Naruto : Path of Wind

"Just a joke, just a joke," he assures me, eyes shining with mirth. "Truthfully, though, your rank won't have anything to do with it. Neither will age. I'm not keeping this from you for anything so petty. I'll tell you as soon as I think you're ready to know," he says sincerely.

"I swear, old man, this thing better be worth the wait," I grumble.

...

We move on to safer waters after that, mostly just catching me up on all the things I'd missed during the week and a day I'd spent unconscious. I learn that Lee went and got himself burned bad enough to warrant just under a week in the hospital while beating the everloving shit out of one of the rogue chunin (not the old man's words, but I got the point).

I learn that the shinobi I'd killed had a massive bounty on his head courtesy of Kusa, which is now available for me to collect whenever I feel the need.

I learn that Sakura and Tenten were kept here in the hospital for three days after we got back, suffering from severe mental trauma.

"Is- Are they okay now?" I ask concernedly. Sakura is already so timid- if she got hit with something really bad...

"I truly hope so." I don't know.

"Did either of them say anything about what that guy's jutsu did?" I don't even bother asking about Sasuke. If he wasn't willing to tell me yesterday, there's no way he told anyone else beforehand.

The Hokage shakes his head in the negative. "Both of them were quite adamant in staying silent."

"And you didn't have...?"

He cocks a single, gray eyebrow. "Not all matters of the mind can be solved by a simple Yamanaka intrusion. If that were the case I'd no doubt be paying them a lot more than I do." I sink back deeper into my bed and scowl up at the ceiling, and think.

From what I saw Tenten has a pretty solid support system in Gai and Lee, if not the Hyuuga. Whatever it is that stupid nukenin did to her, she should be able to get through it. Sakura, on the other hand...

I'm not sure what her home life is like, but if Sasuke has been spending all his time training and hiding out in my thoroughly disinfected prison cell, and if Kakashi is Kakashi, she likely hasn't been getting much in the way of a shinobi's support. And from the way the old man is shying away from a concrete answer, and from the way Sasuke described the whole ordeal yesterday, it sounds like she really needs it.

That's not to say I'm the shinobi she needs to talk to, of course. Now that I really think about it, the only genjutsu I've ever been hit with has been Kazu's, and that one was hardly traumatic. Extremely frustrating, and a little bit disturbing, sure, but nothing mentally or emotionally damaging. I don't have too much to sympathize with her about.

I'll definitely still try, though. Because I'm Uzumaki Naruto, and that's what I do.

"Oh," A soft exclamation comes from the doorway, and I tilt my head down to see Sakura standing there with a small cluster of flowers held tightly in her hands. "Hokage-sama, I didn't know-" she stammers, but the old man merely smiles that grandfatherly smile of his and creaks his way to his feet.

"Not a problem, Haruno-san. Naruto and I were just about done anyway." And with that he tightens his robes about himself and bids me farewell, sweeping out of my cell in a flurry of white and red.

Looks like I won't even need to get out of bed for this one. "Hey Sakura," I greet happily. "Are those for me?"

"Y-yes," she says, fidgeting with a particularly orange flower. She shuffles in, making for the nightstand by my bed where my other flowers are. She plucks those out and drops the fresh ones in, tossing the limp ones in the garbage bin sitting by the door.

"So!" I say, clapping my hands together, and causing Sakura to jump a bit. She turns to me, and I notice the bags under her eyes, even darker than the ones Sasuke was sporting yesterday. Have I been the only one getting any sleep on this team? "What's Kakashi had you guys doing while I was out?"

"Not much," she answers softly, walking over and taking the old man's seat after a moment's hesitation. The way she very deliberately avoids touching any of the shadows in the room while doing this does not escape my notice. I struggle to contain my frown. "He's been focusing mostly on individual training, using a clone jutsu to teach both of us. I think he's been waiting for you to get better."

"That's surprisingly nice of him," I admit, subtly shifting my weight so that a particular tendril of shadow slithers forward just a bit closer to my teammates foot. Without missing a beat, the sandaled appendage retreats and settles crossed behind her other leg. What in the world.

