…

This chapter especially.

To clarify: This story takes place after Gaara's revival and after the capture if the mentioned (previously) Bijjou (probably skipping a few major events that I hadn't included when I first planned this, a long while ago). But Sakura's personality has been changed since Sasuke left. And even when Naruto came back, she was already Jounin. When this story starts she's ANBU, for an unspoken while (quite a long while…) she had made Red Op (my own invention) seven months previous the start.

AND: you can't say Itachi is OOC since we don't know him at all except when there's expectations held over him. And we've never seen him teased/mildly disrespected by somebody he can't (Shocking, I knowkill for one reason or another.

MY REVIEWRS; YOU GUYS ARE THE BEST, You Rock!

TO NEVER LOSE

By Reverse

Chapter 8- Of Scrolls and Developments

I stared blankly at the Uchiha compound. I had never been inside, I didn't think many had. My footfalls were heavy like lids over eyes that were tormented by no sleep. They seemed to fall and move in opposition to my flight instinct; yet abruptly I continued my pace. I might feel like I was walking into the lair of a lion, but I was not so different from a lioness.

Uncaringly, or at least with that appearance, I looked left and right before deciding to vaguely move forward. My legendary flee-on-sight cloak seemed to float and I reminded myself that silk had that tendency. As nice as it was, I defiantly had a pronounced preference to rayon. Not that my opinion mattered, or such pettiness and superficiality was something on my level anymore either.

I touched my hand to my left side where I had strapped a very plain but sharp looking katana.

Itachi very suddenly appeared at my side and I very dryly commented to him on returning my hat.

He handed it over wordlessly.

"Are we here because you want something from here?" I asked. My voice wasn't hesitant, but mild.

He looked at me with what I would consider contempt if his expressions weren't so damnably limited. Most likely at my suggestion of privacy, "I had the urge to acquire an old family scroll. It is likely just rotting here."

I rolled my eyes. "One that could help repair your eyes?"

He paused to glare at me. "What do you know about that?"

I smiled; a little twist of my mouth. It was defiantly filled with maliciousness or sadism or perhaps both. "I'm a medic; part of the job is recognizing the problem."

He was silent for a moment and I faced forward. "Can you fix my vision?"

I wasn't even all that surprised. I made a humming noise, considering. His left hand latched with an iron grip onto my right arm and he spun me in a lock to face him. "Answer the question."

I mostly ignored the picture it made and tried harder to infuriate him. I had a feeling making him angry might become an eventual hobby. "What's for dinner tonight?"

My mock cheerfulness pissed him off farther and he shoved me into one of the walls of the deserted Uchiha homes.

I clamped my hands around his wrists and concentrated my still affected chakra reserves on shattering them. Unfortunately he jumped back and I only managed to barely snap one, he wouldn't mention or acknowledge something so insignificant. He began walking again, obviously knowing what house he was planning to stop at. I walked behind him, not bothering to catch up, but merely keeping my same previous pace.

"Seriously, you feed me and find me a place to sleep and…." I suggested, giving an unseen jerk of my head, at the moment I was all and pure attitude.

"Girl!" His growl was a literal warning. I pursed my lips and looked at him with an almost critical expression. It was defiantly on the edge of disproval somewhere.

"Well, compromise with me." I shrugged; I really liked to push the limit these days. Flirt with disaster, walk on fire, and tango with danger, so matter how you put it I liked to push it. Maybe it would be my ending sometime; if so, probably soon.

He glared. "I don't do compromise."

"It's not always all or nothing, get over yourself." I argued back.

"For me it is, I never lose." He stated calmly. I hated how he could state it and believe it completely non-fiction.

I shrugged; I seemed to do a lot of that lately. People were exasperating lately. "It's only your eyes…"

"You can eat dirt and sleep on the floor for all I care."

I knew the perfect counter to this, regardless of the pain the reference might cause me. "You can go blind and not recognize your brother when he tries to make good on his promise."

He defiantly made a habit out of his little phrase. I wondered if somebody had constantly called him foolish when he was a boy; and if it might not be a term of hate and distain. I wondered if it might be an odd symbol of endearment. "Foolish little brother."

"Foolish Itachi Uchiha, stubbornness will be his downfall." I made my own repetition.

