This MIGHT be really confusing. For those of you who've already read the ORIGINAL Chapter three...this isn't it. That chapter will be back (I swear and promise). What happened is this. One of the reviewers mentioned that there could have been more between chapters two and three. After all, that's eight years that I didn't write about. And my crazy, scatter-brained, has-too-much-time-on-her-hands muse decided to run with it! It's now almost two in the morning where I live, and I've been writing straight for almost the last five hours o.O. I have class tomorrow at nine.

So, to sum all that up before I digress into a rant about my muse, I decided to write chapters of the events between when Sakura was ten and eighteen (about three or so extra chapters worth of stuff). So as not to confuse people terribly, the Rationale chapter of With Practice will be re-uploaded when this fic is well and truly completed. I wouldn't worry too much though. My muse has been scarily insistent of late.

The chapter turned out a little more angsty than I would have liked, but sometimes, things get misunderstood. You'll see what I mean ^^

Please enjoy!

Disclaimer: Don't own Naruto, but totally wish I did.

Chapter 3: Epiphany

"Hmm…"

The quiet, contemplative sound was snatched up by the wind that circled the trees in the forest that skirted the Academy grounds, tickling the short, strawberry-cream strands of hair that brushed the back of the thirteen-year-old's neck. Eyes closed, the girl seemed utterly intent on the objects resting in her palms. Warm, smooth oak with a fine grain that was broken by name kanji engraved on one side sat snug in the hollow of her left hand; cold steel with bladed edges that could slice an incautious handler, a tiny flower with five petals visible in one corner lay flat on the open palm of her right.

Iridescent, green eyes slid open, bright with assured confidence. Slipping the wooden disk back into her kunai pouch, she pulled out another shuriken of burnished steel to replace it. Academy standard. It was serviceable, pitted in a few places from many months of wear, and lacked the dainty, deadly beauty of the weapon given to her three years ago.

Custom made. A soft rose hue colored her cheeks for a split second at the understated thoughtfulness of the gift. While heavier than her heaviest practice shuriken, the steel ones Itachi had given her were more versatile; their aerodynamic form allowed her greater range and their blades had never needed to be sharpened.

She weighed the one in her palm against the regulation shuriken that her parents had bought her the year before, and a small smile fluttered across her lips.

"That's what it was," she told herself with a soft laugh. "Mine are lighter."

She sent the petal-engraved weapon biting deep into the bullseye drawn in red paint on a tree-trunk across the clearing.

A victorious grin flashed across her elfin features. Though it was only an Academy regulation target, one where the bullseye was painted twice as large as on a regulation target to keep up a pre-genin's self-confidence, she couldn't help feeling a thrill of pride. It was the first time she had managed to send one of Itachi's shuriken into the center of a target. The miniscule weight difference between her Academy issue shuriken and those given to her by her taciturn benefactor had had her consistently missing by a noticeable margin.

It almost made her wish that she had just used the special shuriken from the start so that the disparity in weight wouldn't have affected her throws.

"Almost," she told herself with a tiny grin. She had lost too many regulation shuriken in the last two years since Iruka-sensei had finally begun teaching them to handle the star-shaped metal blades to regret her decision not to touch the ones that had been a gift until after she learned some accuracy.

"Maybe I could attach chakra strings to them, like the Suna boy from the chuunin exams," Sakura mused. "That way I wouldn't be in danger of losing them…"

Thoughts chasing one another around her head with creative ways to retrieve thrown shuriken, she jogged over to the target to tug her weapon free.

"Sakura."

With a soft yelp of surprise, Sakura whirled around, a quick blush stealing over her cheeks as she shoved her hands behind her back. "Sasuke-kun!" She winced as the edge of the shuriken sliced a line of fire down her palm. "Wh-where's Naruto?"

"The dobe's saying goodbye to Iruka-sensei," the dark-haired teen replied, sharp obsidian eyes catching his teammate's pained expression, though he made no comment of it.

"It's hard to believe Naruto's leaving for training with Jiraiya-sama," the rose-haired girl said quickly, slipping her shuriken back into her kunai pouch as stealthily as she could manage. The shallow cut on the palm of her hand throbbed in time with her rapid heartbeat.

"We are all going our own ways for a bit," the young Uchiha commented bluntly. "Naruto with Jiraiya-sama, me with Kakashi, and you with Tsunade-sama."

