Author's Note:

I hope you guys are liking this fanfic... Its kinda heavy and slow-moving and focuses more on the OCs than the actual Akatsuki. But hey, I'm not going to apologize for that. If you like it, I'm so glad that you can go on this journey with me. Thanks for all your support. It means the world to me.

Blu3b3rryT3a: Lol its coming, don't you worry.

indigo: Glad you enjoyed it! We all love a soft Deidara moment.

Enjoy the chapter guys! As always, please read and review.

Chapter 9: Only People

A fierce wave of cramps and aches suddenly ripped through Rose's body. The girl let out a strangled cry of pain and curled in on herself, willing the episode to pass. Her body wracked as it demanded attention and a thin sheen of sweat clung to her skin. The withdrawal symptoms had come suddenly and left just as quickly, leaving Rose huddled under her blankets and struggling to catch her breath. Quitting her bad habits had sucked. Sometimes she slept for days and other times the pain wouldn't let her, leaving her awake and alone with her tumultuous thoughts.

Rose laid awake after that, staring up at the creaking rafters of her attic. A few feet away, Chrissy was sound asleep. Konan's mattress was empty, the quiet woman no doubt still with Pein. There was really no point in the mattress being here. In the one month since the group of weirdos had invaded her house, Rose hadn't seen Konan sleep once.

Glancing over to make sure Chrissy was still sleeping, Rose reached over and gingerly took her friend's phone. It was a new device, something David had probably gotten her, but the picture was being used as her lock screen was old. It was a picture of Chrissy, Rose, Matthew, and David, back when they had graduated high school. Chrissy's hair was still long and she and David looked so in love. Matthew looked less tired and Rose… The photo was bittersweet. Rose knew that the four of them could never be as close as they were back then.

Pushing the memories away, Rose swiped on the phone and rolled her eyes at the lack of passcode. David probably didn't like Chrissy locking her phone. Rose herself didn't own a phone. She did at one point, but had pawned it off for quick money for drugs. She hadn't gotten around to getting a new one and, with this forced imprisonment in her own home, she might not ever get one. Pein had been clear that only Chrissy was allowed to leave the house. Rose would have argued, but she feared for the consequences of her disobedience. Chrissy's finger was almost fully healed, but Rose didn't want to risk anymore injury to her friend.

These people are crazy, she thought wearily. Not only did they all look weird, they talked and acted like they were from some other planet. A planet where it was apparently normal to kill people and go on "missions" and live in secret villages. They all also apparently spoke some weird dialect of Japanese. For the past few nights, Rose had been stealing Chrissy's phone to try and figure out who this group of psychopaths were. Her search had started with looking up "Akatsuki", the word that Chrissy had let slip. The results had been strange. After several misspellings of the word, Rose had found plethora of sites and images detailing the lives of a fictional group of ninjas from an anime. Rose had never been into anime, that had been Chrissy's thing. But she had attended a convention with her best friend when they were teenagers and Rose saw how crazy fans of anime could be. And that's what she assumed these terrorists must be. Crazy fans trying to replicate some stupid show. They looked and dressed very similar to these characters and had the same names. Rose's education had been in physical health, but she had taken many courses on mental health as well. She knew that there were people out there who could become out of touch with reality and become obsessed with a fictional world due to trauma. They become disillusioned to their own lives and truly believe that they are someone else.

Rose wanted to scrap all this up to that. That these were just insane people who for some reason were trying to emulate an anime and had convinced themselves that they were truly from that world. While it wouldn't make their situation any less dangerous, it would answer some questions and give Rose an idea of what they were dealing with.

As out there as that answer was, it was by far the easiest answer to accept. If she didn't accept that, then the only answer was…

These people are crazy, she reminded herself deep down, Rose knew that wasn't true. The odds of them all suffering from some sort of psychotic disorder was low. True, most of them clearly suffered from depression, PTSD, and acute paranoia, but Rose hadn't seen any signs of schizophrenia. Besides maybe the weird plant guy, but she almost felt like there was something strange about that too.

