Two years on:

Itachi sighed as he dropped his head onto his desk – it was far too late, or early as the case may be, to be working. Miami had been struck with a killer, and as awful that in itself was, the paperwork that came with it was arguably even worse. Itachi had been bogged down for a week now, and the killer had only claimed one life so far, thank God. His office was silent and looking out into the bullpen, there were only two or three people still there. Itachi pitied them, he was used to such lengthy hours at work, but they weren't. His phone rang, sounding inexplicably loud in the silence of the office, and Itachi noticed the other late-workers startle from their groggy trances.

"Hello," he answered, pushing his hair back from his forehead.

"Hey baby," came the reply from his husband and a small smile reached Itachi's lips. "You coming home any time soon?"

"I think I'm going to have to pull an all-nighter," came Itachi's reply as he glanced over the pile of paperwork, "I'm getting a bit bogged down with paperwork over here." Kyuubi's deep chuckle resonated over the phone-line and Itachi closed his eyes, excruciatingly tired.

"Well I'll bring you breakfast a bit later then," Kyuubi murmured sleepily, "the bed's awfully empty without you."

"Don't Kyuu," Itachi chuckled, "stop tempting me. You know I'd rather -"

"I know," Kyuubi teased, before sighing, "it's just I haven't seen you in a week."

"Mmm, I blame your brother for that, living all the way across the country."

"Yeah, well I blame your brother for that," Kyuubi laughed as Itachi rolled his eyes.

"Fair play, fair play..." he signed at the bottom of the current document, moving it to the considerably small pile of finished paperwork. Considerably small in comparison to the unfinished pile, that is. "How is your baby brother then?"

A sigh drifted over the phone-line in reply, "he's fine … he just misses home, you know?"

"Yeah," Itachi's right hand came to rub at the scruff now developing on his chin. "Anyway, you should get some sleep, you've got work tomorrow." There was a moment of comfortable silence.

"Yeah," Kyuubi murmured, "Love you."

"Love you too, I'll see you later." Kyuubi hmm-ed in response before they hung up, Itachi now not only tired but also aching from missing his husband. Eyes drooping, he rest his arms and head on the desk, falling into a steady slumber.

–

This was the position he found himself in a few hours later as his employees trickled into the office. Suit jacket crumpled and scruff showing where he clearly hadn't shaved, with a twinge in his neck that one only gets from sleeping in such awkward positions.

"You okay, Itachi," a voice sounded at the doorway as Itachi scratched his chin pensively. It was Kiba, bright eyed and bushy tailed with a genuinely curious expression on his face.

"I'm fine, Kiba," Itachi smiled, "just completely wrecked by this creepy murderer."

"The Breast Biter?"

"If that's what you're calling him, yes. Have you found anything?"

"No, the bite was far too jagged to get an impression of the killer's teeth, and I swabbed the area for saliva, it's processing now, but Tsunade's pretty run down on her own."

"Yeah well she'll manage."

"You don't want to replace him do you?" Kiba looked saddened, "Itachi, you fired him..."

"You say that as if you gave us a choice Kiba." Itachi glared over the document he was currently reading, before setting it on the desk and signing aggressively.

"What you you mean?" Kiba's eyebrows furrowed.

"You know exactly what I mean, that bullshit excuse you all came up with, you knew I wasn't going to buy it but you said it anyway."

"If you didn't buy it why did you fire him, we could have sorted it out properly?"

"You really think I fired him? Of course I didn't, he's my brother in law and one of the most genuine people I know, I could never fire him. He was distraught that you threw him under the bridge like that, so he left." Kiba looked shocked, to say the least, but Itachi was more surprised that Sasuke hadn't told him earlier. It seemed his little brother had kept that secret from the rest of his motley crew.

Various people from the office had clearly overheard their conversation and were trying to hide their shock and curiosity by turning round to their computers and appearing to be very hard at work, a rare occurrence at eight AM in the office of Miami Homicide Division. Usually the staff would be like zombies, congregating around the coffee machine as if it were a holy grail.

Itachi's eyebrows quirked, amused, as Kiba was dragged out of the office and his brother shoved his way in, slamming the door shut behind him.

"Kyuubi saw him again?" Itachi rolled his eyes, after all this time Sasuke still demanded routine updates on Naruto's life. "Did he pass on my message?"

"Does he ever pass on your messages, Sasuke?"

"No, but there's always a first time for everything."

"You need to let him go, it's not healthy for you."

"I'll let it go when I hear from him that I have to let it go."

"Isn't his moving as far away as he possibly could some sort of indication that he may not want to hear from you at all?"

"I cant give up, Itachi."

Itachi just sighed and stood up.

"We need a progress meeting for the breast biter case, we'll discuss this later."

Sasuke just sighed and followed his brother into the conference room, where the others members of staff were waiting. The room, a rectangular shape with four glass walls and a long black marble table running down the middle, was full to the brim with officers. Sasuke took his seat next to Neji and Kiba, glancing down the table at the morose looking faces of the officers there.

Itachi took his place by the big whiteboard that was positioned in the corner of the room. On it were the case photos of the body and evidence found, as well as the notes they had made so far. Thus far, it was incredibly bare. Itachi hushed the officers into silence and started his presentation of the findings.

"This," he said, pointing to a photo of the victim whilst she was still alive, "was twenty two year old Ino Yamanaka; blonde, five foot six, athletic, studying a degree in International Business Law. She was found a week ago, dumped at the rear exit of her apartment complex in downtown Miami. Although she was fully clothed, she had been raped and strangled, and showed savage bite marks on her breasts." He pointed to another photo. "There were no signs of bloody skin under the fingernails of the victim which leads us to believe that she did not struggle against her assailant." Itachi finished as a tentative hand went up into the air.

