[Challenge][Fanfiction][Naruto] Expiation
Title: Expiation
Challenge: We've Seen THAT Before (The Overused Plot Lines Challenge)
4. A gets hurt or gets sick, B takes care of him/her.
Plus points: if they aren't together yet, and they learn they love each other
11. Emo/angst fics, where the narrator or main character wallows in too much personal grief.
Series: Naruto (alternate universe)
Characters: Sasuke, Sakura
Rating: PG-13 for language
Word Count: 2343
I'm not sure if I did what the challenge was asking for. -__-;;
The piercing fluorescent lights gave an aseptic finish to the polished concrete floor, but somehow left shadows to nip the periphery of the long narrow passageway that connected the main hospital building to the emergency department. There were other, less convoluted paths available, but she didn't feel like walking through the chaos of the E.R. tonight, not with the succession of wailing ambulances, the tell-tale whirring of an arriving helicopter, probably come to bring another vehicular collision victim, another bullet recipient. Not when she wasn't even on-call that night.
The universally-adored young doctor was easily recognizable by the staff, a fact she attributed to the unusual color of her hair, and no one would have questioned her presence. That was, if they even had time to notice her. As she predicted, she made it to the back of the department without even a polite nod from any of her colleagues.
The psychiatric holding unit only had two patients that night. Besides the sitter who was constantly watching them through several cameras, one of the nurses was there, too, probably passing the evening meds.
"Hey there, Nurse Nara," she greeted with a smile. Considering the size of this trauma E.R., she rarely worked often enough with any one nurse to be able to rightly associate a name with a face. Nara Shikamaru was an exception: exceptionally laid-back, exceptionally underachieving, exceptionally brilliant, and exceptionally perceptive.
"Hey, doc," he drawled lazily, training a critical eye on her. "Didn't expect to run into you this end of the hellhole."
"Oh, you know me." She reached for a chart and flipped through it. "Patient-centered care and all that."
"Thought you signed off this case months ago."
"I thought so, too." The doctor returned the clipboard to him. "Suicide by cop, they call it?"
"So they say." The fierce-looking man shrugged. "Wear the panic button, in any case, Dr. Haruno. Unit protocol."
She slipped the device into her coat pocket. "Happy?"
It could summon the security people, in case her safety became an issue inside the plain, white cell. She liked to think she wouldn't need it, but the hospital policies and procedure made it easier for her not to be so cavalier. Shikamaru nodded, then knocked the drowsing aide upside the head, suggesting he go take his dinner break now.
"Thanks."
It took her a few moments to adjust to the low lighting in the room, and sitting on the empty recliner under the sole dim light source didn't help. Her patient was sitting on the bed, an unmoving shadow among shadows.
"I thought I had medical clearance," came an ironic voice from the general direction of the darkened corner. "Aren't you people just waiting for an open spot in some nut-house?"
"Good evening, Mr. Uchiha," she replied mildly.
"Good evening, Dr. Haruno," he greeted, then swiftly changed his urbane tone. "Now, enough of the rigmarole: what do you want?"
He was surprisingly forthcoming, so she decided to return the favor. "To see for myself."
"What? Can't believe one of your projects didn't turn out as perfectly as usual?"
"I think this qualifies as a purely social visit," she said, still calm.
"Oh? Visiting hours was over two hours ago."
"As far as they're concerned, I am following up on a patient I have performed several major surgeries on." Her voice was frosty.
"And as far as we're concerned, you're here to assuage some unwarranted guilt feelings."
"To see you for myself," she corrected firmly. "You look better. Amazingly."
"Considering I was waking up from weeks of drug-induced coma and had a hole in my skull drilled by the youngest, most celebrated neurosurgeon of this medical center the last I saw you, I can believe that."
"How have you been, Sasuke?"
"What? Didn't do your research before coming in here?"
Major Depressive Disorder with Psychotic Features, bits of the psychiatrist's evaluation flashed in her head. Blood work, CT scans, MRIs. . . all the tests were either negative or bore no changes from the previous ones from months ago, but he wouldn't necessarily rule out an organic cause to the patient's delusional paranoia. . . "You told them the truth?" she asked carefully.
