As usual, he couldn't sleep.
He sat on one a chair next to the window, looking outside at the snow that shone like silver under the dim lights that still illuminated the streets of this little village.
The day had turned out to be very interesting for his taste. Mostly due to bad things though.
Mia's jutsu had affected him more than he wished to admit. He had underestimated her. He had really thought that her level of genjutsu wouldn't be as high as it was. But then again her growing had been going upwards at a tremendous speed since he first met her.
Suddenly he realized that ever since his teammate had been changed, things had been getting slow.
He had to fix that.
But how much trust could be bestowed on this girl? He had learnt that trust was a luxury that he just couldn't afford; in fact, it had took him years to feel comfortable with Kisame around.
He saw things that he didn't like in her memories during that genjutsu. It had been short, a few seconds maybe, but it had given him the sensation that she wasn't who he thought she was.
He was stepping into dangerous terrain, mostly because he had already gotten involved with her.
It had been a great mistake.
He wasn't used to making mistakes.
His intense Sharingan eyes moved to her darkened form.
She was awake, he noticed. She was lamely faking slumber.
"Can't sleep?" he said all of a sudden, his voice quieter then usual.
She stirred a little and pulled the covers up to cover herself completely.
"Mmmm…" she responded with the same quiet tone. It was as if neither of them wanted to disturb the stillness of the night.
He closed his eyes and lowered his head a little.
"What keeps you awake...?", she whispered.
A few moments of silence passed.
"...Thoughts", he merely replied.
"...Your living hell...?", she said quietly.
He narrowed his eyes.
Her back faced him, so he could only see a mound of blankets with wild black hair coming out at the top.
"How can you stand it?", she asked without facing him.
Itachi just remained silent.
"Go back to sleep", he commanded. It had been a bad idea to let her get into his mind. In fact, he didn't have it planned, she just infiltrated him and then he kicked her out as soon as he realized. He had used Mangekyou and now he was feeling the consequences.
He felt tired.
He decided that they would depart to Konoha the upcoming day and capture the kyuubi once and all.
He didn't like the idea of entering Konoha just like that, but there wasn't much choice, they would just have to be careful.
The upcoming day finally arrived for both shinobi. Sakura hadn't slept much and Itachi hadn't slept at all.
When in the bathroom she realized she needed her hair done, so she hurried to the village. Itachi remained in the room, waiting for her to finish her "urgent business that need to be taken care of".
He knew she was hiding a few things that might be of considerable importance. He didn't want to dig into it very much because that belonged to her personal life, but some of the things he saw and felt the day before during the genjutsu made him change his mind.
He had thought of many possibilities for her strange behaviour, starting from the base that she wasn't Gennosuke Mia as she said she was. But it was all more complicated because of her Sharingan.
Honestly, he didn't believe a word of the explanation she had given him about it, but logically, it was absolutely viable, in fact, it was the most reasonable explanation.
He had noticed she suffered a lot of pain every time she activated them, which, for someone who had actually developed the third tear, wasn't something normal. She had trained her doujutsu for quite sometime and it was unusual for that pain to happen.
Many things just didn't fit.
So he followed her.
She looked at her pale face in the wall-large mirror of the hairdresser.
Her hair was perfectly dyed of black as always.
The woman stood behind her and looked at sakura with an impassive face.
"Why would you dye your hair black when your natural colour is so cute?", the woman asked friendly.
Sakura smirked while her eyes where fixed on her hair's reflection.
"Exactly because of that", she said and stood up.
She paid her and muttered a quick 'thank you', then she left, just in time to be received by a slap of snowy morning air.
There was a lot of people on the street despite the freezing weather and the thick layer of snow covering the ground.
'They have lives to follow no matter how cold the day is', she thought. Yeah, she had a life to follow too, one that now presented her a big obstacle.
The return to Konoha.
With Itachi.
What was she going to do then? she hadn't planned that when she started her mission years ago, nor when she decided to stay with Itachi the day before.
People would recognize her. It had been easy to deceive Itachi because he had seen her face probably once, and he remembered her for her pink hair, but the people of Konoha knew her face very well, after all, she was the famous apprentice of the Fifth and a prestigious medic-nin who worked in the public hospital of the village.
It was all becoming more and more complicated and somehow she had the sensation that it was her own fault.
"Look who I found here"
She stopped dead in her tracks.
Her blood ran cold.
A hand bigger than hers placed on her hip as a warm body positioned itself behind her cold one.
She felt like fainting.
'Keep cool, Sakura, don't lose it, just... just...'
"Did you miss me...? Sakura...?", his lips next to her ears, pronouncing those fateful words hit her like a rock in the head.
"...How...", she tried, but her trembling voice got caught in the back of her throat.
"It doesn't matter, more importantly...", he whispered. "...This..." he softly grabbed a few strands of her black hair "...and this", his other hand was placed upon one red cloud of her Akatsuki cloak.
"...Sasuke...", she said, barely above a whisper, her voice cracking, reflecting her current inner storm.
He moved to her side, so his arm was on her shoulders, embracing her and holding her close to him.
He started walking, forcing her to walk with him.
She didn't dare to look at him on the face. Her green eyes were glued to the white road before them.
She hadn't felt him at all.
"This was a big surprise indeed", he said. His voice lingering at her ears, she felt like it had been ages since she last heard it. It was also provoking her body to fill with adrenaline, rushing at full speed, making her heart pump uncontrollably hard against her chest.
"I must admit that I had a difficult time recognizing you at first", he said without looking at her.
"What are you doing here?", she dared to ask, using the coldest voice she could mutter.
"Well, you see, I was in search of Uchiha Itachi...", he paused for a second while turning his gaze to her "...but I found you instead".
