Naruto: Dreaming of Sunshine

It's always too early to quit. ~ Norman Vincent Peale

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"Okay," I said, clambering back onto the foot of Kakashi-sensei's hospital bed with my pile of books. "Project; Miracle is a go."

Sakura giggled, covering her mouth with her hand delicately. "Do you give all your missions codenames?"

"That's not actually a thing," I said, trying to organize myself. A hospital room didn't exactly make for a great base of operations, but we worked with what we had. "Missions are just missions."

"They do in War Operations," Kakashi-sensei said, seriously. "There's a prize for whoever can come up with the best names."

"Really?" I asked, intrigued. I was a little surprised – more that he was telling us than that there was a competition, to be honest. That sounded exactly like something ninja would do.

He smiled, eye crinkling. "No."

No, there wasn't a competition or no, they didn't name them? I huffed in exasperation and then let it go, knowing that Kakashi-sensei was probably just trying to deliberately wind me up because he was in a terribly uncomfortable situation and couldn't escape.

Yep, that boded really well for how this was going to go.

"So where do we start?" Sasuke asked, impatiently cutting through the byplay.

Good question. "Well," I said, "did you find any Uchiha records?"

He shrugged, a bit uncomfortably. "I don't know what's in them. I have all the stuff you brought back from the outpost. And… there's more compound, if those turn up empty."

He didn't exactly seem eager to go through them, but I couldn't exactly blame him for that either. I wasn't sure if there would be anything in the outpost records – was that the sort of stuff you planned to move first?

"That'll probably be our biggest trump card," I said optimistically, "if we have access to information on the sharingan that the hospital doesn't."

You never really could underestimate clan knowledge hording. Even now, when it could be assumed that the hospital had aggregated enough data on us all, just from experience, there were cases when that just wasn't so. Like the Akimichi pills – Shikamaru had had to give Tsunade access to our clan encyclopedia for her to treat that.

"Shouldn't you give that to the hospital then?" Sakura asked, hesitantly. She glanced at Sasuke through her eyelashes. "We'd be really happy to have it!"

Sasuke crossed his arms and shot me a look that very plainly said why Sakura.

I shot back a look that said well do you know any other medics that are willing to help us solely on the basis of friendship and/or your pretty face. I wasn't sure that it all translated but he probably got the gist of it.

"Anything we come up with will have to go through Tsunade anyway," I said to her question. "And it's not like the hospital will want to wade through a lot of irrelevant records to search for it. There just aren't enough medics for that."

"That's true," she acknowledged, wilting a little. "So, um, Kakashi-san, is there a reason why you won't have Shishou's surgery?"

I'd explained the situation to Sakura – what the issue was, what the sharingan was, even, because that wasn't really well known information in our generation and why it was important to us – but I hadn't exactly gone into depth about his reasons. I hadn't thought Sakura would out and out ask, but of course she would.

Kakashi-sensei sighed. "Tsunade wanted to just remove it outright. She only agreed to try re-implant it because I wouldn't agree." He looked away, out the window. "There's are a lot of things that could go wrong with the surgery. If it deactivates and they can't reactivate it. Or if the chakra paths collapse. If there's nerve damage. There's only a 40% chance that it will still work afterwards. And even then, if all of that is successful…." A tiny, fractional amount of frustration started to leech into his voice. "It might not even fix the issue."

Tsunade had said something like that, hadn't she? A 60% chance it would improve the chakra drain. But that was on top of the success of the surgery itself.

That probably wasn't the whole reason – I very much doubted it, in fact – but it was the logical reasoning, dry and factual, about the surgery itself. I didn't think anyone would ever get Kakashi-sensei to admit to feelings related reasons.

"So, if there are any viable alternatives, we should look for them," I said, smoothly trying to jog the conversation onwards. "Since none of us are actually-" trained in this, I nearly said then thought better of it, "-specialists, Sakura has kindly located the current medical textbooks for chakra systems and optometry. Ophthalmology." I considered the words. Which one was correct? "Eye stuff."

That did seem to break the tension in the room. "Eye stuff," Kakashi-sensei repeated in dry amusement. "I'm glad to know my team is so eloquent. Very reassuring."

I waggled a finger at him, not taking it to heart. "I'm the chakra expert, obviously. I've studied chakra, chakra systems, chakra development and chakra disorders, though admittedly not chronic chakra exhaustion. That'll be something new."