He laughed, the rustling of the rough hospital sheets easily swallowed by the alien sound. He laughed. "For all your faults," he said, now sitting at the edge of the bed. "You're still easily the sweetest thing alive."
"For all your faults, you still--"
"Make you weak in the knees?" His sudden snarl rent the light atmosphere his honest amusement brought. "Is that why you persist in trying to cure me, doctor? Or is it some god complex of yours? A few of your patients end up in a nursing home once in a while, don't they? It's about time you have one in the looney bin."
She glared at him. And it was so easily true, too. The soft incandescent light that shone from where she sat rendered him oddly, his bare chest easily becoming the marble bust of some mythological deity. It wasn't an entirely foreign sight to her, but there were changes here and there. He's obviously regained muscle mass and already there were new scars. Even the tensed rippling brought by his anger-fueled breathing riveted her.
He sighed, a huffing, unwilling little sound, and ran a hand through his dark mussed-up hair. "I will try to talk to you, if that's what you want," he finally said, rising to his feet as he said so, towering over her, arms akimbo. "But you have to lose the lab coat."
She paused to peer up at him, puzzled. "You have white coat syn--"
"No." She thought she saw him roll his eyes. "And let's switch places. If somebody else asks me how I feel, I'll show them, so help me."
Hesitantly, the doctor stood up and unbuttoned her nearly threadbare white coat. Under it was a little cocktail dress, resplendent with emerald-hued butterflies, that seemed more congruent with the black designer stiletto sandals she was wearing. She felt critical eyes running over her from the figure now slouched on the recliner, and was tempted to blanket herself with the very coat she had divested at his command.
"Out on a fancy date, were you?" he commented. "Some obscenely-prized bistro uptown, with your young, hotshot lawyer?"
"Local art show with some of the O.R. nurses, actually," she returned airily. "Keep up, will you? Young hotshot lawyer was so years ago."
"Some, huh?"
"Don't make assumptions."
"As long as you follow the same rule."
"Fine. Why are you still here?"
"I thought you said you did read up."
"I know why they're keeping you here," she retorted. "Why are you letting them?"
He gestured to the small white room in general.
"You could escape whenever you want to."
"Are you suggesting I'm hiding from somebody?"
"No. I've learned that you can't really hide from the sort of people you tend to cross. Now, if my hospital is in any dan--"
"Relax. I'm on vacation. Think I deserve one, after doing my last mission a little too well."
"Were you committing suicide?" she asked bluntly.
"And now you're suggesting I was trying to get your attention with my little stunt with the local cops. I assure you, I have more direct ways, had I wanted to."
"Was it suicide?" she repeated harshly.
"Sakura."
"You told me not to assume."
"Is that how much you've reduced me in your mind?"
"Your brother is dead, Sasuke. You've done what you've set out to do. I'll be surprised if you're not suffering from a little anomie."
"Anomie!" he spat viciously. "You're seriously believing the little notes those pompous shits have been writing? Let me guess. Axis I: Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Axis II: Borderline Personality Disorder. Axis III--"
"What do you want me say?" she snapped. "I thought you had jumped off the nearest bridge when you realized you no longer had a reason to live, now that you've killed Itachi--"
"Itachi has never been the be all, end all."
"I never thought so; you did."
"What do you want me to say?" he hissed, unwittingly echoing her, his contorted face inches away from hers. He had lunged at her, and she didn't even see him coming. What good was the panic button against such a man? "Thanks a lot for saving my life? Why did you do it, anyway?"
"I do not choose whoever lives or dies," she grounded out. "I do not choose whom to treat, whom to leave behind. It could have been you in that operating table; it could have been your brother. You happened to have survived long enough to be rescued. You were the one brought to this E.R. You were the one brought to me that night with a bullet lodged in your frontal lobe."
"But you liked it, didn't you?" he taunted, grabbing her by a forearm to keep her in place. "You liked holding my naked brain in your hands, liked the power it conferred you. After years of chasing after Uchiha Sasuke, you had him in front of you, vulnerable, dying." His grin turned even more malicious. "Did it turn you on?"
