Melancholia

Chapter 18

A/N: Y'all it's been forever since I wrote anything for this fanfic, I'm so sorry. I've been going through a lot over the past year. I've been dealing with grief, moved to another city, court (because some guy raped me), got developed with Arthritis and I've also started school and working again. I'm actually on a leave of absence right now.

Also, I hope y'all didn't mind me inserting a little headcanon of mine that Sasuke likes to read some manga on the side and since Kishimoto considers Toriyama his idol, I figured why not make Dragon Ball the subject of the conversation between Sasuke and Naruto? I recently caught up with Dragon Ball actually, so I sorta recommend it, it's actually not that bad.

Anyways, enjoy!

...

"Okay, you can go back now, Sasuke-kun. I'm sorry for making you wait so long..."

Sasuke looked up to see his pink haired teammate standing in front of him with a slightly guilty look on her face.

"It's fine. Don't worry about it." He said simply, getting up.

"Well, I'm going to train with Hokage-sama in a little while, so I should go. I'll see you later." Sakura waved a bit, heading to the front door.

"Yeah..." Sasuke said, getting up, and heading over to ask the attendants what room Naruto was in. Due to it apparently being in a different section of the building than normal, a nurse chose to show him the way.

Upon entering Naruto's room, he met face to face with his blonde teammate, who looked a bit startled by his appearance. "S-Sasuke...!?"

"What's wrong? You seem surprised to see me..." Sasuke rose an eyebrow.

"Yeah, well, nobody told me you would be coming here." Naruto muttered.

"Do you have a problem with it? If you want me to leave, I will." Sasuke offered simply.

"No, it's not like that... I just..." Naruto fidgeted nervously. "After what happened the other day, I wasn't even sure if you wanted to be around me anymore, let alone talk to me..."

"Tch, I'm here , aren't I...? So what are you worrying for...?" Sasuke looked away with a light blush on his face. " ...Usuratonkachi ."

Naruto couldn't help but feel a bit of relief at hearing Sasuke's attempt at reassurance. Putting his hands in his pockets, Sasuke sat down beside him on the chair that Sakura had been sitting in earlier.

"So how are you feeling...?" Sasuke glanced over at him.

"...What, you mean like right now?" Naruto asked. "Honestly, I can't stand it here, just sitting around and doing nothing all day... I've always hated hospitals... And some of the nurses and doctors have been really rude to me before." Naruto said, clutching at the hospital blanket. "Maybe they haven't done anything this time because Kakashi-sensei and Iruka-sensei have been with me. Still, I've kinda been on edge ever since I came here..."

Iruka, who had been wordlessly observing them, couldn't help but be slightly concerned over what he had just said. Experiencing hostility from nurses would be more than enough reason to not want to come back to a place, for any person, really.

"What kinds of things have the nurses and doctors done to make you so uncomfortable, Naruto?" He asked.

"Well, usually it's things like pretending to 'accidentally' drop meals or spilling hot drinks on me, but there's been a few occasions that they would carelessly stick me with needless when they were drawing blood and they did it everywhere except the spot I told them to." Naruto said bitterly. "This one lady was especially hateful, she wouldn't even listen to me when I tried to talk to her, so she jabbed me about 6 times before finally doing it in my left arm where I'd told her to. Afterwards, I was really bruised because of it. I swear, people like that annoy the crap out of me. If they hate their job so much then give it to somebody else who will at least pretend to care."