sunshineverse | It happened too quickly to stop.

Entry tags:

It happened too quickly to stop.

Who: Adela Milani (

abileunaspada), Neji Hyuuga (

heavenly_earth), & OPEN (Post-event only)
Where: Several kilometers outside of Konoha, near the western border of Fire Country / Konoha Hospital
When: September 5th (late night), 6-10th
Notes: Acting on the rumors of a powerful doujutsu, an enterprising missing ninja has decided to give himself greater power to make himself more appealing to a new village. This, unfortunately, doesn't end well.
Warnings for gore, violence, and language.

It hurt so much.

Adela was panting heavily, her good eye wincing and tearing up as she watched the blood drip down to the dark and dead leaves beneath. Her hands and the kunai she found were stained with her assailant's blood; the scuffle had ended his life, but she felt so sick and dizzy - not to mention her eye stung and she didn't want to open it. And she may have gotten stabbed a couple of times as well, though the fact that she only saw blood and no other fluids was probably a good thing. Still...

Where was she?

Knocked out, taken to the middle of no where, and she had fought an angry missing nin with the intent of taking her eye based on that stupid fucking rumor. Wonderful. With a grunt she got to her feet, dizzy with blood-loss as she tried to find her way. The moon was still giving enough glow to see through the trees, but she was barely armed and had no strength left... She was going to die out here.

Damn it, she couldn't die like this! In her own frustration she slammed her fist into a nearby tree, though it didn't take her too long to cling to said tree for support. Her world was starting to become more black as well, driving her to feel even more angered and frustrated. She hadn't even gotten to catch up to him... She hadn't even gotten the chance to become Hokage... This wasn't fair! No, she had to survive, she had to... Even if it was looking more and more hopeless.

That was when she heard the rustle of branches above, and immediately Adela took the bloodied kunai in an unstable grip - one wrong move and it'd slip right out of her hand. Who was coming now, someone who was with that ninja...?

--------------------

The smell of hospitals always got to her. She sighed, feeling heavy in her bed when she finally regained full consciousness. There was an IV drip in her arm and a heavy gauze taped over her injured eye. No one had talked to her yet, save for a nurse telling her that she could have visitors. How would her eye recover, though? She didn't know, she just knew that she still felt kind of dizzy and tired.

Still, she turned towards the curtain seperating her from the rest of the room. At least she was near the window and it was sunny out, if a bit cooler than it was before. She had to wonder just who would come to visit, if anyone at all. It all happened so fast... Would anyone have even heard about what happened? She remembered someone coming for her last night, but save for possibly the Hokage...

It was probably going to be a lonely recovery, depending on how long she was in there. Damn everything. Why did someone have to act on that stupid rumor...?

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"A plan? Like what?" Adela couldn't help her curiosity, and it helped distract her from the fact that Sasuke was, well, healing some pretty intimate areas. Okay they might have only been intimate to her but she didn't exactly like holding up her shirt like that for so long. It was unnerving!

But... Her other eye couldn't see anymore. She knew that. She was reduced to one eye for vision, and by that point that much was fact. So just what was Sasuke talking about?

"The post-op schedule after initial surgery; changing out your stitches, draining wound fluids, that sort of thing," he said, words absently matter-of-fact as he finished up with her side and moved up to her face instead, the Sharingan flickering into his eyes to assess for anything that the naked eye might not see. "You had all flesh wounds, so it looks --"

Good, he'd been about to say, but the words died out with the instinctive horror of anyone born into a doujutsu clan. There was the usual buzz of chakra around a wound, something Sasuke had seen many times before, but the usual focus point of flow around her left eye was simply -- absent. Like the body had already given up, even as it worked to heal the superficial wounds.

"It's true, then," he said, before he remembered that Adela was still in recovery and probably wouldn't want to talk about what had happened with just anyone. "That is --" He corrected himself awkwardly, the hand that had been reaching to professionally turn her cheek for inspection stalling. There was no way to correct the vector of what he'd been saying, and in the end he simply finished with: "You were attacked for your eyes."

"... Yeah. I was."

She couldn't hide her grimace when Sasuke spoke about her eye, and she glanced away from him as she laid back in the bed to try and get comfortable again. She didn't like it. That look of horror, the realization that it was why she was attacked in the first place. She couldn't help the bitter anger then, the frustraion that it all started over a rumour -- and how completely helpless she had been when it had happened.

"... He's dead. The guy that attacked me. I had to kill him out of self-defense, and if Neji hadn't found me I wouldn't have made it back alive," It was hard enough to make that admission -- admitting to how frightened she'd been, how weak and vulnerable she had been, and how powerless she was to stop the attack. She felt sick again... Already she could see it again in painful detail, that knife in front of her face, the icy sting of her eye getting sliced open...

Whether or not Adela realized it she had started to quiver, the nausea from just remembering it getting worse with every passing second.

