Spectral Illusions (Naruto fanfic)

Spectral Illusions Chapter 26 [FINAL CHAPTER]

She wasn't sure where she was now. Everything was loud-- amplified. Every tiny sound like a step or an inch forwards, and she heard it like a stampede of elephants. She was deafened by the sounds, of the crashing and the smashing and the thumping.

Sound wasn't the only thing she had, though. She could see, but... It was strange. It looked lucid, yet in such a blurred haze that she wasn't sure if it was entirely real or not. Colours shifted and blended together, things that moved either moved too fast or too slow for her to follow, and she turned too quickly for her to make sense of anything.

It was strange. She was in her body yet she had no control.

It all felt like a bad dream. She'd never wanted out of the dreaming world so much before, even when she'd had the most awful and horrendous dreams in the past.

She felt as if she had no control, but as soon as she demanded that she wanted to leave this place, she was yanked so harshly and abruptly from it she wondered if she was really waking.

She woke in a spluttering mess. In time with her erratic heart, a machine beeped with it. Her chest heaved with each breath, her brow drenched in sweat and her palms itching. Her heart hurt, feeling like it was constricting in on itself from how hard it thumped against her ribcage; if felt almost as if it would break through.

Arms were around her, then. Holding her still, holding her close, gently squeezing her and reassuring her that everything was alright. That she was alright.

"Kakashi..." she breathed, before she felt the tears she didn't even notice were there pool over. She clung to him as a single tear trickled down her cheek and onto his shoulder.

"Dammit, Mayako, you gave me a heart-attack." Kakashi chuckled, sounding breathless as he slowly leaned back and squeezed her shoulders. She laughed a little, half-heartedly, before her laugh broke into a small sob. "Mayako, don't cry."

His thumb rubbed at her cheek, swiping away tears as soon as they hit her skin. She smiled through them, sinking into his touch.

"Ayame told me everything that happened," he began, with a sigh. His hand dropped from her cheek to instead rest in his lap. "Mayako, what were you thinking? Using your Sharingan and exposing yourself? Using your Curse Mark? Of all things?"

"I didn't choose to." she mumbled, rubbing at the mark on her neck. "It just happened. I don't know what happened but something... Cracked. Whether it was my resolve or the seal or... Something broke. The snake caused it to happen and then the mark just grew a mind of its own."

"It doesn't have a mind of its own, Mayako. You control it." he lectured, folding his arms and glaring at her sternly. "You choose when to use it -- which should be never, by the way -- and not when it wants to."

"You don't understand. Don't talk about it like you do."

"I don't understand?" Kakashi snorted, "I have a colleague who's had it since she was a child, and I have a student who has it, and he, for some reason, has better control over it than you!"

She scrambled for some kind of comeback. "Oh? I'm sure he does!" she finally spat, "Because he's an Uchiha! They're prodigies, all of them, and they have mastery over the Sharingan, Fire Style, etcetera, etcetera, blah, blah, blah-- no one cares, Kakashi!"

"How old are you?" Kakashi demanded incredulously. "Last I checked, I wasn't arguing with a four year old!"

"Last I checked, you were my boyfriend, not my psychiatrist!"

That cut him off short. Whatever he was going to say faded in his mouth, and he sighed heavily, turning from her and leaning down on the edge of the bed and staring hard at the ground for a while. Folding her arms, she stubbornly turned her head away and glared a hole in the wall.