Disclaimer: I no own, you no sue.

Author's note: I've been sitting on this and two other ideas for a while and I've had the first part sitting in my documents for the last month or so. I want to write more but I wanna know if people would even want to read it so I'm throwing my first chapters up and seeing what people think. I don't need a huge review saying how good it is or you love it or you hate it and think I'm stupid for making such a crack pairing. If just one or two people say, I would like you to continue I would be happy. BTW please don't asked for scheduled updates, I have two part time jobs, do freelance art stuff and go to college part time so it's uncertain. That and I work better when the mood hits me so don't be mad, but I'll try not to go more then a month without an update (I'm hoping that'd be an extreme case), if I do continue. Otherwise please enjoy! It's been a few years so I may be rusty.

P.S. Sorry for the crappy title, I can't think of a non-cheesy one. If someone else could please suggest one to me.

The Unknown

Chapter 1: The Unexpected

The sky was at its darkest, right before the dawn. It sounded cliché but true, you don't realize how dark something is until it's compared to the light. 'I've really got to keep my musings to myself,' thought Sakura as she turned from the sky to the trees that still lay between her and Konoha. It was a simple retrieval mission from grass. Go to important daimyo's house, steal important document from extremely well locked down burglar proof house, and get ass back to base without being seen. She stretched her right arm again which had grown sore from holding her left at her side. It had been popped from its socket and she had tried to reduce it once already but without luck so she would just have to wait until she got back to Konoha.

'Home…oh god I want a bath. Better yet a soak at the hot springs. Even with healing I'm going to be sore for the next week.' Though the mission had been a success, recently because of an epidemic in Konoha, Sakura had been running mission after mission with little or no time in between for recovery. Though the epidemic was only fatal to the elderly and children the recovery time was 2 to 3 weeks. Thus even though the mission was simple enough Sakura was already running low on energy and charka from the mission before healing and tending to the infected. But hopefully within the next three or four days the sick would be back on their feet and she could go back to the hospital to relax. 'Never thought I'd think of working at the hospital as relaxing.'

She winced slightly at the light as dawn spilled over the hillside. 'Well that's it for my break,' she said with a grimace and once again started through the trees with the intention of getting home within the next 2 hours. 'That's right get home, report ASAP, get a bath, and pass out until hopefully tomorrow.' She almost groaned out loud of the thought of her lonely bed she hadn't seen in the last week. She was startled out of her reverie by the faint trickle of chakra she felt in the distance. She stopped a good distance away and tried to track the chakra. She was well within fire counties borders but just as easily as she had crossed into Earth country, someone else could have traveled through here.

'It's just holding still…and it's only one. It could be an injured ninja, but enemy or ally?' It was a tough decision, she was already running on fumes and if it was an enemy and it wasn't injured she could be walking into something she might not be able to handle. 'Oh jeeze,' she thought and made her way silently towards the flickering chakra her senses on alert for an attack. She landed a few yards away from the chakra signature. 'Where is it?'

She didn't spot anyone in the trees but she also didn't spot anyone just lying on the ground. 'A trap?' Just as she thought that she felt something prick the back of her neck. She quickly reached back expecting to find a senbon laced with poison, or a shurinken with a serrated edge stuck in her neck. So it was a bit of a surprise when she instead found a small bug in her hand as she put it in front of her face. 'Just a bug,' she thought looking at it unamused before she noticed….'It's eating my charka!' Like a lightbulb flashed over her head, she finally understood.

"Aburame-san," she called softly. 'There's only one clan with that kind of bloodline ability.' "It's Haruno Sakura, are you injured," she asked a bit louder and held her breath in bated silence.

"Sa-sakura-san," called out a voice softly from below a large oak to her right. 'The roots!' She quickly dropped down and moved a small bush to see that a Aburame was indeed hiding under the tree in its roots, and it seemed it was unfortunately what she thought as she came down to his level. She peered under the roots and was a bit shocked to see she knew this specific Aburame.

"Shino? It's you!" She then took a good look at him. "Shit! Is your arm still attached?" Even being a seasoned medic the sight she saw left her reeling a bit.