"That's right," Sasuke said, looking to the side like he was refreshing his memory. "I forgot you used to read all those boring books in class."

"Personal interest," I said with a shrug. "I still would but I've had more pressing matters to study since graduation." My focus had shifted outside the human body, to the things you could do with it instead.

I parceled out the books, including one to Kakashi who looked at it like he had no idea how to operate this fascinating device – the liar - and started in on it. Unfortunately for us, studying wasn't merely a case of reading through and instantly understanding how everything functioned and how to apply that.

I had studied something like this before – but not in depth. A generic overview of ocular structures, lens and rods and cones, as part of a physiology paper over a decade ago. It was better than nothing, but that didn't make it easy. I took many notes and scratched out diagrams and tried to hone an understanding that would help.

Sasuke flicked through a couple of the books with his sharingan on and then appeared to give up, instead pulling out the medical files that Tsunade had given us. There was still a lot blacked out and flat out missing, but hopefully it had the relevant information in it.

He struggled a bit with those too, asking for clarification on abbreviations and certain hospital vocabulary, until Sakura vanished and came back with a glossary. "Here you go, Sasuke-kun," she said, holding it out like an offering. "This might help?"

He took it a little stiffly. "Thank you, Sakura-san."

Even with the pretty formal honorific attached, she looked delighted.

We took a break for lunch and Sakura had to actually attend classes but by the time the end of visiting hours rolled around, my brain was swimming from the dry medical terminology. It didn't exactly feel like progress.

"Okay," I said, covering a yawn. "I think I've got some ideas. I want to take a look at the chakra drain issue, tomorrow. Do you think we could requisition a diagnostic chakra sensor?"

"Maybe?" Sakura said, but doubtfully, as though she didn't think it would work.

Yeah, me neither. I knew exactly what requisition lists were like. "Orrr…" I drawled. "I can steal one from the clan and bring it. And by 'steal one' I mean make a seal and pretend that it's official."

Sakura fidgeted. "Is that a good idea?" She asked nervously. "It did get you in trouble last time."

And this time I really would be using it for medical purposes. That wasn't just a 'misunderstanding' it was very much flying in the face of the rules.

I looked at Kakashi-sensei.

He shrugged, apathetically.

"Eh," I said. "As long as no one asks where our information came from or looks into it too closely, it should be fine."

"Okay," Sasuke said, standing and rolling his neck. His vertebrae gave an alarming crack. "Same again tomorrow then." He didn't seem particularly enthused, but the grim determined line to his mouth was still there so he wasn't bailing, just disappointed.

Yeah, we hadn't solved it yet. But that was asking a bit more than a miracle.

I packed up the books on the side table and was the last to leave when Kakashi-sensei gave a deep sigh.

"What is it?" I asked, pausing and looking at him quizzically.

"There's nothing to find," he said, looking out the window instead of at me. "You're wasting your time. You should be training."

I considered that. I considered that very deeply.

It was rude to hit someone that was already in hospital, wasn't it? Or was that just being efficient? He wouldn't have to go very far for treatment.

"No," I decided, out loud. "You don't get to do this."

His eye jumped to me, startled, because I wasn't following the script.

"Do you remember," I asked, "in Wave? When Zabuza had you trapped. You told me to go, like I was the one who would talk the others into leaving."

He snorted. "I remember how well that worked out," he said dryly.

"Exactly," I said. "We didn't give up then and we're not giving up now. And we told you not to give us stupid orders anymore, sensei. This counts. I'm not going to try and talk Sasuke out of helping you because I don't want to. We're going to keep looking, keep fighting." I looked at him, as if I could convey conviction with a stare alone. "And if, in the event that there's nothing to find, if… if you die, I'm going to be able to look at myself in the mirror and say 'I did everything I could'."

These days 'everything I could' was no small amount.

I was not powerless.

"So, don't you dare," I said.

He looked away. "I'm-" he hesitated for so long I didn't think he would continue. "I'm sorry."

It seemed like it cost him a lot to say that, to admit it. Everything about this was costing him. For a second, I nearly jumped on it, nearly said so why won't you-

But that wasn't the right approach. This wasn't a fight I'd win with a head on tactic like that. I couldn't argue sensei into changing his mind. He had to do that himself. We'd work on this, show him how much we cared, that there were things to stick around for.

"I don't want your apology," I said, implacably. "I want you to live." I took a breath and went on. "You get to choose even if we don't like your choices. But so do we. And this is ours. It's for us."

