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Love Me When I'm Gone	By : KittenCobra Category: Naruto > Het - Male/Female Views: 1971 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto (the manga or anime) or any of the characters included within it. I only own the original characters in this story including the main character Utako Mizuke. I do not make any form of profit off of this story.

Chapter List
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- 54
53. Aftermath
Gaara is beginning to come around and feel his body again. He’s lost consciousness in battle before, so he knows the feeling. It’s almost like the time he came back from death. This time he couldn’t die though… Protecting Mizuke, and Suna, is too important. He remembers fighting to stay conscious so I could use him – use his sand. He remembers me doing something amazing… but he can’t remember what.
He reaches up to feel his face, and pulls out several tubes – gagging as they come out of his nose and throat. He feels a needle pull out with them, but the pain is helping him come around. A machine beside him starts wailing an emergency alarm of some kind, and he smashes it with his sand to cease the annoyance.
Mizuke… he calls to me mentally. My Love? Where are you?
Silence.
His heart begins to race. Why is she not answering me? She always answers… Mizuke!
“Mizuke!!” he screams, tearing his eyes open and launching himself up off the hospital bed. He stumbles, as a wave of nausea washes over him and his head spins. He stumbles across the room. He feels drugged and leans heavily against the door frame.
“Lord, Kazekage!” a nurse shouts in surprise, “Don’t get up! You’re not well! You could…”
“Where is she?!” he screams at her, lashing out with his sand and pinning her against the wall. She screams in fright. “Where is my wife?!”
“Gaara!” Temari’s voice screams from within the room, behind him. “Let her go, damnit!”
Gaara drops the woman and instead spins to wrap it around Temari, bringing her face to eye level in front of him. Her appearance catches him off guard for a moment. Her clothes are still bloodied from battle. Her eyes are rimmed with red as if she’s been crying. She looks relieved despite her angry tone.
He drops his voice to a deadly whisper. “Where is my wife, Temari?” His sand shudders with the fear flowing through him but he fights to keep it from tightening down on his sister.
“She’s…” she turns her face away, and Gaara can tell she is holding back tears. The bottom drops out of his stomach. “She’s okay.” Relief and confusion wash through him. “She is in the room right next door. We knew you would want to be close to her. That damn Hokage came in here and took over the hospital! She practically has Mizuke under quarantine, but…”
He drops Temari and storms out the door, feeling strength rush into his limbs with his desperation to find me, to hear me again. As he rounds the corner into the next room, the sight that greets him freezes him in place. He can hear footsteps rushing up behind him and halting far enough back to avoid a direct strike. I lay in a large metal tube with only my head and neck visible. The side of my face is deep purple and red – nearly unrecognizable beneath the bruising. The other side is clear and crisp, like the face of a doll. It is equally lifeless, like a corpse. Another wave of nausea washes over him, and he grips a small table beside the machine for balance. He can hear the machine emitting a steady beep which he assures himself must be my heartbeat.
Mizuke… he whispers to me, trying again. Mizuke, please…
Silence.
“She is alive,” he hears Tsunade’s firm voice from behind him.
Tsunade? She must have come after she heard the result of the battle. “Why can’t I… hear her?” he asks in a rough voice. His throat hurts from having tubes down it.
“She slipped into a deep coma,” Tsunade explains, “just after she released the hurricane of sand against Iwa. Her desperate move worked. Your enemies fled in terror of your new bride, but… the jutsu left you both dangerously drained. You simply needed time to recover your chakra and heal your wounds. She…” Tsunade hesitates.
“Explain!” he demands, trying to keep a hold on his patience. His hands are beginning to shake.
“She was using extremely advanced mental abilities in combination with jutsu.” Tsunade continues. “We have no way of knowing how this affects the body… or the mind. Her ability to separate her mind into unique and simultaneous actions was amazing but untested in battle. In addition, the blow she took to the head seems to have caused some severe bruising to her brain. We have had no response from her since she first lost consciousness. She doesn’t even respond to painful stimuli – which means the coma is deep.”
Gaara’s face suddenly feels numb and the numbness spreads throughout his body. He walks to my bedside and strokes the undamaged side of my face.
“How long?” he asks, terrified of the answer.
“You’ve both been out for about two days so far,” Tsunade informs in a clinical tone. “For how long she’ll be in a coma… we have no way of knowing. She could wake in a few days. She… may never.”