"You sick bastard!" She twisted, attempting to crawl away. He locked her in place, pinned both her arms where they were easiest to control, easiest to dislocate. She felt the harshness of his breathing on the rhythmic movement of his vast-seeming chest against her back, the erratic puffing of hot air against her neck. "Why would I look for you? Have you been deluding yourself all those years, thinking I was sitting pretty in that dead-end small town, waiting for you to return from your quest for the bloody holy grail?"
"What man wouldn't?" This time, his voice dropped to a mere whisper, but the trickle of words fell from behind one of her ears, dribbled ice down her spine. "I dreamed of you a lot while I was a trainee. I thought it was the stress making me lose my mind."
The strange confession took her off-guard. "You've always said I was a nuisance," she accused. "Even that night, when we were seventeen, when you ran away. Six months ago, before you disappeared again. Don't fuck with me!"
"But I liked fucking you," he continued smoothly. "It was a good two months, convalescing in your mansion, listening to you dream in your nightly regimented five-hour sleep, manipulating the tiniest nerves in your lithe little body. . . I think I might just give you what you want."
Her efforts on kicking the life out of him quivered, stilled. ". . . Just shut the hell up, you damnable liar." Her struggles ensued. "I don't want to hear it!"
"I came here for you," he murmured, as if she wasn't trying her best to rupture his spleen with a heel. "To tell you. Even before you performed your risky, avant-garde procedure. Even before I joined the black ops. Even before I virtually eliminated all the mafiosi of this god-forsaken city. Even before I took Itachi's bullet between by eyes: I'm fucked up. I have been, for a while now. It runs in families. I can't be fixed."
"Just, just---"
"Just say it, Sakura," he rasped in her ear, despair, despair seeping through the cracks. "Say it."
She concentrated on breathing, shut her eyes when she saw her clawed hand disintegrating into some surreal still life. She concentrated. She breathed.
"I'm offering you closure." His voice was harsh now, commanding, inexorable. "Say it!"
"I HATE YOU!"
She meant it. She meant it with every cell in her body, every functional neuron in her brain.
"Say it again," he demanded. "Please."
"I hate you, Sasuke," she said obediently, brokenly. "I hate you."
"There." It was the damnedest, gentlest way he had ever spoken to her. "That wasn't so hard."
She didn't dignify it with an answer. As soon as he relinquished her, she pounced for the door. She didn't hurl out of it, though. She stood before it first, pulled herself back in place, straightened her clothes, her hair, her face. He made no move to stop her, merely retreated back to the shadows she had rudely taken him from earlier.
"I hate you, too," floated to her ear as she sedately walked out of the holding cell, was the only thing that indicated he was still there.
It was the last thing she heard before the door clicked shut.
--
Uchiha Sasuke
32 y.o. Male
Axis I: Major Depressive Disorder with Psychotic Features
? PTSD
Adjustment Disorder
Axis II: deferred
Axis III: s/p traumatic brain injury, 1 year.
? organic brain disease
Axis IV: Parents were massacred by older brother, possibly while in a drug-induced psychosis.
High-ranking government official, unspecified rank/position. Was involved in a controversial manhunt for the suspected founder of a powerful weapon-trafficking gang.
Axis V: 11 - Some danger of harming self or others, or occasionally fails to maintain minimal personal hygiene, or gross impairment in communication.
Pt presented in E.R. via ambulance, boarded and collared, after moderate-speed impact to tree, with minimal damage to vehicle, escorted by military personnel. Pt was confused and combative on arrival, reportedly raving and violently conversing, possibly with hallucinations. Pt was chemically and physically restrained for safety and was cleared of any injuries after full body x-rays and CT of head, neck, and abdomen.
Pt has a history of blunt trauma to the head, status post fall from height of 15 feet, as well as a mid-range gun shot wound to the head, 17 months to date. Pt discharged from this hospital 12 months to date to rehabilitative facility, s/p decompressive craniectomy and phenobarbital-induced coma, with remarkably minimal neurological deficits. Pt discharged from rehabilitative facility 8 months to date, returning to his full responsibilities in an undisclosed government agency, under the care of an undisclosed family member/friend, who has not been successfully contacted since patient's admission.
Pt alert and awake this morning, with blunted affect. . .
End. 050508 1930
And granted it's an AU fic, I'm not sure about the characterizations. Eheh. Especially Sasuke's.
P.S.
mikochan_noda , er. . . Sorry I couldn't make lemonade today.
