The water in a vessel is sparkling; the water in the sea is dark. The small truth has words which are clear; the great truth has great silence ~ Rabindranath Tagore
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.
Yes, I thought, as I dragged myself into consciousness. This is chakra exhaustion.
It was too awful to be relieving, but at least it was familiar. It indicated that things were back on the right track and in working order again.
I felt like I had swallowed half the desert, and had the other half permanently jammed into my eyeballs. Opening them was like trying to drag a brick wall up a steep hill, and I ran out of energy half way up.
It was enough to see the white tiling of a hospital ceiling.
Figured.
My chakra sense was telling me there was someone in the chair next to my bed. Someone who's chakra buzzed and crackled in a familiar pattern. I rolled my head to the side, so I could look in that general direction. It took an unholy amount of effort.
He looked back.
"Kaka-sensei," I rasped to break the silence that was heavy enough to be uncomfortable. "You're late."
He flinched like I'd slapped him.
"Sorry. That was," I swallowed roughly, "a bad joke."
I tried to sit up, but managed only to lift my head off the pillow. Instead I limply raised and arm and twitched my fingers at him in an obvious offering. He didn't respond. After a moment, I gave up, and let them fall limply back to the bed. But as they were starting to droop downwards, he reached out to clasp them in his own.
"Ah. What's the damage?" I asked lightly, trying not to be scared of the answer. Kakashi-sensei wasn't the hospital visiting type. My thoughts bounced along frightening paths such as 'permanently crippled', 'never be a ninja again' and 'only a week to live'.
"You're going to be fine," he murmured after a long silence. I couldn't tell if that was the truth, or just what he wanted to believe was the truth. Then again, Kakashi-sensei was hardly the type for self-delusion, was he? If I was hurt, he'd say. Or at least, wouldn't be the one who had to break the news. Right?
"Thought you were on a mission," I said, instead. My fingers twitched against his, weakly. "You've been busy."
"I heard my cute little students were in trouble," he replied, eye crinkling into an obviously fake smile. "So I hurried home. But here you are, all safe and sound."
"Here we are," I echoed. I yawned, eyes sliding shut and ending up too heavy to open again.
Then the door slammed open and I found that, no, actually, I could sit up. Adrenaline did that. I was sharply aware of everything from the dust motes dancing in the afternoon sunlight streaming through the window, to the shifting of bandages wrapped around my chest, to the garbled echoes of voices from further along the hospital.
I was exhausted but that didn't mean I was helpless; I could probably take anyone who assumed I was by surprise, if I was fast enough. The closest weapons to me were Kakashi-sensei's – I had no idea where mine were - but at a pinch, the chair, bedside table and bed itself would probably work. I had a clear run to the window, which was probably my best bet, if Kakashi-sensei would delay-
Tsunade-sama stalked in, looking irritated and glaring at sensei. "I said 'no visitors'," she ground out. "It wasn't a suggestion; it was an order."
Kakashi-sensei shrugged his shoulders in a manner that said he gave precisely no fucks about her orders.
Tsunade narrowed her eyes at him. "Hatake," she said, warningly. It dripped out, viscously, and flooded the room.
I tried very hard to discover invisibility. This was not an argument that I wanted to be caught in the middle of.
"She's my student," he muttered, sounding sullen.
"And you can wait outside like the rest of them," Tsunade snapped. "I shouldn't have to tell you what 'classified' means!"
"I don't care about classified-"
"Out!" Tsunade pointed a single finger towards the door, and held it until Kakashi-sensei sullenly rose and shuffled out of the room.
Then she sighed, a long aggravated sound. Her heels clicked on the tile floor as she strode forward, in a way that had to be deliberate for a shinobi. But her touch was gentle as she propped a pillow behind me and let me sit, and then swept green chakra through my system.
"That bad, huh?" I rasped, aiming for joking and missing by a wide margin.
Tsunade arched an eyebrow. "You did die," she said, voice mild now. "The second time this week, according to your brother."
I gaped at her. "Died?" I squeaked.
I had not.
"You were," Tsunade said clearly, "so chakra exhausted, that you were no longer producing any. That alone is enough to declare death, and that's not even mentioning the cardiac arrest you went into on the floor of my office. No chakra, no pulse, no breathing," she ticked off on her fingers. "I'm not even sure I'd get neural activity from you on a good day."
I closed my mouth with a click. When you put it like that…
Although, calling me brain dead was a bit far. Not enough to get me to say anything to an obviously annoyed Tsunade but, yknow, unfair.