He looked at me, considering maybe. "You are not the first to use that context."

"I guessed as much." I shrugged, this time in dismissal; probably for the first time.

"You can find food in the village and I'll see about a room here you can sleep in."

I glared at him.

"With a bed." He spoke.

I smirked at him. "Not so bad was it? Sometimes you have to compromise. Bad Itachi thinking he can always kill his problems."

I almost heard his growl, but he reigned himself in. He really did have pretty decent emotional control; he never slipped with expression or words. But even he wasn't perfect.

"Usually it works. It would be impossible to say you were ordinary." He said; a statement of the fact. His voice was dry and very nearly jaded.

"Boy, you should wish I was ordinary." I stated coyly. Offhandedly I added: "I'll take a look at your eyes tonight, find your scroll it might help me out."

"Everybody here already knows us both. It's to hot for a cloak." I also noted; I slipped the silk from my shoulders and folded it over my arm.

"This building here is where we will stay. Go find food, and then come back here." Itachi stated as an order.

I resisted the childish urge to stick my tongue out at him. He was almost always impeccably silent, or impeccably polite. I started to wonder if he had less boundaries around me because my expectations were lower. And I had very much displayed that attitude. I wondered if it made him find me easier to be around, or something. "Does it make you feel like the dog of Akatsuki?"

Yeah, like a real bitch. I bitterly wanted to reply.

"Not when you're the one going to end up playing doggy, boy." I rolled my eyes. He gave me a piercing stare.

"Been living like a prince for to long? I don't care if we starve." I pushed past him. He had opened the door to the house and I was damned if I didn't take advantage of his momentarily stunted intelligence. Another afterthought; "I could care less if you starve."

I was pinned to the wall again. I just looked at my captors face. "Not many people can get away with talking to me like that."

"Like what?" I whispered with a trickster's enthusiasm. This was the best fun I'd had in months. Maybe even years; again with the damned if I give this up.

"Almost like you're more than an acquaintance, like you want to be family to me," He clarified, almost wistfully. His voice was a thousand miles back.

Maybe it was on the day that was a complete change in everything; it affected my life more greatly than any other event probably ever would.

He killed his family. …Leaving only one survivor. Though both Uchiha's had the same stranded eyes.

He killed his friend.

"What if I'm not a friend or family?" I asked, completely truthful.

He looked confused, a child lost in an adult's interpretation of something big, God maybe, or the universe. I would savor that look; it was something that made me almost feel half decent about him. After all, hating him for his crimes could only be useless, wasteful and hypocritical.

After all, I was nothing else if not a murderer.

"Then what are you?" He finally asked. His Sharingan faded; his eyes were a smoky black, obscured by almost-blindness.

"If you can't see colors but you can still see shapes, do you still hope you can be saved blindness?" I riddled him.

"Hope is for fools."

I had said there was no hope, Itachi said it was for fools and Naruto possessed it.

He may be a fool; but I thought me and Itachi must be bigger ones.

"Then I can be whatever you want to think of me as."

His stare was intense. "I'm trying to imagine you six feet under. It's not so attractive."

"Sorry boy, only the sky is higher than me…" I laughed bitterly, back to the ease of earlier. It was strange to be conversing with somebody whose sadism was as fleeting and severe as my own. But I'm not sure mine was quite as violent.

"Oh, and your ego." I nearly laughed contentedly but I doubt I would ever get to that point.

He grimaced; it was so strange seeing him so free from the Akatsuki and the expectations of others.

I knew this was a rare treat. "Join me and get the food with me. Cause I ain't bringing any back with me."

He made a face of complete refusal. I continued, "Fine I will. You give me the softest bed then."

He shrugged; "Then you'll have to share."

It was a threat, a complete threat. But I wasn't going to let him win.

"Alright, just don't snore." I replied, probably more confidently than I felt. I almost felt manipulated.

He let go of my shoulders, sensing correctly that this talk was decidedly over.

I strolled out of the house, counting the number and noting the placement from the gate. I put up my face and mask; I couldn't afford to show any of the personality I'd displayed so casually in front of Itachi. That's different.

