AN: I'm sorry it's a little short. I've had a very long week, my dad got hurt at work, had tons of assignments to get done (math being my enemy), and lots of little things happening during the days that played with my temper. Anyways, a little more of a build-up in this chapter, with a comic relief at the end. I'll try and have a writing spree this weekend and hopefully produce a much longer, better chapter. ~ Wahyah

Sasuke

I arrived back at my apartment to see a figure standing in the shadows by my door. I wasn't exactly sure who it was, but I could make a pretty good guess. The figure stirred and I spoke first.

"Hello, Itachi." I hissed through clenched teeth.

"Not a very nice way to greet your brother now is it?" He asked as he stepped out from the shadows, revealing his face. "Anyways, all nonsense aside, we need to talk."

"We don't need to do anything. You can get the hell away." I muttered.

He raised both of his palms in the air gesturing that he did not wish to fight nor argue. "I mean what I say. We need to talk." He repeated. I almost took his words considerably, but that's when he lies to you the most. I decided to go along with this charade of his and allow him to speak. I nodded slowly and he understood that I was going to listen to him.

"I've decided to go to America," he began, "now, before you yell, hear me out."

I closed my mouth that I had opened to yell.

"It's a completely new slate," He began again, "on the other side of the world. It's a better chance at us getting away from all of our problems that seem to follow us."

"You mean all the problems that seem to follow you." I snapped. "That's what you're going to do, huh? Run away like the coward you are?" I hissed.

"It's not cowardice," his eyes narrowed at me, "It's the smarter choice, and we would be able to have a new life. A happier life."

"Why do you feel compelled to tell me this?" I scoffed. "Why didn't you just go and not tell me anything?" My reaction would have been the same."

Itachi looked taken aback by my words of malice. His expression softened, but changed back to his usual stoic look very quickly.

"Because, you are my brother, and I thought you would like to come with me." He said softly.

Now, I was a bit surprised by this. I wasn't expecting his offer to be genuine. I expected this to be a "Hey! I'm off to America. Have a nice life!" and he just leave. I couldn't tell if he was just being a caring brother that was actually concerned for my well-being, or being an ass and possibly disappearing again for another four or five years.

Itachi noticed my expression. He opened his mouth to break the silence that had now fallen upon us. "I won't be leaving for another three months. I need to get the money for it, have a place to stay in order, and everything else needed to get started in a completely new country." He finished.

"I never agreed to go." I almost whispered.

"I know. The reason why it's three months is also to give you time to think about it."

And you know what? I was actually thinking about this. It would be nice to live for a while without being borderline paranoid about that one man that's trying to do everything in his power to get you. I get a chance to not be alone anymore, and yes I may choose my brother because I'm sick of being alone all of the time.

But…I had a feel of belonging here as well. I've established my own way of living. I pay for my own apartment, I have a half-decent job, and I'm almost finished with high school here. I kind of had an idea of going to England for college. Push myself through that, become a lawyer, and push my way up the political ladder. I wanted to fix what's left of my family name. I can't do that on the other side of the world where nobody really knows my name.

I stood there for a while thinking about the outcomes I'd have to face out of each decision. I heard Itachi's shoes turn on the catwalk, and it broke me out of my thoughts.

"I'll see you around, little brother." He left and now I'm left alone with all of the stress of making a choice.

I searched my pockets for my keys to open the door of my apartment. Once I had found them, I opened the door, threw my backpack across the room, and laid down on the couch face-down. Why can't my life be a little more simple? Yes, I wanted to have a happy life. No, I didn't want to go across the world to have one. I wanted to stay at least somewhere somewhat close to France. I wanted to have a family there, and live comfortably without a worry in the world of anyone or anything coming to break that apart. I wanted to believe that my brother is actually being caring, but how can I trust someone who has been out of my life for years now, without a trace. To me, that's pretty much showing he didn't care about me to begin with, and leaving me to fend for myself. I have three months to make a choice, so I guess I can wait on truly deciding.

Sakura

I got back to the apartments a little later after school. I was helping Hinata with an afterschool project and so it was around 7 o'clock now. I walked up to the doors and opened the doors.