"My chakra's been like that for a few days?" I offered meekly. "So it's not really so bad?"
"I figured," she said dryly, clicking a small sample container down on the bedside table. I craned my neck to look at it. A small rectangular stone, about the size of my pinky finger rattled around the inside. I knew instantly what it was and where it had come from.
It was a stone of Gelel. And it had been in me.
"This," Tsunade said pointedly. "Was retrieved from your Eighth Chakra Gate. It was blocking or absorbing all of your chakra. You're lucky I was able to detect an anomaly in your system, otherwise you'd never be able to mold chakra again."
I shivered a little, at the thought. That would have ruined everything. Without chakra, I couldn't stand against the threats that were coming. Couldn't protect Sasuke and Naruto. Couldn't do anything.
But…
The Gelel warriors had been able to use techniques to attack us. They hadn't been that much weaker than us, in the end. With proper training… I would have been able to manage. I might have even been able to turn it towards even greater strength.
Because I'd turned into shadows. It had been a full and proper transformation. That level of control was restricted to A rank techniques – or bloodline limits. The Hozuki clan from Hidden Mist; able to turn into water. Konan; paper. Kakuzu; thread. It was a powerful ability, one that might have appealed to me if I hadn't been so quick to panic. Our clan oath even said 'become one with the shadows' did it not?
And it had healed me of a mortal wound. That ability to regenerate, like Fugai had when we had as good as killed her would have been exceptionally handy.
I hadn't really wanted it. But now that it had been taken away, before I'd even had the chance to try…
Well.
"Tell me what it was," Tsunade said, making me tear my eyes away from my stone.
I coughed, accepted a drink of water, and started. "Before the Sage of the Six Paths, there was an empire that spanned the Elemental Nations. These people didn't have ninjutsu as we know it, but seemed to have a source of power that they used to strengthen their nation. It was, I think," I hesitated, twisting my fingers around. "They dammed a dragon vein."
Dragon veins were what I would have called ley lines. Areas of land that had high concentrations of chakra running through them. I'd looked up the subject after our trip to the Land of Snow had made them of interest, though there had been little to find. Some people were said to be able to use them to bolster attacks, though that sounded rather like limited senjutsu.
"They created a huge seal, incredibly intricate and detailed, and blocked the flow of chakra so that it all pooled together. And then they compressed it until it crystalized."
If you had enough chakra, you could make light. If you had more it could even be solid, like Naruto's Rasengan. The next step… or step after, would be crystal. The amount of chakra, though that it would take, even for something the size of my tiny little stone… it was probably more that I would produce over my lifetime.
"The mined this crystal and used it in various ways, including inserting it into people in order to give them powers comparable to a ninja. That's what the people we fought had," I clarified. "During the fight with Haido, the mine itself was damaged and the Gelel began to escape. It was… it was alive. It was like a spirit. A kami."
It felt odd to put a name to it, because it wasn't what I would really call a god. But it was similar to a Shinto spirit, the kind that was simply an essence of the world.
"I was… I had been stabbed at that point," I said, glossing over it. "And it used me as a conduit to escape the seal, healing me in the process. Which was a better option than the seal rupturing, exploding, and quite possibly wiping out the entire continent."
Kahiko had not-so-cheerfully informed us that this had been an option after the fact. I was rather glad I hadn't known ahead of time. His intended alternative of summoning a black hole wasn't too flash either, in my opinion. That had been what he'd been trying to accomplish with the 'blood of the royal family' maneuver, and while I could admire the sheer balls of it - and the reminder that seals were reality bending dangerous - I repeated my desire to not be caught in the middle of it.
A minute twitch of Tsunade's eyebrow was the only indication that she was bothered by what I'd just said.
"It must have left a piece behind and when I tried to use chakra, something else happened. That's why I collapsed in the office," I finished.
That wasn't the end of it, of course. She had far more questions than that. But she seemed to know the majority of it already, so she'd probably spoken to Naruto and Shikamaru. The extended information about the Gelel was really the only thing that I knew and they didn't. Apart from the book… and somehow I failed to bring that up. I should have, I knew that. I just didn't.
It's not really about the mission, I rationalized. And the fewer people that know about it the better.
Afterwards, I tentatively asked, "Tsunade-sama? About the Elders…" I wasn't entirely sure how I would have finished that sentence, but she seemed to get my meaning.
