26

Chapter 26: twenty-five: balm on the woundSummary:

"Let your hopes, not your hurts, shape the future."

- Robert H. Schuller

Notes:

I do not own Naruto.

Chapter Text

Becoming Hokage 101

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Section Five

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Chapter Twenty Five

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Waking up feels like falling in love: slowly, then all at once.

Except you're not in love. You almost died.

Memories of my desperation mixed with a deep sense of frustration and the unwillingness to let Orochimaru get what he wants flood my brain, and I sit up with a gasp, choking on my own saliva on the way. My entire face and my throat burns, the air entering my lungs not as relieving as I'd hoped for. My blurred vision and my stinging eyes almost send me into a panic, until there's a calming presence next to me.

"Easy, now." A kind, female voice gently rubs my back and sends a wave of healing chakra, and for a couple of seconds, nothing in my chest hurts. The woman brings a glass of water with a straw on it to my lips, and I greedily drink from it like someone who just survived a sand storm. "Slowly. There you go."

Her warm hands guide me back into lying down, and I make no protest as she gently prods my body with chakra. Little by little, my vision starts to come back, and although I can't see clearly just yet, there's a distinct mob of dark, short hair on her head.

"You spent a few days sleeping, but we'd honestly thought you'd be unconscious for at least a week. Thankfully, the seal on your forehead helped to stabilize your haywire chakra, just like Jiraya-sama said." The young woman says almost conversationally, and my brain takes a while to process her words.

"Gai and Genma?" I suddenly blurt out, throat rasping with the sudden effort. She firmly but gently puts a hand on my chest and prevents me from getting up.

"The boys are fine. Gai-kun had a few broken ribs, but is healing well. Genma-kun is also mostly healed, he just needs to wait for his body to flush the rest of the poison out." Only after she's reassured me that they're fine do I breathe a sigh of relief and relax into the mattress, my body suddenly hurting all over again.

A pounding in my head that's slowly getting worse makes me hiss, which soon turns into another sigh when healing chakra is sent to it. It feels warm and gentle, and although it's a foreign sensation, it's not unwelcome.

"Don't you want to know about yourself?" The voice sounds amused, but there's a hint of worry behind it. As my eyes finally decide to work properly, I focus on a pale face staring with pinched eyebrows at me.

"Not really, Shizune-san." I rasp out, and to her credit, the young woman doesn't seem surprised to see that I know about her.

"Well, too bad. You're gonna hear about it anyway." The new voice sounds decidedly older, wiser, snarkier. I feel my own heart start to beat faster in anticipation. If Shizune's here, then it means-

"Tsunade-sama." The dark haired woman by my side greets her mentor with a slightly surprised look in her eyes, perhaps because the blonde is uncharacteristically serious.

I lock eyes with the Slug Sage, flinching lightly when her honey irises glare at me.

"Hi." I say meekly, and if I weren't so overwhelmed I might've smacked myself. The older woman raises an eyebrow, looking completely unamused. "It's an honor to meet you. Though I wish it could've been under better circumstances."

A few awkward, silence-filled seconds pass as we both continue to stare at each other. Tsunade then sighs and waves Shizune away, taking her place on the chair next to my bed. She, too, puts a hand glowing with green chakra on top of my head, and the headache is almost nearly gone. The fog in my mind clears a little bit more, and my vision comes back to normal as well.

I breathe a sigh of relief and close my eyes, letting my body go slack. Her chakra feels warmer than Shizune's, but it's a pleasant sensation. Comfy, even.

"Did Kushina have a hand in this?" The blonde asks, tapping the star-shaped seal on my forehead once. I nod, and she hums.

"The boys?" I ask, opening my eyes lazily, and the Slug Sage gives me an almost amused eye roll.

"Shizune told you they're fine, didn't she?" She snarks, and the sheer relief of having Tsunade here, with us, makes me unable to come up with a biting retort.

"She did, but I wanna know where they are." I mumble, and she takes her hand off my head. I let out a low whine before I can think better of it, but I suddenly feel so tired that I don't have enough energy to feel embarrassed about it. A decidedly amused huff reaches my ears before her healing chakra is prodding at my ribs.

