Just so you know I had this one written the night I posted the last chapter... I waited hoping more people would review! PLEASE REVIEW!

One

Kakashi struggled not to smile under his mask, watching, stoic as possible, as Ume walked away from the academy, her new hitai-ate clutched in her raised fist.

Asuma reached her first, slinging an arm enthusiastically around her shoulders and yanking her against his side. "Well, look at that, runt! Nine years old and already graduating. Takes after us, don't she, Wonder Boy?"

Kakashi gritted his teeth, glaring at the much bigger ten-year old. Asuma was over-compensating, trying to distract Ume so she didn't notice her parents' absence... he was also annoying.

Ume smiled brighter, meeting Kakashi's eyes, and shrugged off Asuma's arms, before launching herself at him, wrapping her arms around his neck. "Kashi-kun! I'm a genin!" She started bouncing up and down, grabbing one of his hands. "I'm a ninja!"

Gai came up behind her and grabbed her by the waist, swinging her around. "Soon we'll both chuunin and then we'll go on missions together!"

Ume turned in his arms and grabbed his hands.

Kakashi shook his head as he watched them dance around, singing about becoming chuunins. "What happens if you have to battle each other in the last round of the Chuunin exams?"

They both stopped and stared at him, processing the question and then turned back to each other, almost simultaneously shouting: "Awesome taijutsu battle!"

"Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday to you, dear Hound-taichou. Happy Birthday to you." Ume landed lithely in his tree, her mask set firmly in place, holding a protein bar with a paper bomb-wick candle in her gloved hands. "Thought I forgot, didn't you?"

"I was hoping you would." Despite his grouchy tone, he took the protein bar and disposed of the wick.

"I tried to smuggle in a cupcake, but Bull caught me and stole it." She dropped out of her crouch and wrapped her legs around the tree limb they were perched in. "So how does eighteen feel, you old foggie?"

Kakashi chuckled. "You'll know in a couple months, won't you?"

Ume nodded. "We'll go get dinner when we get back. Asuma suggested that miso place you like so much."

Kakashi nodded and munched on his new protein bar, his eyes on her as she exchanged words with Bull below her, presumably about her stolen cupcake. Eighteen... they were already eighteen. Studying the way she was moving, the way she was speaking to Bull, the way she filled out her uniform, he was struck by how different they were now.

He was taller than her. After years of behind around the same height as her, he finally was significantly taller than her. She in turn had finally grown into her lanky frame, long gone were awkward knees and elbows, here now was lithe muscle and while she still wasn't graceful per say, her movements were strong and confident.

Her voice, high and squeaky when they were children, was raspy and while she still couldn't sing to save her life, he was rapidly finding that her voice affected him in ways that he had no right being affected.

He shifted around in the tree, trying to find a position that would be more comfortable with his growing problem.

"You keep shifting around like that, we'll both end up on the ground."

Kakashi looked up and caught Ume's blue eyes, the only part of her face that her mask couldn't cover. He thanked whatever deity applied for that small mercy.

"Branch is digging into my ass."

"Sounds like a party."

Kakashi popped into Ume's apartment after her and watched as she broke all of the seals surrounding her ANBU uniform hiding spot.

"You gonna go home and get changed or are you just going to stare at me?"

Staring sounded good to him, especially as she pulled off her mask and stripped out of her armor and weapons. She paused and stared at him, a weird expression on her face. "What's your problem?"

He almost answered a terse 'I'm fine' when she began to pull her shirt over her head. Suddenly he forgot what question he was supposed to be answering.

Now he had seen her in various states of undress over the last fourteen years, usually in order to dress some wound or another, but this was different.

For some reason, he was hyper aware of her as her white cotton sports bra was revealed. He watched utterly fascinated as her shoulder blade glided under her pale skin.

When she turned to face him again, he sucked in a breath, staring down at her chest and her flat belly. He began to move towards her, almost stalking her as he removed both his ANBU mask and his cloth one under it.

"What is up with you?" Ume looked concerned and she crossed her arms over her chest, pushing her breasts up and increasing what little cleavage she had.

