Author's notes: wow, I'm enjoying this already. Even though it's only been, what, a day or so, I feel the need to update =D. I'm actually working on chapter three at the moment, so I feel proud that I'm updating and working on the same story :P. Anyway, I've just gone over the plot in my head, and I have a fair idea this story will be between three to five chapters, more or less, depending on how much I decide to write. Thank you guys so much for the reviews, I really appreciate them. Honestly I didn't think this fanfic would be so much of a hit...guess I underestimated my own work :P.

Kakashi: That's a lot of me to write about.

Yan: Nah, I've written longer ones.

Kakashi: Two stories?

Yan: Yeah, Hard To Forget, and Under The Rain.

Kakashi: And Under The Rain isn't-

Yan: finished yet, I know...I said I was sorry about a good dozen times in the last chapter.

Kakashi: then work on it...you're exams are over, and I'm sure you've got lots of readers who are dying to know what happens next.

Yan: Good point, but then again, I'm also waiting on an update on a fanfic I'm reading.

Kakashi: Which one's that?

Yan: Simple Things. It's a really good fanfic, and the author hasn't updated since January T_T, darn cliff hangers.

Kakashi: welcome to my world.

Yan: great...anywho, hope you enjoy reading this chapter.

Kakashi: and now, off to the main event (grins).

CHAPTER TWO: EXHAUSTED

"As a Shinobi, you must always follow the rules on any given mission, no matter what the circumstances are, you must never disobey the rules and regulations; fight on. Take this to heart…"

"You always care only about yourself and never consider the good things others have done for you, no matter how many times we tell you we care about you and all the times we try to save your ass, it always ends up with an asshole caring solely on the rules…"

"We can't go back and save Rin, Obito, the mission comes first…"

"You know…I was hoping…to spend the rest of my life with Rin…and you…I've always considered you as my best friend…Kakashi…"

"Haha, Shinobi don't cry, come here cry-baby!"

"Kakashi…"

"Kakashi-san…"

"Kakashi-sensei!"

Kakashi snapped his eyes open at the sound of someone calling his name and reacted in a both unexpected and an unwanted way. He rolled over the moment his eyes opened, his Sharingan activated fully and kunai in hand. It was then he realised he had Sakura pinned beneath him, utterly shocked at his actions.

Kakashi was unable to speak, for he was trying to catch his breath from that dream he just came out of, "Sakura…" he managed to whisper in an almost relieving tone.

Said medic sucked in a breath, realising their proximity, "are you alright, sensei?" she asked, deep concern lacing her voice. Kakashi looked uncertain for a moment, right before noticing the position he was in, especially the kunai pressed against his former student's throat.

"Sorry," he said slowly, as if he was about to fall back to sleep.

Sakura took note of his appearance and his condition. As a medic and Kakashi's former student, she could tell a lot of things just by looking at his semi-covered face. His face was covered in sweat, and his breathing was laboured, showing he was in both discomfort and deep mental worry. Something had triggered in Kakashi's mind that caused all this to happen.

The Copy Nin blankly placed his head on the dirt ground next to Sakura's and moved his kunai from her neck, "I'm so sorry Sakura, please forgive me…" he breathed, feeling unreservedly embarrassed and worn out for a reason he couldn't pinpoint.

"It's alright, sensei, I guess you must've had a really bad nightmare," she mumbled softly, noticing only now that Kakashi was still on top of her and Naruto could wake up at any moment.

The silver haired Jounin lifted his head to meet Sakura's worried gaze and finally took his weight from atop her body and sat up, staring at the burnt out campfire; the ambers still burning red, "yeah, just a bad nightmare," he muttered under his breath, attempting to get some sense back into his mind as he placed his hand over his Sharingan eye.

"…D-do…you want to talk about it?" the former student asked, knowing well that Kakashi would refuse the offer.

And as she guessed, Kakashi didn't say anything; he didn't even look in her direction, most likely to hide his shame. It's not everyday you have an elite Jounin fall apart right before their own student's eyes and threaten them without even knowing it. Sakura could feel that there was something seriously wrong with Kakashi, and she wanted to help, but she had a feeling at the pit of her stomach that she wouldn't be able to do anything about it anyway.