"Those other two brats are in the next room over. No visits until you'd stabilized enough." I wince, closing my eyes with a flinch when she pokes at a rather sore spot near my ribs.

"That bad?"

"Awful."

The room is enveloped in silence, but it's not an uncomfortable one. As we both mull over our thoughts, a thought suddenly punches me in the face and makes me panic for a split second.

'Tsunade's afraid of blood.'

Exhaustion is trying to pull me back into sleep, but my stubbornness easily wins out. As the medic nin shifts her glowing hands to my arms, I finally ask the million dollar question.

"What happened?" She glances at me, face carefully blank, probably deciding if she really wants to be the one to explain the entire story to me. In the end, though, Tsunade sighs quietly and takes her hands off me for a moment.

"I don't know much more than you do." She starts, a somewhat cautious look in her beautiful honey eyes. "Shizune had gone out to see what the commotion nearby was about, and found Jiraya with you and your team half-dead in his arms."

I wince, deciding to keep my mouth shut about how I'd planned on making my blood cells explode, ruining my body so that Orochimaru could never study it.

"The older boy had been on the verge of death, honestly." The blonde barrels on, and I have to suppress another flinch. "The poison in his system had been a nasty one, but Shizune took it out with no major issues."

There's pride in her voice, no doubt feeling content that her apprentice has become such an amazing medic nin. Orochimaru's poisons are known to be fatal, a mix of different substances that makes it hard to identify just which one they should treat first.

'It's a miracle we're all alive, at this point.' I think wryly.

"The green one suffered less damage, but was trickier to heal. Three ribs broken in multiple locations meant moving impossible and breathing a struggle. Katsuyu'd had to deal with that one."

'Wait, if she summoned Katsuyu, then-'

"Then there was you." Tsunade's almost angry tone of voice takes me off guard, her glare keeping me quiet as a mouse. "Both arms and both legs broken, five cracked ribs, a concussion, blood loss, punctured lung, and, oh, let's not forget how your body is one massive purple bruise."

Her voice is harsh and the wounds I suffered are nothing to laugh at, but despite it all, I feel strangely at peace. Comforted. Relieved. Her sharp glare and gruff words might've intimidated anyone else, but I've been dealing with my mother's tough love long enough to recognize it anywhere.

The Slug Sage had been worried, and that warmed my heart more than she could ever imagine.

"Thank you for saving me and my teammates." I attempt to grin at her, and she answers me with a frown. "You're the only one who could have pulled it off."

Tsunade's frown deepens, possibly thrown off balance. Her bedside manners don't bother me in the slightest, and I'm truly grateful for her. Even with Katsuyu's help, healing me and the boys must've been no easy feat. More importantly, to treat me would mean she'd have to get over her fear of blood, and although I have no idea how that went, I know better than to ask.

"Don't try to sweet-talk me into going back." She snaps, and I blink confusedly.

'Right. I'd forgotten this is why we came looking for her.'

"I'm not." I reply before I can think better of it. "I was just telling the truth. I really do admire you a lot."

The Senju Princess spends a long moment looking at me, most likely trying to see if I'm really telling the truth or if I'm just another one trying to get in her good graces by complimenting her.

"Jiraya did say you were an odd one." She finally huffs out, apparently coming to the conclusion that I was a nutcase.

'I mean, she's not wrong.'

Belatedly and a little guiltily, I realize I'd yet to inquire about Jiraya. In my defense, he had left us to fight Orochimaru on our own, whether on purpose or not, and the fact that he left us alone in the first place is enough to get him into trouble - legendary Toad Sage or not.

The matter of the fact is that yes, he'd come for us in the end, and yes, somehow he found Tsunade and everything is well and all, but.

We're still talking about the man who abandoned his godson Before. If Jiraya had never once attempted to contact Naruto before he was 12, his own godson, only son of the village's heroes and his student, who's to say he might not have simply left a kid he doesn't really care about to die at his ex-teammate's hands?

Without me actively doing it, my mind reaches out for the iron flowing in nearby bloodstreams. There's Tsunade's, who is feeling rather calm despite it all, and Jiraya's, who seems to be listening in from outside the door. My teammates' is kind of muted, but still easily recognizable if only for the sheer familiarity. Shizune's is barely in my range, but she also seems to be calm enough, and that makes me relax a bit further.