"Nothing." Lie. A certain part of his anatomy was definitely up and wanted to know if she was as concerned with it as she was with his mental state. "I have a question for you." God his voice was deep.

"What? Shoot."

"Have you ever been attracted to me?" He was in arm's reach of her now.

She blushed. "What?"

"Have you ever been attracted to me?" He ghosted a hand over her shoulder. "You know, thought I was hot... wanted to know what touching me would be like..."

She shivered and in the deep reaches of his mind where his macho he-man lived, he felt a swell of masculine pride. She was reacting to him... only him.

"I don't understand..."

He reached out and tugged her against his body, right up against his erection. He dropped a kiss on her neck and then tugged on her earlobe. "I want you, Ume... and I want to know if you want me too." He leaned back to look into her wide blue eyes. "Answer the question, Ume."

She nodded dimly, staring at his lips and his macho he-man stood up and roared.

"Is that a yes, Ume?"

"Uh-huh." His mouth descended on hers almost violently. When he pulled, away she smiled with a small amount of uncertainty and led him towards her room.

"Kashi?"

"Yeah?"

"Have you ever done this before?"

"Nope, but I have read about it."

A nervous giggle. "I guess will have to figure this out together, huh?"

A nod and the rasp of a zipper being pulled down. "Yeah... God I'm looking forward to this."

Kakashi sighed and rubbed at the ache in his chest. God Ume...In the past twelve hours since Bull had shown up and then turned right around and assembled a rescue team, about a dozen memories had surfaced over and over again in his mind: the first time he had met Ume, the first time they had sex, hell.. any time they had had sex, the image of her naked body was imprinted permanently on his mind, her graduation, chuunin and jounin promotions, going with her to get her ANBU tattoo, every injury, minor or major, that they had stitched up for each other... every little thing he had done with her.

What was taking so long?

Asuma moved sharply from his place by the open window. "They're back!"

Kakashi was in the Hokage tower courtyard before anyone even responded. There cradled in Bull's beefy arms, swathed in her blood-stained white cloak, was Ume.

"Is she alive?"

"Barely, we need to get her to Lady Tsunade now."

Kakashi felt his chest constrict even as he let out a relieved sigh. Gently he transferred Ume from Bull's arm to his, noticing how limp her left arm and leg were.

"Kakashi! Bring her to the hospital intensive care unit! I'll meet you there."

"You know she is very lucky." Tsunade sat heavily on the bench next to him.

Kakashi snorted, not a damn thing about this situation defined what he considered to be lucky.

"She's alive."

"Barely." Kakashi considered Tsunade dryly with a cold eye. "Who's to say she will ever recover?"

"I do. Now are you ready to pull your head out of ass and hear what I have to say or do you want to doubt me some more?"

"Sorry, Lady Hokage, please continue." Kakashi rubbed a hand over his face.

"She's lucky that Orochimaru wanted her to die slowly." Tsunade considered him gravely. "We both know ANBU policy. She should've disposed of her body as soon as she knew that she wouldn't survive. But Orochimaru wanted her alive for some reason. According Bul, there wasn't a weapon within five feet of where she was pinned. All of her kunai and her katana were found stacked neatly on a tree stump some distance away. To add to that her paper bombs and left hand were pinned under the snake, she couldn't activate them or use any jutsu."

Kakashi nodded, not liking the way they were discussing Ume's near-death experiences. "She's alive because she couldn't kill herself and destroy her body, Orochimaru made sure of it." He suppressed a shiver, the thought of Ume not coming back, of not having anything to bury, just an empty black marble cube in a sea of mostly empty black marble cubes. "She is lucky." I'm lucky.

Tsunade nodded. "Back to business: her left leg and arm are severely traumatized, half of the ribs on her left side are broken. She has a fever and pretty bad infection. I'm going to have to completely re-build that half of her body. "

Kakashi looked up at Tsunade. "Can you do it?"

