Stiill don't own it. Aren't you all just so glad. I mean.. look at what I'm doing to these characters. Dear lord the havoc. Wouldn't it be fun? Anyway, for you all, who've managed to put up with the babblings of the authoress for this long... which looking back on it now... hasn't actually been that long... going through things fairly very quickly... I think my muse is trying to get out of our agreement by making things that much less detailed... there may be some major revision done, or there may not. Either way... announcement:

FINALS START TOMORROW

of course, i don't actually have to take them tomorrow, but i really need to start SERIOUSLY prepping for them... so as a good by gift... two chapters... go on... shoo

Sasuke watched; Hinata and the other medics were so very tense. It was understandable, they weren't sure this would work; none of them had done anything like this before. Practicing on a doll was not the same as actually performing the procedure on a person. If it didn't work, he was sure Hinata would withdraw into her shell, drowning in guilt and doubt.

Sasuke watched from outside the protective circle. Hinata was marking the affected tenketsu, the other medics watching her carefully. She was running a great risk, informing all the ninja in the room of how the Juuken worked. Granted, unless one had the Byakugan, the Juuken was just careful chakra release, no different from climbing a tree. Hinata herself did not seem to mind. She wanted to help the helpless, it was such a great weakness, and yet it was her greatest strength.

Sasuke watched as Hinata carefully touched the marked points, slowly feeding them chakra. Several agonizing moments later, at a nod from Hinata, another medic, from the Grass as it were, prepared for his part. A quick movement of her free hand, and he deftly slid the delicate pin under her fingers, into the ninja's body. She opened her eyes from the flinch of hope and denial. Breathing a sigh compounded of several days' worth of relief, she took the pin by its bulbous metal head, barely feeling a tug from it, and removed it.

Sasuke watched as Hinata reactivated her blood limit. She stared at the ninja like she only just realized her was there. Sasuke's shoulders relaxed when she smiled, holding up the long, innocent looking pin.

"We did it. Now to repeat the procedure with all the other tenketsu, with all the other patients. This pin should be ready to use again in a day or so…" The other medic nins were ignoring her explanations, too busy congratulating her.

"Konoha is blessed to have such skilled medics and such a wise Hokage. I do hate to impose, but unless she can teach my medics that trick, we shall have to keep you until you finish all of the victims." The Raikage laughed good-naturedly, but the silent Konoha nin beside him could see the flash of steel. Kumogakure had been hard hit, and the Raikage needed as many nin as could be saved. He was understandably furious with the ninja who had sealed those of his village. He had also been understandably delighted when Hinata informed him that Hoshigake Kisame had been killed in battle. He had lauded the two Konoha nins for that feat, the lines marring his face disappeared for a little while. He heaped praises upon Hinata and her incredible skills. She never knew and continued to work her small miracles, because it brought her joy to know she could.

She taught some of the more skilled medics what to seek to find the throbbing tenketsu, what to feel for, since they could not see like she could. Many of the Cloud medics had come back, some brought their patients, most wanted to carry the cure away with them. All were properly grateful; the shared desire to heal removed any walls that heritage and geographical location created. Hours turned to days, days turned into weeks… until finally

"They're all done. We did it." Hinata felt like she should have known that the list of patients wasn't endless. However the messages that appeared sporadically proclaiming another had finally healed and was ready to accept missions had finally stopped. More and more Cloud ninja were appearing and disappearing from Kumogakure. The Raikage was not letting them rest, insisting they take on their missions immediately; they'd rested enough when they couldn't do anything.

Hinata however, couldn't rest. Uchiha Itachi couldn't have been happy that his partner had been killed. But everything was so quiet. It scared her, this lurking evil that no one could trace. Sasuke had been training harder than ever with the Cloud nin. The Raikage had jokingly suggested that Sasuke was the reason so many ninja were accepting their missions. It was refreshing to spar after a long bout of inactivity, but duty was as good an excuse as any not to continually have their hitai ate handed back to them by a foreign nin.

