A/N: Trying to be more frequent with my updates so here's another chapter! Thanks again to all the favouriters, followers, and ESPECIALLY the reviewers 3 (and please excuse any sketchy typos!)

"Ha!" Sakura yelled out from the effort to push against Sasuke's hold over her. He stepped back and let her as she circled around him and went for a low arcing strike.

He deflected, sure enough, and struck back with more force than ever. He was pushing her to her limits. Challenging her.

She wouldn't back down now.

Sasuke seemed to fly over the grass and fallen leaves, his feet always planted firmly and yet dancing with utter speed to accommodate each swipe of his sword. His weapon was an arcing ray of reflecting light cutting through the still air of the forest. The sounds of their clashing and rebounding swords was deafening to Sakura's ears.

And then it was if everything was happening in slow motion. One moment Sasuke was deflecting her slashes and jabs with perfect precision, and then the next, when she tried a bold move and struck at his neck, just above the curse seal mark still imprinted on his skin, a spasm went up his prosthetic arm and his sword failed to lift in time to block her.

It was at that last moment as she felt the tip of her sword meet the soft flesh of his neck that she pulled back in terror. Her left foot slide unsurely on wet leaves as she reeled back. The force of her backwards momentum on her ankle ultimately twisting it and making her collapse to the forest floor.

She cried out in pain as the weight of her body slammed down on her ankle. She was sure it was broken now. But she had no time to think on that as she opened her eyes and saw the blood dripping from Sasuke's neck over his white shirt and painting the brown leaves on the ground crimson.

"Sasuke!" She scrambled towards him. He knelt a few feet away, bent over one knee, his sword plunged deep into the earth to hold him up.

Sakura used her arms to support her weight as she shoved herself across that short distance towards him. She came up underneath him, looking up at him. His face was masked by his dark hair and besides a few beads of sweat on his brow, he showed no outward displays of pain.

Typical Sasuke.

But then she noticed his deadly grip on his katana. His prosthetic seemed to tremble as he clutched desperately onto the handle to hold himself up. Sakura felt her heart grow heavy with remorse.

She spoke with deadly calm despite the panicked beating of her heart and her shortness of breath. "Sasuke, you need to let go of your sword now and show me your neck so I can heal it."

For a moment she thought he couldn't hear her, but then he did exactly as she said but remained kneeling on one knee. His eyes met hers with utter blankness. "I'm fine," he said.

She took a look at his neck to find that he was indeed right—she had managed to reel back before her blade could've done any real damage. Sasuke's neck bore no more than a slight cut, but nothing immediately life-threatening.

She nodded. "Still, let me stop the bleeding and close the wound. We can't have you bleeding out."

He didn't say anything. Sakura didn't know what else to say, so she simply raised her right hand to his neck, taking hold of the side of it as a mother would before kissing her son on the forehead. She focused her chakra in careful amounts—into her hand and then into Sasuke's skin and veins, watching as he was knotted back together.

Through the whole process she kept her eyes focused on her hand and didn't once chance a look at his face. She knew that the blush that has risen to her cheeks was unmistakeable but she couldn't find it in her to care about whether he saw. It wasn't as if he didn't know about her feelings about him. She had told him she loved on more than one occasion—most of which ended in him turning away without regard, and the last of which ended in him killing her in a genjutsu.

She breathed a sigh of relief when she was done healing him. Sasuke's expression was a mask of impassiveness, but underneath that she could see some flicker of confliction in the set of his brow and the turn of his mouth.

What's wrong? she wondered and immediately remembered the spasm that went through his prosthetic just before she had cut him. She suppressed a shudder at the possibility of what she could've done to him. Of how badly he could've been hurt—and by her. By the girl who said she loved him. It was indeed not something she'd ever thought possible.

She bit her lip as she stared at his face. Under normal circumstances she would not stare so blatantly at him, especially considering he was returning her gaze equally. But she couldn't help herself. The look in his eyes was enough to undo her.

She wished she could heal the pain in his eyes. Wished she could've stopped the many terrible things that had occurred and not just in this one moment or in the last few years.

She wished she could've stopped all the pain he had endured since his parents had died. Since Itachi had died. Since he had left his team behind and appeared lost to her forever.

Even now, gazing upon his pale and drawn face, she wished she could release all the hurt in him with just her touch.

If only things were as simple as that.

She cleared her throat at the sudden quiet and awkwardness. She shuffled back on her hands and Sasuke stood up abruptly.