I felt like I walked into a brick wall, again. I was about to stumble backwards when a pair of hands grabbed my shoulders to steady me. I looked up to apologize and I felt déja vu about the situation. This was really starting to become an annoyance. I looked up to see Sasuke there, but for a moment, I swear I saw a surprised expression on his face.

"Do you never watch where you're going." Sasuke said in a rather rude tone.

"Uhm…I'm sorry, I didn't know that you liked to hang out in front of doorways. Wait hold up, why are you here?" I asked.

He scoffed. "I live here. I could ask you the same thing."

I scoffed in an attempt to mimic him. "I live here too."

"Great, now there are two people who make me want to hang myself living in these apartments." He said sarcastically.

The clerk looked up from behind the counter with a concerned look on his face, but looked back down at his paperwork when he heard me laugh.

"I'm sorry," I began, but this time I meant it, "I should really watch where I'm going from now on."

"Hn." He said, er…grunted. Did this guy have vocabulary?

"Do you need a dictionary?" I asked in between some laughter.

"Excusez moi." He said in a confused matter.

"All you ever really communicate with is with grunts and short answers. I feel like I'm talking to a caveman." I said.

He narrowed his eyes at me. And walked past me, "You're making me late for work."

I nodded, "Thanks for not letting me fall by the way."

He just walked out and left. He was late anyhow, so I couldn't blame him for wanting to be in a bit of a hurry.

Sasuke

As if I couldn't get her out of my head enough already, it was even more difficult with the knowledge that she was also living in the same apartment complex. For some reason, I felt as if it'll complicate things even more for me. It's interesting though, but it's also frustrating. My mind makes a connection with her that I cannot seem to comprehend. She's starting to become a daily aspect of my life, and normally, I wouldn't care one iota about that. I figured she'd be another fangirl, and to be honest, I thought she was stalking me when I ran into her. But, she isn't a fangirl, and she treats me differently, like another person. She doesn't put me on a pedestal and fights other girls over me, and it makes my day easier, and in the past month, we've become acquaintances. For the longest time, I've been begging for a break, and these nightmares just get worse for me. I feel like something bad is about to happen. Yet, I feel like something is trying to at least warn me. I'm really superstitious person, and I don't believe things really happen for a reason. Me and Sakura running into each other all the time is just a coincidence in my mind.
And for her, she doesn't seem to see it as such either. At least to my knowledge. Perhaps for her it's just annoying coincidences to her too.

I didn't really have much time to dwell on my thoughts. I was still running a little late to work, and I was already in a bad mood from Itachi showing up on my doorstep earlier. To make things even better, it's Friday night, and I had to work. Itachi had taken up most of my getting ready time, so I didn't even have time to take a shower. I guess in the back of my mind I always think. "Could always be worse." And that was true, to an extent.

I walked into the store and got everything together. I was amazed, people actually showed up to work for once. Normally we get the stoner teenagers that don't want to do anything, and most of the time they forget they even have a job and ditch coming to work. For once, I didn't have to work behind to counter, but that leaves only two things for me. Stockroom or shelving. For the love of God, I did not want stockroom duty, so I looked at the schedule, and as fate would have it, I got off the hook. I silently thanked whoever it was that helped me, I only had to do shelving. It's an easy enough job, just restock all the things that we are running low on the shelves. But the downside to shelving is-

"Clean up on aisle three, clean up on aisle three."

Yeah…That.

Sakura

I walked into my apartment to see my mom had done what she normally does when she's depressed. And what she does is bake everything from cookies to full party cakes while slightly intoxicated. By slightly, I mean about half a bottle, and then some. I'll be honest, some of the things she bakes turn out amazing though, I'm just amazed she doesn't pass out and burn the whole complex down.

"Mom… I know you're upset about dad being gone, but please tell me you're catering a wedding right?" I asked. My mom popped around the corner with a smile on her face. She came straight to me and hugged me.

"Oh no honey! I'm just baking for everyone in the apartment, you know, make some friends?" She said.

