I use the word "senpai" in this chapter because it isn't all that easy to translate into English, especially in the context it's used. It means person superior in school, working environment, etc., sometimes translated to "upperclassman," but that isn't really correct because it's so hard to translate it.

In other news, the annoying anime changed the Leader's eye color! They're fricking gray now! Fortunately, they are still the proper shape and style for my theories to work either way. The manga is probably closer to the truth anyway.

Sunrise, Sunset: Part Ten

The Things We Learn

A new day led to another breakfast where Naruto was scrounging around the Akatsuki kitchen, looking for food. Looking, but not finding. It was strange to think of a member of Akatsuki shopping for food, but it was clear that shopping was indeed what needed to be done. Heaving a sigh, Naruto opened the refrigerator. It was mostly empty except for an expired carton of milk and a few containers of food. There was a note propped up against the container's top. Naruto picked it up, scanning over the words briefly.

Up for grabs.

Naruto tapped a finger meditatively against his lips. He had thought that no one in Akatsuki cooked, so why was perfectly good-looking food sitting in the fridge with the words, "up for grabs," near it?

"Ooh! Itachi left us food again!"

Naruto banged his head against the inside of the refrigerator. "Ouch!"

He backed away from and straightened to stare at Tobi, who was paying absolutely no attention to Naruto's actions and taking food out of the refrigerator with all appearances of happiness. Deidara came in just a few seconds later, snatching the food immediately from Tobi and holding it over his head. "Respect your senpai, brat," he said, waving the container a bit.

"Aww, you just want it for yourself," Tobi whined, a pout in his voice.

Udon, Naruto noted from his view of the clear plastic bottom of the dish. Yummy, delicious udon noodles in what seemed to be a sauce. It was probably just vaguely spicy, with lots of vegetables... maybe even chicken...

"Give it here! I saw it first!" Naruto made a mad grab toward the dish and the blonde Akatsuki leapt back, turning up his nose with an expression that was by no means amused.

"How very unartistic," he said, eyeing Naruto as if he were a bug that desperately needed to be squashed. While he was doing this, Tobi was sneaking up behind him. If Tobi got the noodles, he might share.

"Whatever." Naruto stuck his thumbs through his belt loops, nonchalant. "I thought that Kisame said that Itachi didn't share or something."

Light blue eyes rolled expressively as their owner continued to hold the food in the air. "Jeez, Kisame is dumb sometimes. Itachi will feed us as long as he can pass it off as him making too much or that he's gotten sick of it." He grinned and Naruto saw Tobi creep ever closer. "Uchiha is such a baby. Well, either that or he really doesn't care, 'cause I—" He screeched suddenly when he realized that he was no longer holding the food. Tobi grinned.

"Come on, Uzumaki-san," Tobi said, leaving the room at a dead run with Deidara following. "I have bowls in my room for when Deidara doesn't share." Naruto was laughing when he started running after them, Deidara's curses echoing through the halls. The two of them nearly slammed into the doorway before they closed the door, slamming it behind them.

Tobi laughed, setting the food he had grabbed on the small table to the left of the door and diving down to root under the bed to try and find the dishes he had mentioned. "Deidara does this a lot," he confided. "I think he must have been an only child."

Naruto laughed as well. "You really don't act like a big, bad member of Akatsuki. I actually like you, for one, and I tend to express my opinion pretty loudly if I don't like you."

Black-clad shoulders shrugged, or at least Naruto assumed that was what the extra wiggle was as Tobi headed further under the bed. "I don't remember anything before I entered Akatsuki," the masked shinobi said cheerfully. "I have a whole bunch of scars, though. The Leader said that for every mission I get right he'll make a couple of them go away. I've only got a couple more missions left to go before he has fixed all of them."

"Huh." Naruto crouched down beside him, pushing away all other thoughts other than the growling in his stomach. "Is there a black hole under there or something? I want food!"

"What are your intentions with Uzumaki Naruto?"

Although Itachi's words were cool, impersonal, Pein still raised his brow. "You almost sound like an interested party, Itachi. Careful, careful."

Itachi's face didn't change a whit, nor did he move as he watched the movements of the red-headed man with calm crimson eyes. He stood there expecting an answer, not demanding it and yet knowing that if he waited it would be given to him. Pein studied him for several long moments, the dark grin fading from his face. Itachi seemed more pristine than usual, which generally meant that he was brooding. There was an impenetrable quality to him then, as if he was made of frosted glass. The Leader was not just anyone to be fooled by this façade, though.

