I'm just trying to get back into the swing of writing. Reviews are always nice. I'm sorry if there are any spelling errors. I edited it but sometimes errors escape my notice.

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto and any of it's characters.

Chapter 1

This is the End

1980, May 31

She can't stop coughing up blood, no matter how much she tries to cover her mouth and inhale between counts of four and exhales of the same pattern.

She's doing this thing that resembles a dying animal, scrabbling at whatever she's entangled her fingers in and digging welts into it. A tree, she realizes, because her fingers are bleeding a bit as well from holding on and she can smell pine and copper.

There are dead bodies around her too but she's knows to ignore them. One of them is loosely grasping a kunai, the one that had made the gash down her chest. His eyes are wide open and eerily staring at her. He doesn't blink and his face is twisted at an odd angle against the floor.

"I can't-" Hinata starts and coughs up more; scarlet is dribbling down her chin, making splatters on the floor. She knows because she can't seem to stop focusing on it, whilst her fingers are clawing at whatever surface she has her hands on, and oh, her vision is hazy. "I can't-" she tries again and hacks up more.

Black emerges at the forefront of her vision and she thinks, 'oh good, I'm going to sleep. I need that. It's been too long,' but she realizes quickly enough that it's just Sasuke's hair.

There must have been some sort of lapse in time because she can suddenly see his face –porcelain – and she blinks to try to focus, but it only makes time seem to move forward faster.

She sees his lips moving but they're just about as understandable as the blood on the floor and she feels herself trying to close her eyes again to refocus.

A sharp sting is felt on her left cheek and she barely contains a hiss, turning away abruptly. Blood splatters on the wall in the direction she's turned to and she wants to tell Sasuke to stop slapping her because he's not helping at all- it's the opposite of help in fact.

"Stay awake" he's saying – but she thinks he's yelling that – and she wants to tell him that she would if he would stop making her injury worse but all she manages is another cough. "Don't move" he adds, and she thinks he's being a little bosy.

"-breathe" she finishes, because she suddenly remembers what she was trying to say. "I can't breathe" she manages and it only garners a swear from Sasuke and he's lifting her up. She can feel the world spin on its axis and she rolls her head in to tuck herself under his arm as he adjusts her against his chest.

"Stay awake" he repeats and she wants to add that she doesn't want to listen to him because he got them here in the first place. They're deep in the forests of the hidden mist and too far from Konoha to possibly call for Naruto- help, she really means help. To call for help.

"I think it's getting into my lungs" she says, "that-"

"Shut up" he hisses and suddenly they're in the air, high above the canopy of trees, and she stops because she thinks she can hear the desperation in his tone. "I know that" and he then proceeds to ignore her.

She closes her eyes.

1980, June 6

Hinata picks at the stitches on her neck. It makes a trail further down the valley between her breasts and stops at her abdomen. It will be another couple of weeks before Sasuke will see them fit to be taken out.

There are no windows in the room she's in. The bed is white and smells faintly of herbs and sweat and the chair she occupies is often the one Sasuke sits in at night when he's watching her; hands clasped in front of him and expression unreadable. It's cold and wooden and the air is almost clammy and nothing like home on the Hyuuga compound. She misses the smell of the daffodils that would grow in the garden. They had often been her bed in the afternoon during her breaks from the medic room in the center of Konoha. But that had been so long ago.

She realizes that she's been swimming in her thoughts again because the book in her other hand falls and she startles at the sound it makes when it hits the floor.

She bends to pick it up and she's shocked by the numbing pain down her chest, and she crumples to the floor, on top of the book.

It's enough to send Sasuke running in because she can hear the heavy footfalls he makes as he runs down the stairs and she can hear the clattering of pans from whatever he was cooking before he heard her. Her only passing thought is that dinner will probably have to be remade. He absolutely hates cooking so he will most likely be mad at her for not sitting still and letting the wounds heal like he's told her so many times before.

"Hinata" he says, and he's already picking her up.

She's only slightly worried that she didn't hear him opening the door or appearing behind her to pick her up.

Her senses seem duller than before and it doesn't make sense.

"I told you not to move too much, No, I told you to rest" his actions aren't as laced with anger as his words because he carries her like a bird to the bed. He's pushing a strand from her eyes and unconsciously feeling her pulse.

She notices he does that a lot.

Checks her pulse.

Sometimes longer than he should.

Sometimes for no reason.

She's breathing. There's no need for that, but she thinks it's his new ritual, so she never comments. She sometimes washes her hands long after they're clean from blood.

"-and are you even listening?" he says and her head snaps up to look at him because it seems like she had been focusing on his neck far longer than what an attentive listener should have been doing.

"I-" she manages, but he cuts her off,

"stay still" and he touches her forehead, seeming to look for something in her eyes.

He's eye to eye with her.

Black to opaque.

She stares into the abyss.

They stay like that for a long time, but that's only Hinata's attempt to hazard a guess because time is scrambled for her.

Sasuke doesn't let her read the news on the resistance nor does he give her much of a status update on what they're next objective is or how everyone else is doing. Newspapers don't seem to deliver where they are and there are no windows in her room. She often doesn't leave the room lest Sasuke bickers with her on the possibility of her reopening her wounds. She sometimes feels guilty for that since she's supposed to be the medic in their partnership – and a shoddy job he's done with the stitches but she doesn't tell him that. It would be hypocritical too because her chakra paths are so scrambled that she can't even do a simple healing jutsu.

"When do we regroup with the resistance?" she asks when he seems to be inching closer to her.

His eyes are suddenly steel. "When they tell us to. Right now we're no good to them with you out of commission."

We, he'd said and she wanted to correct him that it was she who was useless currently. He could pass her off to Tsunade – the best medic of the lot of them – and she could heal up quite fine while he continues with a temporary partner until she's up and running again but she had said that a couple days ago and he had snapped back like a rearing snake, "We're low on medics. The sound nin like to kill your kind because they know it'll hit us the hardest. A mission without you will most likely lead to my death"

She tries again now because he seems distracted by something on her face.

"They should've sent word atleast" she tries patiently, but she's only met with Sasuke's back.

He's walking to the door.

"Sasuke" she says again – and when had her voice sounded so feeble and so reminiscent of when she had first met him?

He stops.

"I'd like to get into touch with Naruto atleast," she breathes, missing the blonde like she's missing a limb, "I can still do something from here. Tend to some of the sick. I won't be as efficient but I can-"

"Hinata" Sasuke says, and it's in that tone that garners no argument, "the resistance doesn't need you right now. You are no use to them half dead" he turns to her, positively ice and steel, "rest" and he's clutching her chin and so close, but she can feel his hands shaking from where he's touching her.

He leans in so, so close she can smell the smoke off of him – from cooking – and she feels like he's caging her in because she can't breathe. There's something desperate there - in his gaze- but she can't seem to understand it.

Sasuke pulls back just as quickly and she suddenly feels less suffocated.

"Dinner will be ready in an hour" he finishes and shuts the door.

She can hear him locking it behind him.