Note: Okayyyy, so here's yet another upload. I'm in LOVE with this, so please let me know your opinions. If you're a fan of mine, then know I'll be updating my other stories very soon, just in final editing process.
Please let me know how you like this one!
This story is a mystery to me as far as the final, epic pairing. It will either be Itachi, or Sasuke...Who will she chose? So I'll let you lovely readers decide. As this story progresses, let me know which pairing you like best, and I'll start keeping count. Which ever pairing gets the most praise, I'll work it in. I have my plot already evolved a bit, but as for the final couple, I'll let you help me!
Yes, it will be a Sasu/Saku fic as well, but it's not going to be immediately in love or anything crazy. This isn't a story book Sasu/Saku fic...As for Ita/Saku, personally, I'm eating them up in this fic.
Recently found the absolutely amazingly wonderful Kariska. Stop being so perf already!
AU.
So here goes.
Pairing: Sasu/Saku/Ita
Rating: Will be rated M for mature themes. Currently, mostly language.
Goal: Next chapter will be up in the next few weeks. 2 or 3, maybe sooner if I get the inspiration. Please remember to let me know which couple you like, as it progresses.
Beta'd by, Kariska! Your friendly pedo-platypus next door. Feel my platypussiness.
Disclaimer: I don't own anything related to Naruto. Only the plot and my dreams! (Kariska- She fucking wishes she does, though.)(Damn right)
_These Four Walls_
Sudden inertia hit him, washing through his bones with a stiff uneasiness. Abrupt tightness seized his lungs, making each passing breath to his starved lungs impossibly difficult.
"Uchiha-san, I regret to inform you that your mother and father didn't make it through surgery." Blatantly apathetic eyes gazed back at him, words of duty, well rehearsed and unsympathetic. Words that strangled his breathing even more. "Your brother remains in intensive care. When we know more, you'll be the first to know." With a dismissive nod, the doctor turned and left, leaving Sasuke to his thoughts.
It was like the world had ended, collapsing in on him. His hand swept up, cutting through his dark hair and disheveling it, the confused mess paralleling the state of his mind.
Images of his family were replacing the once comforting darkness every time he closed his eyes. His mother…his father…his brother; his family. Why did this happen to him?
He sat quietly in one of the matching, ugly chairs that lined the waiting room, his eyes unfocused and his head thrumming with pain. The most amazing part was that an unsteadying numbness was already settling in. Not acceptance but a coldness, seeping to the surface.
His eyes burned and his shoulders felt heavy from the weight of the day. That morning, at precisely seven in the morning, he received a call from the Konoha hospital. His family were victims of a break in. A robbery. The police force that reported to him informed him that it was a team. Several armed perpetrators had entered in the dead of the night and gunned down his family members, with the intention of robbing them blind.
They not only succeeded in robbing them but it seemed they had left no witnesses either.
Sasuke held his breath in an effort to calm down. His family was distinguished and extremely wealthy, so it was clear why they were chosen as the target of such an incident. It was just unbelievable that he had lost both of his parents, and his brother was at risk of following them because of greed.
Standing quickly and unexpectedly, he vacated the room, running around the corner blindly.
Watching his feet as they hit the smooth, white tiled floors, his breath became ragged. He was alone. His mother, his sweet mother, was gone. His father, strict as he was, but still a good father who was proud of his sons, was gone.
He pumped his legs harder, ignoring the shouts from the nurses he passed, scolding him for running in the hospital.
Before it registered that the last shout was actually a warning, he collided into something. The force of the collision was so intense that he was knocked off of his feet and onto his back, staring at the ceiling. He groaned and he heard a twin groan in front of him.
Pushing himself up into sitting position, his eyes fell upon the mess he had caused. The woman he ran into was also sprawled out on the cold floor. Rose colored locks muddled by the collision, framed a pale, petite face. Expressive, jade-green eyes regarded him with a dazed appearance, her jaw slack in confusion.
"I'm sorry," she said after a moment, brushing off her teal-colored scrub. After another moment of his silence, her eyebrow tweaked and she rose from the ground rather inelegantly. "Though, in case you forgot, this is a hospital, so you shouldn't be running."
He stood, annoyed that he had been interrupted, and even more angry that his stomach was twisting nauseously, knotting and roiling. He shrugged and edged past her silently, but her undignified snort stopped him. Though he didn't turn around to look at her, he could practically feel her glare against his shoulders.
