Naruto Fan Fiction ❯ Twelve Years ❯ Chapter 5: Broken Voices ( Chapter 5 )

Chapter 5: Broken Voices

 

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"When . . . hit the ground . . . like that . . . dead . . . ."

 

I heard only broken pieces of voices above me. A male was speaking, but I could not see who.

 

"Did . . . make a mistake . . . ?" A new voice, this one female.

 

I slowly opened my eyes and blinked several times before my vision cleared. A flash of blue and green, and then silver. "Oh, you're awake!" Suddenly the slightly blurred visage of Kakashi was directly above me, causing my body to jerk in startled surprise. I felt his hand come to my shoulder, soothing me. "Sorry, I didn't mean to frighten you," he said in a quieter voice, his visible eye fixed on me. "I've just been a bit worried; that was some fall you took."

 

I closed my eyes, remembering. Then I opened them again and sat up slightly. "What happened after that? Where am I?" I asked as I felt his hand come to my back to support me.

 

"Keika, you should rest." I looked to the second voice: Tsunade. She gave me a small smile. "We'll answer your questions when you're feeling well again." She nodded to Kakashi and then walked out of my line of vision. A moment later, I heard the door close.

 

I let my eyelids grow heavy and slumped against Kakashi's hand.

 

"To answer your first question," his low voice said quietly, "you're in the hospital. Are you in much pain?"

 

I opened my eyes, finding that my vision was almost back to normal. "No," I shook my head, looking towards him. "None at all."

 

His eye widened, narrowed, and then returned to normal. "Surely you must be tired, though."

 

"Not especially," I shook my head again.

 

He frowned. "I think you should rest, anyway." He let me back down against the bed, taking his hand from my back. "You've been through too much to recover this quickly."

 

I sighed and nodded. "Fine." I closed my eyes and, despite myself, was asleep in just a few minutes.

 

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I woke again about a day later. The first thing I saw this time, the same as the last, was Kakashi's face. However he was not now watching me concernedly but instead was leaning against the wall, sitting in a chair, asleep. I could see his mouth hanging open slightly behind his mask.

 

My own mouth curved up in a smile to see him in such a position. I slowly pushed myself up to sitting, my gaze lingering for a long moment on the silver-haired Jounin. I finally turned my eyes to survey the stark white hospital room. I pushed back the starched sheets and stood, my toes curling slightly at the cold tile floor.

 

I picked up my shinobi clothing sitting on a chair by the bed and walked to the bathroom where I stripped off the stiff white hospital linens and changed into my own clothes. By the time I came back into the room, Kakashi was sitting attentively - though slouched, as usual - on the chair, his visible eye on me, his elbows resting on his knees.

 

"Yo."

 

I smiled and discarded the hospital clothing onto the bed. "Hi."

"How are you feeling?" he asked, his eye still glued onto me.

 

"Same as ever," I replied, sitting on the edge of the bed and facing him. "So can I go home now?"

 

"To my home?" I could tell he was grinning under his mask, but it did not stop me from blushing in slight shame.

 

"Well, I guess so," I said, trying to push back the heat in my cheeks.

 

Thankfully, Kakashi dropped the matter. "Okay then, let's go," he said, climbing to his feet and striding to the door. I stood from the bed and followed him to the hospital front desk where the receptionist reported that I was free to leave. We nodded our thanks and made our way back to Kakashi's small house.

 

I had scarcely sat down, however, when there was a knock at the door. It was the young pink-haired ninja again; I thought I remembered her name being Sakura.

 

"Kakashi-sensei," she said happily as he opened the door for her.

 

"Hello, Sakura," he smiled down at her. "What brings you here? I didn't know you knew where my house was."

 

"Trying to keep secrets again?" the girl laughed. "No, actually Tsunade-sama told me. She wants to see you again in her office." Her bright green eyes flicked to me a moment before returning to her teacher.

 

"Of course. Thank you," Kakashi nodded and looked to me, his hand coming up to scratch the back of his head slightly sheepishly. "Well… I know you just sat down, but we had better go, Keika-sensei."

 

"Sensei?" Sakura repeated, confused, as I stood and nodded to Kakashi, walking towards him.

 

"Just another secret, Sakura," the silver-haired Jounin winked to the girl as he and I passed her. "Be sure the close the door on your way out," he called back to her, raising a hand briefly in a departing wave.

 

I saw out of the corner of my eye her jaw hanging open as we continued walking away from the small house and towards the Hokage's office.

 

There was much bustle and activity as we walked through the hallways, avoiding jostling men and women laden with huge stacks of papers moving quickly along. Kakashi and I finally reached the large doors of the Hokage office and pushed them open after knocking briefly.

 

Tsunade hurriedly pushed the papers on her desk aside and beckoned for Kakashi and me to sit opposite her. We did so, mirror frowns on our faces at all the activity in the building.

 

"Sorry," Tsunade apologized, noting our expressions. "There is a lot of paperwork being done at the moment. Now, Kakashi, I—"

 

She was interrupted by the door opening and an attendant hurrying over to the desk and setting down a tall stack of papers. The top few sheets fell off as the attendant hurried and I bent over to pick them up for him. I frowned as I saw my name at the top of the first page. The paper was snatched immediately from my hand and pushed roughly out of my sight by the attendant who immediately left the office again.

