Chapter Text
Sakura usually went in with Grandma Tsunade. Every appointment, every check up, every emergency, and every surgery, Sakura was by Tsunade’s side to help and shadow. There were no exceptions. Except for this one. This time, Tsunade had gone into the sterile, white-washed room alone, and Sakura was sitting here next to Naruto, shaking.
Her legs shook furiously in the chair next to him, her knees bobbing up and down so harshly that it made her hands quiver where they were clenched in her lap. Which made her shoulders shake, which made the pink strands of her hair sway side to side. She was a ball of horrifying energy, fear, and nerves all mixed into one.
Naruto turned slowly from where he sat in his own chair to watch her. Her eyes were steadfastly locked on the door opposite from them, lips pressed together tightly. He had seen this expression on her face so many times, for so many years. It had always been this way, it had always been just them. Sakura and Naruto, Naruto and Sakura, the two of them together, waiting, fighting, wishing, hoping, praying.
When they were around other people she managed to hide it better than he did. Where he would burst into angry red flares of chakra and allow his eyes to darken at the mention of Sasuke, she would stand quietly to the side. But he knew better, he could always see the tendons pulsing on the backs of her hands, the urgent widening of her eyes. He knew she felt the same, she shared his flurry of emotions.
He didn’t know exactly why Tsunade had told Sakura to wait here with Naruto. Clearly it had everything to do with the fact that it was Sasuke who was unconscious behind those doors, but why exactly she had insisted on examining him alone, Naruto wasn’t sure. Maybe because she didn’t know the extent of the damage on Sasuke’s body, or she didn’t want to run the risk of Sasuke waking up and putting a sudden chidori through Sakura’s heart as he had tried to do so many times before.
Either way, Sasuke was in that room, and they were in this one. It had been 10 days since the end of the war and since Naruto and Sasuke fought at the Valley of the End. The battle had nearly killed them both. But Naruto had Kurama, and woke up after 2 days nearly completely healed, but Sasuke hadn’t. It was 8 days later now, and he was still asleep behind those solid doors, locked in a room where no one but Tsunade could see him.
Not that Naruto hadn’t tried to sneak in and slap the stupid bastard awake, but he had been promptly and quite forcibly stopped by Kakashi. He didn’t know why. The only thing he knew was that it had been 8 days, that no one had told him anything, that his whole being ached with the need to see Sasuke, and that Sakura was shaking.
His hand shot out to rest on her kneecap, stilling her movements. She looked up at him, still unblinking.
“Stop shaking. You’ll bring the building down.”
She glared at him, but her hair finally stopped swaying. He squeezed her knee in silent support, smiling at her past his rising anxiety.
Suddenly, the door swung open. Both their heads whipped to the sound in unison, and his hand fell from her skin. Tsunade strode in and slapped a thick folder onto the desk in the center of the room with a resounding clap.
She was looking more and more tired by the day. The hospital was overflowing with survivors from the war, and one of them was the last remaining Uchiha and an international criminal. Dark bags hung under her eyes, and strands of her blonde hair stuck up in odd angles. Naruto stood up, unable to continue sitting still for any longer.
“Well? How is he?”
She blew a heavy sigh out of her mouth, sending the loose strands flying away from her face.
“He’s alive.”
Sakura squeaked out an odd sound from behind him.
“But he’s not well. The amount of stress that boy put himself under in the past 4 years is quite literally incomprehensible. He managed to reach Sannin levels of power in such a short period of time by forcing himself to his breaking point over and over. By all logical reasoning, he should be dead.”
Naruto rocked back on his heels and locked his hands behind his head in his usual, awkward standing position. Nerves and apprehension bubbled under his skin at Tsunade’s words.
“But he’s not dead.”
“No, he’s not. But he spent the last year running and hiding from all authorities, training with his curse mark, fighting and winning against his brother and with the Akatsuki, taking part in the war, and fighting you. And with the state that his eyes are in, I wouldn’t be surprised if he had spent days on end with his sharingan activated.”
Sakura spoke up from where she sat, her voice quivering.
“That shouldn’t be possible.”
“Correct, but he managed. Unfortunately for him, that much stress on the body will have negative repercussions, specifically on his immune and respiratory systems. Not to mention the damage on his mental health, which will undoubtedly be drastic. These effects probably account for Itachi’s mysterious illness as well.”
Naruto heaved a sigh and started pacing in front of the desk, staring down at his shoes as he walked. He kept his voice as even as he could when he answered.
