A/N: Cha~ I forgot to put in the last chapter ^^; the 'head innards' came from something a friend siad to me while I was writing fic ideas and it ended up being written on the same piece of paper XD so I couldn't resist putting it in somewhere :3 Hope people enjoy this chapter~

Naruto blinked at Sasuke's invitation, not knowing whether to believe him or act like it was a joke. In the end he stood in silence, wondering whether Sasuke had actually said what he thought he had.

Sasuke rolled his eyes, not really knowing himself why he had said it; he had just felt inclined to. A mutual feeling having risen in him which made him feel the need to speak out. He spun away from Naruto and started to slowly walk away. "I won't ask again, idiot, you coming or not?"

Naruto blinked again before a broad grin made its way across his face as he splashed through the puddles to catch up with Sasuke, drenching himself further without even realising it. His grin widened as he caught up. "You're still a bastard though, k?"

Sasuke smirked. "Whatever."

"Tch, moron." Sasuke moved out of the way as Naruto shook the rain from his hair.

Naruto smiled, not really minding. He'd never been out walking in the rain before. It was refreshing to him, even if it was cold enough to make his teeth chatter. Without answering Sasuke he looked around, interested in the place that he had grown up in, though a frown crossed his face as he stared. "This place is..."

Sasuke rolled his eyes again, not having noticed Naruto's facial expression and just thought he was showing awe. "Cool? Spacious? Huge?"

"Lonely."

Sasuke froze for a second, before frowning and turning around seeing Naruto's thoughtful expression as he continued to look around, having ventured further into the hall. "What do you mean?"

Naruto stopped, thinking he might be being rude and walked back to Sasuke, his head slightly tilted as if he was listening. "It just seems lonely, that's all. It's so quiet...it doesn't feel lived in." His frown deepened. "Where are the other people who live here?"

Sasuke blinked at him, wondering how to answer that and at the same time shocked that Naruto could feel that atmosphere almost instantly, an atmosphere Sasuke had grown up with for the last few years. He turned away from Naruto, gesturing for him to follow as he walked to the kitchen, thinking about making them a drink to warm up. "No one else lives here. I live alone."

"Alone?" Naruto's head tilted again, not understanding. He'd been with children his age all his life, there hadn't really been personal or private time at the lab.

Sasuke nodded as he turned the kettle on. "Yeah, you know, on my own, no adults, no annoying siblings..." He tried to act nonchalant about the conversation, though his hand clenched into a fist by his side. He brought to steaming mugs over to the table a minute later and sat down opposite Naruto. "Like you and Gaara I guess. You two live on your own."

"But I have Gaara."

Sasuke frowned for a second, realising this was another one of those moments that showed that Naruto didn't act like an ordinary teenager would. He chuckled, deciding not to dwell on it. "Honestly, most people are age would see it as a good thing. To live on your own, no one to boss you around. That was the impression I was trying to give. You and Gaara may live together but you have a sense of freedom that most kids are age wish for."

"But not you." Naruto stared at Sasuke, taking the body language and the emotions he was trying to conceal so hard. "You don't wish for this, do you?" Naruto looked around again, not liking the silence and shivered, though he didn't know whether it was dues to his thoughts or just because he was cold. "I have Gaara at least, who do you have?"

Sasuke's eyes went cold. "I have myself, I don't need anyone else." He stood up, taking his mug back to the sink even though it was only half drunk.

"Liar." Naruto played with his mug, using it to keep his hands warm. He didn't look up at Sasuke but knew that he had paused next to the sink. "You keep up this bravado but it's not true. You're lonely, aren't you? I know I would be."

Sasuke looked back at him over his shoulder, his expression unsure. "Not many people would say that. Most want to get away from their families and live their own lives, so why don't you?" Sasuke didn't know what had happened to Naruto and Gaara and that frustrated him, though he did know that they'd had a rough time, so surely their parents had to have played a part in that at some time?

"Because I'm still looking for mine." Naruto finally looked up from his mug and smiled at Sasuke, though it appeared sad even to Sasuke. "I've never met them...as far as I know." He looked away for a second, wondering if there was any trace of them in his memory before he sighed at his unsuccessful endeavour. "I think that a family would be nice...isn't it?" He looked back up at Sasuke, his hope showing through his eyes.

Sasuke sat down again, thoughtful. "I guess but every family has its secrets." He wondered how to describe it properly. "Not all people are good are they? Some people are bad, right?" He waited for Naruto to nod before continuing. "The same can be said for families. Some are happy, some don't end up that way even though their meant to...it depends on the people inside them." He stopped for a second. "Am I making sense?"

Naruto nodded. "I think so. A family is made up of people, so it depends who the people are?" He smiled as Sasuke nodded back. "I bet my family will be great!" He grinned again, his faith restored by his own confidence. His smile waned after a second though as he realised something. "I'm sorry for being personal but...does that mean your family wasn't happy?"

