Abandoning Hope

Abandoning Hope
Part 3
By Mieren


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First thing in the morning, Kakashi reappeared as promised, actually on time for a change, coffee and two disguised students with him. The silver-haired jounin was now stocked with a fanny pack, Sasuke, and another funny shuriken, Sakura. He was lucky that he was in good enough shape to be lugging around two sixteen-year-olds and still balance a pot of coffee and a few cups without spilling anything or dropping anyone. Once the three entered the room, Kakashi was quick to dismantle the camera in the corner, blinding the staff to the fact that Naruto had several unregistered visitors.

Sasuke and Sakura instantly dropped their disguises and moved over to Naruto’s motionless form. The Uchiha heir hesitantly reached out to stroke a bandaged cheek.

“Dobe,” he whispered, eyes softening. He glanced at Iruka. “How can you tell if he’s awake?”

“Ask him,” Iruka suggested.

Sasuke blinked, but still did as told. “Dobe? You awake?” Naruto calmly extended his middle finger. “In a good mood, I see.” The blond startled, shocked that the uptight teen had actually shown some form of a sense of humor.

“How are you feeling?” Sakura asked from his other side. Naruto finally moved, rolling his head to face her. He smiled weakly, his lips pressed carefully together to conceal his missing teeth from the emotional girl. “Uh… Naruto?”

“He can’t speak yet,” Iruka provided. The blonde’s two teammates glared at him for the late information.

“Dobe,” Sasuke muttered, earning himself the finger again. He couldn’t stop the smirk that graced his lips in response to the rude gesture. “Don’t think this gets you off of your match with me.”

Sakura almost tore into the dark-haired chuunin, holding back when she saw Naruto’s full-fledged grin at the challenge. The blond reached out to poke at his opponent in clear acceptance of the aforementioned match. Sasuke slapped at the offending appendage, earning himself a retaliatory punch and vindictive pinch to the thigh. For some reason, the two couldn’t get within throwing distance of each other without the maturity level plummeting like a rock. The two scrabbled with harmless jabs and childish poking for some time until their audience had had enough and separated them.

“Naruto! You should be resting,” Iruka chided. “And Sasuke! No attacking anyone in the hospital.” The roughhousing stopped but both teenagers threw him dirty looks.

Naruto was the first of the two to stop glaring, mostly because he was unsure if his scrunched up face was pointed in the right direction. Instead, he directed his attention towards something he felt was far more important, his stomach. Feeling around with his good arm, he almost immediately caught the attention of his peers and sensei.

“Do you need something?” Iruka asked, ever attentive to the injured blond. Naruto popped his mouth open and pointed to the void. The brunette hesitated. This was the moment he had been dreading for the last few hours. Being the food fanatic he was, Naruto would throw a fit at the thought of a liquid diet.

Kakashi saved him from the imminent rampage, opening the door just enough to flag down a nurse and voice his request. The orderly nodded and scampered off, returning with a tray almost immediately. It was covered with small plastic containers with aluminum covers filled with unknown liquids. The only item there that didn’t’ scare the present ninja was a simple bottle of water.

“Food’s here,” Sakura told her friend uncertainly. Naruto perked up instantly and tried to sit up with little success, only managing when Sasuke and Iruka flanked him, gently lifting him to a sitting position.

Kakashi studied the mystery containers blankly, finally choosing one containing clear amber liquid he thought was apple juice. He held it up to Naruto’s lips, blinking when the blond sputtered. Either the blond had an aversion to fruit or that wasn’t apple juice. A quick sniff confirmed the latter and even caused the silver-haired jounin to gag along with his student. It was over-salted broth.

Dispensing of the offending container, he tried a second one, hoping that the red liquid was juice this time. Naruto’s face scrunched up, but he reluctantly drank the mixture, drawing away with a grimace a swallow short of finishing off the container. Almost afraid to, Kakashi took a tiny sip of the remaining liquid, choking on the bitter flavor that scorched his poor tongue.