Challenge: We've Seen THAT Before (The Overused Plot Lines Challenge)
4. A gets hurt or gets sick, B takes care of him/her.
Plus points: if they aren't together yet, and they learn they love each other
11. Emo/angst fics, where the narrator or main character wallows in too much personal grief.
Series: Naruto (alternate universe)
Characters: Sasuke, Sakura
Rating: PG-13 for language
Word Count: 2343
I'm not sure if I did what the challenge was asking for. -__-;;
The piercing fluorescent lights gave an aseptic finish to the polished concrete floor, but somehow left shadows to nip the periphery of the long narrow passageway that connected the main hospital building to the emergency department. There were other, less convoluted paths available, but she didn't feel like walking through the chaos of the E.R. tonight, not with the succession of wailing ambulances, the tell-tale whirring of an arriving helicopter, probably come to bring another vehicular collision victim, another bullet recipient. Not when she wasn't even on-call that night.
The universally-adored young doctor was easily recognizable by the staff, a fact she attributed to the unusual color of her hair, and no one would have questioned her presence. That was, if they even had time to notice her. As she predicted, she made it to the back of the department without even a polite nod from any of her colleagues.
The psychiatric holding unit only had two patients that night. Besides the sitter who was constantly watching them through several cameras, one of the nurses was there, too, probably passing the evening meds.
"Hey there, Nurse Nara," she greeted with a smile. Considering the size of this trauma E.R., she rarely worked often enough with any one nurse to be able to rightly associate a name with a face. Nara Shikamaru was an exception: exceptionally laid-back, exceptionally underachieving, exceptionally brilliant, and exceptionally perceptive.
"Hey, doc," he drawled lazily, training a critical eye on her. "Didn't expect to run into you this end of the hellhole."
"Oh, you know me." She reached for a chart and flipped through it. "Patient-centered care and all that."
"Thought you signed off this case months ago."
"I thought so, too." The doctor returned the clipboard to him. "Suicide by cop, they call it?"
"So they say." The fierce-looking man shrugged. "Wear the panic button, in any case, Dr. Haruno. Unit protocol."
She slipped the device into her coat pocket. "Happy?"
It could summon the security people, in case her safety became an issue inside the plain, white cell. She liked to think she wouldn't need it, but the hospital policies and procedure made it easier for her not to be so cavalier. Shikamaru nodded, then knocked the drowsing aide upside the head, suggesting he go take his dinner break now.
"Thanks."
It took her a few moments to adjust to the low lighting in the room, and sitting on the empty recliner under the sole dim light source didn't help. Her patient was sitting on the bed, an unmoving shadow among shadows.
"I thought I had medical clearance," came an ironic voice from the general direction of the darkened corner. "Aren't you people just waiting for an open spot in some nut-house?"
"Good evening, Mr. Uchiha," she replied mildly.
"Good evening, Dr. Haruno," he greeted, then swiftly changed his urbane tone. "Now, enough of the rigmarole: what do you want?"
He was surprisingly forthcoming, so she decided to return the favor. "To see for myself."
"What? Can't believe one of your projects didn't turn out as perfectly as usual?"
"I think this qualifies as a purely social visit," she said, still calm.
"Oh? Visiting hours was over two hours ago."
"As far as they're concerned, I am following up on a patient I have performed several major surgeries on." Her voice was frosty.
"And as far as we're concerned, you're here to assuage some unwarranted guilt feelings."
"To see you for myself," she corrected firmly. "You look better. Amazingly."
"Considering I was waking up from weeks of drug-induced coma and had a hole in my skull drilled by the youngest, most celebrated neurosurgeon of this medical center the last I saw you, I can believe that."
"How have you been, Sasuke?"
"What? Didn't do your research before coming in here?"
Major Depressive Disorder with Psychotic Features, bits of the psychiatrist's evaluation flashed in her head. Blood work, CT scans, MRIs. . . all the tests were either negative or bore no changes from the previous ones from months ago, but he wouldn't necessarily rule out an organic cause to the patient's delusional paranoia. . . "You told them the truth?" she asked carefully.
He laughed, the rustling of the rough hospital sheets easily swallowed by the alien sound. He laughed. "For all your faults," he said, now sitting at the edge of the bed. "You're still easily the sweetest thing alive."
