UPTOWN GIRL

CHAPTER VIII
~ AS TIME FLIES ~

And the tears come streaming down your face
When you lose something you can't replace
When you love someone, but it goes to waste
Could it be worse?
Lights will guide you home
And ignite your bones
And I will try to fix you

Time did not stand still, nor did it pass in a haze of panic, confusion, or chaos, though driver was on his phone asking for an ambulance faster than the human ear could follow.

Groaning, Sasuke pulled himself up from the hard concrete pavement; He could tell from the pain that he had some sort of shoulder injury, but he simply avoided sharing it as much as possible as he pulled himself to his feet.

Once steady, he was approaching the red Mazda as fast as its driver had been in dialling the hospital. It was dark, and the glow of the street light was dim in the middle of the road, but the dark wet substance dripping from the point of impact was enough to make his blood run cold.

"Hey, kid! Stay awake all right? I called an ambulance and the caller lady says sleep is bad, ya' hearing me girlie?" the red-headed man ordered loudly, panicking and hovering over what Sasuke could only describe as… bone chilling.

One of her legs had twisted as it crashed through the windscreen, shredding the flesh of her calf. The original impact of the car itself had left a horrible purple bruise across the flesh of her lover abdomen, seemingly growing by the moment.

Worst was the sticky patch staining her hair; she had hit her head against the framework after being thrown into the air by the primary collision. Landing through the windscreen had torn into the side of her throat, and left scratches on her face, though that seemed minor compared to her other war wounds.

She tried to say something to the man as he grew closer, those horrible tears in her skin growing ever clearer, but was seemingly stopped by the scratches on her throat.

"Hey, kid, don't talk! You'll choke!"

"…ske" came her spluttered, stubborn reply, and he increased his horribly slow uncertain scuffling walk towards the car.

"He said not to speak you idiot!" he berated, ignoring the man's protests and pushing past him towards her, not daring to let his gaze wander anywhere other than her face; scratched as it was, they were by far the least disturbing injuries.

She tried grinning but apparently the movement agitated the gash at the back of her head, and she winced at the attempt. Instead she gestured with a flip of her wrist towards his face. Touching a cheek, he found a damp substance; tears, cold and salty tears.

"What the hell were you thinking? Look at you! You idiot!" he chocked, his knees hitting the tarmac head slumped on the car bonnet as reality began to crash down. He crushed one of her hands with his own, not daring anything else for risk of aggravating already horrendous gashes.

"…didn't…wa-"

"The guy said not to talk!" he berated again, voice not rising from a hoarse choked whisper.

"shit thank god! Hey, brats, mobile medical arrived!" shouted the relieved driver of the car.

Indeed sirens were blaring in the distance; his grip on her hand tightened at the sound. His irrational side was screaming not to let the medics take her into the van without him, and it took strenuous effort to beat it down just in case.

They allowed him into the ambulance, if only to gain answers and information to their medical questions - the ones he could answer at any rate. Once inside the stark, hygienically horrendous hospital, he was whisked away by a pair of ER doctors to have his shoulder stitched and bandaged (he hadn't even noticed the gash of his own).

After that, one of the nurses (nice woman with brown hair) had taken him to the hall outside the operating theatre Naruto had been skidded into by another team of doctors.

Words such as 'internal bleeding' and 'head trauma' and 'broken femur' had been the three predominant calls to the orange haired doctor who had demanded 'stats' before they had been separated, and though he held no interest in anything medical, he was fairly certain they were serious injuries

It took him thirty minuets to pick up the phone at the reception and dial the number for the Senju clinic. Naruto's grandmother immediately answered the phone, sounding somewhat ill at ease.

"Hello? Naruto? Sakura?"
"Sorry Dr Tsunade, its Sasuke"
"Sasuke?"

Another burst of a gurney into the ER disrupted her momentarily. Perhaps it was the cracking in his voice, or the hiss as someone bumped into his injured shoulder, or the familiar noise of a hospital, but something triggered her sense of unlucky precognition before he could begin to broach the subject.

"Oh god, I knew it when I beat that pervert at poker that something was wrong, what happened? what all that noise?"

There was a pause before he choked out one word.

"Car."

He heard her sharp draw of horrified breath over the phone, before she began barking orders to her husband and brother about cars, and loudly mentioning two people called Shizune and Nagato Sasuke didn't find familiar.

"Ten minuets; call Sakura and tell her to get her arse over there!" she ordered in a calmer tone, but with equal command. And with those parting words, the call was cut short.