Gaara cannot breathe. Never!? No! He can’t believe that. He instantly decides it can’t be true and therefore he must simply wait for me to return to him. He cannot believe the alternative. He’d rather die.
“What is this?” Gaara asks, gesturing to the machine entombing me.
“This machine is keeping her alive,” Tsunade explains. He detects something unusual in her voice – not a lie, but a discomfort. He narrows his eyes at her. “Her body was heavily damaged from the chakra being forced out of it and into you. This machine is keeping her vitals stable without her brain being involved. It’s also providing us with the information we need to monitor her condition extremely closely. I… understand that you were not informed, but your wife was already in a weakened state before the attack.”
Gaara is too numb to be shocked any further.
“It’s true,” Temari says, stepping into view. “I’m so sorry Gaara. She’d only admitted it to Kankuro and I just before the attack. Everything happened so fast! I asked Tsunade about it as soon as she arrived. No one would even let me near Mizuke!” Temari’s fists are shaking in anger and tears are threatening in the corners of her eyes.
“What is she talking about?” Gaara asks in a dead voice. He had forgotten all about sending Kankuro to check on me until now. Now he remembers his earlier fears: my sluggishness, my avoidance of public places, the weariness he was beginning to sense from me constantly – things which were all so unusual from my natural state, but which I continued to pretend were not real.
“Her body was having difficulty adapting to the desert,” Tsunade says.
There it is again… he thinks. That discomfort.
“It was a condition that would have resolved within the next couple of months,” she continues. “However, in this case it meant she was starting the battle without her full strength. You’ll have to trust me on this, Lord Kazekage. Your wife’s life depends on remaining in this machine until at least the time she awakens.”
Gaara can sense that the last sentence is no lie – she means what she says. Why Mizuke!? He begs of me. Why did you do this?! You should have stopped! You should have run!
“Truly,” Tsunade continues, “It would be much better if I could bring her back with me to heal. We could consider it the fulfillment of her contractual obligation to return. We could…”
“Silence!” he screams at her, outraged by the suggestion. I must stay here. The people need their Kazekage present at such a time. If she is so far from me… “I will not allow her to be taken from Suna. She is needed here.”
“Be reasonable, Gaara,” Tsunade shouts; her own temper getting the better of her. “I have better medicine and equipment in Konoha. I could…”
“You will not take her from me!” he screams, beginning to see red. Without consciously summoning it, his sand begins to rise and swirl around him menacingly. He knows he should calm down, but his rage is making it difficult to think straight. I should have protected her from this. I should let her go… I should let her heal… but if she is gone… she could die without me. She could slip away in the night. I wouldn’t even be there to… No!! He grips his hair with both hands and pulls, squeezing his eyes shut and trying to distract himself to regain some semblance of calm.
“Gaara…” Temari’s voice suddenly cuts in again. It is shaky from obvious fear. “You need to calm down big boy. No one is going to take Mizuke from you, okay? She’s going to stay right here and you can stay with her as long as you want to.”
He opens his eyes enough to see Temari is stepping towards him cautiously with her hand outstretched as if to touch him.
She should know better than to touch me!
He is ready to strike her when she continues by saying, “That’s right. You need to be careful when you’re standing so close to her.”
Mizuke!
Shock courses through him, cutting through the rage. If he truly lost his cool, he could injure me further by being so close… He instantly feels all the rage drop away and his heart clenches in a painful thanks to his sister. Temari’s next move shocks him to his core. She moves quickly and wraps her arms around his shoulders – pulling him tightly against her. He stiffens like a board.
She’s… hugging me? he thinks, completely baffled by the gesture.
This is nothing like when Mizuke hugs him. He can feel fear still radiating from her. He knows this is an extreme gamble, and… leap of faith on her part. Is she doing this because she wants to… or because she thinks she has to… or?
He is suddenly too overwhelmed to care. There are too many emotions and he has no idea what to do with them. He doesn’t want to hurt anyone. For the first time in many, many years – he presses his face into her shoulder to hide the tears that begin falling without permission from his eyes.
Flipping quickly through the minds of everyone in the room I can see that Gaara has spent every waking moment possible at my bedside; returning to the office only when absolutely required. Eventually, with no change in my condition, his patience began fraying. He was losing hope, and began battling Tsunade to try alternative methods of healing and releasing me from the machine. But I know why she’s been keeping me in here without even scanning her thoughts. This is the only thing still hiding my condition. I say a silent prayer of thanks for her quick thinking.
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- 53
- 54
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Love Me When I'm Gone

53. Aftermath