Naruto Fan Fiction ❯ Fragile: Handle With Care ❯ Chapter One ( Chapter 2 )

Disclaimer:

:Looks at watch: ….. Nope, still don't own it. Maybe next week.

 

Warnings for this chapter: Brief hints at violence, but nothing else yet. And the fact that I only went over this chapter three times or so. I'm not as happy with it as I was with my prologue. Then again, the prologue ended up having to be totally rewritten, so…In any case, I hope this chapter goes over moderately well…^_^;

 

Fragile: Handle With Care- Chapter One

 

 

The ticking was making his jaw clench painfully. Looking up, he wasn't surprised to find that only a minute had passed since the last time he'd checked.

 

Umino Iruka hated that damn clock.

 

Every time the swinging doors were flung open, he sat up in anticipation, only to watch another medic-nin race past without offering any new information. It had been nearly four hours since Sakura had interrupted his afternoon class, wide-eyed and breathless. Her brow had been furrowed, and her hands shook with the effort of holding back tears. It had been her shaking hands that drew his attention to the blue piece of cloth that was held tightly in her grip.

 

He had never run so fast in his life.

 

But now that Iruka had reached his destination, there seemed to be no end to his waiting. He growled in frustration as he walked slowly over to the glass windows of the waiting room. Kakashi's admittance to the hospital wouldn't be common knowledge in the village just yet, but Iruka was certain that someone would have told Naruto by now. But at this point, he didn't know if even a hug from the blond-haired boy would be able to lift his spirits.

 

The sudden stray thought that he may need to sit down again rather abruptly convinced Iruka to wander back over the uncomfortable plastic chair he had previously occupied. Another medic pushed past the set of doors, this one less hurried than the previous. When he saw the chuunin, he gave a brief, grim nod before continuing down the hallway. But before Iruka's already strained mind overloaded itself trying to over-analyze this new piece of information, a bright orange streak wove its way around the medic-nin and past a gurney that had been left by the nurses' station.

 

“Iruka sensei!” Naruto yelled anxiously. “Iruka sensei, what happened? How long has he been in there?”

 

The teacher shook his head, pulling the boy into an awkward embrace. “They haven't told me anything yet. It's been over four hours since Sakura found me. But…” Iruka bit his lip, and forced himself to continue. “I saw Morino Ibiki san walk in a few minutes after I got here.”

 

Naruto struggled to keep his facial expressions under control, but Iruka could see that the boy understood what that meant. He was smarter than most people gave him credit for. Naruto smiled then, but it was forced and never reached his eyes. “Kakashi sensei won't let something like this take him out that easily. The next volume of Icha Icha Paradise comes out in three weeks, and there's no way he'll miss that.” He paused, before speaking again with renewed enthusiasm. “Besides, Tsunade baa-chan is with him, right? She can fix him up…at least she's good for something.”

 

Iruka smiled despite himself. It was true that the Fifth Hokage was the best healer Konoha had to offer, but the teacher was still disturbed by the presence of the special jounin. It was obviously not a simple medical matter if it called for that particular's jounin's opinion.

 

Iruka hadn't even registered the opening of the doors until he found himself staring into the drawn, scarred face of Morino Ibiki. It was unsettling how just thinking about the man seemed to summon him.

 

“Iruka sensei,” the jounin spoke, more softly than usual. “Hokage sama would like to speak with you.”

 

Iruka gave his former student a reassuring touch on the shoulder, before following the other man through the doors that would lead him to Kakashi.

 

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Tsunade turned away from the window when she heard the approaching footsteps of the two men. She forced her face into a mask of neutrality. As painful as it was to be so cold and professional with those she had grown to care for over the years, Tsunade knew that she couldn't allow the chuunin teacher to see her true feelings. But the worried look on Umino Iruka's face nearly broke her resolve, and Tsunade mentally berated herself. `Right now, you're the Hokage…you can grieve later.'

 

“Umino Iruka sensei, let me first remind you that this information is still classified. The only reason you are being updated is because of your…close relationship with Hatake Kakashi.”