Sasuke, who had almost smiled at Naruto, slipped back into his stoic expression. "Something like that...sometimes things don't turn out the way you expect." He paused, wondering how best to phrase his response without giving too much about himself away. "It's not that my family wasn't happy but...my parents are dead, that's why I live alone." He decided the blunt approach was best for this situation.

"Dead..." Naruto looked down at the table. He hadn't thought through that turn of events, hadn't even imagined not finding his parents because they weren't here anymore and so the news came as a shock to him, jolting him out of the little fairytale he had unconsciously started telling in his head that everything would be fine once he found his family.

Sasuke cursed under his breath, putting two and two together as he realised that Naruto hadn't thought of the possibility of not finding his parents from the lonely expression he held on his face again. The same look he had had when he had tried to hold back his jealousy that Gaara had found his family. "Hey, Naruto..."

Naruto looked up and saw the guilty expression on Sasuke's face and smiled, stopping Sasuke from whatever he had been about to say. "Hey, should we be brothers?"

Sasuke blinked at him, his mind completely thrown. "Huh?"

Naruto looked down again, embarrassed. "Well...I think of Gaara as family and his family thinks of me as being part of it...I like that feeling of being part of something." He smiled happily at the thought. "And well...I see you as being well...similar to me and..." he stopped, his face scrunched up as he tried to think of the right words.

Sasuke smirked. "Similar, eh?" He tried to keep his face as a smirk instead of the smile that was threatening to come forth. "Sure, why not, you're the annoying brother I never knew I had, moron." He tried to sound sarcastic and nonchalant again, but his mouth betrayed him as it quirked up at the corners into a smile.

"Bastard." Naruto pouted at the response, though he was happy that he'd gotten through to Sasuke in some way at least and even if Sasuke didn't think of him as such he would think of Sasuke as a friend.

Sasuke smirked again, trying not to laugh before remembering that Naruto was still soaked from his walk in the rain. "Hey, I forgot...do you want to borrow some clothes?"

Naruto looked down, registering himself that he was soaked through. "Nahh, it's OK. I should probably be getting home soon..." He paused as he got his phone out to check the time and saw the blank screen, realising it was dead. "Ehh? I must have forgotten to charge it." He gulped slightly. "I hope Gaara hasn't been trying to get hold of me...he'll be worried."

Sasuke shook his head, still not understanding Gaara. He only ever saw him smile around Naruto and so in classes where they were separated he went back to being silent and expressionless so the image of Gaara being 'worried' was a hard one to fathom. "You can ring him with my phone if you want." He pointed behind him to the landline. "You do know his number, right?"

Naruto nodded, it hadn't taken him long to remember Gaara's number and it was one of those times that he was glad he had a head for numbers. "Thanks." He quietly went over to the phone and rung Gaara, wincing ready for Gaara's rebuke about his phone. His face changed from smiling apology to a deepening frown as the conversation went on before he put the phone down. "Thanks Sasuke, for letting me stay here for a bit and use your phone. I should get going now."

Sasuke nodded before grabbing Naruto's shoulder. "Sure, but first you tell me what's up." It wasn't hard to tell when Naruto wasn't himself, his hyperactivity being the usual sign that everything was fine wasn't like it was normally.

Naruto looked up, his face still perplexed. "It's just Gaara sounded odd on the phone, so I kind of want to get back now and see what's bothering him." He chuckled. "He wouldn't tell me on the phone. All he said was to watch out for trouble on my way back. Something about remembering what Kakashi told us about the crime rate at the moment." He rolled his eyes. "I can look after myself."

Sasuke laughed, wanting to keep up the atmosphere, though was shocked to hear his own laugh and how natural it sounded. He had expected it to seem wrong from lack of use. "I bet Gaara always comes and helps you in fights you get yourself into."

Naruto shook his head, acting serious. "No, we're not allowed to help each other in fights. It's always one-on-one after all."

Sasuke shrugged, not understanding the implication and deciding he didn't want to either. "Whatever, I'll see you at school, right?"

Naruto nodded, grinning as he raced through the door and back into the rain, though it had become less torrential. "See ya!"

Sasuke frowned half an hour later when his thoughts were disturbed by his phone ringing. He had been wondering how Naruto had somehow made him smile and laugh without even meaning to, just on impulse and whether he should be worried about this fact. He was still thinking this when he picked up the phone. "Hello?"

"Sasuke?"

Sasuke's thought process disappeared as he recognised the voice. "Gaara? Yeah, it's me, what's up?" He had never expected to talk to Gaara, let alone get a phone call from him, so he didn't know what to expect.

There was a pause as Gaara figured out what to say. "I'm sorry for ringing you like this; I remembered the number from when Naruto rang a while ago. It's just...has Naruto left your house yet?"

