DiSCERN (Naruto Fanfic)

Chapter Five.

"Alright Itsuki, I need you to tell me the last thing you remember," Dan (Dan. Dan, why is he alive. He's alive? When did he die again) is before him, speaking in soft tones, his words slow and almost forcefully calm.

Itsuki keeps a hand at Anko's wrist, noting how his pointer finger and thumb could touch and still have a lot of space. He crosses his leg over the other, still comfortably fitting next to the wall on the bed, and lifts the wrist to the front of him, pressing curiously around the chubby hand and skinny wrist.

"The last thing I remember," he mumbles as if only to himself, "Anko's boobies shrank--"

There's a loud smack noise and a burning pain spikes in his head-- Anko had punched him, head wound and all, so now his brain's spinning, brain juice sloshing dangerously. He turns to where he thinks Anko is, holding his head and nursing the big bump right there.

"Ow," he makes a point of saying it.

"Now, Anko dear, I know he definitely asked for that one," Dan made a dying noise like a strangled toad, (was he laughing?) "but please hold back on his head. It may have been healed but it's not completely intact yet."

Itsuki yelps, instinctively whimpering when Anko suddenly tears her hand away from his lap.

Anko hmphs, "if he's got enough energy to be a pervert, he's fine!" she snorts, and Itsuki jolts when he realizes the weight beside him is lifting and shifting away from the bed.

His hands reach out, drop forward, and jerks around, but when he doesn't manage to locate anything a despaired noise rips from his throat.

The emptiness returns, and stares back down at him, scrutinizing his every twitch. He freezes, stays perfectly still. A fear washes over him, petrifying him, and he can't move.

He's scared of moving.

What's beside him? 

What's around him? Will moving give him away? If he moved now, will the enemy find him? In a second, he'd be dead, and no one would even know. He shouldn't move. This was a solo mission and he can't fail it or they'd lose the war.

So he clamps his lips shut, and doesn't breathe. Because heavy breathing (when did his breathing become so heavy? So quick? So frantic?) would give away his location as well. He stays so perfectly still, because he thinks he's in the middle of the forest.

He's in the middle of the forest, in the center of enemy territory, spying on the enemy which he had just lost sight of. The enemy's noticed him. It was a standstill battle and the first to find the other wins. He would either mess up here and die or stall through this and live.

He doesn't breathe, he clenches the sheets under him so tightly his fingers are cold and white from effort. He remembers what Kakashi's told him before. He closes his eyes, pulls a hand over his mouth to hide the bottom half of his face.

A warm hand wraps over his, and abruptly he remembers where he really is.

He gathers himself, his other hand landing on top of Anko's-- and his fingers crawl up, slowly conjuring mental images as he registers that this hand is a human, a person he trusts, and he reaches around, the girl taking his hand and putting it on her shoulder as he slowly makes sense of the human form in front of him, remembering how humans were shaped and slowly understanding that there was a human beside him on the bed.