Disclaimer: I DO NOT own Naruto.
I'm sorry that this has taken so long. I'm so lucky to have so many people who love my stories. It really inspires me to continue to write. Every review you guys write gets sent as an e-mail to my phone so I read it within in the hour in most cases. It makes me smile to see how excited and into the story you guys become. Honest and truly I couldn't ask for a better fan base of people who share a mutual love of this amazing anime. I hope you all have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. I will continue to write but when School starts again for me I have several demanding classes that are harder than this past semester. Speaking of which, I passed this past semester with two A's two B's and one C so I qualify for the hope scholarship in my state which means they'll pay for my tuition! I'm continuing to try and wrap this wonderful story up, but good things take time, ya know? So I thank you for your continued patience and loyalty as well as enthusiasm.
Karin walked down the street towards Sasuke's house. She had an uncomfortable feeling about that pink haired girl, and she didn't like her. Being a supposed "relative" of Sasuke's she assumed that she would be at Sasuke's house if he were telling the truth, and it would finally make her feel better about the situation. when she walked throughout he door all the maids cringed. None of them particularly liked Karin, she was a bit of a snob, even if she was Sasuke's friend. Mikoto cringed as well as she walked up to greet her as a good hostess of a household did.
"Karin" she said nervously smiling, "Can I help you with something today?"
"Yea" she muttered while looking at her phone screen texting, "Is Sasuke ready to go to school?"
Mikoto tapped her chin then mumbled, "Well you can always go to his room and check…"
Karin didn't even ask permission or wait to be granted so. She just walked down the west wing hallway, swinging her hips as she went.
Eventually she came to his bedroom door and loudly knocked yelling, "Ready or not Uchiha! I'm coming in!"
Sasuke on the other side of the door heard a banging equal with that of an explosion and a shrill voice. He sat up rubbing his eyes only to see an angry red head standing in his doorway. Who the hell had let her inside? Sasuke then immediately followed her intense gaze to the pinkette still soundly sleeping about a foot away from him on the other side of the bed.
"Karin" he grunted, "This isn't your business."
"Like hell it's not you incestuous man-whore!" she shouted throwing her hands up as she walked back down the hall.
Sasuke quickly rushed out naked from under the covers and reached for his school clothes, rushing to throw them on. How he'd over slept, he wasn't sure, but he didn't even have time to grab breakfast as he headed out the door behind Karin, jumping on one leg as he tied his shoes.
"I can't believe you" she growled, "You're disgusting."
"Can I just explain myself?" He asked angrily.
"What is there to explain? You just bang every attractive woman you see. It's no different than last time."
"It is different!" he shouted.
Karin stopped. He actually shouted at her. Sasuke always snarled in a manner that would make any man's blood run cold, but the fact that he had actually raised his voice to a decibel that was only associated with rage made her quiver in her shoes as she looked over her shoulder at him.
"Will you just let me explain?!" he huffed angrily.
Karin just turned around with her arms crossed and hip popped out to the side with attitude, "I'm waiting."
Sasuke sighed in agitation. He shouldn't have to explain himself to anyone, let alone the woman who'd put a knife through his heart and unknowingly in his back.
"I tried to tell her no, but she wouldn't listen."
"That's what they all say" she rolled her eyes, about to walk away.
"Shut up and let me finish" he snapped, "She's adopted for fuck's sake. Not only that, but I knew her when I was five, Itachi adopted her, and then she was gone, and I forgot about her. Years later I'm sent out to his hell hole in the middle of nowhere, and met her again. I can't help that what I felt for her was rekindled. I'm only looking out for her, which is why I told her I didn't want to in the first place. But she wanted to have her way."
"Did you even use protection, jigilo?" she sneered.
Sasuke gritted his teeth at her insults and name-calling before answering, "Of course I did."
Karin turned to keep walking towards school but stopped when Sasuke dropped the final bomb, "For someone who's name calling, at least I wasn't the one who was a full-time gang banger."
She clenched her bag with anger. She thought that she'd put that behind her, but apparently it would always be there to haunt her. For all the shit she was giving Sasuke about his past, she deserved having her own thrown back in her face as well.