Over a rumour -- Sasuke had first heart about and then seen that stupid rag of a magazine, sure, but he'd dismissed it as some idiocy that would blow over before anyone could even remember the name of it. He'd never expected the obvious misinformation in it to be taken seriously, and by someone who would attack a shinobi so close to her home village for it. There was no doubt that whoever had done it had been a fool.

"He didn't deserve to survive what he did," Sasuke said, voice low with anger, and then noticed that Adela had started to shake. He was at a loss for a moment -- that girl he'd met at the Chuunin exams hadn't been wrong about his bedside manner and how very little he'd bothered to train it. The hospital didn't exactly have psychiatric care on staff, however much the medic-nin grumbled about it, and ...

And he was being a coward, trying to devolve responsibility onto someone else as soon as he was confronted with an unfamiliar symptom. He hesitated for only a moment before reaching out and putting his hand on the back of hers, copying what he'd seen more experienced med-nin do with newer patients.

"You made it back," he said, trying to sound as confident as Obito had all those months ago after their first trainwreck of a mission. "Sensei is dealing with that stupid rumour magazine now. You're safe here."

The instant the warmth of another hand was on hers she tensed and looked at Sasuke, almost disbelieving. Yeah, she had made it back, and she was healing then, but... But...

Something opened. She couldn't stop it before it did, and injuries be damned her uninjured arm wrapped around Sasuke as she buried her face against his chest. Her shaking was worse, and by then it was pretty obvious that she was crying, "I know, but... Damn it I thought I was gonna die, I... I couldn't stop it! I keep telling everyone that I'm gonna move on, keep getting stronger and not let it get to me but... But..."

Adela didn't even know what she was trying to say anymore. The fact that she was breaking down so quickly was probably a sign that it had been coming for a while now, and at that moment she just couldn't help herself. She hated herself so much for letting it happen. She was just so weak and pathetic, how could anyone not see that? It was no wonder she was targeted, or that she lost her eye, or...!

Right -- that was not the reaction he'd expected. Sasuke tensed up instinctively when he was nearly tackled, hands flinching to her shoulders, safety of hospital and village not overriding shinobi-trained reflexes at first.

But for all the ninja training he'd had, Sasuke had grown up in a clan with family he loved and trusted, some of whom had even been huggers when he was younger. As unused to being the one to give comfort as he was, Sasuke could think of times when he'd sought out Itachi or their mother as a child (or even his older cousins, when he'd been much, much younger). This was not an attack, and Adela was someone he'd had responsibility for and --

And a friend who was trusting him enough to be vulnerable, however little choice for friends being stuck in hospital probably gave her.

"You were alone and managed to defend your life and take down a missing-nin," he said, channeling Obito to the absolute best of his ability as he carefully moved his arms into what he hoped was a reassuring hug. What was it that Mikoto used to do when he was really little and went to her, worried, about Itachi's missions?

Right: he lifted a hand to stroke her hair, careful to avoid disrupting bandages, and tried to think about his response before putting it together in words. "It'll take time to recover. That's normal after every injury, you know. But you won't be the first shinobi to fight with a handicap -- sensei's weird teammate does it all the time."

Edited 2014-09-14 04:48 (UTC)

"I-I know, but... I... It just..." She couldn't find words anymore. Not for how scared she'd been, or perhaps it was simple pride that was preventing her from saying it. Her breathing was shaky and, for the life of her, she just couldn't stop the tears from flowing out of her uninjured eye. She just couldn't stop crying then, and the fact that Sasuke was holding and soothing her --

She'd... Think on that more later. At the moment, she was too caught up in the torrent of emotional breakdown that she was simply grateful for the attention and comfort. She was still shaking, but it was lessening as time went on and she just went on, getting it out of her system.

She just? Sasuke waited for more, but when no further words arrived, he mentally filled them in: she was just frightened, of what the future meant now, and of the narrow escape she'd made. As Sasuke had heard from the staff, if not for Hyuuga Neji and Shisui ...

He sighed after a moment, letting his hand in her hair settle into what he hoped was a comforting pattern of strokes and keeping an arm braced around her back in case she ended up needing the support after straining her injuries like this. This wasn't what he'd signed up for when he'd (mutinously) given in to Obito's forceful suggestion that he pick up medical ninjutsu; it was so far from his realm of expertise that he was nearly certain that he was screwing it up.

"It's okay to have been scared," he said, once again relying on memories of Obito. "There's no cowardice in feeling fear."

She felt so pathetic when she sniffled again, her eye still brimming with tears. It was taking effort to calm down, and that it was okay to be scared... It was okay to be scared? But... Ninja were supposed to kill emotion, so why was senpai telilng her this?

Eventually her quivering stilled and she took a couple of deep breaths, feeling guilty then for crying on him and finally withdrawing her hand. Why had she... Damn it, she must have been really out of sorts. She shouldn't have done that. That was humiliating, and he just put up with it...