The phone call to Sakura was far worse; he could hear the muffled drop of the phone as it dropped to the carpet, Kakashi's worried questions and choked noises not dissimilar to some of the ones he held back only with will power. There was a frantic warn of upcoming arrival from her before the call disconnected as quickly as it had with her grandmother.

Going back to the hall outside the operating room, he felt he finally understood the feeling of haziness books and films seemed to portray in such instances; he remembered the accident, but it was not clear as it should have been having occurred under two hours ago. He remembered selective instantaneous moments in flashes.

The dark patch on the red paintwork of the car, and the force of her hands as she pushed him to the other side of the road played repeatedly in his mind as he crashed down against the wall. How long had she been inside the room? He couldn't remember; the doctor had rushed him into the er for his own injuries so quickly…

The smell of the hospital was predominant in the hallway; clinical, detergenty smells and something metallic flooded his nostrils. Its was so clean too; the doctors couldn't have germs getting in down here, but the smell was more sickening than any bacterium. The longer he sat there, the longer it invade his nostrils and clogged his senses, the easier it became for Sasuke to decide that he did not like hospitals.

Seven minuets after the first phone call, Tsunade arrived with her brother and husband in tow.

She exuded a calm that Sasuke could only place as her long experience in the medical industry blotting down personal emotions. Her brother frowned, but Orochimaru always seemed to be frowning at something; unlike Jiraiya his unease was hard to measure.

"What happened Sasuke?" he asked, and Sasuke was shown Jiraiya's serious side for the first time since meeting the man nearly three months ago.

Sasuke struggled with the answer; his mind was intent on blotting out unwanted memories, twisting him into passing them off a simple nightmares, but he eventually managed to arrange his memories into something resembling order.

"A car, we were heading back and she got hit by a car..." he stated, not really wanting to go into the details of how she had been hit just yet.

Tsunade was, thankfully, intuitive to that feeling and held her husband off before he could harass him for more details. Sasuke let out a breath he didn't even know he had been holding.

"What were her injuries like?" she asked instead.

Sasuke found the subject, in all its horror, to be a relief. Maybe it was just getting the visions out of his head and into the air, but it gave him a chance to think more clearly. He describe the injuries as best he could, including the medical jargon he'd overheard before being hauled into the ER himself to satisfy her medical curiosity.

"Did they tell you who was overseeing the op-"

"That would be me mother"

The orange haired surgeon who walked into the hallway was obviously exhausted; green surgical clothing turning to a brown satin in several large patches. He recognised the bright orange colouring immediately, and placed the man as the woman's second child, twin brother of Naruto's father.

"We've managed to stop her internal bleeding; Shizune and Kabuto are still working on her leg wounds as we speak" he informed them taking a long gulp from a polystyrene cup handed to him by Orochimaru.

"What's worrying me is her head trauma; I don't think it's severe, but it's beyond my capabilities. I'm not confident with head injuries, and all the other doctors are drowning in work of their own…"

He fixed his gaze on the blonde woman, and her face tightened.

"So that's what this about…" her brother noted cryptically.

"Yahiko, I can't do what you're asking - I'm not even registered with this hospital in the first place" Tsunade protested.

"I can sort out the official stuff later; right now my niece, your granddaughter, is going through the exact same thing Minato did and none of the other doctors have the time or capabilities to go through with the necessary procedure" the man growled.

Sasuke felt very confused but he could tell this was some sort of long-standing family issue, that this doctor needed help with Naruto's operation or whatever they were doing to her inside the operating theatre, and only her grandmother was skilled enough to produce the necessary results.

"Are you going to hold keep living with this forever Tsunade? You've been given a second chance, and I suggest you take it before your granddaughter gets to a state beyond even your aid" the black haired man stated with almost unnatural calmness in his voice.

"Are you serious? I haven't worked in surgery for eighteen years! If something goes wrong then the effects could be fatal!" Tsunade retorted, anger rising into her voice.

Sasuke knew he was probably not the person to talk, but from what her son had been inferring earlier, he found himself unable to keep his opinions to himself; it was a quiet voice he used to sound them with.

"Even if you don't go in there, he says she pretty much on death's door anyway! If you can do anything to help her, then fucking do it! So what if you haven been in there for donkeys years? She's your damn flesh and blood! You shouldn't even be having this conversation!"