"Did he say anything else?" I break the silence after a little while, the Slug Sage still working her magic on my arms. I really wanted to know if he'd told her anything about the mess with Danzo and my father, as well as Tenzou and Orochimaru's experiments.

"He's glossed over it." Tsunade says vaguely, and from her poker face I can't tell if she's heard of Tenzou just yet, which is both good and bad.

Another silence envelops the room, heavier than the previous one. We both know there are things I must say, I just don't know how or where to begin.

Exhaustion hits me like a fully loaded truck. Not just physical but mental, too. Leaving the village - more specifically, the Nara's - has been harder than I'd expected, and my nerves are so high-strung I've been unable to sleep more than four, five hours if I'm lucky. Every little noise makes me twitch, every kunai makes me flinch, and every day we're away from Konoha makes me increasingly more anxious. Add to the fact we were all fatally injured and could have died while Jiraya was off to gods know where… Well, I can't say I'm in the best state of mind right now.

"Tsunade-sama?" My voice comes out smaller than I'd wanted it to, but I ignore the fact and barrel on before I think better of it. "It's fine if you don't want to come back, it's just… there are some things I think you should know."

The woman takes her hands off my legs, green chakra fading. Having her full attention focused on me is somewhat nerve-wracking, but somehow less so than it'd been with Shikaku and Fugaku. Perhaps it's because I know she won't label me as a traitor, or unleash her certain wrath on me. A passing thought, almost like a whisper, tells me Jiraya is still listening outside the door, iron in the bloodstream starting to flow slightly quicker.

I take Tsunade's silence and unwavering gaze as a sign for me to speak, and after a mental pep talk, I begin.

"A few months ago, I noticed discrepancies in some paperwork related to the orphanage and the number of children under its care."

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On the next day, after Shizune spoon-feeds me lunch (which, surprisingly, doesn't bother me as much as I thought it would) and one Akimichi soldier pill, Tsunade-sama allows the boys into the room for a little while.

"Group hug!" Is the first thing I shout after I see their faces, rosy and young and worried and alive. Gai dashes to the bed without a single thought, but Genma is a little more hesitant.

"Youthful Chiyuki!" The boy next to me cries, sliding into my bed and gently hugging my right arm.

"Gai, take it easy." The oldest says, but it lacks its usual snark. Instead, he looks a little lost and insecure, a completely different image from the usual Genma.

"If you don't come here, I'll get up and go to you." I say, with all the conviction of someone with both arms and both legs completely immobile. It does seem to work though, because then he rolls his eyes and walks slowly towards the bed.

"And get scolded by Tsunade-sama? Yeah, no thanks." The teenager hesitates for one second before he gingerly climbs the bed and lays on my left side, close enough to touch but not quite doing so.

"Genma, I'm not made of glass. Give me a hug." His eyes bore into mine for a couple of seconds before he sighs, apparently giving up. Slowly, gently, he puts his hands around my left arm, which makes me release a content sigh.

"Tsunade-sama said you got lucky." The brunette whispers, so low I almost didn't hear it. Gai stills next to me, and I bite my lip.

'Well, better to quickly address the elephant in the room, I guess.'

"Yeah. I… don't remember much, honestly." I reply after a while, voice barely above a whisper. "All I could think of was to buy us time. And when I thought I wasn't gonna make it-"

"I saw it." Genma blurts out, eyes wide and face pale. The boy on my right side remains eerily still. "I was nearly unconscious, but there's no way I could forget it."

He gulps audibly, wetting his lips after glancing around the room. After a quick check, I nod at him. There's no one nearby, unless you count Shizune who's two rooms over.

"I-I don't know what you did, but your skin started to become really red, like, like-"

"Like the blood was gonna explode out of my skin." I finish it for him, surprising myself with the even tone of my voice. "That was the plan."

"Chiyuki-"

"Gen, please, you gotta understand. Orochimaru was going to study my body. Pick me apart and put me back together multiple times, whether I was alive or not. I couldn't let him. I can't."

I look at his trembling dark eyes and I hate myself for a brief moment. I hate that I was the one who put that look there, and I hate that he had to see such an awful sight. I hate that they both are scarred for life, in more ways than one.

