A/N: I'm not dead, I'm alive, lol! Sorry!! I was busy.... Uh, enough said. And please do try to remember that most of these Naruto chapters that I'm posting on my account are things I wrote a long time ago that no doubt need to be revised. Sorry, and I'll try to edit everything in a while--which could be anytime from a month to a year. That's also why it's hard to update; it's hard to edit things that are so stupid that I know I wrote, lol.... I'm writing newer things at the moment that will hopefully be out soon. Thanks for reviews, and enjoy! :)

Lost Control
By SpacePirateGirl

Chapter Three

"So what do you think?"

I shrugged to ease off the wonder threatening to burst inside of me.

"That's not an answer. What do you think?"

"Um . . . huge?" I tried. It wasn't every day I saw a mansion as big as this. The stairwell in the middle of the room spiraled up, floors and floors and floors. An elevator was behind it, and I realized there was probably about four or five floors to this mansion. All around me were clear-glassed windows stretching from the ceiling to the ground. I gazed in wonder at the paintings hung on the wall. And this was only the opening room—the room connected to the front door.

Sasuke chuckled slightly, though the laughter was without mirth. "I thought so."

I took off my backpack and glanced at him to see where to put it. He held out a hand, and I gave it to him quickly. His footsteps echoed throughout the entire room as he opened a closet and set it inside. He put his own backpack there as well.

"So," I started when he returned and led me to the elevator. "If I'm right in assuming Itachi is your brother, then what is he doing here? I thought he was going to Princeton."

The elevator door opened, and he entered it swiftly, pushing a button for the third floor. "It's a holiday for him. My mother thinks it's best to have him pick me up from school on his holidays. 'Brotherly time' is what she calls it. Usually I just drive or take the bus."

"Oh." Shutting behind me as I entered, the elevator began to rise until it reached the third floor. We walked out, and he led me down the long hallway toward his room. Another question had been bugging me for some time too, so I decided now was as good a time as any to ask. "Why did you let Tenten walk home alone?"

"She wanted to."

I followed him as he entered his room and sat down on his bed. "Why did you let Tenten walk home alone?" If I ever walked home alone . . . Well, Kiba, Neji, or even Sasuke could regularly find me.

"She's not a wimp, you know," Sasuke finally answered. "She'd stand a good chance against me even."

I frowned. "Huh?"

Knowing that I had heard, he didn't answer.

Still frowning, I sat down on the floor. It was common courtesy to walk a girl home. But then again, I guessed that Sasuke, being one of the naughty kids attending Konoha High, probably wasn't familiar with common courtesy. It was funny how one of the rich kids could know less about manners than someone like me, tempered and poor all the way through. "So am I allowed to talk to Tenten?" I asked curiously. I really needed a friend, and Tenten seemed the least "girlish" out of all my opportunities.

"I haven't decided. Probably not."

I wanted to land a good kick on his face, to maybe wipe that smirk off his expression. I took back all previous thoughts. Being friends with that happy Sasuke was not worth knowing the rude and egotistical one. I turned my back on him and sat down on the floor, not planning on saying anything unless he ordered me to.

But soon boredom started to pester me as silence forced me to stare at the wall and do nothing. "Do you have a paper and a pencil?" Maybe I could draw something to pass the time.

"Yes." I didn't hear him make a single hint of moving to get the requested objects.

"Can I have a paper and a pencil?"

"Yeah." Still, nothing.

"May I have a damn paper and pencil?"

"No."

I stood up and turned to face him while placing my hands on my hips and gathering the most annoyed expression I could muster. "What the hell do you want from me?"

An annoyed expression on his face, Uchiha Sasuke still sat in the same place on his bed while he stared at me with icy, black eyes. He didn't answer my question, nor did he open his mouth. He stayed completely still. I wondered if his plan was to make me destroy the deal I had made, just so that he would have an excuse to bug me more. I was already tired and sick of his game. I was already dangling close to the edge. One more push and I would fall. But was that really what he wanted?

"Sasuke. What do you want?" False politeness masked my angry tone, and I stopped frowning—I simple looked at him while I awaited an answer.

He removed his eyes from me and stared at the floor below him. "I want you to act like a friend would."

"That sounds really needy," I commented, amused. "Besides, I already told you. It won't work."

He leapt to his feet as he put his arms around my neck. My head hit the wall hard, and I struggled to escape. If it wasn't for my sprained arm, I could have pulled him off, but he had me too tightly. "Then make it work," he said coldly.

I tried to breathe, but there was so little air. How did I act when Hinata and Naruto were around? How did I feel? Did I smile? Did I frown? Did I act neutrally, or did I laugh? I couldn't remember. It was a mixture of all of those feelings, all of those actions. The response to friendship just came naturally. I never thought about what I would say; I just said it. They were friends. They wouldn't care if I made a mistake.

But Sasuke—no, Sasuke could never become my friend, no matter how hard I tried. He did care if I made a mistake. And that was why it wouldn't work. "Sasuke," I wheezed, and tried with my unhurt hand to pull him off me. He let go after a moment when my vision started to grow blurry.