She levelled a stunned gaze on his own, surprised by the tone, words and the manifestation of his voice; he had been keeping very quiet up till now. She ran a had over her blonde hair, clenched one of her fists, and took a long look at the door to the medicinal stage.

"Well, when you put it like that I don't have a choice do I?"

At some point during the long wait for the results of whatever surgery Tsunade undertook with her granddaughter, he had fallen asleep. When he awoke it was to find her sister snoring away on his shoulder in an unfamiliar room, his shoulder groaning in protest at the contact.

Glancing around he could make out the still form of Naruto laid out on a spotless hospital bed. Gently moving Sakura off of him, he rose from the sofa he had been sleeping on and crossed the room blearily, slumping into one of the uncomfortable-looking chairs nearly always present by the bedside in dramas.

She was hooked up to more monitors, drips, and breathing devices than he cared to count. There appeared to have been other injuries than he had first though, as bandages were wound tightly around various spots on both her arms. There was some sort of plastic brace around her neck that would have kept her form moving her head is she had been awake to do so.

Seeing her like this was wrong; she should be up, moving, yelling French profanities at the most menial irritations, jumping up and down when she finally got the knack of… boiling eggs, or something equally mundane; something other than simply ling there. Even when she was sleeping she muttered to her self, or twitched in her sleep; he had been rudely awakened after a (Sakura-strong) punch to the nose once.

She wasn't supposed to just lie still. He found himself wondering why she even had to be here in the first place, and found he was partially to blame. She had silently pleaded with him to avoid confrontation with Neji hadn't she? He had done his best to do that too, but when Neji had kissed her, his resolve had completely snapped.

If the git hadn't hit her, he would never have been thrown onto the road like that, he would have easily dodged the blow, but Naruto had been more important than the stupid snobby asshole.

A small, annoying part of his mind told him he was simply coming up with excuses, trying to make the whole scenario more credible, but he ignored it. He simply didn't have the capacity to deal with such emotions at the moment.

He laced his fingers into her own, his skin running over a few scratches caused by the glass of the windscreen, squeezing tightly. Her hand felt colder than it should have been, and she looked pale. He didn't like it at all, Naruto was bright not pale.

"Sasuke, how long have you been up?" a sleepy voice asked from the sofa.

Sakura had woken up.

"About ten minuets or so" he replied.

Sakura examined his worn expression.

"Sasuke, what happened exactly?" she asked , taking a seat net to him, slumping her head against the bed.

He considered lying for a very brief moment, but decided that telling the real turn of events to one person was probably best. If he had to pick anyone, Sakura was probably the most trustworthy. So he told her the truth.

"Neji showed up; she tried to see him off but it didn't work, and we got into a fight" he explained, noting the hardening look in the girls eyes when Neji's name was spoken, and with the words 'didn't work'.

"She tried to stop it, and he hit her, telling her to stay out of it; she hit her head on a pole…" he growled, remembering the incident.

No matter what the situation, one of the few morale codes that he held high was that hitting a girl was not an option; he had never been interested in them personally, but his father had a strong sense of pride and honour. He had drilled it into his sons that, no matter what the reason for their anger, hitting a girl was out of the question. Neji's actions were completely foreign to him, they just didn't enter his wide real of understanding.

"He- hitting girls doesn't even register with me; I was so mad and disgusted, and I just- I didn't block a punch he landed on me, and it threw me into the road…"

Voicing everything was harder, and he kept swallowing his words before the could come out; guilt shock pain, he didn't know what it was, but it wasn't a good feeling at all. Something burned in the corner of his eye and he swallowed the feeling, determined to keep his cool.

"…she… she saw the car coming before I did, and-"

He couldn't finish. Or was it that he didn't want to finish? The building suppressed salty rivulets escaped their prison in either case, and he hung his head over the murky green bed sheets; spasming shakes the only indication to Sakura that he even knew how to cry.

"…that doesn't really surprise me. It's just like her to do that..." Sakura gave an unseen, weak but sincere smile, folding her arms and leaning onto the bed herself.

It was several hours later when Tsunade entered the room, the son and brother on tow to give a check up on her;it was still far to early to see any sort of change but it had greater appeal than sitting around worrying.

They mumbled jargon that made no sense to Sasuke, but Sakura's medically inclined ears picked up on several Less-advanced terms. It didn't give them much of an indication of Naruto's progress, but it was something.

"Sasuke, you should go home for a while; Your parents are probably worried sick by now, and believe me when I say that sitting around waiting for something to happen will do you no good. You too Sakura" Tsunade instructed with an iron-kind voice.

