Fourth, fourth, fourth.

Again, this chapter has been revised.

A thousand thank-you's to my amazing beta Tomas the Betrayer.

Standard disclaimer applies.

Chapter 4

Amusement and Remorse

Sakura Haruno was very annoyed. Not to mention disappointed. Or furious, annoyed, betrayed, annoyed, horrified, annoyed, deflated, annoyed, scared, annoyed, determined, and did she mention annoyed?

Hermione was right when she told Ron that no girl had the emotional range of a teaspoon.

The various feelings mentioned above were due to several reasons:

1) Tsunade-sama had summoned her earlier to inform her that she would be taking care of Uchiha while he was in the hospital. Overjoyed, she had flown to be with him, and had practically killed the hospital staff in order to know which room her beloved Sasuke-kun was in.

2) The aforementioned Uchiha was, in fact, not her beloved Sasuke-kun, but his horrible and hideous (okay, maybe that was going too far – she couldn't deny that the elder Uchiha was far from ugly) elder brother, which led to the disappointment, betrayal, deflation, and annoyance.

3) This Uchiha was staring at her as if she was something unpleasant that was stuck to the underside of his shoe, at the same time managing to glare at her. While feeling annoyed, horrified, and scared, she also admired his impressive facial flexibility.

The man really knew how to multitask.

Anyway, coming back to the topic at hand, she shook herself out of her fantasy that involved a certain drunken Hokage with a pair of unusually strong hands around her neck.

"YOU!" she shrieked. "You are NOT Sasuke-kun!"

Hinata stared in surprise at her patient. She had never expected it to be one of the ice cold Uchiha brothers. With Naruto-kun too. She immediately began to resemble a cherry as her secret crush exclaimed as to how utterly extraordinary it was that she should happen to be here. Oh, Naruto-kun.

Averting her eyes from the sight of the blonde (her supervisor had told her that if she fainted one more time, there would be serious repercussions), she had no choice but to look at the face of the other occupant of the room, the aforementioned Uchiha Sasuke, and was surprised to see him looking oddly… relieved?

That irritation quickly changed as he punched Naruto in the back of the head so hard that Uzumaki flew off his stool to go soaring through the air and crash into a (formerly) sterile hospital-room wall.

"Stop acting so idiotic, dobe. Isn't it obvious? She's my new medic."

Hinata, who had hurried forth to help Naruto-kun, blushed as soon as Sasuke mentioned her. Feeling predictably shy, she stammered answers through Naruto's rapid-fire questions while helping him up into another chair.

"Ah!" Naruto suddenly exclaimed. "I was supposed to meet Iruka-sensei for lunch at Ichiraku's! I'm 3 hours late! Sorry, gotta go. See ya, Hinata-chan, Sasuke-teme!"

And he promptly ran out. Leaving Hinata with the unapproachable Uchiha.

She was going to kill Tsunade-sama.

"Are you really a medic?" came a low voice from behind her.

Startled, she whipped around to see Sasuke staring at her with intense onyx eyes. What else was there to say but…?

"Yes."

He nodded once, almost thoughtfully, then turned his gaze towards the window. Relieved, she dropped into a chair.

"Well?" came a more menacing voice. Her head shot up to see him still staring out of the window, but with a harder expression on his face. "Are you going to sit there forever, or are you going to check on me? I have better things to do than hear your annoying voice."

Her jaw almost dropped, but she hurried up and ran to his side, where she clumsily attempted to take hold of his arm. He roughly wrenched it away. "Don't ever touch me without asking me first, understand?" came a hiss.

She meekly nodded, and he thrust his arm out again, "Hurry up already. I don't have all day."

It would have felt nice to point out that, since he was admitted, he did, in fact, have all day, but she kept quiet and instead fumbled through the procedure. She could feel cold, hard eyes upon her – he had turned his head away from the window – and that made it hard to concentrate.

The experience, while totally familiar to her, somehow became overwhelming with every second that ticked by. She couldn't get through the checkup fast enough. Hinata raced out of the room as soon as the procedure was finished, not stopping in the hallway but actually running 2 floors down via the staircase before she collapsed in a heap and buried her head in her arms.

She was definitely going to kill Tsunade.

Shizune was quite alarmed. She had come back from the etiquette lessons with the young Hyuuga heiress (the clothes, honestly! She had seen the formal dresses later, the ones gifted by her clan, and while they were very lovely, Hinata's personal choice had to go, or she was going to be assassinated by the fashion police sooner rather than later) to find her mentor sitting at her desk cackling madly. A quick glance at the cabinet showed that she was not drunk, so what could possibly be the reason for this mad outburst? The last time she had cackled like this was when she had forced Genma to go buy lingerie for her at Victoria's Secret.

The Hokage was a very sadistic person inside.

"Ah, Shizune, there you are! I've been waiting to tell you what happened this morning!"

Shizune began to silently pray for the soul of whatever poor unfortunate had been the target of this fiendish aura.

As she did, her mentor crossed her arms and smugly declared, "I assigned Sakura to the Uchiha!"

And it was now apparent that more than prayers would be needed here. "But, Tsunade-sama, Sasuke will kill you! Or his father will – take your pick. He hates her!" Although Sakura would be delighted…

But Tsunade's further crowing proved that there was more evil done. "You're too quick to jump to conclusions. You failed to notice that I didn't mention which Uchiha."

