Time heals almost all Wounds

Sanzen ran as fast as she could to the hospital without giving him wind burn. There was no doubt in her mind that he would be on bed rest for quite a while now because of this. Which may damper his enthusiasm but the more she though about it, the more this may have helped him more than anything. She had a high feeling she would hear about what a mistake she did from the higher ups and maybe even Hokage but she began to not care. In a way she strengthened him. When she was being trained she learned that the best way to endure pain is to feel it multiple times. Being a fire user, she had been burned many times in the past. Every fire user should learn to endure their flames on her opinion and today may have been the beginning of his endurance. He might get mad at her but she didn't care really. He was a strong willed genin who she felt would go far in life and his ninja career.

Arriving, she quickly was able to get him a room and hand him over to the doctors. Taking him to it, she followed and even stuck around to watch how his condition was. They didn't let her in the room at first which as she waited she had time to ponder how bad it truly was. The spirits held another meeting already but Bankotsu only smirked and ignored everyone. He knew something they all didn't obviously and but the smartest one, Nagori, also seemed to be holding secrets.

"Honestly Sanzen! You should take him in as your student!"

"You're forgetting her rank Shisshou..."

"Aww but who cares! He's funny!"

They each gave the young child an odd expression before the other spirit, Tsukimi, continued after a sigh.

"Until she's a higher rank, there's no way she could even think about a student. Remember, academy students only. She's not a Jounin and honestly, thanks to Bankotsu over there she may not even obtain the spot for a long time."

"Don't be such a joy kill Tsu Tsu!!" the girl shouted before sticking out her tongue. Tsukimi let out a very aggravated sigh, no doubt wishing to hurt the young girl.

"Enough you two.... Tsukimi don't say such things."

"Gah, great, not you too," Tsukimi grumbled.

"Lets all just wait and see what happens...." Kairo said, sitting in his usual posture. His eyes were closed while his arms propped up his head, elbows on the table. He seemed so calm and casual despite his eternal worry. Nagori nodded to his comment and Sanzen simply watched. She felt as though she had no say so whatsoever but at the moment she did not know what to say. She couldn't do anything to stop Bankotsu, none of them could. Maybe Kutsuu but he was silent as always, acting as though he did not care. What a bother.

"Pardon me miss..." a voice said, snapping her from her thoughts. Immediately she looked up, her eyes wide with surprise as she stared into the face of a woman doctor.

"We have finished evaluating him and he is going through treatment. He suffered second degree burns all over his body and fainted due to fluid loss. Luckily, he didn't go into shock and he is going to be okay. You arrived just in time. He will be on bed rest for quite a long time to fully heal and so we can watch over him and theres a high chance he will be scared from this; especially since it was all over. Would you like to see him?"

She simply looked at her in a bit of surprise but most of all, sorrow. She was honestly worried for the genin. She knew what could happen to him if she didn't get him here in time or if he went into shock. The consequences made her heart ache and was giving her near anxiety attacks. However the good news put her more at ease.

"Sure...," she said a bit weakly before standing up and following the doctor in. She should have left. As soon as she arrived the other two doctors looked up before the woman guided Sanzen to a chair nearby.

"May we ask you a few questions, Sanzen?"

Sanzen's eyes floated from Shihouin to the doctors before she nodded.

"Can you tell us what happened to ... Shihouin?"

"Training accident."

"I see... do you know his parents or anyone we can contact? From what our records say, you two are in no way related by blood."

He shook her head, she truly did not know who she could contact or anything about Shihouin and his health. As long as he would be okay that's all that mattered; even if she went through a lot of punishment for this.

"I see.. well, for now he will just need a lot of rest and we will continue his treatment. You may stay until visiting hours are over but the chances of him waking up for a while are low."

She nodded, watching them all as they left closing the door behind them. Her eyes returned to Shihouin as he laid their peacefully. Releasing a sigh, she leaned back in the chair to rest and wait for him to wake up. She doubted he would for a while as well but she had all day today to wait. She figured she should probably leave but in all honesty, she wanted to wait. To talk to him and see what he had to say. He was an interesting genin after all.

Cracking his eyes open was unexpectedly difficult, even though that part of his body hadn't been affected too much by the blast. Unlike the normal mucous that covered ones eyes from sleep, Shihouin's whole face felt burned and tightened as if skin was about to burst. The pain hadn't hit due to the amounts of morphine they were giving him, which he was lucky for. If they had decided to pull the plug sooner on the amount of drugs he was receiving, Shihouin bet he'd be screaming in pain.

