Chapter 65

"Don't 'tch' me," she said with a small smirk, "Leave anything more on the floor and you'll end up tripping on it—or I'll throw it at you."

Flumping down onto her futon she snuggled down amongst the blankets, rolling onto her side, her arms reflexively seizing one of the extra pillows. She had always been that way, ever since she was a child—she had always felt the need to hang onto something when she slept. As a kid, her favourite stuffed animal had been squeezed to death while Sakura slept, but now she usually clutched a pillow.

"Just so you know," she said to Sasuke after a quiet minute, "I hardly move in my sleep, just so you don't think I'm dead or anything."

"I know you don't move around a lot in your sleep," he replied quietly, "Sometimes on our genin missions Naruto would get up and check on you, just to make sure that you weren't dead. I hardly got any sleep because of it sometimes."

So that's what Naruto had been doing when she woke sometimes to find him peering down at her. Whoops, guess she owed him some apologies for hitting him so hard. But she had forgotten that Sasuke had been there with them, too. She blushed; sometimes it was hard to remember that Sasuke was the same person who had been on those missions with their group all those years back. Some elements of him were familiar, but others made him seem like a total stranger.

"Well, sometimes I couldn't sleep because he was moving around too much," she retorted quietly, burying her face in the pillow she had glomped to her chest.

He gave a light snort in amusement.

Closing her eyes, she let out a tired sigh, looking forward to the sleep that was needed. Not only as chakra low within her, exhaustion from the past week was catching up with her. Dimly she noted that she needed to find some time for her own training; if she needed to train Sasuke as well, it would not do good to fall out of shape. She should probably see if she could find some others willing to help her train Sasuke, because fighting against one opponent wouldn't help him improve.

"Sakura?"

"Yeah?" she murmured sleepily, her mind half-hazed.

"You're brother's a good man," Sasuke said after a moment.

She rolled slightly onto her back, and peered at his bare back from over her shoulder in an inquisitive manner. "Huh—? Well, I mean, I know, but… Why? What did he say to you?"

"I was given a lecture," came the quiet reply, seeming amused.

"Kanaye, you bastard," she muttered quietly to the ceiling, then glanced over at Sasuke again, "And that makes you think he's a good man?"

"He's a good brother," Sasuke stated evenly, still not moving from his position, "He expresses concern for you well being."

"Sometimes I wish he wouldn't," Sakura sighed, rolling to lie fully on her back, her eyes fixed on the ceiling.

"You are lucky to have a brother like Kanaye," Sasuke said sharply, rolling onto his back so that his face was turned towards her, an intense and serious frown on his face, "And don't ever take that for granted, Sakura."

A surprised look came to her own face, staring back at him in shock. There was a severity in his words that just challenged her to tell him that she couldn't care less about how Kanaye felt about her. She blinked, and then slowly realization dawned on her, a notion coming to her. It would explain why he felt so strongly as he did about the issue.

"I suppose Itachi was nothing like Kanaye," she replied so quietly that she was barely audible to even herself.

"That's not the point," he shot angrily, rolling onto his side again, facing the wall.

Sakura firmly believed that it was, but didn't say anything. She tried to imagine what it would be like to have a brother like Itachi, but couldn't even begin to grasp what Sasuke had felt to find his clan dead the hands of his own brother.

"Kanaye and I are close."

"How much older is he than you?" Sasuke asked after a contemplative moment.

"Five years," Sakura replied, her need for sleep seeming to have been dissipated and forgotten, "He turned twenty-two at the beginning of May."

Sasuke was silent for a moment, like he was thinking about something. "He's a good brother," he told her again, before falling quiet.

She knew what he said was true—having been on a team with both Sasuke and Naruto, neither of which had any family left, she had come to appreciate her own family more than she had before. But right now, as she stared a Sasuke's back, she would have given anything at that moment, even her family, to have Itachi be a brother to Sasuke like Kanaye had been to her.

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