CHAPTER 13

Sasuke didn't say anything to her; he merely regarded her with something like disinterest and coolness.

Sakura wondered why his gaze looked so… cold.

She felt twelve again.

"I just wanted to apologize for not being able to make it last night." Sakura started, trying to ignore the fact that Sasuke was looking at her like that. "I really, really didn't mean to bail. It's just… something came up, and –" Could this apology sound any lamer? "– I promise I'll show up today." She ended with what she hoped was a full smile.

Sasuke's face was – as ever – impossible to read.

Mostly because he turned from her and started walking away right after she finished.

Sakura stared at him, and reached out and grabbed his wrist. "You're really not even going to give a even grunt of acknowledgement?" She asked him with mixed feeling of confusion and annoyance. "Are you… actually mad at me?"

"Let go, Sakura." Sasuke said warningly.

Her grip only tightened. "I will as soon as you say something to me."

"Such as?"

"Anything. That you accept my apology – or that you don't. That you're angry – or that you're not. Whatever." Sakura didn't really know why she was getting this heated over his lack of talking. After all, this was Sasuke – he had never been one for conversation.

But she had thought that they had gotten closer in the past few days. Sasuke had even gone so far as to ask her about herself – and now his wordless, cold demeanor was back.

She hated feeling like she was twelve.

Because the truth was, she most definitely was no longer twelve. She had grown up. She was strong now.

And she would make Sasuke acknowledge her apology.

"Fine, I accept your apology. Now get off of me, Sakura." Sasuke's eyes held defiance and menace. He didn't like to be told what to do.

"No, because it's clear that you don't accept it. What the hell, Sasuke? I said I'm sorry, and I really am. It won't happen again."

By now, Naruto and Sai, who had been standing around and bickering a few feet away from them, had diverted their attention to Sasuke and Sakura. Sai was looking at the pair with clinical interest, while a confused frown formed in Naruto's face.

Sasuke was now facing Sakura. "Stop being annoying."

"No, not until you stop being annoying yourself, Sasuke."

He opened his mouth to speak once more, but at that moment a gentle wind blew past Sakura toward him – and his eyes turned hard and angry.

What the hell? Sakura wondered at this sudden change, and in her wondrous state, Sasuke managed to pry himself off of the pink-haired girl.

He took off, and was gone in a second.

"Sakura-chan, what was that about?" Naruto asked as he quickly made his way back to Sakura's side.

Sakura herself couldn't even explain what just happened. "I… don't know." She shook her head. "Sasuke being Sasuke, I guess."

Sai seemed to be caught up in contemplation of a concept he couldn't quite grasp. "Ugly, I'll walk with you back to the hospital. I have a few questions."

The pink-haired medic smiled warily. "Okay. I'll see you later, Naruto?"

"Yeah, I should probably go see where the teme ran off to… Don't let the bastard get to you, whatever he did, okay, Sakura-chan?" With a bright smile and a squeeze on her shoulder, Naruto took off.

"Alright, Sai, hit me with it," said Sakura as the two of them made their way back to the hospital.

"From what I could overhear –"

"I'm not sure that there's a point to you giving us privacy if you only move away just enough to still overhear everything, Sai," interrupted Sakura, rolling her eyes.

Sai nodded. "I see. I'll make a note of that. Anyway, it seems that you have broken a promise with Sasuke to meet up with him and apologized to him."

"Uh huh." Unforgiving bastard, thought Sakura while she gritted her teeth.

"But why was Sasuke so cold to you?"

"Because," Sakura refrained from substituting Sasuke's name with a foul word, "Sasuke was really annoyed about me not showing up, I guess. Who would've thought the great Uchiha would be peeved about little ol' me blowing him off?"

"But, Ugly," Sai looked at her with confusion, "you said friends forgive each other."

Sakura didn't have anything to say for a bit. When she finally opened her mouth, it was laced with irritation. "I guess that's a one-way street when it comes to Sasuke and me."

She'd basically forgiven him for skipping out on the village for seven years, and he was mad about one night? Now that Sai had brought it up, Sakura could feel anger rising at Sasuke.

The nerve of that one.

As Sakura stood in front of the door, she contemplated just going back. She didn't have to knock. She didn't have to go in.

But you do, an annoying voice tugged at her brain. You have to heal Kakashi and his eyes, even if you're mad at Sasuke.

Sakura inwardly groaned. She hated having to be the bigger person.

Bracing herself, she knocked.

She waited.

No answer.

She knocked again – harder, this time.

No answer still.

You've got to be fucking kidding me, Sasuke. Irritated beyond belief, Sakura irrationally considered punching through his door.

But would it really be irrational?

Sakura was never the model of patience or even-temperedness. When she was younger, she tried to mask her real personality by acting sweet on the outside to everyone, while the Inner Sakura would prance around in anger in her mind. As the years went by, Sakura outgrew her need to please everybody, and – with a little help from the infamously-blunt Tsunade herself – Sakura's Inner had ceased to exist merely in her mind.

She did whatever she wanted and said whatever she wanted now. She wasn't a simpering twelve-year-old anymore.

So she decided to punch through Sasuke's door.

