affect Lee much.
Lee held up the book with the page in question, and there was no doubt. The lesions were forming on the skin in the exact place of the tenketsu points.
"What does this mean, Sakura-san?"
She frowned, feeling that sense of dread once more. "It means this... virus... its attacking the chakra system. That must be why the medic-nins were the first affected... those with more active chakra must be more susceptible."
"Then we must remove you from this place at once," stated Lee, thinking quickly. He reached down, but Sakura gently batted his hand away.
"No. I'm staying."
"Sakura-san, you just said..."
"I know what I said, Lee," she replied, her voice perfectly calm as she stood and turned to face him. Her jade eyes flashed in a warning manner. "I also said I'm not leaving. So unless you intend to pick me up bodily and haul me out of here..."
She didn't finish her threat, but her eyes did, and they promised untold pain if he even thought about it.
Rock Lee, however, did not back down easily. He swallowed and grimly replied. "... if that is what it takes to keep you safe," he replied evenly and respectfully. But he did lower his hand back down to his side.
"I'm the only one who can help here, Lee... I have to risk it," she said, turning back to examine Naruto. "For Naruto's sake... for all these villagers."
Grimly, he nodded, though he would've vastly preferred to grab her up and throw her over her shoulder, get them both far away from the plague as humanly possible. Instead, however, he simply said "What can I do to help?"
"Take a message to Lord Tekka."
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Lord Tekka climbed the stairs up to the second floor of his estate, locking himself up in his private study, and took a moment to make his way to the far window. Below, he watched as the green-clad, bushy-eyed ninja, the one called Lee, sped out of his estate. After delivering his message, he'd been all to happy to return to Sakura's side. The boy's affection for her was obvious and pathetic. What woman could love such a freak as he?
Shrugging, Tekka turned to proper matters at hand, notably the troubling new developments Sakura had unearthed. They threatened to ruin everything. Drawing out a scroll and dipping his quill in ink, he scribed a quick message to his comrades. Though few in Takaki knew it, their young lord was also a ninja. Only a chuunin, it was true, and not particularly promising one at that... he'd only barely passed the qualifying exams, and that mostly because of his teammates. So he'd been assigned a post here, and most had been content to forget about him.
Until a month ago when the plague started.
Tying up the scroll neatly, he made his way over to the cage with his messenger falcon, affixing the message.
"Fly swiftly," he said, instructing the falcon and giving it a light toss out the window. It's wings spread and it caught an updraft, and swiftly it was on the move. Within an hour the message would be delivered.
Then something would have to be done.
He shut the window, drew the drapes closed, then locked the door.
Tekka made his way to his wardrobe and flung it open wide, discarded the ceremonial robes and clothes of his office, his every day things and reached forward, yanking out the back of the wardrobe to conceal it's true purpose. Built into the wall, hidden behind it, an assortment of shinobi weapons and tools, including a forehead protector, though the dim light made the symbol difficult to see. Swiftly, he began to arm himself, strapping a holster onto his leg, a vest around his torso. He double-checked his scrolls and kunai.
All was in readiness.
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Author's Notes:
I can only presume Neji had to practice his attacks on a living target to do it properly, and that Lee would be unaffected (since he doesn't use ninjutsu or genjutsu). But it's all guesswork on my part.