Is she alive? Is she dead? What's Sasuke going to do? Is there really only one more chapter? Find out now!

Sand. Miles and miles of sand. No matter what people said, Suna had an eerie quality of beauty for Kakashi, but as he sat by the window, he had no time to enjoy the view or the chance at rest he had been given. Not when one of his teammates was toeing the line between life and death.

After the battle with Itachi, Sakura and Naruto had stumbled upon the scene. Naruto immediately asked if Sasuke was the one to hurt her while Sakura tried as best she could with her low chakra levels to stem the bleeding. She had only done light patch work when Naruto asked Sasuke if they could trust him again as the Suna nin arrived. Apparently, after defeating Kabuto and Orochimaru once and for all, the Konoha nin stumbled into Suna and asked the Kazekage for a search party to be sent out.

That was yesterday.

-

-

"You know I'm only keeping quiet about this in return for saving my life, right?"

"Hai, Gaara-sama," Sakura bowed and with a nod, Gaara walked down the hall to quiet the raging blonde he called his best friend.

Sakura giggled. Gaara had really lightened up since she saw him last, she thought amusedly as she turned to the viewing window. Besides Kakashi and Amaya, Sai was also in there, recuperating from the several broken bones he suffered from being thrown against a cliff. Surprisingly, he suffered nothing but a concussion to his skull and she knew that if she could make a remark about him right now, it'd be that he was lucky his skull was so thick, otherwise he'd be dead.

Chuckling to herself, she failed to notice the familiar face until he was right in front of her. "Hey."

"Hey," she said shyly, tucking her shoulder-length hair behind her ear in a self-conscious act. It exposed her blush to him. He thought it was cute.

"So…how is everyone?" he asked self-consciously. It was (if you got to the root of it) his fault they were hurt, after all.

"They're pretty beat up, but they'll live. They always do," she smiled.

Sasuke chuckled. It felt good to laugh. How long had it been since he had laughed?

"Something funny?" she asked curiously.

Sasuke shook his head and smiled to himself. Now that Itachi was gone, it seemed like half a lifetime of emotions were spilling out to make up for lost time. As awkward as it was to express himself again, it felt nice. "No. Just thinking about how much I've missed out on," he mused.

She nodded at his answer, smiling sadly. "So…what do you plan on doing now?"

Sasuke shrugged. He wasn't really sure what to do. There were so many possibilities. "I don't know. I think I'll travel a bit more before I return home."

She looked up at him. He was half a head taller than her now. When had that happened? "Do you really promise to do that?" she asked.

He smirked and tucked away a stray lock of hair. "An Uchiha never goes back on his word," he replied. He smirked at her shocked expression and turned to the window. "Do you think they'll forgive me?" he asked.

"Yes," she replied.

"Do you forgive me?" he asked with baited breath.

"Yes."

"Does…does it still hurt? What I did to you. Does it still hurt?"

She smiled sadly to herself. "Yes, but…time heals all wounds, Sasuke."

Sasuke. It felt strange to hear her say the name without the "–kun". It felt like his heart was being stabbed. He tried to name it. Was this disappointment?

"…What should I expect when I return?"

She seemed to think about it for a minute. "Well, for starters, most of Konoha will shun you. Naruto will probably challenge you, the others will either slap you, avoid you, or both. Shikamaru will say 'troublesome,' everyone who went on the first retrieval mission will probably try and get a punch at you. Kakashi is going to smile at you and drill you relentlessly, Tsunade-sama is going put you on D-rank missions for at least two years, Amaya's going to punch you and then crush your ribs in a hug, and I'll send you flying back out of the gates before dragging you back into the village."

"You wouldn't…would you?" he asked. After all, after the change in behavior he had seen between her and Naruto, it was hard to tell where they stood.

She smiled at him. "I guess you'll just have to find out, won't you?"

He chuckled and she started to laugh too. Smiling at her one more time, he bent down and kissed her. It wasn't an earth-shattering change-your-life fairytale type of kiss, but it managed to make her heart flutter just a little bit. When she opened her eyes, he was gone and on the wind she heard him whisper, "Wait for me."

-

-

Kakashi sighed heavily as he sat in the hospital room. It was still the same hospital room. Metal frame bed, a small bedside table, green walls, white sheets, white pillowcases, a small bathroom on the other side of the room, and blue polyester chairs. Like the room, Amaya's condition had not changed in the past two days. Even though the worst had been avoided, she still needed to heal. Chakra couldn't work miracles. It just healed what it could. Amaya had her intestines punctured when she was stabbed. She had been lucky. A few millimeters more and her spinal cord would've been severed, but several organs exhibited internal bleeding. Itachi had done a bigger number on her than they thought.

