Byakuya

Chapter 25

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Sakura's scream was abruptly cut off as the pink-haired kunoichi realized how she had reacted. She brought her hand up to cover her mouth, this time not to stop herself from throwing up; but to stop her self from whimpering. Her green eyes filled with tears and soon the liquid was falling down her cheeks rapidly. Sakura's lips quivered and she let out a whimper deep down on her throat.

Naruto was looking at her with his still red eyes, she noticed, but what before she had translated as betrayal and anger now looked like sadness. Then the red chakra seemed to fade out of existence and Sakura looked with morbid fascination as Naruto's claws seemed to extract and his whiskers thin. The golden blonde hair seemed to soothe down a bit, and the fangs that before had protruded out of the sides of his mouth morphed back into normal teeth. And then, last of all, the red betrayed eyes watching her morphed into clear blue ones.

The look of slight horror and fear seemed to fill into Naruto's eyes, and Sakura felt her shoulders shake, and she had to slap her other hand in front of her mouth in order to hold the sob in. The air felt heavy as Sakura felt like someone was pushing the air out of her lungs, and hot, burning sensation started to creep up her throat. Her breathing started to hitch in her throat, and her knees gave out.

Sakura's eyes never left Naruto's, and the stone chamber was swallowed by silence so thick it could've been cut with a knife.

A drop of blood let out a small 'plop' as it fell down the hanyou's cheek onto the stone floor.

Silence reigned.

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When Tsunade finally arrived at the medic chamber with Kakashi, Hiashi and Iruka, she caught the end of Sasuke's sentence.

"—the hell was that?" The Uchiha muttered from the examination bed where he was still strapped down, fighting to force the words out of his mouth. Tsunade noted with satisfaction that the Uchiha did indeed look slightly baffled and extremely annoyed.

The atmosphere in the room was thick, Tsunade noted at once, and took it as her responsibility to break it.

"Oy! Brat! What were you doing! You can't just dash off like that when you hear somebody scream! And no, I don't care if it was your team-mate, you let us to handle these things, goddamn it!" The Gondaime snapped. The melancholy left Naruto's face as his temper came out to play.

"What? You would rather I would have left her to die? Sorry to tell you, but you don't know shit about these hanyou's! Lee wouldn't have stood a change because he would've had no idea where to hit the bitch, even if he would have had the speed for it!" Naruto bellowed his eyes open with anger. Tsunade glared.

"Hiashi, I trust you to take Sakura and Lee out of here. I'll explain everything to them at a later date. Swear them to secrecy." Tsunade ordered, and Hiashi, even though he didn't particularly like the Hokage, sensed her urge to get Naruto's team-mates out of the room. Hiashi nodded, before indicating Lee to follow. Lee picked Sakura up from the floor where she was still sobbing, and followed the Hyuuga out of the chamber.

Tsunade waited for a moment until their steps had echoed away, and turned to Naruto.

"Why was Sakura crying? It's my understanding she's always been calm in battle situations." Naruto turned away to stare at the floor, before glancing at the Gondaime.

"She is… She was calm most of the time the hanyou attacked. She…" Naruto's voice broke off, and he raised his hand to wipe some blood off his cheek. Tsunade threw a slightly nauseated look at the pile of blood the hanyou was lying in. She still hadn't completely been cured of her fear of blood, and it still brought pile in the back of her throat, one of the reasons why it had taken her so long time to get to the medic chamber. It had taken some time to recover from seeing someone push a Rasengan through somebody's chest.

"She screamed when she saw Naruto." Sasuke said silently from his bed, his voice full of dull detachment and hesitation, as if he wasn't quite sure what he said was right. Tsunade's eyes softened and she reached out for Naruto, hugging him close. Naruto leaned into the touch for a moment.