Sasuke, perplexed, looked over at the clock on the wall, to check Naruto had left around half an hour ago. "Yeah, he left right after ringing you...is he not back yet?" Sasuke thought it through, it was only a ten minute walk from his house to Naruto and Gaara's flat, so it shouldn't have taken anywhere near half an hour.

Gaara's voice became even more worried to Sasuke's ears though there was also a hint behind it that he suspected was what Naruto had mentioned earlier. "No...he isn't."

Sasuke thought for a second trying to work out what could have happened. "Right. You have Iruka's number, don't you?"

"Yes, he gave it to us in case we needed anything."

Sasuke nodded. "OK, give him a ring. He should have the other members of our tutor group's numbers in case of an emergency. That way we can check if Naruto just met up with one of them and hasn't got round to ringing yet."

"OK, but what about if he's not with any of them?"

"I'm going to go look outside for him now, if I find him I'll let you know." Sasuke put the phone down before Gaara could argue about coming with him, which he knew he was bound to do. He slipped on his shoes and coat again and grabbed the umbrella before running out into the rain. His brain registering subconsciously that he was actually worried about Naruto.

Sasuke panted as he stopped running for a second. So far he'd had no luck locating Naruto and Gaara had already rung him saying that no-one in the tutor group knew where he was but that Kiba was asking around everyone else that Naruto knew. Sasuke was starting to worry now himself, knowing that Naruto wouldn't just walk off without telling anyone. He shook his head, squinting through the half gloom made by the rain and soft glow of the street lamps that had turned on above him, trying to see anything he could have missed. There were a few people near him that were unrecognisable through the rain. A woman with an umbrella walking past, some people waiting on a bus stop. He walked on, trying to catch a glimpse of the people, to identify them but so far he wasn't having much luck. He carried on, looking up the streets he passed and noticing three people ahead of him, some friends having a fight as far as he could tell. Just as he was about to carry on and look down the next street, a glow of blonde hair from the street lamp above him caught his eye. He looked back at the group, his eyes again squinting again as he walked forwards. His eyes went wide as he recognised the back of a blonde head and realised that this wasn't just some friends having a fight, finally listening to the words that had been drowned out by the rain before.

"I thought I told you-"

"I know what you said. But I can't give you something I don't have."

Sasuke blinked at the exchange, his mind seeming slow on the uptake especially as Naruto sounded so calm and collected. He shook his head though, realising that Naruto's view of the world, or limited experience in it probably didn't include anything like 'mugging'. Wondering what to do, he looked around before freezing, a glint of silver catching his eye in the mugger's hand. "Naruto!" Without even meaning to he shouted and ran forwards.

Naruto spun around, shocked and at the same moment the mugger, in his own shock, came forward, the penknife in his hand pushing into Naruto's side. Naruto winced, falling to his knees. He blinked for a second, wondering what had happened. The guy hadn't seemed that threatening to him, he hadn't actually used a knife before from the look on his face and his stance in Naruto's opinion. He had been more worried about how he should disarm the guy without injuring him and yet now here he was bleeding and in pain, the type of pain he hadn't felt since leaving the lab.

"What did you do that for?" The mugger's friend grabbed his arm, his face scared.

"I-I didn't mean to." The guy's hands shook as he stared down at Naruto, his face full of fear and guilt.

His friend pulled him away. "Come on, we have to leave now!"

Sasuke debated about following them before deciding Naruto needed his help more. "Naruto, I'm so sorry! This is my fault." He bit his lip, wondering belatedly if Naruto would have been stabbed if he hadn't shouted.

Naruto gestured to him that it was fine. "Don't worry about it." He gripped the pen knife and pulled it out quickly and easily, wincing slightly at the pain but glad that he hadn't caused himself further injury. "See?"

Sasuke shuddered slightly at the ease in which Naruto had done that and the calmness Naruto was showing. "Naruto, have you-" He stopped himself from asking about Naruto's past, now slightly scared to ask. "Actually never mind." He got his phone out to ring an ambulance. "But anyway, you shouldn't have done that. You should have waited." He stopped what he was doing as Naruto tried to stand up. "What are you doing? Don't try and move!" He pulled Naruto back down again.

"Why? I'm fine, really."

"You're not fine, you've just been stabbed! You're bleeding-" He stopped his tirade as he noticed that the bleeding had stopped, or from what he could tell anyway as he couldn't see the blood patch on Naruto's clothes getting any bigger. "Huh?" He dropped his phone, not even noticing where it went as he grabbed Naruto's shirt, lifting it up to have a look at the wound.

"Sasuke? What are you doing?" Naruto, perplexed, didn't understand what Sasuke was doing and why he had gone silent.

Sasuke dropped Naruto's shirt, his eyes wide with shock and confusion, with a hint of fear showing through though he tried to quell it.

"The wound...it's healed. How is that possible?"

A/N: Hope that wasn't too overly dramatic for people ^^; sorry if it was~