Winter's Fate

Chapter 7

Beep... Beep... Beep... Beep... Beep... Beep. Itachi's head felt achy and heavy as his mind wandered in his own memories. The images of his past were foggy, as though he were floating in a cloudy haze while trying to make sense of each picture before he was whisked off to another.

A man's pale face flickered against his closed eyelids, his mouth moving as though he were trying to speak to him, but the sound just wasn't there. Itachi tried to move his body, but the weight of the world seemed to have been set right on top of him. For a moment, his high school Ancient Greece class came to mind and he deliriously swore that if Atlas had decided to drop his burden of the sky on him he was going to kill the Titan with his bare hands. No matter what he tried, Itachi's body wouldn't cooperate with him, and the pressure holding him down refused to budge. Even through the blanket the weight seemed to put on his senses, he could still feel a painful throbbing in his left leg.

Time passed differently in the maze of memories, and as he floated along, he soon found himself able to hear instead of see clearly. The fog in his eyes got thicker and he relied on his ears as he deciphered a muffled mixture of sirens and voices. A man spoke wearily, but Itachi could only pick a few words out of the garbled memory. "...Car accident... Kenshin... Don't move..." His eyelids felt as though sandbags were pinning them down, keeping them closed even as he struggled. Another memory came, this one of white lights above him and voices calling his name... No, not just his name. Shisui's as well. Shisui, blood, a code blue- whatever that meant. The memory was chaotic and he couldn't make much more out of it.

Then suddenly something shifted. All of his struggling started to make a difference, as he began to hear the sounds of machines and he sensed that he wasn't alone wherever he was. A gentle caressing of his hair and someone's warm hand delicately moving his right arm. He mentally melted into the comforting touch as he briefly told himself that it, along with the growing pain in his leg, meant that he was still alive. Then a soft voice broke gently into his reverie.

"Uchiha Itachi, can you open your eyes for me?" The male voice was rough, not deep, but still somehow soothing.

Itachi struggled to comply to the simple request, his eyes fluttering open to show a blurry image of the figure hovering over him. He blinked, forcing his onyx eyes to regain clear vision and focus. A delicately framed face finally came into focus with sympathetic cerulean eyes and wispy layers of crazy blonde hair that was haphazardly swept to the side and out of the angel's face so that he could stare into Itachi's soul. His tan skin looked so soft, the raven almost reached out to prove that theory, but then continued to blink as the pain in his leg grew and he realized that the man in front of him was, in all actuality, not an angel... Probably.

He pressed himself into the soft bed and focused on the periodic beeps coming from the monitor behind him to reassure himself that he had in fact, not passed into the next life. The strangely beautiful man squeezed Itachi's right hand as his other hand continued to brush through his raven locks. Continuing to speak softly, the blonde continued, "Hey, there you are." He smiled as though the fact that Itachi existed was a miracle in and of itself. "My name is Naruto Hatake, and I'll be your nurse for the duration of your stay here. Do you know where you are? Does anything hurt?" Itachi weakly squeezed Naruto's fingers before swallowing thickly, wincing while closing his eyes tightly and gritting out in a deep, raspy voice bringing his dry throat to the attention of both men.

"I am in a hospital in Tokyo, Japan, and yeah, my hip and leg hurt the worst." With that, Naruto removed his hand from his patients, leaned over the bed and pushed the button on the PAC (patient controlled analgesic) to release a dosage of morphine, the narcotic they were using to ease his pain. Itachi could feel the cold liquid travel into his veins from the IV that was taped to the back of his hand. It quickly warmed and numbed him as it mixed with his blood and the desired affect took hold. He closed his eyes and sighed as his body slowly began to feel heavy yet almost ethereal, the narcotic doing its job. His mind returned to the situation he was in and an annoyed groan ripped its way up his throat right before a straw was pressed to his lips. He opened his obsidian orbs to see Naruto holding a yellow cup, the white straw in it bent and ready. He grinned appreciatively and drank his fill before the blonde returned the cup to its place on the bedside table. "Shisui..." Itachi sighed the name as though he didn't really want to ask the obvious question. And maybe he didn't. He didn't truly want to find out that his friend was dead all because he had to return to the country during a damn snowstorm.