Redemption |complete| (SasuSaku)

A feeling of vulnerability

Sunday 23 of July.

"And do you feel something here?" she pressed her finger on his chest.

"No."

"It's odd."

Sasuke was watching Sakura activate around him. They were in the hospital and he honestly couldn't comprehend how she managed to "convince" him to go for a check-up. He felt fine.

"And have you coughed again lately? Last night?"

"Not since I was in the hospital room with you after you woke up." she scribbled something on her clipboard.

"Even more weird. And no other unusual symptoms? Is it just the difficulty to manage your chakra?"

"Yes and no other symptoms. Are we done here?"

"No we're not. Let me get Lady Tsunade."

She left him alone in the room. It was going to be a long day, he could feel it. He didn't like the fact that it was his birthday either.

Sakura took her sweet time to come back but when they both arrived they didn't pay attention at him. The pink haired ninja took the clipboard on her desk.

"Look, that's what I found in the body I told you about. And here," she flipped the page. " that's the symptoms he had when he had the first episode in Hoshigakure. Since then he hasn't been able to control his chakra very well."

"Mmh I see. I remember seeing similar symptoms back in the days when the village was still standing. The team of medics I sent came back with similar results. All the patients they observed had a cough and chakra problems. It deteriorated pretty fast which isn't the case here."

"Maybe the energy there wasn't as strong as it used to be... and it doesn't affect the body the same way..."

"No you told me the body was recently dead."

"That's right. Maybe the first aid I manage to give stopped the complications."

"How did you manage to avoid any problem?"

"I compacted my chakra in front of my chakra center. I could feel something was bothering it before I even entered the village."

"So your chakra stopped it. And your chakra healed Sasuke."

"No I didn't heal him. I did the same on him as I did on me. I sent my healing chakra where I could feel the biggest disturbance. I had to stay like that for three hours but it eventually helped. We were also out of the village. What I want to know is how the villagers managed to live with this energy for this long. All it took for Sasuke to be affected was to stay in there for less than an hour."

"I'm guessing the energy was held inside the meteor and when it exploded, it was out in the open."

Sakura replied something and Sasuke lost interest. He was half listening to the back and forth between the two medics. They were using medical terms that he couldn't understand at this point and asked himself how long this was going to last for. He just wanted to leave the room and spend the day alone.

He looked at the two women: these two were considered the best medical ninja in the world. Sensei and student. Sakura did have come a long way. She started as a helpless girl and today she was known for her talents and what she did. He wasn't even aware of any of the things Sakura had done while he was away. Orochimaru and Kabuto did speak about the fact that she became Tsunade's student back when he was living with them, which surprised him, but that was all he knew but he was sure that she had done much more than that. He could hear the villagers speaking about her and he saw the respect they had for her. He wanted to know.