𝐁𝐀𝐂𝐊 𝐓𝐎 𝐁𝐀𝐂𝐊 | 𝐍𝐚𝐫𝐮𝐭𝐨 [HEAVY EDITING]

𝟏𝟕 | 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐁𝐚𝐭𝐭𝐥𝐞 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐌𝐢𝐬𝐭: 𝐏𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝐅𝐨𝐮𝐫

My eyes are heavy, and it's difficult to open them. Even when I'd been up for nearly two days straight on a training expedition with Makara-sensei, I'd never felt so weighted before. So tired. The air around me is cold still, like it'd been before I'd gone unconscious. Oh, does this mean I'm awake again? I guess so, if I'm suddenly feeling everything, my injuries, included.

My whole body winces, a hot sensation rushing through it as if I'd been thrown into a fire – everything hurts!! And the things that don't hurt, I can't feel because I've been numbed, either from my injuries or the cold. I'm trying desperately to open my eyes now – if I'm still hurt like this, it means we haven't won against Zabuza and Haku, and that I'm still lying on this bridge, stuck inside Haku's Jutsu with Sasuke and Naruto.

I'm able to move my hands to cradle my throbbing head, feeling like it's been run over by one of Mister Tazuna's machines. And finally, finally, my eyes open.

The Jutsu has disappeared. Having woken up on my back, I'm facing the thick fog covering the bridge and clouding the sky. I'd then turned onto my side, where I'd last remembered Naruto laying next to me after he, too, went unconscious. But he isn't there. After spotting a figure in orange, my eyes home in on it, where I finally see him, awake, facing Haku one-on-one.

I hadn't noticed, but the ground around me has been scarred – by what, I wonder? And then, I look down at my body, my eyes widening in shock at the fact that all my visible injuries, and the deep one to my thigh, have been... healed? Just how long... have I been out? What have I missed? Why... are my wounds gone again? And wait, if Naruto's fighting Haku now, then... where's Sasuke? I turn the opposite way.

"Why do you not strike?" I hear Haku say. My quivering lips part in horror. "Did you not just vow to avenge your comrade's death by killing me? Or was that vow just empty words?"

I... I wish my eyes hadn't opened after all.

"S... Sa... suke?" I call.

I flip over onto my stomach with a grunt, my pain almost instantly having dulled at the sight of him and his injuries. Through his chest and through his stomach, there's more of Haku's senbon...! I... I can't have been unconscious that long, how could this have happened?! He was... was he protecting us?

"Damn it, Sasuke." My hand reflexively balls itself to hit the ground beneath me. "No..."

My teeth grit as I pull myself up, kneeling in front of his body. I grab his arm to find he's cold to the touch. Breathing heavily, I start pulling the senbon out from him with my one hand, and then unwind my remaining bandages to fold into piles in case he starts bleeding.

I can feel myself trying to slip into numbness, but there's no time for it. There's no time for crying, either, but apparently I can only manage the one thing.

"You're not dead," I say. I take his wrist and press my fingers against it. "You're not dead." But I can't feel a pulse. I move to his neck— "You are not dead, Sasuke." – but I'm shaking so much, I can't tell. I pull out a kunai and hold the flat of it before his lips, but there's nothing coming off on it.