This chapter primarily focuses on Sasuke's past and present, which is central to this story as it will also become crucial for Sakura if she is to try and understand him now.

Be warned there is gore present. I usually like the unexpected, but not everyone shares that.

Chapter Four

Memoirs of a Troubled Soul

He ran as fast as his legs could carry him. Konoha wasn't a large town; it was pretty safe, but now that the sun was going down - boy, was he going to get it. He wished he didn't stay so late after school, but he wanted nothing more than to perfect himself with every opportunity he had. His mother kept insisting that he not push himself because he was different from his older brother, but his father wanted nothing but the best. Just like he asked so much from Itachi...

"M-Mom? Dad?"

The small boy tiptoed into the house, gulping with fear when he saw the lights were all off from outside the windows. His bookbag felt heavy against his back, and he shrugged it off, dropping it by the door as he did to his shoes. A terrible feeling came over him. It was too early for his parents to be in bed...

The room was still dark, but it wasn't long before he found himself slip-sliding on the marble floor of the foyer onto all fours. He flinched when his joints erupted with a little numbing pain. Then he smelled something salty from the wetness he slipped on. Why didn't he think to turn the light on when he first came in...?

As if someone read his mind, the lights were on in a flash. A chilling voice penetrated the rigid air. "You didn't think to just turn it on when you had the chance. You were just paralyzed with fear." The person scoffed. "Foolish Sasuke, I almost pity you."

The person who spoke - it was his big brother, Itachi. But the sight of him...covered in splatters of blood across his face, a thick butcher knife in hand...those cold, depthless eyes and lack of emotion. Now the young boy's traveled down and saw the source of what made him slip. The fluid was dark red, but on his hands, it was bright red like the roses that his mother planted in the garden.

Blood.

And it trailed back to the bodies of his parents. Horrified, he saw their throats had been slashed. "MOM! DAD!" he wailed, staying where he was. And the weapon present in his own brother's hand - Itachi had killed them. He took them away... "Why? Why did you do this, Itachi? Big brother..."

"...it is of great importance."

The child lifted his head from the stinking liquid that was both their parents' mixed, disbelieving at the unfeeling way he said that. What did...what did he mean? That creature, that calloused monster standing there, was NOT Itachi, his big brother who loved him and protected him, said he would always be there for him - "even if I am a wall for you to climb over. Even if you do hate me." Was all that a lie then...?

The sound of a boot clicked on the floor which wasn't stained with Mikoto and Fugaku's blood. "You would never understand - a pathetic child like yourself. Protected from the world around you. I did you a favor, foolish little brother," Itachi sneered, hovering over him and making him shed tears.

Pathetic.

Foolish.

He found himself unable to move, too paralyzed with fear and succumbing to it...

~o~

Sometimes Sasuke used to dream about that night. It was horrendous when he was still a child, and it worsened when he hit his teen years when his body underwent more changes than he could recall. It did nothing to help his morbid mental state, either.

Why would anyone try to understand his pain? Why would they pretend to when they had NO idea? Even if those psychiatrists said they knew, it was all a ruse to get him and others to open up. For all he knew, they just did their jobs for their pockets to be filled, and he long ago stopped trusting anyone - except Kabuto, when he felt like it.

He remembered still going to school because Kabuto's parents - who had been out of town with their son for their day off - persisted, stating that his parents would have wanted him to continue his future and that they would have been proud of him. And someday, he would get to run his father's consulting business. But at that time, little to Sasuke Uchiha mattered anymore.

As far as he was concerned, his life was over because of Itachi.

He was thirteen, maybe fourteen when he started to get into fights at school, and his legal guardians were by the time fed up with his attitude and insist that he see someone. The school counselor hadn't done jack; what did she know, hn? That was the start of many "shrinks" he was placed in front of. When he had just turned sixteen a few summers later, his limits were pushed over the edge besides slipping out at night for hard partying and a fake ID - given with help from a "friend" - and resorted to drinking, even sneaking sake at the mansion, and finally the one thing that he chose to do at home.

Sasuke took a razor to both his wrists in his bathroom. He wanted nothing more than to die, to see his parents again, or to just hope there was eternal darkness in which he knew no more. His efforts failed when Kabuto's father broke down the door after repeated slams, smashing the wood in half and finding a completely nude Sasuke who had not finished his bath, feeling now was a good time to die...

...only to wake up in a hospital room, tied down in watch, and visited by a shrink. He'd tried to escape one prison - life - only to end up in another, which would eventually be a padded cell for a year to come.