"Well it still hurts if that says anything," he said wincing as she approached and hesitantly reached out to touch his right arm, which by all rights looked like it was completely ripped off, if not for a bit of underarm flesh stubbornly hanging on. She went to move the arm up slightly to get a better look when his scream of pain actually startled her with the massive volume. It was probably the loudest she had ever heard the guy in all her life.

"Shit! Sorry! Look I got one more eppy pen of morphine but if I give it to you there's a chance of you passing out or at the least getting loopy. But I need to use it to fix your arm."

"I really don't care but if you're going to even try touching it again I suggest you dig out that shot." She quickly reached back and pulled out her last vial of morphine and gave him an injection and almost immediately saw his body sag in relief. She reached out again with her one good arm and did grab his arm again to look at the damage, and he winced in pain.

"Yeah sorry it will dull a lot of the pain but with something this serious there'll still be pain. Shit how haven't you bled out, your veins and arteries are completely ripped!"

"My kikai are blocking the larger ones and then I used my belt and kind of tied it off. But I don't know how well it'll hold."

"Ok," she said shifting and taking the med pack completely off her back. "Before I can help you, you have to help me," she said getting a questionable look from him. "I need to get my left shoulder back in the socket, think you can try and help?"

"Is there much of a choice," he asked rhetorically. She set about getting into position.

"Ok on the count of three you'll have to pull straight and hard until you hear a pop." He nodded and took a tighter grip on her wrist with his one good arm. "One, two, THREE!" She muffled her scream by biting down on her lip just enough to draw blood before they both heard a distinct pop. "Oh damn," she rasped moving her arm slowly now once again in it's socket. She pulled out another pen and injected it into her enflamed shoulder.

"I thought you said you were out of morphine," he asked watching the kunoichi writhe a bit before seeming to pull herself together.

"I am, that was an anti-inflammatory. Don't worry working with shishou has upped my pain tolerance." He gave her an odd look but didn't question her. "All right how long since this happened?"

"About an hour, maybe an hour and a half ago. I passed out for maybe 10 or 15 minutes before my kikai could wake me up."

"All right we're only 2 hours from Konoha and if your kikai can keep that up until then we might be able to save that arm of yours. She pulled out two more pens and injected them in the same area as the morphine. "Don't expect much those are just large doses of antibiotics to try and keep the infection at bay." She pulled out a grey sheet and laid it on the ground along with a few instruments, and a lot of gauze. "Hold on one sec." And with that she left him alone under the roots again looking out as the morning light crawled to the edge of the tree shedding a bit more light in the small area.

She was back not 10 minutes later with a canteen and some longer branches. "Sorry but we have to make do with what we have," she said setting them with her other supplies. "Ok I need you to take off your coat and lay down with your right arm on the sheet." He didn't seem that comfortable with the idea but he took it off anyway and lay down on the sheet. Sakura felt herself blushing slightly, as for the first time she got a clean look at his face with the coat now off. 'I never realized how much he was like Kakashi-sensei in that I've never actually seen his face. I guess I never noticed. He actually has a really nice face.' She noticed him staring at her and shook her head a bit before setting to cleaning out the wound (as much as she could clean one piece of flesh hanging off another).

"You kind of caught me off guard; I never realized that I've never actually seen you're whole face before."

"Is it that odd," he said, her eyes catching his lips as she finally actually saw him speak and felt a small tingle run up her spine. 'Oh come on Sakura stop acting like a child, he needs you to get his arm back together not gawk at him.'

"No not really, actually you have a really nice face, you should show it more," she said cleaning up the wet mess on his arm, satisfied that was as clean as it was getting. She saw him wince in pain as she put the large piece of flesh that was his lower arm near his right and started making seals. She put her hands above his arm and started to work on piecing the bone together, the bone and major arteries and veins would be her goal out here. Then stitch what she could together and get him back to Konoha. She felt her chakra move through his bone and then…

"Ah, Shino, you need to get your kikai to stop eating my chakra. I don't have a whole lot left in general and I'll need all I got to put you together and get us back."

"Sorry," he said with a small grimace on his face. "They may be a part of me but they do get a bit hard to control at times like this, hold on." He brought his other good arm up to his face and put it into a seal and concentrated for a second, letting his face scrunch up. After a moment he took a deep breath and answered, "Ok they should be settled while you work on me." She nodded and set once again to realigning and connecting the bone. This time she felt her chakra get through and wrap and weave itself around the bone stimulating cell generation and working at mending the bone. They sat there in a comfortable silence for nearly ten minutes, she was on the verge of finishing the bone when he spoke up.