Sakura woke up to an empty bed and an even emptier ache in her abdomen. She couldn't tell if it was her stomach or her uterus, both had equally been shaken the night before. Careful not to make any noise or alert the maids, Sakura reached for Sasuke's bath robe and perused his drawers for something to wear. She pulled out a pair of navy blue sweat pants and a black t-shirt that was much too large for her. After finding suitable clothes she headed back to her own room to clean up for the day. However she found Sai sitting on her bed waiting for her in her room. Suddenly the ache in her stomach grew larger.
"Sai…" she hitched her breath worriedly, "What're you doing?…"
"Really?" he asked her in almost an angry, sarcastic voice, "Did you really waste yourself on trash like him?"
Sakura crossed her arms before huffing, "I just walked out of my room to go get some breakfast from the your wild assumptions to yourself. I have no idea what you're talking about."
"So you eat breakfast at 3am and don't come back until 9am? That's good to know."
His sarcasm was tearing apart her alibi which she thought was rather clever.
"I know because your room looked like that at three in the morning when I walked by, and at seven as well. I stayed here wondering where you went. I was about to go tell Mikoto you'd vanished."
"I can explain!" she shouted, "I fainted!"
"And what? He couldn't bring you back to your own room? Is it rape now? Was it not consensual?"
Sakura couldn't believe her own brother was ripping her apart like this. She didn't even bother answering any of those questions as she locked herself in her bathroom and buried her face in her knees as he yelled at her through the door. The worst was yet to come when Sai confronted Sasuke. Sakura already knew that was inevitable. However she decided to focus on just being able to get through the day alone. She waited for the coast to be clear, and her raving-mad brother to leave her room, before she grabbed her Japanese grammar books and ran to the only place she felt safe, Sasuke's room.
"Young master, wait!" A maid called out to him, "Don't go in there yet!"
"Why?" he asked a little agitated that he couldn't even go into his own room after a long and excruciating day at school.
The maid twiddled with her fingers before answering, "We have... a bit of a situation…"
Sasuke gave the woman a confused face as he jiggled the knob of his door and shook it on it's hinges a little, only to find that it was barricaded from the inside. Was she insane? Why couldn't she just leave his room and go to her own like a normal person would after she woke up? Sasuke didn't find the barrier much of a match as he wedged his door open and pushed the dresser away from it.
"She did that earlier…" the maid mumbled, "She's actually locked herself in the bathroom… Please don't be mad at us!"
Sasuke looked over his shoulder confused, "You didn't lock her in the bathroom. Don't worry about it. Just go ahead and go. I'll take care of this."
Sasuke hoped she hadn't heard them talking in his room as he unscrewed the top left bedpost to reveal where he'd hidden the keys to all his rooms around the house, including the bathroom in his bedroom. He thumbed through them quietly until he found the one he was looking for and slipped it into the door. In a matter of seconds the door was swung open with a crash and he saw the pinkette lying on the floor of his bathroom. She didn't even flinch when he slammed the door open. She just looked at him with empty eyes. Sasuke almost felt sick when he looked at her, but he supposed that she probably felt worse by the look on her face.
"Are you ok?" he asked as he kneeled down next to her as she sat up, "You look pale."
Sakura just gave him a continuous blank face instead of answering his probing questions. Fed up with her lack of vocalization, he reached a hand under her pink bangs on placed his hand on her forehead. She was warm, almost burning up. Sasuke helped her up off the floor and led her over to the bed where he noticed that she'd ransacked his dresser and was wearing his clothes. He rolled his eyes in slight amusement and irritation. Babysitting a sick Sakura might be even more work than a healthy one. After laying her on her back in his bed he went to the kitchen to get some cold water in a bowl and a wash cloth. He had to make an attempt to lower her fever. To help Sakura be a bit more comfortable he looked around in the kitchen's medicine cabinet for some Advil. Luckily there were a few pills left in the bottle. As soon as he was about to take her the cold wash cloth and medicine a menacing presence manifested itself in the entrance of the kitchen.
"What the hell is wrong with you" came Sai's opening remark as he appeared from the shadow of the doorway.
Sasuke turned around with his teeth clenched as he sneered, "Mind your own P's and Q's."
Sai grabbed Sasuke's shirt collar causing the raven haired boy to grab Sai's wrists and drop the glass of water in his hand, sending it shattering onto the floor.
