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Teamwork, yet another slice of chpt. 6.
When, finally, the woman strode in, she still hadn't let go of Naruto's hand.
Naruto jumped on his feet so fast, Sakura almost fell over. She clung to his hand, for a second thinking that he'd gone mad and was going to pounce on the Hokage. Kakashi-sensei tensed, his eye narrowing, and she suddenly realized how much his casual attitude was pretend.
"About time, you old hag!! Were you joints too achy or what?"
"Shut up, you idiot! Do you think I have nothing better to do than be at your beck and call?"
Tsunade frowned down at Naruto, hands on her hips.
"You should!!" Naruto shot back, stepping forward. Every ninja in sight stiffened, and a few took hold of their weapons. One of the two Council members who had come in behind Tsunade spluttered angrily.
"Oh, really?"
Sakura winced, wondering if she had to intervene. She wanted to calm them, but at the same time she really didn't want to get in the middle. The Hokage was a fearsome woman.
"When it's so important, yes!"
Tsunade lifted her hand, clenched it in a fist over Naruto's head, and Sakura cringed; but Tsunade didn't hit Naruto in the end, because then he let his angry expression slip, and underneath, he looked scared.
"You're a mediconin. How is Sasuke?"
"How should I know? I came here directly from a meeting, I'm not the one operating -- I don't even know what happened to him," she added, frowning suspiciously.
"An ANBU tried to kill him is what happened!" he snarled. Sakura threw all her weight into keeping him in place, but even though he paused, it didn't stop his ranting. "Now he's got internal bleeding, he didn't wake up this morning and he was all cold and sweaty and-- and-- fuck."
Touched by Naruto's suddenly wavering voice, Sakura sniffled, remembering the horror she'd felt this morning when they woke up and he didn't, and leaned against Naruto, her face against his shoulder as if hiding behind him. He sighed -- shuddered -- and briefly turned toward her, his lips brushing her brow, before glaring at the Hokage again.
Tsunade watched them in silence for a few seconds, then reached out to punch Naruto lightly in the forehead. "He was breathing when he got here, right? Still had a pulse?"
"... yeah -- but you didn't see him--"
"Naruto. We've had to face more dire medical emergencies than simple internal hemorrhaging. If he was still alive when he got here, he'll stay this way."
She sounded so certain, so matter-of-fact, that Sakura didn't think to question her. Naruto didn't either. He sagged against Sakura, then when she stumbled, surprised, stepped back and let himself fall in a chair, suddenly boneless, all his nervous energy dissipated.
"Thank fuck," he whispered, squeezing Sakura's hand gently.
The first Council member spluttered again. Sakura eyed him worriedly. He was turning purple.
"How utterly -- rude!"
Naruto didn't even appear to notice the man was talking to him, or even about him. His eyes were closed and he was making a weird relieved grimace that would have made Sakura laugh at any other time.
"Hey, brat, you do know it's not the only problem right now, don't you?" Tsunade asked with a touch of sarcasm.
"What do I care 'bout anything else?" he whined, glaring sullenly at her.
Sakura elbowed him, unable to keep to the sideline any longer. "What does THAT mean?" she hissed.
Naruto winced. "Sorry... I didn't mean it like that, Sakura-chan. So, what's the other problems, old hag?"
The first Council member -- he was wearing the Kagami emblem, even though he didn't look anything like he was one of the gracious, fair, ethereal clan of the Mirror -- hissed in anger, though he didn't step forward, staying behind Tsunade.
"You little monster, don't you know how to be polite?!"
Naruto opened his eyes, just a slit, and gave him a coldly assessing glance, then snorted.
"Comes with not having parents, or anyone who gave enough of a flying fuck to raise me, I'm afraid."
Tsunade raised her hand before anyone could add anything.
"This is not a time for disputes. We have several problems concerning you, Naruto, and all of them would be enough to justify locking you up and awaiting a fair trial."
Suddenly, he was on his feet again, too fast to let Sakura grab him again.
"Fair, like locking Sakura up and forcing her to abort Sasuke's child, without even telling her what the fuck was going on?"
Tsunade and the two Council members -- the other, she'd just noticed, was Shino's father, the Aburame clan head -- blinked. "... Sasuke...?"
"Well, duh! He was there, too, what do you think he was doing, knitting socks?"
Sakura's cheeks were burning, but when Tsunade looked at her in askance, she didn't look away, and managed to meet her eyes even as she nodded a confirmation.
"You mean to say the child is Uchiha Sasuke's...?"
"We don't know that he is," Sakura intervened softly, demurely, "but we don't know that he isn't yet either. I am sure Uchiha-sama will be very displeased if his first heir is disposed of summarily. It isn't as if waiting a little to confirm it will cause problems. What kind of threat can a fetus be?"
They looked out of balance for a few seconds, then Aburame-sama shook his head and stepped forward.
"You ran away from the village."
"You were gonna murder Sakura's baby!"
Sakura rested her hand on Naruto's arm in a calming gesture, while her heel discretely crushed his toes. She admired his unwavering support and blatant disregard for nobility, but the way to get the Council to treat them fairly wasn't by insulting them.
"We were worried. We knew that people were afraid and weren't taking the time to think. We only planned to wait a little for things to calm down and then come back when they would be disposed to judge the situation rationally."
"That's what you say," Kagami-san snapped back. "But nothing says you'd have come back at all if Uchiha-kun hadn't gotten hurt."
Tsunade threw a quick glance his way, and Sakura wished she knew the Hokage better. She couldn't guess her reaction to that. There was really nothing they could say to prove their good intentions.
