First thing first. Wow, the number of reviews I got for the last chapter were amazing! 33! That made me one very happy Author. And I wanted to post the next chapter since I have exams coming up and I need to devote my time to them. So here is the chapter earlier than usual (:

Chapter 9

"Brother?" Deidara exclaimed.

"Sakura?" The more stoic men said. How was that possible? For this girl to be so devious and given a name so…innocent? Surely her parents mistakenly named her. Cherry blossoms were delicate and harmless; this girl was far from those traits.

Sakura she shot Sasori and Itachi a harsh look. "Just because I am a bitch to you, doesn't mean I am to everyone else boys." The rosette then turned to Deidara and gave him a sly grin. "Don't worry, Blondie; I didn't even know of this little...fact. Mind clueing me in, Nagato?" Sakura turned her cold viridian eyes onto her brother.

"What are you doing here, Sakura?" Pein ignored her question. He was still surprised to see her here, in his base.

"Well your men thought it kind enough to kidnap—" Sakura was interrupted by the blonde Akatsuki member.

"It's not kidnapping if you go willingly!" He growled at the younger female.

Sakura ignored him, "…me so their leader could 'take care' of their situation. Such a surprise to find out my own flesh and blood is the one that needs to take care of the problem." Sakura shot her brother a glare before continuing, "You know you might want to instill self-preservation in these men."

Sasori and Deidara gaped at the tone she was using to their leader. It was scolding and clipped; as if she was not related to him but instead a drill sergeant for a platoon of new recruits. Why was Pein even allowing her to say such things? They were the strongest of the elites, they should be feared. Not taught to be independent!

Itachi was a different story. He watched the pink haired girl with amusement and some respect. Though, Itachi had to admit he was surprised of her…connections to the Akatuski. First he discovers that she knows his two younger brothers. Then she is related to the leader of the group. But he was curious as to how she didn't know her own brother was the leader of the gang she had despised so much. And if she grew up with the Akatuski would it have changed how she saw them? Itachi wasn't sure why but he kind of hoped it did.

"I should have known it was you; you're the only one that will go that far with riddles," He let out a sigh. "I congratulate you on stumping my smartest member, Sakura."

Sakura shrugged her shoulders. "Well if I knew you were in this…gang I would have traded victims. Your reaction would be far more amusing however I would have to not see you in person like I did Itachi." Sakura replied. The only emotion shown on her face was the traces of a coy smile. Her emerald eyes were dead, showing nothing. She felt betrayed and she wanted to cry, but how could she cry in front of this man? The one she thought she could trust? The one who had disappeared from her life for ten, long years?

"Why are you doing this?" Pein asked his baby sister.

"No, why did you do that!" Sakura's voice went an octave higher. She didn't mean for it to, it just happened.

"They were corrupt, Sakura!" Pein explained his voice calm. This made Sakura even more irate. How could he be calm when he condemned his own parents to death?

"That doesn't mean they deserved to die!" She screeched. It was just her and Nagato right now. He was the one who deserved her wrath, not the three men standing silent somewhere in the room. No long was this organization her enemy; no, now it was her brother. Her own flesh and blood, the man she once idolized.

"Yes, Sakura they rea—" Nagato's reply was cut off by a harpy's scream.

"NO! Do you even hear yourself? You sentenced your own parents, your own flesh and blood, to death! How did they deserve to die and not you? How can you dare say you have a right to when you are destroying this town? The place we grew up? How can you call yourself a man?" Sakura's voice was raspy as it grew in volumes.

Pein's eyes narrowed on his sister's frame. Sakura should have known better than to question him, especially to give enquiry on his masculinity. "Sakura," he warned.

"Oh, don't you dare use that tone with me, Nagato. I am not a part of your clique and you cannot belittle me like you can them. We are on equal level here, Nagato. Family always is." Sakura retorted.

"I killed my family remember?" Nagato replied.

"You didn't kill me." Sakura bit out. Why? Why didn't those men kill her? "Don't tell me you had a heart. Because no one who did that could have ever had one," Sakura replied. She blinked away the tears that were forming.

"Why did she survive?" It was a surprise for everyone to discover that Itachi asked the question. His comrades gave him a shocked look while Sakura just simply nodded. She repeated his question.

"Why did they let me live?" Questions came flooding back to her and her voice spoke without her consent. "Why couldn't they have at least killed me after making me witness my parents' murder? Where you so sure of yourself, of your authority, that you never thought I would return the favor?"

The men in the room noticed their leader's body stiffen and his eyes narrow. His hands clenched into a white ball. Did he not know that she had witnessed their parents' murder?

"Describe them." Pein's voice was harsh now.

Sakura's shoulders tensed. "D-describe them?" She asked.

"Sakura," He growled.

