Hello everyone! I am SO SO sorry for not updating for like a million years, but... life happened . Ch 5 is also almost finished so will upload that asap! Please forgive me, and as always, R+R! constructive criticism ALWAYS welcome :)

I woke up to voices of ninjas I didn't recognize. Confused, I tried to open my eyes. Everything still really hurt. I lifted my arm and pain surged through me.

"Hinata!" It was Shino's voice. I tried to say something, cry out to him, but no sound came out.

"Hinata, it's okay. We have you now." Kiba-kun! I finally managed to get my eyes open. Kiba and Shino were sitting next to me. I was in a building I didn't recognize, and I could see medical ninjas bustling about.

"Wh-What happened?" I managed to croak.

Kiba looked at Shino uneasily. "We were hoping you could tell us…"

Shino nodded. "Kiba and I met back up after the first day… We got worried when we couldn't find you, so we started looking. Kiba couldn't distinguish your scent with all the blood spilled in the forest. We finally found you, half dead under some tree, but there was no one around. What happened out there?"

A medical ninja took advantage of Hinata's pause to shush them.

"Stop interrogating the girl, she's severely injured! Questions can wait. For now, just be thankful that she pulled through. Things didn't look too good for you, Hinata. You really must have a lot of fight in you."

I looked away, embarrassed. No, not a lot of fight. I just got really lucky…

It all started to come back to me as I lay there, my body numb from the healing chakra that the medics were pushing into my body. The last thing I remembered was the sound group pounding me to near death in that clearing. Then someone had come and saved me. But who? I struggled to remember, playing the painful events through my head one by one. That sand ninja… he had come to save me. But why? Why would he do that if he had been so close to killing me himself just the day before? The thoughts stopped making sense in my anesthetized brain, and the numbness lulled me into unconsciousness again.

The next few days were a blur. It mainly consisted of Shino and Kiba coming to visit me after training. Kurenai-sensei came a couple of times, and even my father showed up once. I was surprised at how he reacted at first. I thought for sure he would get mad at me for not taking my enemies down and keeping up the Hyuuga name. Instead, he didn't say anything as he sat next to my hospital bed, just looked at me with that familiar distant expression. When he left I noticed he had left a flower in a vase on my bedside table. It was the same shade of grey as my eyes. I had been pretty drugged up at that point and I couldn't really hold a conversation with him, much less thank him. Even Naruto and his team came to see me! If I had been any more coherent, I would have been embarrassed, but I was just happy to see familiar faces.

Most days I just spent slipping in and out of consciousness. The medical ninjas had done what they could; healing what was broken with Chakra, but there was only so much they could do. The majority of my healing was to be done the old fashioned way, waiting. I still had a lot of broken bones, they had concentrated mostly on my internal injuries that had been life threatening. Most of my limbs were in casts, and I was on a constant dose of painkillers. They made me really woozy, and most of my interactions with people felt like dreams. I was content with this. If I had been all the way coherent I probably would have gone crazy from reliving the two days that had almost killed me. I knew I had no reason to now that it was over, and the only thing that mattered is that I was alive. I couldn't stop myself from mulling it over, replaying everything in my head, over and over again, clawing for some sort of sense of the whole ordeal. None of it made sense to me. Those eyes, that name - Gaara. They haunted my dreams just like they did in the forest. I was still terrified of him, but I knew once I could walk, I needed to find him.

The nurses started trying to wean me off of the painkillers after about a week in the hospital. They said it would help me get better quicker, that I was strong enough to not need them anymore.

The fiery pain in my limbs disagreed with them.

The first night they gave me medicine to help me sleep. Soon after the injection the world got blurry and I passed out.

I started to dream. I was in my hospital bed, just like normal. There didn't seem to be anything strange, but something felt unsettling. There was someone there. A figure cloaked in shadow stood in the corner of the room. Thank god, maybe the nurses had changed their minds. My body hurt so terribly, I went to call out to them.

"Um, excuse me, doctor? Are you here to give me pain medication? I can barely sleep, it hurts."

The figure in the corner didn't answer. I started to get a little more nervous.

"Wh- Who's there?" I choked out.

I needed to get out of this bed. I tried to sit up, but my broken bones still ground against each other as soon as I moved. I gritted my teeth and a whimper escaped my lips, hot tears pricking the corners of my eyes.

I heard the figure release quick breath, a cross between a scoff and a growl. I couldn't move. I squirmed and tried to find someway to move that didn't knock out my breath from pain. The figure's hand came out from the dark and grabbed my arm when I tried to move it out of its cast.

"Don't."

I knew that voice. My first instinct was to call out for help, but the words caught in my throat. All I could manage was another whimper.

"Wh-why are you here?" I finally managed to choke out, tears welling in my eyes again. "Why did you save me in the forest?"

Silence. I went to try and move again, adrenaline rushing through me and numbing my pain.

"I said don't."

I froze, tears going full force now, blurring the already faint figure.

Sand started to float toward me. He must really love to play games if he was coming now to kill me.

"Who is he…" Gaara murmered.

"Wh-who?"

"The one with the dog."

My breath caught in my chest again. What did he want with Kiba?

"H-he's my teammate…"

More silence. The sand began to form a lazy current through the creases of my bed sheets. I looked warily at it and began to shake. I could feel the chakra pulsing from it. He was more powerful than I had realized.

"Why did they come here… You failed them…" He growled.

"W-well, Kiba's my friend and-"

The growl turned into a snarl and I could feel the sand tightening around me. I couldn't even squirm anymore.

"P-please!" I shrieked, finally able to find my full voice. The boy walked out of the shadows, his eyes closed, his hands in a position that I knew all too well.

"No!" I screamed, and tried to push against the sand that was still getting tighter around me.

He opened his eyes and lunged toward me. His hand clasped around my throat and he brought his face close to my own. The eyes from my nightmare bored into mine. Spit started to drip from his mouth as he snarled out something I couldn't understand. I choked and managed to let go one more scream before I lost consciousness. As I slipped away I could hear the vase with the flower from my father crash to the ground and smash into pieces.