“So what does all of this mean? What’s gonna happen to him? When can I see him?”
“It means he will not be fit for any sort of shinobi activity for the foreseeable future, and he will likely suffer from physical and mental ailments for the rest of his life. He may go blind, he may need to be sedated in some way. You can see him when he asks to see you.”
Naruto whirled on her, dropping his hands down and stopping in his tracks.
“When he asks to see me? He’s asleep, Grandma. He can’t ask anything. And Sasuke won’t go blind, and no one is going to sedate him.”
The room was silent for a second as Tsunade stared at him.
“Your willpower alone won’t stop Sasuke from facing the consequences of his actions, Naruto.”
Frustration surged in him at the finality of her words. It sounded like she was sentencing Sasuke, like she was deciding what his future would look like for him. He needed to wake up, Naruto needed to talk to him, to hear his voice and see the flash of his eyes and know for sure that he was okay, and that he would always be okay.
“I need to see him.”
“Not until he wakes up.”
“I’ll wake him up.”
Tsunade rounded her desk and approached him. She placed a heavy hand on his shoulder, and her touch was warm. He wished it was more comforting.
“He will wake up soon, he is healing. It’s just slow.”
He turned to look at Sakura. She was still seated in the chair, her hands still in her lap. Her eyes were fixed on him, green and resolute. It was happening again, his anger and frustration and absolute refusal to cooperate when it came to Sasuke, and her quiet strength by his side, letting him know that she agreed.
He took a step back, and Tsunade’s hand fell from his shoulder.
“Fine. I’ll wait one more day. We’ll be back tomorrow.”
He turned and headed towards the exit, away from the door that Sasuke was behind.
“Let’s go, Sakura.”
Tsunade didn’t speak as Sakura fell into step next to him, and they left the silent room in unison. The hallway outside the room was covered in fluorescent lights that buzzed above them as they walked. Nurses and shinobi hurried through the halls, glancing at them as they passed. Everyone knew who they were and why they were there, but they all looked away quickly, as if the mere thought of the last Uchiha was cursed.
Sakura bumped his shoulder as they finally left the hospital and warm sunlight washed over their faces.
“He’s gonna be okay.”
She sounded more like she was trying to convince herself than anything else. He nodded anyway.
“I know.”
He went straight back to the Hokage’s office, because that’s what he did every day. In between bothering Tsunade and bothering Sakura, he was bothering Kakashi, who had taken over the Hokage position only days before.
He landed perched on the railing outside the window of the office, knowing that Kakashi had felt him coming. Sure enough, his old sensei spoke immediately without turning around.
“What do you want?”
Naruto grinned and cracked back, “Just coming by to make sure you’re doing the job correctly.”
The joke felt forced, as did his smile, and he knew Kakashi could pick up on it. The older man crumpled a ball of paper up and threw it over his shoulder, hitting Naruto square in the face. Naruto watched as the ball dropped down to the slanted roof and skittered off the edge, falling to the ground far below.
“It’s not good to litter, Kakashi-sensei.”
“It’s not good to spy on the Hokage either, yet here you are.”
Naruto leaned forward and pulled himself through the open window, dropping down onto the hardwood floors of the office lightly. A breeze drifted in and swirled through his hair. It was late summer, the peak of heat and humidity, and normally Naruto would be spending every spare second out on the training fields, building stamina and a tan. But this summer was different, he felt he didn’t have time for anything, he was always too busy thinking about Sasuke.
“I’m not spying, I’m gathering valuable information for my future occupation.”
Kakashi raised his one visible eyebrow.
“Or gathering information on Sasuke.”
Naruto shrugged and slumped down in the chair opposite from Kakashi.
“Well, any updates?”
He had been coming here to train for the Hokage position, that was true. But he still had two more years until he was inaugurated, seeing as Kakashi had just stepped in. The real reason he was here was because Kakashi had been in attendance for all of the recent council meetings that went over sentencing and what to do with the fallen or disgraced shinobi from the war.
The last 5 meetings had been solely about Sasuke Uchiha.
Kakashi leaned back in his chair, bracing his hands on the edge of his desk in a stretch.
“He’s not getting off without a sentence, I can tell you that much.”
Naruto clasped his hands together in his lap, squeezing tightly.
“He’s still unconscious and Grandma said he’s in bad shape. Are they planning on just throwing him in jail while he’s in a coma and leaving him there?”
