Hey all! I want to thank you all so much! Nearly 400 hits on chapter 4! I LOVE YOU ALL!!!!

Thanks for reading, after my last few stories didn't get read I really appreciate you all taking the time to read!

Anywho, on with the show!

Disclaimer- Nope, don't own now either.

Chapter 4

Sakura woke, finding a cup of water at her bedside, as well as a small moth that flew away the instant she moved. She sat up slowly, gulping down the water before standing.

She frowned as she got to her closet, there was a short yukata and a pair of her black shorts, a pink lacy tank top and... not really anything else.

She hadn't gotten any laundry done.

She pulled out the shorts and the tank top and changed quickly, headed to the kitchen.

It was early. That she could tell from the window in the bedroom. She got to the kitchen and looked around finding water glasses in the sink and a knife left laying on the counter. She was about to start wondering about it when she realized she'd left Diedera in her kitchen.

She looked out at the sleeping duo, Itachi on her couch and Diedera in the reclining chair. She shook her head as she headed back out.

When they'd first gotten there she was absolutely terrified. She was still scared, but not nearly as much. Itachi was so lifeless, she wondered if that would end when he was able to start moving around again. She still had a fear of Diedera, his lusting glances mixed with his playful nature scared her to death. If she didn't have Itachi watching out for her, telling him to behave himself there was no doubt in her mind that he would have killed her by now, after a rape of course.

She made ham and cheese omelets, noting that she needed to go to the store. She'd bought supplies for one person for a week, not three people. She sighed as she plated them.

She put the teapot on the tray and brought it out, setting the tray on the kitchen table.

She'd want to check Itachi before he ate, and she was worried to wake up Diedera at all.

She walked over and tapped Itachi's shoulder, jumping back when his eyes shot over at her, his tomoe spinning wildly. She closed her eyes, looking down, trying to avoid his look. "I need to check your side." She spoke softly, feeling his hand suddenly on her chin, she looked up at him, surprised.

His tomoe was still spinning like mad, but it wasn't effecting her. If it was going to, it would have the instant she noticed it. The look on his face was sad, nearly anguishing as he moved his hand back, cupping her cheek.

She stared, surprised as the tomoe stopped, causing the look on his face to divert to sheer stoicism. "Sakura-chan. Gomen-nassai." She nodded. "How are your eyes feeling?"

She could tell from the look on his face that he was confused. "You were still asleep just a second ago, right? You woke up holding my face." He nodded, no words wasted.

"Your sharingan had you trapped. I know the more you use it the more it drains you. It can be dangerous to have that keep on going like that." Itachi nodded before realization hit. "Sasuke. You know about this from him."

"He's woken up a few times and tried to kill me. I can help with it. It's pretty easy, actually." Itachi huffed, diverting his eyes to the ceiling. "How does your side feel?"

"It feels better." His voice was soft.

"Do you feel any pain?" She asked and he shook his head. She felt around the wound, noticing that his hands clenched when her hands got too close.

"Why did you lie to me?" She frowned, looking up at him and his eyes closed.

Her hands roved over his side and she pushed her chakra into his side, noticing again the heart beats and breathing sped up. She looked up at him and he reached up, covering his eyes, gritting his teeth.

"Oh!" She jumped up, putting her hands on his shoulders, suddenly worried. "Are you alright?!"

"Sakura..." His voice was breathy, the velvet from the first day returned. She nearly blushed at hearing her name said in such a way.

"Please... just... side..." His voice was trembling now, as if he were in terrible pain. She wasn't happy with this, but decided to just take care of his side.

It was a moment later that he seemed to calm down. His breathing and heart rate slowing, he finally laid his hands down, lacing his fingers across his chest. By then she'd checked, making sure the wound looked good, didn't have any infection, she sat up and smiled. "You should be able to move around now, no fighting or heavy lifting for the next three days, alright?" He nodded and waited till she backed away before sitting up.

"Itachi-san, let me look at your eyes." He looked at her, terrified for a moment. "What will you have to do?" She was surprised to see him honestly scared of her.

"It's easy, I just send in a little chakra so I can see what's happening in there, then I can use the chakra to seal the lenses in your eyes. After that, I can make sure that the pressure in your eyes is correct, that should take care of the self-hypnotism." He nodded, sighing. "Does it... is there any pain?"

"No. It's completely painless." She smiled consolingly and he finally nodded, closing his eyes before looking over at her.

She looked into his eyes, seeing if there was any visible trouble, but didn't see any. She lifted her hands over his eyes, pushing the chakra into him. She was surprised to find the extent of the damage done.

"Wow, you're nearly entirely blind, aren't you?" She mumbled, almost subconsciously.