 

Iruka flinched at the Hokage's words. Of course she knew about their relationship; it was the worst kept secret in Konoha. But he didn't detect any disapproval in her tone of voice, but a cautiousness that set him on edge. `Disapproval would have been better…' he thought.

 

“His condition has stabilized,” she continued. “We've taken care of the most urgent problems, namely the internal bleeding and the broken ribs. Everything else will require time to heal on its own. Physically, he should be fully recovered in six to eight weeks.”

 

Iruka frowned. “Physically?”

 

Tsunade's hesitation was almost imperceptible, but the significance wasn't lost on the chuunin teacher. “He hasn't regained consciousness yet, so it's impossible to determine anything beyond that.” The Fifth Hokage prepared herself to be on the receiving end of Iruka's well-known temper.

 

But it never came. His next words were terrifying in a way that his yelling never could be. They were spoken with a quiet, almost primal rage that hinted at violence and blood.

 

“What aren't you telling me?”

 

Before Tsunade could get a word out, the imposing figure of Morino Ibiki stepped forward, saving her from the difficult task of explaining the situation in any more detail. This was, after all, his area of expertise, as Umino Iruka was very aware.

 

Every bit of common sense the teacher had was screaming at him to run far away from this room; from this man who would tell him things he may not be able to handle. But Iruka knew that uncertainty would be far worse, and forced himself to stay and listen to the man whose specialties were interrogation and torture.

 

“As you probably already know, Hatake Kakashi was on a mission to retrieve a scroll that had been stolen from Konoha by a shinobi of Hidden Mist. He was teamed with a rookie jounin by the name of Chosha Harikou.” Ibiki paused, glancing at the door that led to Kakashi's room. “He hasn't spoken anything coherent yet, so we can't be sure of all the details, but it seems as though Hatake's teammate was taken prisoner shortly after the retrieval of the scroll.

 

“One of Hatake's dogs delivered the scroll to Hokage sama, and explained that his master had stayed behind to rescue Chosha. When ANBU finally found them…there wasn't much left of Hatake's teammate,” he continued, voice dropping to almost a whisper at the last sentence.

 

Iruka swallowed, forcing back the bile that he felt rising in the back of his throat. “And Kakashi?”

 

“He was conscious when the ANBU team arrived, but in a severe state of shock; not only physically, but mentally as well. He was suffering from blood loss due to numerous kunai wounds, burns on his arms and legs, and more broken bones than we could count. But those he can heal from, given enough time. The more serious worry is the mental state he will be in when he wakes up.”

 

Iruka felt relief at the fact that Tsunade and Ibiki were confident that Kakashi would wake up at all, but nothing could have prepared him for the jounin's next words.

 

“The mental torture he was put through was vicious, and we won't even know the full extent of it unless Hatake is able to tell us what happened. But it appears that, among other things, he was forced to watch as their captors tortured, and eventually killed his teammate. ANBU found him chained in the corner of a room, along with the remains. Before he lost consciousness, he kept repeating the same three words over and over: Obito, Harikou…and Iruka.”

 

 

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So…yeah. I'm starting to feel worse and worse about this fic. It's so much darker that what I normally write. But I must persevere. Although it may get worse before it gets better.

Um…some notes about this chapter. In keeping with Kishimoto sensei's penchant for bad puns, my OC shares the same fate. The name is done in almost the same format as the Uchiha puns, with only a slight variation. The family name: Chosha is the Japanese for “writer”. The “ha” at the beginning of Harikou is actually the Romanization for the character that is written “ha” but pronounced “wa” which basically means “is”. And finally, rikou is a word meaning clever, so…if you piece the meanings together…It means that I'm an arrogant ass, but whatever. ^_^;

As I mentioned before, OCs will not play a large role in this fic at all (as you can probably tell by the fact that the first one is already dead…) I couldn't bear to kill off a canon character. I thought about it, I really did. But in the end, I decided that this was for the best.