Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto or any of the characters. Why do I have to say this in every chapter? –sigh-

So, those of you who are patient, or kind, or bored enough to read the author's notes at the top and bottom responded to the "Should I put some ItaNaru stuff in?" So I will, it won't be mutual, though. It will mostly be Itachi freaking Naruto out. Also, since I've been writing Sasuke's POV so dang short, Naruto's POV will mostly be like a filler. Like those things the anime's on right now. Grr…

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Chapter 9: Until it's Gone

"Mom and dad…were really like that?" Sasuke asks, and Itachi nods. Silence. "I can't…fully forgive you for killing our parents. But…it'd be nice…to have you around more…," he mumbles, and Itachi smiles.

"Thank you, Sasuke," he says, and Sasuke just nods, letting out a breath he didn't notice he was holding. I smile a little, too, at the whole brother make-up thing. It's sweet. I get up and walk downstairs to the kitchen. I've discovered that I can raid their kitchen as I please.

As I pass through the living room, Kakashi's sitting on the couch watching a subbed anime show. I don't know what it was, but it had some hot purple-haired, purple-eyed guy with black wings on the screen at the moment.

I search through their refrigerator and cabinets. To my surprised delight, I found a packet of beef ramen. I'm not sure who eats ramen in this house, but I don't really care. It's mine now!

Putting the pot filled with a cup of water on the stove, I turn it on and lean against the counter, waiting for it to boil. I hear footsteps, and I look up expecting to see Kakashi coming in to ask what I was doing-he's nosy- but instead it's Itachi.

"Where's Sasuke?" I ask, wondering if he's hungry, too. I can't help but feel a little uneasy with the way he's been staring at me.

Itachi leans against the counter right beside me, intently staring. Again. "He's in the shower," he says, and I hope he got in the shower after I turned the water on. I didn't hear screaming curses, so I guess it's fine.

"Oh." There's a few seconds of silence, and I glance at the pot to see it's still not boiling. "Did you need something? You can help yourself." I motion towards the fridge and cabinets then shrug nonchalantly.

I turn away from him when he starts staring at me again, but this time he has this weird look on his face. "I can…help myself?" he asks, and I get this gut feeling he's not talking about the kitchen.

Swallowing, I grab the beef ramen packet and poor the noodles and seasoning into the now-boiling pot. "Yeah, did you let Kakashi see you on the way here, by the way?" I ask, trying to change the subject.

Three minutes now. Itachi shakes his head. "I went the long way here, around the living room. Even if I did go through the living room, he wouldn't have noticed me. You're beautiful."

The last statement completely caught me off guard. I stare at him, feeling uneasy. "Um…thanks…I guess. Um…you better go back upstairs. Just in case Kakashi decides to come in. He does that…yeah. Sasuke told me about this one time- " I was rambling now. I knew it. He knew it. To my horror, he stops my mouth from moving in the worst possible way.

His mouth is on mine, his hand at the back of my head holding onto my hair lightly. I thought he'd be violent and threaten to throw me out the window or something if I tried to fight, but instead it seems like he's almost shy.

Itachi knows Sasuke and I aren't going out; we straightened those things out back in our tent when I told him who I really was. So in a way, he's not really doing anything wrong. He's trying to get me to open my mouth, but instead I pull away.

I look away from him, blushing. He's a little red in the cheeks, too. "Sorry," he mumbles. The stove goes off; three minutes is up. I turn it off and pour the ramen into the bowl slowly and carefully.

"It's okay…I'm sorry, but I don't- "

"I know. I just…yeah. I don't know."

"Naruto, I'm out of the shower!" Sasuke calls from his room. "So if you wanted to use it, you can!" I don't respond, and when I turn back around Itachi has gone back to the room. I lean against the counter, fork and bowl in hand, and from the next room I hear Kakashi's anime ending.

Nante dare mo wakatte wa kurenai

Mayotte kyou mo yuku basho nante nai

Sore demo machi wa ugoki hajimeteru

Watashi wo oite

Nobody understands

Lost, I don't have a destination today either

But still, I start moving down the street

Leaving myself behind

With the beloved ramen, I make my way to Sasuke's room as well. I walk in to see Itachi sprawled across the bed, looking deep in thought, and Sasuke sitting on the window sill looking strangely at Itachi.

Hearing my footsteps, both look up. "Hey Naruto, what'd you do to Itachi?" Sasuke teases, noticing his brother's odd behavior. I can't help glancing over at him, and I turn away and blush when our eyes meet.

I shrug. "Maybe he saw Kakashi's porn book on the way to the kitchen."

Sasuke frowns. "Kakashi doesn't read porn…but I told him when he came in he shouldn't go anywhere near Kakashi, just in case. He killed our parents when I was little, I was able to forgive him and sneak him in while everyone thinks he's dead. What does he do? Skips off to the kitchen while Kakashi is in the other room." He glares at Itachi, but he doesn't seem to have heard and just stares at the ceiling.

I lean against the wall and stuff a large amount of ramen into my mouth. The moment the taste hit my tongue, I instantly forgot about chewing and just swallowed. "It was risky." I glance at Itachi, but he's still mentally not here, seemingly not aware of us talking about him as if he wasn't here. I'm pretty sure I know why, but I'm not about to bring it up. Especially with Sasuke in the room.

I finish off the ramen and sigh in content. "Hey, Itachi," I say, slapping on my usual huge trademark grin. He shifts and looks at me, waiting. "Since you and Sasuke are cool, and I'm Sasuke's best friend, does that mean we're friends?" I grin again nonchalantly, but we both Itachi and I know it's a roundabout way of asking if everything is okay now.