Sasuke suddenly remembered he had not phoned his parents as he normally did if he was staying out for the whole night; he always phone, his mother was a worrier by nature, and even his father had his own version of concern. Dear god, the poor woman would be having kittens right now. How could he have forgotten to call?

It wasn't like he hadn't come out the accident unscratched either; he had a fractured shoulder for crying out loud. How could he have just forgotten? It had never occurred to him that they might want to know of the accident; he had been too preoccupied with unfruitful waiting and phoning Naruto's family.

"What time is it?" he asked, almost scared to find out the answer.

"Almost half past four" Yahiko informed him, scribbling something on a complex looking chart, giving one of the complex machines a measured glance.

Sasuke almost choked; nearing half four? God there would be three litters of kittens by now! He'd have to phone to let them know where he was soon. He hadn't been cleared of release yet, so they would definitely need to know his whereabouts.

"Urgh… there goes judo club for today…" Sakura groaned, though honestly not believing she would have been able to direct the club as appropriate anyway.

Sasuke smiled weakly. Very weakly.

"Sasuke, where in gods name are you? Mum and dad are on the verge of calling the missing persons hotline! Gramps is trying to organise a search party!" Obito roared down the phone at his youngest sibling.

It wasn't just the elders of the family that had been worried; no matter what the occasion, Sasuke always called if he was late back from the city - he knew better than to invoke their mother's worrying streak, since it had a disease like quality.

He and Itachi, free from work and college classes unlike their parents, had taken it upon themselves to wait for the call. Itachi hadn't even fed his animals this morning; their grandfather had been forced to remind him when Tobi tried to bite the leg from the kitchen table!

"The hospital" came the tired, exhausted sounding reply.

Obito was known for jumping to conclusions rather quickly (much to his father's irritation) and he did not fail to live up to that reputation even then.

"Oi, oi. You didn't break her or something did you? Or is she pregnant? Dude, there's a reason you use condoms!" he barked down the phone, ignoring the roll of Itachi's eyes.

"…I wish Obito"

Obito blinked at the phone; where was the adamant denial? The flustered embarrassment? Where were the insults? Something was very wrong – since when did Sasuke use his name? Obito berated himself from not picking it up earlier - the voice his brother spoke with was one usually associate with some sort of unpleasant incident.

"What happened?" he asked, dropping the cheerful attitude, and gaining a wide eyed look from Itachi.

"There was…There was an accident"was a the quiet shaky reply.

Obito sucked in his breath.

"Five minuets; which hospital?" he heard Itachi raising his voice at his question.

"...General"

The call ended, and Obito stared at it in his hands for a few moments before roaring orders to Itachi and his grandfather as he made a mad rush for his car keys.

There was a click as the door opened and a grey haired man Sasuke didn't recognise came into the room. He wore horn glasses and seemed to have a permanent frown on his face. He closed the door behind him quietly, before crossing the room to stop in front of the chair he was seated on.

"Sasuke Uchiha I presume?" he asked.

Sasuke instantly disliked the man; he showed even less emotion on his face than his father did (and that was certainly an achievement). He felt the need to be wary of him for some reason, reminded him of his father in a bad mood, only he was permanently disagreeable. He didn't like the way the man looked over his glasses and down his nose on him either; it reminded him of Neji.

"Yeah, who are you? He replied tersely.

The man did not answer him, instead giving Naruto a contemplative look, seemingly unhappy with the number of tubes poking into her mouth and veins.

"She was always impulsive, worse than Kushina, far worse than Sakura in many instances, but this…"

He turned to Sasuke, a cold stare behind his classes. Sasuke suddenly realised he was in the presence of the old buzzard himself; Homura Uzumaki, chairman of the Uzumaki company - top munitions specialists in Aisia and Europe. He certainly matched his reputation; he was as cold as the guns his factories produced.

"What is so special about you boy? How is that someone like you has managed, in mere months I might add, what so many others of a far better lineage have failed? What is it that would make her risk her life for a mere commoner?" he asked in an eerily calm manner.

Sasuke found himself beginning to understand Naruto's dislike for the man. It seemed like he would have to have a valid reason for any action, any word. There was no visible passion or emotion in the man at all. He needed validation for everything, and those validations had to be perfect every time. He was suffocating for someone like his girlfriend.

"…I don't know, and I think she's an idiot for it, but…"

'It one of those infuriating things that suit her best' he added privately.