“Screw the liquid diet,” Kakashi muttered, shoving the tray aside. “Hold on for a few minutes. I’ll be back with some ramen.” Naruto lit up in sheer delight. Anything was better than the crap the hospital had to offer. Presenting the blond with his favorite food was akin to paradise for the teenager.

Sasuke and Sakura were largely silent, unsure of how to keep their crippled teammate company. The pink-haired girl responded first when Naruto pleadingly reached out towards them with his mangled hand. Leaving Sasuke’s side, she gingerly embraced the blonde’s head and shoulders, unsure of what else to do. The teenager wanted to roughhouse some more, but Iruka had already forbidden him from messing around while he was here.

Deciding that he wanted conversation, he trailed his fingers down Sakura’s side. If he hadn’t been in full body bandages, she would have decked him. She figured out what he wanted when he gripped her holster and tugged on it.

“Training?” Sakura asked tentatively. Naruto nodded eagerly. “We haven’t been doing anything since you were hurt.”

“Though you were kind enough to get us out of washing old people,” Sasuke added wryly. Iruka opened his mouth to throw a screaming fit at Sasuke’s lack of decorum when he heard an odd rasping noise accompanied with some hoarse barks. It took him a moment to register the origin of the odd sound. Naruto was laughing! Sasuke apparently understood the blond better than he let on. He guessed that their insensitive comments made sense. Naruto was something of a dingbat as well, so the conversation was right along his wavelength.

Kakashi wandered back in, carrying no less than ten bowls of ramen. “Ramen is here,” he announced perkily. He eyed the tangle of people that was Naruto and Sakura. “Oy. If you’re going to have an orgy, at least wait for me to get back first.”

Sakura leaped away, scarlet. Naruto sputtered indignantly and shot a glare at the smirking jounin, miraculously nailing him with the dirty look despite his inability to see.

“Pervert!” Naruto rasped, the first intelligible word he had managed. His voice was strangled and hoarse but his four assembled friends still smiled in relief. The reconstructive surgery had been successful.

“How much do you think he can eat?” Sakura asked, stunned by the number of bowls. She didn’t even know how the silver-haired pervert could even carry that much without dousing himself in noodles.

“I didn’t think you’d want hospital food either,” Kakashi said dismissively, letting Iruka unload his stacked arms. “What flavor do you want to start with?” he asked Naruto.

“Miso,” the blond croaked.

Kakashi placed one bowl on a small table and pulled it up alongside the bed. Iruka reached for a set of chopsticks, intending to feed the blond. He was shocked when the jounin slapped his hand away and handed the utensils to the teenager in bed.

“He can feed himself,” the silver-haired man said. Iruka eyed the sixteen-year-old propped up against the headboard doubtfully.

“Iruka is right,” Sakura seconded hesitantly. “He can’t move.”

Sasuke just watched the argument passively, noting that Naruto was getting increasingly irritated at the ramen just beyond his reach. Sighing, he came up with the solution to the rising argument. The metal braces on Naruto’s legs had joints at the knee and he took advantage of that, pulling the blond sideways in the bed so his legs partially hung off the side. Hefting his friend to a sitting position, he hopped onto the bed with the blond and let the smaller teen lie against him back to back as though he was a human chair.

Naruto was happy to take advantage of his new position. Snapping the chopsticks apart with his teeth, he verily attacked the ramen, slurping up the noodles happily. Luckily for him, ramen noodles required very little in the way of chewing, sparing his sore mouth from too much work. Setting down the utensils, he picked up the bowl and gulped the broth. He managed to down the bowl in less than half a minute. Anyone who knew him was well familiar with his ability to inhale ramen, so no one was overly shocked at his gluttony.

