The Red Maelstrom

[26] New Beginnings

Kohana woke up to the sound of birds chirping out the window. She blinked the sleep out of her eyes slowly, focusing however she could on the sunlight streaming through white curtains. It took her a while to realize she was in the hospital, and even longer to recall why she was there in the first place. But when Kohana looked down, it was clear. Her body felt far too heavy for her to move beyond a simple twitch, and yet she felt none of the pain she'd felt when had been awake during her battle with Yoshiaki.

"So, you're awake."

Luckily, it wasn't so hard for Kohana to crane her neck to see who'd spoken.

Her eye twitched.

"Gods above. Why am I in a room with you?" Seriously, what had they been thinking? After what happened, there was no way in hell Yoshiaki could be trusted to be with Kohana in the same room while she was completely vulnerable.

Yoshiaki turned away to stare at the empty beds at the other end of the room. His expression was carefully blank, and as Kohana stared at him, the more frustration she felt. Clearly, he'd suffered with fewer wounds than she had; there was a single bandage on his chin from where Kohana had cut him when she kneed him, and a few more bandages covering the smaller wounds on his body. Maybe there were some stitches from where she'd stabbed him, but Kohana certainly had a grand total of three stab wounds and therefore sustained the most damage and blood loss. Really, it was a wonder that she was still alive.

Yoshiaki didn't respond for a while, but Kohana was perfectly content with that. She'd just remembered that she hadn't gotten the chance to watch a single match.

"Are the preliminaries over?" she asked in a low voice. Fraternizing with the one who gave her hell in the battlefield was not a situation she expected to be in, but she really wanted to know.

"They are; you've been asleep for more than an entire day," he replied tersely.

At this, Kohana nearly jolted out of bed, but if not for the discomfort in her muscles, she probably would have hurt herself trying to sit up. Like Yoshiaki had just told her, it really did feel like she hadn't moved since she was admitted. She fell back against her soft, downy pillow with a tired groan. "This is all your fault."

"Did you expect me to go easy on you?" the Kusagakure boy replied sardonically.

For once, Kohana had nothing to fire back with. Still, she seethed in her place. How were her teammates? Did they win? Although she would be sitting here licking her wounds and lamenting at her loss, she hoped that she was the only one in such a condition. If they got hurt as much as she did, oh would their enemies see hell.

Now that she was indeed stuck where she was, there wasn't much else she wanted to say. Memories of what occurred during the prelims were incredibly fresh in her mind, but Kohana felt that once everything was now said and done, she didn't really have a place to ask Yoshiaki what he was thinking. After all, they hardly knew each other and he did hate Konoha.

What was odd was that the rage Kohana had felt back then simmered down to a morbid curiosity and unexpected concern for Yoshiaki. The things he'd told her about the price his clan had paid for Orochimaru's crimes were horrific, but even more so because he'd blatantly accused Konoha, an ally, for turning a blind eye to the Satoru Clan's demise. This was her home he was talking about. The people were certainly not perfect, but wasn't everyone like that? Never did she fathom that the Hokage would do such a thing. She knew the Old Man, loved him just as much as she did Naruto and Sasuke, even, but if Yoshiaki said was true, did she truly know her village at all? What did that mean? What did all of this say about the one who was entrusted with the lives of an entire people?