"It'll be strange, here at the village," she responded, her cheeks taking on familiar warmth as her aspen-leaf eyes flickered to the boy she had been crushing on since three years ago, "Without Naruto, and Kakashi-sensei, and you." The blush deepened at the way her voice wobbled on the last word; feeling horribly embarrassed, Sakura looked away.

Silence stretched out between them, worsening the girl's discomfort. Somehow the situation felt almost oppressive, her sense of nervous unease completely incongruous to how she felt around Sasuke when in battle. It was so uncomplicated then! He was her teammate, her comrade, she trusted him to watch her back; she knew that even during the worst moments on the field, he and Naruto would be protecting her as she did them.

Waiting with him, alone with him, in the Academy forest with no Naruto to act as a buffer, she couldn't help but feel a little out of place.

Sakura stifled the urge to sigh. The feeling that something was missing had been growing lately, even when her heartbeat danced to a faster rhythm around him.

A tiny frown marred Sakura's brow as she gave her rosy head a shake to clear it of such confusing thoughts. As if in answer to her irritation, the cut on her palm pulsing with pain. Feeling the stickiness of drying blood beaded down the gash in her flesh, she hoped Naruto would arrive soon. She needed to wash her hand without drawing attention to it, in case Sasuke asked questions she didn't really feel like answering, and there was little chance of achieving that out here in the forest.

"Sakura—,"

"Sakura-chan!"

"Finally!" she called, her lips quirking into a smile that was as much relief as greeting; the tone of inquiry in Sasuke's voice had been too interrogative for her comfort. "You're getting too much like Kakashi-sensei; perpetually late."

"Sakura-chan!" the blond whined in protest.

With a laugh, Sakura led the way to Naruto's favorite Ichiraku, allowing the blond's loud-mouthed chatter to wash away her confused thoughts for a while.

…

"Teme, Sakura-chan, I'm going to come back, better than I went! So you two work hard too!"

Sakura stood at the village gate by Sasuke's side, waving until Naruto and Jiraiya rounded a bend in the road and could no longer be seen. "Cheeky Naruto," she muttered wryly as she and Sasuke turned away. "Like we'll be slacking off while he's gone."

"Hn."

The silence as they walked down the sun-soaked street was more comfortable than earlier. Calmer. She didn't feel like her heart had been replaced with a frantically fluttering butterfly. Lunch had soothed her feelings, draining away the adrenaline that had been rushing through her veins, and Naruto's animated conversation had made her forget, if for a little while, that she wouldn't be seeing her teammates for the next two years. In the face of that, her feelings seemed so much less urgent.

Sort of, anyway.

Sasuke, too, seemed different. He appeared surprisingly relaxed in the afternoon's warmth and light. More approachable.

Mustering up her courage, Sakura managed a soft laugh. "The way Naruto talks, two years doesn't feel that long."

She hadn't been expecting a response, so she was surprised when the Uchiha beside her gave a shrug and replied, "It probably won't be. We'll all be too busy training to feel time passing."

He stopped by the front gate of the Uchiha compound. "We'll be back in no time."

And for a second, a quick smile flashed across Sasuke's face.

Sakura waited for the flush of heat, the sudden rush of light-headed happiness that came whenever Sasuke showed her any special attention. But it wasn't a blush and elation that caught her up. The usual thrill of girlish excitement never came, though her heartbeat pounded in her chest hard enough to drown out all other sounds.

It was all wrong!

Something inside her protested fiercely. The swift upward tilt of his lips, the flash of uncharacteristic warmth in his dark, cobalt eyes; both were sharply familiar, but not from her long association with the teammate standing in front of her. The expression was not his, and yet it drew heat to her skin like none of his ever had. Compelling her in a way she couldn't explain, she still felt resistance at her very core. The person she saw in that look wasn't Sasuke. Something was…missing. It was like being alone with him in the Academy forest; the feeling that something was off intensifying until she couldn't ignore it.

Her throat closed, making it hard to draw breath as her cheeks crimsoned, then went pale in recognition.

Itachi.

In her teammate's face she could see the older Uchiha's sharp, aristocratic looks. They shared the same obsidian eyes, the quiet, confident self-assurance that was so striking. But they were inherently different. She could never mistake one for the other.

In a singular moment of clarity, she saw the last three years through unbiased eyes. Why hadn't she been conscious of how similar they were? Something in her had noticed.