"Oh, Naruto… is he right?" Tsunade asked. Naruto nodded dumbly, fighting tears. Now isn't the time nor place the break down, Naruto said to himself as he regained his resolve. Tsunade hugged Naruto closer, and Naruto started to struggle as he felt his ribs creak under the pressure.

"Oy! Careful with the suffocation bags!" Naruto protested, trying to get his face from between Tsunade's breasts. After hearing Naruto's comment, Tsunade let Naruto go with a huff.

"You should learn to respect your elders, brat!" Tsunade snapped, and Kakashi moved to help Sasuke out of his bed. The sedatives put on the Uchiha to keep him calm under the examination of his seal were starting to wear off. Sasuke stumbled slightly and Iruka moved to steady the brunette from the other side.

"Respect my elders? You're old, yes, but no way am I going to go all slave-y when you don't deserve it!" Naruto answered in his aloof style, sticking his tongue out. Tsunade rolled her brown eyes before her expression turned stern.

"This needs to be talked about, Naruto. Come by tomorrow, and we'll talk about this situation." Tsunade said, her gaze going over Naruto's exhausted and bloody face that still had a bloody line going down from his forehead to his jaw, and his red yukata that was now painted with blood.

Naruto's eyes glimmered with worry.

"But, baa-chan! There are still two of them out there. We don't know who their aiming to kill!" Naruto protested, remembering that the hanyou did, indeed work in teams of four. Tsunade smiled gently down at the exhausted blonde.

"Don't worry about it. From the sounds of all the barking going on in the floor below, Inuzuka has already fought one in the mission room. Gai went to help him, and Kakashi killed one on our way here. Besides, you're exhausted. This is important, I know, but we're hardly going to be able to discuss this properly when you're still exhausted from fighting Hiashi, and not one hanyou, but two." Tsunade explained, her face turning a bit motherly.

"Really, baa-chan, I'm not that tired," Naruto started to whine, but Tsunade shook her head. She reached to straighten the collar of Naruto's yukata gently.

"There's been a lot going on, Naruto. First you came from that mission where you had contact with over twenty shinobi, and almost right after it you went for that mission in the thunder country. Don't worry about it." She said. Naruto sighed, before turning his face to the side again, having noticed that Sasuke was watching him.

"You can't push a shinobi too much before he breaks. It's not only the body that needs the rest, brat." Tsunade said now slightly more teasing.

Glimmering brown eyes met annoyed blue ones.

"Fine." Naruto finally huffed.

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"Sakura-chan, you all right?" Lee asked worried from Sakura. She was looking at the street in front of them, her green eyes unfocused and looking at something only she could see. She nodded distractedly, before turning to the green clad taijutsu master.

"Lee-kun?" Sakura started hesitantly, and Lee brightened at the suffix. "Ano… Umm… Do you think I'm a bad person?" She asked, putting her forefingers together in a nervous gesture. Lee's eyes softened and he gained a more adult look as he seemed to weight the question carefully, knowing it must've been important to the girl that had held his heart for four years.

Abruptly Lee stopped in the middle of the street, grateful that not many people seemed to be walking by just then, and turned to face Sakura. She was looking up at him, as if suddenly seeing him in a different light. Suddenly she was more aware of how tall he really was, and how his hair with its braid and loose bangs on the front seemed to compliment his looks more.

Lee took a deep breath and took Sakura's hand, and held it for a moment before he spoke.

"Sakura-san…" Lee started, hesitantly trying to seek for the right words to express how he felt about her. "…if you were not a good person, then I…" Lee started, before just resigning to his fate. Lee had never been good with words, and so no one really realized the difference with him after he met Gai. Lee had been a bit disappointed frankly, seeing as how he wasn't actually as alike, as his sensei, as people seemed to think.

"Look, Sakura-chan," Lee started, and she felt her breath catch in her throat. "When I first saw you, I was captured by your eyes. They seemed so intelligent and sweet, if a bit naïve. I've seen no evidence after that to prove that you weren't sweet or kind or intelligent, on the contrary actually." Lee smiled down at her gently. She wiped a tear from the corner of her eye.

