Uchiha Sasuke; 7 Years Later

Age 19

-Pain-

Well, at least nothing else could go wrong at this point.

After an unexpected and long stay at our advisory's…er… lair… or whatever he'd like to call it… we finally managed to escape.

Everyone would like to argue that it was my fault that we got caught in the first place and I wasn't going to deny it.

But what was I supposed to do?

Leave Ino behind?

We weren't in the clear yet and I led my team of Ino and Neji over to what seemed to be a dead end. I stood in front of the wall and put my hands out for Ino to use as footing. She jumped over.

"I can do it myself." Said Neji as if I had offered to help him jump over the wall too even though I obviously hadn't.

"Okay fine." I said. "I wasn't going to help you anyway."

He really needed to be put in his place. I was the leader of this mission and he was only a chuunin.

He quite easily jumped over the wall and landed with such grace to the point in which I almost was impressed but I wasn't at the last second because I knew I could do better.

I jumped up over, lost my balance on something and almost fell over, but caught myself at the last second. I don't think either of them noticed, though. Either that or they both did a good job in pretending they didn't notice.

I went over to them to devise a strategy.

"We should probably give ourselves a little bit of distance from this place as much as possible before we rest for the night." I said.

Neji looked angry with my decision. And, even though I technically, whatever I said was what would happen, I still liked to hear out my teammates just in case they might present a more reasonable solution to the problem. But Neji tended to be counter productive and rather negative.

"I say we just travel all night until we get back to Konoha." Neji said. "They are no doubt going to come looking for us."

"Exactly." I said. We had just escaped from a prison so we were in no shape to just go gallivanting off into the night until we finally wandered back to Konoha. "That's why we should give ourselves a little distance."

"I'd rather not run all night either." Ino agreed with me.

"It's settled then." I said. Not only was I team leader, but I liked Ino better than Neji. A lot better than Neji.

I gestured for Ino and Neji to follow me and they did.

Why was Neji even on this mission? It was an important JOUNIN mission. A special A-rank mission. Chuunins never went on special A-rank missions. It must have been some kind of mistake or something…

But, even though we had a chuunin on our team, as far as I knew, our mission had been a success. The fourth member of our party had made it back all right and returned the information to the Hokage. With the information, she managed to intervene before the village decided to wage an attack against our village.

Ino had fallen behind and had gotten captured early in the mission. Neji wanted to leave, but I wouldn't do that. Ino was the only woman I had ever loved and there was no way I was going to just LEAVE her there.

So, since I was team leader, I ordered Neji to come with me back to rescue her.

Of course… that didn't work out too well.

But in the end, everything was just fine so looking back on it now to point out our mistakes would be pointless.

I had decided we had gone far enough and stopped at a good spot.

"This is a good spot." I said. I looked at Neji and waited for him to disagree just for the sake of disagreeing, but he didn't.

That's when Ino ran over and hugged me.

"I thought we weren't going to get out of there!" Ino said, settling comfortably in my arms. "Thank you for rescuing me."

"I wasn't going to leave you behind…" I said, holding her tightly.

I had missed her truly but I believe that this time away from her almost strengthened my feelings for her because I realized just how much I did need her. She went in to kiss me but I suddenly heard Neji clearing his throat.

I looked at him.

How dare he.

"I hate to ruin the…moment…" he said with an edge to his voice. "But we should set up camp together."

Well that was it then.

"We'll do it quickly." I said, kissing Ino briefly and then going over to Neji. After a few minutes, we decided that it was Ino's job to collect leaves for the shelter as Neji and I bent over trees to use for the base.

"How about these trees?" Neji said.

Was he kidding? "They might break." I said. "I think they need to be slightly bigger."

I searched for a size that I could be happy with. "Definitely these." I said, pointing to a pair of trees. I grabbed one to pull over but it was a little harder than I had expected…

But Neji didn't bother offering to help.

"Need a little help?" Ino asked.

That would have been a shameful charity…

"I…can handle it…" I said.

"Doesn't look like you can." Ino said with a sigh. She came over and grabbed the tree and we easily pulled it over. She kissed me.

We both stood there like fools for a minute with a tree bent over. Neji was off doing whatever so he wasn't about to tie it for us…

"Who's going to tie it down?" Ino said.

"See, I was gong to have YOU do it." I admitted.

Ino laughed.

"I don't even have a rope with me right now." Ino said. "Well, no use holding it anymore, right Sasuke?"

Well I probably could have held on to it while she got the rope and—

I was interrupted from my trail of thought though, because Ino had just suddenly let go of it in such a fashion that she almost HELPED it snap back up to it's regular position. I don't know exactly what happened, but all I knew was that my shoulder was in excruciating pain and I suddenly found myself kneeling on the ground.

"Sasuke!" I heard Ino yell. "I'm SO sorry!"

Though I was not crying, tears started to weld up in my eyes. "No…" I said. "It's fine. It doesn't hurt that much."

Who was I kidding? It hurt like…I don't know. It hurt a lot.

"You must not have tied it tight enough." Said Neji condescendingly.

"We didn't tie it at all." Ino said, as she put her arms around me. I did feel a little better being held, but any pressure on that side of my body was making me feel sick.

"Do you think the bone might have snapped?" Neji said.

Bone? Snapped? Not likely. I'm much stronger than that.

"It's broken!" Ino gasped. "No it's not!"

"Yeah…" I agreed with her, trying to stand up. "It's fine…"

"Sit down Sasuke!" said Ino, pulling on my shirt. I didn't want to resist at all because if I could avoid any pain, I was definitely going to do whatever it took.

"Listen to your girlfriend, Sasuke." Said Neji, turning away. "I'm not a medic but even I can tell by looking at you that you broke your collarbone."

I couldn't have a broken collarbone.

"I probably just pulled a muscle." I said, standing up just to prove they were both overreacting.

Ino immediately followed after me.

I could feel myself getting a little dizzy so I had to lean up against a tree. I was getting a bit of tunnel vision, but I was probably just in shock.

The mission was OVER…I couldn't be injured NOW…

By Ino no less…

I think I sustained more injuries from Ino than from missions…

"I think we should get your shirt off your arm." Ino said.

I didn't know what good that would do but I was willing to try anything. I took left arm out of the sleeve easily…

Ino helped get the shirt up over my head. This was the part that I had been dreading.

She carefully tried to maneuver the shirt around my arm but everything at this point hurt so no matter how carefully or slowly she did it, it was going to be painful.

"Should we…" Ino said. "Wrap your shirt around your arm? Give you a sling?" The last thing I wanted was to throw my arm around more when I should have just been resting it.

I guess this attitude was apparent to Ino because she said the line that I heard quite often.

"Sasuke, stop being a baby." She said, giving me a light hit on the side.

But the hit didn't feel so light.

"I'm sorry!" she apologized frantically. What exactly was Neji doing? I knew he wasn't a serious medic or anything, but I also knew he had trained for a little while as one. Shouldn't he be saying something on the matter?

I was finding it harder to breath.

"You could help you know." Ino said to Neji. I guess she had been thinking the same thing as me.

"Sasuke needs to be put out of his pain." Neji said.

"I'm fine, just give me a minute to shake it off." I said, though I really would have liked to be put out of pain if he had any means of doing so.

But then I felt pain.

On the back of my neck, I felt a suddenly jolt of sharp pain.

However, after that, there was no pain.