"Make it work."

"It's not possible." I took in a deep breath to refill my lungs. "You can't expect me to know what to do. Manipulating me, yes, it's possible. But forcing me to have friendship . . . It's something you just can't buy."

He turned his back on me as if to think about it. I knew he believed he could buy everything—and not necessarily with money. He bought my obedience with threats. He chose to buy me popularity by giving me money. But there were some things he could not buy, and he needed to understand that.

"Sasuke, dinner's ready!" called a high-pitched female voice.

He didn't move. He hardly even seemed to breathe.

"Sasuke!" The words the woman shouted blended into background static when Sasuke turned around.

"Make it work." Then he left the room and shut the door behind him.

It had been an hour, and I was starving. I wanted to eat. The odor of fresh food filled the air and caused my stomach to do tiny flips inside my body. The door remained shut, and when I had tried to get through it, I had found Sasuke had locked it. And so I had sat down on his bed and curled up into a ball while trying to ignore the breathtaking growls my stomach was making. Nausea came with hunger, and I wondered when I would be able to throw up on his desk or bed or something. I hadn't even eaten lunch.

Seeing a picture frame on the very desk I wanted to vomit on, I gathered the energy to sit up and look at it. What caught my eye most was how it was turned facedown on the table. Most people who didn't want to see a picture anymore just tossed it in a trash can. So why was this picture frame put out of sight, yet not thrown away either?

I gently grabbed the picture frame to look at it, and gasped at what I saw. A young Sasuke on one side with a huge grin on his face. He was happy. A younger Itachi stood next to him with a hand on Sasuke's shoulder. He was also grinning. What I assumed to be Sasuke's mother was in the picture next to Uchiha Fugaku. Mikoto was smiling, and Fugaku looked a tiny bit happy.

"What are you doing?"

I jumped and almost forgot the picture was in my hands. Luckily I grasped it before it could fall. There, Sasuke stood, staring at the frame in my hands. He quickly walked over and yanked it from me, setting it back in its facedown position. "I asked you a question, Sakura."

I avoided his gaze. "N-nothing. Sorry."

He sat down in his desk chair, and I noticed that he had he had brought his backpack. He pulled out a textbook and a paper before starting to do his homework. I sat down on his bed and watched for a few minutes. My stomach still growled periodically, but if Sasuke noticed, he didn't say anything. Several minutes passed. I saw that his hand had dropped the pencil. Then I realized his eyes were closed and his head was leaned forward as if it was too heavy to hold up.

He had fallen asleep.

"Sasuke?" I whispered, just in case.

There was no answer. Carefully I searched in his pockets for the keys to his room. He snored when I found them, and I closed my eyes, afraid for my wellbeing if he woke up. He didn't though, and I thanked my luck. Tiptoeing toward the door, I unlocked it and retreated to the elevator. I was hungry enough to eat my own fingers, and from what I had heard, the famous Uchiha Mikoto would probably be nice enough to give me leftovers or something.

I went to the first floor, and began wandering around the hallways, trying to find the kitchen. If anything, I'd just cook something for myself, and if anyone caught me, I could just say I was Sasuke's girlfriend. They'd probably believe me . . . I reached the kitchen to find Itachi, Sasuke's brother, hovering over the stove. He looked up when I walked in.

"Yo."

Not knowing what to do, I smiled.

"Sasuke's starving you?"

I shrugged and leaned on the counter behind me. Sasuke would get angry if I told anyone about our "deal."

"So you're his next victim, aren't you? Last year it was Ino, but I guessed he got bored with her. She was willing to be with him, and he didn't like that."

I frowned. "What do you mean?"

"I'm not stupid," Itachi said clearly. He smiled slightly as he said so. "You're not here because you want to be. He knew what you wanted, and made a deal with you probably. He's always been that way. Playing God. It's the effect of how his father treats him. He likes to pretend he has control of everything."

I sighed, once I realized that Itachi knew everything about what Sasuke was doing to me, how he had forced me into submission. At least, I had someone to talk to about it, if only for the moment. "He wants me to be his friend," I admitted. "But I hate him. He used to be my worst enemy—he still is really. He used to tease me, and I'd try to fight him. I always ended up getting beaten up in the end. And now he's just bullying me in a different way. A worse way." I hardly noticed the tears coming to my eyes. "I guess starvation was my punishment for not knowing how to pretend to be his friend."

Itachi tossed me an apple. "Eat up then."

Smiling, I caught the apple and took a huge bite out of it. My stomach already had seemed to calm down the minute I had seen food in front of me.

"Where is Sasuke anyway?"

I shrugged and took another bite. "Sleeping over his homework."

"Would you like something to drink?"

"Sure."

He reached into the cupboard and pulled out a small glass. Then Itachi poured a strange liquid into it. I didn't really care. The site of something to drink was enticing. My throat was parched and dry. I took it and rose the drink to my lips.