"He's not as bad as you think he is," Sakura says, and she actually sounds a little exasperated. "He's very... eccentric, yes, but it's not like he hasn't been teaching us."

"He's still the worst," I retort sourly. "What he did with those pheromones is unforgivable. Just thinking about all of those spiders-" I shiver.

"That was part of our exam, though!" Sakura protests.

"No, not that time he tagged us with vicious predator-attracting pheromones. The othertime." She doesn't have anything to say to that one. Victory. "Enough of Hatake, though. I want to hear about what happened with you and Tenten." The pink-haired girl's eyes go wide, apprehension shining clear as day in their grass green depths.

"What?" She squeaks.

"Yeah, you know. How many bandits did you two get? I only got to take down a couple before Raiakuzu the Electric Prick crashed the party," I reply easily, carefully observing the tension that drains out of her then. I arch my back, stretching, and watch out of the corner of my eye as her arm carefully settles into her lap to avoid the resulting shadow. Just what did that nukenin do to her?

"Tenten did most of the work, really," she begins modestly. "I mostly took Sasuke's advice and used explosive notes to herd them into the middle of the field while Tenten picked them off. It was better that way. Her accuracy is unreal."

I grunt. "It better be, for her to be chucking axes around by her teammates' heads."

She giggles. "That's nothing, you should have seen this one thing she did with a shuriken and three senbon-"

She stops cold then, in mid sentence, to flinch bodily away from the shadow that I'd thrown across her face stretching my arms above my head. The hospital chair shrieks and goes tumbling backwards, taking her with it.

Almost before she hits the ground the pink-haired kunoichi is scrambling to her feet for a patch of sunlight at the foot of my bed. She stands there, panting slightly, though I doubt it's from any sort of exertion, and shaking just enough for it to be noticeable.

Holy shit.

When she finally gains control of herself and turns to me, there's dread in her eyes. "I... I..." She stutters ineffectually. I continue to stare at her, shocked.

"Sakura?"

"I..."

"What did he do to you?" I ask slowly. She flinches again, though she thankfully manages to keep her feet this time.

"I..."

"Sakura," I say sharply. She shakes her head. "Tell me. What was the name of the genjutsu? What did it do?" She shakes her head again, almost desperately, her eyes clenched tightly shut. She looks like she's about to cry. I lean forward, irritably jerking a few cord too short to accommodate me out of my skin. The same monitor from yesterday screams its mechanical scream.

We had you hooked up to those machines for a reason, you know.

"Sakura, you can tell me about this. I won't tell anyone else if you don't want me to, but at least tell me. You need to tell someone." Shake shake shake. I can see tears streaming down her cheeks now.

"Did- Did he rape-" I can't even say it. Come on, Uzumaki. Now's not the time to lose your voice!

She shakes her head again anyway. I tear the covers off my legs, remove the last of the cords from my body, and swing my legs over the side of the bed.

I almost collapse again, my stupid legs are so weak, but I grip the nightstand with one hand and the metal bedpost with the other, and carefully find my feet. Then I take a careful step forward, and another, and another, until I'm standing in front of my teammate's hunched form. I bring my hands down on her shoulders, almost as much to steady me than to gain her attention.

She flinches again, almost ripping herself out of my grasp and sending me tumbling to the floor. I stare determinedly at her. "Just tell me the name of the genjutsu, Sakura. Just tell me the name." She closes her eyes again, but I shake her until she opens them. "Sakura! Tell me the name."

She whispers something, so quietly she might as well have been mouthing it.

"What'd you say?" I demand. She shudders.

"It wasn't a genjutsu," she repeats, just loud enough for me to hear it. My brow furrows.

"It- What was it, then?" I ask, at a loss. She shakes her head again, lurching backwards for the door. I stumble after her, lose my balance, and fall to my knees. "Sakura, wait!"

But she's already gone, the sound of her rapid footsteps fading down the hallway.

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