No, the Akatsuki may all have serious trauma based disorders, but none of them were insane. Which put Rose in a place she didn't want to be in. She would have to consider the possibility that they were actually from another world.

Her head was beginning to hurt, whether from the withdrawal or from her thoughts, she didn't know. She closed the article about theories of dimensional travel that she had been reading and cleared the search history from Chrissy's phone. With a groan, the woman put the phone back and got to her feet. Her body protested against the movement as she quietly made her way from the attic. She glanced back at Chrissy's sleeping form. Rose admired her friend's haircut for what seemed to be the millionth time. Chrysanthemum had changed so much in the short month since this all had started. She had become more confident in herself and in her abilities, she was learning to say no, and she clearly had a sense of value that manifested itself in all the cleaning, cooking, and providing for the unwelcome house guests. As much as Rose hated to admit it, the Akatsuki was responsible for that change. Rose hadn't been able to help her. But they had. It made it almost difficult to hate them…. Almost.

Rose turned and headed down the stairs of the attic. Just because they weren't crazy and had done a few good things didn't make them any less dangerous. Rose knew they would never be fully safe until the Akatsuki was gone. Chrissy said that they were just trying to get home and Rose believed it. She knew calling the police would be useless and trying to escape would be impossible. So Rose didn't really have a choice other than to wait it out and protect Chrissy as best as she could.

Rose made it down the stairs and into the living room. She flopped on the couch and turned the TV on, lowering the volume to almost nothing. Flipping through the channels, the woman tried her best to ignore the creeping feelings of hopelessness and the subtle pains in her body. She needed to distract herself from the desires that were welling up inside her. It helped that she couldn't leave the house. If she could, she would have been high hours ago.

It was almost 4am so there was nothing really good on. She settled on Animal Planet and was watching some hyenas harass a gazelle when someone next to her said, "Hmm."

The girl nearly jumped out of her skin as she found Kisame standing directly behind the couch and watching the TV.

"I need to put a bell on you or something!" Rose hissed, placing a hand over her startled heart. She would never get used to how quiet these stupid "ninjas" were. It wasn't natural, especially for a man as massive as Kisame.

Kisame snorted at her comment. "An intriguing suggestion," he mused, moving around the couch to come sit next to her. "But that would make my job a lot harder."

"Your job," Rose repeated. "Your job that involves killing people."

"Yep."

"Ah."

The two of them sat in silence, watching as the nature show turned from grasslands to deep oceans. The calming blues of the waters and the rhythmic swimming of the fish began to lull Rose into mellow state of mind. For some reason, water had always calmed her. Something about the weightlessness of being underwater had always appealed to her, though she didn't really know how to swim.

"Why are you up?" she asked the man.

Kisame shrugged. "Couldn't sleep," he replied. "You?"

"Something like that."

The silence resumed. Rose pondered for the millionth time that night the strange guests she had in her house. They were just as bizarre as the day they arrived. Out of all of them however, Kisame was the one she felt the most comfortable around. Yes, he was ginormous and blue, but he was the most normal acting. He spoke normally, he ate normally, he wasn't obsessed with world domination or explosions or murder. Minus appearances, he was just a guy. In more normal circumstances, Rose thought they could even have been friends.

"Can I ask you a question?" Rose asked.

"You just did."

"Very funny. Why did you choose the line of work you're in?"

Kisame quirked an eyebrow, still watching the TV as it transitioned from schools of fish to herds of whales.

"Why?" he repeated. "Seemed like a good fit."

"But you don't seem as wacko as the rest of your friends."

The shark man chuckled. "Have you seen me, kid? I'm just as wacko as the rest of them."

"Maybe your looks," Rose conceded. "Honestly, you're a pretty chill guy."

"Thanks I guess." Kisame turned in his seat to face the woman sitting next to him. "Alright I'll bite," he said with a sharp toothed grin. "I'll answer your deep personal question, but in exchange, you've got to answer mine."

The auburn haired girl considered. She couldn't think of anything he could ask that he could use against her, so she shrugged.

"Sure."

Kisame nodded and then rested his head in his hand, staring off into space.

