Healing

A/N: There are some anomalies that do not match up with the basic line of the manga/anime. I am fully aware of this, and if that bothers you, oh well. For those of you who don’t care, enjoy.

 

Sweat dripped off Tsunade’s nose as she pumped chakra into Sakura’s body. Ino quickly wiped it away through the tears in her eyes and moved around to the other side of the gurney to wipe Shizune’s brow. Naruto, Sai, and Kakashi were standing in the corner, horror, grief, and concern plastered all over their faces. Sakura’s lifeless body lay on the gurney, bruised and bloody. She’d come in three hours ago in worse condition, Tsunade and Shizune had been working on her from the moment she arrived.



No one in the room was sure what happened. Sakura had been out on a simple B-rank mission. She’d been gone for a few days. A couple of Chunin who were on their way out of the village found her at the front gates.



“We’ve almost got her stable,” Tsunade announced as Ino wiped her brow again. No one said anything. They just looked on as Tsunade and Shizune worked on Sakura. Her teammates were holding their breath, praying that there wasn’t any permanent damage to their little cherry blossom.

Soon, Tsunade and Shizune stopped, their breathing labored. Shizune fell back against the wall, and Tsunade collapsed into the window. 

“Granny…is she…?”

“She’s stable, and with time she’ll be okay…but she can’t live on her own right now.” 

Everyone looked at Sakura. They would all be more than willing to take her in, but who would she the most comfortable with? “She can stay with me.” All eyes in the room turned to Kakashi.

Tsunade nodded. “Alright. She should be awake in a few hours, and depending on how she’s doing tomorrow, she may be able to leave.” Tsunade stood, bracing her weight on Ino. “I’ll need a report from her before she leaves.” 

Kakashi nodded and watched Tsunade, Ino, and Shizune leave. Naruto’s head hung as two other nurses came in and started cleaning up the used sheets, towels, tools, and washing Sakura’s body from all the blood. Even Sai looked genuinely concerned. “Naruto, why don’t you go to Sakura’s and pack her a bag?” Kakashi suggested. Naruto wasn’t used to seeing the people he cared about in this kind of condition. It was harder on him than anyone in the room, except maybe Kakashi himself. “You can bring the bag back here, by then maybe she’ll be awake.”

“Yeah, alright.” Naruto walked out, Sai behind him. 

As soon as the nurses left and Kakashi was alone with Sakura he pulled up a chair and sat beside the bed, looking over her. The nurses had covered her with a clean sheet, and Tsunade and Shizune had been careful enough not to let Kakashi, Sai, or Naruto see anything, but he knew she was naked beneath the flimsy fabric covering her. The damage that had been done to her body had been extensive, something only someone very powerful could have done.

Her arm had been broken in two places; both of her kneecaps had been twisted around to the back of her legs. Her body had been bathed in her own blood from multiple stab wounds all over. Tsunade had mentioned that she had severe head trauma, and hemorrhaging in many of her organs, and that her lungs had been filled with blood, her veins filled with poison. 

Kakashi grunted and rested his elbows on his knees, glaring at the floor. When he found out who did this to Sakura he was going to make sure they paid, dearly. He knew that this was part of the job; he also knew that he was not her sensei anymore. He hadn’t been for a long time now, but damn it, it killed him that he hadn’t been there to protect her from this. That’s what he’d always done in the past, and it wasn’t because Sakura wasn’t a skilled kunoichi, it was because he cared about her…probably more than he should really.

He ran a hand through his hair and sighed, leaning back in the chair to focus on the ceiling. No one else could have gotten him to stay in the hospital. Had it been anyone else he would have been out the door the second he knew they would be alright. But this was Sakura. She wasn’t just anyone. 

A small noise from the bed had his full attention on the young girl lying there. She stirred beneath the sheets and slowly started to raise her body. Kakashi wanted to tell her to lie back down, but he knew better. Sakura had learned more than just superhuman strength from Tsunade; she’d also picked up on her independence. 

Sakura forced her body up on the bed and looked around, her jade eyes hazy as she took in her surroundings. Her head was killing her, her eyes hurt, and her body was screaming at her. She knew, somewhere in her consciousness that she was in the hospital, what she didn’t know was how she’d gotten there. Slowly her eyes looked around the room until they came to rest upon a familiar masked face. “Kakashi?”

She saw him smile behind his mask, but she knew better, his eye didn’t crinkle, so it wasn’t a real one. “How’re you feeling?” he asked, sitting up straighter in his chair. 

“Like I was run over by something very heavy.” Sakura rubbed the bridge of her nose and begged the headache to ease away. “What happened?”

“I was hoping you could tell me that. All I know is that a couple of Chunin found you half dead on Konoha’s doorstep.”

