Awaken from the Ashes (Naruto Childhood Friend Story)

Chapter 2: Revived

After running a few tests to see Kaya's physical condition, Tsunade couldn't find anything out of the ordinary. Kaya herself was fairly weak, but it wasn't a permanent consequence. She would just have to eat properly and exercise regularly enough to improve her condition, but otherwise, she was fine. There was nothing particularly different about her, from what Tsunade could tell, but it confused her. If she had been one of Orochimaru's experiments, surely something would be off about her, right? Maybe it was just something that couldn't be so easily detected.

To monitor her condition, as well as because she has nowhere to go at the moment, Tsunade had Kaya stay at the Konoha hospital for a bit. She arranged for her to have her own room, due to her mild mental instability as well as the fact Tsunade wasn't sure how she'd react to random strangers for now, especially sick or injured ones.

Naruto visited Kaya constantly throughout the week, hoping to help her readjust to Konoha. He was worried about her now that he knew that she had been likely going through something horrible ever since the time she disappeared. He wanted to be there for her like she was for him, but Naruto didn't know what to do. Although the girl in front of him was Kaya, a part of him knew that she wasn't quite the same person anymore.

For the majority of the time he visited, Kaya would be sitting in her bed, her knees to her chest and her arms wrapped around her legs as she gazed out the window beside her. Naruto sat in a chair on the opposite side of her bed from the window. It was quiet most of the time. Kaya didn't seem like she wanted to talk, and Naruto wanted to respect that, though the silence would sometimes drive him crazy.

A couple of days after they'd gotten back to Konoha, Naruto had arrived at Kaya's room with a gift hidden behind his back. He hoped it would help cheer her up. When he handed her the orange stuffed fox, she held it in her hands in front of her and looked at it for a moment. Naruto wasn't sure how it made her feel, because her expression didn't really change, but he hoped it would be fine.

When Kaya looked at the fox, she couldn't help but remember the time she'd given it to Naruto. The kind memories of that peaceful time were refreshing to her, but a part of her wanted to deny all of it. If she refused to accept she had ever had such a pleasant time, perhaps she wouldn't have to feel the great sense of loss losing it gave her. But even still, she held the fox close as she continued to gaze out of the window.

She tried to keep her thoughts clear as she looked out at the village she'd grown up in. There were some small things that were different, but it looked pretty much the same. Seeing the Hokage monument from her window, she realised that the woman she had talked to the other day, the one that had brought her here, was indeed the current Hokage. She didn't know what happened to the Sandaime, and she was sure she didn't want to know yet. She wasn't ready to hear that another part of her past was gone forever.

At night, Kaya held the fox close, hoping it would chase away the nightmares for her. Well, she calls them nightmares, but they were just memories. Memories of some of the things she'd gone through in the past eight years. Seeing all those corpses, of the people already dead and of the people killed in front of her, seeing the burnt corpses of her mother and father. It was too much for an 8-11 year old to handle, and remembering them filled her with the same sense of horror she'd felt back then.

One morning, barely a week after she'd gotten to Konoha, Kaya couldn't stand to stay in the hospital anymore. She wanted to go out for a walk and clear her head. She'd seen them again tonight, the memories of her parents' deaths and the memories of their charred bodies being dropped in front of her in that test room. That room that was covered in white and in various forms of machinery, the one that the hospital, though with a much different look, reminded her of. She just wanted to leave for a bit and refresh her mind.