She smiled sharply. "Oh, I wouldn't worry about them. That won't be happening again." She looked satisfied. "You can thank your brother for making such a fuss at the gates about needing medical treatment. In light of that, their actions are highly negligent and I have more than enough justification to implement restrictions on their ability to interfere with my shinobi."
"Glad to be of service," I muttered, even as my insides squirmed. 'Justification' meant that people would back her on this issue. It meant that people would know. I would forever be 'that girl that died in the Hokage's office'.
How embarrassing.
"More than you know," she said cryptically, even though I was pretty sure I did know. "I'm slapping this mission with an S-rank Classified label. Where you went and who you met is public information, but anything with regards to this Gelel, the stones or mine is not."
"Why only that half?" I asked curiously.
Tsunade smirked. "I'm good, but even I can't hide the invasion of two countries. Besides, this could work in our favour. Coming to the aid of Hidden Sand like that shows we're taking this alliance seriously, even with how new it is. It will almost be worth dealing with those old fossils, knowing how much they're going to have to grovel for this."
"Taking it seriously? We have barely a year of experience between us," I said skeptically. "That's not exactly…"
She arched an eyebrow. "Our Jinchuriki. The Jounin Commander's two children. The fact that you succeeded makes it 'exactly'."
It sounded so weird when she put it like that.
Like people would actually think that we'd been on a purposeful assignment, rather than randomly stumbling into trouble.
"You'll stay in the hospital until I'm satisfied your condition has stabilized," Tsunade said, business-like again. "There are a number of tests to run." She stood and walked towards the door. "Try not to get too excited."
Shikamaru ducked in through the door and under her arm the second she opened it, sliding around her with barely a nod. She seemed more amused than anything.
Shikamaru slid onto the bed next to me, sitting so we were thigh to thigh and tucking me in under his arm. I sighed and leant against him. It was a good thing we were both small, otherwise we might have been in danger of falling off the sides.
Sakura and Ino waited until Tsunade was gone before following him into the room, but Sakura ruined the sense of composure by immediately throwing herself at me and bursting into tears on my lap. I awkwardly patted her on the back and waited for the tears to subside. Ino perched on the other side of her and made an apologetic face.
"No Naruto?" I asked. I hadn't expected Kakashi-sensei to stick around, not really, but I had expected Naruto.
"He was pacing," Shikamaru muttered, in a tone that clearly added 'and he was annoying me'. "I sent him home to tell mum what happened."
I peered up at him. "That was dumb," I said. "What's mum going to think when she sees our squad leader come home without either of us?" I really hoped she didn't think to unpack our gear either, because I didn't want to see what she would make of my jacket.
There was a pause and an aggravated sigh. "Shit."
Sakura hiccupped and wiped her face. "Sorry," she whispered. "I was just so worried!"
"Sakura's the one who got Tsunade for you," Ino said, as explanation. I thought I remembered seeing Sakura behind Tsunade, right before I'd done an ungraceful face plant on the ground.
"I was at the market, and I heard the rumours from the gates," Sakura said with a sniffle. "So I came to the hospital to see you, but you weren't here. So I asked Tsunade-sama what was going on."
Sakura, I considered, didn't lack courage. At all. Because most people would take a few intermediate steps between 'can't find' and 'ask the Hokage'. It made me wonder what else had been going on, that that seemed like a logical progression of events. Maybe Tsunade had just been especially easy to locate.
"Thanks," I said. "I'm lucky you did."
She burst into tears all over again.
Oops.
I looked at Ino helplessly.
.
.
Eventually, the medic ninja came and kicked Shikamaru out so they could run some more tests and put me to bed. I was a little uncomfortable under their probing gazes, because they seemed utterly fascinated. That was probably a result of Tsunade's 'you died' story.
I got to be a medical marvel. Wonderful.
Once they were gone, I looked at the plastic jar still sitting innocently on my table. I reached out, fumbled the lid off, and tipped the stone into my hand.
There was no flash of chakra. There wasn't even any music. Nothing that said this was anything but a hunk of earth. It seemed utterly ordinary.
But I curled my fingers around it anyway. Maybe I could find a chain for it; wear it as a necklace.
I slept like the dead, though, a side effect of actual chakra exhaustion. When the medics came by in the morning for round two, I just rolled over and dozed. They could beep things at me all they liked, I didn't have to be awake for it.
People came by, but I have to admit, I mostly dozed through those visits too, feeling too drained to want to socialize. Mum was there, and I roused myself enough to mumble at her, even if it was most likely an incoherent jumble of syllables. That was pretty typical 'just woke up' behavior from our family, really.
