Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto, just this story.

Mature content warning for language and lemon in later chapters.

Sakura: age 18

Sasuke: age 18

Itachi: age 24

Take your pick

Chapter: 1

Sakura Haruno leads a fairly normal life. If you call healing injured shinobi, being able to collapse walls with a flick of her fingers, and hanging out with a demon fox child normal. Well, she can at least call her life fulfilling and very, very busy.

Sakura was about to leave Konaha Hospital, since her shift was now over, when a harried looking nurse burst into her office.

"Haruno-san, we need your assistance in operating room three immediately, an Anbu unit has just been brought in severely injured and we don't have enough medics to handle them all!," said Masumi.

Sakura jumped to her feet. "Thank you, Masumi, I'll be right there." She then rushed out hoping that things weren't to bad, or else she might end up in here with severe chakra depletion. Moments later she was staring into the face of an injured Uchiha Itachi. She placed her hands on his naked chest, the nurse had divested him of everything but his black pants. Immediately her hands glowed a soft green as she assessed the damage.

"Hmm, three broken ribs, a dislocated shoulder, and a fractured pelvis. What were you fighting, elephants?" she mumbled to herself as she stared the arduous process of healing the damage.

"No."

Sakura jumped when she heard his voice, since she thought that he was unconscious. Her eyes flicked up to his face and she was rewarded with the sight of the most beautiful eyes she had ever seen. "Sorry, Itachi-san, I didn't realize you were awake."

"Hn."

Sakura rolled her eyes at his response, knowing he wasn't the conversational type. Of course, neither was his brother. It had been over a year since the brothers had been welcomed back to Konaha after the truth about the Uchiha massacre had been revealed.

Flashback

Sakura, Naruto, Kakashi, and the rest of the rookie nine as well as team Gai, rushed in the direction of Sasuke's chakra signature. They were met with the sight of a torn up battlefield and the two brothers collapsed and nearly dead. Sakura and Ino jumped forward. It wasn't hard to tell who was worse off, so Sakura rushed to the side of Itachi and left Sasuke to Ino. She was shocked once she assessed the damage. Itachi's body was riddled with disease and he was nearly blind. Calling up her healing chakra she makes sure that he'd be stable enough to survive the trip back to Konaha.

Once they were back, and Itachi was healed enough to be interrogated, the sad truth about the Uchiha clan massacre was revealed. Apparently, Itachi was a pawn for Root and was ordered by Danzou to wipe out his clan when a plot to overthrow the Hokage was revealed. The only setback was that Itachi couldn't kill his little brother, so he left the village to live the life of a missing-nin. Before he disappeared he left Danzou with the threat of revealing all of Konaha's secrets to the other hidden villages if any harm should come to Sasuke. Shortly after, Itachi joined the Akatsuki in order to keep the group from harming Konaha and getting their hands on the nine-tailed fox.

After the truth came out, Sakura was given the arduous task of healing the Uchiha. It took several months to heal the extensive damage to his body and during that time Sakura grew fond of Itachi, now that she no longer crushed after Sasuke and only seemed to love the younger Uchiha in a sense that they were family. She now knew that Itachi was not the cold-blooded monster he was made out to be, but instead was a very protective and loyal person as well as a genius prodigy. Though, because of the training Root put him through he wasn't a very social person and he seemed to enjoy mind games a little too much. This was fine for Sakura, because she enjoyed trying to figure out the enigma that was Itachi.

After finding out the truth, Sasuke went through several months of therapy to get over all of the conflicting emotions that he held for his brother. Once both brothers were able to rejoin the shinobi ranks Konaha was back up to it's former glory. Soon after that the Akatsuki was destroyed and life in Konaha went back to normal, or as normal as it ever got.

End of flashback

Sakura stared down at her handy-work, as well as Itachi's well-toned chest, impressed with herself yet again. She had healed all the major damage and informed him that he would need to rest for a couple of days as well as come back for a check-up in two days. She made a note on his chart for Tsunade to take him off active duty until he was declared fully healed. Itachi looked slightly annoyed at this but decided that there wasn't much he could do about it.

Sakura left to gather up his dismissal papers leaving Itachi to get dressed. A few minutes later, Sakura returned with the papers, and after getting them signed, repeated her orders for rest and only minimal training so that his muscles don't lock up.

"Alright, you're all set. See you in two days for your check-up," she says with a smile that lights up the room.

"Thank you, Sakura."

Itachi's low voice drifts through the room like velvet making Sakura shiver slightly. "No problem, I'm just doing my job. Well, take care." Sakura turns and starts to head out into the hall when the room seemingly tilts to the side and waves of dizziness wash over her and she collapsed. Before she hit the ground two strong arms were holding her against a muscular chest that so very warm. She looked back at her savior and straight into Itachi's eyes. Blushing slightly, "Ummm…….. Thanks," Sakura said weekly.

"You're nearly out of chakra," he spoke softly next to her ear.

"Uh, yeah…… My shift ended right before your team was brought in. I had to help because there weren't enough medics to go around."

"You overexerted yourself to heal me." It was a statement.

"Yeah," Sakura mumbled, almost falling asleep in his arms. When Inner-Sakura babbled dreamily about how very warm Itachi was and how good it felt to be wrapped in his arms' Sakura couldn't really disagree.

"I will take you home, then." Itachi stated, and before Sakura could argue, he picked her up bridal style and carried her to her home. When they arrived at her apartment he noticed that Sakura had fallen asleep in his arms. Deciding not to wake her and ask for her keys, he easily picked the lock and went inside. Her apartment was small, but well furnished, warm and welcoming. To him, her home was a lot nicer than the Uchiha compound that was richly furnished, but cold and unfriendly.

Itachi carried Sakura to her bed, removed her sandals, and tucked her in before laying down on her couch. He decided that he would protect her in her weakened state since he was the reason she was suffering from chakra depletion. He also decided that he would probably get better rest here than back at his house, since the compound brought up a lot of unwanted memories.