Thank you for checking this out! Hope you enjoy ;p

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto or any of the characters!

Chapter 1: Beginning

"Don't forget. Ever. Kay?"

"I won't forget unless you forget."

"It's a promise?"

"Yeah. Promise."

It happened all in an instant. It was just a loud bang, screeching metal and tires. And then everything was dark.

He woke up in the ER. It was unfamiliarly familiar. He'd been here enough times to recognize the smell of antiseptic and beyond-clean bedsheets. He'd been here enough to recognize the smell of illness and wounded bodies. There was a doctor and nurses hovering over him.

"He's awake!"

Hidan's head was pounding. He felt like he was forgetting something. What was it? Sakura! The car! He bolted upright, ripping wires off of him and yanking the IV line out in a spectacular spray of blood.

"Sir! Sir!" He pushed his way past the bewildered and taken-by-surprise team of medical staff blocking his way.

He made it out just in time to see a head of red-stained pink hair, splayed on a gurney, wheeling towards the OR.

"Sakura!" His voice was hoarse. "Sakura!"

"Sir, you must keep your distance!" Hidan ignored the doctor clinging to his sleeve. He ignored the security guards shouting at him, running towards him.

"Sakura! You've got us! You can't forget! Everyone's waiting for you!" And the big, intimidating, silver-haired teenager slumped to the floor in a dead faint.

The next time Hidan woke up, he was in a hospital room. There were a beeping heart monitor, one that flatlined in an annoying beeeep as he yanked it off. The room's door slid open gently.

"Hidan." Konan stood at the door. Hidan stared at her with belligerent eyes.

"Yeah? Something wrong?" Konan shrugged.

"You're an irresponsible asshole." She sighed out. "Sakura's in critical condition. What were you thinking? Driving under influence with Sakura in the car. You dumbass." Hidan scowled.

"Whatever. Can I see her?" Konan shrugged again.

"It's your choice. I doubt they'd let you in, but we can try." She made no move to help him as Hidan stood on bruised and aching legs, clutching the IV pole in a rare show of weakness.

They made a strange parade, a woman with an impassive face save for the slight furrows of her brows, and a teen following behind, dragging an impressive array of injuries with him. Konan stopped in front of a pair of big doors.

"ICU. That bad." It wasn't a question. Hidan limped past Konan to push the doors open. Before his hand brushed the door, it hummed open on automatic hinges.

He never thought he'd feel fear. Yet that was all he felt as he stood at the doorway with Haruno Sakura's name on it.

"Go on." It wasn't encouragement, it was just a statement. But Hidan straightened his shoulders and slid the door open quietly.

Sakura didn't look like Sakura. It was a monster that had swallowed her up, amidst the coiling wires and lines snaking from and into her. Her skin was pale, blending nearly into the white pillow her head rested on. Her pink hair was gone, shaved off, leaving a nest of bandages covering her head.

"She...wasn't expected to survive." Konan quietly said. "Her heart stopped once in the ER, and her brain was bleeding so badly…" She trailed off, letting the circumstances in which Hidan was seeing Sakura sink in and hit him across the face.

Hidan sank into a chair beside her bedside, taking ahold of her cold hand.

"I'm sorry." He whispered. "It was my fault. I'm sorry. But please, come back. Come back to us."

Days passed, and Hidan had mostly healed. He'd been discharged after three days of observation, into the custody of his two friends. Not really parents, but friends. After all, Nagato and Konan had all the youth the rest of his eccentric family had.

He received the expected lecture from his guardians, but not the expected punishment.

"You have done something you can never fix." Nagato sighed, running a hand through his red hair. "But Sakura's suffering is your suffering. And that is punishment enough." Hidan nodded, almost meek.

A week passed, then two weeks. Sakura didn't wake up until the middle of the third week.

When Sakura woke up, she didn't know where she was. She didn't know the silver-haired boy dozing beside her bed, holding onto her hand like it was a lifeline.

Her body wasn't responding to her commands. I want to reach out to the boy and pat him on the cheek. But the most she could manage was a single finger lifting. But that was enough. The boy's eyes flashed open - were they purple? - and he shot up.

"Sakura! You fucking dumbass." His voice broke on the 'ass'. "Do you know how much you scared me?" His free hand reached up and touched her cheek. And she felt familiar with this total stranger.

"Ah…" She winced. Her throat hurt. But she needed to ask him something. "Um, who are you?"

His face changed from an almost tender smile to slack-jawed disbelief.

"Sakura?" He was confused. "It's me. Hidan."

"Oh." She smiled softly, "I'm sorry, I don't recognize you. Who are you to me?"

Hidan didn't know how to reply. Gone was the fiery girl he had once known. Gone was the reckless brashness he'd loved. All of it was replaced by this thin wisp of a girl. What was he supposed to tell her? That he was the guy that loved her unconditionally? That he was the guy that she loved unconditionally?

"I'm...I'm just a friend." He stood, disentangling his hand from hers and somehow wrenched himself away from the wide-eyed little girl who was somehow Sakura.

"O-Oh I see. Um, thanks for visiting."

It was not often that Kakuzu saw Hidan's weak side. Actually, he hadn't seen it since Hidan's estranged parents (if you could call them such) had signed their guardianship of the abused boy over to Konan and Nagato.

But here he was, sitting on the edge of his bed, head in his hands and shoulders shaking. Well this was awkward.

"Ahem." Hidan's head shot up, hands furiously brushing at his face.

"What do you fucking want?" Ah, there was his potty mouth.

"How's Sakura?" Kakuzu definitely had not expected to step on a landmine.

"She's fucking fine! How the hell do you think she's doing? She's awake, she's alive, she's on her way to recovery! Of course she's fucking fine!" Kakuzu was taken aback.

"What happened." It was not a question. Hidan seemed to deflate. Kakuzu had always seemed to read him better than other people.

"She doesn't remember me. And that's all my fault. It's my fault that this -" He waved his arm around "- is just a place to her. It's not where her family is. It's not where her heart is. It's just a place."

Kakuzu's eyes had widened over the short course of Hidan's explanation. "She has amnesia?"

"Yeah." Hidan's breathing was heavy again. "Leave me alone."

Kakuzu did as he asked, shutting the door quietly on Hidan's misery.

So obviously I haven't been active. My other two stories are pretty much on indefinite hiatus, since I don't have much motivation to write them and also because I feel like my writing style has changed.

This was a plot bunny running around in a cage and was demanding to be released XD

My plan for this story is to have one chapter in the present, then one chapter in the past, kind of a flashback thing (kinda like If I Stay) It's kinda based on If I Stay, but the plot will be completely different :)

Thanks for reading, please review and leave any questions or comments you have behind :D