Bre POV

The night felt like a blur. We got back sometime in the middle of the night and I was feeling lucky that I'd even managed to find the cave where we'd stashed our stuff. And now I was sitting vigil in the freezing night as Cass tried to regain her strength. I was currently doing my best to dry our clothes in the back of the cave. The fire was small and I'd moved Cass a few feet in front of it to try and block the light from reaching the edge of the cave. Unfortunately it also kept the heat from reaching me as well.

I suppose I should be happy that we'd at least left our cloaks behind, so it was dry for me to wear. But to be honest I was too cold and tired to do much of anything besides be grumpy about it. Reaching over I set my hand on the sword we'd taken with us, a bit sad I hadn't taken the other as well. They would have been a nice reminder of our first successful mission since we'd stolen them from the first men who'd almost killed us.

The thought of it still gave me mixed feelings. I was sad that I'd murdered someone, but I was also proud that I was able to defend Cass when she got attacked. At this point I wasn't sure which sword had belonged to which guy but I guess it didn't really matter. Closing my eyes I took a deep breath and tried to clear my head. It was doing no good thinking about everything that had happened, I should just be glad it was over and move on. I did my best to focus and think about other things, going back to watching the woods around the cave and listen to the slowly stopping rain.

A while later and the rain had almost stopped, making the noise of Cass stirring all the most startling. Flinching slightly at the sudden noise I looked back to see her slowly push herself up onto her hands and knees, as if she was going to be sick. She stayed like that for nearly a minute before suddenly lurching towards the closest spot near her that wasn't close to something and starting to gag even though there clearly wasn't anything in her stomach. Even after she'd stopped she stayed put, taking deep breaths to probably calm herself. It was a while before she finally started to move again and slowly came to sit across from me.

"You should get more sleep." My voice was quiet as I talked and I had to stifle a large yawn.

"And you should get any sleep..." Cass talked slowly and even more quietly than I had, and by how raspy she sounded I doubt she could talk louder if she wanted. I knew she was right but I still felt horrible about it. I knew she needed more rest but I also knew that I needed some as well if I was going to be of any use in the morning.

Sighing heavily I rubbed my face with both hands before looking at her. "We'll eat something and then I'll get some rest ok." Her face bunched up at the mention of food but I interjected before she could complain. "You have to eat. And drink. I saw some bread and an apple in the bag earlier, those should be fine." There was a pause before she looked back up at me and nodded.

It was odd of her to be this quiet most of the time. But it wasn't the first time I'd seen her while she was sick or injured. She always got like this when she wasn't feeling well, probably because she was too tired to bother thinking of what to say or how to act. It was similar to how she was in the mornings before she woke up all the way. Small, fragile, and usually clingy, like a little kid.

I moved things around before getting up and walking over to our bags. After a little bit of digging around I found the box with our food and the single bottle of water we had left. As I sat back down I set the water and the box between us, opening them both, and started to make sure that Cass ate. After she'd taken a couple of bites of things I started to eat slowly, hopping the sudden food in my empty stomach wouldn't make me sick. There wasn't a lot of food left once we were done and I felt a bit worried we wouldn't have enough for our trip back to Amegakure.

Letting out a heavy sigh I pushed the worry to the back of my mind and instead put the food we still had away before laying down in front of the fire. "Wake me up when it starts to get light out. I don't want to be close to that place any longer than we have to." Cass nodded at me and shifted around to watch the entrance of the cave as I did my best to get comfortable. Clearly it didn't matter though because I quickly fell asleep.

Someone shook my shoulder, causing me to startle awake. I started to push myself up and look around, first to the entrance of the cave where light was just starting to touch the sky. And then around beside me where Cass was slowly starting to pack our bags. Standing up I stretched as best I could and kicked dirt onto the fire to put it out. I then pulled off my cloak while I started to get dressed in my still slightly damp clothes, a shiver running through me. Luckily the shock of cold did help me to wake up more. Once my shoes and cloak where on Cass handed me what looked like the heavier bag and we left.

Quickly finding the path back to the village we walked for a long time in mostly silence. So it wasn't hard to me to notice the sound of someone running up behind us. I pushed Cass, causing her to stumble gently into a tree, and quickly ducked as a person lunged at me. Pushing against their legs I managed to use their momentum to cause them to flip onto their back. As I stood straight I wasn't really expecting there to be another person until I felt them use my braid to yank back into their chest.

A strong arm wrapped around my neck before pulling me up off my feet. I tried to struggle against them but they were much stronger than me and nothing I was doing was working. I heard Cass let out a yelp and stopped trying to pull on the person's arm, instead fumbling with the pouch on my thigh. A few kunai slipped from my shaking hand and I started to feel weak as the arm tightened, starting to choke me. Pulling my legs up higher I managed to get a good grip on a kunai and pulled it out before stabbing the person in their arm.

Their arm jerked away and I dropped to the ground, coughing and gasping in breaths. I looked up where the noise of Cass struggling came from and managed to push myself up onto my feet. Scrambling forward I gathered up my strength to tackle the man attacking her. But I only managed to make them stumble away a few steps before they got their footing and hit me, causing me to get knocked onto the ground. This time as the other person attacking us pulled me up using my hair I managed to let out a scream in hopes someone would hear us with us not being too far from the village.