"Thanks, Lee-kun." She said, smiling brightly, although albeit sadly. "I just… Naruto looked so sad. And I never wanted to…show him I'm frightened of him." Sakura said, looking to the side, her bangs covering her eyes. She bit her lip, and Lee frowned.

"Sakura-chan, Naruto… He didn't look like himself. I've never seen anything like it before, actually. But I've seen something similar like it, and its implications scare me. But whatever this sudden change in Naruto is, he will understand. You were surprised, after all, it isn't every day your team-mates eyes turn red, and he develops fangs. There's a possibility it's just something like what the Inuzuka clan have, the beast transformation technique." Lee said, while getting the feeling he really shouldn't talk like this about Naruto. Not only was it impolite and just forbidden by the Hyuuga clan head minutes before, Lee didn't really know that much about Naruto.

"You don't understand!" Sakura yelled, her voice full of despair, and lowered her voice after a lady standing by a nearby fruit-cart with apples on it turned to look at them. "I'm afraid of Naruto. I've tried to get rid of it, but I can't. Not after the forest of death. And I'm horribly unfair against Naruto. I've seen him look like that before, when he stopped one of Orochimaru's snakes from eating Sasuke. Ever since then, I've been terrified of him…" Sakura hurriedly explained.

"I…I'm a Haruno. My family isn't big or famous like the Hyuuga's or the Uchiha's, and I'm the first shinobi in our family in three decades, but what special family jutsus we have, have to do with Nature. We're tied to the nature really close, and that's why I feel the nature respond when Naruto gets like that. First there's this sense of something bad coming in the air, and everything in me screams for me to run. And then when that red chakra appears, it's like you were facing the evilest power in the world." Sakura's eyes became hazy as she tried to describe the feeling of terror that overtook her.

"It sends shivers down your back, the smell of dog vomit into your nose, and the nauseating feeling on the back of your throat that simply seems to force you to throw up." Sakura whispered at the end, her eyes dropping to the ground again from where she had been staring at Lee with her eyes bright as she yelled at him. Lee reached out to her, putting his hand on her shoulder. Sakura shivered at the skin to skin contact, even though only the tips of Lee's fingers were void of bandages.

"…Then you'll have to explain it to him. Otherwise you'll both get hurt. I know you care for each other a lot…" Lee began. A sliver of fear showed in Sakura's eyes.

"No! We don't like each other like that!" She hurried to explain. Lee settled his other hand on her other shoulder comfortingly.

"I know, and that isn't what I meant. Its oblivious Naruto no longer like you romantically, and I doubt he knew enough of his own emotions when we were young to tell the difference between romantic and sibling love. What I mean is; you're team-mates. And you shouldn't let something like this get between you." Lee continued, and Sakura blushed. She then abruptly turned to look at Lee again. Her eyes brightened before closing as she smiled gently up at him.

"Arigatou, Lee-kun." She thanked him gently. Lee just looked frozen at the smile on her face.

She has never smiled like that at me before. Maybe she's like Naruto in that way, and prefers me to act like Gai only when she needs encouragement.

"It'll be fine, you'll see, Sakura-chan." Lee comforted her, before turning to stand beside her again. He offered his hand to the pink-haired kunoichi, before smiling gently, a smile where his teeth didn't actually show.

"May I walk you home, Sakura-hime?" Lee asked teasingly. Sakura giggled behind her hand and took the offered hand.

"You may, Lee-sama."

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A/N: Sorry this chapter is a bit short, but that just seemed like the place to end it. Oh, and Lee does actually have a part planned in this fic, even though it doesn't have anything to do with the main plot.

And Ha! I got this chapter betaed before I posted it so if you now dare to complain I'm going to seriously cry T-T. All thanks to my lovely beta Sufinkusu, whose healing hand helped me a lot!

--Dark

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