Itachi seems to think for a moment, while Sasuke presses his forehead against the cool glass and smiles, chuckling. "Of course, don't be stupid," he finally answers. We share a smile that only we can interpret, while Sasuke announces that he's going to bed.

--- (Sasuke POV) ---

With Naruto and the death of my brother in my mind, I get up quickly and quietly and lunge towards Itachi and Naruto. What happens next seems to go in slow motion. I grab Itachi's wrist, the one holding the knife, and jerk it away from Naruto's throat.

I grab the front of the dobe's shirt quickly, catching a glimpse of a thin line of blood on his throat. My stomach lurches, but I ignore it. Doing those two things only took a split second, and before Itachi can fully turn around to stab me, I violently push his arm, driving the knife into his right shoulder.

He stands there, looking at me. I stand there, glaring up at him, hate rushing through me. For the first time in years, I see an emotion –anger- flash through his eyes, but it's gone again when I blink.

We're interrupted by a shrill scream, and I look behind Itachi to see Sakura standing two feet away, a hand clasped around her mouth, just standing there in fear and shock. I can't see what Naruto is doing right now, but probably doing the same thing.

Instead of slow motion, it happens in the blink of an eye this time. I wonder if that was what it was like for Itachi. "SASUKE-KUN!" Sakura screams, while Itachi tightly wraps a hand around my throat and shoves me against the wall.

There's a searing pain in my right shoulder, and I clench my eyes shut trying to get rid of the pain. I open them and look down to see the bloody knife that, not seconds before, was buried in Itachi's right shoulder.

From out of the corner of my eye, I see panic cross over Naruto's face and he takes a step forward. Itachi responds by twisting the knife slightly, and I let out a short hiss of pain. I glare up at him, but he only looks down at me with the same emotionless face.

Itachi grunts in pain and surprise as I bring my leg up, ramming my knee into his lower gut. Before he can recover, I put my foot between our bodies and push, separating our bodies, the knife leaving my body as he didn't let go of it.

"Bastard," I hiss, clenching my shoulder to try to stop the blood flow a little. Naruto rushes to my side, and I finally get a good look at his throat. It's a very shallow cut, barely any damage at all. I look to my left to see that Sakura is gone.

"I've got to be going. I'll finish this later, little brother." He gives me a faint smile, a mocking one, and before I know it he's gone. Naruto and I hear the faint sound of sirens as we leave, and we run the rest of the way to my house.

---

When we get to my house, we clean our wounds and bandage them, since we didn't want to make a big deal and go to the hospital. We then get dressed in clean clothes. Neither of us has talked, since we both know I'd rather think about what had just happened.

The odd thing is, my mind keeps wondering to Naruto. How I would've reacted if he died, how I would've reacted if the real Naruto died. I'm forced to admit that I'm still attached to him. Those childhood bonds hadn't gone away, they just went in hiding. I felt my heart drop when I thought about the possibility of never seeing him again.

I take the cell phone out of my pocket and toss it on the bed, and my thoughts are interrupted when the doorbell rings. Since Kakashi isn't home, again, I go downstairs to answer it, only to be greeted by two police officers and Sakura. Shit.

"Good evening, are you Uchiha Sasuke?" the first policeman, a slightly overweight one, asks. I nod, groaning mentally, and open the door wider to let the three in. Sakura looks nervous, probably wondering if she did the right or not. Despite that, she looks ecstatic to be inside my house. Just great.

"This young lady, Haruno Sakura, says she saw you and another young man in an alley, and you were attacked. Is this true?" As if on cue, Naruto appears, and not saying anything, we all head into the room to sit down.

"Yeah. It wasn't that big of a deal." The second police officer raises an eyebrow as he writes in a notepad, while the first is obviously the questioner.

"What happened exactly?"

"I was outside, going to the pier with my friend. We started to fight, and while I had my cell-phone out he shoves me and I drop it. We stop fighting to look for it, and find that someone took it and told me to meet her in the alley. I assumed it was a her because it was signed with a heart. It said to come alone, but I brought my friend and we were attacked."

"Do you still have this note?"

"No, I was angry and threw it on the ground."

"What did your attacker look like?"

I'm getting sick of this already, and I let out a sigh through my nose. "I didn't get a good look at him. I just know he was wearing dark clothes and had dark hair. I didn't get a name."

There's a pause as the second police officer writes the information down. "Miss Haruno states you were…stabbed?" He looks at Sakura for confirmation and she nods without looking at him.

"No sir. He tried to, but I moved away in time."

He doesn't ask for any more, and instead looks at Naruto now. You can see the thin pinkish line where he was cut, but the blood was gone now and was already healing. "What's your name?"

"Uzumaki Naruto."

"Where did you get that cut on your throat?"

"The guy in the alley that attacked us. I didn't get a good look at him either, my back was to him half the time."

The police officers nod, murmuring, "We thank you for your time," and leave, along with Sakura. Naruto turns to me and whispers, probably not realizing it, "Why didn't you tell them?"

I get up and head to my room, stripping my shirt off. "Because. It's not their job to find my parents' killer and punish him. It's mine. You can sleep on the couch or whatever," I say, shutting my bedroom door before he can say anything.

Stripping down to my boxers, I crawl in my bed and wonder why I keep thinking of Naruto and not of Itachi. I really do miss him. I guess it's true that you never truly appreciate something until it's gone.

---

Sorry for the long wait. It was going to be up yesterday but I got hooked on this Naruto Arena game. It's really fun, you should try it. Naruto-arena. co m

Anyway, only 2-3 more chapters left until it's done. Sorry once again for the wait! Late than never, though. x.x