Sakura didn't know why she did. Maybe it was because his response to her questions was so different from what she respected. His reaction was similar to that of a man's who didn't know what exactly happened. "It was a group of three; they were two older men and one maybe in his late twenties. The older ones had dark hair about the length of their back while the younger one's hair just came down to the base of his neck. Two out of the three eyes were demented. They enjoyed it. But the third one…he looked like he didn't even want to be there. I swear he kept throwing things at me so I wouldn't see what the others were doing. But that didn't take my mind off of their screams... from what he was doing I knew he was a father," Sakura murmured the last bit to herself more than to the men in the rooms.

"I need more, Sakura." Nagato growled. The four others in the room could tell that he was restraining himself to not yell.

"The youngest had Onyx eyes; one of the older ones had red eyes and the other had yellow." At this, Nagato turned his glare to Itachi. The Uchiha gave no response, he agreed with Pein's anger. It was rightly deserved.

"I will kill them," He growled in a low voice.

"Can't kill all of them," Sakura stated. She took a deep breath and her composure was back to the icy wall.

"And why not?" Pein's eyes narrowed.

"You cannot kill the deceased." The men of the room raised an eyebrow at this.

"The one with yellow eyes, I saw him while I was traveling with Tsunade and Shizune. I can't remember exactly what happened but I remember seeing red and going for his throat. Shizune helped me when his…gay lover?...decided to attack me and well let's just say his body is now mangled." Sakura explained.

Sakura didn't want to go in depth on what happened that day. She killed a man, sure it was rightly deserved but murder was still murder. And because she had committed such an act, she could never forget it. How could Sakura forget the blood that drenched her person? Or the man's last gasping breaths. But the worst of it, how could she forget that look of terror in her mentor's eyes? Sakura couldn't tell these men all that had happened. Because if she did, then she was admitting something she refused to accept. The rosette didn't want to be as much of a monster has her brother.

"Why didn't Tsunade stop you?" Deidara questioned. He didn't know why he asked her that, it just seemed to fly out of his mouth.

The rosette's body stiffened and her eyes glazed with tears before she blinked them away. Her reaction didn't escape the eyes of the Akatsuki men. This made them curious, but before one of them could question it Sakura answered Deidara's question.

"You don't stop someone in that kind of rage. You are risking your own life at that." Sakura made it sound obvious. Her viridian eyes, now glazed to something akin to ice, looked towards her brother. "Don't you teach them anything? I thought you would have at least taught them not to fight a battle with someone who truly has nothing to lose. The yellow-eyed man should have known that," Sakura chided.

"Do you know the name of the others?" Sasori asked. His curiosity slipped from his normally well-controlled emotions. He would have never expected to find such entertainment from an Organization like this.

Sakura hesitated on answering before she nodded her head, "I know one."

"Tell me," Nagato demanded. His voice was laced with the promise of death.

"Kill him and I will kill you." The words were ripped from Sakura's throat in a snarl.

The men didn't expect that response. They expected her to want revenge. The leader was practically willing to off the men who made her witness the killing of her parents. Yet she was refusing to have one of them killed?

"Look, he has been nothing but kind to me. Sure he had never verbally said sorry, but his actions implied that. And if it was one thing I have learned from you, Nagato, it was this: Your actions always speak louder than your words."

"What is his name?" Nagato was persistent.

"I will not give you his name." Sakura responded.

The members of the organization could see how the two were related. Despite the contrast of their looks, the two were practically mountains. So dead set in their ideals that neither refused to move.

"He is Sasuke-kun's daddy," Sakura gave-in, "lay a hand on him and I will chop it off before you could even mutter the word 'sorry'! He was a father, can you imagine how hard it was for him to be there allowing it to happen?"

"He was still a part of it!" Pein argued back.

"You ordered him there! What do you think he felt knowing he had to allow two men to kill a child's parents? He had kids my age! Imagine how hard it was to sit there and distract me while my parents were being painfully killed. How each time I heard one scream, he heard one of mine in return. Or how the last thing I had said to him that night was me begging him to just rip out my eyes and kill me. And each day he saw me after that he had to re-live that memory. He doesn't deserve to die, Nagato. I might do a lot of things for revenge, but I will never kill someone innocent. I am not like you."

"He should have gotten you out of there!" The infamous Akatsuki leader yelled. He fastened his eyes on his younger sister and his voice softened. "You should have never witnessed that, Sakura. That was never my intentions when I told them to kill our parents."

"It doesn't change the fact that you allowed them to be killed," Sakura said.

"They were corrupt," Nagato repeated.

"And you are not? Tell me Nagato who isn't corrupt?" Sakura let out a harsh laugh.

"You aren't," Nagato said quietly.

