Syncope
Chapter 3
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It was that night happening all over again. Sasuke was running through the Uchiha district, slipping on the blood flowing down the streets from the slaughtered bodies of his clan. He'd lived through this nightmare thousands of times and it still struck the same unadulterated terror in his heart. But this time something was different. Out of the corner of his eye he spotted a splash of pink among the monochromatic corpses. This wrenched an anguished cry out of him, but he couldn't turn back and see if it was really her... he had no control over his body, trapped in this world until it all played out.
He arrived at his house to the scene of Itachi mercilessly cutting down their parents. Their lifeless bodies fell on the tatami in a mess of limbs. Itachi turned to him with a crazily spinning Mangekyo and then the scene changed.
Sasuke was paralyzed, stuck in one spot. Older Itachi was coming up to him, bloodied, injured, but smiling, a hand lifted up for that last forehead poke. Suddenly, he coughed up blood, the black hair turned to pink and it was Sakura standing right in front of him, blood pouring out of her mouth, nose and eyes. She gave him a macabre smile and touched his forehead.
"There won't be a next time," she said.
Her skin blackened and cracked. Sasuke pitched forward, to catch her, fix her, put her back together, but he only grabbed on the air as she turned into dust right before his eyes.
"Sakura!"
Sasuke shot up in the bed, sweating and panting like after a long run. He wiped his forehead and glanced at the alarm clock. It had been barely two hours since he'd gone to sleep. He swung his legs over the edge and got out of bed. He was in no mood to try sleeping again. Without Sakura there, their bed felt unwelcoming, almost hostile to him.
Sasuke padded to the bathroom and took a cold shower. Next he checked in on Sarada. At least she was sleeping soundly, though she was clutching onto a thick medical tome in her sleep. She must have stayed up late, reading it until exhaustion, looking for some clue to cure her mother. Sasuke smiled proudly at his diligent, stubborn child. Just recently she was showing him and Sakura that she learned how to heal a fish.
Sasuke carefully slipped the glasses off Sarada's nose and set them on her nightstand, then did the same with the book, replacing it cleverly with a stuffed panda. Sarada's nose slightly wrinkled, but she didn't stir.
He would have liked to sneak into Sakura's hospital room to watch over her, but Shizune forbid him from staying after the visiting hours. Normally he wouldn't care less about her opinion, however Sakura took her side and told him to go home and get some rest.
Sasuke snorted. Obviously it didn't work.
Unwilling to go to sleep again, he settled himself cross-legged on the porch and whiled away the night in meditation, but even that was plagued by recollections of the past two months. Still, he'd take the meager rest gained from meditation over another hellish nightmare.
When the sun finally rose, Sasuke prepared breakfast for Sarada to eat when she wakes up. He didn't touch the food—even if he tried, he wouldn't have been able to swallow anything.
On his way to the hospital he stopped by the flower shop. The bell at the entrance rang when he entered.
"Welcome! Oh, hi Sasuke!" Ino greeted him as she looked up from the register. "Is it already that day? Do you want the usual?"
"Aa."
Ino picked the daffodils, Sakura's favourite flowers, and wrapped them in a paper, filling the place with a friendly chatter. Sasuke just grunted here and there, pretending to listen, though he didn't miss that instead of the three flowers, which stood for the three members of his family, she gave him two more.
"These are from me and Sai," Ino explained with a wink. "Tell Sakura to get better and that I'll drop by today, okay?" Suddenly, she dropped the cheer. "And Sasuke... you take care too. Don't lose heart. Things are looking bad now, I know, but Sakura's tough. We all just have to believe in her."
Sasuke nodded, unsure of what to say, paid for the bouquet and headed out.
He arrived at the hospital at nine on the dot, when the visiting hours started. Sakura was wide awake after taking her medicine. He changed the flowers in the vase and sat in the visitor's chair he'd already claimed as his own.
"You brought more flowers," Sakura noticed right away. "Ino forgot how to count to three?"
Sasuke smirked at that. His wife's rivalry with her best friend was amusing when they weren't fighting for him. "No, they're a gift for you."