Begrudgingly, Sasuke was forced to accept the medications they prescribed him, give up his drinking habits, and see that his life wasn't over. He had more to live for. If he gave into his despair, he was letting Itachi win. That was the final trigger to making him decide that he would pull himself together and make his path.

Itachi still hadn't been found all these years, but for some reason, Sasuke was no longer afraid. But he swore that if he did see big brother dearest again, he would be all too ready for him.

Besides his prescriptions, he had to think about healthy, productive exercises like sports and yoga. He found his interest in basketball since he used to be on the team in middle school before he hit rock bottom. Now he played the sport alone at home.

Nobody ever tried to befriend him besides Kabuto. He never cared, either. He only wanted people to work with and FOR him, that was all. When he got out of the asylum a year before graduating high school, he got word that he was expelled from school for his behavior, but he was allowed a tutor to help him get into a two-year college so he could learn what he needed; he ended up going to the local community, before being placed right ahead into the seat that was his late father's. He was "welcomed" with acclaim simply because he was Fugaku's youngest son when Itachi disgraced them all.

"His elder brother showed promise, but he threw it all back in our faces. Let's see if this other brat of Fugaku's will be any better. I heard he got into so much trouble since that night..."

In other words, they thought him insane and unfit, but he would show them wrong, by any means necessary.

As far as he was concerned, he earned his place the way it was now, and to get there, he had to step on several. Karin had been one of the latest, and now Sakura, the daughter of the repairman who wrecked something that was among all he had left...but here she was now firing back at him while tolerating him better, unlike Karin.

Kabuto was the only one to ever talk to him the way she did, but she'd struck him unlike the silver-hair, and after she'd left that day when finished packing his bag, Sasuke found himself confronted. "I should have just fired her," he muttered over dinner. "Why was I so weak and speechless?"

"Well, if you ask me, you deserved it."

He blinked. He could hardly believe what he just heard. I deserved it? "Excuse me?" he demanded, glaring up at the man from the steak sprinkled with soy sauce. Kabuto turned away from the sink full of dishes and sniffed.

"Yes, you heard me right. She said she loved that book, and yet you reacted as usual; you never bothered thinking to tell her that it was your mother's. I'd say she would have been happy to know that. But no," he drawled, making the Uchiha's lip curl. He was treading fire now. "That was your first time getting smacked by a girl."

"...I ought to fire you with her then," Sasuke growled, but that didn't scare Kabuto.

"Go ahead then, Master," he said sarcastically, wiping his hands with the towel. "Because who will be here to take care of you without me and Sakura?"

"I can manage hiring someone else."

Kabuto raised an eyebrow, smirking. "Highly doubtful they would last that long. One day you'll be tired of hiring and firing, and when you hit middle age, you'll look back and see how lonely and miserable you made yourself. And no, your dear big brother isn't the only one to blame. You chose to shut everyone out, me included. But I did only so much for you." He turned his back to Sasuke then. "Keep it up, Sasuke Uchiha."

Sasuke couldn't stop thinking about those words just as much as he couldn't stop thinking about Sakura and her "advice": you don't know my reasons or me. Stop being so disrespectful.

For the first time, he found himself looking back on his life and the faces of those he put down. All by his hand. But then he closed his mind to it to focus on the meeting with Hyuuga to renew the mistake that had been made by Karin.

~o~

Sakura spent her day away from the mansion doing all her research on the Uchiha business, which dealt with both forms of consultancy, providing expert advice on security, accountancy, the law, human behavior, education, and so on. Both internal and external existed within the Uchiha Agency, which made her almost disbelieve that he had tackled such responsibilities at a young age, after everything he'd been through. Sasuke Uchiha had been the leading consultant since age nineteen.

My God...and he had me doing his littlest needs like a maid instead of a real assistant over the biggest things he does.

When she came a couple of days after he returned from that day-long meeting, she didn't see him at first, only to peek out his office window and see that he was wearing a heavy black coat and roaming the snow-covered gardens again. Besides that one time she saw him on the basketball court, there wasn't much for him to do that required another person. Who could even stand living like this for as long as he had?

She sat down at his desk and found her interest in the paper book which was filled with assorted law details regarding healthcare coverage for those applying for this new year. Since he was going to be out there for who knew how long, she took this risky chance to show him she was capable. The health field wasn't something she could not handle.