"There's no need to apologize or anything." She grumbled and he heard the shuffling of feet in the opposite direction.
He tossed an irritated glance behind him, to see an empty hall. Infuriated and still emotionally unstable, he stormed off down the hall.
Her fingers were careful as they navigated around his wound, redressing it with gentle precision. She tilted her head to the side, an intense focus painting her face, pulling her eyebrows down into a frown.
It was surprising that he was alive at all. Cruel beating, as well as a gunshot to the shoulder. Much more to the left, and he would've certainly died from the wound. It amazed Sakura.
She gazed down at him, handsome even with the bruises and cuts marring his visage. Several weeks now that she had been his nurse, and he was just beginning to get some color to his pallor.
"How are you today, Uchiha-san?" She asked quietly. As it had been since she was first assigned to his room, no reply parted from his lips. With his heavy breathing, his induced sleep would not likely be disrupted by her soft voice.
His steady silence weighed heavily on her. She longed to see him happy, and well on the way to being healthy.
Her eyes shifted to the flowers at his bedside, and she smiled down at him, "You must've had a visitor," She was overjoyed for him. All the time that she was caring for him, she had never seen a visitor of any kind. His was the dreariest room in the whole building in her opinion. To see the bright red poppies positioned by his bedside, gave her small relief. Previously, she had wondered why this attractive man didn't even have one visitor.
She reached out and spun the vase around, searching for a tag, but spotting none. A frown creased her pale, oversized forehead, "Hhm, no name." She turned to the man before her, setting down her clip board on the bed beside him. His chest regularly rose and fell, his face made tranquil by his sleep. "Maybe it's from your girlfriend?" She grinned at him, reaching down and checking his temperature, followed by his heart rate. A steady thrum, deep and warm, like she had began to imagine his voice sounding. She spoke softly and companionably to him as she did so, "I bet you have a beautiful girlfriend." She didn't let it bother her that, if he did have a girlfriend of any sort, beautiful or not, the woman hadn't shown her face in this hospital as of yet.
As always with Sakura, she tried not to take it personally in his defense. Such was the danger of taking your work home with you. She always found herself getting attached to her patients.
She sighed, looping her stethoscope around her neck and walking around to pull the curtains closed. The sun was just barely disappearing behind the horizon and it was a beautiful sight. She lingered on it for a moment, her eyes drinking in the scene before she snapped the fabric together, shutting it out. "Uchiha-san, you've been healing well. You're going to make a full recovery," She turned back towards him, "And you should be waking up any day now. So hurry up, get your rest in, so that you and I can meet already."
Her eyes dawdled over his sleeping form for a moment longer before she showed herself out hastily. This particular patient was getting to her. She found herself wondering about him, more curiously than she should.
The souls of her shoes squeaked against the bleach white floor as she walked slowly along the halls of Konoha Hospital. She was having a hard time denying her tired feet the pleasure of release.
Passing the counter, she smiled at the familiar face there.
"Hinata-chan, I think I'm going home for the day." Her eyes closed in a friendly smile.
The pale-faced girl before her looked up, her lips parting in surprise. "Oh, Sakura-chan." Her nervous expression wasn't unforeseen. Shaking hands, pretty pink blush, and vibrant eyes we're to be expected.
"Let Tsunade-sama know for me," She winked and walked off without waiting for a response. As soon as her back turned, the demeanor dropped and her exhaustion took the reins. Her shoulders slouched and she rolled her shoulder in its socket, hoping to ease the tension there.
The long trek back to her apartment was made in a dislocated, dream like state, brought on by the forgoing absence of sleep. She had long ago drowned out the pinching of her nerves brought on by stress, with coffee and extreme patience. In fact, her entire body had began to reek of the caffeine, and her muscles had reached the inevitable point of permanent, continuous strain that even her hands couldn't kneed away.
She was articulate, kind, polite, and she genuinely seemed to want to help him. This was causing a peculiar magnetic pull each time he looked at her, undeniable and insatiable. He thought it must have been caused by the fact that she was his only visitor. He hadn't seen one friendly soul besides her. Maybe it was just out of duty, on her part, but he felt that it was deeper than that.
Uchiha Itachi looked into the green eyes of his doctor, who he had the pleasure of meeting earlier that morning, with a hint of awkwardness and since then, a lot of warming up.
He didn't usually warm up to people very quickly and he was certain that from her point of view, he would be rather detached and sour but as far as he was concerned, he rather liked this girl.