Kakashi lay back down, hoping to get some rest, but couldn't get that mental image of his dreams to part from him, and he feared it would haunt him again.

With a reassuring sigh, the Copy Nin closed his eyes, ignoring the slight chill in the air and fell asleep within moments.

Sakura however, was still puzzled at Kakashi's behaviour. She watched him sleep for a minute or so, watching the way he raggedly took in a breath and exhaled the same way. He was afraid of something, Sakura could tell this much already, but she didn't want to get in the way of it and cause Kakashi more mental harm, not that she intended to do so in the first place.

In all honesty, Sakura was a bit scared of what might become of this problem and hoped her ex-sensei would get better.

The sooner the better.

The blonde Jounin woke up with the same old ritual; not wanting to wake up at all. He yawned so loud it probably woke the others. He rubbed his eyes and inhaled the sweet crisp morning air. Although he wasn't really a morning person, he did enjoy the early feeling at seeing the sun rise like he would.

Looking around, he saw Sakura, still sleeping soundly, and panned his view across the burnt out campfire to where Kakashi was, and found he wasn't asleep, nor was he even around.

This would be the usual time for Kakashi to get up, most likely to check the surroundings and make sure they were safe for now. Naruto channelled his chakra senses and felt two: Sakura's and then Kakashi's…Naruto gasped. Kakashi's chakra signal was literally distorted, like he'd been going a bit insane these past few days.

This was new for Naruto, so he couldn't exactly tell what was wrong here. With a light shrug, the Kyuubi-bearer got up to wake up properly with some exercises to get his blood pumping.

Sakura felt Naruto leave, causing her to wake up. She sat up slowly, looking around the slightly foggy environment, and remembered what happened last night. Sakura sighed, checking to see where Kakashi could be at the moment and was no where to be seen. The medic frowned as she got up, stretching her arms up high and stared at the black smudge that was the charcoaled campfire remains.

"Ohaiyo, Sakura-chan," Naruto said cheerfully as he jogged back.

"Oh, morning Naruto," Sakura replied, smiling briefly before starting to walk off towards the trees.

Naruto sat down next to his backpack and pulled out three cups of instant ramen, "where are you going?" he asked, cocking his head to one side, "I'm just stretching my legs. Hey, have you seen Kakashi-sensei this morning?" she wondered, glancing over her shoulder.

Naruto scratched the back of his head in uncertainty, "nope, haven't seen him all morning, but if you find him, make sure you two return quickly because I'm preparing the ramen." Sakura nodded and took off to find her former sensei. It wouldn't surprise her if he didn't get any sleep since she forced him to wake up from his nightmare. It wasn't like Kakashi to be acting this way, so she couldn't blame herself for worrying so much.

The birds were chirping happily as the sun rose higher, and Sakura almost felt content to be walking here. Almost. That was until she found Kakashi sitting high up in a tree, staring out at the lake before him. The lake was pretty big, and there were plenty of wildlife meandering about, including the insects buzzing here and there.

Kakashi didn't notice her presence, but then again, he could've sensed her a mile away but just decided not to do anything about it. It was just like him to be so laid back.

"Are you alright, Kakashi-sensei?" Sakura called out to him.

Said Jounin glanced down, his gaze distant and unreadable. He smiled, trying to hide his true feelings, "I'm fine, just thought I'd come here and check out the sunrise," his eye crease hid all unwanted emotions from Sakura, and of course, she bought it.

The medic smiled in return, "I was just curious to know because of what happened last night," she giggled nervously, as if it was embarrassing for her.

Kakashi's smile faltered as he rubbed the side of his masked face, "ehh, yeah, but can you do me a favour and not tell Naruto about what happened. I don't want to deal with the whole problem from his end of the stick," he chuckled at himself.