"You see, the village I grew up in didn't like me much," he told her. "Stood out a little too much. So I got good at sword fighting, something very honorable there, but it didn't make a difference. I even joined the ranks of an elite military group so that I could protect them, but still they called me a monster. Sent me on a lot of really dangerous missions, hoping that I would die on them."

"That's horrible!" Rose said, disgusted by the people Kisame grew up with.

"Ah ah," Kisame wagged a figure at her in a scolding manner. "Before you buy into my sob story let me tell you the rest. I was on mission that went pretty wrong. My whole team was captured. I was able to escape but I knew there was no way everyone would make it. So, in order to make sure no information was leaked to our enemies, I killed my whole team."

Rose stared at him in shock. "You killed them?" she asked in horror.

"Yep," Kisame said, looking completely unbothered. "It had to be done, so I did it."

Rose had to take a moment to process the information before something clicked in her mind. "You did it because your village already hated you," she realized, looking at the man. "Someone had to do it and so you decided to be the scapegoat and protect the village at the cost of them thinking of you as a monster."

Something flashed in Kisame's eyes for the briefest of moments. Was it surprise? Relief? Then as soon it was there, it was gone. The shark ninja threw back his head and laughed.

"Don't paint me like a hero, kid," he said. "Those don't exist. Life is unfair. Some people get born with all the luck in the world and a pretty face like you. But guys like me just have to deal with the fact that we got dealt a bad hand."

"I wouldn't say I was born with much luck," Rose replied, pulling up her knees to hug them. "But thank you for the compliment and I think you have a pretty nice face yourself."

Kisame snorted and turned back to the TV. "Don't gotta try and cheer me up," he chuckled.

"I wasn't," Rose told him, a little put out by his dismissiveness. "I've seen a lot uglier faces on men with far less pleasant personalities."

"Sounds like you hang out with bad company."

"Sometimes."

"Well, that leads me to my question then," Kisame glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. "You're young, beautiful, smart, and enigmatic."

"Wow, keep up those compliments and I just might fall for you, Sharkboy."

"A bad decision, if I ever did see one," Kisame said, clearly amused. "My question is, with all those things going for you, why on earth would you turn to drugs?"

Rose blinked, not expecting the question. After a moment's silence, she shrugged.

"I dunno," she said, she said honestly.

Kisame quirked an eyebrow at her. "You don't know?"

"Yeah I mean, I don't have a sob story for you. The best I got is that growing up with a twin who was literally better at everything than you made my parents constantly ask why I wasn't better. And when I tried my very best, it still wasn't good enough." Rose stared at nothing, echoes of her parent's disappointment ringing in her ears. It hadn't been Matthew's fault and she didn't blame him for anything. But she knew that if her parents had to choose only one child to keep, it wouldn't be her. "So I stopped trying," she said finally. "I got depressed, had a friend in pharmaceuticals, and it was all down hill from there."

Kisame hummed and turned back to the TV. Rose also watched as there was a fish separated from its school and before it managed to get to safety, was snapped up by a vicious predator. Part of her felt like that right now. She was swimming in open waters right now with Kisame and he had every opportunity to snap his jaws and end her life. But she didn't think he would.

"You're right Kisame," Rose murmured, watching the powerful predator swim through the blue waters. "Life isn't fair. There's no such thing as heroes. Only people, just trying to do their best."

Kisame stretched out a fist towards the girl. "Here's to being 'only people'," he said.

Rose smiled and returned the fist bump.

. . .

That morning, Chrissy was the first one awake. She headed down from the attic, half asleep and on the hunt for coffee. She managed to make it down the stairs without tripping and headed to the kitchen. She was absently thinking of the long day at work that she was probably going to have and how she was going to wake up Hidan so he could go with her. When she passed the living room, she did a double take. Sitting on the couch, fast asleep was Kisame and Rose. Rose had curled into the large man's side and the tall shinobi had his arm draped across the back of the couch. They were both snoring lightly, looking incredibly comfortable.

Chrysanthemum slowly backed away and ran back up the stairs to wake up Hidan. He was going to die of laughter when he saw this.