Sakura took it to the kitchen since the office wasn't perfect, and there was just too much of him to smother. By this time, Kabuto was unloading some groceries he brought back. Then his gaze fell on the pamphlet in her hand, and a little worried expression appeared before it was gone in a second as if he had an idea what she was going to do. Sakura gave him a reassuring smile.

It wasn't long before she was halfway through when she heard his footsteps. And just as always, he asked her what she was doing - and with something from his office he'd worked on himself. "Welcome back," Kabuto told him, but Uchiha ignored him and demanded an answer from her.

"Reading," she answered simply, not looking at him. And then she had to mention there was a little typo on page four, but that made him snatch it from her.

"What gives you the right to look at this without my permission?!"

She whirled around. "Uchiha-san -!" And just like Kabuto to the rescue.

"Calm. Down." His slow space between words was a hinted warning. Sasuke did do that, but he wasn't finished with her. "And Sakura, call him Sasuke." She was startled a little that he had the bold move to say she call him by his first name when HE was supposed to make that choice.

"Sasuke," she started, slowly, and she admitted it was a nice change, but that was as far as she was going, "I'm sorry for reading without your permission. But it's my job."

"Your job," he ground out, waving the papers in her face, "is to do what I tell you."

Sakura gritted her teeth. "Sasuke, despite what you believe, I can think for myself." Kabuto winked at her, but she wouldn't give him acknowledgment. "If you want a decent assistant, then let me do something for you besides running errands."

He stared at her for a second, gobsmacked, before he got it back together to demand, "You think you know about what I do." She smirked at him.

"I know I'm beginning to. I've done some research while you were away, as a start. You, for one, help companies identify problems so they are more profitable. For example, you think this one company is far understaffed..." He exploded, slamming the papers on the counter beside her.

"I don't have time for this." He turned and stalked out of the kitchen. Oh, she wasn't going to let him get away with this. She picked up the pamphlet and followed him.

"Look, you might as well let me do something more useful. You only have so many shirts I can take to the cleaners."

He snorted. "I can buy more." And have so many you don't even wear, probably, because you don't trust me. Is this how it was with your last assistant?

"What do you have to lose?" Sakura shouted. "I can still do all these menial things; just give me a damned chance to show you what I CAN do."

He bristled. "You've been here for barely even a couple of weeks. You think I would trust you with anything -?"

"IF YOU WANT A REAL ASSISTANT, THEN YES!" For the life of her, Sakura couldn't recall a day or a time she raised her voice this much at someone - even at the man everyone said was a beast, including her father. Her heart was beating so much with frustration and relief that she got this out, but for a second they stared hard at each other before he turned to pick something up from his desk. To her delight, they were more booklets.

"Fine. If you love to read, then look through these if you want so much to understand what you're REALLY dealing with. And when you do understand...then we'll talk." He said no more and left her standing there, holding her next line of exhaustive work.

Score time. Sakura Haruno: victor, so far. Sasuke Uchiha: zip.

When he was gone, she cracked a grin of triumph.

For the rest of the day, she spent reading through the books, finding typos here and there, correcting a phrase, and so on. And they just kept coming in. She continued to smile at him when he would give her a new one, but he said nothing. That meant she got him good.

However, she found herself troubled when she realized she had yet to speak to Kabuto about his boss. With today now, enough was enough. Two more booklets to go, she chose to take a break and seek out the silver-haired young man, whom she found was in a back room which looked like a mini staff room for him personally. He was busy at what looked like a woman's sewing machine. "I hear you've been keeping busy," he noted, looking up at her with a smile. She returned it before asking of the device. "It was my mother's. She never had a daughter, and taught me how to." He chuckled nervously. "It's silly that a male could learn how to use it. But when she died, I felt I had to keep it alive for her, because it's one little reminder of the past that keeps me and...Sasuke in check."

She understood what that was like, all too well. When Mebuki died, she and Kizashi kept several things of her besides her many cookbooks. "You know something else?" Kabuto asked, putting down whatever that garment was in his lap, and turning to look at her. The light reflected off his glasses. "Things have been...a little different since you came here. He's always been one to shout because it's all he's known, but you're the only other to stand up to him...and still survive." Sakura found herself sitting atop the counter beside the machine, a little higher than him now.

"If it's not wrong of me, Kabuto," she started carefully, "why is Sasuke the way he is?"

