Hinata once again woke up to someone standing over her shouting her name, this time instead of a red mess of hair it was a sleek black waterfall of hair, she focused on Itachi's worried face.

"I-I'm sorry Itachi-san" She laid back down in a huff and felt him sit down on her bed. She was exhausted, she just wanted a few solid hours of sleep and she was sure everyone else did too.

"What do you dream about?" He asked softly sitting down on her bed beside her.

She didn't hesitate. "Th-The men I killed, a-and people I know dieing of the same causes."

"You fought for your life, you are not wrong. Even as part of a village self-defense is the perfectly acceptable reason for lethal force." He cleared her hair from her face and smoothed it down.

"I-I should be strong enough to defend myself w-without lethal force. I-if I fight someone I know h-how can I rationalize defending myself." She curled herself into a ball of misery.

Itachi didn't have an answer, he wished he had, but he knew that nothing he would say would comfort her. He leaned back against the wall and continued to pet her hair until she fell back to sleep leaving him to his thoughts.

Hinata was startled awake by crashing. She bolted up tossing the blankets off her and jumped to her feet. She was pulled back down by the other person in her bed. She turned to see a rather groggy Itachi sitting against the wall. "It's Kisame, he's making you breakfast since you haven't been sleeping, act surprised."

Hinata let out her breath and nodded gathering clothing and heading to the shower. She found it odd she had slept the rest of the way thru the night, she wasn't well rested, but she could at least manage the day. She wanted to desperately ignore that it was because she could feel the warmth and protection of Itachi's presence in her bed.

She dressed herself and stumble out to the kitchen to see Kisame struggling with her cooktop. She tilted her head around him to see burnt eggs. "W-would you like help?" His angry looked at the eggs turned to a tinge of surprise as he turns his head to see her, he blushed turning his face purple.

"I really don't know how you do it kid..." He surrendered the kitchen to her and let her clean up his mess and make an editable breakfast. "You okay kid, when we got here we were told the last two weeks had been hell. Sasori said you were getting sick and could barely move you were so tired."

"I-I'll be fine, j-just some trauma induced night terrors." She explained setting the first dish in front of him then continue cooking for the rest of the house.

"Saying it like a doctor doesn't make me feel any better." He said with his mouth full. She scolded him as Sasori and Itachi joined them soon finding food in front of them as well.

"The brat is going to sleep all day." Sasori complained pointedly at the boarding room door.

"L-let him, I have been waking him when I wake up, I-I'm sure he would like some solid sleep." She sat down with her own food and picked at it carefully. She hadn't been eating much, or rather she could keep anything down so she tried to eat slowly to make sure she could.

"How are you faring with one eye." Itachi started.

"She runs into everything." Sasori answered, ignoring her glare.

"I-It causes my depth perception to be a bit off." She explained. "Th-the byakugan is similar, i-it's just that my blind spot is larger." Itachi nodded.

"Your other injuries?"

"L-Largely healed, m-my eye, o-or rather eye socket t-took the longest to finish the natural healing process, th-the scar is permanent." She reached up to touch the hem of the fabric over her eye. Kisame gave her a look of pain. She knew the felt bad for her, but she almost wished they didn't, she felt bad enough without knowing she was making others feel bad just looking at her. She forced her hand down to her lap and put on a brave smile. "I-I'm really okay." The two more perceptive of the three males at the table didn't look so sure.

She promptly started to clean up after them and tried to go about a normal day. Though Itachi wouldn't let her do any of his treatments until she got more proper rest (with him by her side) he did let her monitor his depression. She marked it in his charts and made a plan for when she could next treat him.

Sasori never seemed to be far. Always in eyeshot, and with her now limited range of site it seemed on purpose. She was starting to think these boys she loved so dearly were plotting to keep her from doing any work that could make her tired. She sighed in defeat knowing she could get no work she wanted to do done with them all watching her like hawks and resigned to doing non-delicate research in the main room cuddled into a blanket.

"Are you still reading that? I think you understand me in and out by now, do you really need the book." Sasori asked lifting it from her hands looking at it with minor disgust.

"Th-that's one of the ones you brought me." She defended reaching for it.

"I know and you have surpassed it, you would be better rewriting it." He closed it and held it out of her reach.

"I-I'm not nearly skilled enough to be a puppet master." She stood trying again to snatch it from him.

"You rewired a human puppet from near scratch what will you learn from a book on making attachments with non-live puppets." He looked amused as he dangled the book from her reach.

Pouting and plopping back down she glared at his feet. "I-I know which joints are the weakest."

Raising an eyebrow he too sat down. "You didn't have to learn the from a book, you learned it when you had such a hard time making the chakra in my ankles from stretching too thin when I moved my feet." he set the book back in her lap. "Why haven't you wrote your own book?"

"I-I write my notes." She claimed, trying to find what page she was on. "I-I don't think there is anyone like you s-so there really is no need for anyone else to have those notes, b-but me or you."

"Maybe you wrote something that no one else has noticed because they can't see it like you can."

"I-I doubt that." There had been puppet masters for many generations, she doubted she could bring anything to them that they had not already known. Then again she had found something the Hyuuga hadn't in many generations just with a bit of medical knowledge, but the puppeteering community didn't have that restriction. She was sure anything she found was already somewhere she just didn't have access to it before.

"Let me read your notes on my recovery I bet I can find something." She blinked her eye, setting the book aside on the page she stopped on stumbling over to her office. She dug through binders on her desk to find his, she brought him back two large medical book sized binders and sat them in front of him.

"Th-these are the notes on the books I have and your treatment."

"All this?" He asked opening them both to the first page. Her handwriting was neat and delicate, fitting that of an heiress who had her fingers smacked for anything less than perfect.

"Wh-what?" She shrunk at his mocking grin.

***TheUnstableLiz***

I appreciate CONSTRUCTIVE comments and reviews.

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If you have a question please log in and PM me. I will answer any and all questions!

I will point out I am not sure of and will not be following the timeline of the show anything that seems out of place is a result of that.

I will also point out that anyone who is out of character by a lot is the fault of me not knowing the character well enough and I apologize for that.