"I have sensitivity to light," he said making her look at him questioningly. "You said earlier I should show my face more. But because of the kikai in my body that like dark 'hives' subsequently their sensitivity to light also became mine. Most of my family is like that but not all of us, some are lucky and the kikai actually adapt to the light."

"Really," she asked stopping for a second to readjust herself and start working on the arteries and veins slowly. "What about if you want to go swimming? I've heard from Naruto that your team likes to go to the lake sometimes to swim in summer." She took a second to wipe from sweat away from her forehead as she felt herself nearing her chakra limit.

"I need extremely strong sun block and even then I can't be out more than an hour then I need shade."

"How strong are we talking she asked," glad to have something to say to the usually quiet man.

"Starting at 75 and going to 85 or 90 SPF."

"Damn that's like baby block."

"Baby block," he asked raising his eyebrow with the left corner of her mouth, making her smile in kind.

"Yeah baby's have really sensitive skin and that's around the SPF they have to have. I remember I was really bad as a baby and I had to get a prescription for like 98 or something. Got over it eventually after I burned a lot."

"Well that sounds fun," he said turning his head to look more fully at her. "I wish it was something that simple. I think if I actually sat out in the sun I might tan. But when I'm out too long the kikai get anxious and it takes a toll on my body and usually pass out."

"Seriously? I guess that's the price for that kind of bloodline limit. But it could be a lot worse."

"Worse? I have to dress like I do because of my bloodline and then at the same time people think I'm odd or a one because of the way I dress."

"Actually, they kind of think you're a loner because you don't talk much," she said sweat dropping a bit.

"I talk, but I have conversations about things, not just randomly go off on nothing."

"So, you're just more conservative when you talk," she said with a slight giggle. "So as long as there's something to talk about you'll talk," she asked. She could of swore she saw slight pink come over his cheeks but it was gone just as suddenly.

"Of course, I wouldn't just ignore someone." They sat in a bit of silence for the next few minutes as Sakura finished up the last vein and sat back with a sigh and a bit of dizziness from chakra depletion. "Sakura-san?"

"Please just Sakura," she said holding her head for a minute. "Just give me a second; I got the bone loosely mended along with your veins and arteries but none of the muscle or skin. I'm going to stitch your arm up for now and then we'll head back to Konoha for some decent medical help."

"For what it's worth I think you've done a great job." She did feel her cheeks heat a bit at that.

"You're just saying that because I gave you morphine," she said and saw him smile in return. She got to work and finish stitching him up then used the branches, gauze, and wrap and made some kind of make shift craptastic splint/cast. "It's not the best but it should hold you together until we get back." She got up and dusted off her legs and held her hand out to help him to his feet. He groaned but got to his feet, though a bit wobbly.

"Can you steady yourself?" He let go of her shoulder and took a few steps before falling to his knees panting slightly.

"I think the kikai used most of my chakra keeping me from bleeding out."

"Fine then, have the ones in the main veins and arteries pull back, they should hold with my patch job." She walked up and put his arm around the back of her neck and hauled him to his feet. "Just lean on me and hang on, we're double timing it to get back."

"What about your charka? I know you have to be almost as bad if not worse then me." She walked out from under the tree taking him with her.

"Yeah but I've learned to run on fumes, don't worry I can get us there." She gave him a disarming smile before tightening her hold on him and jumping to the trees making for Konoha.

Sakura was gasping for nearly every breath now, the front and back of her shirt soaked through with sweat as Shino floated between conscious and unconscious. About 15 minutes ago the morphine started wearing off and he was starting to pass in and out from the pain. She saw the hokage tower, and not too far ahead the gates. 'Almost there, come on you can do it!' She pushed herself off her current branch and launched herself towards the gates. 'You haven't dragged the two of you for the last hour and a half just to have someone find you both passed out in the woods! You can do it!' She gritted her teeth and landed on the ground a few yards from the gate.

