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For some reason, Fanfiction deleted ch. 20 and 21, so if you've read these then you don't need to read them again!
However if this is your first time, please enjoy! And as always, please please PLEASE review! It's the only way I know how to improve my story!
Enjoy!
Out of all the collaborations I've ever had, this is by far the most...intense.
Both of us were spitting blood, our lips busted and our noses not broken but definitely in pain. To say frustration was a part of it was an understatement.
He was yelling at me in a language I couldn't understand, myself doing the same to him and both of us just getting upset at this miscommunication. So yes, punches flew. We were currently taking our lunch break, Kisame forcing us into different rooms and ordering my lunch. Thank god at least someone spoke English.
It wasn't until I sighed and sat against the wall, letting my muscles rest, that I felt how sore I really was. I had been pushing myself so far before and then there was the effects of jet lag and god damn my shoulder hurt. I rubbed it, my mind finally letting everything really process.
I was in a foreign country, whose language I couldn't not speak, with no place to sleep, no contacts other than UDA, and now there was this issue dealing with my...twin. If only Sasuke were here to-
Sasuke.
I had left my home, my own family, and Sasuke.
I gripped my shoulder, whimpering at the immense amount of pain it brought me. I knew that burn, and I knew it could only be from our Mark.
Tch, my Mark. Not his.
Kisame's assistant, I think her name was Karin, came in a few moments after and simply dropping my food in my lap and storming out afterwards.
Was everyone here so odd?
I ate in silence, the thoughts in my mind filling my ears.
Why? Why would Sasuke just...not mention something like that to me? It's not exactly something you don't forget to mention. He knew the whole time! As I was telling him about my panic attacks, my struggles...all through it, the bastard knew who my family's killer was! Why couldn't he just tell me? He sure as hell thought Gaara was good enough to be told. He didn't even know the guy, he didn't like him at all!
Why couldn't he just stayed away from me? If he knew the truth the entire time, why not stay away from me and let me live my life in peace? Oh right, we were 'born-to-be soulmates' or whatever the hell that stupid Mark implied. I'd rather die happy than die like I hated my life. And right now, I hated about eighty-percent of it.
I sighed, throwing my half-eaten apple at the wall and into the trash bin. I wasn't hungry anyway. A second after Menma came into the room, a smirk on his face and an insult most likely spewing from him.
I growled and threw one back, both of us chuckling at the childishness of the whole charade. I cleared my throat and stood, forcing the negative thoughts out of my mind and dancing into it.
"Great work guys, good job the two of." Menma and I were both panting, attempting to catch our breaths and wiping the sweat off our brows. We were so alike in thought that after we selected music, even if we had to go through numerous amounts of bickering to get there, our bodies just matched one another's rhythm so perfectly. It was like we knew what one another was thinking without actually saying anything, well, since we couldn't. Kisame brought us back to focus once we could breathe a little easier. "I want to see you here at nine tomorrow morning. Be here early tomorrow, Menma; you wouldn't want your new partner to get a head start, now would you?"
He must've said something to grab the brunette's attention because he frowned and pouted his lips. Kisame went on about telling him and I a few more things, the detail of having to re-tell it twice in two different languages obviously annoying him. Eventually he sighed and murmured under his breath. "Naruto, where are you staying tonight? Gozisan?"
Gozi...what?
Seeing my confusion he raised a brow. "Do you even have a place to stay?" I scratched the back of my head, my cheeks tinting red as I shook my head. Menma smirked behind him and said something in a smug tone, Kisame responding lazily in Japanese, which I applauded myself for understanding as 'Shut up.' Menma frowned and snickered, turning his head the other way and letting his boss continue. "Well, I suppose since you are here on business and all I have to provide you a place to stay, and any place you can get at his hour of the day isn't exactly the best to secure your life. You'll go home with Menma tonight; I'm sure he can accommodate."
...What.
As I processed what he said my jaw dropped, no words forming coherently or sounding correctly. Menma, seeing my reaction began asking Kisame what he had said, worrying about what his own fate might be. Kisame recited the same to him in his native tongue, Menma's jaw dropping as well and steam almost visibly fuming from his brain.
He stammered and almost choked as he attempted to get his way out of the situation. Kisame merely quieted him and showed him, as well as myself, the way out. We both groaned and simply complied.
The walk to the subway station was quiet, as was the ride and pretty much any ride on the subways, and the rest of the walk to his house was also silent except for our footsteps. He put in the keys and jiggled until it opened, his house obviously not as new as others in the area, and when it opened we both took off our shoes and proceeded into the kitchen. He turned the light on and opened his fridge, frowning when nothing seemed to satisfy him. I leaned against one of his cabinets, a growl emitting from him as he pushed me to the side and opened said space, pulling out three cups of instant noodles and placing, more like throwing, them onto the counter. "Hey!"