"Don't worry, sensei, I wasn't planning on telling him anyway, considering the whole situation," a light blush tainted her cheeks and she started walking back to camp, "oh, and you'd better hurry, otherwise your ramen will get cold."

As soon as Sakura was out of sight, Kakashi felt like jumping in the lake and drowning himself and ending it right there. He sighed audibly and rubbed his eyes before yawning loudly. The sad part of this problem was that the nightmare he had was just too intense for him, so he stayed up the rest of the night. He was very tempted to go to sleep and skip breakfast, considering it was instant ramen, but he needed to eat and stay active or he would just drop to the ground the second he stopped moving.

Jumping down from the tree, Kakashi made his way to camp where Naruto would most likely be asking questions.

The morning went by smoothly, with only a day or less until they would reach Iwa, but the unfortunate part of it all was that they were travelling extremely slow according to Kakashi, probably because he was so tired and took note of everything that was going on around him.

The older Jounin kept himself occupied (or he tried to at least) with his latest volume of Icha Icha, and it did for a while, until he felt his eyes grow heavier by the minute, 'man, why did last night make me feel so damn tired?' he mentally asked himself. There were times where Kakashi wasn't able to sleep for days due to a life death mission, and he managed to hold out fine, but today was just one night and it felt like he'd been running a marathon in his sleep for three days straight.

Kakashi had to maintain focus for the remainder of the trip. He couldn't risk feeling tired after one night. Looking ahead, he watched his two ex-students happily talk as they travelled, but something at the pit of his stomach told him that there was something big going to happen.

Half the day passed, and all Kakashi could do was listen to his surroundings, though it was slowly putting him to sleep. Keeping his ears open, he could hear the birds singing, and the cicadas buzzing and screeching in all directions. That was when everything suddenly went dead silent. The older man stopped, as did his former students.

"You hear that, Kakashi?" Naruto warned, looking around suspiciously.

"Yeah…nothing…" the Copy Nin replied.

Kakashi listened closely and sensed enemies closing fast. All three of them were separated the instant the foes leapt in for the attack. The Copy Nin unfortunately wasn't fast enough to jump out of the way of one of the Nin's attacks, which resulted in a light cut on the side.

Checking the current situation, there were at least five ninja attacking them. Kakashi was stuck with one of them, who was rather large in size and wielded a long mace. A few kunai were thrown at the silver haired male, but he easily dodged them and countered with a flurry of shurikan and kunai. Jumping up, Kakashi threw down a kunai with an explosive tag attached.

The explosion went off and Kakashi landed in amongst the cloud of smoke and dust that erupted after the blast. Oops. This wasn't good. Kakashi was already slow as it was in his current condition, and now that there was smoke everywhere, there was no telling how bad things could get.

He sensed one from behind and jumped, missing the attack barely. In return, Kakashi rounded a kick to the adversary's face, forcing him off balance.

On Sakura and Naruto's end, they were going fairly well, although Sakura was busy trying to fend off two at once. Naruto jumped in to the rescue and knocked one clean over, "who are these guys?" Naruto asked, displeased as he received a slash to the arm after trying to block the skinny man's attack.

Sakura retaliated immediately and socked the tall one in the nose, "they're Iwa Nin by the looks of it," she responded, kicking the enemy back far enough to ready her stance, "looks like they were expecting us this whole time."

Kakashi jumped out of the dust cloud, bearing a few cuts and bruises. He landed, though not the way he was hoping. He fell off balance a bit but stood upright quickly to face the large Iwa Nin. His enemy swung the mace around like a total maniac, but thankfully Kakashi managed to dodge from it, "I have no choice but to use it," he said to himself as he reached for his headband covering his left eye. Eyeing his opponent, as to see what he would be doing next, Kakashi lifted his Leaf headband, revealing his Sharingan eye. The moment he had his both eyes visible on his enemy, he saw someone he didn't want to look at, 'NO! Not now,' he inwardly cursed, but before he could react, his enemy punched him hard in the face, sending him flying.

He crashed to the ground hard and winced as he felt something crack. Feeling his lip starting to bleed, Kakashi looked up at the muscled man before him, who was ready to strike him down.