Her heart skipped a beat.
A few ones, actually.
She noticed that they were heading to the exit of the village and she naively wondered what he had on his mind.
People looked at them as they passed by.
Girls stared at Sasuke with a stupid puppy-love face and she laughed inwardly as she remembered directing the same look at him when she was younger.
How stupid can a person be?
"Now, the question is...", he interrupted her thoughts "...Why are you dressed as an Akatsuki like my brother?", his voice low and dangerous.
She sighed, hoping for the best.
"You don't need to know that", she simply responded.
He fell silent as they reached the spot in the forest that had served her and Itachi as a training field.
Sasuke stopped there and released her. He took one step backwards and stood unmoving, staring at her back as she still didn't dare to face him.
The white environment made their dark figures to stand out.
"I came here for a reason, Sakura", he said with ice on his voice "...and I know that you can help me"
"You can't kill him, not alone at least", she said.
He smirked.
"Want to join me?", he said mockingly.
"No", she responded.
"Are you protecting him then?", his eyes narrowing.
"No, I just don't want to help you, Sasuke"
His expression darkened.
Where had Sakura gone?
"I should kill you instead", she said while turning around, finally finding the courage to look at him on the eyes.
Courage born in hatred.
Sharingan blazing like fire with an intensity that made him gasp.
He was dumbfounded.
"...Sharingan...?", he said incredulous, his eyes wide open.
She just stared at him.
He bent his head down a little, hiding his face behind black bangs.
"So it was you after all...", he said barely audible. He was more like talking to himself, answering the question that had been on his mind during the last year, plaguing his dreams with nightmares, eating him alive.
His chest felt suddenly heavier.
"Thanks to you I've obtained these eyes...", she said darkly "...these cursed eyes", she couldn't help the venom that dripped from her voice with each syllable.
"I never expected you to become a criminal like him", he said angrily.
"I'm nothing of what you expected", she responded.
Sakura felt angered by his words. She wasn't a criminal! She was just doing a mission for the village he had betrayed!
She wasn't like Itachi.
Sasuke was more like him.
"You know how much you resemble your brother...?", she said, the corners of her mouth curving into a smirk.
In a second Sasuke was grabbing her throat painfully tight, anger evident in his Sharingan eyes.
"You don't know a word of what you're talking about", he whispered dangerously next to her face.
She smirked and that only angered him more.
"Asshole", she whispered slowly, exaggeratedly pronouncing each word.
He narrowed his eyes and threw her away violently. Her body landed in the snow, making a hole so deep that her back hit the soil under.
She winced in pain, but she quickly started chuckling.
"You're so predictable", she said.
He came again at her, lifting her limp body as he hit her hard on the cheek, sending her flying away again.
Sasuke ran to catch her before she even touched the ground and received her with a strong kick on her stomach.
She coughed blood as small tears left her eyes.
She fell like a dead weight.
He kicked her with fury again, and again.
Sakura had known that one day she would confront Sasuke, and that she would have to fight him as if he were her deadliest enemy. But now, that that day had come, she found herself too emotionally damaged to even lift a finger.
He was fighting her.
Her Sasuke-kun was beating the crap out of her, fully intent on killing her.
How could she understand that?
What had happened to her life?
She cried for the physical pain he was inflicting on her.
She cried for the ache in her chest, on her heart.
"Dammit...", she spat out in frustration.
He stopped and looked at her pitiful form below.
She tried to move, but the pain on her ribs was too big. She collapsed on the ground.
"Even after all this time, you're still annoying", he said smirking. He knew he had hit a sore spot, which was rapidly confirmed as she gasped and turned her hands into tight fists.
She finally stood with great effort and looked at him with hatred so intense in her blood-red eyes that made him smirk.
She forced her body to relax as much as possible in such situation. Closing her eyes, she accumulated her chakra on her right hand and placed it over her hurt side.
Sasuke gazed in awe as she healed herself with such ease, and slowly she recovered her pose, and her expression now lacked the pain he saw just second ago.
Now it was pure hate.
"You know...", she started "...I've been training a lot lately", she closed her eyes and smirked "...with your brother", she opened her eyes just to see the priceless expression of the man standing in front of her.
He twitched his mouth and narrowed his eyes almost imperceptibly.
"And I've learned some things that maybe even you don't know...", she chuckled.
Sasuke raised his eyebrows and looked at her with an amused expression.
"Oh really?", he said.
She smiled widely.
"Really...", her eyes stared intently at his and he realized what she was trying to do.
"That won't work with me, Sakura, even if you possess Sharingan now, I've had it since I was twelve, there's no way..."
And he fell shut at the same time she let a soft chuckle escape her lips.
His face showed the most horrified expression she had seen on him.
And he screamed.
Her few seconds of glory were dramatically interrupted though.
"Haruno...Sakura...right?"
Damn.
She slowly turned around to face what she had been afraid of since the day she left her village.
"Itachi..."
A/N: Hi everybody!! Man, I'm sooooooooooooooooooo happy with your reviews! I'm very very glad to read that you like this story so much. special thanks to Tyger's eye of gold; I swear that I was overexcited for almost a complete day because of what you said in your review xD THAAANKS xD
So, most of you guessed what was going to happen on this chapter through your questions xD I just wanted to add a little bit of tension :P
And thanks for replying to my question about Itachi's parents. :D
Thanks again to SharinganAngel who did the beta in like...20 minutes xD love yaaa!
damn...I love you all!!!!!!
ahahha, yeah Sasuke...SUFFER!!!!!!!!! xDDDD
bye everyone and keep reviewing!!!!!!!!!
T-----T I hope to update soon too xD