He didn't think Sanzen could hear it, but he definitely could feel it. Two very small popping sounds came from his eyes as he cracked the layer of mucus that was burnt open. He rolled his dark eyes inside of his head and slowly began to wake up, feeling the tight, bursting feeling of crisp skin all over his body. Most of the vitals were healed, the medic ninja had put their efforts into healing his vital areas to preserve his life and letting the minor but numerous other areas heal on their own if his body would let him.

His eyes rolled over and barely glanced at half of Sanzens' face. He couldn't move his neck or his body and he was tired of looking at the light above his head on the ceiling. If he could talk to Sanzen just a bit, he'd feel a whole lot better.

He forced a dry, raspy tone through his voice. It hurt slightly to talk.

"You blew me up... Next time I'm gonna kill you." Even though his scratchy voice was full of pain, he was still joking. "That jutsu, the clone jutsu is really awesome. How about you..." He had a quick coughing fit and bits of saliva went everywhere. It hurt to talk. "Teach me with that when these burns heal...I want to get stronger...I have to be stronger."

"I have to be stronger..."

It was as if he was holding on to some sort of dying will. As if facing death once, no twice was embedding itself in his conscious. The certain memories of his mother and his father and his uncle. They were deep there too, deep. Held by the chains of fate by the Sharingan. His lack of fear of death had been replaced by his need for strength and now it had embedded itself in the front of his mind, more specifically his eyes. He could see his parents dying over and over within his accursed eyes and he could see himself more importantly.

He could see how weak he was as he watched his Uncle murder his mother and father right before his eyes.

The sound of a slight popping in the silent room caused her ears to tune in. She soon opened her own eyes, peering at Shihouin with a tired expression. She wasn't actually tired or sleepy at all, in fact it was all just an act to get the doctors to not ask anymore questions or pester her. Sometimes she really disliked people talking to her but the other thing she hated more was being questioned even after she told them what happened. Sure, she lied a bit, but she would make it up to Shihouin for that.

Her arm remained positioned beneath her head as it kept it propped off the chair's arm. Her legs were crossed before her, showing she had a very calm and relaxed posture unlike what she felt within. By the time he began to speak, she was staring right at him. It looked like he was also peering at her but at the same time he looked dazed; obviously still recovering. Letting out a slight cough and obviously finishing, she soon stood and crossed the room to the light switch. She has been in the hospital before and knew what it was like to sit there and stare right into the annoying light. It hurt her eyes and it took to long for the doctors to come, so she decided to turn it down herself. Of course it didn't end well but she wasn't going to go into that.

A sigh escaped her as she soon crossed back over to him and pulled up a chair beside him. He had recovered quite a bit since he first came thanks to the medical ninja but he obviously still had a ways to go.

"You know you shouldn't be talking if it's hard for you to," she finally said as her red hues returned to his face. His body looked almost as red as her eyes, the doctors should be back in sometime soon to check if he awakened yet but in the meantime it would be her that would talk to him. Truth was, she really didn't know how to say sorry or anything of that sort, so she skipped to the next thing that came to mind.

"At the moment you need to heal, maybe then we will talk about more training," she wondered if he was even listening. He looked dazed still and the drugs probably wasn't helping this fact either. She soon released another sigh, "is there anyone that you would like to visit? It might be best if I ask cause the doctors surely will later. Keep it short, if any."

Normally in this type of situation pain would be a given. He was going to experience pain no matter how much drugs the doctors gave him, or how much they treated him. This stage of the burns would test his threshold for pain and at the same time would make it higher on later in his life. Either way, he was going through the most physical pain he'd ever gone through in his life. The burns on his skin and muscles hurt...

But they didn't hurt on his inside. The pain there was much more prominent that his physical pain, much more deeper. It was as if it was stone surrounded by a vast amount of deep black water, lying in the pit of the cold darkness in his conscious. A memory shrouded by so much darkness and mental depth was now sinking even deeper. To Shihouin, he was that stone. A weak sack of bones which couldn't rise to the top for anything. Weak. Alone. Dark.

When she'd asked him who he wanted to see, Shihouin had a few people he wanted to see. "My mother... My father." He couldn't contain the water and began to silently cry. "I want to see them and tell them that I'm sorry for not being there for them. I'm sorry for not being strong enough. Tha... That's who I want to see."

Shihouin's body struggled to move. The burns on his body weren't allowing his muscles to move, but Shihouin couldn't give a care if his body didn't want to move. He didn't give a care how heavy his muscles were and how much pain trying to move was causing him. He didn't care when the machine started to beep louder because his pulse was rising above the normal limit. Shihouin continued on, and lifted his right arm up. His skin cracked and began to slowly bleed but he wasn't done. He coughed up some more blood and brought his back up, he wanted to move. He couldn't be the weak stone at the bottom of the water anymore.