"Not since that night Nagato. I," Sakura let out another harsh laugh, this time directed at her person. "I can't even tell you the last time something seemed so innocent to me. Not my first kiss, not my first boyfriend, hell not even my first time seemed innocent to me. I have been tainted like an angel fallen from grace."

"Sakura," he whispered. The cold Akatsuki Leader felt his heart rip at her confession.

Sasori and Deidara looked at their leader in shock. The defeat in his voice was something unheard of. They had never known him to have compassion for anyone but Konan. Maybe that was why he was so protective of Konan; maybe the only active female of the Akatsuki reminded the ruthless leader of his younger sister. But that was purely a speculation of the two partners.

Sakura shook her head. "No. You caused this, don't you dare give me that emotion! I refuse to accept pity from anyone, especially from you." Sakura's voice was still uneven and a little pitchy. The men could tell she was not as composed as she would have liked to be.

"Sakura," Nagato repeated again. He hated to see his sister like this. Yes he ordered his parents to be killed. But it had to have been done. They would have ruined her life if they lived. He couldn't have let that happen. He refused to, so he ordered them killed. But Pein didn't plan on her reaction to it. Maybe he should explain to her why he had them killed. It was time for him to tell her the whole story.

"You three, leave." Sasori and Deidara do so without complaint. Itachi, however, hesitated. He looked at the female who had caused him so many problems in the weeks before. After a few moments, Itachi left the two alone.

Ino let out a breath she wasn't aware she was holding. What made her want to do this? Oh yeah, Sakura. The girl was so brave, and so…so…stupid. What did she know about friend problems? But wouldn't listening to Sakura's advice make her unwise also? She was dragged out of her thoughts when someone answered the door.

"Yeah, what do you want…Ino?" The person seemed surprised that she was there.

"Hi…Shika-kun." She murmured. "If this is a bad time I could come back." The blonde heard her best friend's voice echo in her head.

'What happened to the confident girl I met when I was little; the girl who protected me from bullies and told me to grow a back bone?' She was starting to agree with her friend. Where was her backbone, her courage? What made Sakura so strong that she seemed fearless?

Ino had been jealous of Sakura since their second year of middle school. She wasn't that shy girl that she was the previous years. Something changed in Sakura, something she had recently noticed begin to show on the surface. But that change and her striking appearance made her untouchable; exotic even.

"No, this is an okay time. Come in," The brunette male said. He stepped aside and let her into his home.

"…She is not home, is she?" Ino asked. Ino was hesitant on entering his home. She didn't want to cause him any more problems.

Shikamaru shook his head before responding. "No, she isn't. We had a falling out," Shikamaru explained. He wasn't sure if Ino knew about Sakura's escapades so he didn't tell her why he had broken up with his red headed girlfriend.

"Oh, I am sorry." She told the male, before she walked into his home. The pine wood smell hit her nose and she immediately felt like she was at home once more.

"So why are you here?" Shikamaru asked. His tone was generally curious.

"I…I just wanted to say sorry. I know it doesn't make up for all that has happened, and I know you probably don't even care. But I at least wanted to get this off of my chest." Ino blurted out.

Shikamaru looked at her for a moment. "I apologize too. I shouldn't have let something as trivial as that to interfere with our friendship."

Ino looked at him in shock before saying. "Maybe we both screwed this up." Shikamaru nodded his consent at this. Maybe they did put too much strain on their friendship, especially over a stupid reason.

The two talked over all that had happened, why it occured and how their pink haired friend pricked at sore spots. Neither realized how great it felt finally getting rid those emotions which were slowly collecting. It felt good to talk to an old friend. Ino had a smile on her face for the first time in a long while when it came to Shikamaru.

Despite what Sakura had caused them, they had to thank her.

"Sakura," Pein started.

"You cannot excuse what you've done, Nagato. You just can't." Sakura told him, gently shaking her head. The young rosette's shoulders began to shake and Sakura couldn't contain the emotions that had made her quiver. "There is no plausible excuse to murder our parents. Whatever they did wrong to you, you should have just let it go."

"And I would have," Pein told her, "If it was ever about me."

She was still so innocent. Despite all that she had claimed herself to be, the harsh Akatsuki leader still saw the woman before him as an innocent babe. She was still naïve in the way of the world. No matter how much she has seen, Sakura still placed far too much trust in those she thought deserved her loyalty.

The viridian eyed woman's eyes widened at this admission. "If it were about you…why else would you kill our parents? What other motive could you possibly have?" She questioned. This time Pein hesitated to explain to her, he knew he needed to. But how did he break it to her?

"Sakura," he started. "They died because our parents were planning on selling you into a life of servitude."

Alright here is the next chapter. Tell me what you think of it. I added the Ino and Shikamaru scene to ease the tension between Sakura and Pein, it felt…suffocating to me. But that is my opinon. Tell me yours in a review :)

-Kori.