"Hey, someone get us some help!" She looked around searching for the guards on duty but didn't see anyone. "Someone get some help, we need medics!" She heard something stir and looked up to see someone on top of the gate moving around. She nearly tripped and tried rubbing her eyes as her vision seemed to be getting blurry. She heard a bit of a commotion and saw a few more figures on top of the gate before it was opened. She moved towards the open gate but felt her feet leave the ground and her body literally crash into the ground as her senses seemed to dim. She vaguely heard someone coming near her but by then the darkness had already taken her.

'Ugh, what hit me…?' Bleary eyes opened and quickly shut from the bright light in the room. 'What happened? Where am I?' Eyes opening once again they focused on the white sterile room answering the unsaid question. 'The hospital?' All of a sudden everything came rushing back to him. 'My arm!' He moved his arm slightly and winced in pain but he felt he could flex his fingers again and was relived to see Sakura had indeed helped save his arm. He then looked around the empty room, but the room was not empty as there was a familiar pink haired woman in the bed next to his.

"Sakura," he called out sitting up and being made aware of just how bad the pain in his arm was. He moved it and flexed it feeling the strain of the new muscles and the pain traveled back to his shoulder, but it was nothing like earlier. He turned back to the woman in the bed next to him and noticed she still had not stirred. "Sakura, wake up." He reached over and grabbed her arm to shake it but as soon as he touched her arm her own hand reached up to grab his wrist. Her eyes slowly blinking open and turning to look at him.

"S-shino," she said her voice cracking. "Ugh, my head is killing me."

"Chakra depletion will do that to you," said a new voice they both turned to see Tsunade standing in the doorway.

"Tsunade-sama." "Shishou."

"Just relax you're both staying for at least the rest of the day, thou Shino will probably be here for the next 5 or 6 days. Seriously how the hell did you two even find each other out in the field?"

"I felt a flicker of his charka." 'I wasn't that bad, I was injured!' He bristled at the thought.

"Well I'd like to see how well you do with your arm half off," he said with a pout. He saw Sakura ready to make a come back and then…she stared. Was that a blush on her cheeks?

"Sakura," he asked when she still didn't say anything. She quickly turned away towards Tsunade but the small blush was still on her face. 'Crap did I piss her off?' But they were both interrupted by Tsunade again.

"Anyway, you're lucky Sakura found you, if you waited for someone to find you or tried to make it here on your own without getting patched up you probably would have lost your arm completely. That being said I want to take you off active duty for the next 2 weeks."

"Tsunade-sama!"

"Don't argue, you need time to recover. And I said you were off active duty meaning no missions. But I never said you couldn't train, actually I'd encourage it to get the muscles in your arm back in shape." He felt a bit of comfort from at least that. 'At least I won't be stuck at the compound doing nothing the whole two weeks.'

"Thank you Tsunade-sama."

"And Sakura, you are off active duty for the next week AND," she interjected seeing Sakura was about to say something. "You are not to train for the next 3 days."

"But I wasn't even injured that badly!"

"Yes but you were running on fumes, which I told you repeatedly not to do, now can you tell me the two reasons why?" Sakura stared hard at the blanket around her waist and even though she looked pissed she still answered.

"Because when you 'run on fumes' it takes your body twice as long to completely replenish your charka. And for the next week or two your body will be slower in producing charka."

"Sakura if you already know this then there's no reason for you to try and argue your way out of it."

"But shishou-!"

"Sakura I understand the circumstances and I appreciate what you did, but this isn't a punishment. What good is an injured ninja?"

"But I'm not injured!"

"Yes you are! You're body is having trouble producing charka! That would be classified as an illness or injury. Don't argue with me Sakura, please," she said holding her head in her hand and at that moment looking very tired and very much her real age.

"Hai shishou." The pout on her face was replaced with a thoughtful expression.

"Thank you, now please rest. You both need it." With that she turned and left the room, Sakura was still staring at her blanket but now looked troubled.

"Sakura," he said getting her attention and finally getting her to look up. "You know she's right, and she's just worried about you."

"I know that! But I'm a jounin now, not some little genin, I can take care of myself! I'm not some weakling!"

"I don't think you're weak, and I don't think that's how Tsunade sees you either." He took a second to try and work out how to say what he needed to. "I think even if it was Kakashi, Naruto, or even Sai in the same condition she would have done the same."