The old man seemed to be on the verge of asking another question when another unfamiliar voice broke the silence between them.

"Have you finished?" the old woman asked irritably, entering the room and walking over to the man.

"Koharu? What are you doing here? I specifically said to-"

"You have no place to interfere with her anymore; she is a legal adult beyond your control. Stop living in the past and let her have her own life" the woman spoke quickly, calmly, but her displeasure was obvious.

Sasuke swallowed. What was with all the business moguls and their creepy ways of speaking? Did they have a training camp ore something? God, this woman could give his mother and Tsunade a run for their money with the intimidation method.

Not giving the man a chance to protest, she placed a firm grip on one of his arms and directed him towards the door. She made certain the man had left the room before turning to give him a warning glance.

"Look after her boy; and relay that to Mr Hatake too; my husband will not let this pass quietly" she informed him quietly.

She gave him a slight incline of her head, before turning from the room with her husband, and closing the door behind her. Sasuke let out a breath her didn't realise he had even been holding.

What the heck?

"Obito, why is Sasuke in the hospital again?" Madara asked his eldest grandson.

"Cuz he was in an accident gramps"

"I know that boy! What kind of accident?" he growled loudly, poking the back of the man's knees with his walking stick.

Obito took after him in many ways, but Madara had to agree with his son when Obito did something remarkably foolish; the boy was the king of the idiots.

He had dragged him out of bed-rest (not that he was complaining - Fugaku worried too much about his arthritis) to the car, and was now dragging him up the stairs (honestly-who makes someone with back problems take the stairs?) with next to no explanations.

If Obito wasn't careful, Itachi was going to hide his porn magazines for all the unexplained fuss, and he would have no-one to blame but himself when he had to buy new ones. Madara knew what happened to porn magazines Itachi came into contact with - they served as littering for the bottom of Deidara's cage in tiny little tatters.

"I don't know! Sasuke didn't tall me anything else, but it doesn't sound like a simple scraped knee!"

"Then why didn't you ask you buffoon?" the old man raged, scaring one of the nurses going down the stairs as he waved his walking stick.

"Grandfather, please be quiet, we're close to the ICU" Itachi berated gently; like his mother, Itachi had the certain hand required to calm his grandfather.

His grandfather grumbled but kept his grumblings to a low register as Obito went to the ward receptionist to inquire on their little brother. The woman wore a strange topknot, and seemed to be drowning in her piles of paperwork.

"Excuse me, could you tell me which room Sasuke Uchiha is in?" he asked politely to the red chestnut-haired woman in blue uniform.

"Sasuke Uchiha? Room ten. Had to move him in there if we were going to get anything done; not that I can blame him poor kid. Dr Yagura says he had to fight him into the bandages after he came into the ER last night. Straight down to the end of the hall and on the left. Cant miss it" she smiled before turning back to her pile of paperwork.

Obito exchanged his thanks, before heading in the direction she had given. Itachi's ears caught the conversation of two doctors as they headed down the hallway.

"…her sister left a few minuets ago. I heard Dr. Tsunade performed the operation herself, is it true? I thought she'd given up surgery after that incident with her son…"

"What do you think? It was her granddaughter! I can only imagine how bad it was if the black haired kid was anything to go by! He nearly destroyed my ER Fuu!"

"I noticed, It was a nightmare trying to find some penicillin this morning… You have to get that expansion planning completed quickly Yagura, were running out of space!"

Clearly Obito was right to be hurrying; not just Sasuke, but Naruto had sustained some heavy injuries of some sort if that conversation was anything to go by. The sister was obviously Sakura, and everyone knew about Dr. Tsunade's abstinence from surgery, the older ones at any rate.

Itachi increased his pace.

"Try not to move it too much Sasuke; you've already done enough damage moving around so much" the doctor, a man named Utataka instructed seriously.

Sasuke nodded, his gaze and mind firmly attached to his motionless girlfriend in the bed beside his; her hand had twitched about ten minuets ago. Not much, just a slight jerk of her pinky, but it had been enough to send his pulse racing.

Apparently hers had too, since it had drawn Tsunade in from some other part of the hospital - she seemed to have taken on several other patients at the insistence of the hospital staff (such was her reputation and skill).

"It'll be awhile yet before she wakes up after a head injury like that, but I wouldn't worry so much. Dr. Tsunade is the best of the best around here, and she's not going to let her granddaughter go without a fight after what happened with Minato" Utataka reassure him, tying off the last of his new bandages.