"She is my P's and Q's you prick."
Sasuke slapped Sai's hands away as he answered, "Out of the kindness in my heart my family takes you in and this is how you treat us?"
"Us?" he repeated with sarcasm, "I owe your mother my gratitude, not you. And unlike you, she knows how to respect people. She doesn't seduce them."
"What's your point?" Sasuke asked already knowing what Sai was getting at.
"Don't play dumb you asshole. Your dick doesn't belong inside my sister! I heard your conversation with Itachi the first night you arrived with us out in California. He told you to keep it in your pants. Now look what you've done! You really soiled her this time, if you didn't already that time you two were stranded out in the storm!"
Sasuke'd had enough and pinned Sai against the kitchen counter face down with his arm painfully behind his back, twisted at an upward angle.
"Now you listen you over protective little fuck" Sasuke growled with the intensity of a drill-sergeant, "I may be a lot of things, but an avid liar isn't one of them. When I said I didn't lay a perverse hand on your sister that night, I meant it. Nothing happened. Nothing. Get that into your hard-ass head. As for now I'd prefer not to try and justify myself as it's not your concern. Sakura is your twin, not me, so don't pick your fight with the wrong person."
"Who're you kidding?" Sai scoffed, "Who do you think I went and ripped on before I came to you! Of course I confronted her first, but you're the problem! And you always will be!"
"Then you're the reason she's sick" he scowled, "As if she wasn't stressed enough."
"How could she be stressed?" he asked sarcastically, "She's living in the lap of luxury."
"And mentally struggling in the depths of hell. It's sad to see that you're her twin and you don't even understand her when she's in pain. It's pitiful."
Sai was enraged at Sasuke's supercilious manner as if he knew Sakura any better than he himself did. Sai made a movement to lunge at Sasuke, but he was quicker, and dodged the on coming assault, sending Sai right into a maid carrying a tray of dishes. As soon as all the fine china hit the floor in a crash, Sasuke was leaning against the counter as he watched his mother enter the room with her hands over her mouth. That was his queue to leave. Sasuke carefully exited the kitchen and made his way back down the hall. He figured the kitchenette near his room in his entertainment lounge would suffice. He had given the maids explicit orders to keep Sai out of the west wing. Sadly, he was the last person Sakura needed to see. After filling a new glass with water and putting the washcloth in a bowl of ice water, Sasuke headed back to his bedroom. He was surprised when he saw that Sakura had moved from the bed to the coffee table.
"You shouldn't be up" he chastised her calmly.
Sakura scowled at him with a fatigued face, "Thanks, mom. I'll keep that in mind."
After he was done glaring at her for her crappy mood, he took a closer look at the coffee table and saw that she was draped over several Japanese books. Ignoring her grunts of protest, he kneeled on the floor, wrung out the washcloth, and held it against her forehead.
"Nooo" she whined as she squirmed against the cold, wet fabric on her face.
Sasuke just pulled her side up against his chest to restrict her movements. It was obvious that she had no regards for her own health. Then, in a wave of lung wracking coughs, Sakura spat up blood right onto Sasuke's arm. He quickly helped her up and took her into the bathroom. After washing the little blood off his arm, Sasuke got down in front of where she was sitting on the rim of the tub. Gently lifting her shirt a little above her naval he took a better look at the scars on her lower chest. it was too dark to clearly see them the night before, but from the looks of it, they'd healed.
"Did Tsunade treat you?" he asked skeptically.
"She refused further treatment after the external wounds had healed" Mikoto said worriedly from the doorway of the bathroom.
"You idiot" he hissed as he lightly shook her shoulders, "That means your lungs are still injured."
Sakura didn't respond but just looked at him with a mixed emotion of sorrow and anger. Right when Sasuke washed the blood off of her lips, Mikoto made a personal call on her cell phone to Tsunade. Only one hour later, the woman came walking down the hallway.
"So the masochist finally changed her mind, did she?" Tsunade asked sarcastically as she entered the room.
Sakura remained silent, but scowled. Sasuke watched as Tsunade opened her rolling case full of medical equipment.
"Why am I treating her in here instead of her own room?" Tsunade asked as she filled a syringe.
