Temari's POV

Sighing, she walked down the long hallway to Sakana's hospital room; it had been two days and her friend was still unconscious. None of the medics knew what to do, despite the fact that Nagataki-san, the woman who'd helped Sakana in the forest, was working practically around the clock looking for answers. Every day Temari came to visit her, hoping there would be some change in Sakana's condition, but no one ever came with her. Kankuro didn't care about their teammate, but she wasn't so sure about her younger brother. Call it woman's intuition, but she had a feeling Gaara and Sakana might have thing for each other - both either too stubborn or too shy to confess.

As she entered Sakana's room, Temari was met with the familiar, annoying beep of the machine monitoring her friend's heart, but there was a change - it was beeping much faster than normal. Sakana was tossing and turning, beads of sweat on her forehead. Temari ran to her bedside and felt her forehead, but immediately jerked her hand back in disbelief. Sakana's skin was scalding to the touch! Running out of the room, Temari yelled for a medic as she ran down the hallway to the nearest nurse's station - Sakana's screams echoing behind her. Nagataki-san was at Temari's side in seconds, asking question after question as they raced back to Sakana's room. However, when they arrived they were met by an unusual, yet comforting sight. Gaara was standing next to Sakana's bed, softly hugging her while she clung fiercely to him, crying into his chest.

Sakana's POV

The vision started abruptly. Somewhere in a forest stood a young man surrounded by spiraling purple chakra. When he straightened up she saw that his skin was covered in shimmering flame-colored markings. As the purple chakra faded away she was surprised to see it was Sasuke! Sakura was on the ground, badly wounded, her hair jagged and bloody. Sakana watched horrified as Sasuke, with swift efficiency, dislocated the arms of a Sound ninja. When he began to scream, almost against her will, she did as well. Sakana felt her body jerk into a sitting position, hands holding her head, eyes wide, but the vision was still playing out in front of them.

She watched as Sakura ran up behind Sasuke and begged him to stop. Slowly, as the strange markings retracted on Sasuke's body, she came back to consciousness, abruptly realizing that her back was being rubbed by someone. She hugged the person around the middle and began to cry as they hesitantly hugged her back. But then she was softly being pushed into a different pair of urgent hands, which in turn laid her back onto the bed.

"Sakana-chan, can you hear me?" a familiar feminine voice asked.

Slowly her eyes opened and Temari's worried face came into view. "T-Temari-chan? What happened?" she asked weakly, confused.

Temari looked towards a far corner of the room and standing there was Gaara. His face, as usual, held no emotion, but his eyes betrayed concern and...could that be confusion? His shirt and sash were wet...with tears? "Was...was I just hugging Gaara?!" Sakana asked herself, a blush spreading across her cheeks. "And was he hugging me back?!"

"Welcome back to the world of the living," another voice said softly from her right, pulling her thoughts away from what had just happened. Sakana looked over to see Emiko standing there, smiling kindly.

"Emiko-san? Why are you here?"

"She's been taking care of you ever since you collapsed in the forest," Temari replied.

The older ninja shrugged. "The bookstore is my hobby, but healing people – that's my life. Which is why," she continued, looking pointedly at Gaara and Temari. "I'm going to have to ask your friends to leave, so we can have some quality doctor/patient time now that you're awake."

"But she's our teammate!" Temari argued. "Whatever you have to say can be said in front of all of us.

Emiko sighed, but was still smiling softly. "I suppose I could bend the rules just this once...if it's okay with you, Sakana?"

She nodded. "I'd really like it if they could stay."

All of Emiko's questions were simple and straightforward, although there were some about her family's medical history that she naturally couldn't answer, having never known them. She also asked a lot of questions about what had happened in the Forest of Death, too. Sakana told her everything she could remember, but said nothing about the visions she'd been having. She liked the older woman, but that wasn't the same as trust and she just couldn't bring herself to feel comfortable talking about what she'd seen.

Emiko left shortly after, promising to do to everything she could to figure out what was going on, but stating that Sakana shouldn't have any problems participating in the next stage of the Chuunin exams. She also told Sakana that after one more night of observation, she was free to go. Temari left soon after, needing to report Sakana's current condition to Baki, which left her nervously alone with the one person she should have been happy to be alone with – Gaara.