Sasuke looked at him for a few moments before turning back to Naruto. The man left the room with the mention of another bandage change later in the day, and Sasuke was left with Naruto once again. The silence annoyed him in context with her presence as it had since that morning.

He was replaying the events agAin in his mind, trying to further clarify the series of events, when the door to the room opend again. He could tell without the rough jerk of the door that it was Obito.

"Crickey, Sasu-brat; you look like you came out of a war zone!" his doddering eccentric grandfather noted with an intake of breath.

Sasuke had to admit, he looked like utter crap; he was covered in scratches, bruises, had a black eye, a split lip, and had a fractured shoulder (from the fight with Neji and the landing on the pavement respectively).

"Sasuke, when you said accident… I though you meant your hand got sliced by a knife or something, or you got into a fight, but…" he trailed off, clearly unsure of what he was supposed to say; he didn't seem to have noticed Naruto yet, or he would have been silent.

"I did get into a fight" he stated, clarifying one fact.

"What kind of fight breaks your shoulder?" Itachi asked, raising an eyebrow.

"It's fractured, and I didn't break it in a fight. I hit the pavement too hard when…" he paused, trying to find the words.

Telling Sakura what had happened had been easier; he had still been in shock remission. Things had sunken in horrifyingly clearl;y now, and clarifying things for his family members was a lot more difficult.

"…Sasuke, what happened?" his grandfather asked, serious side emanating.
"…there were other factors, but there was this stupid red Mazda and-"

Something choked the back of his throat.

"-Naruto saw it before I did. I hit my shoulder when she… She's not woken up yet."

He couldn't quite give the exact definition of events; besides, he was sure his grandfather and siblings could work out the rest for them selves.

"…Sasuke, that's not an accident. This is what you call tragedy, or calamity, or catastrophe, or- wait, where is Naruto?" Obito asked, receiving a whack on the head from his grandfather's cane.

"The other bed you dolt; honestly, Fugaku is right about you sometimes…" the old man grumbled, moving to examine Sasuke's medical charts.

A retired surgeon himself, he was the only person in the room he could read the medical jargon on the thing. Obito was an electrician, and Itachi was going into law, so neither were well versed with words like 'fissure break'

Itachi had already taken Sasuke's words and the silent girl on the other bed and put two and two together. He was staring at her, taking in the extent of her visible injuries.

"How bad are they?" he asked.

Sasuke took a deep breath before answering.

"The top bone in her leg is fractured, the bottom one is broken. She had some internal bleeding, but I don't know what, and she hit her head on the framework. The skin on her throat looked bad, but it was just torn. That and minor scratches" he repeated mechanically.

It was easier if he got it all out in one go, and tried not to think about the actual injuries themselves. Like taking off a plaster; the quicker he finished talking, the easier it was to mention. What he didn't add were the possible effects of her lung problems, but Naruto had told them of that herself.

Itachi noted the breathing aid with a frown, and his grandfather let out a long low whistle.

"That's quite the number of war wounds" he stated, a cross between sympathy and twisted admiration in his voice.

Sasuke could agree with that, but he could also disagree in that it was several war wounds too many.

Umm... Please don't kill me! *Hides in andersonson shelter from kunai and exploding tags hurled overhead*

I'm so sorry that it's been so long since I updated this fic. Really, I checked the date and it's been nearly an entire year... I'm so sorry.

All I have to say for myself is that my writing style has changed since I started this, and matured within that, so gettting back to this has been difficult... There are also so many grammatical errors that I need to sort out, especially for the French. I'm tempted to go back and change it to English or something having gone back over it, but I'll finish this before doing any major changes like that.

I promise that I will finish this fic; It's one of the first SasuFemNaru fics I've ever writen, and the first fic I wrote a lemon for, so I have to finish it on pure principle. It is nearly completed actually, but I can't promise it will be a quick update either. As my style has changed, I've also lost the muses for this story even if I do remember where I was going with it. In any case, I hope you liked this chapter, and please stick with this story a little longer.

I'll finish this before the year is out damn it all. I swear to the great demon lord of Karanda that I will; if anyone understands that refference i just made, you get a oneshot or a drabble of some kind of your choosing (SasuFemNaru of course^^). I think the song quote is fairly obvious but it is 'Fix You' by Cold Play for those who have never heard of this song...

Again, I'm so sorry for the long update gap ^^;
Nat.
xxx