"At least it's not another teddy bear. I've got so many here, I don't know where to put them anymore," Sakura complained jokingly. He glanced at the table covered with get well cards, plushies and assortment of other gifts. It still astounded him how many people's lives Sakura had touched. "Tell Ino I appreciate the flowers."
"You can tell her yourself," Sasuke replied, relaying Ino's message.
They kept talking about anything that came to mind. Sakura was curious about everything that happened outside the hospital walls and Sasuke did his best to indulge her. But no matter how hard she pretended to act normally, he could see how quickly she was getting tired. Her responses came slower and shorter, until she stopped talking altogether and just closed her eyes, so he just sat with her in silence, holding her bony, small hand in his big palm.
In moments like this, those quiet moments, Sasuke allowed himself to be hit by the severity of the situation. Everyone else was fooled by Sakura's facade of strength. They thought she'd heal in no time, because she was the best medic on the planet. They believed that Konoha's state of art medical care which she had established herself would save her. Sasuke couldn't blame anyone for thinking that, he'd believed the same too, at first. Now he wasn't under any such illusions.
Once the illness took a solid foothold in Sakura's body, it was impossible to fight off by conventional means. Sakura's chakra was her most powerful weapon and it was turned against her. It took all of Shizune's efforts to barely keep it at bay while she and her best team of medics scrambled in search for a cause of this terrifying sickness. It had been two months and they still couldn't find a cure. Ironically, the one person that could have made the most progress with this case was the patient herself. But Sakura's dwindling energy was all focused on the survival of her failing body.
In the beginning stages of her illness, her incredible chakra control as well as siphoning a portion of her chakra into the Byakugou seal slowed down the damage to her body, with only the fainting and fatigue as side effects. Any other human wouldn't have lasted as long as she'd had—an astounding two years before the sickness developed enough to attack her with full force.
As they found by trial, chakra blockers were the most effective method of treatment, but it was only buying them more time to find the real cure, time they were starting to run out of as Sakura's ravaged body weakened with every day. Her own chakra was eating away at her from the inside with a lightning speed and all Sasuke could do was helplessly watch his wife's body wasting away right before his eyes.
When Sakura dozed off, Sasuke slipped out of her room for a short trip to the hospital cafeteria. He desperately needed caffeine after another restless night. When he came back, he heard voices inside the room. He recognized Naruto's familiar timbre followed by a weak laugh from Sakura which ended in a coughing fit. A wave of irritation swept over Sasuke. What was that idiot doing in the hospital, bothering a sick person? Didn't he have a village to run?
Sasuke opened the door with a little too much strength. He found Naruto in his chair, holding out a glass of water to Sakura who was sipping carefully through the straw. A loud eyesore of a bouquet was stuffed in the vase on the nightstand, daffodils completely hidden from sight behind the large sunflowers. The flowers were swaying lightly on the breeze coming from the wide open window.
"Hi, Sasuke!" Naruto greeted in an upbeat way that awakened in Sasuke an urge to strangle him.
"What are you doing here, you dumbass?" he snapped and shut the window close.
"What's bit you in the ass, bastard? I'm just visiting Sakura-chan," Naruto replied ignorantly. He didn't have a single clue of what he'd almost done. Sasuke's already shortened fuse blew up.
"You're only going to make her worse with your idiocy! What if she caught a cold?! In her state it could kill her!" Sasuke exploded. "Do you want to kill her?! Is that it?! Is this the final punishment for me?!"
Naruto gaped at him, for once rendered speechless. "Sasuke... you..." he managed to utter in shock.
"I asked Naruto to open the window, Sasuke-kun," Sakura cut in calmly. "It was stuffy in here."
Sasuke blinked. He felt as if a bucket of ice cold water was upturned over his head and the angry red filter was lifted off his vision. "Ah..." he choked out stupidly. He scratched at his stubbled jaw, overcome by acute embarrassment over his foolish overreaction.