"This is a matter of their word against our opinion, which cannot be judged here and now," Aburame intervened before changing the subject. "You attacked the ninjas sent to stop you."
Sakura stepped on Naruto's foot before he could snarl back that they'd attacked first. "We tried as hard as possible to avoid this, Aburame-sama, but they didn't let us. Were there any severe injuries?"
"As a matter of fact," Kagami shot back, "one of the ANBU sent your way is still in observation."
Naruto's lip curled over his teeth in a very bestial expression.
/Oh shit./
"That wouldn't happen to be the guy with the tiger mask, per chance?" he asked in a voice whose softness was so alien that it could only sound utterly contemptuous.
"It is," Aburame replied soberly, frowning.
"Then the fucker deserves it!! He was the one who injured Sasuke so bad! He and his pals ganged up on a genin, bet they were proud of themselves--"
Naruto was going to launch into a tirade as to why the son of a bitch could consider himself happy to be alive and in one piece, she could feel it, but it really was a bad idea to let him threaten people out loud, so she pinched his ass.
It was the quickest way she'd found, honest.
If Kakashi-sensei kept laughing quietly in his corner one second longer, she would murder him.
"He's going to heal, though?" she asked hopefully.
Aburame-sama nodded.
"And he's going to heal long before Sasuke," she added.
Another nod.
"Then I'm with Naruto; the retaliation was less than it could have been. We were trying to leave, not to hurt anyone."
Tsunade actually looked mildly approving as she looked at Sakura, which made her blush, and Aburame-sama, while still as expressionless as ever, didn't look angry or like he rejected her opinion entirely. It made her feel better, a little more hopeful.
"Listen to them. The way they're telling it, we had no reason to try to prevent Kyuubi no Youko from slaughtering us all!!"
Naruto hissed quietly, glaring at the man as if he was wondering in how many parts he should chop him.
"Kyuubi's not any risk to anyone, dammit!"
"Do you honestly think we would take YOUR word for this?" Kagami replied, straightening up to glower at Naruto.
She was very, very glad that the snarled reply had been too strangled to be understandable. Naruto was reddening in anger, fists clenching.
"Don't," she whispered in his ear. "He'd be too happy that you proved him right."
Kagami was now eyeing her, frowning as he looked her up and down as if trying to determine what to make of her. She met his eyes, expressionless.
"I do hope you will take Hokage-sama's word, then. We are quite willing to ask her to prove that Naruto's seal is working perfectly and isn't about to let the Kyuubi go free."
"Willing to--"
"And then," she added with a little more strength, "then we will expect to be left alone. Unless the Council can bring in a seal specialist who can prove without a doubt that Naruto's seal -- the work of the Fourth himself," she reminded him sternly, "is indeed unraveling."
"Actually," Tsunade intervened, her voice carefully expressionless, "I have already called on an expert. I know enough about most usual seals to offer good judgment, but the knowledge of this specialist is a lot deeper than mine ever will be. He will be there tomorrow morning. Until then, Naruto, Sakura, I expect you two to stay put, and accept to be watched. Then we will expose his findings to the Council and make the appropriate decision."
"That sounds fair," Aburame-sama replied thoughtfully, nodding his agreement. "If you two run off, we will take it as a proof of your guilt," he added, a hint of steel in his low voice.
Naruto nodded soberly. "We're not gonna run."
"Good. Kagami-san, the rest of the Council awaits our report."
The noble seemed furious, but faced with his peer's calm determination, he couldn't make a scene. He walked out with a huff and a last glare sent Naruto's way, glare that the blond teenager utterly ignored.
Of course, the second he left the room, Naruto was glowering at his back and sticking his tongue out, using his middle finger to pull his eyelid down in a very childish but undeniably expressive grimace.
Sakura gasped in horror -- Tsunade-sama was still there, and Kakashi-sensei, and all the ninja guarding them -- but finally, she couldn't manage to care. Letting the tension of the meeting flow out of her, she slumped back into her chair and started to laugh.
And laugh. And laugh, until she couldn't breathe, and her ribs ached.
"Oi, Sakura-chan, it wasn't that funny, you know," Naruto commented, chuckling despite himself.
Finally, she brought herself under control and wiped her tears of laughter and unnamed emotion away. "I know... I just -- it just -- I was so scared--"
Naruto blinked, baffled. "Scared of what? That idiot Kagami guy? Shino's dad? Okay, Shino's dad is kinda scary, all expressionless and frowning and you know he's crawling with hidden bugs and all --"
That brought on another laugh attack. "Sorry!" she gasped, as Kakashi-sensei and Tsunade-sama watched her with mild expressions of concern on their faces. "It's the nerves, that's all-- oh god -- Oh god, Naruto, I --" /love you/, she thought, but she was so startled that she didn't complete her sentence out loud.
"You?"
"I really wonder what I'm going to do with you."
Naruto blushed. Sakura decided that she didn't want to try guessing his thoughts.
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Aww! ;_; You write Sakura so well! :D
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Oh dear
Characterizations were wonderful!!
Can't wait to read more of it, of course.
Curiousity for me though; is that the end of the chapter?
Personally, I think it'd be a nice end.
And I agree with the above comment, you do write Sakura wonderfully.
I love the "I love you" bit that wasn't said.
Laters!
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Though i guess the sequels would fit in that, sort of... hm. Nah, i like them being separate from the main fic.
*huggleloves you*
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Ce qui veut dire que j'ai enchainé sur celles de Kineko aussi ... vous êtes diaboliques, toutes les deux ... Je suis foutue.
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*câline* ma pauvre. ^_____________^ ahh, sérieusement, naruto c'est bien. tellement de persos intéressants à traumatiser...
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