He looked at me almost annoyingly and merely waved his hand at my complaints. He began making him "meal" and ignored me. I frowned and cursed under my breath, heading over to the fridge and finding things to eat on my own.
"Oi, that's my fridge!" Menma put his cups down next to the sink and slammed the door to the fridge close, attempting to grab the stuff in my arms but failing. I smirked.
Let the games begin.
"You can sleep on the floor." I blinked, Menma's face still. I sighed, not understanding a word of what he said. He began talking to me in his language, eventually sighed in frustration that I wasn't getting it and grabbed his phone. He typed in some things and hit a button, the English translation sounding out to me. I merely nodded before frowning.
"What!" He smirked at my outburst, getting up from the couch and beginning to go to his room. I quickly pulled my phone out and typed in my message, translating it for him and playing it aloud. "Like hell I'm sleeping on the dirty, hot floor!" He turned around and held eye contact with me for the longest time before finally, he clicked his tongue and merely keep walking. I threw a random pencil at him, which caused his to grow and the insults to begin to spew.
"Bastard!"
"Asshole!"
"Scardey-cat!"
"Loner!"
We had no idea what we were saying to each other; just that it was mean. We got closer to one another in the process until we made contact, hands flying and nothing to stop our hits. He got a good punch in, my lips splitting and spilling blood, my knuckles giving him a nice bruise on his cheek. We took a minute to assess our damages before going at it again, scratching each other up more.
Eventually we both retreated back to our own spots, catching our breaths and glaring at one another. I felt blood dribble down my nose and I raised my hand to it, touching it and frowning. A minute later I felt something fall in my lap.
"Napkin." Menma threw a couple napkins into my lap and turned away after saying it in his language.
I replied in my own. "Napkin." He looked at me, both of us mentally marking that in our heads.
He came back out with a futon, almost pushing me out of the way before placing it and some pillows and blankets down. He left without another word.
That's the best apology I'll get.
"You perform in two days! Two days! Get your act together!" Kisame yelled in frustration, Menma and I still feuding over the simplest things. It wasn't like we didn't establish the obvious skill of one another, or the fact that this was our job and potential paycheck on the line; we knew our boundaries. The issue lay with the language barriers in addition to living accommodations and our senses of pride. We both sighed and started back at the top of our show, sweat dripping onto the floor at our movements.
Eventually we called it quits, taking a good five minutes before heading home. Kisame was too lazy to get me a room anywhere else, so I had just been staying at Menma's for the past two weeks. In those two weeks I'm proud to say that I have not once cried or thought of the drama at home, and I have come to almost been able to hold a simple, very simple, conversation by myself with a native, the natives being UDA and Menma. We've only fought each other once since then as well.
Overall, it's been pretty great.
Our routine went about as normally; taking the trains to his house, fighting over who would take the first shower, attempting at conversations while fighting over food, kicking each other off of the bed until someone one, sleep, repeat. The mornings went about a fast breakfast sometime between the train ride to UDA and simply straight into practice. Things went as normal until I arrived, Karin calling me into a conference room. Menma followed as well, curious, but was rejected at the door.
"Just Naruto, please." I gulped.
Karin did not actually go inside, but as soon as the door shut almost a little too quickly behind me I braced myself for some sort of impact. A smooth baritone cut through the room.
"Hello, Naruto." He drew out the syllables of my name slowly as he walked towards me, his tall, lean figure swallowing me in it's shadows. I refused to make eye-contact, simply stepping back until I couldn't anymore. He hovered over me, taking a deep breath as he held suspense over me. "It's been a little while since I've last seen you, huh?" I stayed silent, stayed still, just waiting for him to cut to the chase. He frowned when I didn't seem to cooperate according to his plans. "Why are you here?"
I didn't respond, and he cleared his throat and adjusted his tie, stepping back just enough so he could meet my eyes and stare me down, asking once more with pressing pressure. "What are you doing here, and so suddenly too?" He ran a finger down my cheek, over my neck, against my pulse. "You know my baby brother has been driving himself insane over you, talking about how a worthless," Ba-bum. "Unfaithful," Ba-bum, ba-bum. "American like you could've somehow mistakenly been placed as his mate." Ba-bum. He chuckled, obviously feeling how hard my heart was beating with every insult he spewed. "But of course those are just his words, never mine."