"For all your faults, you still--"
"Make you weak in the knees?" His sudden snarl rent the light atmosphere his honest amusement brought. "Is that why you persist in trying to cure me, doctor? Or is it some god complex of yours? A few of your patients end up in a nursing home once in a while, don't they? It's about time you have one in the looney bin."
She glared at him. And it was so easily true, too. The soft incandescent light that shone from where she sat rendered him oddly, his bare chest easily becoming the marble bust of some mythological deity. It wasn't an entirely foreign sight to her, but there were changes here and there. He's obviously regained muscle mass and already there were new scars. Even the tensed rippling brought by his anger-fueled breathing riveted her.
He sighed, a huffing, unwilling little sound, and ran a hand through his dark mussed-up hair. "I will try to talk to you, if that's what you want," he finally said, rising to his feet as he said so, towering over her, arms akimbo. "But you have to lose the lab coat."
She paused to peer up at him, puzzled. "You have white coat syn--"
"No." She thought she saw him roll his eyes. "And let's switch places. If somebody else asks me how I feel, I'll show them, so help me."
Hesitantly, the doctor stood up and unbuttoned her nearly threadbare white coat. Under it was a little cocktail dress, resplendent with emerald-hued butterflies, that seemed more congruent with the black designer stiletto sandals she was wearing. She felt critical eyes running over her from the figure now slouched on the recliner, and was tempted to blanket herself with the very coat she had divested at his command.
"Out on a fancy date, were you?" he commented. "Some obscenely-prized bistro uptown, with your young, hotshot lawyer?"
"Local art show with some of the O.R. nurses, actually," she returned airily. "Keep up, will you? Young hotshot lawyer was so years ago."
"Some, huh?"
"Don't make assumptions."
"As long as you follow the same rule."
"Fine. Why are you still here?"
"I thought you said you did read up."
"I know why they're keeping you here," she retorted. "Why are you letting them?"
He gestured to the small white room in general.
"You could escape whenever you want to."
"Are you suggesting I'm hiding from somebody?"
"No. I've learned that you can't really hide from the sort of people you tend to cross. Now, if my hospital is in any dan--"
"Relax. I'm on vacation. Think I deserve one, after doing my last mission a little too well."
"Were you committing suicide?" she asked bluntly.
"And now you're suggesting I was trying to get your attention with my little stunt with the local cops. I assure you, I have more direct ways, had I wanted to."
"Was it suicide?" she repeated harshly.
"Sakura."
"You told me not to assume."
"Is that how much you've reduced me in your mind?"
"Your brother is dead, Sasuke. You've done what you've set out to do. I'll be surprised if you're not suffering from a little anomie."
"Anomie!" he spat viciously. "You're seriously believing the little notes those pompous shits have been writing? Let me guess. Axis I: Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Axis II: Borderline Personality Disorder. Axis III--"
"What do you want me say?" she snapped. "I thought you had jumped off the nearest bridge when you realized you no longer had a reason to live, now that you've killed Itachi--"
"Itachi has never been the be all, end all."
"I never thought so; you did."
"What do you want me to say?" he hissed, unwittingly echoing her, his contorted face inches away from hers. He had lunged at her, and she didn't even see him coming. What good was the panic button against such a man? "Thanks a lot for saving my life? Why did you do it, anyway?"
"I do not choose whoever lives or dies," she grounded out. "I do not choose whom to treat, whom to leave behind. It could have been you in that operating table; it could have been your brother. You happened to have survived long enough to be rescued. You were the one brought to this E.R. You were the one brought to me that night with a bullet lodged in your frontal lobe."
"But you liked it, didn't you?" he taunted, grabbing her by a forearm to keep her in place. "You liked holding my naked brain in your hands, liked the power it conferred you. After years of chasing after Uchiha Sasuke, you had him in front of you, vulnerable, dying." His grin turned even more malicious. "Did it turn you on?"
"You sick bastard!" She twisted, attempting to crawl away. He locked her in place, pinned both her arms where they were easiest to control, easiest to dislocate. She felt the harshness of his breathing on the rhythmic movement of his vast-seeming chest against her back, the erratic puffing of hot air against her neck. "Why would I look for you? Have you been deluding yourself all those years, thinking I was sitting pretty in that dead-end small town, waiting for you to return from your quest for the bloody holy grail?"