The question came out harsh and biting, and Kakashi gave him a stern look, his one black eye flashing with warning. Other than Sakura, Naruto and sometimes Tsunade and Kakashi, no one else in the village thought that Sasuke deserved any sort of freedom. He was alone in his stubborn vindication.
Kakashi didn’t answer for a long moment, his fingers drummed out a heavy rhythm on the surface of his desk. Naruto knew he wasn’t supposed to be privy to these decisions or meetings, and Kakashi wasn’t supposed to tell him anything. But Kakashi also knew Naruto, and knew that there was no reality in which he wouldn’t have the answers he wanted.
Finally, the older man leaned forward, his voice dropping lower.
“They decided today that he is too volatile to be held in prison, it puts the other prisoners and guards at risk. I think he will be put under house arrest.”
Naruto let out a deep breath and his hands loosened around each other. Sasuke would hate house arrest, but he would hate prison more.
“But…” Kakashi continued, “He’ll definitely have chakra and energy blockers placed on him for a while. No one trusts him to have the amount of power he has now. And I don’t necessarily disagree with them.”
Naruto immediately could hear Tsunade’s voice ringing around his head from just a half hour earlier. Sasuke being placed under sedation, under restraints and blockers. Sasuke without his power, Sasuke without his anger or danger.
“He’ll never agree to that.”
Kakashi sat back again, and he suddenly looked slightly worried.
“You realize this is a sentence, right? He won’t have a say in any of it.”
“You have a say though. Stop them from restraining him. Without his chakra or energy Sasuke will be ....”
He didn’t finish his sentence. He didn’t know what Sasuke would be. The person he had always known had been angry, full of life and revenge and fire, he had always been thrumming with power and energy, quick eyes and sharp mouth. The Sasuke he knew was awake, the Sasuke he knew was a ninja. What would he be without any of that? Without a place to aim his thirst for vengeance? Without chakra crackling around him at all times?
“He’ll be safer. Both to himself and to others.”
Naruto stared at Kakashi blankly. The Hokage sighed and kept talking.
“He tried to kill you, Naruto. And if it weren’t for Kurama, he may have succeeded. He tried to kill Sakura, and me. He did kill Danzo. And I’ve been talking to Tsunade as well, the boy nearly killed himself. He has no regard for anyone’s well-being, including his own.”
Naruto shook his head. “That’s not true”.
But his words came out weak and soft, and Kakashi ignored them.
“It’s the only option. He’ll have to find another way to live.”
Naruto couldn’t think of an argument. All the quick rebuttals and light-hearted comebacks that used to come so easily had been lost to him recently. He found himself silent too often, drowning in the knowledge of what was true, what had happened, and what was bound to happen in the future. He thought of Tsunade’s drawn face in the hospital, the shaking of Sakura’s small frame, the thick metal door that blocked him off from Sasuke. He remembered the warm blood that coated his face and neck at the Valley of the End and the way Sasuke had lit up chidori after chidori until his eyes clouded over and his skin was dull with near-death.
His voice was quiet when he finally answered.
“Where will he be put on house arrest?”
“Wherever he chooses. The Uchiha district is still standing, and the apartment he lived in as a genin is still under his name. The official decision will be made once he wakes up.”
Kakashi pulled his chair into his desk and shuffled the papers together in front of him.
“Now beat it. Go get some sleep, you need it.”
Naruto stood up slowly and walked back over to the open window.
“Thanks, Kakashi-sensei.”
“Hm. That’s Lord Sixth to you”, he turned and winked at Naruto as he spoke. Naruto managed a small smile back before dropping off the railing onto the roof. He leapt from roof to roof, back towards his apartment.
Kakashi was right. He hadn’t been sleeping. He couldn’t sleep, not when Sasuke was still unconscious, not when there was so much he still didn’t know. Every time he tried to rest, his head was filled with images of Sasuke in Akatsuki robes, blood seeping from his eyes and into his mouth as he grinned wickedly. Images of Sasuke plunging a lightning-covered fist into the chests of bodies around him, Sasuke straddling him at the Valley, raining brutal punches down on him with bloodlust in his eyes.
He couldn’t rest, and he barely even wanted to try.
But it had been days spent awake, pacing, doing push ups, and taking hot showers, and crying tears of frustration, and apparently that had been enough to let him sleep.
When he shot up straight out of bed many hours later, it was in the middle of the night. He was laying in the same clothes on top of his covers, and had clearly passed out during one of his nightly laps around his room. He had one shoe on and his hitai ate had slipped off as he slept. Normally he didn’t go anywhere without it, but at this moment he couldn’t bring himself to care.
