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Konoha Children's Crusade: I just wanted to help

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Illustration from the fan novel Konoha Children's Crusade- Chapter 26 part 6



“Come on... come on... I know you’re in there somewhere, you little bastard!”

Sakura often talked when she worked. It was the natural progression of a childhood habit to babble when she was nervous. Back then it had been the source of untold mountains of embarrassment.

Even as jonin, she still had this little issue, only now it manifested itself in a different way. Instead of finding the nearest person and talking their ear off, she would start to talk to herself, or even worse, to inanimate objects.
The harder the job, the more she would chatter. Being a fully qualified, Level four, Battle certified, medical-nin, a lot of the jobs she had these days were quite difficult.

Patching up a mortally wounded, half naked Sasuke Uchiha, in a dimly lit cavern, after a cave in, was to date, number one on her all time difficult jobs list.

When she had first started her medical training, Tsunade-sama told her that there were two reasons why Medical-nin avoided combat. The first was an obvious one: if the squad’s medic got wounded... who would patch them up? The second was a practical reason: battle used up a lot of chakra. The amount of chakra a person had would eventually regenerate itself with rest, but in the short term, it was finite. Chakra used during battle could not be used to heal a comrade later. There was a reason why medical-nin left the showy, high energy, ninjutsu attacks to others during the course of a fight.

“Ha! Okay, that’s number five,” she muttered as her probe found yet another shard of bone lodged inside Sasuke’s thoracic cavity. Sakura wedged a pair of retractors in the entrance wound and slowly ratcheted them open. Despite two ampoules of morphine and her admittedly somewhat less than optimal anesthetic jutsu, Sasuke still grunted.

“Hold still Sasuke,” she whispered under her breath. “Hold still... I’ve got to get out another one... I need you to stay with me okay? This is going to hurt for a moment.”

Sasuke’s eyes fluttered. “Not like I’m going anywhere,” he grumbled. That was another thing... No matter what she tried, he just wouldn’t go under. It was driving her crazy that he was treating all her nervous talk as if she was trying to actually hold a conversation with him.

“Okay... on three..” She took a deep breath “One... Two...” Her forceps darted in and dug for purchase on the bone projectile.
Sasuke’s body bucked. Sakura mashed herself up against his chest and arms as best she could to hold him still. “Just stay with me Sasuke, just stay with me... It’ll be over in one second... Just.. let... me...” There was a grating pop and the fragment came loose.

“You said you’d go on three!” Sasuke grumbled accusingly.

Sakura grinned triumphantly down at him and reached for her suturing kit to start closing. “What are you complaining about? I got out the...” She stared at the steady stream of dark red blood running down his chest. “Shit!” she swore. “It nicked a vein.” She tossed down her kit and put her hands directly over the hole. She started burning the bottom of her chakra reserves to find the bleeder and force it closed. A cloud of pulsing blue-green energy covered her hands.

“You didn’t say three,” Sasuke complained again.

“Yeah, well... Dammit!“ Her preliminary scan showed her the blood was starting to pool up inside his right pneumatic cavity. She had to find it fast otherwise... well, he’d lose lung function. In a hospital that would be a crisis... Here it would be a disaster. “Dammit dammit dammit! Stop bleeding dammit!”

“I’ll try my best,” he half coughed, half snickered.

She found the bleed, but it was deep, very deep. If she was at full chakra strength she would just pulse all the way down there and not care about the chakra insertion loss. But now, in her weakened state, she needed to get closer. “Okay Sasuke...hold still... this is going to feel... weird.”

“Weird Ho...OOOOOW!” he howled as she jammed her finger, bright with concentrated chakra into his wound and sealed off the bleed.

Sakura pulled her finger out, and left her hands resting on his chest. After a brief moment, Sasuke looked up at her. “Ouch?” he whined.

“Don’t worry I got it,” she said grinning. “I’m almost done, I just want to start your body on reabsorbing some of that blood in your thoracic cavity before I close you up.” She took a deep breath and started doing what she could with what little wisps of chakra she had left.

Sakura was exhausted enough that it took her a second to realize that the healing glow was brighter than it should have been. She looked down to see Sasuke’s right hand, bright with healing energies hovering over the long gash on her thigh. “You’re not a medical-nin! How are you...” she glanced up. In the sickly glow of the jutsu she could just make out the red glint of the sharingan under his half closed eyelids.

“I’m cheating,” he croaked. “I’m copying your jutsu... But I figure it’s for a good enough cause.” His hand wavered, whether intentionally or accidentally she couldn’t tell, but at any rate his fingers brushed her leg.

It took all of her training to suppress the warm quiver that ran through her body. “You... you should stop that... please... Save your chakra. I was just going to use a bandage on that.”

Sasuke smiled at her. “I just wanted to help out.” His hand slowly came to rest on her thigh. There were waves of heat where his chakra entered her body, slowly, clumsily knitting the gash on her leg closed.

Sakura became very aware of her hands pressing down on his bare chest. She attempted to focus on something else, and ended up staring at his hand as it gently ran up and down her thigh. “You can stop now,” Sakura said nervously. “It will leave a scar, but you did a fairly good job... for a first attempt.”

Sasuke’s hand fell away. “I’m sorry,” he said in a low voice.

She shook her head slightly to get some semblance of decorum back and smiled at him. “There’s nothing to be sorry about,” she said. “You’ve done a wonderful job... with... with everything. Tsunade will have to let you back for sure!”

Sasuke slowly shook his head. ‘I’m glad you think so... But that’s not what I meant...” He looked up and his sharingan met her green eyes. She felt like she was falling into its swirling red depths. “I’m sorry,” Sasuke said again. “I’m sorry I ever left you.”



Naruto Characters belong to Masashi Kishimoto

Link to full chapter: Chapter_26_part6

Artist's note:
I'm really really happy with this picture. I loved using colored pencils for the figure and the watercolors for the background.  I have to say. that this is the first one I've done where I can sit back and say "Hot damn! I'm finally getting good at this!"

Which, I guess means I'm only about twice as bad as everybody else... but still... Look Ma! Progress!!!

-Cas
Image size
1275x1651px 1.09 MB
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