He came back to their little apartment more and more banged up every day. Hinata didn't have a choice but to watch him slowly killing part of himself with each passing day. Sometimes he'd come back and just crawl into bed, she didn't dare try to sneak into his room to heal him. He was a ninja, his senses and reflexes were far too sharp to trick. And the very thought of sneaking into his room, for any reason, made her turn pink. And besides… he didn't want her help on those days. It was killing the facet of him that only she saw. That side that understood that weakness was acceptable. The part of him that didn't care that she wasn't a fighter. The part of him that wanted to see her grow stronger, not so they could fight, but because he cared.

"Why do you look at me like that?" She had been peeking into his room to see if he was asleep.

"Like what, Sasuke-kun?" She came in and sat on the edge of the bed.

"Like you're not sure you know me. Every time I come in bruised and bleeding you look at me with those eyes and that look, but you still bandage my wounds and kiss me good night. Why?"

Hinata countered with another question. "Why do you feel the need to come in bruised and bleeding in the first place?"

"Because… it makes me feel like I'm alive." Sasuke didn't miss the stiffening of her shoulders and the flicker of something across her face. She moved to rise. He grasped her wrist, determined to explain this to her, as she had explained to him in the hospital hallway months ago. "When I was with the Sound, pain was my only connection to reality. I could watch others in pain, but it didn't feel real. Watching them suffering was … difficult. But not painful.

It was feeling my own blood dripping to the floor that told me that I was still myself, that the deception hadn't completely taken over me. It meant I could still fight, I could still become stronger, that I was still human. I have to become stronger. Weeks ago you told me that death was better than living an empty life…"

"So a life without pain is empty?" Her voice was hard, and she tried to pull her hand out of his.

"That's not what I want to say. If I'm not strong enough to kill my brother, I will have to live with everything he's done and everything he does until he dies. If he wants to attack Konoha, I want to be the first person to fight him. If he wants to use that seal on me, he'll have to defeat me in a fair fight, and I don't want to take the chance that maybe I won't win. If he wants to hurt me by hurting you…"

Hinata stopped him with a chaste brush of her lips, that tremor in his voice had to be hurting him more than it pained her. She understood better now. He was afraid, afraid of his brother, afraid of what he himself couldn't do. He was afraid of his weaknesses. So he was trying his best to eliminate physical flaws to make up for the pieces that had been shattered in his mind. By his brother, by someone he loved and looked up to.

And she understood that like she and Neji… perhaps he still loved and looked up to his brother. Which made the pain that much worse. There is no better way to get rid of that debilitating ache, than to drown it in the pain of getting stronger. To gain acknowledgement from someone who refuses to look at you, it was so easy to warp it into an addiction.

Sasuke already had.

"I made a vow… that I'd kill him and revive the clan. But what if I'm not strong enough? That's why I have to beat him. I'm getting tired of being the Uchiha Avenger, I want to be Uchiha Sasuke. Just Uchiha Sasuke. I'm getting tired of worrying that he might try something else. I'm tired of looking over my shoulder in case he's there. And I'm tired of seeing his face in the mirror, laughing at me and my weakness."

She hushed him; like he wasn't the number one rookie in her graduating class, like he wasn't the man she was falling in love with. She hushed him like she had hushed so many lost souls in the hospital; cradling his head, softly brushing his hair, whispering softly.

"You're tired. You have every right to be tired. You lost your childhood so quickly, please let me baby you, just this once. You're strong enough to exist as a ninja and person, aren't you? You'll grow old, and you'll be happy, and you'll fulfill your vow."

He was tired, he was losing consciousness even as he heard her. With you he wanted to say. I want to grow old and be happy and revive the clan with you.

So yeah, this is like… completely my own perspective on the character's thoughts. I just had to make them get it out in the open some how… and thus the OOCness propagates. Short chapter, but hey, at least I uploaded the next chapter to make up for it. I suppose if you look at it the right way... that's a good thing.