 

Tsunade's eyes were watching me as I sat back up in my seat, my confusion and curiosity evident in my expression.

 

Her eyes flicked back to the man beside me when she saw me looking at her and she resumed speaking. "Kakashi, I need to get a report on—"

 

She was cut off again, but this time by me. "Tsunade, what is that paper? I saw my name written on it."

 

"Don't interrupt the Hokage," she grated, her eyes flashing in irritation. "Kakshi. Give me—"

 

"No, Tsunade-sama, I saw the paper too," Kakashi interjected, completely ignoring her last order. He also disregarded her angry, red face as he continued speaking. "I'm just as curious as Keika; what have you been keeping from both of us? I won't give a report until you tell us. She, at least, has a right to know, don't you think?"

 

Tsunade fumed for several moments, then she sighed in defeat. "Fine." Her intelligent brown eyes flicked to me. "Keika, there is something very… different about you. No one should have been able to survive that fall of over sixty feet."

 

I shivered slightly and looked at Kakashi in confusion. "But I thought surely you or Gai or Shikamaru caught me or… or something."

 

Kakashi slowly shook his head. "No. None of us could get there in time to catch you. I saw you fall. It was… it was pretty rough, Sensei."

 

I was about to make another suggestion as to how I survived but Tsunade had begun speaking again. I closed my mouth and turned my attention back to her.

 

"We looked into all sorts of possibilities, Keika, but the fact remains that you should not have survived. And even if you had by some miracle, you certainly would not be in the condition you are in now. You would most likely be paralyzed." I suppressed a second shiver at her words as I continued listening.

 

"Of course this is not the first time you have escaped death. We all thought you were in your grave until just over a week ago," Tsunade said to me. "After a long search through some tedious paperwork, we found a journal entry from one of our ninjas from the day you were thought to have died. He reported seeing the mutilated body of a Jounin woman. She was unrecognizable, so badly was her body destroyed, but she had an ANBU tattoo on her arm, black hair, and a photograph in her hand. The picture was of—"

 

"—Yondaime," I finished for her, my voice soft in awe. How had I survived if that is how I looked? It was undeniably me from the description. There had been no other former ANBU Jounin females with black hair, and certainly none carrying around photographs of Yondaime in their breast pockets. I imagined I had taken it out to look at as I had fainted or… or whatever had happened. But how was it possible that I was alive after being in that kind of state?

 

I glanced at Kakashi. What I could see of his face was white; his mind, too, was reeling from the mental image of my body, I supposed. I put a hand on his shoulder then let it drop just as his eye turned to look at me. "Whose journal was this?" I asked the Hokage.

 

"It belonged to Chuunin Matsuo Kazuma," she answered.

 

I shook my head. "I have never heard of him."

 

Tsunade nodded. "Further proving that it was truly you he saw. There were no medical records of such a person being taken in to the hospital, not even on the field. Keika, you were dead, not just disappeared or vanished," she said flatly.

 

"But that's impossible," I protested, running a hand through my hair.

 

"So I thought as well," Tsunade said with a nod, "until a very astute student of mine—" her eyes flicked momentarily to Kakashi "—yesterday discovered some very old records from the first days of this village that spoke of a legendary ninja who was able to survive even death, only truly fading into that unknown country when his natural lifespan was over." Both Kakashi and my eyes narrowed as we listened.

 

"We have performed extensive research while you recovered from your fall, Keika, and while you dutifully stayed by her bedside, Kakashi. We have determined that not only was this man real, but we also discovered his identity. He is your great-great grandfather, Keika."

 

"I… I don't understand," I said, my voice faint in my ears.

 

"He passed his extremely rare bloodline limit down to you," Tsunade told me in a voice even softer than my own.

 

Kakashi was shaking his head in confusion and amazement. "What bloodline limit? I've never heard of anything like that at all," he protested.

 

"It is the Fenikkusu bloodline limit," Tsunade said, ignoring Kakashi. "It is a form of ninjutsu inherent within your body that will recover any lost cells and heal you completely from any harm until you die a natural death at old age. Though it sometimes takes even decades for one with this bloodline limit to recover, as you experienced from your twelve year rehabilitation after your fight with the Kyuubi, your body will nonetheless always heal itself from any kind of injury."

 

I stared at Tsunade, stunned into silence, my jaw hanging open.

 

"How—how do you know all this?" Kakashi spluttered.

 

"I'm the Hokage," she said, smiling enigmatically, her serious tone from just a moment before completely discarded.

 

I was still gaping, and now Kakashi had joined me in my dumbfounded expression.

 

"Come on, now, I have work to do. You should both get out of here and get some rest. Kakashi, please fill out that report and have it sent to me by tomorrow evening," Tsunade said, gesturing for us to stand. We did so mechanically. "And none of your usual tardiness," the Hokage added, eyeballing the Jounin man.

 

He sighed, coming out of his stupor, and nodded. "Yeah, alright. Come on, Keika." He took my arm and drew me away from the office, my feet carrying me seemingly on their own volition. I closed my eyes and allowed Kakashi's strong arm to guide me back to the home we shared.