"I haven't been able to see more than a few feet before me for years." Sakura nodded. That's why he was able to find her so quickly that first night, as well as why he was so easy to stab. He could see her chakra, but he couldn't see her knife.

"That's about to end."

It was only about ten minutes later that she sat up, her hushed tone seemed soothing, even to her. "I'm about to take my hands off of your eyes. You're going to want to close them, count to ten slowly before you open them."

"Alright." His voice was so soft, he'd gotten his hopes up so far. She smiled, knowing what was about to happen. Her hands withdrew from him and he kept his eyes closed, slowly counting in his head, before taking a deep breath and opening his eyes.

The first thing he saw was her. She looked him in the eye, making sure nothing was happening that shouldn't be. "Is that better?"

He looked around, but his eyes quickly came back to her, now shocked. "I'd heard it wasn't fixable."

"It is. I'm the best at it, the most experienced, but there are two others that can do this as well." Itachi's eyes closed, he looked down and stood up, opening his eyes again, looking at his hands, the walls, the couch.

"It must have been hard, sitting on the couch for three days, not able to see." He looked at her, really taking her in this time.

"All I could tell before was you had pink hair. You don't look like I'd expected you too." His face turned to a slight frown as he looked over at Diedera.

Sakura stood and wandered over to the table, setting a chakra wave through the table, heating up the food and tea. "Breakfast is ready." Itachi looked back down at Diedera and kicked the side of the chair, sending the blond to the floor head first.

"Oi, Diedera, Sakura's made breakfast." Diedera looked up at him and stuck his tongue out. "Bite me."

Itachi's eyes narrowed and Diedera just looked for a bit, surprised.

All through breakfast Sakura watched as Diedera tried to do random things, move his fork out of the way while he was taking a drink, moving his tea by an inch while he was eating.

Then he got ballsy and flipped him off. Itachi turned to him with a frown. "There's a lady at the table. Behave." His voice held the velvet tone again and Sakura felt a chill run up her back again.

Itachi was dangerous again. She realized, part of the reason he'd calmed down was his inability to see.

What had she done?

Diedera looked at him, eyes narrowed and he looked over at Sakura who smiled at the confusion. "Sweety, yeah, what did you slip into his food?"

"Nothing." Sakura smiled, watching as Diedera's eyes widened.

"You... you fixed his eyes, didn't you?" Sakura nodded. "It's easy. I fixed Sasuke's all the time." Diedera looked over at Itachi and his face slowly dissolved into a terrible grin. "Itachi! This can be a lot of fun, yeah! If you can see, we don't need to stay here! We can travel again!"

Itachi turned to him with a soft smile. "Diedera, how long have you been talking about finding a home? Do you really want to take off traveling again?"

Diedera's smile faltered, he looked down at the table sadly. "I was just saying we could, yeah."

Sakura lost her smile to this as well. Itachi looked at her and nodded.

"Don't worry about it. We're just used to running our mouths."

Sakura nodded before shoveling the food into her mouth.

She ran to the other room, grabbing the yukata and threw it over her shoulders. She ran to the front door, looking at Itachi and Diedera's looks as she headed out. "Don't get into trouble you two! I have to get back to real work today!"

"I should come with you!" Diedera jumped up but Itachi looked at him with a frown. "Don't even think about it." Itachi stood, stretching before headed over to the door. "I'll stay with her. You, go to town, get us some new cloaks." Diedera frowned, but nodded. "Hai, Hai."

Itachi turned to Sakura who just stared at him. "You don't need to go. Until you two got here, I was the most dangerous person in the area." Itachi looked down at her, his face suddenly a total copy of Sasuke's expression. "It only took a day for us to get here. Besides, Diedera dragged you in yesterday. You're lucky he's calmed down some." Sakura felt chills down her back. What didn't she remember? For all she knew...

"Alright, but do me a favor, please behave yourself. Most of my patients are children." Itachi nodded.

Sakura went to town, looking over the billboard, seeing she had a massive back log. She groaned as she looked over the list, pulling it from the wall. "You're going to have to use chakra today. I'm going to be running all day." She frowned, looking at the first name on the list.

She was there after a moment, Itachi right behind. She knocked at the door with a smile, hoping it would calm the family against the man behind her.

A woman opened the door, her eyes wide as she saw Sakura. "Sakura-sensei! Please, come in!"

"Hai, This is my guard... Sasuke." The woman looked over at him and her eyes widened. "Sakura told me a lot about you! You're... different than I thought..." The woman blushed as she stepped aside, letting them in.

Sakura was pointed to the corner where there was an old man. "He's getting worse. I know there's not much more you can do for him, he's gotten so old after all." Sakura walked over, taking his pulse. "He's been eating well?"

"He keeps insisting on these chocolates, I tell him only if he eats well." The woman smiled at her and Sakura nodded.