Sakura lifted her chakra-laden fist and punched with all her might –

- Only to narrowly miss Sasuke's head.

Sasuke hadn't been sure if Sakura would show up tonight. He knew that he had been colder with her than necessary – after all, she had been coming to his house consistently to work on his eyes even after her long shifts. If she took one night off, he should have been able to shrug it off.

But he couldn't shrug it off. He couldn't shrug off the odd, empty feeling he had when she didn't show up. He couldn't shrug off the irritation he felt at being told that she won't be coming that night.

And he definitely couldn't shrug off that Genma had said the jonin would be with her that night.

Most of all, he couldn't shrug off the fact that he could smell Genma's scent on Sakura's hair when the wind blew while they were talking.

Sasuke hated that he couldn't shrug off any of these feelings. He didn't want to think about the whys – he didn't want to think about it, period.

Out of his irritation, he considered not even letting Sakura into his apartment that night. But once her knocks had become more forced, Sasuke remembered that she was now known for her monstrous strength – and he had become used to having a door attached to his door frame.

So he opened the door, and, had he not been as fast as he was, he definitely would've gotten his face – and skull – smashed in by her fist.

At any rate, he caught her fist just in time before it his face.

And, instead of breaking his face, it broke every bone in his hand.

Sakura heard the cracking of the bones – it was loud.

"Are you bloody crazy, Uchiha?!" Sakura saw the pain clearly in his face, but he seemed to be refusing to make any sounds. Typical.

He did, however, shoot her a murderous glare at being questioned about his sanity from the girl who had tried to break his door – and succeeded in breaking his hand. He wondered if he would ever be able to use his hand again. Sasuke could feel the fractures up to his elbow in addition to the broken bones in his actual hand.

Sakura got to work quickly – she knew she had little time to set the bones right before his hand would be useless to him. She shuddered to think what would have happened if he hadn't caught her fist in time. Without saying a word, she sat Sasuke and herself down on the floor of the foyer of the apartment and started emitting green chakra from her own hands to his.

Shit. His bones weren't just broken – they were crushed.

She had to try very hard to feel concerned for it, rather than gloating over the fact that she had managed to crush Uchiha Sasuke's hand.

He would literally kill me if I looked even a little bit smug right now, she thought as she put on her best poker face. But –

"You know, Sasuke, maybe you should've opened your door when I first knocked."

Oops. She couldn't help it.

"Maybe you shouldn't try to break through doors when people are trying to ignore you on the other side," Sasuke growled out, but failed to sound very menacing, as Sakura could hear the grimace in his voice.

He was in pain.

"I'm sorry, Sasuke." Sakura said quietly. She genuinely was sorry that she had hurt him. She never wanted to cause her friends pain – even if the friend happened to be a giant, moody mystery to her.

Sasuke said nothing in return, but Sakura let that go, as she was too busy fixing his hand to chat, anyway. The pink-haired medic was tired – she hadn't had much sleep in what seemed like forever, and had spent half the day being hung over and the rest trying to catch up on the work she had neglected due to being hung over. She had performed several little surgeries already that day, and all of these things combined left her chakra tank pretty low.

She didn't have a large chakra reserve to begin with. If she hadn't had such great control over her chakra, Sakura was sure that she would only have been an average kunoichi at best, even with Tsunade's training. Because she could exercise such precise control over chakra, however, she was able to stretch out the chakra that she did possess to last longer.

Fixing the crushed and fractured bones in Sasuke's hand – all the way up to his elbow, actually – tested Sakura's chakra. She hated to admit that as simple a thing as fixing broken bones was pushing her – but it was. It was the end of the day, and she was just so, so tired.

It seemed to take forever, especially considering the silence between the two of them, but, eventually, Sakura finished her work on Sasuke.

"It should be alright now, but I'd advise that you don't really use that hand for anything for the next couple of days," told Sakura as she slumped up against a wall. She was still on the floor of Sasuke's foyer – she as absolutely drained.

Sasuke silently got up from the floor, and looked at Sakura expectantly. When she made no motion to move, he raised his eyebrow at her.

She waved him away. "Yeah, yeah, I'll get up soon. I just need to rest for a little… I don't think I'm up for using any more chakra on you tonight, so I'm gonna just head home in a bit." Sakura yawned. "Are you actually going to open the door tomorrow so that we can avoid this whole ordeal? Or perhaps you'd like to make it a daily thing." She could feel her eyelids getting heavier.

"Sakura, you're falling asleep."

"No, I'm not." she protested, "You're just saying that to avoid answering my question."

But she knew that really couldn't keep her eyes open anymore.

"Sakura."

"Mm…"

"Sakura."

"…."

Sasuke crouched down and looked at Sakura's face. She was knocked out.

Unbelievable. She tried to break his door, broke his hand, and was now asleep in his foyer. Shaking his head, he lifted the pink-haired kunoichi up and carried her into his room.

Author's Note: Hi guys, LONG TIME NO WORD! I apologize; I just had a lot of stuff going on for the past, um, year. Wow, that's crazy that it's been a year. I'll try to update as fast as I can.

Comments would be extremely welcome, as, if I feel like no one is reading these, I really would have no reason to return to writing!