What I hate even more, however, is the thought of being kept in a cage as that snake studies me like a lab rat, picking me apart and doing whatever he feels like doing - just like he did with the Shodaime's blood cells, and with so many innocent children. If Tenzou exists, it means Orochimaru succeeded in manipulating a dead man's cells, so who's to say what can happen if he gets his hands on this body?

'Young, fit, owner of a rare chakra release, and direct descendant of one of history's most powerful shinobi. Best case scenario, he only manages to create one other Tenzou. Worst case scenario…'

"Gai?" I glance at him and whisper, his silence scaring me more than the fear in Genma's eyes. The eleven year old remains glued to my right arm, dark eyes staring at an invisible spot on my shoulder. "Gai-chan?"

"I trust you, Chiyuki." The boy says, quiet and focused unlike anytime before. "I managed to cover good ground after you told me to run, and right before I passed out, I met Jiraya-sama's eyes."

I feel my own eyes widen at this new piece of information, mind stuck between getting the facts right and worrying about the boys. "You did?"

"I did. So, I trust you. If you say that was the only way out, then I believe it."

A heavy silence falls on us, and I sigh mentally. Nevermind me, Gai and Genma are in dire need of some good ol' therapy sessions, but for now-

I wiggle my fingers around, wanting the boys to hold them. Gai does so instantly, and Genma follows a second later.

"What's important is that we're alive and together. We might not be okay right now, but as long as we remain together, I believe we'll be just fine."

It's cliché and cheesy as all hell, but it's what a team leader should say, and it's what the boys need to hear. We might have been warned about it, but no one tells you just what it's like to look death in the eye. Soldier children or not, the fact we were left on our own outside of the village in the middle of a war alone should have never happened.

"I'm glad you guys are healing well. I'm glad you're here with me. Thank you for supporting me and trusting me."

Both boys squeeze my fingers at the same time.

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I wake up from my afternoon nap feeling disoriented and grumpy. My ribs throb and my head pounds, and not for the first time today I curse Orochimaru to hell and back.

The room is nearly dark, the colors of the sunset barely slipping through the window. Despite the pain, I feel mostly comfortable and warm, like someone wrapped me up in a cocoon of blankets, and only then I realize there's someone sitting on the chair next to the bed.

"Tsunade-sama?" I rasp out, and a cup with a straw is soon brought to my lips. The woman says nothing, merely takes the cup back when I finish drinking and continues to pin me down with her intense gaze.

"What's the boy like?" She finally speaks after a while, her face and tone of voice betraying nothing. We might as well have been talking about the weather.

"I don't really know." I reply honestly, knowing just who exactly she's asking about. "He seems to be around my age, maybe a couple of years younger. He's got a pale face, brown hair and dark eyes. The one time I saw him, he seemed skittish. A bit nervous, confused, lost."

I nearly say I can't blame him, but then Tsunade's lips thin out, and I keep my opinion to myself. Before the silence becomes too much for me to handle, I blurt out what I've been wanting to say for a little while now.

"I'm sorry, Tsunade-sama." I feel the woman's heavy gaze on me, but I don't dare look away from the spectacular view of the worn down ceiling. I'm much too ashamed to be able to look her in the eye, anyway.

"For?" The medic asks, and it almost sounds like a trick question.

"I feel like I should apologize. For everything." I almost shrug, and then I remember I can't really do that before settling for an awkward shoulder roll. I can still feel her eyes on me, piercing and heavy like a bed of thorns, but for the life of me, I can't meet her gaze.

I know exactly why I'm apologizing.

'I'm sorry for coming here on a mission to bring you back to a place that's only taken and taken without giving anything in return. I'm sorry I was planning on using underhanded methods like telling you about Tenzo. I'm sorry for showing up half-dead on your doorstep asking yet for more and more-'

"Your boys told me you want to be Hokage." The Slug Sage remarks before my thoughts can spiral down any further. Something warm and fluttery blooms in my chest as she calls Gai and Genma 'my boys', but that's to be analysed some other time.

"Yes." I reply immediately, voice bearing none of the insecurity it had only seconds before.

"Why?" This time, I turn my head slowly to look at her without a hint of hesitation. Her mask is a perfectly polished poker face, betraying nothing - except for the slight tremble in her honey eyes. If I hadn't looked for it, I wouldn't have found it.