"Daddy, how are you?" Sakura looked over, the youngest of his children at five years old was there. She lifted the blanket around him and he looked over at her, his eyes squinting with a smile. "You're so pretty, You find a good man and get married, alright, Aris?"

"Father, that's Lulu, I'm Aris." The woman looked over at the old man and Sakura smiled. "I think you're right. If he gets any pain, please come get me, but there's nothing really left that I could do."

Aris smiled at her, collecting her little sister. She hugged her close and nodded. "Sakura-sensei, thank you so much. We wouldn't have had this time with him if it wasn't for you."

"You just take care. I'll see you around. Lulu, watch out for the creek! No more playing ninja with the boys with real kunai!" Lulu nodded, looking over at her sister with a guilty smile.

Sakura turned and left the building, Itachi right behind.

Sakura was a few feet away when she stopped. "I'm sorry, I just don't know how well they'd handle it if I told them who you really are. With the sharingan it's hard to hide you're an Uchiha, they all know that I know Sasuke, it seemed the best thing to do."

"It's fine." Itachi nodded, looking around. "In that case, maybe we should call Diedera by the Kyuubi's name."

"Naruto isn't the Kyuubi. Naruto is Naruto." She looked at him with her eyes narrowed. "I think that's a good idea, though."

Itachi held up his hand, a crow seemed to appear behind his back and landed on his hand, his fingers stretched out. "Diedera, for now you're Uzumaki Naruto. I'm Sasuke. We're team seven mates with Sakura." The crow cawed once before taking to the air.

"Where's your next patient?"

By the end of the day Sakura was exhausted, she nearly stumbled into her house, Itachi following closely behind. She wandered over to the desk full of papers and looked down, diving into her reading, surprising Itachi. "You need to rest."

"My body is exhausted, but my mind is still quite energetic. This is my usual... Oh..." She read over one of the lines in her book before pursing her lip and frowning. She just kept on going from there.

"Sakura, dinner is ready." She heard Diedera call over to her and she looked up, surprised. She looked down longingly before standing and stretching, feeling a little strength flow back into her limbs. She wandered over, looking at Diedera, who was looking horrifyingly bored.

Itachi passed out the plates and handed out the tea, Sakura was surprised to see the details he put into the food, the way he held his hands when he poured the tea. Each move was elegant, showing the way he was raised. Sakura watched, amused at the thought. He was still Uchiha Itachi. He'd killed who knows how many people.

He was so proper.

She covered her mouth with her hand, stifling a giggle at the thought. Itachi turned to her, confused as she waved him off, trying to get herself back under control. "Stray thought." She smiled and he looked at her for a second, his face dangerous again.

After the food and the tea was served, okinomiyaki with shrimp and eel, the most fragrant green tea she'd ever smelled, she looked up at him.

"You're one hell of a cook." Itachi looked at her, eyes narrowing. "You haven't even taken a bite yet."

"I already know. I can smell it. You're very careful in the kitchen, aren't you?" Sakura smiled before she picked up her chopsticks, taking the first bite.

"Mmmmm" She sat there for a moment, the sticks hanging from the side of her mouth before she thought to pull them back. "I knew it." She smiled at him, surprised to see him not take a bite till after she'd spoken.

After dinner, she gathered the dishes and looked over at him, smiling. "Why are you two so gifted with cooking?"

"I'm an artist, it only goes to say that I would be an amazing cook." Diedera grinned, looking over at Itachi. He looked over at her and his eyes narrowed sadly. "My mother taught me." Sakura froze, looking down. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to..."

"It's alright. It's odd, though, knowing others know the truth." He sighed and stood, taking the dishes that Sakura's hands were too full for.

He set them down carefully on the counter as Sakura set hers into the sink, starting the water. "Itachi-san, can I ask you a question?" He looked at her, his eyes showing interest, curiosity, so many things that Sasuke never showed in his expressions unless you already knew what to look for.

"I know you're protecting me because of Sasuke, but I'm a missing nin, almost banished. If you're protecting me because someday him and I... I know he wants to revive the clan. If I'm not allowed back in for ten years, There's a chance..." She was having harder trouble accepting these thoughts than she'd imagined.

"Would you turn against me?" She looked into the sink, afraid to look up.

"If Sasuke has known you for most of his life then I know him. He'll stay by your side." Sakura nodded, frowning. Itachi didn't know Sasuke as well as he thought.

"He's cold, you know. He'll sacrifice anything to get his will done." Itachi turned to her, eyes narrowed. "If you've been his friend so long, then you're one of the true friends he has. You know my past. If there's anything I cherish, it's taking care of those who have meant anything to me." Sakura nodded.

"I'm sorry to have bothered you." She started on the dishes, noticing the look, the confused, unsettled look he gave her before he went back out to the living room.