"I'm afraid that's not an option right now" Mikoto said firm, but gently, from where she was sitting on the couch close by.
Tsunade just shrugged it off and continued with what she came here to do. Sakura heard her say something in Japanese to Sasuke right before she was pinned down by the boy and given a sedative in her arm by Tsunade. After feeling her whole body involuntarily relax, she saw Tsunade sticking a small tube up her nose, leading down into her lungs. After plugging the other end into the machine, she saw blood coming out of the tube and into the machine.
"Relax" Tsunade grunted, "We're just draining the blood out of your lungs."
After no more blood was coming out of the tube, a ventilator was put in her mouth and she breathed in a bitter vapor. When she managed to bite down on the mouth piece and spit it out, Tsunade changed it to a gas mask. The blond woman smiled, amused, this girl had a lot of fight in her.
She turned to Sasuke and spoke in Japanese so Sakura still couldn't hear, "Her lungs are in rough shape. She needs to stay in bed. Sedate her if she tries to do otherwise. These medications will also cause her to be groggy and dysfunctional, so someone needs to take care of her personal hygiene and such. You might want to consider hiring another temporary worker or maid."
"No" Sasuke cut her off as he took the sedatives made into pre-filled syringes and bottles of pills, "I'll do it."
Tsunade cocked a brow at the boy as she unpacked the rest of the medical supplies and packed up her own things.
"You've come a long way" Tsunade sighed with a hand on the boy's shoulder before she walked out.
"You can't be serious..." Mikoto commented from where she was sitting silently on the sofa after Tsunade had left the room, "You can't take care of her full time. You have to go to school!"
"I'll have a classmate bring home my work."
Mikoto just threw her hands up in the air and walked out of the room. She wasn't in the mood to argue. It was unspoken from the current situation and his mother's earlier comment, that Sakura would stay in his room. After finishing some of his work, Sasuke looked at the clock and realized it was time for bed already. However when he looked at the pinkette sleeping in his bed, he realized she needed a bath. Too embarrassed to do that part himself, he called in a maid and told her to use his bathroom. While he was waiting, he read over the instructions Tsunade had left him and arranged the assorted bottles of medication on his night stand and programmed alarms into his phone for all the medications that needed to be taken every 4, 6, 8, or 12 hours. After the maid came out with a wobbling Sakura in an oversized t-shirt of Sasuke's he nodded to her in thanks and took the girl off her hands. The woman exited the room and closed the door behind her. And according to the schedule Sakura needed to take three of her pills along with a sedative to sleep because one of them was a steroid. Sasuke helped her sit up in the bed and gave her water and put the pills in her mouth. He felt like a parent as he held her mouth closed until she swallowed them all. She groaned and held onto her head as she felt her body going limp again. Sasuke made sure she was lying down before he made his way back over to the couch. He grabbed a blanket out of the lenin closet by his bathroom and made himself comfortable on the couch with his phone on the table next to him and tried to get what few hours of sleep he knew he had.
A few days had passed and Sasuke had barely caught any Z's. He was sitting in front of the coffee table sleeping on a pile of school papers with the sun shining through the windows when he woke up. He was startled when he couldn't find his phone and he realized it had been over 4 hours and Sakura needed her next round of medications. He scrambled up to his feet then saw none other than his brother sitting by her bedside looking at her placid face. As soon as he heard the shifting of bodyweight by the sofa he looked over at his younger brother with a face of unreadable expression. Sasuke was slightly scared at the sight. He was in charge of her safety.
"I'm not blaming you for this, since her current condition isn't your fault, and you've taken good care of her thus-"
"My phone! My alarms! Her medicine!" he panicked.
"Calm down" Itachi said gruffly, "I took care of it all. I turned your phone alarms off and I've looked at the schedule and did it myself. Now let's talk about the real issue."
Sasuke breathed a small sigh of relief, but the real problem had yet to be solved.
"Sai called me" Itachi spoke, knowing that would key Sasuke in on the situation.
The raven haired boy clenched his fists. This was his personal business. What they did was their business. No one else needed to get involved. The fact that Itachi would even fly all the way back down from Hokkaido meant that he considered this a real issue, and Sasuke was in deep shit.
"You have to marry her" Itachi stated bluntly.
To Be Continued…
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