She woke up on a futon next to Kakashi's bed. Several hours later. Gai wasn't there anymore, but Jubei was back on her wrist, pretending to be a leather bracelet, and Sai was sitting outside on the windowsill. He left the moment he noticed that she was awake though. Haruka didn't really have the energy to wonder about the odd behavior. She also got distracted by the way Kakashi's chakra felt.
Her sensei's reserves took ages to recover because of the Sharingan. What was out of the ordinary though was the way his chakra hummed with static. She hadn't noticed yesterday, but that wasn't really a surprise considering how out of it she'd been.
If she didn't know better she'd say Kakashi was under a genjutsu, but there was absolutely no foreign chakra in his system. Not even residue from the jutsu Itachi had used on him. Nothing. Yet, his own chakra was fighting against something. It didn't seem to do him any harm, but she asked Jubei to fetch a medic anyway. The little tanuki was surprisingly eager to help. She assumed it was compensation for the fact that he refused to talk about what happened with Gaara and the Ichibi.
Gai entered the flat alongside the doctor, who informed her that both Kakashi and Sasuke seemed to suffer from the same thing after their confrontations with Itachi. He also had no idea what said thing was, only that it didn't cause any physical damage and apparently kept her teammates in a comatose state.
Haruka raised an eyebrow at Gai. So he explained that Sasuke had come to see how they were doing and overheard a jonin in the process. It seemed Itachi, or rather Akatsuki, the organization he worked for, was after the Tailed Beasts. Sasuke had immediately gone to track down Naruto and run into his brother in the process. Of course he'd also tried to kill Itachi and gotten his ass kicked.
"What an idiot," Haruka groaned. "Why does everybody seem to think they can just take on one of the most powerful shinobi this village has ever seen?"
"Would you like me to stay with Kakashi for a while so you can visit your teammate in the hospital?" Gai asked rather pointedly.
"No," Haruka told him with a glare. "He totally deserved that beating and I'm not leaving here until Kakashi wakes up."
"Sasuke-kun has sustained a number of bruises as well as a broken arm and several broken ribs." Gai's voice was verging on angry now and Haruka sighed.
"It's not that I don't care he's hurt," she said. "But his hatred blinds him. And those injuries? Any remotely competent medic can heal them. They won't so much as leave a scar behind and it's hard to take them seriously when I know that Itachi would never kill Sasuke."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean," she huffed. "Itachi murdered his whole clan. Old people, babies, even his own parents, but not Sasuke. I don't know why he did it, and I don't know why he does what he does now, but I know for a fact that he loves his brother." Haruka didn't mention that Itachi was a pacifist. That statement didn't go well with this particular example, and it wasn't something Gai needed to know. If Itachi hadn't been the heir, hadn't been taught that he needed to fulfill his duty to the clan, he would have never become a shinobi. Her friend might be brilliant and deadly, but he also hated violence and the suffering it caused.
Sasuke would have attacked his brother until he was physically unable to continue. Itachi could have achieved that without breaking any of his bones, but he'd been playing villain for a while now. She wouldn't judge him until she had evidence that could explain the discrepancies between his character and behavior. The only theories that Haruka could think of were that he was either protecting something or acting on the Hokage's orders, but neither of these made a whole lot of sense.
Gai tried to convince her a few more times to go to the hospital, but she didn't budge. He'd have to drag her away kicking and screaming if he wanted her to leave Kakashi. She told him as much. In the end he went and stole Sasuke from the hospital, which was why there were now a bed and two futons in Kakashi's flat. It was a curious kind of compromise considering that it would cause a minor panic in the hospital, but Haruka wasn't about to question the decision.
At least she didn't until both Sakura and Ino were pounding on the door, demanding to see the Uchiha. She tried waiting them out at first, but after half an hour her patience was at an end. She stalked over to the entrance, ripped open the door and then hit them with a burst of very focused, very malevolent killing intent.
"You have five seconds to leave, or I swear I'll cut you into so many tiny pieces that no one will be able to identify what's left of you," Haruka said in the most pleasant voice she could manage. She'd personally always thought quiet threats were far more terrifying than shouted once, but cheating a little with killing intent certainly didn't hurt. Maybe she'd overdone it though.
Both girls were hugging each other and huddled against the wall, staring at her with wide eyes. Haruka sighed, but didn't say anything more. Instead she closed the door in their faces and hoped that they could at least be frightened quietly. If they started to cry or scream she'd definitely have to kick them down the stairs.
Gai came over to deliver food and scold her in the evening. She thanked him for the former and completely ignored the latter. He was the one who had brought Sasuke here, that didn't mean she had to tolerate the Uchiha's fangirls.
𖦹𖦹𖦹
The next day had Hinata leaving a collection of herbal teas and salves in front of the door without even knocking. Haruka stopped her before she hurried away again though and asked if she wanted to come inside.
