Mending The Past To A Better Future

Chp.21 The Art of Being Shisui {Part-1}

+*+*+

Naruto wakes, breaths heavy and chest constricting. Her hands claw desperately at the foreign sheets covering her, hot and damp with sweat. Her lungs feel like they're closing up and it's so hard to breathe, so hard to see when all she can focus on is the strangle of the blood roaring in her ears. Tears stream down her face, and Naruto lets out a sob.

Hair matted to the pillow, she struggles to sit up and unstick herself from where she's pasted onto the mattress. Shakily, her hand extends towards the pitcher of water by her bedside.

Her hand knocks it over though. The glass crashes to the ground and the water spills everywhere. As Naruto stares at it, her eyes glass over with tears again.

Stupid.

So stupid. She rubs her wrists raw again, body shaking as her breathing picks up.

Her eyes drift to the red roses on the sill, completely terrible and beautiful. They had to go. Had to.

Had to now.

Without thinking about it, she lifted herself off of the bed, not even registering the pain that blistered through her feet as she stepped on the broken glass. Blood welted from her soles, but she ignored it and stumbled over to the roses. She wrenched them out of their vase before sliding the window open and chucking them out.

Finally. It was okay.

But then she turned back and saw the bloody footprints she had left behind, the glass that was stained red.

Her chest began falling and rising rapidly as panic welled in her throat. Too much blood. Too much blood.

Kakashi and Rin and Obito... the war... Sakura and Sasuke... Sai... Hinata... Shikamaru... Gaara....

She barely noticed when she slumped down to the ground, curling up into a fetal ball, arms rung tight around her knees. Naruto's hot tears soaked her hospital gown.

She didn't even look up as the door opened and light fell in before yellow hair and blue eyes stopped abruptly, taking in the scene before dropping next to her in a heartbeat.

Her father pulled her closer to him and wrapped an arm around her as she cried, quietly shushing her and petting her hair as he did.

+*+*+

Shisui raised his knuckles to the glass filtered door, a bag of flowers clutched tightly in his left hand. Tapping lightly, he smiled sheepishly when the silver haired boy sitting on the bed rolled his eyes and gestured him in, no different to what he had done the first time Shisui had made his rounds nearly four days ago.

It was a predictably rainy day out - where the weather seemed to match the somber mood the hospital held. The whole of Konoha seemed to be waiting for Team Minato's recovery, with each of its members excluding Minato in various states of distress and injury while waiting for their health to return to normal status. It was making them all completely restless, but they still had some ways to go before they would be discharged.

As it was, Itachi was down the hall visiting Naruto, and if he listened hard enough, he could hear Naruto's exuberant shouts of glee (Itachi had decided to play favorites and had bought the blonde nin an extra large serving of barbecue pork ramen. If only Itachi did things like that for the rest of them). Shisui rolled his own eyes at the thought. Izumi-chan and Naruto had no idea how lucky they were to have Itachi pulling out all the stops for them, when he never did for anyone else.

"Back again, Uchiha?" Kakashi asked, his normally cherub cheeks looking a bit gaunt from having to live off of hospital food. It was with a sort of dismay that he realized his face didn't fill out the mask properly. "Haven't you been taking missions?"