The velocity of her tears calmed after some time passed, Sasuke relaxing with it as it became evident that he hadn't made any egregious error in the unaccustomed position of being someone to give comfort rather than receive it. He gave her hair a few last pats, still trying for reassuring, and then cautiously moved to disentangle once her hand had dropped, keeping her back and shoulders in line.

"You have friends and comrades here," he said, voice easily confident in this at least: "We'll help you recover from this."

"Yeah... I know. Thanks, Senpai," Her murmur was soft as she made to scrub at her eyes a little, not really having anything else in reach to use.

The storm definitely seemed to have waned, Sasuke decided, and reached again for her charts to flip through them. "You'll probably be in PT for a while," he noted, skimming over medic-nin chickenscratch with a practiced eye. "Will your uncle be coming with you for those?"

"He should be, yeah... He's gonna be with me. He's even keeping the store area closed for a couple of days 'cause of it."

"Good," Sasuke nodded, leafing through the remainder of the pages and scribbling a few notes where needed. "It'll be easier for you to handle the outpatient appointments on your own, but the first few days it's recommended you have someone else with you.

"You should also --" He paused here, glancing up at her again with half a frown. "When you get back to formal training and duty, do you have sparring partners chosen who will help you?"

"No, not yet. I was going to take some time to try and adapt to not having my eye anymore," It just made it that much more painful to admit it. She hated herself for it. She hated that she had been put in that vulnerable a position, that it had happened...

"Shisui brought you in, right?" Sasuke asked, though he'd already read the report. "If you're comfortable with him, you can see if he'll train with you. All of us are taught to fight blind."

Us meaning Uchiha, something Sasuke neglected to clarify out of simple habit. And not asking if she wanted him to train with her was an attempt at decorum, given where they stood in relation to one another right now.

"... If we're not on missions, sure. I'll as him about it."

The Uchiha were taught to fight blind... Somehow that made sense, considering. She had to wonder if the Hyuuga did that too, but that was an absent thought. What she really needed to do was think about how she'd go about training in the future. How she'd be a ninja.

How she'd be Hokage.

"Ask him about it, and then keep harassing him so he can't forget," Sasuke advised, a certain amount of dry familiarity in his tone. If nothing else, he could offer advice on how to track down busy ninja and pin them down for training.

Adela didn't seem cheered by the thought, though -- then again, it was unlikely anyone would be cheered by much in her place. Sasuke returned the clipboard with her information back to its hook at the foot of the bed and then paused, not sure what else to say. The flask of Mikoto's soup caught his eye just as he was considering if he shouldn't just give her the benefit of being alone, reminding him:

"My mother sent you some soup so that you're not stuck with just hospital food," he explained with a tap of the flask. Medic-nin developed extremely healthy meal plans that aided in rapid recovery, but they weren't particularly renowned for culinary talent. "... I didn't know she knew you, but she wanted me to pass on her personal hopes for your recovery."

"... We trained together, when I was a genin. I haven't seen her much lately... S'nice of her to think of me, and nice of you to bring it here," She nodded, finally allowing herself a smile as she shifted to sit up a bit more on the bed -- though maybe she should've been leaning against the bed, but how was she going to eat if she was lying down?

They'd trained together? How many of his family members were going to turn up with connections to genin he didn't know about? Then again, Mikoto was probably the most likely of all of them to have been approachable enough for a student to work with.

"Watch out," he started out of the thought when Adela moved, pulling the control to lift the bed out from its usual slot in the side of the headboard. "Don't strain your muscles while you're trying to heal -- here."

He handed the control to her, pointing at the button to raise the bedhead.

"... Thanks," Nodding, she moved it so that she was inclined and almost sitting up with the support of the bed at her back. This was super comfortable actually, she might sleep like this when he left... But first, soup.

Adela reached for a tray for her bed then, making sure that it was secure before setting the thermos full of soup onto it and making to start having some. Even though she was still recovering, she could at least do this much herself.

"You here for anything else today, Senpai...?"

Sasuke had been a healthy child growing up, but Mikoto's get-well soup was good enough that he could distinctly remember overexaggerating one or two Academy flus in order to ensure that he'd end up with a steaming bowl of it. Now that he thought about those moments, he was reasonably certain than his mother had been fully aware.

"I'm on rotations," he answered, making a vague gesture to indicate the rest of this hallway. "I requested --" Trauma unit, technically, but the med-nin had beaten the importance of terminology in speeding healing into him after many gaffes. "-- this unit so I could look in on you."

"... Thank you, Senpai," Adela murmured before she quietly sipped at the soup, drinking down the warmth and flavour. It was really nice... Mikoto was a really good cook. And Sasuke was there for her because he wanted to be... She felt more flushed at the thought.

It was her job just to recover then, though. So she'd take it easy, eating what she could and letting him help if it looked like she was about to drop something on accident. It'd be a while before she fully got her strength back, after all...

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It happened too quickly to stop.

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