Hey guys!

It's been a while, hasn't it? Sorry to keep you waiting.

Now I wanted to add a little footnote here, in the last chapter I had a comment by a viewer (yes I do actively read each one!) that stood out to me.

Not for bad reasons, but for good ones.

They said that Sakura was too cold, and while she is, I want to say everything, every word spoken and every little thing I put in the story has a very specific purpose. And while it might not be explained in one chapter, it will likely be explained in another.

Have patience my dears.

Now, on to the next chapter of Break Me! As always please leave me your thoughts and comments in the reviews, I take great pride in hearing that you all love my stories.

Much Love,

BlackRose999

Break Me

Chapter Four: … It Pours

Kakashi was waiting for us when we pulled up. His eyes were furious and his body was tense. Surprisingly, his team was behind him. I'd only met them once when I was a teenager just beginning his crueler regiment of exercises. I tried to remember their names.

I remembered Konan, the only woman on his team. Her pierced partner, Pein, stood beside her. I think Kakashi's partner, Itachi leaned against the door with his always-annoyed red eyes.

I couldn't remember the name of the blond man beside them.

Kakashi hurried down the steps and stalked toward me as I stepped out of the car. "Sakura." I chose to ignore him. I walked with the unconscious men in the arms of my team, and for once, my father figure didn't press the issue. Konan stepped forward and directed the men to the right-wing of the manor, where her makeshift hospital is. She was the medic of their team and a damn good one.

Pein noticed the harsh way my guards were carrying Sasuke and promptly took over command of him, taking him to one of the secure rooms in our basement. I bit back a smirk, it seems those 'unnecessary' rooms I'd commissioned a year or so ago were now necessary.

Finally, I turned toward Kakashi.

"Sakura… What the hell is going on?" I sighed and delivered the news. "I left the Organization. I'm considered a rogue. So is Gaara." He looked at me stunned, horrified, and suspicious. "Did he force you-" "Gaara has never forced me to do anything! You are so quick to hate who the Organization made him become that you refuse to see the real person behind the mask!"

Kakashi growled and gripped my shoulders, shaking me like I needed common sense knocked back into me. "He's a murderer Sakura!" I shoved him off me, screaming at him "SO ARE YOU! SO AM I! Everyone we know in this fucking world is a goddamn murderer and I still find reasons to love them!"

I had never raised my voice like this at him, I respected him, and I valued his approval and opinion above everyone but Gaara, but I would not tolerate this. Gaara couldn't defend himself right now. So I decided for once, while I had the chance, I would defend him. "You love Kaze, despite everything he's done, you love him. He used to torture animals remember? And you defended him when they tried to send him to that institute. Why is accepting your grown daughter's choices so damn difficult for you?"

Rage flew over his face, and he walked away from me and toward the house. The blond man, Deidara I suddenly remembered, sighed and walked over. "Don't be too angry, yeah? He was really worried about you. Thought you were dying or really hurt cause you've never used that ring before. It's just stress, yeah?" I nodded and quietly told him that they were welcome to the three guest rooms in the manor, and when he asked where they would put Gaara I smiled and reminded him that he would be fine with me.

I made my way toward Konan's hospital, stopping outside the door. For some reason, pain filled me. I was afraid. I didn't want to see the devastation Sasuke had brought upon his body, I didn't want to see his ragged breath and pale skin. But if he passed without me I would never be able to forgive myself. I steeled myself and opened the door.

The smell of bleach and antibiotics filled my nose, making the hairs in my nostrils burn. I winced and tried to resist the urge to turn around. Konan sat beside him, her hands delicately working the long-nosed tweezers into his bare chest, she pulled the bullet out just as I walked up to him. I wanted so badly to touch him, to feel his heartbeat beneath my fingers, but I was afraid if I did I'd make her lose her focus.

"It's alright Sakura. He's not ready to die just yet…" She smiles softly, her eyes glistening with unspoken memories. "He still has quite a lot of fight left in him." I walked forward slowly, trying not to run to him and feel his chest rise and fall with each breath. "I'm not sure how much I've figured out, so let me know when I've hit the mark." Her voice turned hard, and her hands picked up the needle and thread. "I'd say you two have been an item for… let's say two or three years if his scars are right. He's starting to become committed to you, his tattoo says that much, and the way his heartbeat calms now that your smell reaches his nose confirms that." Her hands looped the thread into a knot as she spoke, expertly sewing the incision she'd made closed.