Sakura and Naruto exchanged a look, then Naruto finally stood up from Sasuke's chair. "You look like you need some fresh air. How about we let Sakura-chan get some rest? Come on," he said, steering Sasuke back towards the door.
"But Sakura-"
"Go on, Sasuke-kun. Have fun," she said with a reassuring smile.
Sasuke let Naruto drag him outside. They ended up on the roof of the hospital. Sasuke tried to ignore the memory of their fight in this place and how Sakura had jumped between them. If he dwelled on it too much, it could become fuel for another twisted nightmare.
Naruto turned to him with a grin. "Want to spar?"
"What?" Sasuke blurted out.
"Come on, I didn't have a good spar in a while. Just hand to hand, nothing fancy. Or are you afraid I'm going to beat you up with my bare hands?" Naruto asked.
It was a transparent bait, but Sasuke still took it out of habit. "In your dreams," he scoffed.
Naruto punched out, Sasuke parried and countered, and the spar was on.
When they finished wailing at each other (Naruto insisted that he won, but it was a draw), they sat down on the roof and soaked in the sun as their breathing calmed down.
"That was fun," Naruto remarked. Sasuke made a humming sound in agreement. Fighting Naruto without any hard feelings between them was pretty relaxing. He could lose himself in the movement, blow, dodge, counter, a familiar pattern of attack and defense. He could finally stop thinking about Sakura...
A wave of guilt and self-loathing slammed into him. His wife was terminally ill and he wanted not to think about her? What kind of a husband was he?
"I need to go back to Sakura," Sasuke said and made to get up, but Naruto grabbed his arm.
"Wait. I actually wanted to talk to you about her."
Sasuke gave him a look and sat down. "What is it?" he asked impatiently.
"Well, Sakura-chan's really ill. I was thinking that maybe if I gave her some of Kurama's chakra, it could help, maybe?" Naruto suggested.
Sasuke shook his head. "Chakra injections don't work. They already tried. When the chakra is assimilated into her system, it gets infected and attacks her."
"Damn," Naruto muttered with a frown. "So she can't use her Byakugou seal to heal herself?"
"That would kill her instantly. When the chakra is just stored in the seal, it's dormant and it can't hurt her."
Naruto swore again, looking really troubled. He assumed a concentrated thinking look on his face, then he brightened with a new idea. "Hey, what if I send someone to get grandma Tsunade? She'd heal Sakura-chan right away!"
"You realize that contacting Tsunade was the first thing they did?"
"What, and even she can't help?" Naruto asked in surprise.
Sasuke shrugged. "Sakura says the current medicine has advanced a lot since Tsunade retired. She doesn't know anything more than the medics here."
"Is there nothing we can do? I'm the Hokage, there should be something! We can't let Sakura-chan die just like that!" Naruto cried out in frustration.
Sasuke stayed silent, wrestling with himself. He'd already pondered about this for weeks. The last, desperate chance he'd rather not take, unless there was no other choice. He hated it and he knew Sakura wouldn't like it too. But they were really running out of options.
"Bastard, you have some idea, I can see it," Naruto said.
Sasuke sighed and told him.
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He slipped into Sakura's room after dark, even though he shouldn't have come there. It was quiet and still, only the soft beeping of machines monitoring her health and the drip of IV. Sasuke kneeled by the bed and gazed down at his wife. With her eyes closed and hands clasped together over the sheet, she looked like she might be already dead. Through the Rinnegan he saw the small flame of her chakra burning out all of her strength and vitality from within.
With a trembling hand, Sasuke touched her hair first. It was so thin and straw-like. Next he very gently traced her face with his fingerpads, stopping at her pale, bloodless lips.
Sasuke swallowed and put his only hand over her frail one. He rubbed warmth into her cool fingers.
"I'll come back with the cure. I promise. Just hold on, Sakura," he whispered, then leaned down and pressed a kiss to her forehead. "Please."
"Sasu... ke... kun..." she mumbled through her sleep.