Sakura frowned and thought back to what had happened before she’d passed out. “I was on my way home…I was just about to cross the border, someone…jumped me.” The details were fuzzy, but the more Sakura concentrated the better they came back, and made her sick as she realized how lucky she really was. “It was the Akatsuki. Itachi and Kisame.” She heard Kakashi’s growl, but kept talking. “I don’t remember what they wanted exactly, everything escaladed so quickly…I tried to fight them off, but…well I think you can figure the rest out.”

“Sakura, do you know how lucky you are?” Kakashi asked, leaning forward and pinning her with a hard stare. “Why didn’t you just run away?”

“I tried,” she explained. “On a good day, I may be able to take one of them, but both of them? And one with a Sharingan?” She looked at Kakashi. “I’ve been trapped in your Sharingan before while training, but, and I mean no offence, you only have one. Itachi has two and his was…so much more powerful. Usually, if I want to, I can break out of it, if I try…I couldn’t. While I was stuck inside the Sharingan, I think Kisame continued to beat my body.”

Kakashi swore under his breath and stood. Sakura watched him pace around the small room and couldn’t help compare him to a tiger in a cage. That’s exactly what he looked like; lethal, poised for a kill, but trapped. “Naruto is going to lose it when we tell him,” he finally murmured.

Sakura sighed and rested her head back down on the pillows fatigue swamping her. “I know,” she whispered. Kakashi walking over and looking at her was the last thing she saw before everything went dark.

Kakashi swore under his breath when Sakura passed out again and walked out of the room. He was going to make the report Sakura had just given him and then he was going to go find something to hit. He walked into Tsunade’s office. She hadn’t had much time to recover, but she looked like she was replenishing her chakra quickly. In fact, it looked like she was on her second bottle of sake. And honestly, Kakashi didn’t blame her. She was like a mother to Sakura, she had been ever since she’d taken the twelve year-old girl under her wing and showed her just how powerful a kunoichi could be. Sakura was showing signs of following in Tsunade’s footsteps, and both of them were proud of that fact.

“What is it, Kakashi?” she asked, staring at some paperwork on the desk.

“Sakura woke, just briefly, she told me what happened.” Tsunade’s eyes snapped up to him, her eyes narrowing. “Kisame Hoshigaki and Itachi Uchiha attacked her.”

Tsunade slammed her fist down on the desk, snapping the wooden monstrosity in half and pitched her sake bottle against the wall. White shards of porcelain went flying. “Are you fucking kidding me?!” she snapped.

Kakashi shook his head and crossed his arms, leaning on the door. “She can’t remember anything, but she said she was trapped in Itachi’s Sharingan, and it was possible that Kisame continued to beat her while she was inside.”

Tsunade swore under her breath and pinched the bridge of her nose. “I’ll send for Jiraiya. He’ll need to be here when we tell Naruto what happened. I have a feeling that as soon as he finds out he’s going to want to go after them.”

“I agree, I would be lying if I said the thought hadn’t crossed my mind.”

Tsunade swore again and looked for an unbroken bottle of sake. “If she doesn’t have nightmares I’ll be shocked.”

Kakashi nodded and looked out the window. There was a storm brewing off in the horizon. “I’ll look after her while she heals.” After a few more exchanges, Kakashi left and went straight back to Sakura’s room. Naruto was back, sitting in the chair Kakashi had occupied and staring at Sakura’s sleeping body.

Kakashi took up residence in the corner and watched Sakura’s chest, making sure it was rising and falling steadily, making sure he could see the subtle jump in the flesh of her neck where her pulse was beating away. He knew that Sakura wasn’t the only one who was going to need time to heal. Both himself and Naruto, even Sai were damaged at the moment and it was going to take a while for them to mend. Kakashi and Naruto had known Sakura for years, they had watched her grow. Sai had known her long enough to become attached to her. Kakashi supposed in a way she was the glue that held the team together.

They all knew that out of all of them, she had grown the most over the years since her genin days. Gone was the weak little girl who had been in love with Sasuke, and whose only strength had been genjutsu. Sakura had blossomed. She was strong, confident, beautiful, only an exam away from obtaining Anbu status, and over her puppy love infatuation with Sasuke. She had even given in to Naruto and gone on a date with him. Kakashi heard that it was a mutual agreement that they didn’t mesh well, and something inside of him had been happy to learn that. He wasn’t sure why.

But the thing was, no matter how strong Sakura became, Naruto and Kakashi would always feel that it was their job to protect her, like they had when she was younger. The fact that this had happened to her, and that neither one of them had been there to help her, killed them both. He could feel it in his heart, and see it in Naruto’s eyes. Kakashi knew that only time would be able to heal the wounds that had been made. He only hoped they were all strong enough to deal with the repercussions of what had been done.