'Get up, get up, GET UP!' he screamed inside, but he couldn't move. He saw the face of his father, who had haunted him the night previous.

"Kakashi-sensei!" Naruto shouted, running to his aid and created a few clones to help out. Naruto stood by Kakashi while his clones made short work of the Rock ninja.

Once all the enemy Shinobi were taken care of, Sakura rushed over to see what had happened, "what happened?" she asked, standing by Naruto, who looked very unhappy at the silver haired Jounin who was sitting on the ground, breathing heavily.

"What's gotten into you?" he said harshly.

Kakashi winced again, but not at his injuries, but at Naruto's words. He never liked being scolded or getting told off, but this was different, "why the hell couldn't you take out one Shinobi?" he asked, his temper weakening at every second and his anger rising.

"Naruto, calm down," Sakura said, punching his arm, "at least we got them."

The blonde haired Jounin inhaled slowly to calm himself down, "Sakura-chan, I think I might've busted a rib," he said, frowning a little as he looked himself over and winced when he gingerly touched his side.

Sakura rolled her eyes, "okay, sit down, and I'll take a look at those injuries," she said to both males and joined them on the dirt ground.

Naruto unzipped his orange jacket and lifted his fishnet cut shirt to reveal to Sakura a bluish purple bruise, looking rather ugly at the sight, not to mention sore too. She gently placed her chakra laced hands over the dark bruise and felt the bones mending back together beneath her touch. The blonde let out a relieving sigh, feeling much better now that he could breathe without pain.

"Okay Kakashi-sensei, lets see those injuries of yours," Sakura said, shifting her gaze to the silver haired Jounin, who looked distant as usual.

"I'll go take care of those ninja, be right back," Naruto jumped to his feet and grabbed the large Iwa nin he had knocked out earlier and dragged the unconscious body to where the other four lay unmoving.

Sakura watched Naruto for a minute before returning her attention to her ex-sensei, "come on, lose the mask, I know you've probably got a cracked jaw; I can see it from here," she grinned, though not at the fact that she would see Kakashi's face, but mostly because she was right, Kakashi had shattered his jaw, which explained one of the reasons why he wasn't talking.

Kakashi let out a slow, shaky breath and slipped down his mask. There was a small streak of blood from the side of his mouth and slight swelling, but it was manageable for Sakura. The medic focused some of her healing chakra to her hands and placed them against Kakashi's jaw, causing him to inhale sharply. It was hard not to tense his jaw at the pain, but it felt like someone just placed a hot iron to his face and decided to pour salt on the open burn right after.

Not a moment sooner, the Copy Nin relaxed a little when the pain started to fade and sighed in relief when he was able to move his jaw freely. Placing his hand on his jowl, the silver haired man moved it around a bit, tensing the muscles there and flexing them until he felt a little click, and wiped the slightly dried and smudged blood from his chin.

"Better?" Sakura asked, smiling sweetly at her former sensei.

Kakashi looked at her and returned the smile softly, "thanks," he managed to say, but the second he attempted to get up and help Naruto, he remembered the nasty crunch he heard in his chest when he was fighting his enemy and sat back instantly.

Cursing, the silver haired Jounin clutched at his ribs and willed the pain away, but that was before Sakura moved his hands away, "let me take a look," she didn't sound worried at all, mostly because these injuries weren't fatal, not unless the rib snapped and pierced the lung, but that would mean Kakashi should be suffocating right now and dying.

Kakashi removed his Jounin vest and lifted his shirt, looking away so he wouldn't see the Kunoichi's reaction to the damage. He felt Sakura hiss sympathetically when she caught sight of the large dark bruise on the lower right side of the man's chest. The medic gently placed her hands over the injury, but the sudden jerk from Kakashi and his low curse under his breath startled her.

"Ow…" he groaned, rolling his lone open eye at himself.