"I wouldn't want to be a burden," Hinata told her. It didn't take a genius to figure out she'd heard about the incident with Sakura and Ino. Haruka assured the heiress at length that she was never a burden and couldn't be as annoying as the other two girls even if she tried.
They spent a pleasant few hours talking about whatever took their fancy. Hinata didn't care about Sasuke or Kakashi any more than she did about any other near stranger, but she'd still specifically made the salves for them. They were meant so relieve stress on the chakra system and also had calming as well as anti-inflammatory properties. Haruka told her that she was too nice.
"You're just too jaded," Hinata quipped and then promptly slammed one of her delicate hands over her mouth in shock. Haruka blinked at her for a moment, then burst out laughing. It took her several minutes to get her breathing back under control, but by the time she did Hinata looked a lot less horrified.
"See?" Haruka smiled at her. "The sky didn't fall down."
On day three Shikamaru brought over a shogi board and then spent the whole day with her.
"Heard this is a no-annoying-visitors zone," he'd said when she'd let him in. Apparently the village, or at least this year's rookies, had nothing better to do than gossip about who was and wasn't allowed to enter the flat.
After that Shikamaru, and sometimes Choji, Shino or Hinata, spent every day keeping Haruka company. Even Neji visited once so she could explain how she'd beaten him during the third exam round. Sai never came in, but he was usually somewhere close by when she went to bed and still around by the time she got up again. She left food on the windowsill every evening to thank him for keeping watch. Haruka had no idea if something was going on, or if he was just being cautious, but it was nice to know that he was there in case something did happen.
On the seventh day Naruto bounced into the room, all wide smiles and excited energy. He had started talking a mile a minute before he'd even been through the door. With him were Jiraiya and two women. The seal master and the one in a dark blue kimono and a tiny pig in her arms waited outside, while the other woman marched in as if she owned the place. She had blond hair and wore a grass-green haori over a gray kimono-style blouse. On her forehead was a diamond shaped seal that held immense amounts of chakra.
"Tsunade?" Haruka guessed.
"Try Hokage-sama," Shikamaru suggested before the woman could answer. Haruka shrugged at him.
"Right now I'm more interested in the fact that she's probably the world's best medic, but I guess she's also not a bad choice for Godaime."
"So glad you approve," Tsunade sneered. She only needed seconds to figure out what was wrong with Kakashi and Sasuke, and even less time to fix them. She also looked a little baffled when Haruka bowed deeply in thanks and apologized for being disrespectful.
"Knock it off!" The woman demanded. "I want both of you in my office before the day is over." She glared at each of them in turn as if she expected protest and then marched out, dragging Naruto with her.
"Weird," was Shikamaru's only comment, then he reset their game as if nothing had happened. Haruka silently agreed.
Kakashi woke less than thirty minutes later and almost immediately threw them out of his flat. He seemed more embarrassed than unhappy though, so Haruka didn't read anything into it. He was usually the one protecting others and never really seemed to know how to react when the tables were turned.
They hadn't planned to go see Tsunade so soon after the woman had left, but it wasn't like either of them had anything better to do. Of course that didn't keep Shikamaru from walking so slowly that Haruka would have sworn he'd lose a race against a stone. By the time they finally reached their destination they'd wasted nearly a full hour.
"Good job," Haruka commented sourly.
"You could have gone on your own you know?"
"But then she'd have made me wait for your lazy ass to arrive."
Shikamaru gave her a one shouldered shrug as he opened the door to the Godaime's office. Lazy bastard. Still, she'd gotten used to having him around, and it wasn't like he was bad company.
Tsunade raised an eyebrow at both of them, and Haruka didn't know if it was because she'd expected them to arrive five minutes after they'd run into her assistant on the road or not for a few more hours. Instead of enlightening them she threw a chunin flak jacket at Shikamaru.
"Congratulations," she drawled with a sadistic smile at the Nara's groan. Then she turned towards Haruka, another vest to her right and a stack of papers to her left. "Explain to me why nobody wanted to promote you during the exam, but there are more than a dozen recommendations for a field promotion. I also have several requests from the hospital, both to get you an apprenticeship and to reprimand you for unlawful use of an unspecified medical procedure. Not to mention one report marking you as a potential traitor and threat to the village, and a request from Suna for leniency on an entirely different matter of potential treason."
Haruka blinked at her for a few moments while Shikamaru quietly snickered at her side.
"Uhm… my fight with Neji, going after Hinata, rescuing Shino, the confrontation with Itachi and not killing Gaara, respectively," she guessed. This time it was Tsunade's turn to stare in confusion. The Godaime made her explain everything that had happened from the start and in detail. Shikamaru tried to escape from the office twice. The first time all he got for his efforts was a glare, but the second time Tsunade threw a paperweight at him that broke the bookcase behind him. He sat down and pretended he wasn't there after that.
In the end the Hokage decided that Haruka would neither get a promotion nor a reprimand. She also made her register at the hospital as a poisons specialist, which wasn't entirely untrue, but implied she actually used poisons or knew how to properly treat them.