A sharp pain hit my hand, and I dropped the glass. Glass shattered on the floor around my feet, and I felt shards scrape my legs. I yelped. But none of that registered as much as the culprit who had apparently kicked me in the hand. Sasuke stood in front of me, right between me and Itachi.

His back pressing me against the counter, Sasuke's body felt tense and almost trembling. "What the hell are you doing to her?" I winced at the volume of his voice.

"She's thirsty."

"Don't ever even speak to her again! Got it?"

The shock protecting my brain wore off and searing pain ripped all throughout my legs. I struggled to stay calm. The pain was just a few cuts and scrapes from the glass, nothing else. But after a moment, I could hardly even stay standing. When I glanced at my legs, I saw blood all over.

I heard Itachi's voice through the thick veil of my pain, but his words were just a blur of noise. Suddenly Sasuke picked me up, and carried me away. I clung to his shoulders, afraid of falling, and it felt strange to feel protected by the most hated person on my list of enemies. But still—there was comfort in the way he clutched me to his body and held me in his arms. So warm.

So safe.

I cringed at the thought.

He set me down. I couldn't tell where since my eyes were shut too tightly. Then I heard the steady sound of water falling and felt hands take off my socks. "Sasuke?" I whispered, unsure of what he was doing.

He didn't respond—maybe because he couldn't hear me. The running water I heard was very loud, and there was also the fact that I was whispering. He lifted my legs, and I winced when I felt warm water seeping through my toes. The water also touched my legs, and somehow the pain began to vanish.

"Ow!" I cried when it felt like a needle penetrated my skin.

A hand touched my own and squeezed it.

Another prick of pain. I drew in a ragged breath. Would it be worth it to open my eyes? I figured I might as well try. I struggled not to gasp when I saw Uchiha Sasuke himself trying to get the shards of glass out of my legs. The water I had heard was from a bathtub, and I was sitting on the edge of it. A washcloth dangled from Sasuke's hand as he tried to use water in order for the glass to peak out of my skin.

I gasped again when he got another one out. "No, stop. Stop!" He pulled out another one as I tried to move away. "I can do that later," I told him anxiously. I would feel a lot more comfortable if my mother would do it when she got home. He made no move to stop, and it was hard to admit that I didn't want to resist. With each fragment he pulled out, my legs felt even less painful.

After a few minutes he finished, and pulled out a first-aid kit. He used band-aides to cover my still bleeding cuts. "Why did you do that?" I asked, referring to how he had kicked the glass from my hand. My knuckles still ached from the impact.

"Don't talk to Itachi." Sasuke finished and stood up, avoiding my unrelenting gaze. "He's only trouble."

"What do you mean?" I moved my legs from the bathtub water after accepting the towel Sasuke was offering me.

"Don't you know what you were about to drink?"

I shook my head angrily. His voice sounded so accusing, as if I was some child who didn't understand how metal objects weren't supposed to be poked into plugs. I wasn't a baby. I knew what I was doing.

"Alcohol."

Suddenly the task of putting on my socks grew very interesting. "Oh."

"Why do you think he's not going to Princeton with a scholarship? He used to skip high school classes half the time to do drugs, and it took so much money to convince Princeton to take him. He's a major addict. Did it ever cross your mind that I was wary of him for a reason?"

"You aren't a druggie?"

He didn't answer that for a moment. I fixed an accusing glare at him. "Not anymore," he admitted.

I suddenly wanted to go back on the deal that had lasted only a day. I wanted to stay away from Sasuke's family as much as possible. The lot of them seemed to be only trouble. I looked at the bathroom door longingly.

"Hey, we've all tried some type of smoking in the past, haven't we? What matters is that we stopped."

"I've never smoked or drank alcohol." My parents had annoyed me a lot about the risks of such things. And the peer pressure especially. They had stressed their point until they had gotten it through. And even though there had been a lot of times I could have slipped some into my system, I had always lived through the temptation.

Sasuke moved in front of my face to block my view of the door. "Then you're lucky. Everybody, probably including that rich Hinata friend of yours, has done something bad like that. Did you know Naruto used to be high most of the time, too?"

He was labeling my friends now. I wouldn't take it. I turned to face the other way.

"So you're going back on the deal, just because I used to smoke?"

"I want to go home."

"What?"

I drew in a deep breath and stared at him desperately. "I want to go home."

He closed his eyes for a moment before turning away and leaving. I followed him as he entered the elevator, and I followed him as he stepped out. He walked all the way to a black corvette and opened the passenger seat's door for me. I ignored the good deed and got into the back seat.

The car drive passed in silence fortunately. I didn't ask aloud how Sasuke knew the directions to my house, but I did wonder. Maybe he had planned this out for a long time. I pitied him for messing up so soon. I even felt a singe of regret for going back on the deal which had taken him forever to perfect. But the minute I was within walking distance of my house, I told him to stop, and I hopped out of the car to go home.

Yeah, I wasn't satisfied with this chapter at all... But I can't figure out how to make it better. Helpful advice would be... well, helpful, lol. Thanks. :-)