Hello everyone and welcome to chapter four of Sanctuary. I trust you all are enjoying it. I wish I could make the chapters longer, but that would ruin all the suspense. Due to complaints about the entire chapter being bold, this one will be in regular text, just to make it easier on everyone's eyes. Okay?

Disclaimer: If I owned Naruto, trust me, you'd notice. I'm a yaoi fangirl! Fear me! Roar!

Episode 4. Protector

Naruto slept without inhibition. His mind was free to wonder among the border between the conscious realm and the unconscious realm. Dreams floated about with figments of his imagination, but none moved close enough to disturb the boy's restful sleeping.

Upon waking, he found himself in a large bedroom. He waited for his eyes to focus in the darkness before turning to observe the room. Opposed to the other rooms, this one was practically bare of possessions. A single blue lamp with a grey shade adorned the miniscule table beside the bed. The curtains in this room were rather drab as well, made of cheap black fabric that had faded to grey on one side from years of blocking sunlight.

He took notice of the matching black satin sheets and pillows, which looked to be the most expensive thing in the entire room. The room was painted the color of pitch, with a black ceiling. It has obviously been painted well for there were no spots of other colors on the wall. There was absolutely no evidence of what the room had looked like before its paint job.

"What is Itachi? A vampire or something?"

The question seemed somewhat like the thoughts of a lunatic. After all, vampires didn't exist, right? Assassins...Well, Naruto thought they could exist, but that it was impossible for someone as aristocratic as Itachi to be one.

"He's just a loner." Naruto decided, ending his monologue.

As he stood, pins and needles raced across his foot; it had fallen asleep. With a groan he shook his foot, banged it against the floor several times while yelping every time it connected with the floor.

'Stupid foot...fell asleep on me.'

Waves of exhaustion consumed him with menace. He was still sore from his ordeal, though not quite as much now, but the pain was enough to trigger memories. How had he been so weak? Why hadn't he fought back? If he had, he could've prevented it... Prevented the pain although he knew he deserved it for being so stupid and naive.

"Damn it...Damn it, damn it, damn it." he swore, punching the wall between every phrase.

In the end, all Naruto got out of his actions were a pair of bruised knuckles. He let himself slide against the bed slowly until he reached the floor and began to cry. Pretty soon his throat was sore and scratchy and he felt even more miserable than he already was.

"How...am I...going to deal with this. I was...ra..." he couldn't bring himself to utter that final word.

Admitting the truth would only prove that he'd been powerless to stop it from happening. It had just...Everything had just transpired in a matter of minutes. He shuddered as the memory of the rape came back again. Naruto brought a hand to his nether regions, remembering the feel of Orochimaru' mouth against his penis.

"Damn it!" he swore, yanking his hand away. "...and damn you, Orochimaru."

Naruto let his head tilt forward until blonde bangs shadowed his eyes from view. Several tears leaked out and landed on his fist. With a sigh, he exhaled his sorrows and let sleep overtake him once more.

Itachi's nimble fingers held the strange-looking gun the way a mother might hold her precious infant. In his hands, the weapon felt like an extension of his arm. Before entering the house, he slipped a porcelain mask decorated with strange red features over his face. Two little slits for eyes was the only other detail of the mask.

He tested the door: unlocked. The same held true for the windows and the back door. He made the decision to enter through the back door because it was less likely for his targets to be gathered by the back door.

The man crept through the house with an air of silence about him, taking care not to touch anything. As he crossed a wall decorated with pictures frames of a man and a woman, he saw a replica of the photographed woman enter a hallway from what he presumed to be the kitchen.

She saw him and screamed, dropping a pot of stew that then spilt out across the hardwood floor. He brought the gun up to her face and cocked it.

"No...Please, no! NOOOOO!" a young woman pleading for her very life fell down before the cloaked assassin.

"W-W-Why are you d-d-doing this?" she cried.

She was holding a bundle in her arms, but even Itachi's sharp eyes that seemed to penetrate through the darkness could not distinguish it from the woman. He believed it to be a mere piece of clothing.