"You, on the other hand, say so much more." She clipped the thread and reached for a sterile wipe. "He is everything to you, you follow his every move, to the point where you can't stand to be unable to smell or feel some part of him." She finished wiping the blood away and placed the blood-soaked wipes in a silver bowl, lighting it on fire and dropping the ashes into the trash can beside her. I gave her a curious look. "If it's burned they can't collect a DNA sample from the blood, making it impossible to identify the person who'd been bleeding." She explained dispassionately.

I stepped forward and felt my fingers trace the contour of his collarbone, my dark red nails gently caressing the oddly-soft flesh of his chest. "I bet you have something of his, a jacket or shirt maybe, something you can wear when you need to feel a part of him is with you." Her dark eyes flicked up and gauged my reaction carefully, I met her gaze with a calm indifference that had been drilled into me since I began training at ten.

Kakashi had personally trained me with the Organization's approval, he refused to let anyone else teach me to fight for fear they'd take it too far and hurt me worse than he would. He may not have been my birth father, but I was his daughter, and genetics didn't mean a fucking thing to him in that regard. I didn't like looking back on the many years he spent tirelessly working the harsh lessons of being an assassin required, even though he'd only wanted to teach me the basics of self-defense, once the Organization had realized he was training someone outside of their jurisdiction they quickly forced him to train me to a future tool for their use. If he'd said no… well, I think it's safe to say he wouldn't be around.

I hated that about the Organization, they trained us young, very young. They 'adopted' kids often, usually kids as young as five, and began grooming them to be hitmen. You'd think so many adoptions by the same place would be suspicious right? Well, you'd be wrong. The Organization has multiple branches all around the world, they have assassins from every language, nationality, sex, and race… Anything you think of they have and much more.

Because each Organization has different branches and leaders, nobody has made the connection that they are all the same entities… No… That's not right, no one living has. "Tell me Sakura… Do you truly love Gaara?" I looked at her, startled out of my thoughts by the obvious hostility in her tone.

Konan leveled me with her honey-colored eyes as she stood to her full height. She wasn't exactly tall, but something about her made her very intimidating. "The time will come when you have to decide between what you can do as a woman, and what you must do as a soldier." She washed her bloodied hands in the sink beside the door, scrubbing until even her fingers were spotless under her nails. "If faced with a choice that meant death for one, who would you save? Kakashi… Or Gaara?"

With that she turned and walked out, leaving me alone with that horrible realization of the fact that she was right. What did Gaara mean without the warmth of my family? What did I mean without the love of my life?

What have I done? I stared at the unconscious form of my lover, the pallor of his normally tanned skin, and his almost ragged breathing. Anger filled me, Sasuke had done this to him. Sasuke had caused this entire fiasco to happen, my failure of a mission, my disillusionment with Tsunade and the Organization, and the fracturing of my relationship with Kakashi… All of it. I stood and marched out the door toward the stairwell to the basement, stopping only when I reached the metal door that stood between me and the man I desperately wanted to slaughter.

"I know you're out there, I can hear your footsteps. Why don't you come in and have a little chat with me?" I opened the door, glaring at the bound form of Sasuke. He had a wild look in his eye, a manic grin that made my stomach churn with disgust. Seeing the look on my face he leaned forward with a dark sneer. "Aww… Is that red-headed fucker finally six feet under? Good. I've been hoping I'd be the one to kill that malicious egotistical-" He was silenced by my fist slamming into his temple. I wanted to hit him, again and again until he was nothing but a bloody mess lying lifeless on the concrete, but the rational side of my brain took control and that desire was quickly stomped out.

"You and I are going to have a little discussion… And if I like the result, you might survive until the morning. If not… it will be my greatest pleasure to beat you until you can't move before I slit your throat and watch you bleed out." Sasuke eyed me with an appraising gleam in his eye, seeming to determine how much of that threat I intended to dish out personally. He seemed to be annoyed that he couldn't read my stone-faced mask. "And what exactly do you want to discuss?" I smiled and leaned forward, looking him in the eye.

"I want to bring Tsunade to her knees and rip that entire Organization apart piece by piece… And you have a choice in this. You can either help me… Or I can do exactly what I promised I'd do a moment ago and just get rid of your disgusting existence… So, what's it gonna be?"