I knew danger and I seemed to be exposing myself to the whole range. Itachi was dangerous, dangerous to be constantly pissing off and dangerous to get to close. He was the very definition of risk. And I was dangerous; to myself and almost everybody else around me. I had no doubt that one day Naruto would be captured and seeing his angelic face had charged something within me. My dept was not repaid. My bond still existed; I could never let him know.

It was strange that Itachi was the one I took out my strangely teasing emotions on. Stranger still that he complied, he even went along.

Maybe we both just needed something to preserve our humanity. Maybe we hadn't realized the effect we had on each other.

I stepped out on the street. I looked down; I was wearing my basics, I left my cloak in the Uchiha house, but I had my hat in hand. I gently placed it over my head, the white rayon tassels covering my cherry colored hair.

I defiantly knew better that to bring back something disgusting just to watch Itachi's face. Talk about getting bitten in the ass later. That would likely be lasting and painful. Well, it would be if the food was as disgusting as I knew I could find.

Distantly I wondered how Itachi would react to ramen, after I settled him down enough to eat it. It was almost comical, and distracting. I barely noticed how the street seemed to part like before; I would however know if certain chakra signatures were too close. I checked my katana at my side; just in case. I really had an attachment to it; ANBU had made sure of that. Itachi would probably make fun of me for it later.

As I walked the market, vaguely scanning it for a teahouse, I ignored the looks that were shot my way. Fear was etched in all of them, a head-turning, instinctual terror unspoken behind the eyes. I was only an object of mass destruction.

Three figures moved rapidly to corner me. Two others stood farther off in the back. A regular ANBU formation. The chakra signature on my left flank was recognizable.

"The only one here I know is the leader." I stated. I had strangely not recognized the other ANBU. "I'm just passing through."

"Akatsuki promise trouble." The one directly in front of me spoke, his white cloak fluttering lightly, he wasn't really the leader. This leader preferred to be inconspicuous, but personally I thought he was just lazy. Always had been and I would know.

I chose to stare at him as I answered the fake leader's questions. That trick would work on anybody but me. "Red Ops promise trouble… are you going to chase them down too and make sure they stay on the right path?"

"Are your shadows spattered with blood yet, Shikamaru?" I lightly dropped.

I heard a hushed, scared whisper. "She can't know that… how…?"

"I've changed."

"You have," He agreed. "But the difference isn't in alliances; from the moment he left you gave up connections. So you retained humanity..."

"Funny how I seem only to find that among my own kind."

"Own kind?" He laughed mercilessly.

I shrugged; a familiar gesture. "I am a murderer Shikamaru. I just used to murder people for you and Tsunade and Naruto and this damned country. Now I can murder who I want to or need to."

"But to find humanity finally, among criminals." He spoke, his tone questioned my sanity. I was as sane as Itachi; just as sane. We really were more similar than me and Sasuke, just like I had said so long ago in response to the Black Op's statement; 'Of all people you compare me to his bother?' It wasn't a bad thing; it might be a true thing. But the ways we were different seemed to oppose in characteristics so extreme we seemed to match rather than clash.

"I changed on that day." I spoke, dark, even tones lapped like tidal waves under my initially calm tone.

His mask was not even there to my eyes, I could imagine his expression, as if he were playing shogi or go, or watching the clouds. Considerate, open to all the possibilities. "We only ever speak of that day…" He paused, considering again, the mask lowered like a bow of the head, maybe apology, and maybe guilt. He had kept his squad in the dark for to long. He always felt guilty when he fumbled on missions. Or he used to. I doubt he had really changed all that much.

"Sakura." He finished. The response was immediate. Ever mask focused on me, every katana was held by the hilt, easily palmed to draw. I removed my hat calmly. My jade eyes observed the situation. Troublesome. The shadow user would say. They really didn't realize how strong I was.

"How smart is it to fight me, really?" I shook out my strawberry hair, pink to the very roots. I was like a tiger crouched and ready to spring. Sudden battle instincts overtook me and prey was the only word to describe the ANBU in my eyes.

A voice filled with an inferno of calmness and authority halted my visionary bloodbath. "Stop."

It was only one word. I never realized what kind of effect one word could have.

I'm nowhere near the heart of the plot. So if you are still confused, it will be resolved

later.

Again: Review; just speak away.