Blood began to leak from the crack muscles in his arm and on his back and in the corner of his mouth. Through the pain, he pushed through it all and was able to sit up. "I want to see my parents once again, to show them I am not scared of death. Can you do th---" he couldn't get the last few words out, because his speech had been replaced by a rather heavy flow of blood. His body grew light and his mind drifted into wave of unconsciousness and he fell back to sleep.

The more he tried the more she wished to push him back down and force him to rest. This, however, was his decision and it would be he that would suffer the consequences. People could say that not telling him to stop and allowing him to be in pain as heartless but in her eyes she saw differently. She saw someone who did not wish to give up no matter what pain they went through or how rough the situation become. As tears rolled down his skin from his eyes and the blood began to pour from his mouth, amongst other places, Sanzen rose to her feet and pushed the chair back with a force. As it cracked against the wall behind her, not hitting the IV or anything else as it did, she soon grasped his remote. It was the device he was supposed to use to call the doctors in case he needed anything.

A female voice talked through the intercom above Shihouin's head, "Hello?"

"You might want to get in here as soon as possible," Sanzen said darkly.



The doctors came in no time, in fact, they were already on their way. Not wasting any time the door swung open as two came in. One of which hurried right over to Shihouin to check the pulse meter, IV, and of course SHihouin himself. The other raised her voice a tad as they entered, "What happe-"

Her words were cut short as she only saw Shihouin lying in the bed. The female doctor gaped as she peered around, her attention turning to the open window. The wind rolled in as it caused the white curtains to dance and light break in. She sighed and shook her head before crossing the room to aid the other doctor with taking care of Shihouin. Sanzen was gone.

Soft sheet rippled across the standard issue mattress and bed stand. The back of the bed was risen up to allow his head to rise and his blood to flow safely within his still body. The ache in his back and body was going away and even now he could feel the pulsing ebb of his tight muscles relaxing as his body sunk into the soft mattress. His head lay back properly on a special foam pillow which would comfortably keep his neck from moving. The warmth of the sun beat across his body, tingling his body into its wake up phase.

He was surrounded by several women and another man who was holding notes in the back of the room. His eyes lingered across the room, looking at the faces in front of him who seemed to be focused on his body. Shihouin didn't know if his wounds had been healed yet, so he loosely gripped his fist to feel his skin. The inside of his fingers touched his soft palm. There were no burn marks there.

"It seems as if you are up. Shihouin, you are one lucky man." The doctor in the back of the room had moved to beside him, and was removing his IV from his vien, taking the equipment attached to his open chest and discarding it into it's proper place. As his nerves began to click with electricity, he could feel chakra on his wounds. More importantly he could feel the pain of the wound fading. He gulped in his throat and began to speak. "Lucky?" It was much easier this time to get words out of his mouth than it had been last time. "Yes. You were stuck in the hospital for about three weeks. We could only heal minor injuries because some of our nin were out doing missions. Just recently here this week, we got a new batch of nurses in training who are quite skilled if I may say so myself." The young women over his body cheeked bright red in modesty. "What?" His brain wasn't moving at it's normal pace and he couldn't piece together the information. Instead of explaining, the doctor moved a large mirror from behind Shihouin's back, up over his head so he could see what he couldn't due to his position.

A massive incantation of seals and bandages covered with seals were all over his body and on the bed itself. Candles and pools of water were surrounding the bed. They were in some sort of formation and the woman touching him was taking her turn, or what it seemed to be. "Your skin was totally destroyed and you even had burns in your nostrils and lungs from breathing in too much hot air. We had to use your hair as a medium to reconstruct the damaged cells. That took about a few weeks, but we were able to pull it off. Not to mention your own will to get better helped in way." "Will?" "You're a sleep-talker. Several times, you kept talking about how you had to train, how you wanted to get out of bed and become stronger. Usually that doesn't really do a deciding factor on your body but sometimes it can. Not to mention the team you had here around the clock working to heal you." "When can I leave?" "To train? Hahaha! In about an hour dude. Make sure you take your time though. Your skin is about 90% healed. We can't totally reverse anything, but we can get to the point where your body can easily heal." "We're going to have to put you down to finish the rest of it."

Before he had a chance to say anything, Shihouin took a deep breath of relaxation in and fell off to sleep in an instant. Since his clothes had been burned, they would give him some standard issue clothes and things of the like due to the fact that he lost them. They hoped they wouldn't be seeing anymore burns like that from him in the hospital again and would send him off in about a couple of hours though. Shihouin couldn't care less. He just wanted to train and become stronger.

Even if it killed him.

-End Thread-