Sakura came by with lunch, and I was awake enough at that point to want a change of scenery. It took a little convincing, but we moved out to the hospital courtyard and sprawled out on the grass under the shade of a tree.
We weren't the only ones out there, and I let the general chatter wash over me while we ate.
Two of them, either young medical ninja or trainees, by the looks of them, were having a very fugitive conversation, which involved plenty of glances in our direction. I considered them. On one hand, I had so little chakra recovered that it seemed like a huge waste to use it eavesdropping. On the other… I was really quite nosy. If they were talking about me, or my mission, then I'd really rather know. There were bound to be some rumours circulating by now.
I carefully channeled a dribble of chakra to my ears.
"-that's Shikako Nara!" the brunette hissed to her friend. "She's the one that Tsunade-sama brought in yesterday!"
"I thought she was dead," the other said, puzzled. "Critical chakra exhaustion, right?"
"Migaki-sensei said she was basically a corpse already - that even Tsunade-sama couldn't save her. But he said that last time as well. You remember that big mission where all the clan kids got hurt, a few weeks ago? I was on shift then, and she just walked right in. They didn't think she was seriously hurt until they went to take a reading and the chakra sensor started spitting out single digit readings."
I squirmed uncomfortably and dropped the jutsu. Well. That did answer my question about how likely people were to believe what had happened.
Did she have to sound so… awed about it, though?
"I can't believe you," Sakura hissed at me. "You aren't supposed to be using chakra!"
I gave a guilty start. I hadn't expected Sakura to notice. "I was just… curious," I said, lamely. "I wanted to know what they were saying."
Sakura glanced sideways at them, frowning a little, and I realized she'd been listening in too. "They shouldn't have said that," she said.
I shrugged, looking up at the sky. "It doesn't matter, really," I demurred. "It's even kind of funny, really. I mean, if you go with 'shikabane'" – which was a more formal way to say corpse than 'shitai' or 'nakigara' – "then you can even make a pun about our naming tradition."
"How can you say that?!" Sakura burst out, looking at me with something akin to horror. "It's not a joke!"
"Ah, no, sorry," I said hastily, pulling myself into a sitting position. Had I crossed a line there? It hadn't been that bad. As deflections went, it was a little tasteless, but in a gallows humour kind of way.
"Everyone was really worried about you!"
And… I felt a flash of temper rising up. I had been the one hurt. I was the one who had become a god and said 'no'. I had been the one who had walked home worrying that I wasn't going to be the same ever again. I was the one in hospital.
Why is your worry more important than that? I thought viciously. Why do I have to reassure you? It was an ugly thought, and an ugly emotion and I clamped down on it hard before it could escape.
I didn't really want to say that to Sakura. Except for the parts of me that did.
Of our group - heck, maybe of all our year – Sakura was the most emotionally honest. If she was upset, she cried, regardless of whether she was in public or not. If she was upset with something, she wanted to talk about it and have it known. It wasn't a bad thing. But it wasn't how I was.
I did not, actually, want to talk about it – even if I could thanks to everything being classified – and I didn't want to rehash how everyone else felt. I wanted to be left alone.
"Sorry," I repeated, shortly. I lay back down and threw my forearm over my eyes, blocking them from the sun. "Do you have class this afternoon?" I asked, changing the subject to something less volatile.
"Yeah," Sakura said, after a lengthy pause. "Anatomy."
I seized onto that as a reasonable way to redirect the conversation, and also with the vaguest sense of relief that she wouldn't be sticking around all day. That was a mean thought, too, but I couldn't help it.
She offered to help me back to my room before she had to go, but I said I'd much prefer to stay outside. It wasn't like the medic-nin couldn't find me if they wanted to.
I wasn't in much of a mood to be social after that, but I did make an effort when Sasuke showed up. He didn't seem inclined to talk about the mission, or the rumours, anyway, for which I was grateful. It would probably be brought up at some point, but I was glad for the brief reprieve.
"Hey," I rasped, squinting up at him.
"Hey," he returned, dropping down to sit beside me. He put his back to the tree trunk, which was about as defensible as you could get out here. "Cloud watching?"
I made a sound of agreement, even though the only thing I could see from here was leaves.
We sat in silence for a while. "So what kind of trouble have you been up to while we've been gone?" I asked, covering a yawn.
His eyes flickered towards me. "Nothing so exciting."
Huh. I hadn't actually thought there had been something. Guess the curse of Lucky Sevens didn't die just because we were separated.