People usually shied away from him, were intimidated by him or threw themselves at him, for various reasons. She did none of those things. She simply was there, smiling at him and talking to him. Checking in remarkably often, and each time, with a very friendly intention.
By her third visit on this day, his first day awake after that night, he thought that he could get used to this surprisingly beautiful lady-doctor named Haruno Sakura.
"Uchiha-san." Her voice was smooth to his ears, like rose petals were to the touch. "Are you feeling better?" She rounded the corner and came over to his bedside with a small grin.
He gave her a small nod, "Much." That was all he said but she seemed to find the fact very pleasing. Her pink cheeks rounded into a much bigger smile.
He took a long moment to absorb her warm aura. He was fortunate to have her near his side at the moment, lest his time be overtaken through agonizing over his thoughts. Each time he closed his eyes, his vision whirled into a tangle of nightmarish images.
As she reached a graceful hand out to check his temperature, not with the thermometer, but with the back of her hand, he couldn't tear his gaze away. Yes, he was very pleased and thankful to have her there.
"Uchi-"
"Itachi." He corrected her mildly.
Huge, bright and impossibly wide eyes gazed back at him in the most self-conscious, lovely way. It was almost surprising to him that he contained his interest and managed to suppress the smile that was struggling to surface on his visage.
"Itachi-san." She breathed out softly and took a step back from his bedside, "Is there anyone I should notify, now that you're awake?"
That was an innocent question, but it dug into his skin and festered there, infecting his mood like a virus. He felt a frown pull down his eyebrows, and he brought a hand up to scrub it away. As he dropped his hand back down, his face was clean of any expression. "No one."
She was clearly caught off guard by this, and her jaw was gaping in a surprisingly adorable way. "Oh," She sputtered, her cheeks going the same soft pink as her rosy hair, "Okay then." Out came her paperwork after that, and she inspected the board like it might disappear if she took her eyes off of it. Her tone switched from the captivating smoothness it had held all day, and settled in a very sober and serious one. "Right, well, we'll need to keep you here for a while longer I'm afraid. We have many more tests to run, and you'll need plenty of rest and recuperation, but soon," She did look up here, and when their eyes met it was like lightening striking; bold, magnificent, enthralling, and intense, "you'll be free to leave."
Leave? How could he ever leave with such a lovely creature present to take away the pain? He nodded and watched as she left, slightly awkwardly, glancing back at him before reaching the door and pausing.
His eyes didn't leave her form until she was all the way out of the doorframe. Such an oddly thought provoking girl.
With his new doctor absent, and only silence and loneliness to fill her wake, he felt a familiar darkness settling in on him. He brought both hands up to his face, dropping his forehead into his palms.
His family had fallen apart. His family was gone.
Sasuke.
"Hiya there, Teme," Uncharacteristically dull. "Gimme a call, ne?"
.
Beep.
.
"It's been a few days now since I last called, so I was thinking," A slight pause, "Let's get some ramen. My treat? Call me, Teme."
.
Beep.
.
"Sasuke." Grave now, seriously out of character for his overzealous, silly friend. "You can't hide forever." Abrupt ending.
.
Beep.
.
Sasuke scrubbed a hand through his hair, as was his habit, his black eyes now accustomed to the darkness of his open, bland apartment.
Another beep. "Teme!" Angry now, "You can't just disappea-" He slammed his finger down on the end button, effectively ending yet another worried message from his best friend.
His empty apartment had been his haven for weeks now. The silence was after his own heart, with its white walls, and scarce furniture, he felt calm. It was a break from the torment of his mind.
He really should've called Naruto, but the moment the thought crossed his mind, it disappeared. Inconspicuously absent and replaced by his far more important self-loathing.
He had no time to waste on friends. His family was gone! They weren't just gone; they were fucking stolen from him. Taken before their time!
Sasuke was angry, livid even, but curiously, he was not sad. He was not grieving, because he refused to allow this injustice. He would grieve when his parent's memory had been redeemed.
He was determined to fix this wrong, no matter how long the journey, or what happened along the way. He would worry about all of that stupid, nagging shit at the end of his journey.
A sigh parted his lips, and with it came the cementation of his new goal. His new goal meant that he needed to do something he was very, very nervous to do. He would have to speak to his brother. He would have to ask his brother to relive that moment, so that he could know.
He needed to know what happened in order to get revenge.
Standing and heading towards the door, he stepped out into the sunlight for the first time in days.
Itachi.
Note: Oh, stop it you.