"Are you afraid that your brother will think we've kept Naruto here for a long, drawn-out torture?" Cat-like red eyes, a match for Itachi's own but far more wild, narrowed. "You have a hole in your reasoning. I thought that your baby brother had expressed nothing but a lack of feelings for Naruto, Itachi."

"It was not my intention to spare my younger brother any feelings of pain or unease," Itachi said swiftly. "Naruto is a distraction. He keeps our goals from being realized by deterring us from our motive."

"The Tailed Beasts are not motives; they are means." Itachi stiffened at the warning hiss that was in that low voice. "You go beyond your place to presume my intentions, Itachi. I know what I'm doing and have been doing it for longer than you and that brat Deidara have put together."

"Did Deidara speak to you, then? I thought he was too afraid."

Pein settled himself, starting to smile again. It was not sane, happy, or civilized, but it was an expression that for him expressed some sort of normalcy in word and action. Itachi's even voice had just a hint of snideness and it amused him.

"Deidara gathered his courage," the Leader said with finality. "Ask me again on the matter of Uzumaki Naruto in another few weeks, Itachi. Then we'll see if you get your answer."

Itachi turned at the obvious dismissal and Pein watched him leave. Itachi walked with a grace beyond that of a normal shinobi, bred and drilled into him by his clan ever since he was born. He was nobility at its height and as leader of Akatsuki, Pein almost mourned the loss of the clan. He did not, though, for he believed mourning to be a useless time in which nothing was accomplished. He believed in action; perhaps he and Naruto were similar in that respect.

He drew further back into the shadows of his study, hiding himself from the attention of his team and anyone else that might care to look at him. His eyes were the only thing that was visible, almost glowing in the dark with a light that went beyond normal means.

The problem, the one that he was not willing to divulge to Itachi at this time or any time in the future, was that he wasn't entirely sure what he wanted to do with Naruto either. He knew what he wanted, in the end, and he knew what his team wanted. He just didn't know how to get there. Yet so much rested on the shoulders of one fifteen-year-old boy who had the face of the Yondaime and a demon fox sealed inside of him.

Pein's dark red eyes grew heavy, then closed. Unhindered by the light that had been in those eyes, the dark conquered the room. That was all right. The Leader liked the dark.

He was woken roughly forty-five minutes later by the slight pop of a summon appearing in previously unoccupied air. It the one he called most often, a young female. It was strange that she was back so soon when she should have been gathering reports from Hidan and Kakuzu.

"What is it?"

She snorted at him, twitching her gorgeous two tails. "I'm reporting back, my lord. The news has reached me that Orochimaru has been defeated by that Uchiha brat and the sibs volunteered me to be the one to tell you."

Pein was silent for a long moment, thinking.

"Does anyone else know?"

She hmphed. "I might have told Hidan and that other one, but there were some complications and a couple of people died, so no one else knows."

She noticed that his long, pointed nails were digging into his hand only when she smelled the blood. She did not say anything that might ruin his veneer of serenity only because she knew better. "Tell no one, and tell your siblings to do the same," he ordered, his tone as composed as she had ever heard it.

"What about the rest of Akatsuki?"

"Tell no one. Now, what were you saying about Hidan and Kakuzu?"

It was a rare thing to find the Leader outside in the broad daylight, yet it was in the middle of the training ground that he had decided to place himself, right between Itachi's kunai and Naruto's punch. All he did was give them a vague smile when both went spinning off direction, mysteriously choosing to redirect themselves to the nearest tree. Needless to say, Naruto was not happy when he was shaking his hand gingerly to ease the pain.

"Kakuzu is dead. Hidan may very well be, also."

Deidara managed to fall from his seat even though he was sitting on the ground; an admirable feat. "What? How did that happen?"

The Leader sighed. "Team Shikamaru and Team Kakashi. The fools seemed to be late picking up the information that Naruto was with us and not with Konoha, a fact that I'm sure raised a few eyebrows in the village. They were personally killed by Shikamaru and Sakura, respectively, though my sources tell me that Hidan may have survived."

Naruto snickered. "Go Shikamaru and Sakura." He was given three unamused looks. "What?" the blue-eyed ninja asked, wide-eyed. "I'm just saying!"