He waited with bated breath to see if she'd wake up, but she slept on. Sasuke put another kiss on the back of her hand, then stood up. He had to go, but he lingered a moment longer, Sharingan activated to remember Sakura as she was before he left. She was deteriorating so fast... he needed to come back quickly.
Or there would never be the next time.
Sasuke gathered all of his determination to save her and walked out of the room. He was travelling lightly, with only a small pack slung over his shoulder. To his relief, the road to the gate was empty. He didn't want to deal with nosy people gawking at him and questioning his departure. Everyone who needed to know he was going was already informed.
"Papa! Papa, wait up!"
He stopped walking, allowing Sarada to catch up to him. He left her a note explaining his plans, but he should have expected she'd want to say goodbye in person.
Or not, he realized when he saw her backpack.
"I'm coming with you! Please!" Sarada said with determination.
But Sasuke was unmoved. "I can't let you come along. It's dangerous."
"Papa, please! I'm not a child anymore, I'm a shinobi. Let me help save Mama," his daughter argued, putting her hands on her hips. She looked so much like Sakura when she wanted to get her way that Sasuke's heart throbbed in pain.
"Then who's going to stay with your mother?" Sasuke asked, hoping Sarada would see reason and give up on her idea right away.
"Me, for example." A masked man walked out of the shadows, hands in pockets.
"Kakashi," Sasuke said without a hint of surprise. He'd seen the presence long before his old teacher showed himself.
"Sakura's my favourite student, you know. I'll watch over her for you, read her some books. If you two hurry up, she won't even notice you were gone."
"Thanks, Uncle Kakashi!" Sarada beamed at him.
"I still didn't give you a permission to come, Sarada," Sasuke said sharply.
"Papa!" she cried out in protest.
Kakashi coughed. "Actually, that's why I'm here." He pulled out a mission scroll and threw it to Sasuke. "The Seventh assigned Sarada to come with you for this mission."
Sasuke opened the scroll and skimmed it. "Tch. That dobe," he muttered, annoyed with Naruto's meddling.
"This could be good for both of you, Sasuke," Kakashi said conversationally. "You've never gone on a mission with Sarada before, correct? Think of it as a new family bonding experience."
Sasuke gave him an unimpressed look. "I don't consider bringing my daughter into dangerous places a fun idea for family time," he shot back sarcastically.
Kakashi shrugged. "Do you accept the mission?"
"Like I have any choice." Sasuke rolled up the scroll and pocketed it. He'd rather set it on fire and shove it up Naruto's ass, but he kept this opinion to himself.
"I can go then?" Sarada asked to make sure.
"You can, but you have to do everything I say on this mission, Sarada," he told her seriously. "You will stay close to me and you will not trust anyone there. If I tell you to run, you will run, no questions asked."
"I understand," Sarada said with a nod.
"Good."
"Have a safe trip, you two," Kakashi gave his farewells. "Sarada, do me a favour and watch out for your old man, will you?"
Sasuke rolled his eyes and started walking. Kakashi never ceased to be an irritant.
"Sarada, come," he called his daughter.
She ran up to his side and together they passed the village gates. They walked through the forest in silence for a few minutes.
"Papa, please don't be angry with the Seventh. I kind of... asked him to send me with you," Sarada confessed quietly.
Sasuke sighed. "I'm not angry. I just don't want to put you at risk, not when your mother's already..." he cut himself off.
"I know," Sarada whispered with understanding. "But that's why we're going. For Mama. And I'm not weak, I promise I won't slow you down."
"Aa." Sasuke never doubted in his daughter's ability. He only feared the cruel and fickle fate getting to her too, like it did to the rest of his family. If even Sakura wasn't safe...
"Besides," Sarada added resolutely, "if I'm with you, I'm definitely going to be okay." She shot him a confident smile, which he returned. Her confidence in him was humbling, but it also made him feel more at peace.
"Papa, so where are we going?" Sarada asked curiously, hands clasped behind her back as she peered up at him.
"You've already been there with me." When she gave him a confused look, he specified. "We're going to Orochimaru's lair."
.
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AN: Thanks for reading! Please let me know what you think about the chapter and see you next time :)