I didn't know if he understood what I was saying, but I thought he did. Probably more than he wanted to.

You did everything you could. And then you hoped it was enough.

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By the time I arrived the next morning, Sasuke was already there and hard at work.

"I pulled out all the sharginan related information and graphed the incidents over time," he said, tapping a pen against his lips and squinting at the sheet of paper, sensei's medical files piled around him. "I thought they'd get more frequent but they don't."

"Good idea," I said approvingly. "Data analysis." We had no idea what we were doing, so it was simply a matter of throwing everything at the problem and seeing what stuck. I looked over his shoulder. "You might need to control for ... mission frequency? Extremity? Badness?" I tapped two fingers down, one at the point of implantation and one a bit further along. "This is the Third War and ... here to, say... here is going to be frequent high risk missions."

Kakashi-sensei stared at me, narrow eyed. "How do you know that?"

Those were his Anbu years. But... "Kyuubi attack to when you started testing Genin teams," I said, not blinking an eye. "The village would have been short staffed, and then you're one of the most elite ninja we have. It's pretty obvious."

Sasuke made a mark where I'd gestured. Most of the lines fell within it, which was probably because they were most of the time frame. "Hn," he said, displeased. "Maybe if I go by length of recovery."

"Maybe take the tomoe into account?" I suggested. "Do you remember if that changed anything for you?"

Sasuke squinted thoughtfully. "They came in in the middle of a fight so I couldn't really tell." He shrugged, a little helplessly. "But I don't think running the sharingan takes that much chakra for me. I notice it's activation, but that's because... I have to activate it."

I made a thoughtful hum. "If we can find a way to compare the two of you we might manage… something. I'll think on it." I had diagnostic jutsu, and my own chakra sense to rely on, but I didn't think there was any way to measure chakra drain for doujutsu. It wasn't like an external jutsu where you could measure the expenditure.

I settled in, taking some of the medical files and getting started.

"Oh," Sakura said, high and startled when she arrived. "I'm late! I'm sorry!"

"We didn't exactly agree on a start time, so you can't be late," I said, waving her off. "We're just all workaholics here."

"Oh, um," she fidgeted, tucking a strand of long loose hair behind her ear. "I brought bentos for lunch. For everyone. Since we had to go and get lunch yesterday, I thought it would be nice."

"That's very thoughtful," I said even though I was pretty sure I hadn't been the one to prompt the generosity. Sasuke conspicuously said nothing.

(This suspicion was absolutely borne out at lunch time when I opened it to find a salad absolutely layered in tomatoes. I sighed and flicked them all into Sasuke's bento box instead. He was perfectly happy with that arrangement.)

"Okay," I said, staring thoughtfully at the ceiling. "So, I put together that measurement seal."

"You mean the one you aren't supposed to be doing," Sakura clarified, a tinge of disapproval in her voice.

"Yeah, that one," I agreed vaguely in her direction. "I'm going to set that up and get a baseline reading and then see if I can refine it to focus on the sharingan chakra drain."

"Does this seal work?" Kakashi-sensei asked, peering over his book at me. I was pretty sure he'd given up reading the medical textbook and had just slotted Icha Icha inside it, but I didn't actually want to check.

"Of course," I said immediately. "Probably. I tested it on myself first. It should be fine."

I slapped the tag on my arm to demonstrate. My circulatory system completed the open circuit and it spun to life without needing to be fed; which was probably important if you were trying to measure chakra without consuming it. The outer circle spun, decreasing in speed until it settled.

Then it beeped.

"See?" I said, looking at the clearly displayed numbers. "Exactly like the machines."

Not bad for a mornings work, really.

"Impressive," Sasuke said, so very dryly, making it clear he really wasn't.

Yeah well, compared to combat seals it was nothing. And we already had devices that would do exactly the same thing, so it wasn't a break through either.

"It really is, isn't it?" Sakura said brightly, clapping her hands together. "That's really great Shikako!"

"You take it off and it resets," I said, peeling the tag off. "Viola. Also, just so we're clear. I'm a field ninja and accepting a seal from me is the same as accepting a weapon."

"Is that a declaration you need to make often?" Kakashi asked, looking at me oddly. "It isn't going to explode, right?"

I brushed it off. "Hospital rules," I said. "Don't worry about it. Just don't get me in trouble with Tsunade."

Still, Sensei applied it with good grace and Sasuke wrote it down, apparently filling in the role of scribe for us.