Tsunade sighed and looked down at him with assessing eyes. "Yes, but it's not going to be fun. Fortunately, none of her vital organs were damaged and she hasn't gone into sceptic shock. But Kakashi, you really aren't going to want to see this. There is going to be a lot of blood-"

"I'm not leaving."

"Okay, then you need to get into scrubs and you need to wash your hands, we're going to start right away."

Kakashi squeezed Ume's right hand lightly and winced as Tsunade pulled out yet another brilliant white bone fragment.

Dropping it into the jar labelled 'Nagasaki: left knee,' She sighed and glanced at him. "That looks like all of it. Suction."

"What are you going to replace it with?"

"Standard total knee replacement made out of oxidized zirconium. Same with her ankle, then I will add some metal plates and bolts to her femur, tibia and fibula and that will do it for her leg. We'll operate on her arm tomorrow, it'll require a lot less to fix, probably just a plate or two and some rods to help her shoulder and elbow heal up right."

Kakashi nodded.

"When she comes around, just make sure you tell her you love her."

Kakashi lifted his head sharply and stared at her. "What?"

"You heard me." Tsunade paused as they prepared to insert the new knee and looked up at him again as Shizune wiped the sweat from her brow. "And encourage her to tell you that she loves you as well."

Sher was pale and still and far too quiet. Her long blond hair was out of its ever present ponytail and had been drawn over her shoulder and braided loosely. There was a feeding tube and a respirator in her mouth, an IV in her arm and a heart monitor clipped to her finger.

She looked small and fragile surrounded by the medical equipment that gave her the creeps and covered in bandages and plaster casts.

This was not his Ume.

His Ume had always been a robust woman, long bones layered under lean muscle, with enough attitude and personality to make her very easy to notice. She was talkative and friendly with a bright, cheerful smile that he hadn't seen for four days now.

Four miserable, quiet, lonely days.

Could he really say that they had her back?

Kakashi shifted in the seat that he had parked his ass in two days ago directly after her surgery and sighed. Putting the kunai down on the edge of the bed next to him, he leaned over and picked up Ume's right hand and brought it to his lips.

What he wouldn't give to have her back.

Kakashi laid his head down on the bed and sighed, before jumping straight out of the chair he had been sitting in and staring at Ume. She began to thrash around, slowly at first, moving slightly one way or another and then more violently throwing her arm this way and that. Soon she was shaking the bed and screaming at the top of her lungs, the sound muffled by the respirator.

The smell of blood hitting his nose tore him out of his daze. She was ripping her stitches out.

Asuma rushed in, Gai right on his heels, just as Kakashi pinned Ume's good shoulder to the bed. "I thought she was in an induced coma?"

"She is. I don't know what's going on. Get the Hokage."

Tsunade rushed in not a moment later and quickly, checking every monitor and running every test, shouting orders. Soon Kakashi realized that Ume's lips were moving around her feeding tube.

"She trying to say something." He reached for the respirator when Tsunade stopped him.

"She's in a coma, Kakashi."

Kakashi glared at her. "She's trying to say something."

"Her mind is recreating the battle, its an unconscious reaction to the trauma."

"Well then she might be able to give us something to go on."

Tsunade's eyes were soft with sympathy. "You don't want to hear it, Kakashi. You think sleeping is hard now? You don't need to know."

"She isn't going to appreciate this." Asuma sighed around his cigarette. "Ume hates genjutsu and would not react well to knowing that someone was fuckin' around in her mind."

Tsunade nodded. "I realize that, but she's already had three of these episodes and the anesthesia isn't solving the problem and I can't keep stitching her back up. We need to put her under genjutsu and block those memories so she can heal properly. The genjutsu will probably wear off in five or six months, and by that time she should be well on the road to recovery."

"And when she figures out that we've all been lying to her for six months... What then?" Gai closed his eyes and swiped a hand over his face.

"Do it."

Everyone stared at Kakashi as he stared down at Ume's peaceful face.

Asuma cursed. "Are you sure?"

Kakashi nodded. "I'm her next of kin. Do it."

"Go get Kurenai."

"She's going to be pissed."

Kakashi nodded. "Yeah, but she'll be alive too."