"We should head back," he said. The Sasuke who had appeared at her window in the sunlight this morning and the Sasuke who had been fighting with her just now—both were gone, replaced with the ever impassive and unbreakable Sasuke. Always so deeply draw into his mask that sometimes she wondered if he ever took it off, or if everything else had become a mask in comparison and this—the expression void of feeling or care—or dare she say it void of love—had become the reality.

Sakura nodded and moved to get up. The resulting pain in her ankle shot up her leg and she suppressed a cry of pain. She managed to make it to her feet with the support of a nearby tree, keeping the weight off her injured foot.

"You can't walk like that."

Thank you, Captain Obvious.

"I'm perfectly aware of that, Sasuke. We just need to get back to the house so I can call Shizune and have her set the bones. If I try to use medical ninjutsu on it now it won't heal properly," she explained. A sheen of sweat had collected on her brow from the effort of standing up.

A strange look crossed Sasuke's face. "Sit down."

"What? Why?"

He just stared at her.

"Sasuke, I won't make it down without falling over. Can we please just go back to the house?"

He didn't say anything. The next moment he had slipped a hand under her knees and another at the small of her back, picking her up with ease for a moment and then setting her on the ground to sit with her legs outstretched.

"Hey!" she called out in surprise. She breathed a sigh as the feeling of his hands on her subsided and he knelt down in front of her, gingerly placing his hands on either side of her swollen ankle.

"W-what are you doing?" she asked out of breath from the pain.

"I'm going to set your ankle. Grab onto something."

"Wait, Sasuke—"

Her words broke off as he ruthlessly twisted and jammed her ankle back into place—all in one swift movement—without warning.

Sakura bit down hard on her lip, drawing blood, and when she looked down at the ground where her hands laid, the earth had been shattered tenfold by her chakra.

He was examining her ankle as he said, "The splint will have to wait until we get back, but for now this should do for you to heal it, am I right?"

Sakura wiped at the blood on her lip and glared at him. She then bent over her leg and placed her own hands over her ankle, letting her chakra flow into the joint. She sighed with relief as the pain subsided, but the effect on her was draining.

"Better," she sighed. "Now I just wish I had some ice to make the swelling go down."

Sasuke looked thoughtful. "There's a stream just past this clearing."

She tilted her head up to look at him and then let her eyes scan over her surroundings until she found what she was looking for.

Just within her grasp was a long, thick branch that was about three-fourths of her height. She snatched it up, using it as a support to get up.

Sasuke watched the whole endeavour without a word.

"Let's go," she said with noticeable effort.

After hobbling along with her makeshift crutch for the better part of ten minutes, they finally reached the stream Sasuke had been talking about.

She had to admit the sight was quite breathtaking. Tucked into an small clearing, free of trees or even trampled, crumpled fallen leaves, the floor was pure soft green grass and the sky above them was a clear baby blue that shone with the light of the sun. A slight breeze travelled through and the stream seemed to glisten and sparkle.

Sakura made it to the stream with a sense of great accomplishment, throwing her head back to drink in the sun and let out a small laugh. Sasuke had trailed a healthy distance behind her the whole way over, but now he had drawn close to the stream.

She purposely ignored him as she lowered herself to the grass and gingerly stretched her foot into the water. The coldness amid the warm sunlight was welcome to her sore and throbbing limb. She sighed with pleasure, closing her eyes.

When she opened them Sasuke no longer stood by the stream, and when she finally twisted around to look behind her, he sat on the grass, sprawled out facing away from the water. After a moment, he leaned back fully, lowering his head onto the grass too, lying there under the sun with a heart of hurt bared at the heavens.

Sakura leaned back on her hands and sighed. "This place is beautiful. How did you know about it anyway?"

Sasuke spoke to the sky. "I found it when I was scouting the nearby area last week. The day Kakashi came to talk to you."

Sakura paused and turned around to look at him. She had gotten angry with him that day for lying that he'd been home all morning. She'd accused him of going out to train without her, but thinking back on it now—Sasuke had never explicitly said he'd gone to train against her wishes. She suddenly felt ridiculous for reacting so harshly.

Just as she was about to apologize for acting that way that day, wrapped in all her resentment and regret, he spoke in a deadly quiet voice.

His eyes were closed and he didn't outwardly seem like he was speaking to her, but the words that came out of his mouth like a whisper were ones she would've caught from a thousand feet away—

"Why do you love me, Sakura?"

A/N: Hope that last bit has gotten you excited for the next chapter! Once again, pretty please, I would IMMENSELY appreciate any kind of feedback on my writing/story in a review! Thanks for reading! :)