Oh. Well, that was fine then. Sasuke was safe. It meant that Sakura was assigned to…

"Tsunade-sama! You assigned Sakura-chan to Itachi?"

Sasuke Uchiha was surprised. And relieved.

Surprised, because there was no way that he would have thought Neji-the-asshole's younger sister was a medic. He didn't have very many memories of her – he had been knocked unconscious before she was beaten by Neji, but he had heard that he had tried to kill her, and that Naruto had sworn on her blood that he would avenge her or something like that. Stupid dobe. Always finding a way to embarrass himself.

Relieved, because she was obviously not one of his fangirls. Last he saw, she was completely head over heels about Naruto. Why, he could not understand. How could someone fall for the dobe? However, if it saved him from the agony of having an obsessed teenager near him, he would gladly accept it.

Before him, the girl stammered and blushed as Naruto blabbered on and on about what a great coincidence it was that they should meet here of all places. Stupid. Seriously, was he channeling Lee's spirit or something? The next thing they knew, he would be running around wearing an eye-watering green jumpsuit, flashing a toothpaste-commercial smile, and worshipping Gai.

And judging by the way she was looking at him, that Hyuuga girl would still be head-over-heels for him. Pah.

The Nine-tailed Nitwit was getting on his nerves now by his sheer inability to reach the conclusion she worked here – the girl was wearing scrubs, for god's sake, how hard could it be to deduce that she was a medic? – so he said, "Stop acting so idiotic, dobe. Isn't it obvious? She's my new medic," while punching him in the back of his head for good measure. The moron flew off his chair and crashed into one of those sickly hospital-room walls.

Even more sickening was the fact that he now had to watch the Hyuuga girl gush over Naruto. Seriously, was he in a hospital or a romance drama? Cut out the mush, people.

He saw the girl carefully lead the object of her adoration into a chair and proceed to fuss over him, while Naruto continued to exclaim about every little thing. 'Hey, it's a chair! Hey, you have two eyes!'

Twit.

Suddenly Uzumaki stood up straight – the girl was no better than him at being alert; she almost fell over – and after saying something about having to meet that idiot Iruka, promptly ran out of the room.

Leaving him with the Hyuuga.

An uncomfortable silence settled over the room. He could hear her taking quiet breaths. It seemed that she was even trying to lessen the sound made when she inhaled. What was she, a mouse in front of a cat?

The silence reached a breaking point. He was sure that if something wasn't said then the pressure would crush him. He turned his head to look at her – she was still standing up, for all the world like she was preparing to scamper into a hole and hide.

"Are you really a medic?" he questioned, at the risk of appearing dumb – the situation was too uncomfortable and it was the first thing that had appeared in his mind. Making a mental note to craft a list of things that he should say during awkward situations, he watched her fumble and turn red, then say in a voice so quiet that he had to strain to hear it, "Yes."

He nodded thoughtfully. Not a mouse after all. More like a deer. In front of a lion or a tiger. She had the same wide, doe eyes. Rather appealing for all their pallor. He hadn't seen eyes like that for a long time. They were full of innocence and naivety, but also exhibiting a mystery and depth that was most unusual…

Sasuke was abruptly furious with himself. What was he doing, musing over a girl's eyes, a Hyuuga no less? It was her fault, he decided, looking at him like that. She had to leave, and fast. Then this discomfort would go away.

So he snapped at her to hurry up with her job, watched calmly as she fumbled and tripped, even made smarting comments. He watched her as she practically ran out the door, then reclined back into his pillow and closed his eyes.

Sleep would not come. For some reason, he felt like an arse.

Itachi Uchiha was perplexed.

No, that was the wrong word. He was surprised, that was all. He hadn't expected the girl to so vociferously declare that he was not Sasuke. After all, that was kind of obvious.

She seemed slightly familiar. He abruptly recognized her from the team of Chuunins that he had just commanded in that disastrous mission – Haruko or something. She had opened the door, stared at him for a full 4 minutes and 27 seconds (he had counted), gaped like a goldfish for another 52 seconds, and then shrieked that he was not Sasuke.

He was surprised that the Hokage had sent such a slow person to take care of him. After all, what else could it mean when they took that long to realise that he was not his brother?

The girl stomped furiously around the room, muttering something that sounded vaguely like 'murder', 'stupid', 'how could she', etc. etc. He discerned from the information that she was about to murder someone, probably a woman, either figuratively or literally. He didn't care – it didn't concern him in any way.

The village hero watched with a mild fascination as she continued to resemble a cross between a flamingo and a rhinoceros. He had been very bored all day – Shisui had been assigned on a mission while he was on his own, Sasuke was himself bedridden (the thought brought a small guilty feeling in his chest), and Anko and Kotetsu were still in Suna. The only person to visit him was his father, who had first seemed disappointed about the status of his mission, then accepted it and started ranting at Itachi to get out of the hospital soon so that he could train, and finally started wondering if people would be able to overlook this one blot under all of Itachi's other achievements, which of course led to a lengthy discourse about the merits of his darling offspring.

Yes, Itachi was bored. Maybe this flamingo-rhinoceros combo would bring at least some form of comic entertainment.

The furious female let out a squawk which resembled that of a toucan.

Change 'maybe' to 'definitely'.