Naruto rolled back over onto his left side with an angry flop.
He roughly settled his cheek down onto his pack, frowning when he couldn't seem to find a place for him to lay his head that was not bumpy and uncomfortable. He quelled down the restless energy thrumming through him and irritably kicked his legs in a futile attempt to disentangle himself from the stuffy clutch of his blanket.
Chouji let out a long, gurgling snore...
"Ugh!" Naruto just barely held in his roar of frustration, springing up into a sitting position with his hands balled into fists at his sides. Why can't I sleep?!
And just as suddenly as his restless anger had overwhelmed him, it was swept away, an almost unbearable exhausted urge to cry taking it's stead. Naruto gritted his teeth, panting as he tried to regain control of himself. He hated nights like this.
Filled with an indomitable restlessness, so powerful that his skin itched with the strain of containing it, he could never sleep. And, for some reason, it was always on the nights that he was beyond fatigued that this strange affliction overcame him... This, Naruto slowly relaxed his hands, looking around at his sleeping teammates with a miserable sort of jealousy, sucks!... All I want... All I want is sleep... Why can't I fall--
His watery blue eyes flitted despairingly over the shadowed, mossy walls of the cave before catching on the crumpled blanket lying forlornly across from him.
"Oh..." The small enclosure was quiet and still as realization, tinged with the sour tang of guilt, washed over him. Naruto groaned, bowing his head forwards, and rubbed his knuckles into his dry, itchy eyes. Makes sense... I never could fall asleep on a guilty stomach...
He straightened slightly, squinted left eye twitching through the spaces between his fingers as he slid his hand slowly down his face. Okay, if he didn't get sleep soon, all of the powers of rational thought would be lost from him. He had to find Kakashi.
With much resentful grumbling and hushed curses, Naruto stubbornly managed to traverse the prone bodies of his teammates as well as an assortment of unnecessary bags that he really didn't remember any of them owning, and stumbled through a freshly spun spiders web out into the crisp, night air.
How did one differentiate between the poisonous fuzzy caterpillars and the not poisonous fuzzy caterpillars?
Kakashi hugged himself tightly, ignoring the small tremors that raced through his taut frame, and cast a skeptical eye on the wooly larvae before him. Really, he frowned, unless the whole of the entire avian race possesses an inborn, supernatural tendency to always guess correctly, thousands of bird species would have been forced into extinction through the kamikaze war tactics of this little bug.
His eye widened, Who's to say that scores of unlucky, risk-taking birdy gamblers haven't fallen prey to it already? He took a stuttered step back, a new-found respect for the creepy-crawlies casting them in a more menacing light.
A twig snapped.
"Shit." Kakashi muttered tensely, uncovered eye flinching closed as an uncontrollable shudder gripped him. For some reason he was gasping, gloveless hands fisting in the thin fabric of his shirt under his armpits.
"Sensei?" A hesitant voice asked. More snapping twigs and crunching leaves, "It's me, Naruto."
Why did he feel so dizzy? Kakashi shook his head to clear it but stopped, swaying on his feet, when the action just made it worse. What was Naruto doing up? He should be catching up on sleep.
"Listen I'm," there was a small pause as the Jinchuriki solemnly stepped over a fallen branch, "I'm sorry, Kaka-sensei."
Sorry? Kakashi had nearly ripped the boy's spinal cord out through the front of his throat. He blinked a few times, trying to clear the uncomfortable lethargy that had settled like a fog over his mind as well as his blurrily careening vision.
"Naruto, don't-" he panted, overcome with the tightness in his chest, and was unable to finish his sentence.
"No." Before him now, Naruto shook his blonde head, "I shouldn't have tried to look under your mask when you were sleeping. Shikamaru was right, I was being goofy. But, I never meant to freak you out or anything." Blue eyes looked up earnestly and widened when they connected with Kakashi's unfocused gaze. Naruto frowned.
"Sensei?"
It was those cerulean eyes looking at him worriedly again.
His sensei had such a calm countenance, he felt guilty for putting such an expression in those azure orbs. Kakashi shook his head again, words of explanation catching jumbled in his throat, and the world tilt even more. He staggered backwards a couple of steps, his breath catching in his throat noisily. A queer, tingly sensation swept through his trembling body and he had to latch onto a tree trunk for support.
"Kakashi-sensei?" Kakashi-kun?
"Are you okay?!" Are you okay?
He didn't want to bother him, his sensei had so many other things to worry about. Kakashi opened his mouth to tell him that he was fine, but all that came out was a strangled moan of pain as his neck muscle spasmed and then clenched.
Naruto frowned as his former sensei stumbled clumsily backwards, breathing raggedly. He caught himself on a nearby tree trunk, fingers scrabbling slightly over the dry bark, and held himself up.
"Kakashi-sensei?" A strange, cold dread pooled into the pit of his stomach.
His blue eyes widened in shock when the man before him crumpled to the leaf covered forest floor. Naruto took a step forward and then a step back, unsure if he should touch him or not.
"Are you okay?!"
In some distant part of his brain, as Kakashi's body contorted into tight angles and seizured before him, Naruto wondered why he always asked unnecessary questions.
Sorry it's such a short chapter, but I just couldn't resist that potential cliffhanger :]
For anyone that isn't really getting what's going on, here's a synopsis. Naruto couldn't sleep because he unconsciously felt bad about what he did to Kakashi, so he went out to go apologize. Kakashi was standing outside in the cold, distracting himself from his guilty conscience and bad dreams with philosophical observations of a caterpillar. As Naruto begins to apologize, Kakashi starts to feel strange and out of it. A memory of his past sensei talking to him overlaps Naruto's words and he thinks that Naruto is actually his past sensei. Kakashi falls down and starts to have a seizure.
Poor thing...
Anyway! Please, please, please review!
Thanks!
~Flintyminty25