"Yeah but when it comes to them they never listen and she doesn't get all that mad most of the time when they do disobey her." Her anger had seemed to come back full force and was now turned towards him.

"Yes but Sakura she has higher standards for you. She personally taught you and she knows that you know better, being a medic and her apprentice. But Naruto and the others, they haven't had the same training you've had and doesn't expect them to understand like you do."

"But that's a complete double standard!" That was hard to argue with and he felt he had done all he could to defend Tsunade.

"Yeah you're kind right on that." Then he noticed it again, she was staring at him. "Umm, what are you staring at?" That made her blush come back full force and she quickly looked away.

"I didn't mean to, it's just. Well…I've never seen your eyes before."

"My…?" It was then he noticed the room was brighter then normally and reached up to feel his face was in fact bare. It was now his turn to blush a bit, and hastily divert his eyes from her. He hadn't noticed the change in light right away since apparently Tsunade had turned the lights down as was standard when treating one from his clan.

"I'm sorry, I didn't notice, you could have told me sooner. Sorry I didn't mean to creep you out." 'Well duh Shino, no wonder she was acting weird.'

"Huh, you're not creepy." He slowly turned his eyes to meet her gaze. "Actually it's kind of the opposite. You have really nice eyes."

"Nice eyes," he asked sweat dropping a bit. "I've never heard of anyone having nice eyes."

"Jeeze, well I would have said pretty but most guys hate that word." He could feel the heat creeping along his face and fought to control it, but was failing.

"You think…I have pretty eyes?" She gave him a small smile.

"Of course, I don't lie about that kind of thing." He felt his heart skip a beat, though if it was from the smile or her words he wasn't sure.

"Umm, thanks," he said once again looking away. He felt himself tense a bit and wasn't sure what to think of the situation. 'No ones ever said anything like that to me before.'

"Sorry, I must be embarrassing you," she said reading his body language as being such.

"No it's not that." He said slowly. "I've just never had anyone compliment me on how I looked before."

"Well you don't really go around without your coat or glasses a lot so probably not."

"I used to a bit when I was a kid but." He stopped himself wondering if he should continue. He looked to see her waiting patiently for him to continue. "But when I did a lot of kids didn't want to play with me and one girl even said I looked creepy."

"Don't believe in stuff like that. When I was younger I got picked on a lot and the kids said I had a big forehead and called me ugly." He was a bit shocked to hear this coming from her. He had always known ino had made fun of her forehead but then Sakura always called ino a pig too so he thought it was just limited to ino insulting her. "I thought that too for a while but now I know that isn't true. Though maybe it was when I was a kid, I think I've grown into it," she said smiling. This gave him a lot to think on, but even as he sat there he felt a head ache coming on .

"What's wrong? You ok?" Apparently she had noticed as well.

"Yeah just a bit of a headache." She frowned at him and almost looked…'Is she actually concerned?'

"You should rest, you probably had major surgery when we got back judging by the fact your arm looks a lot better then what I did. You need to rest."

"Isn't that what Tsunade-sama said to you?" She smirked.

"Don't worry I will, but I'm feeling a bit too restless to sleep. Don't worry, I'll watch over you." The way she said it with that smile again made the heat return to his cheeks. He decided it was best to just rest and lay back down closing his eyes and wondering over his odd rescuer.

Sakura smiled as she watched Shino nod off in the bed next to her. It was kind of odd, she had seen him before, talked to him before, and even went on a handful of missions with him before. But at best he was an acquaintance, not quite on the level of friend. Like she told him before he just seemed like a loner to a lot of people and it was hard for her to read his body language with his coat so she was always worried she would annoy him. But maybe this time off might be a good opportunity to get to know him better. 'And those eyes...' She felt her face instantly go red as she tried to banish the image. She had seen and taken care of many people in the hospital and many attractive looking men. Men with nice bodies, nice smiles, nice hair, but she had never been captivated by somebodies eyes before. It was odd, like she wanted to just sit and stare. She shook her head again trying to banish the thought. 'What would Shino say if he knew I was thinking of him in an odd way? You're just thinking about it because you've never seen him like that before! Yeah, like if you ever saw Kaka-sensei's face you'd be acting the same way!' She determinedly reassured herself before crawling out of bed and sitting over by the window letting the sun warm her as she looked out over the village.