"We give it half an hour and measure again and then we can calculate the total chakra recovery rate," I said. "Which is actually the result of both recovery and drain. And then hopefully I can fix the seal to focus on the sharingan…" I trailed off because I was pretty sure I was starting to repeat myself here.

"I can run some diagnostic jutsu," Sakura offered, twisting her hands together. "I'm sure the medics already have, but maybe I'll see something?"

Kakashi-sensei sighed. "If you must," he said, resigned. Which was actually good sport coming from a man that regularly fled the hospital to avoid check ups.

Sakura was brisk and professional, and while she was doing that, Sasuke let me run one on his eyes as well, activating them and turning them off on cue so I could feel the difference in the chakra flow.

It was interesting. The chakra pathways behind his eyes were far wider and more developed than, say, mine, but there wasn't anything particularly unusual about them. The surge of chakra when he activated the sharingan was large but brief and probably didn't equate to anything more than a D-rank jutsu. The flow after that was higher than resting state, but again, not particularly significant on its own.

"How long can you hold it?" I wondered. I could feel it spinning, not necessarily physically, it was an interesting feeling.

"I've never tried for longer than a battle," Sasuke said, then amended. "Or training. A couple of hours at most. But it wasn't because it was hard or anything."

I hmm'd thoughtfully.

"Some of the police used to have theirs active all day," Kakashi said quietly. "It was something we asked about, when it was implanted. They didn't think there would be any negative side effects."

Sasuke stiffened at the mention of his clan, but nodded, reluctantly.

"Your chakra pathways are a little enlarged and inflamed," Sakura said, "but nothing that should be causing large scale problems. Maybe a little bit of discomfort, but that's it."

"Chakra bleed off?" I asked, swapping places with her. Sasuke gave me an irritated look that I ignored.

"Nothing particularly noticeable," she said, shaking her head.

I ran through the handseals and settled my palms against sensei's temple, starting to parse through the feedback. Sakura was right, there seemed to be irritation around the pathways, but that was a thing that often happened to shinobi hands. Generally speaking, the cure was rest which wasn't exactly possible in this case.

The chakra usage was a little higher than it had been in Sasuke's case and I could almost feel where the join had been made because there was a jolt like a missed step and chakra began to bleed out a little more afterwards. That wasn't exactly uncommon either – chakra didn't just stay in the coils, it permeated the entire body.

None of it felt like enough.

Which was what the second tag measurement told us, as well.

"That's ... weird," I said, the catchphrase of a research ninja stumbling across an anomaly.

Everyone leaned over to look at my calculations. "What?"

"Sakura," I asked, slowly, "What's the average chakra recovery rate?"

"Two to three days," she said promptly.

Yeah, that was what I thought. Generally speaking, full recovery took two to three days. "And Kakashi-sensei takes about a week."

I'd taken the recovery rate we'd witnessed with our two points, guestimated an average chakra capacity for a jounin, and calculated the time it would take to fill. Not even complicated.

And it was wrong.

"What's the problem?" Kakashi asked. "Have you found something?" He didn't sound hopeful, didn't sound much of anything, which probably meant he was or was trying not to be.

"Well," I said. "I've discovered that theoretically you should be fine."

"Ah," he said dryly. "Well, I'll just hop on home then, shall I?"

"Two days," Sasuke said, tracing my answer. "It's wrong."

"I know it's wrong," I said, annoyed. "I just don't know why."

"Well, the hospital usually tests recovery per day," Sakura said slowly. "Maybe doing it by half hour is just … too short." She reached over to Sasuke's notes. "See? They've already tested this."

"That doesn't even make sense," I retorted. "Chakra production doesn't vary like that. Sure, it might be less accurate but it's not going to give us an answer that is that far out."

Sasuke smirked. "Maybe your seal is wrong."

I glared at him, half-heartedly. Because yeah, that was the most obvious solution to this problem. But… "It's not," I insisted. I gave the tag back to Kakashi-sensei, who applied it with some fascination.

We watched as it spiralled.

And the result was lower.

"Well at least it didn't explode," Kakashi-sensei said, peeling it off gingerly. "As far as seal failures go, that's pretty mild."

"Impossible," I muttered, taking the tag back and going over my seal work. There was nothing wrong with it. I wrote it out again, taking care with my brush flicks so I didn't cross any characters, and applied both tags to myself.

They gave the same answer.