"What man wouldn't?" This time, his voice dropped to a mere whisper, but the trickle of words fell from behind one of her ears, dribbled ice down her spine. "I dreamed of you a lot while I was a trainee. I thought it was the stress making me lose my mind."
The strange confession took her off-guard. "You've always said I was a nuisance," she accused. "Even that night, when we were seventeen, when you ran away. Six months ago, before you disappeared again. Don't fuck with me!"
"But I liked fucking you," he continued smoothly. "It was a good two months, convalescing in your mansion, listening to you dream in your nightly regimented five-hour sleep, manipulating the tiniest nerves in your lithe little body. . . I think I might just give you what you want."
Her efforts on kicking the life out of him quivered, stilled. ". . . Just shut the hell up, you damnable liar." Her struggles ensued. "I don't want to hear it!"
"I came here for you," he murmured, as if she wasn't trying her best to rupture his spleen with a heel. "To tell you. Even before you performed your risky, avant-garde procedure. Even before I joined the black ops. Even before I virtually eliminated all the mafiosi of this god-forsaken city. Even before I took Itachi's bullet between by eyes: I'm fucked up. I have been, for a while now. It runs in families. I can't be fixed."
"Just, just---"
"Just say it, Sakura," he rasped in her ear, despair, despair seeping through the cracks. "Say it."
She concentrated on breathing, shut her eyes when she saw her clawed hand disintegrating into some surreal still life. She concentrated. She breathed.
"I'm offering you closure." His voice was harsh now, commanding, inexorable. "Say it!"
"I HATE YOU!"
She meant it. She meant it with every cell in her body, every functional neuron in her brain.
"Say it again," he demanded. "Please."
"I hate you, Sasuke," she said obediently, brokenly. "I hate you."
"There." It was the damnedest, gentlest way he had ever spoken to her. "That wasn't so hard."
She didn't dignify it with an answer. As soon as he relinquished her, she pounced for the door. She didn't hurl out of it, though. She stood before it first, pulled herself back in place, straightened her clothes, her hair, her face. He made no move to stop her, merely retreated back to the shadows she had rudely taken him from earlier.
"I hate you, too," floated to her ear as she sedately walked out of the holding cell, was the only thing that indicated he was still there.
It was the last thing she heard before the door clicked shut.
--
Uchiha Sasuke
32 y.o. Male
Axis I: Major Depressive Disorder with Psychotic Features
? PTSD
Adjustment Disorder
Axis II: deferred
Axis III: s/p traumatic brain injury, 1 year.
? organic brain disease
Axis IV: Parents were massacred by older brother, possibly while in a drug-induced psychosis.
High-ranking government official, unspecified rank/position. Was involved in a controversial manhunt for the suspected founder of a powerful weapon-trafficking gang.
Axis V: 11 - Some danger of harming self or others, or occasionally fails to maintain minimal personal hygiene, or gross impairment in communication.
Pt presented in E.R. via ambulance, boarded and collared, after moderate-speed impact to tree, with minimal damage to vehicle, escorted by military personnel. Pt was confused and combative on arrival, reportedly raving and violently conversing, possibly with hallucinations. Pt was chemically and physically restrained for safety and was cleared of any injuries after full body x-rays and CT of head, neck, and abdomen.
Pt has a history of blunt trauma to the head, status post fall from height of 15 feet, as well as a mid-range gun shot wound to the head, 17 months to date. Pt discharged from this hospital 12 months to date to rehabilitative facility, s/p decompressive craniectomy and phenobarbital-induced coma, with remarkably minimal neurological deficits. Pt discharged from rehabilitative facility 8 months to date, returning to his full responsibilities in an undisclosed government agency, under the care of an undisclosed family member/friend, who has not been successfully contacted since patient's admission.
Pt alert and awake this morning, with blunted affect. . .
End. 050508 1930
And granted it's an AU fic, I'm not sure about the characterizations. Eheh. Especially Sasuke's.
P.S.
mikochan_noda , er. . . Sorry I couldn't make lemonade today.