Of Sacrifices and Love - COMPLETE!!!

----------A few hours later, midmorning----------

Naruto's eyes slowly opened and he looked around him, feeling severely disoriented. There was a lot of white and the smell of sanitizers was thick in the air. And his left arm felt almost numb with cold. Looking at his hand he saw a catheter in his vein which was connected to the IV next to his bed. ::I'm... in a hospital...?:: Taking stock of his injuries he noticed the bandages around his wrists and ankles. It felt like there was one around his neck too. ::How did I get here...?:: The sound of a door sliding open caught his attention.

“Good morning,” Jiraiya greeted with a relieved smile. “Oi! Tsunade! The gaki's awake!” he called down the hallway before walking over to Naruto's bed. “Well, you look like shit.”

“Good to see you too,” Naruto grumbled.

Tsunade entered slowly and walked right up to the bed. “How do you feel?” she asked him seriously. His health came first. Figuring out what happened while he was trapped could wait.

“Tired,” Naruto said hoarsely. “And kinda hungry but kinda not... I know I should eat but my stomach's saying 'hell no!' And I ache.”

She smiled a little then and settled on the edge of the bed. “Now that you've told me what I already knew about your body... I'll ask you again, gaki...” but there was a large amount of affection in her voice as she lightly wrapped her knuckles on his skull. “How do you feel?”

“I just told you...” Naruto said, not knowing what she was asking for.

“You're forgetting that he has almost no brains, Tsunade,” Jiraiya chuckled. He just grinned when Naruto razzed him.
“I want to know how you feel emotionally, baka gaki!” she said with exasperation and a soft flick to the center of his forehead. ::I'll have to get him a new hitai-ate...::

“Confused...” the fox-boy said around a growl, scowling at them for picking on him. “How did I get here? The last thing I remember is being in that cell the bastards put me in...”

“You don't remember anything else?” Tsunade looked a little surprised at that, but at Naruto's blank look, she lifted her own gaze to the deathly still figure stretched out on the bed next to Naruto's. There was about three feet from edge of bed to edge of bed, but even from the doorway Sasuke looked paler than the white sheets about him and as dead as a doornail.

Curious Naruto followed her gaze and his eyes widened. “Sasuke...” he whispered. “It... wasn't a dream...? What wasn't a dream?” Jiraiya asked him. “I thought... I was hallucinating. I was trying to die and all of a sudden there he was... He untied me and got me out of there... but Itachi...” Naruto now felt very confused. “Itachi tried to stop him...”

“So, Itachi's dead?” Jiraiya certainly hoped so.

Naruto shook his head. “Sasuke didn't kill him... he could have but he didn't...”

Tsunade's eyes widened as she looked to Naruto and then back to Sasuke and then finally to Jiraiya. “What do you mean he could have but didn't?”

“He just didn't... They argued, Itachi attacked, Sasuke knocked him out... and then just left him there. He didn't finish him.” Naruto's brow furrowed as he tried to come up with an explanation as to why Sasuke had passed up on the chance to complete his life's mission.

Taking her eyes off of Jiraiya the Fifth Hokage finally said what was on her mind, “I guess he really does... doesn't he...” she murmured half to herself and then smiled faintly. She stood and went around to look down at Sasuke's sleeping form. Then she looked back to Naruto. “Is there anything that you need to report to me about this whole ordeal other than what you've already told me?”

“What do you mean by 'I guess he really does'? Sasuke really does what?” Naruto wanted his answer before he told them anything else.

“Why don't you ask him later?” Jiraiya suggested with a grin.

“But I wanna know now!” the fox-boy demanded.

“It's not my place to tell, Naruto,” she said as she headed for the door. “If you haven't got anything else to report - and you better not hold out on me -…” she added looking over her shoulder darkly. “I'm going to go grab a nap. We've all been up all night... well, all but you anyway.”

Naruto grumbled a bit but decided he'd save the arguing for when he got better. “There is one thing... Itachi threatened that if I didn't do as they said he'd take Kyuubi out of me and put him in a container they could control... He never said how but I think he really was gonna do it.”

“There is a way,” Jiraiya said seriously. “But it is very dangerous for everyone involved. There's no guarantee the containers will survive, or that the demon will be held by the seal on the new container, or that the demon will not escape and go on a killing spree.”

Tsunade's eyes narrowed. “He won't ever be able to do that, Naruto. Thank you. If you think of anything else of importance... I’ll be in my office... just send someone for me...” And with that she grabbed Jiraiya and left. They needed to talk about that little piece of would-be-catastrophe.

“I can't believe someone would actually consider using that Jutsu,” Jiraiya muttered as they left the building, his face lined with worry. “No one has ever succeeded. Where does that damn brat get the idea that he will?!”

“He is Itachi...” Tsunade snarled her temper shortened considerably. “That little shit needs to have his ass kicked, plain and simple, though from what Naruto said Sasuke did just that and left him for extra insult. I wonder what he's thinking about that right now...” she grinned, but it was a malicious and wicked smile.

“Probably about how to heal his ego,” Jiraiya chuckled darkly.

She let them into her office and found her seat behind the desk. “So what shall we do then? We could send Sasuke out to assassinate him...”

“Somehow I don't think we need to send him. I have the feeling that as soon as Naruto's better Sasuke's going to leave again and not come back until Itachi is good and dead.” Jiraiya sat down on the corner of her desk, careful not to knock any papers off.

“Very true,” she agreed. “We just have to wait and watch until then, ne?” She smiled up at him closing her eyes, almost like Naruto's fox grin but with her it was more minx.

“Stop smiling like that, you're scaring me,” the Frog Hermit taunted.

She opened her eyes and winked at him. “I could scare you more than that... and you know it, Ji-rai-ya,” she teased back and poked his nose reaching up to do so. She was in a very good mood suddenly. It had come about out of no where and she had even been ready to kill something only moments ago, but now she felt rather good, knowing that Itachi couldn't really hurt them any more now that Sasuke was around. At least as far as they could tell that was how it was.

“I know. That's why I asked you to stop,” Jiraiya teased back, reaching out to pull at her pigtail - and hopefully get a grope in while she was distracted.

Tsunade just laughed at him a little and swatted his hands away. “Later Jiraiya.... if you're really that interested...” she reprimanded him lightly. It had been a while since they'd been together this long. For all their bickering and arguing and insults there had always been a deep bond between them that neither had ever really shared with Orochimaru and occasionally that bond ran a little deeper.

He grinned hugely. “I'll keep you to that.” He got off the desk and headed for the door. “Ja, Tsunade. Don't work too hard. And don't worry about the kitsune-gaki. I think he's going to be just fine.”

Tsunade smirked at his back as he walked out the door. “I'm not worried... not any more,” she called after him and then turned to her papers. “Don't work to hard, he says... I don't see him offering to help... Oh, well. He'll just have to stand for being my stress release later...” With that she picked up a blank scroll preparing to send notice to the lower towns that the problem was being taken care of to the best of the Village's abilities.