'After seeing both her younger brother and lover wish for the same thing only to die shortly after… it's a wonder she's still willing to help Konoha shinobi.'

I fix my gaze on her barely wavering one, something made of iron and fire giving me strength and determination. If there's one thing I'm absolutely certain of in this ever-changing world, it's this.

"When I become Hokage, I'll tear Konoha down and build it from scratch, if I have to." The ferocity in my own voice sounds almost alien to me, but as I continue to say it, I realize this is what I've been feeling all along.

Tsunade's mask wavers, a shocked look on her pale face. She makes a move to interrupt me, but it's time for my own Speech of the Springtime of Youth.

'Watch me and be proud, Gai.'

"Administration is a mess. It relies too much on the Hokage and leaves way too much room for corruption. While this system might have worked when the village was smaller, it became obsolete a long time ago. Even during times of peace, the hospital is understaffed and not properly cared for. I'm pretty sure some higher up has been pocketing some of the money for themselves. Civilians aren't treated in favor of the shinobi population which makes no sense. The report system is completely outdated, and let's not get started on the sewers. They probably haven't seen a maintenance team since the time of the Nidaime."

I cut myself short, realizing the medic is looking at me with the oddest look in her eyes. Something unreadable swims in her eyes, deep and hurtful and longing, and she clutches the necklace she inherited from the Shodaime. Her hands tremble ever so slightly, and I watch, mesmerized, as this woman - a genius medic, born and raised to be the strongest, the heir of an ancient and powerful clan, unshakeable like a mountain - crumbles down before my very eyes.

'This is my ninja way.' I realize with a start, wondering if this is what Naruto felt whenever he used his Talk About Your Feelings Technique on people.

'Are you proud of me, little blonde protagonist?'

"You're insane." A wobbly voice reaches me, something so raw in the usually everstrong woman that it brings tears to my eyes.

"I like to think I'm a visionary." I reply with a shaky, but not any less determined grin, and Tsunade exhales heavily. Unexpectedly, she takes off the famed necklace and gently lifts my head to put it on me, kissing my forehead softly after. I feel my eyes widen as much as humanly possible, brain shortcutting for a moment.

'Wait a minute. Wait a goddamn minute.'

"Tsunade-sama?" All the previous confidence vanishes into thin air, something small and vulnerable stumbling out and meeting the medic halfway. The necklace and its pendant feel way too heavy where they sit innocently on my chest, and the gravity of the act finally catches up to me.

"I look forward to seeing what kind of Hokage you'll become, kid."

The small smile she sends me is one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen.

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Eighteen days after we left Konoha, we're ready to go back, successfully bringing Tsunade and Shizune with us. The latter has agreed to help out at the hospital with whatever needed be, and I make a mental note to ask Fugaku to make her the new director. The former has made it very clear that she'll come back, but she'll be taking a supportive role, training new medics and helping the interim Hokage with the paperwork.

All in all, the means justify the ends, and I feel excited to go back.

"Let's get going, then." The Slug Sage says with finality, and we all hit the road - all eight of us.

"Where's Jiraiya-sama?" Gai asks, nearly bouncing on his toes, no doubt happy to finally be able to move freely again. He'd healed up nicely, free of pain unless he pushes himself too much.

"He went ahead." The blonde woman replies vaguely, giving one final glance to each of the members of Team Choza and their attachments.

As if on cue, all three small toads on our shoulders croak in unison, glued to our clothes using chakra that feels oddly sticky. Genma had looked thoroughly weirded out when they first poofed into existence, but now he seems to mostly ignore them. He too is almost completely healed, but forbidden from exerting himself too much for the next week.

"Alright. Tell me if you feel uncomfortable, Chiyuki-chan." Shizune says as she swiftly picks me up bridal style and settles my body snuggly against her, radiating comfort and warmth.

Both women had done a superb job in healing all three of us as much as they could in only a few days, but no medic thinks it's a good idea to fully heal their patient all the time. It makes the body and the chakra literally addicted to the green chakra, and unable to heal on its own in the future. That's why Tsunade started to mend my bones, but left it halfway to heal by themselves, and now they're just starting to remodel into new, stronger ones.