His face fell. "...I'm sure you've heard the rumors." She nodded. And now that he said it, she wasn't sure if half of them were true. If anyone knew the reality, it was Kabuto. "As you know, when he was eight years old, Sasuke came home late and found his parents brutally murdered, lying in their own blood, and his older brother was standing over the corpses. But Itachi fled before he could be arrested and put on trial. Itachi was the shining star of the family, as it is with older brothers and sisters in the oldest families even by today's standards." Kabuto leaned back, exhaling.

"My parents and I were gone when it happened. My uncle on Mom's side was seriously ill, as it was hereditary, so I wish I could give my two cents as to whether or not Itachi committed the crime before his little brother came. The murder weapon was missing from the scene, no fingerprints, and the only one to witness the aftermath was Sasuke; he gave the butcher's name, and even repeated the words he remembered Itachi said before he passed out from the overwhelming strain of knowing someone who loved and protected him all his life could do something like this."

"What did Itachi say?" Her heart had gotten colder with each grim detail revealed. Kabuto closed his eyes, voice deepening as if to Itachi Uchiha's liking.

"He'd said, quote, 'You would never understand - a pathetic child like yourself. Protected from the world around you. I did you a favor, foolish little brother.' Sasuke remembered word for word; he never wanted to forget that, like it was his only link to remembering that night. He was never the same afterward. When he became a teenager, Sasuke started to sneak out and go to parties, even getting in fights to take his pain into the open. He lost all meaning in life. In his mind, it was all over because the one he trusted most of all took it all away from him."

Sakura didn't realize she was crying until she was offered a tissue. Kabuto went on, "Yeah, he wasn't always the way he is now. He was a happy little child, and I was the only friend he had since he struggled with making them at school. But there was one he knew, before he moved away, leaving Sasuke alone. We were kind of like brothers, with Itachi with us, until that night, and it was me and him as well as my parents who were the only ones available to raise him. But even they had trouble keeping up with him, and one night when he was sixteen years old, my parents could take no more." His gaze darkened when he looked down at the floor. Sakura had a feeling about where this was going...

"This is where the suicide watch comes in, right?" she asked quietly.

Kabuto nodded numbly. "It was horrible. My mother didn't feel like cooking, so she ordered pizza for us all, but when she called him to say it was here, it took forever for us to realize that something was wrong. Dad busted down the bathroom door that was Sasuke's...and we found him in the bathtub, filled with his own blood, and with a razor taken to both wrists. He almost died had I not called the ambulance myself."

So...it's all true. "Sasuke was admitted and placed on watch," Kabuto said, swallowing a hiccup as it must have been a long time since he shed a tear. "He was prescribed, saw many, and he was so bitter and resentful, accusing them all of not understanding him - me included, but it wasn't long before I also lost my parents, by the time he was later released and was given tutorials to get his life back together if he wanted to carry on his father's legacy which his brother almost destroyed. But in the eyes of his business partners and the board, he was already a failure no matter what he did." Kabuto stifled a snort. "Financially, he's fine as you can see, but in terms of his business partners and his lack of social life - he's pretty much an outcast in their eyes. And the stories still told about him only make matters worse for Sasuke," he finished, putting both hands in his lap over the colorful knit which might as well be a scarf.

In his mind, she repeated in her mind, Sasuke's hopes and dreams were over because his parents were taken from him, and his brother betrayed him, but those messes as a younger man than he was now were all on himself. Look at him now. "Has he ever had another drink besides as a minor? I never saw him have one once since I got here," Sakura said.

Kabuto snickered. "No, he hadn't had a drink in three, four years. He's not long past legal age, but he hasn't shown signs of starting again anytime soon. Plus with the consulting firm, it keeps him busy." Busy and alone.

That left one more question she wanted to be answered. "But how does that explain why he is so...mean?" She shared a giggle with him.

"Everyone just takes hard times differently, Sakura. He still blames Itachi, and those rumors don't help either."

No, I suppose not. Sakura then looked up at the clock and realized half an hour passed. She had more work to do. "I should go. Thank you for talking with me."

However, she found herself wondering what she realized she forgot to ask: Did Itachi say why he killed his own parents? There is more to this than we know...

Man, isn't it tiring or what, putting up with the overtly angry Uchiha or what? (whew) But at least Kabuto is there to serve as the medium, as long as it's still between the "couple". XD

By the time I was done today with this, I was in tears. I mean, we do feel for Sasuke, but both here as in canon, it doesn't excuse how he treated people. And he just needs someone to push him in the right direction. People like that exist in real life.