Since she was ten, she had thought she had eyes only for Sasuke. But he hadn't been the one she was drawn to. What she had been seeing was the one who had believed in her when she was only six years old. She had seen his eyes. His straight-backed posture. His quiet manners. His high cheekbones. His lips.

Her heart had been looking for Itachi in every nuance of Sasuke.

And now, seeing Itachi's sharp smile on Sasuke's face, it felt as if she couldn't breathe for missing him. His almost brusque manners that contrasted his kindness towards her, the startling thoughtfulness she glimpsed and sometimes felt she barely comprehended, eyes that flashed crimson when they caught hers, the ebony hair that she secretly wondered would feel as silken to the touch as it looked, even the lines that accented his patrician features endeared him to her.

It all struck her in a rush that left her reeling and light-headed.

The depth of feeling terrified her.

…

"The way Naruto talks, two years doesn't feel that long."

The kunai flew wide of its mark, burying itself point first into the dirt nearly a foot to the left of the target and almost twenty feet past. Itachi didn't bother retrieving it; the strangeness of hearing that familiar voice on the other side of the compound wall had been almost disorienting.

"It probably won't be. We'll all be too busy training to feel time passing."

'Sasuke.'

That strangely hot feeling, the one that brought back flashes of his otouto pinning a ten-year-old Sakura to the dirt during an Academy field exercise, curled around his gut, resisting him as he pushed it back. It was only the second time feeling its ruthless bite, and yet even with ANBU training it was difficult to subdue.

"We'll be back in no time."

There was no response save a short, sharp intake of breath.

"Sakura, you're white."

The undercurrent of concern in Sasuke's voice made his insides clench with something akin to nausea, and he was rounding the side of the main house before he realized his body's movements.

He went still in the building's shadow, seeing the girl through the compound's front gate.

Even in the warm, golden sunlight of the later summer's afternoon she was pale, her ivy-hued eyes wide with an emotion Itachi had seen often in the faces of enemy shinobi. Fear. Her entire body was tense, her gaze fixed on Sasuke but somehow looking through him.

Itachi realized, thoughts taking on that strangely detached cast he had developed to better focus during his ANBU training, that his skin seemed tight with cold. And, as medically impossible as it was, his insides seemed to have been replaced with nothingness. Tears and frustration he had been privy to, but never her fear. Not like this. It felt like a blade of ice slitting him across the sternum to leave numbness in its wake.

The strange, chilling pain grew only more intense at the realization that her eyes were on him.

"I…I think I need to…to go," Sakura stammered, her body taking an instinctive step back as the words forced there way out of her throat to lodge under Itachi's breastbone. "I'll see you tomorrow before you leave."

If Sasuke questioned the strangeness of Sakura's sudden desire to go, he knew her well enough not to mention it. Her emotions, always decently close to the surface, seemed as though they would break free of all restraint at any moment. He merely nodded ascent, replying with his usual, curt, "Tomorrow, Sakura," as his teammate turned, and fled.

He had stepped through the compound gate before noticing Itachi.

"Aniki?"

"It is almost dinner time," Itachi replied by way of explanation as he turned back towards the practice grounds, giving Sasuke only a second's glimpse of the strange flatness in his brother's eyes that made them look so…shuttered. "I will see you in the dining hall."

It was only after his hand protested in pain that Itachi realized he had been gripping the hilt of one of his spare kunai hard enough to turn his knuckles white.

The ache in his hand mimicked the pain in Sakura's, pain he had no way of knowing of, as she pressed one of his practice shuriken to her chest and murmured his name with the frightened awe that came with newly realized love.

tsuzuku

I'm SOOOOO sorry! Firstly for putting Itachi through emotional distress, and secondly for the somewhat angsty undertones to this chapter. It's just that, well, I think love would be kind of scary. Terrifying, in fact. At least at first before you got a chance to calm down and assess your feelings and then be all happy ^^ As to Itachi's unhappiness...misunderstandings happen. You'll get to see how he deals with this in the next chapter XD (I already know how I want it to go and what's going to happen.)

For those of you who've read the original Chapter three, you know where this fits in ^^

Oh! If you feel like reviewing this chapter but the site tells you that you've already submitted a review for this chapter and won't let you submit another one, you can either submit a review on a different chapter, or PM me ^^ I would love to hear what you guys think of this new addition to the story! For those of you reading this for the first time, I'm sure that review button down there is still fully functional XD

The muse says that sweets of all kinds help her creative (and whip-cracking) abilities ^^

Aria, out.