His heart pounded into his ribs as he stared at the wall opposite from him. Moonlight flushed in through the window and illuminated the room dimly. He had been having a dream about Sasuke, as he always did, but it had changed suddenly in the middle of it.
His dreams about Sasuke were always from an outsider’s perspective. It was always him watching Sasuke kill someone, watching Sasuke undergo one of Orochimaru’s experiments, watching Sasuke bleed out as he activated his Mangekyo over and over and over. And in every dream, no matter how hard he tried, Naruto couldn’t talk to Sasuke. He couldn’t touch him, or fight him, or make the other boy see him. Sasuke never acknowledged him, it was like he was a ghost in Sasuke’s memories.
But this night, Naruto had been watching Sasuke plunge a chidori through someone’s heart when suddenly, in the blink of an eye, the scene switched so Naruto replaced the nameless corpse. Sasuke’s hand had been sticking through Naruto’s up to his elbow, and his eyes had been locked onto Naruto’s, finally seeing him. In the dream, his eyes had been black as night and completely void, and his voice had been as cold as Naruto had ever heard it. He had said one word.
“Now.”
And then he had withdrawn his hand and Naruto had woken up.
He raised his palm up to his chest and pressed it into the spot where Sasuke had impaled him in the dream, his body felt cold all over. The look of Sasuke’s dead eyes had felt so real, it had felt like it was really him, like he really was…
Naruto stood up so fast that the room tilted unsteadily around him. He barely had time to pull on his other shoe before he was bolting out of the apartment, leaving the door swinging wildly on its hinges behind him. He immediately jumped down the three floors of stairs from his apartment and hit the street heavily. The impact jarred up his thighs with blinding pain, and then he was running. The night air was biting and sharp as he sprinted through the empty streets. He knew the village like the back of his hand, and he rounded each turn quickly, feet skidding across the uneven cobblestones.
He could faintly hear his own ragged breathing, and the back of his throat burned with the cold wind. His eyes watered as he ran, tears slipping down and then pushing back into his hairline from the speed at which he was going. He didn’t know how long it took him to reach the hospital, but he knew he had been right as soon as he got there. All of the lights were on, and the building itself seemed to hum with an urgency.
He slid into the front lobby, completely ignoring the receptionist who shot out of her seat and yelled at him to stop. He tore down the main hallway and then started taking the stairs by twos, legs burning with the effort. The halls were full of nurses and doctors, and somewhere in the back of the building an alarm rang out incessantly. A red, flashing bulb spun rapidly at the landings of every level, and the fluorescent lights above him sparkled and pulsed with uneven surges of power. The faces he passed were all blurred, but he saw enough to know that they were all taut with worry and furrowed eyebrows.
His heart pounded and pounded, and beneath all the noise and the people and the lengths of hallways he sprinted down to reach that one metal door, there was a thrum of chakra. A crackling, electrified blue chakra that seemed to seep into his bones and fill the air around him.
Sasuke was awake.
By the time he reached the office directly connected to Sasuke’s room, he was gasping for air. His lungs ached and his cheeks were flaming with wind burn and adrenaline. He slammed into the room, bursting through the door with his shoulder and stumbled into the opposite wall. Righting himself, his gaze fixed directly on the metal door across from him.
His hand was wrapped around the door knob when it suddenly burst open, sending him stumbling backwards a step. Tsunade froze in her tracks when she saw him, mouth dropping open in surprise.
He glanced up at her quickly before trying to shove past, but was stopped with a firm hand to his chest.
“What are you doing here?”
“Sasuke is awake.”
His voice was ragged and raspy, and came out between gasping inhales.
She stared, her eyes growing wider and wider with every second. Impatience flooded his body and he tried to move past her again, but her force on his chest grew stronger, and she shifted between him and the half open doorway.
“It’s 4 in the morning, Naruto.”
“You said I could see him when he woke up.”
He craned to look around her form. The room beyond her was full of doctors, so much so that he couldn’t see the bed. The lights on the ceiling buzzed erratically and random sparks rained down from the fixtures, fizzling out on the floor. Machines that he didn’t understand beeped at a pace that made his head hurt.
“Naruto, he woke up unexpectedly. We’re doing the best we can to handle it, but we-”
He didn’t want to hear it. Didn’t want to hear any more unwanted explanations or diagnoses, didn’t want to hear about the dangers or the risks or the restraints. He needed to see him, needed to know he was here for sure. Before Tsunade could react, he ducked under her hand and slipped into the room, throwing his body weight back against the door and locking it to buy himself a moment of time.