I formed a blob of chakra in my hand and let it evaporate into the atmosphere and applied them again. They gave a lower result, equal to about what I'd used.

"Sasuke," I said, demandingly, and gave them to him.

He huffed, but used them. And used a jutsu at my urging. We juggled the tags between ourselves, but the numbers steadily climbed, no sudden drops or weird results.

I stared at them balefully and then passed them to Kakashi-sensei.

He sighed.

His chakra total had climbed again, back over the last highest mark. Calculating the recovery rate from that and the low result still put him in a normal recovery range.

"Sensei," I said, voice overly serious. "You're broken."

"Irregular chakra production?" Sakura suggested, leaning forward eagerly. "Maybe it's not a sharingan issue at all."

"That develops in early childhood," I pointed out. "And sensei didn't have any problems before the sharingan, right?" I tilted my head back to look at him.

He shook his head.

Then again, he was only thirteen…

"Late onset?" she suggested. "It could have been masked by the sharingan. Or maybe a related disorder… I'll go and see if I can get more specific information!" She fairly bolted out of the room.

Even Sasuke looked more energised. We'd found something. What that something was and whether it was relevant and what we could do to fix it… those were still questions up in the air.

While we waited, I grew frustrated with having to reset the measurement tag and ripped it apart, trying to install an auto-reset function so it could continuously monitor instead of taking a single reading. The final result was about twice the size of the original and involved basically setting a circuit breaker that would flip and reset when the reading was made, forcing the seal to restart.

Unfortunately, there was no recording function which meant we'd have to manually watch it and record.

Sasuke took over that job while I tried to see if I could make the other seal into something more location specific.

"What would irregularity look like?" Sasuke asked, eyes still focused upon the seal and pencil moving almost absently against the paper.

"Chakra Irregularity Disorder is characterised by alternating periods of elevated and depressed chakra production," Sakura said promptly, the diagnostic book open in front of her. "Common side effects are mania and lethargy, increased states of activity and mood changes. If chakra production is lower than the basal usage rate, the condition may be life threatening."

"So," Sasuke said, "changes in gradient. It's not that." He turned his sheet of paper towards us. He'd been recording the data as a graph, rather than straight numbers and it was immediately obvious what he meant.

"Spikes," I said, thoughtfully.

It wasn't a slow change. There was a sudden, sharp dip in chakra levels in a couple of places, and then a returning climb at basically the same rate. Overall Kakashi-sensei took much longer to recover, but it wasn't because there was any problem with his chakra generation. But it wasn't a consistent drain, either, it was-

"Almost like a jutsu," Sasuke said.

I looked thoughtfully at sensei. "You aren't doing anything, are you?" I asked.

"And stay in hospital longer?" he deadpanned.

Yeah, good point.

"Well," I said, holding up my half completed seal. "I can try isolate where the surge is happening but-"

"Sharingan," Sasuke filled in, leaning back against the chair. "What else could it be?"

"Assumptions aren't great," I said. "But I should be able to confirm that with a diagnostic jutsu instead. How frequent are they?"

Sasuke shrugged one shoulder. "Looks random," he said. "There haven't been many of them so I can't tell if there's a pattern. Sometimes there's nothing for ages. Sometimes there are two really close together."

We also hadn't really been monitoring for very long, so we didn't have much data for conclusions, either.

"Okay-" I said, then cut myself off. "Tsunade is coming!"

Kakashi casually peeled the tag off his arm and dropped it on the floor. Sasuke flipped his graph over and started writing on the back.

Sakura startled and looked up. "What?"

The door slid open. Tsunade looked at us, being all casual like, and our work spread out all over the floor and looked immediately unimpressed. "Find anything?" she asked.

I smiled winningly. "We have a couple of solid ideas," I said, careful not to call them leads. Sure, this might not have been in the files we were given, but that didn't mean Tsunade didn't know. She might have. It wasn't like we had to immediately report it to her. We could look into it first.

She meandered around the room and gave Kakashi his daily check-up, making notes on his patient chart.

"Alright," she said. "You can be out of here tomorrow." She tapped her knuckles against his skull, lightly. "No chakra, you hear me? If I see you again before your next appointment, I'm going to be annoyed."

"Party at sensei's house," I said immediately.

"Hey, no!" he protested, just as immediately. "Study at your own home."

"But then you won't show up," I said logically, and nudged Sasuke in the shoulder.

He nodded. "I'll bring the scrolls," he agreed, completely ignoring sensei.