Sakura frowned as she scanned the internal areas of Kakashi's chest with her chakra. Yep, it was a busted rib, and it was pretty nasty too. It he had been struck there again, he'd be in big trouble, as in the "instant unconsciousness" type of trouble, mostly because the delicate tissue of his lungs and the areas beneath his ribs would be hit.

"Hold still," Sakura found his movements a bit irritating, considering she was trying to heal him.

Sakura focused on her chakra; everything inside was intact, thankfully, it was just his ribs that at a good beating. With that she sighed softly and mended the bones back together.

Not a minute later, the pink haired Kunoichi had healed him completely, along with any other injuries like the cuts and slashes the man had gotten during the fight.

Just as Kakashi was about to join Naruto, Sakura placed her hand on his forearm, "try and be more careful Kakashi, whatever it is that's distracting you, you have to put that aside for now and stay focused; we don't want you getting injured like that again," she warned him. Kakashi's stern gaze softened a little, realising she was right. She sounded a lot like his father, it was only that Sakura said it in a more subtle way compared to how his father sounded. To say Hatake Sakumo was strict on safety would be an understatement.

The silver haired Jounin nodded at his ex-student, noting the seriousness in her tone, mostly because she didn't mention the sensei bit and made his way over to Naruto, who was just finishing up with the Iwa nin.

"All sussed?" Naruto asked, raising a blonde brow at his former sensei.

Kakashi gave a single nod to the blonde Jounin, before shifting his Leaf headband over his left eye again to conserve his chakra.

That was a turn for the worst; Kakashi felt that today just wasn't his day, and it wasn't even 6 pm yet. He sighed to himself, rubbing the area where he had recently broken his ribs. Although it was very much healed by his wonderful medic and former student, Sakura, it still felt as though it ached, but lightly.

Raising the orange book to higher to hide the fact he wasn't really reading, the silver haired man watched as Naruto and Sakura were ranting on about their favourite flavour of ramen, well, Naruto was actually the one doing so, Sakura was just listening, most likely inwardly wishing he'd shut up about now.

"Look, look, civilisation!" Naruto jumped up and down in joy like a giddy little schoolgirl.

Kakashi glanced from his nonexistent reading and saw indeed a small village up ahead and sighed again. He was now pretty tired, which was probably the biggest understatement of the year. No, Kakashi was beyond tired, now he was just plain droopy, which was hard to tell because the Jounin always looked droopy like he was on drugs or something.

Naruto turned around to face his ex-sensei, who already knew what his question would be and saved him the trouble of even asking, "no, it's not Iwagakure, but we're very close," he said, pocketing his smut novel and neared the other two Jounin in front of him, "this is a small village just off the main, used for trade and such."

"Do you think there will be any Rock Shinobi in there waiting for us?" Sakura pondered.

Kakashi narrowed his stare at the village gates and halted, "chances are they will be expecting us, hence the ninja we encountered before, so my suggestion is we best go around; it'll take us an extra ten minutes or so, but it should keep us out of sight until we reach Iwagakure's main village," he mentally shuddered at the name of the place, feeling bad memories coming back already.

Forcing the images from resurfacing, Kakashi led the team to the right, where they took to the trees and expertly jumped from branch to branch, hiding their chakra as they went. Kakashi, feeling the weight of his exhaustion finally kick in as well as starting to see unwanted flashes of his past, stopped in his tracks, 'kuso, the closer I get, the worse it gets,' he tightened his grip on the branch above him and stared aimlessly at the ground beneath him.

"Kakashi-sensei? Is something wrong?" Sakura asked, creasing her brows together in concern.

Said Copy Nin glanced at the pink haired Kunoichi and shook his head, "sorry, thought I saw something down there, must've been my imagination," in a way he wasn't lying. His imagination was playing tricks on him, just not in that sort of way.

"Lets go," he promptly added and took off to a higher branch, leading the way.

Using their skilled ninja abilities, the three Jounins sped through the trees with no trouble at all and eventually they reached around the other side of the village, having not been seen. Yet. Kakashi felt that they were let off easy, so as much as his body was screaming at him to sleep, he forced his mind to stay focused - or he tried to at least - and kept his guard up at all costs.