Immediately, he pushed his way through the crowd of doctors and shinobi. Some tried to grab at him, most backed up and got out of his way when they saw him coming. A spark of electricity landed on his shoulder, and he could feel the heat of it burn through his shirt.
The bed was small, and there were tubes and lines drifting out from all sides, connecting Sasuke to various machines. A large monitor on his right side flashed and beeped, indicating that his heart rate was well into the 100s and was steadily climbing. A medic-ninja was hovering by his other side, glowing hands quivering above his body in a feeble attempt to slow his pulse.
Anger flared in Naruto so strongly that he was faintly aware of his eyes flashing into the fox’s red. He was snarling at the crowd before he could think better of it. Sasuke didn’t want these people here. They didn’t know him, they couldn’t help him, he couldn’t trust them.
“Get away. All of you. Now.”
As if he was already Hokage, they all backed away immediately, retreating to the corners of the room.
Sasuke lay completely still in the bed. Against the stark white of the sheets, the black of his hair was jarring. It was spread out across his pillow and one strand stuck to his forehead with a light sheen of sweat. He was eerily pale, pale enough that Naruto could see the blue webs of veins under his skin along his throat, on his wrists, and up his forearms. Tubing stuck out of these veins, pumping fluids into his body at various angles.
His lips were dry and cracked, and his eyes were wide open and staring at the ceiling. His sharingan was activated and swirled steadily, and blood leaked from his lower lash line, spreading in streaks down his right cheek. On the white of his skin, it looked gory. It looked horrifying.
Under his left eye was a gashing scar, clearly newly healed and swooping in a downward arc across his cheekbone. He looked like a science experiment, like a ghost.
Naruto’s hands shook at his side as he stared, Sasuke didn’t even seem to notice that he was there. Slowly, he approached the side of the bed, stopping right before he bumped into it.
“Sasuke.”
Sasuke didn’t react, didn’t move or look away from the ceiling. Another tear of blood slipped down his cheek, and Naruto could see his other eye welling up with the thick, red liquid as well.
“Damn it, Sasuke. Look at me.”
No reaction. Naruto could hear the nervous shuffling of the doctors behind him, and the pounding at the door that was undoubtedly an enraged Tsunade.
His heart skipped a beat, he was running out of time. Tsunade would blow that door off its hinges at any second and then demand that he go. She would make him come back tomorrow, she would make him go home and leave Sasuke again.
With a sudden rash urgency, he lurched forward, rabbed Sasuke’s face, and yanked his head forcibly towards him. The warm blood squelched between their skin, but Sasuke’s skin was much too cold. His gaze turned to meet Naruto’s in one sweeping motion, and Naruto realized his mistake the second their eyes met.
The ceiling of the hospital room dissolved into swirling red, and his body was immediately thrown backwards. Locked in place, the ground fell away from under him, replaced by a bottomless black pit. An ear shattering scream filled the air around him, and his head whipped up to see Sasuke kneeling in front of him. The black pit seemed to swallow him up as it curled up and over his form in snaking tendrils. Sasuke was the one screaming, his hands clawing at the air around him as if there was something attacking him, his eyes bloodied and black. The scream was endless, piercing, it rattled through Naruto’s mind and resonated in the back of his eyeballs. It felt like a million daggers punching through his body.
Faintly, he could still feel his physical body in the hospital room. He could feel the blood slipping over his fingers from Sasuke’s eyes, he could feel himself saying something over and over, could hear Tsunade burst into the room with an angry shout.
But he was stuck in the genjutsu, couldn’t pull himself away from the boy in front of him, screaming, bleeding, clawing, crying. He fought against the mental bounds, trying to free his restraints and go towards Sasuke’s crouched form. He tried to say something, but the words were torn from his throat when he opened his mouth to speak, washed away by the force of Sasuke’s scream.
He could feel a tear slipping down his cheek. He couldn’t tell if it was real or not.
It seemed to go on forever. The screaming, the swirling skies and the sinking, black ground beneath them.
Suddenly, he was yanked backwards. The real world slammed back into place around him, and he gasped for breath as he fell backwards. He hit the ground heavily as Tsunade threw him behind her.
The last thing he saw was Sasuke, eyes returned to black, staring down at him blankly as Tsunade injected him with something. The tip of the needle disappeared into the thin skin on Sasuke’s neck, and his eyes slipped shut.
The world went dark around him.