He stepped back quickly, almost impossibly quick for any normal human being, and walked around the room as he spoke. My body physically fell, the tension I didn't know I was holding releasing. "How are you? There must've been a reason you so quickly left. Did Sasuke actually do anything to hurt you? You know I told you to let me know if that were the case...preferably before you left the country." I gulped, still averting his gaze and avoiding using any words. He sighed almost angrily. "Might I say under the 'orders of Itachi Uchiha'. Now Naruto, you must know I'm here for a reason. I always am, after all; I'm a business man, I do not do what I do not gain from. As greedy as it is that is the income-based society everyone lives in now-a-days, and I am not a mere pawn. I move the pawns to secure my win, and whether or not you like it, you're a pawn. Sasuke is a pawn. He may be the king, maybe even the queen, but not the player. You are not even a king, or a horseman; you, Uzumaki Naruto, are a simple, round pawn on the front-line, easy and readily available should there be any indifference or… instances." I shivered. "My point is that we can play this game without any casualties," He stretched the word, almost as if he was loading his gun. "Or you can just play along." Now, he had the weapon placed against my temple, ready to shoot at any moment.
Sasuke had always seemed to carry a hatred for his older brother, almost to the point where I thought he was covering his fear, and I never understood why. However, in this moment, I understood exactly what Sasuke had felt; a fear so intense you could barely move, barely speak. There was just one problem with that and Sasuke's image, and that was that he fought back. Even through his fear, Sasuke would not stand for anything but his way, something I really admired at this point in time.
Sasuke... What were you doing now? Have you really been thinking those things about me?
A sudden sorrow filled me at the thoughts. Itachi soon brought me back to the tense reality at hand and I scrambled to find proper words. "Um, what did you need, Itachi?"
He scoffed with a simple grin on his face; pleasure, satisfaction. He knew he had won. Hell, he probably never lost. "Why did you leave?"
My body automatically stiffened, an anger and sadness washing over me that I had been holding back for so long that it almost overwhelmed me. He could tell it was a touchy subject, and mentally, I knew he had been screaming victory. "I just needed to get away."
"But why?" He responded too quickly, almost as if he knew what I was going to say.
"I, uh, discovered things that I shouldn't have and-" He cut me off.
"Like what?" I sighed, running my hands through my hair. He didn't almost know what I was going to say; he knew.
"If you already know what I'm going to say why ask it, Itachi?"
"Do you want my honesty or my reality?" He smirked as we held eye-contact for a few seconds. I knew my answer, and he knew I could read it just as well as he'd wanted me too.
For my own pleasure, is all. It's only real and fun if I can get you to say it yourself.
"What would you say if I offered you everything you could want? Right now." My eyes widened dramatically, returning to his gaze and maintaining it to detect for any fallacies. I couldn't find any.
"What do you…"
"I mean, you love it here, right? You get to dance for your career here, paid, away from your lying uncle and boyfr-...ex-boyfriend, and with a partner that strangely matches you in every way you never thought possible." I nodded, my heart fluttering dangerously close to nails already getting ready to strike. "What if I offered you what you had in America, just here? A paid penthouse, in Tokyo mind you, close to work and away from everything?" My heart stopped, everything stopped.
A life, here, away from everything I had ever known?
I thought to my life in America; the happy Sakura, my down-fall, the dance studio, UDA, Kakashi, Jiraya, Sasuke. There was so much there that I just couldn't even compare to Japan. I thought to why I fled, specifically to Japan, and realized one thing; I hadn't even attempted to get any more information on the death of my parents since arriving here, the one thing I wanted to do. Was this something I could really manage?
Then, my mind wandered to Menma.
He was flawless, just as I was, when we danced together. The hype over our extreme similarities had spread like a wild-fire over Japan and had managed to get us a giant gig. We worked so effortlessly together, so in sync, I really do wonder how we aren't related. Who knows anymore, we might be. That would be something to research here as well.
I kept thinking, but Itachi looked around and broke the heavy silence. "What are your thoughts?"
I exhaled deeply. "I...wow. I just, I don't know. Maybe if I could just-"
"You see, this offer is only now. These couple more minutes we have, that's all you're getting from me. I don't favor waiting." I scoffed, almost chuckling out of nervousness.
"If I say yes, what are you getting out of it?" He seemed to actually think about that for a second before looking back at me and smirking that damn smirk the Uchihas seemed famous for.
"You are a pawn, Naruto, and I am the player; that is for me to know and you not to care about."
"I…"
So a little cliff hanger for ya guys huh?
Thanks for reading and please stay tuned!