Great, she's in the denial stage, and dad's only been gone for about a month. Hey, don't get me wrong, I miss him too and I hope he's okay every single day. But now, she's gone and baked everything in the house, and I have no idea what we're going to do with all of this junk food. I swear I've gained weight just by looking at all of it. It'll be good until I go to school on Monday, so I guess I can take some to school to try and get rid of it. I know for a fact that everyone magically becomes your friend when you have free food to hand out. Although, I've never actually done it, normally dads around to eat a quarter of the sweets and we end up throwing the rest out.

I hugged my mom back and she smiled again, but I wasn't very sure whether it was genuine or not. She put her hand on her forehead, and closed her eyes.

"I've got a headache, I think I'm going to go to bed for a little bit." She said as she yawned.

Well at least that's the smartest decision she's made for the day. I watched her stumble back to her bedroom. I looked at the mess she left. She loves to go by, "One cooks while the other cleans" thing that chefs do. Unfortunately, I was the lucky one who got to clean up everything. She managed to get flour on the cabinets, egg whites on the faucet in the sink, and a whole slew of other feats that defy a normal person's logical thinking.

I was kind of disappointed to be honest. I didn't think my mom would go into a baking fit, but then again, neither of us knew when dad was going to be whist away at the drop of a hat. So, I couldn't really blame her, not that I would. I just didn't want to spend my Friday night cleaning up a baking fiasco. Well, it's not like I had anything spectacular planned out anyways, but I could at least find something productive to do.

I just had to suck it up, so I started cleaning so I could still have time to find something to do. I went ahead and started putting some things in the fridge and others in saran wrap to put on the counter. I noticed some brownies that were still on the counter, and thought maybe Sasuke would like something. I think I heard it mentioned that he didn't like sweets, but hey, gets the junk off of my hands. I don't think if he threw it away that it would hurt anyone's feelings. Problem was, I knew Sasuke lived here, I just didn't know exactly where.

-The Following Morning-

Sasuke

I heard knocking at my door, and I glanced at the clock beside my bed. I sighed with every ounce of oxygen in my body and got up. I just wanted one thing to go right for me. Just to sleep in, just for a little bit, but no. I have someone, most likely with a death wish, knocking on my door at 8 o'clock in the morning. I really hope its Naruto. I've wanted a good excuse to through him over the railing and watch him plummet to his death. What? I could just say it was suicide…

I opened up the door, and saw an annoying familiar set of green eyes and pink hair.

"I wanted to think you weren't stalking me, but now you've gone and found out where exactly I live. What do you want?" I asked with a tad of annoyance.

"Well, it wasn't too hard…All I had to do was ask the dude at the front desk where you lived exactly." She answered.

"I could swear I told that damn man to say I don't live here." I said mostly to myself.

"Evidently it didn't take. Anyways, all I wanted to do was give you these." She presented me about a dozen brownies. What the hell am I going to do with this?

"I don't eat sw-"

She cut me off, "Yeah, yeah, you don't eat sweets, but I'm just trying to get rid of these. You can do whatever you want with them, ain't going to hurt my feelings."

I took them. "Thanks…" I said a little unsure. For all I knew, these brownies could be drugged with something. Hey, she's only proven to be a decent person so far. But she knows where I live and know shows up randomly with some brownies, excuse me for being a little weary.

"Well, that's all I wanted to do so, see ya!" Turned to walk away. I didn't really want her to just walk away, but it I didn't want her to stick around either. So I just let her walk away. I don't really like getting attached to people, Naruto being the only exception. I only end up hurting people in the end, but no I don't know that from experience, because of the fact I never get close to people in the first place.

So I watched her walk away. When she was out of my sight, I looked at the brownies. I just couldn't help but feel that there was something sketchy about it. Maybe she was plotting this…

In the end I just sat them on the counter. Naruto might come over and devour them in one sitting.

I stretched for a moment. I was up, it was Saturday morning, and I didn't have anything to do. This was truly a miracle of some sorts, so what do I do? I walked myself back to my room and went back to sleep. Because why not?

AN: Thank you for those that keep reading this story. I'm trying to get better. Please review, but I need someone to beta read and help give ideas. Please, if you're interested send me a PM. Thanks! ~Wahyah