Fifteen minutes had passed after they avoided the small village and Kakashi headed to the side of the road, "we'll camp here for the night," he set his bag down without another word. Naruto and Sakura exchanged glances, but said nothing against their ex-sensei's orders and set up camp.

"Don't light a fire here, it's too risky now that we're deep in enemy territory," Kakashi warned, giving his two former students a quick glare and rolled out his sleeping bag.

Naruto pulled out the cups of ramen and set them aside, "sensei, how are we gonna eat our ramen with no fire to warm up water?" he asked, frowning at the thought of missing one night without his favourite food. Sakura was inwardly hoping she wouldn't have to eat another cup of that noxious stuff, especially since it didn't even look all that appetising, let alone edible.

Kakashi sighed, "here, we'll eat these instead," he pulled a few small bread rolls from his bag and handed them over to Sakura to share around.

Naruto pouted, not really liking the idea of eating bread instead of the good filling ramen he grew up eating, but accepted them nonetheless.

Sakura knew this food wouldn't nearly last as long as the ramen would; she'd rather eat the bread than the plastic flavoured noodles. She took a bite of the bread, which was a bit stale after the trip so far, but she bit back the urge to complain. Missions always had their consequences, and not the injury part on that. No, not only that, but the food wasn't what you could call five star cuisine.

"Better than nothing, I guess," Naruto mumbled after taking his third bite.

Kakashi, not really saying much, lay back on his sleeping bag and gazed up at the night sky, watching the stars twinkle as if someone had gotten a pin and stabbed holes into a big dark blanket of darkness. It was close to a full moon now, and it shined it's lunar rays through the branches of the trees, casting light shadows to dance across his masked features.

He could still hear Naruto and Sakura talk and argue about anything that came up, probably with the lack of a warm fire to seek comfort to, or the lack of some ramen. He suddenly felt he couldn't hear them; they were just becoming mumbles and distant to his ears as he closed his lone visible eye. Within seconds he seemed dead to the world, and he was somewhat fearing what nightmares awaited him past his subconsciousness.

Kakashi felt that he would have to tell Naruto and Sakura about his problem sometime soon, but he just couldn't work up the courage to venture back into those haunting memories. He seriously didn't want to talk about what he experienced as a child and expose who he was today, emotionally that is. Telling his former students about his past would be going too far into his own trust, and he would never allow himself to live it down if they ever knew.

The thought of his own team as an early teen merged to the foreground of his mind. He willed away the memories he didn't want to think about, again, but they were stubborn little thoughts that didn't take off very easily.

Breathing out a mental sigh, he gave up; if thoughts of his old team kept on haunting him, so be it. Kakashi had dealt with worse things than this. There were times where he was continuously beaten when he was kidnapped in a mission, or when he had pushed himself way to far beyond his own limits and still managed to fight off an ambush and make it home. He hoped in all the little amount of sanity he had left - well that was probably getting stripped off him right now - that he would be able to get his sleep tonight, and braced himself for the mental torture.

Author's notes: dun dun dun! Chapter two done, yay (happy cheering in the background). I truly feel sorry for Kakashi and what he's gone through so far. It actually pains me to write about it in all honesty :(. BUT, I'm not gonna let that pull me down; I'm going to stay motivated and keep writing until I've written a masterpiece =D.

Kakashi: A masterpiece eh?

Yan: Yeah...what about it?

Kakashi: oh nothing, just wondering about your choice of words; do you really consider it a masterpiece?

Yan: I have....actually I have no idea. I suppose I would just have to ask the readers and see what they think, but I doubt it though.

Kakashi: You never know. I have to say, you write some good stuff.

Yan: yay ^_^, I feel happy again.

Kakashi: so you should (ruffles Yan's hair)

Yan: (pouts) anyway, hope you guys enjoyed this chapter, that is if you ignore the sad torture Kakashi goes through here.

Kakashi: ahem...but she has a point. Reviews help her lots :)

Yan: 'Til next time ;D