The Leader's red eyes became thoughtful. "You might be less pleased to learn that your friend Shikamaru's instructor, one of the Third's sons, was killed."

Naruto's smile disappeared as if it had never been on his face, or indeed anywhere near it. The look he had on his face then made Itachi stare, narrow-eyed and uneasy. "Dammit!" he exclaimed. "Couldn't you guys have a better relay service?"

"Considering that your life is still being lived because of our charity, I think that you will need to make due." His long black robe swept through the dust as the Leader turned and headed back into the building. "Tell the others what I have told you. I will be in my study."

Deidara winced. "Leader's pissed," he muttered. "I hope he remembers that Tobi and I have to leave soon, even though he's all huffy."

"Naruto, please repeat to my associate what I told you as I was leaving the library."

"Your Leader-guy's got ears and they work," Naruto grumbled, distracted. "I'm not a message boy, y'know."

He was scowling, though, and his blue eyes had darkened and filled with anger. Even more importantly, the whisker marks on his cheeks had widened. Itachi noted all of this, just as he noted the blood dripping from Naruto's chin from his bitten lip, just as he noted the clawed fists clenching.

Naruto was not just upset; he was grieving. If he was not grieving for the man Asuma himself, then he was grieving for the students that had known the man far better than he had. Unlike Naruto, Itachi did not become unhappy when he heard the news. He did not, actually, feel much at all. Naruto's expression disturbed him, though, which the older man did not appreciate.

"Come. I wish to see how good your control is when you are using the Kyuubi's chakra."

It was better to get out the anger now rather than later, when they were sleeping and as vulnerable as a shinobi ever became. The untamed grin on Naruto's face said that he knew exactly what Itachi was doing and that he didn't care.

Sasuke had never really looked at those that Orochimaru had experimented on. He had never seen into their hungry eyes, he had never noticed their pinched and starving faces. He was not pleased by what he saw, though he knew there was really nothing that he could do about despite the fact that he was at the moment essentially filling Orochimaru's position. Those were not shoes that Sasuke had ever expected, or indeed wanted, to fill.

Suigetsu was complaining loudly that Sasuke was being mean and doing his brooding thing again and Karin was sniping back at him, her words quick and snide. It reminded him another two people that had once been part of his team. The dynamic was familiar, and against Sasuke's wishes, it comforted him. It had been a long time since he had felt anything like that familiarity.

This land was beautiful, wet and green with large glistening bodies of water and dark swamps. It was something that Sasuke noted only absently and from the corners of his eyes, since beauty was a thing that did not concern him in the least and was therefore not worth musing upon.

"Sasuke-kun," Karin said, suddenly cloyingly sweet. "Sasuke-kun, what are you thinking about? Suigetsu keeps whining, so maybe we should stop."

"I haven't been whining about the road, idiot! Nobody ever listens to me!"

"We're not stopping, no matter whether you are tired or not, Karin," Sasuke said sharply, ignoring the woman's indignant spluttering. Then the look appeared; the adoring "no matter how much you beat me down I'll only admire how strong you are when you do it" look.

There were, unfortunately, more than a few similarities between this team and his old one.

He thought that he had killed any feelings other than hate a long time ago, yet he was still feeling these things. The self-loathing that he couldn't do more for the prisoners, the annoyance toward Karin and Suigetsu, and the ache of memory that their actions spurred in him. There was a darker edge to the way that they acted, however, and maybe that would hold them together long enough for Sasuke's ends. Maybe that darker edge was what growing up meant, and that was yet another lesson that Sasuke had never wanted to learn.

To redeyedevil, because your email address wouldn't work (and anyone else who cares): When the ItaNaru comes in honestly depends on how the pacing of the relationship goes. I never plan out too far ahead because if I do then the quality of the writing goes down the tube, but if had to put a date on it I'd say about three or four chapters. More likely three. So pretty soon, ne? It might be less if I can manage to make the chapters longer. The ItaNaru is actually important to the Plot (capitalization intended), so it has to happen sooner or later unless I plan on having the fic be really long. Which wouldn't be so bad, except I've been neglecting my original work and that is a big no-no.

Sorry for super-long delays in chapter writing. I would have updated last night, except that I forgot I turned the computer off. It's a bit longer, though! Awesome, ne? Please review and tell me what you think.