DiSCERN (Naruto Fanfic)

Chapter Four.

Anko holds his hand tightly, firmly, and Itsuki can't help but squeeze back. Pulling his legs to his chest, he paws skeptically at the blanket that rides up with him.

"Look, Itsuki, I'll need you to listen very carefully."

Itsuki tenses, because he's not too sure who exactly is talking. It sounded oddly familiar, but he couldn't fix his tongue around the name. Was it just a random doctor? He's heard that he was in the hospital. He managed to get Anko to stay beside him, but that was it.

Everything else feels foreign to him.

An unnaturally ratty yet soft blanket. A suspiciously cold mattress. A strangely small hand. An unbroken wall behind him. An upright Konohagakure.

What's going on with the war? Why's it so quiet outside? Was Madara subdued? Obito defeated? Or perhaps, are they in a ceasefire? None of those sound plausible.

Did they win? Then why isn't he hearing sounds of the citizens rebuilding the town outside?

How was he even able to wake up in-- in his own home, was it? Everyone's telling him a pot fell over his head and he nearly suffered chronic brain damage, but he doesn't remember anything about that.

He doesn't understand how he could even be home two days ago when he's supposed to be forward on the front line fighting to his last breath, and most of all he definitely remembers burying that stupid sake pot ten feet underground after his dad died more than a decade ago.

Even so, everyone's got much better things to worry about than him! What about the diplomatic matters? Financial damage? Burial? Political alliances? The multiple Gokage Summit Meetings necessary to settle the aftermath of a war?

Why was no one panicking, or being concerned, for any of this at all?

And most of all-- most of all, that man--

No... beside him-- he hears commonfolk chatter in the distance. An old lady bargaining with a grocery shop owner. A man yelling at his other friend, calling him for a meal. A child laughing, and a girl dashing after him, reprimanding.

It sounds like... like some semblance of peace.

"Itsuki, you're... you're blind."

Itsuki snaps back into reality. He was expecting a lot of news to reach his ears, this included, but it doesn't stop his face from scrunching up in frustration, and his hands clench tighter on Anko's.

He's not going to say he didn't suspect this-- after all, why was everyone acting like this total darkness was totally normal? Why haven't his eyes adjusted yet? From the moment he was told this was a hospital, he realized that his chances were a curse or jutsu at best, blindness at worst.

"Medical Ninjutsu doesn't seem to work, so we'll have Hizashi-san come in and see what's happening to the chakra coils around your eyes," the doctor(?) was talking again, and Itsuki feels him lean in, a hand placed on the bed next to his thigh.

Itsuki raises his head, a brow arching at the man's name-- that man was most definitely dead, last he remembered-- then he comes to a conclusion that he's misheard Hizashi for Hiashi (not for the first time, he will admit), and dismisses the thought.

"Itsuki, I'm going to remove the bandages on your head. I'm gonna have to touch your head, is that okay?"

Itsuki tries not to jerk away from how close the voice suddenly seems. He holds onto Anko's hand like a lifeline, he knows he's hurting the girl but he can't help it, he's scared, then he jolts out a nod he doesn't think he has the will to pull through.

He swallows thickly, and for a few painful moments all his senses that still worked forces its way to his head, because what is this man doing whatishedoingtome he's just removing the bandages but howdoiknowforsure what if he's--

"Dan-sensei," when Anko suddenly speaks up beside him, Itsuki leaps, and a choked breath hacks its way out. But it isn't her interruption that surprises him.

...Dan-sensei?

...Dan?

"I think I should do it instead," Anko offers hesitantly.

"Yeah," Dan admits after a moment, and Itsuki feels the adult's weight shift out of the bed, and back away.

Itsuki's eyes are wide enough that they feel like they'll pop right out of their sockets. He stares straight forward and doesn't know what he's looking at, but he hears it now.

This voice-- this voice, this voice.

His hands reach for Anko's, letting go for a brief moment only to grasp harder at her wrist, fearful of losing the only point of human contact he has to this world.

Now that he thought about it, Anko's voice was higher, younger. It's not his imagination. He can no longer brush it off as just sleep haze.

"Wh-Where's," when he speaks up, he's almost sounds like he's breaking apart, hands gripping tightly, voice shaking and body trembling, "Where's my... where's my headband?"

As if the panic's transferred to the other two, Itsuki hears them scramble around before Anko brings something to his hands.

A cloth. A steel plate.

Smaller than he remembers.

He keeps a desperate hand on Anko, and his hands runs up and down the cloth-- no, it's not here, (it'snothereit'snothereit'snothere) the three hidden senbon on the left of the sash, they were gone.

His hand quickly runs to the other end of the fabric-- there should be a crumpled, stringy part, when he'd messed up the fabric during his Jounin Test and clumsily stitched it back up-- but all he feels is smooth, unnaturally smooth cloth-- then he realizes that this headband almost feels new.

He flips it over and, his breath held and his heart shuddering and his blood rushing to his ears, all he has in him is pleading to nothing that please, don't tell me this is happening.

His hand runs across the sleek metal plating, and when it brushes past the middle, he stops to feel the delicate carvings.

Five long seconds later, he lets his breath go, and the noise that tears out of his throat almost sounds like a whimper.

His hand leaves the hitai-ate and reaches up to his eyes, catching tears. Despite everything and anything and through all the fear and confusion and disbelief coursing through his veins, he lets it all out with a pitiful cry.

The mark on the headband signified the village of the Hidden Leaf.

Not the Shinobi mark of unity in the Fourth Great Ninja War.