Itachi gave no answer. Instead he raised the gun and let his fingers pull the trigger.

Silence roared in his ears but as an assassin he was trained to show no emotion, despite the deep reservoir of inner lament that tore his heart to shreds like an angry beast.

The bullet ripped through a kidney, ricocheted off of her pelvic bone, and lodged itself in her other kidney. Toxins poured out into her blood stream, polluting it with poison. She would die within ten minutes from blood loss as her organs shut down until the grip of bane.

The bundle rolled away from the young woman and a child's cry pierced the stillborn night. Itachi allowed the temperature to plummet around him until the infant went silent.

He saw the husband's hand outstretched towards the baby, but with a bullet in his leg he could not reach it.

'Damn it.' he thought. 'He didn't say there was a third one. I have no instructions...'

He leaned down over the still infant and saw that she had the widest, greenest eyes he'd ever seen. Her lips were blue and her cheeks were tear-stained. She would due of hypothermia if he did nothing. Itachi used his will to warm the air around him before tucking the infant into the insides of his cloak.

The air outside was cool and dry and the stars glittered coldly like thousands of fireflies stuck in the sky. Itachi left the house through the back door, using string to pull it shut so that no fingerprints would be found later at the scene. He wasn't worried about the bullets that would be found during the autopsy; the gun he used was specially made to be silent, leave no identifying groove marks on the bullet, and automatically disintegrated said bullet once it entered the human body. It truly was the perfect weapon.

Itachi knew he couldn't just walk into a hospital considering his appearance. Small amounts of blood painted the porcelain mask on his face and his gun and knife would surely set off the metal detectors. He had to take the infant home, but she would grow hungry soon.

'I should have stolen a bottle or two while I was there. Kuso...'

Abandoning the thought of entering the grocery store as well, he vanished into the still night air and reappeared again in front of his brown apartment door.

Naruto was so deeply asleep that he didn't hear the wailing screams of a hungry, tired, irritable infant. Itachi walked into the bedroom to find the boy sleeping in a position that gave him cramps just thinking about it.

Itachi began to rock the baby back and forth, but immediately stopped. A smell...a horrible smell...like...like a fresh turd on a hot day...almost distinctly like that. And...Oh, kami-sama. Was that something warm on his hand?

With a grimace he looked down to see a green-eyed baby smiling placidly at him while dark brown liquid rushed down his arms.

'Oh, gross. Gross...Absolutely disgusting.'

Itachi was hopping mad. This baby, this newborn baby, had shit all over his hand and was smiling about it. He could not live this down. Never, ever, ever! A sweat drop trickled down the back of his head.

He dumped the still-smiling infant into one part of the sink and began to wash his hands vigorously in the other part. He scrubbed with his nails under the hottest water he could stand. He poured bleach from the laundry room onto his hands. He scoured them until they were red and raw before shutting the water off.

A sigh left him limp and exhausted; the baby gurgled in the sink as if it were pleased with itself. Itachi was peeling off his stained cloak with one shiny red hand while gagging at the abominable odor. A wave of nausea nearly overcame him.

And this was how Naruto found Itachi when he awoke...

Naruto raised an eyebrow.

"It...That thing..." he pointed to the baby in the sink, "...shat on my hand...All over my hands..." the older man explained in a whimper.

While Naruto gave the infant a sponge bath, Itachi threw his cloak into the otherwise empty washing machine and added the remaining laundry detergent for good measure. He then decided to change into a grey suit with a red tie and black shoes.

"I'm going to pick some things up from the store. Watch...it...her...whatever." he said, obviously flustered.

"...Right..." Naruto replied long after Itachi had left.

Beyond the doorway, Itachi melted into the shadows like dust in the wind. He still needed to check in with his boss.

O...M...G...Okay...Itachi and Naruto taking care of an infant. I'm still laughing at the very idea. Well, what can I say. The next chapter ought to be interesting. Push the little blue button and review. The next chapter is on my way. Oh yeah, I edited the last chapters so nothing is in bold now. Hopefully its easier for you all to read. : )