"Do we have any leads as to who this could be?"

"Based on the sexual nature of the crime and the violence caused, we're going on the assumption that our attacker is in his mid twenties, is a dominant personality and has a history of hatred towards women. Something will have set off this man to kill and we need to find what that is." He paused for a few seconds.

"Any more questions?" There was silence. "Good, I need you to really get cracking with this case, so I'm sending you off into subteams to work on various areas of the case. Thankfully there's been no other cases this week so you can focus entirely on this one." Itachi went around the room allocating each subteam the job of checking evidence, finding possible witnesses etc, he got to Sasuke, Kiba, Neji and Sai and gave them their task.

"Okay, so you guys are going to be going back to the scene of the crime, and I need you to talk to the people living in the apartments in and around the complex she was living in. Someone must have seen or heard something."

–

It turned out, as a matter of fact, that if you go calling on people's doors halfway through a Wednesday, they are most likely to be at work, so Sasuke's team found very little evidence wise.

"This is so pointless," Sai drawled as they knocked on the last door. It opened to reveal a redhead, short-ish in stature, with eerily pale skin and some sort of oriental symbol tattooed onto the temple of his forehead.

"Can I help you?" he looked unbelievably bored and spoke in monotone.

"Are you a Mr," Sasuke paused to check his notes, "Gaara Sabaku?"

"That would be me," the redhead drawled, leaning onto the side of his doorway. "As I said, how can I help you?"

"Can we ask you a few questions?" came the reply.

"You need four people to ask me some questions? What do you really want?" The four were silent.

"I … we just need to ask you questions …" Kiba was perplexed by the man's blunt demeanour.

"About?"

"Ino … Ino Yamanaka."

"Who?" The redhead looked up from a spot on the door that he had previously been scratching at.

"Ino … she lived in apartment 1B … downstairs..." came the voice of Kiba again.

"Never met her in my life."

"I'm sure you must have seen her, Mr Sabaku, she was blonde with green eyes and an athletic body. I'm sure any man with a libido would have noticed her," Neji growled. This was going nowhere fast, clearly Gaara didn't care for their investigation. All he got for his valiant offer was a smirk from the redhead.

"Now you mention it, yes, I noticed her. Only because she left alcohol bottles all over the corridor. I assure you Mr police man, I am quite homosexual." Neji was dumbstruck as the redhead walked back into his apartment, leaving the door open behind him. The four looked at one another, confused as to whether they were supposed to follow.

"So do you want to do this interview then?" Gaara drawled, making them shuffle into the empty room. "Take a fucking seat then, don't stand round looking like trapped animals. You're the ones wanting to talk to me. I suppose you'll want coffee?" The four grumbled yes in answer and seated themselves on the redhead's leather couch.

The apartment was spacious and modern, with high ceilings and whitewashed walls. It was more of a studio apartment to be honest. On the wall hung paintings and portraits, and the wall opposite the couch housed the largest photo collage Neji had ever seen in his life. As Gaara walked back into the room, Neji began asking questions.

"So do you live here alone?" Gaara quirked an eyebrow whilst taking a sip of his coffee. "Yes."

"This is an awfully large apartment for one man," Sai noted suspiciously.

"I used to have a room-mate. Then he moved away so I'm saving it for when he comes back. Which he will."

"Can we have a name for this room-mate of yours," Neji prompted, opening his notebook, "just to check."

"Naruto Uzumaki. You might have known him, didn't he work with you?" The four officers sat paralysed as Gaara stared at them curiously.

"Yeah," choked out Kiba, suddenly not wanting to drink the coffee any more. "Yeah, he did."

Gaara noticed their reluctance to speak about Naruto and so prodded the subject further.

"Did you know him?" he questioned, hands paused in making the coffee. He looked at them one by one, studying their expressions.

"These guys did," came Sai's monotone voice, "I was … briefly acquainted with him."

"You were there when Bambi got shot?" came the immediate reply.

"Yes..." They watched as Gaara suddenly went from vaguely accommodating to silent and stiff, as his hand gripped the side of the kitchen counter angrily. There was a moment of angry static as they sat in complete silence, before Sasuke spoke.

"Is he … is he okay?" he paused before going on, "Kyuubi won't tell us anything … I just need to know … know if he's okay ..."

"Well I should think Kyuubi has a sound reason for not telling you anything," Gaara said, accompanied by a glare. "He's fine."

"Fine?"

"Yes, fine. Well, considering his circumstances, he is."

Sasuke didn't try to probe any further but secretly wished to know exactly what those circumstances were. Was it just that they'd betrayed him? Or was Gaara hinting at something else?

"Well if that's all guys, I'm going to have to ask you to leave. I'm afraid I have an appointment I completely forgot until now."

"Your calendar is completely empty," Neji said, casting his eyes over to the calendar on the wall.

"That was my polite way of asking you to fuck off because I cannot stand to be around you any longer. Please leave."

He ushered the policemen back towards the door, past the photo collage. As the others walked on without a fuss, Sasuke became enthralled by the piece as he spotted Naruto over and over again, with that grin he missed so so much. As the others left towards the car, Gaara spoke as he and Sasuke were alone.

"He's not going to forgive you Sasuke, you broke his heart and you deserve all the pain in the world for it." One sharp push out into the corridor later, Sasuke found himself alone with the door slammed in his face.