"Well, you can't leave it there." I nudged him in the thigh. "Go on."
He tilted his head. "A lightning bolt struck the Hokage's Tower," he said, casually.
I squinted at him. Because we'd just been to the Hokage Tower, and it had been remarkably undamaged. Still, I didn't disbelieve him. There had to be more to the story. "Bet that must have pissed Tsunade-sama off."
He smirked. "A bit. It wasn't real, though. Just a Genjutsu even if it fooled everyone. I had to work with the Hyuuga, but we managed to break it."
There was only one person that was 'the Hyuuga' to Sasuke with that level of disgruntled hostility. His grudge with Neji seemed to be deeper than just a personality clash. It wasn't stereotypical clash of clans, either, because he got on reasonably well with Hinata.
"Must have been some genjutsu," I said. Area of effect were normally weaker than targeted, but if it had affected the whole village, and had taken two genjutsu piercing bloodlimits to disrupt… And someone with that kind of strength had got deep enough into Konoha to strike the Tower…
"It was," Sasuke said, with a slight frown. "Kiba helped us track the caster down, afterwards. It was a girl from the Kurama clan. She'd managed to link it to some kind of foci – a painting. I almost thought it was a seal at first."
The name made me blink a little – what were the odds? – but then hazy knowledge dredged itself up. "They have some kind of bloodlimit, don't they? Based around genjutsu?" And there was something more than that… about the paintings…
"Yeah. Turns out she used to be Kurenai's student, a few years ago. Then something happened and she's basically been locked up under watch ever since."
That was definitely ringing some bells. Kurenai's student. Genjutsu. Mostly I remembered Team 8 running around with Naruto. Was she the one with some kind of alter ego? How had that been sorted out?
I drummed my fingers on the ground. "Locked up? Why? And why did she attack the tower in the first place?"
He hesitated. "For revenge, she said. She seemed to think that the Hokage had her parents killed."
I stared up at him in horror, heart stuttering in a way that would have given the medics conniptions. "Don't say things like that here," I hissed. "Don't you know how easy it is to be overheard?"
I'd already proven that, eavesdropping on those medics before. They were gone, but we weren't alone. And better shinobi than me wouldn't even need to be nearby to do it. They could listen from inside, or leave recorders or traps or-
I swept my chakra sense out, trying to tell if there was anything there. It didn't help much. There were people in the hospital and any one of them could have heard.
I went cold. If anyone heard Sasuke, of all people, talking about the village killing its own… And Danzo had just been poking his nose into my mission. Had he been paying attention to Sasuke's? How quickly would he draw the wrong conclusion? What would he do, if it seemed like Sasuke was on to him?
Sasuke's face slowly lost all colour.
I didn't feel much better.
"What happened to her? The Kurama girl?" I asked, mind whirring. It was risky to keep talking about it, but it was also risky to put off the damage control.
Sasuke blinked, looking shaken. "She… was taken back to her house. Tsunade said- Tsunade said she was sick." He gave me a look that could be described as vaguely pleading.
"And who heard her say that?"
Just Sasuke, Neji and Kiba, apparently. And the other two had dismissed it; hadn't believe it was possible. Sasuke had dismissed it; he'd only really been joking and trying to get a reaction out of me. Well he had one, I thought grimly, but not at all what he wanted.
"You haven't done anything… out of the ordinary after that?" I persisted. "You haven't seen anything? People following you?" Would he even notice? ROOT had to be good at stealth, just to exist in Konoha. And if Sasuke had his guard down, because he was at home…
I blew out a deep breath.
I have no idea what to do, I thought miserably. If Danzo already knew, then he already knew. If he didn't know, then Sasuke really needed to stay away from anything that remotely linked him to it.
I wish dad was home.
Not only would dad know what to do, he'd probably have some idea if it was plausible or not. Whether or not he would tell me was another story, but it would at least mean someone was looking into it.
But he wasn't, and maybe wouldn't be for a while. There was no use wishing for things that couldn't be.
"Come visit when I'm out of hospital," I said. "We'll work it out. And until then,don't do anything different." Don't attract attention, I wanted to say. Don't let them think you know anything.
Sasuke gave a jerky nod.
I regarded him unhappily, aware that I had freaked him out, but it was necessary. He didn't know how close he had just stumbled to disaster.
"Help me back to my room," I said, because there was nothing else to say, and I needed to move. Outside wasn't comforting, anymore. It was too open, too exposed. Too dangerous.