Their free hand covered my mouth, smothering my scream and pulling me hard against them. The hand in my hair let go and I look up to see Cass get slammed back into the tree before slumping onto the ground. Struggling again I tried clawing at them weakly but froze as I felt a knife get pressed to my throat.

"Behave yourself. If you stop being a nuisance then we'll be nice enough to kill your friend quickly." I stopped moving and watched as the man in front of Cass picked her up by the wrists. My body my was shaking, I could feel it. We're going to die aren't we? "You're quivering. Don't be afraid, we aren't going to kill you just yet. That wouldn't be fair to the rest of guys who will want revenge." I bit my lip hard to keep from whimpering as this man threatened us.

The knife was moved from my neck and they hit me hard on the back of the head causing my vision to start to fade as I slumped against their arm. I heard the jingle of a small bell close by and could just barely see a pair of figures in the Akatsuki uniform walking towards us. I can't tell who it is... But I don't care. I heard the man with Cass scream before the man let me go, causing me to drop onto my knees. I tried looking up to see who'd saved us but was far too weak and ended up collapsing, only hearing the sound of fighting and one of the men begging before I completely passed out.

All of me hurts...what happened? My memories were still a little fuzzy but they were quickly clearing up as I laid there. Suddenly remembering I jerked my eyes open and tried to sit up, but collapsed back down from a wave of near crippling dizziness. "... C-Cass..." My voice is so hoarse. I sat up slower this time, pushing myself up onto my elbows to look around the room. Another wave of dizziness swept over me but after a couple breaths my head cleared enough for me to make sense of my surroundings. I was laying on a cot in a smaller room that was being split by a curtain and looking down at myself I noticed I was now in a very simple pair of pajamas. It really wasn't hard for me to recognize a hospital room at this point, after having spent nearly a week in one when we first met the Akatsuki.

I slowly started to relax and moved into a sitting position, glancing out the window beside me to see a small village. Now that I was fairly sure I wasn't in any immediate danger I began listening to the noises around me. I thought I could hear someone breathing on the other side of the curtain but it was hard to tell. As I was trying to listen better I started to hear a voice I thought I recognized yelling but it was was hard to tell with it being muffled by the wall.

Frowning I swung my feet off my side of the bed, pausing as I started to get dizzy again. Once my head was clear I braced my hand on a small table beside me and began to move slowly around the curtain. On the other side a bandaged Cass was sleeping on another cot. I let out a soft sigh and used her cot to help hold me up as I kept heading to the door. Even though I was much closer now I still couldn't tell who the voice that was yelling belonged to so I opened the door and slowly shuffled out into the hall.

I could hear someone apologizing now, it sounded like one of the men who'd given us our assignment but I couldn't make out just what he was saying. Using the wall to brace myself I started walking towards the sound. A few nurses scurried around but they all ignored me beyond just a small glance in my direction, they all seemed more worried about avoiding the yelling. Is that... Kisame?

Peaking around the corner I saw him holding the other man up by the front of his shirt and yelling about how if Cass didn't wake up he'd be lucky if he was the one that dealt with him. The small man that hired me paled even more and looked over at Itachi who was leaning against a wall. I blinked a few times finally processing what Kisame had said and stepped out from around the corner.

"What do you mean she might not wake up?" My voice was soft and broke slightly as I spoke but it caused all of the men in that room to freeze up.

"Bre... what are you doing out of bed?" Kisame dropped the man and walked over to me. Taking a step back I looked up at him sternly but he just sighed and started ushering me back into my hospital room. "Let's not talk about it right here." He glanced back at Itachi who just pushed off the wall and walked off to who knows where.

I watched him leave before giving in to Kisame's request. He gave me his arm to hold onto to support my weight and helped me back to my bed before pulling up a chair. "Are you going to explain what you meant now?"

"The doctor said that she strained her body by trying to use too much of her chakra at one time. Right now it looks like she'll be fine with a lot of rest but things can always happen. So it's best to try not to worry too much alright."

I nodded slightly and paused for a while before speaking up. "Leader is going to be so upset with us... we couldn't even do a basic mission without almost getting killed. Those men weren't even ninja..."

"Not once he knows they lied about it." This made me frown deeply and I looked over at him confused. "Leader sent us to check on you. We weren't supposed to interfere, and then we heard you screaming. You weren't hired to kill a person, especially not a don. They called us to get rid of what was described as a beast that was killing their people. We were told nothing about it being a man. He wanted to see how well you worked together without someone else's help. That's the reason he even accepted such a low rank mission." He stopped for a second and sighed before standing up. "I'm going to find the doctor so he can check up on you."

I took a second to process what he said as Kisame stood up and left the room. After a minute I pushed myself up further onto the bed, bringing my legs up onto the mattress. I tried to relax as best as I could while I waited on him and ended up dozing off again.

I'm really sorry about any formatting issues in this chapter. I did my best to fix them but there may still be some mistakes.