With school and homework dominating my life, I've had less time. Also this chapter is mostly a lot of boring explanation.

This chapter is the turning point, but don't worry Sakura isn't going all saskue-kun! on us….eww.

TO NEVER LOSE

Chapter 11 - The Changed

(Naruto)

I stared wordlessly at Tsunade, for once having nothing to say. Sure I've changed since I brought Sasuke back, but we've all changed. We changed when he left too.

Proudly, I still declared myself to be the next Hokage; and I still met with Iruka for ramen. Sasuke was always on alert as what he was, higher than ANBU, always waiting for a word that Itachi was around. Sakura always used to be the one who questioned me, pushed me farther, made me stronger; and gushed over Sasuke with her romantic ideas. She wasn't what she had been. Mysterious, dark, with a body count beyond what it was recorded. How many people had she killed in seven months of secret service to the Hokage?

I thought about it as I left her office. Did I want to be that Hokage? Could I do that, be that?

Yes.

I wondered if it made me horrible.

"Thinking? That looks painful." I heard a familiar voice. "It can't be anything important, moron."

Sasuke hadn't realized what he'd done to me, broke away all the happiness. I didn't even protest; just settled back into my thoughts. That startled him, though I knew it wouldn't show on any feature of his remarkable face. "It's actually about Sakura; why don't you pay her a visit?"

"Have you lost your mind, idiot. Why would I want to see her?" This was the first anybody spoke of Sakura to him, I remember the Hokage ordering it. One month, since entering Konoha, he had believed her to be on a diplomat mission of high importance; h had never cared to question.

"I don't know," I yelled. "The Sakura I saw last is part of an organization trying to kill me!" My anger was getting the better of me.

"What?" Sasuke blinked, before growling. "You are going to tell me everything and yo are going to tell me now."

"Not on your life you bastrard, you want to know what happened to Sakura? Go read the stupid Red Op file!" I growled in return, I couldn't handle this. "You made her like that in the first place!"

"She was annoying." He reasoned, shrugging.

I laughed mercilessly; I didn't know what else to do… Why couldn't I have both of them, the Genin team 7?! "But she kept us together! We were supposed to protect her! We failed."

"You said she was still alive." Maybe Sasuke's emotions just didn't cover this point, but he was sounding very accusatory right now.

"Yeah! She's alive, with a body count higher than ours will ever be and part of the Akatsuki!"

"How could we have protected her?!" He was angry, no doubt his mind had already moved on from the word Akatsuki to Itachi.

I wanted to scream and yell and threaten and try to beat him for saying it, just like the old times. I fumed, but I heard the words. It was the first time I really heard his words today, instead of just the tone. How did you save somebody from themselves, when you don't even know that they're going to go bad?

(Sakura)

I knew something was different today. Whatever had happened with Itachi and me yesterday was erased as non-trust settled in. I had slept on the floor of the kitchen, refusing to be close to him.

After I had arrived back to this little nameless building in the far from nameless complex I had found him staring at a scroll about the sharingan, I ignored it, I wasn't all that interested in the second level if it worded off weakness.

I had decided that I would rather be strong and stand unwavering than try to form a new bond. I needed a new bond, had to form a new bond. But I wouldn't, not now.

It had been his words though, looking up and hiding the scroll from view, could see the dangerous glint, a challenging stare in his eye. It was the look reserved for knowledge of future satisfaction; likely someone would die soon.

"Leader wants us back, has plans." I nodded. There was that surface ice again; and I knew why I had it too. Off mission we were less of ourselves, less worried about living to see another day. We didn't have an objection; sufferers of our own boredom. Now there was a goal, and we were reminded of our names under shinobi. Reminded that we were only tools who took lives…

Itachi found more enjoyment in it that I did, but that doesn't mean I didn't. If it was a child, I would think of the pain I was saving them, the lesson to their parents. A shinobi, I was finally ending their mission; they should be grateful to have me as their killer. I was far more merciful and honorable than Itachi, my gift of deaths less humiliating my tally of defeats less impressive. I hadn't lost until I had gone heads up against Itachi.

Us leaving today would mean I wouldn't have to meet the new Red Op. Sasuke, that is. I didn't want to meet with him when I knew so easily the pain that was asking for. I remembered so vividly the days Naruto and Sasuke and I were part of Team Seven, a squad of young ninja's just barely old enough to tolerate the work and responsibility. As a result we grew up too fast.

No, Sasuke was already tired and jaded beyond his years when our team was formed. Naruto ignored the fact he should be growing up and I clung to the only childhood memory I had; Sasuke.

I didn't want to grow up like that but I had chosen it. Sasuke was the one I had clung to to keep that childhood in place. Keep the memories. I remember my parents telling me about one day I would fall in love with a boy and that he would love me to, and we'd get married and start a family. I was really young; in spirit and body, and Sasuke was never mean to me then, so I came to the conclusion that I would marry him one day. Sasuke connected me to my best friend, if anything, solidified our friendship for the years we would spend apart.