The fight had wound to an instant stop when Sasuke had acted. Naruto was getting help sitting up, but he was still feeding himself, so technically neither side of the battle had really lost. Kakashi persisted to maintain that it was for the boy’s own good, though. If he didn’t move around, his muscles would atrophy and his recovery time would increase exponentially.

The four visiting ninja each claimed a bowl, letting the blond polish off the other six. They had to change out his quickly emptying bowls since he couldn’t reach the stash Kakashi had brought in. Even eating six bowls to their one apiece, he was finished long before they were halfway through their meals. With a contented sigh, he leaned back against Sasuke, who eyed him a bit oddly but didn’t move away from his position as backrest. After a few minutes, he still hadn’t moved and the dark-haired chuunin he was lying against was starting to worry.

“Naruto?” he asked, gaining the attention of the other three ninja visiting the blond.

Iruka checked the boy quickly and sighed. “He’s asleep again,” he diagnosed.

“Already?” Sakura asked, stunned.

“His body is using all of his energy to heal,” Kakashi explained calmly. “He’ll mostly sleep for a week or so.”

“Probably easier that way,” Iruka added. “Once he gets his energy back, it will be almost impossible to keep him in bed.”

“How long does he have to stay here?” Sakura asked.

“Probably a week in ICU and at least another week or two in the hospital,” Iruka answered. “Someone will stay with him at all times while he’s here, even if we have to recruit ANBU. Until he recovers, he’s entirely defenseless.”

“We’ll return later,” Kakashi said, lifting Naruto and placing him on the bed instead of on top of Sasuke. “For now, we have a mission. We’re going to clean and repair Naruto’s apartment.” The task would be messy and time consuming at best. The entire apartment had been demolished and covered in gore.

Iruka quickly stacked the empty ramen bowls and sent them out with Kakashi before someone on the hospital staff noticed that Naruto wasn’t sticking to his assigned diet.

“I’ll hook up the camera after you’ve left,” Iruka said in way of a farewell. Kakashi paused by the door, letting his students reclaim their positions on him as transformed hitchhikers. Nodding to Iruka, he left.

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A few ANBU members were still poking through the trashed apartment when the remainder of Team Seven arrived. Instead of chasing them off, they calmly greeted Kakashi, seemingly having known that he was on the way with his students in tow.

“We’ll wait outside,” a cat-masked assassin said.

“If they were looking for clues, they wouldn’t let us clean,” Sakura murmured. “And they obviously weren’t cleaning. So why are they here?”

“In case Naruto’s attackers return,” Kakashi said. “They have orders to kill instead of capture.”

“They know who did this?” Sakura asked hopefully. Kakashi hesitated.

“Yes,” he admitted, debating whether or not he should tell them who. They needed to know, but would likely respond badly, especially Sasuke.

“Who?” Sakura pressed when he stalled too long. Kakashi sighed and capitulated.

“Orochimaru, Kabuto… and Itachi.” Sakura paled. Sasuke looked downright murderous, having been betrayed by his older brother yet again.

“Why would they do this?” Sakura asked weakly. She knew that her friend was commonly attacked because he contained the nine-tailed fox, but the three named criminals had to reason to target him.

“That we don’t know,” Kakashi said. They had asked Naruto earlier in the morning before bringing his friends in to visit, but the blond had only shaken his head. Either he didn’t know or he didn’t want to answer. “We’ll find out, though. For now, let’s get his place cleaned up as a surprise for Naruto.”

Jaw clenched, Sasuke stalked further into the apartment, now wanting revenge on his brother more than ever. He found himself in Naruto’s bedroom and almost flew into a rage at what he found there.

It was almost possible to map the battle from the evidence left in the room. The furniture was overturned and smashed. Discarded weapons peppered the walls and floor, making it clear why there was so much blood. It was obvious that Naruto had been asleep when the battle first started, leaving him unarmed and disoriented.

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To Be Continued…
Next chapter, you get to see part of what actually happened. I may have to raise the rating from R to NC-17. Review!