When Kakashi was told there was a chance that she could still die, he refused to leave her bedside. He only left when he had to go to the bathroom or when Naruto or Sakura forced him out.

He watched her sleep, her chest rising and falling rhythmically with her breathing. She had been unconscious for two days now. He knew the longer she was in this state, the more likely it was going to be that she wouldn't wake up and he blamed himself for it.

'If only I had been paying more attention. If only I hadn't taken my eyes off him. If only—if only—'

"Kami, this is my fault," he choked out. First it was his father, then Obito, then Rin, then Minato, and now her. Was everyone he cared about condemned to the same fate? To die an early death? Was he cursed to have all his loved ones die? He could still remember the first person who died for his sake. Obito had pushed him out of the way of a falling boulder, crushing him instead of Kakashi. It was how he got the Sharingan and adopted his mottos and mannerisms. It was the day he gained and lost the first best friend he'd ever had and now…he was going to lose the first girl who managed to worm her way into his heart.

He sighed tiredly and sank into the chair he placed by her bedside. He felt drained and…were those tears in his eyes? He was crying?

'A shinobi should never reveal their emotions. They make you careless and they get you killed.'

But they were also what made him human.

And as he struggled with the tears, trying to figure out if he should let them fall or hold them back like he always did, he saw a flicker of motion on the bed. Eyelashes fluttered, then blinked once.

Twice.

Open.

Amaya winced as the light seared her eyes. 'Baby steps,' she told herself as she got her eyes acclimatized to the light before studying the room. 'Unless heaven is a hospital room, I think I'm in the wrong place.'

She turned her head towards the window to see the unique architecture of Suna outside the pane of glass. Just then, she saw something.

"Kakashi? Why are you crying?"

Kakashi was seeing it, but he couldn't believe it. Distantly, he realized she was waving her hand before his face, desperately trying to call his attention. A chuckle left his lips, but he soon found tears in his eyes again. He could hear the alarm in her voice as she cried out, "Ah! Was it something I said? Is everything alright? Why aren't you telling me anything?!"

After a minute, he calmed down and gripped her hand in his gloved one. "I'm fine," he laughed. "I'm fine. I'm just…relieved."

She blinked at him. "Huh? What do you mean? Did something happen?"

"Well, when someone gets stabbed and wakes up after being unconscious for two days, I think you can classify it as 'something happened,'" he smiled. At her slightly stunned expression, he began to talk again, like he had to get everything out there before this happened again. Before he got a chance to know and ask.

"You almost died out there, you know. Twice, actually." He turned to her. "Why did you do something so reckless and stupid?"

She chuckled, rubbing the back of her neck sheepishly as a blush painted her cheeks. "Love makes people do stupid things. Besides, don't you remember what I told you before?"

Flashback

"You know, I used to like someone." she said all of a sudden. Apparently, her mind had enlisted her mouth too.

"Really?" he asked, curious.

She sighed, a wistful look in her eyes. "Yeah. I looked up to him as a hero and things got weird and soon, I fell in love with him."

"Seriously?"

She laughed. "Yeah, seriously. I said I'd give my life for him. I still would."

End Flashback

He blinked and pointed at himself. "It was me that you were talking about?"

She giggled. "I'm surprised, Kakashi-kun. You failed to read underneath the underneath. And you call yourself a shinobi," she teased.

"I thought you were talking about Itachi the whole time," he admitted.

She answered the statement with a look of abject horror. "What?!"

"Well, it sounded like you were describing him," he countered.

"You sell yourself too short, old man."

"I'm sorry. How old were you supposed to be? 5?"

"Hey!" she shouted, hitting him with her pillow.

He chuckled as he shielded him head with his forearms. When she stopped, he opened his eyes to see her hugging the pillow to her chest, the smile on her lips causing her to glow.

"It's good to have you back," he smiled.

"It's good to be back," she replied softly.

Strangely, after those words were let loose, Kakashi started to move towards her and she began to lean towards him. He lowered his lids and she closed hers when she felt the first touch of his lips on hers. Unlike all those tales of kisses that had fireworks that exploded in the background and brought the world to a halt, their kiss wasn't like that. It seemed to have slowed time for a second or two, but it hadn't exactly stopped it, but they didn't seem to care. It was special to them as far as kisses go and surprisingly, it went pretty far.

"Will you stop with all that mushy stuff?" Sai shouted on the other side of the curtain.

Kakashi and Amaya pulled away, a small blush on both their faces as they realized what they just did. He blinked at her and she blinked at him before the two burst out in laughter.

Sai really knew how to ruin a moment.