And the crush, the jealous-fangirl mixed with admiration, the most fake and t pitiful part and the one I clung to the most.

But I did grow up, despite my protests and hopes and efforts, I very much grew up, I did develop feelings of Sasuke, but it was different now. I still wanted to be an angel; his angel. But when I was young I wanted to be his angel of happiness, one who could make him smile because he seemed so sad inside. When I came to know him, I wanted to be his angel again, I wanted to support him and protect him, more like a guardian angel. Because being Sasuke looked so hard, I never realized that it might actually be hard to be Naruto, I never realized that until much later, and in a small but easily dismissed regret, I wish I had known.

And now, now that he had returned to this place where we used to be so innocent, all with blood and tears streaking our hands. I still wanted to be an angel, their angel. Save them from myself.

Deidara had called it; one fucked up angel.

"Red," Itachi's voice broke my reverie, his nickname for me right now not anything too offensive, he had a way of commanding respect well enough you didn't feel slighted by his names and still knew that he thought you were less than him.

Maybe people would have read Itachi's file and said he was antisocial. He was cold, but he was social, he understood every complex tone people used, knew when to speak up and when to stay silent. He commanded power, but he wasn't faulted in his ambition.

He knew what he wanted and he figured out the best way how to get it.

I stood up and tracked his voice easily, up the stairs to the main bedroom of the Uchiha house. Itachi was seated sullenly in the frame of the large window; peering out dismally at the street as if he hadn't destroyed this entire family, his entire family. He looked proud, and worse, he looked like he belonged. I noticed that it was raining, so light it barely mad a sound. It seemed symbolic, it was saddening. I noticed rather than felt that it should be sad.

I was too old to believe it was the heavens crying, too jaded. But maybe this one time, I could imagine it washing the red from my name. No, I was to dirty for the rain to wash it away.

He stood up and I knew he wanted to leave. There was something fluid about his motions.

I followed obediently as we fled back to the Akatsuki, there was calm in his step that hadn't been here before, I believed he may have found something to steal the kyuubi with.

As much as it frightened me, it excited me; I knew that soon, soon this would be over. I had a choice to make, and I was making it. I thought I had lost my heart when Sasuke walked away. But I didn't, it may be black and twisted, but I had seen things, I had seen what happened when the demon is removed.

There were two problems now; I considered as both me and Itachi bypassed ANBU routes on our way out of here. I wanted to get Naruto out alive and I wanted to stop the power from getting to the akatsuki.

It sounded so noble even if my reasons were anything but.

No, it wasn't noble to hold a grudge against your old friend… to want to make him suffer and live through it, to watch as his world changes and crumbles like mine did. I said I'd save his life, but I didn't say how. And the spirit inside Naruto? I wanted it dead. I needed something to blame.

As much as I wanted to blame the Red Ops, I couldn't. Even Tsunade had never encouraged this, Naruto was the most innocent and Kakashi, I suppose, didn't know what to do.

"Keep up." A warning came from a few meters ahead; I increased my pace and calmed my irrational mind.

The Red Ops. It still kept coming back to them, but there was only one reason why the Red Ops had come into their active, elite, secret existence. That reason was running gracefully in front of me.

The first Red Op, before the post had a title or a rank, he did the dirty work. Some reports say it got to him, how his family celebrated him as he tried to wash the blood from his hands, I understood that speculation. I was empathetic. Other speculations say it was his best friend, want for power, annoyance, and even suffering with his own boredom. Even as they grew less likely and less likely the question was never really examined. I had come to the conclusion that it was part of a series of events so horrible that nobody even wanted to ask the question.

When Itachi did go rogue, the response was a secret elite ANBU squad of nine variously useful talents and jutsu. They never came back alive.

It was not history that was to be known, it was a piece of information that could sew fear into the harshest, most resilient animal. I only knew because I was initiated into the unit named in their honor. Always functioning with less than nine members, we were masters and slaves to and of the craft. It stole our lives as we ruled its world quietly from the top.

They weren't Black Ops, found quickly so the bodies could retain village secrets. Black ops would have been less organized…. in the most disturbing way.

The bodies were dragged into the center of a battle-force created jutsu. Itachi was patient though, and probably still had his subtle drama.

When the sun hit them and the bodies were found, they notice. Gently painted over everyone's eyes was red… blood.

Within months of cover ups and failing to completely isolate the case a new type of squad was brought up by the Hokage.

A unit in honor of the nine blooded shinobi. Standing before the Hokages' desk it is unknown if their were four or nine.

All that was certain was that unless you got up and turned your back on the offer, your life expectancy had shortened drastically.

I wondered if I still fit in that category.