Fighting With One's Self

Chapter 16 - No Big Deal

Yoku's POV

Pain. Sheer agony. There are not really strong enough words, but it is all I have to describe. Almost as if every piece of flesh on my body is torn off, sewn back together and just torn off again. Hundreds of needles dig into my brain. My muscles contract and and expand again. My intestines squirm inside my body.

There is light. Lots of it. For a long time, or maybe not. I cannot tell. The light gives way to white fog. But I cannot move. Suddenly, I am wrenched away again, and everything is black.

I sit upright, my eyes wide open, with a gasp of breath. It feels like the first proper breath I have taken in weeks. I look around me.

I am inside the Akatsuki hideout, in my bedroom. Everything is in place: sunlight is streaming through the gap between the curtains. Zetsu's vine-like plant is hanging above my bed. The partially open closet reveals some of my clothes. The statue Dei-kun made for me is standing on the bedside cabinet. The bathroom door opens and Yume-chan steps through. She walks toward me in silence, and sits on the bed next to me.

"Was it a dream?" I ask, more to myself. But my hoarse, dry throat proves otherwise. Only hours' amount of screaming can make my throat feel like that: I know out of experience.

Yume-chan shakes her head, confirming the hard truth. "You were out for two days after Kakuzu finished ... what do you remember?"

"Not much," I say, struggling to make my vocal chords work. I try to get up, but Yume-chan stops me.

"I'll get you some water. Stay in bed."

My stomach growls uncomfortably, but I pass it off by asking, "How long was Kakuzu busy?"

"Five days."

"What?" I try exclaiming, but it comes out as barely more than a whisper. Yume-chan hands me the glass of water, which I drink as quickly as I can. It offers a few seconds' relief. "It didn't feel like that long."

"I asked Kakuzu for details a few hours after we came back here," she says, "The device was hidden in your intestines. But he didn't know that at first. He said you died once or twice every day. Even he started panicking a little. When he finally found the device, and extracted it, you were dead for almost four minutes, but he finally brought you round again."

I don't know what to say, so I just drink water instead.

"We've all been worried sick. No human body should go through that kind of trauma. Kakuzu said that your chakra somehow kept you from dying permanently, but he can't explain it ... I'll go get you some food."

She changed the subject because my stomach rumbled again. I blush and nod. When Yume-chan exits the room, I lie back down on the pillows. What a month I'm having. Imprisoned, starved, chased, killed, revived ... I pull the covers over my head, enjoying the warmth, and take a deep breath.

My chakra kept me alive ... how is that possible, if the ninjas think that it is abnormal? Are my medical skills finally making an appearance? But why can't I revive a fish, but I can revive a human, myself? It doesn't make any sense.

Nothing makes sense.

Why did we come back here anyway? Does that mean that the Konoha nin aren't after us anymore?

I don't allow myself even comfort in that small, hopeful thought. What if Sakura installed a backup device, should the other be found. For all we know, Kakuzu only needed to perform one more operation after the one on my intestines, and that one would have revealed the backup device.

Or maybe it's not the tracking device that permanently sets the nin on our trail. Maybe it's something else. Maybe one of the nin are spying on us right this minute, and he's just waiting for the right moment to call for backup and attack. They got us every time just as we let our guard down.