"I'm good." I quip back, trying to relax as much as possible. I'd made one (1) comment about having to be carried all the way back, but the look Tsunade had sent me made me shut up immediately. Genma gives me one amused grin, but refrains from saying anything in case the blonde scolds him.

The trip back is, as expected, uneventful. The Slug Sage makes us take breaks often so as to not push the boys too much, especially as they're just going back to heavier exercise. Jiraya never shows up, but I always feel the iron in his blood cells just barely at the edge of my sensing range, apparently scouting ahead and getting rid of any trouble.

The man has never apologized to any of us, and rarely seeks us out on his own. Unless he's talking directly to me, he doesn't meet my eye, and he's seemed kind of off the last couple of days. His eyes are no longer dark and cloudy when they look at me, but sometimes he almost seems… bashful? Embarrassed? Regretful? Either way, it's clear he doesn't know how to deal with children, and so I mostly leave him alone.

Genma had asked if I wasn't going to confront Jiraya about what happened, but in the end, I decided against it. There's no one who's beating himself up more than the Toad Sage, and I'm sure he'll face Choza-sensei's wrath when he catches wind of it.

'If Shikaku and Fugaku don't get to him first.' I remind myself, feeling slightly embarrassed about having two powerful men backing me up and clearly showing me favor. I'm thankful and glad for it, of course, but I didn't think things would turn out this way.

Whatever was the reason Jiraya left us to fight Orochimaru on our own, it doesn't really bother me, strangely enough. I never expected him to apologize, either.

'They do say that actions speak louder than words, however.'

The fact that he'd left ahead of us to scout the way could be seen as his own way of running away, but it can also be seen as his way of apologizing, making sure there isn't any trouble ahead and that we're able to go to Konoha at a leisure pace.

The small toads on our shoulders is also a point in his favor; they'd appeared right after breakfast, when Tsunade decided it was time to go. The little animals don't leave their spot and don't make unnecessary noise, sticking to our clothes silently, their chakra flow small but constant. I doubt they'd hop off unless Jiraya himself told them to.

So I told the boys to let it go. The man is repenting in his own way, and he'll get a scolding from at least three people.

'Besides, he's a grown ass man. He's old enough to admit to his mistakes on his own.'

A couple of days pass by in a blur. Shizune's soothing chakra makes me sleepy and I end up sleeping during a large part of the trip. Every time they stop for a break, Tsunade makes the boys stretch and rest properly, making sure they aren't feeling any pain.

When we finally go through the village's main gates, it's too early to call it morning. I breathe in deeply, taking care to feel the way my chest expands, and with every second I breathe easier and easier. Shizune had wanted to take me to the hospital, but both her mentor and I had agreed that its staff was already overworked as it is. Besides, I'm on my way to a speedy recovery, all I need to do is take it easy for a couple of weeks.

They take Gai and Genma to the Akimichi compound, where Choza's wife, Akiko, is waiting for them with a small smile. She ushers them inside, already fussing over them.

"You better hurry up as well, Chiyuki-hime." The Akimichi matriarch smiles at me, a secretive little thing that makes my own lips twitch upwards.

Shizune kindly takes me to the Nara compound, and I can already feel Shikaku's iron flowing almost lazily through his blood. Thankfully, neither Tsunade nor her student say anything about taking me back to the Sarutobi compound, and that makes me immensely relieved.

He's waiting for us at the Nara's front gate when we approach. The Jounin Commander looks exhausted, even in the dark hours of the morning, but his eyes have never looked more alive. There's a lazy smirk on his face even as I notice his heavy gaze on my wounds, and I hope to all the gods he doesn't interrogate Tsunade, of all people.

The black haired woman doesn't let me down. Instead, she gently passes me over to Shikaku's arms, and I almost miss the meaningful look the three adults exchange. I ignore it and melt back into his arms, finally letting my muscles loose and enjoying the woodsmoke scent I've started to associate with safety and warmth.

Slowly, gingerly, I feel Shikaku's arms tightening around me, and I gladly welcome it. The sun has barely started to peek out of the horizon, and in this picturesque scene, it finally, finally feels like home. Orochimaru and that fight those nights ago seem further than they really are, here in this place - in this person - I've taken as my refuge.

"I'm back."

"Welcome back."

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