Holy hell, was this the most depressing thing I've ever written. I really don't know what came over me today, but I wrote this in 2 hours. Just... holy hell, I've never written anything like this. Usually, my stories are lighter things, and have lots of happy moments. this was... I felt like a horrible person for just writing this story. What the hell do I think about in my spare time? What the hell is wrong with me?

I have no idea if this is any good, but it was quick, it was easy, and... and I found myself wanting to share this. I just needed to share it, so here it is. My depressing, romantic, shitty love story. If someone can leave a review, that would be lovely. I really want to know if I conveyed the depression correctly.

It's not rated M for lemons. I don't detail sex in it. It's rated M for the language I use to convey my points (which is composed of the word 'f**k' several times, and once I used the word 'c**k') and the fact that I do mention sex.

Note: the gang boss can be any character you want him to be. I don't give him a name, nor do I want to. I don't like him. You can pick your least favorite male character and use him. I don't really have a least-favorite male character, which was why I couldn't bring myself to make this guy one of them.

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto, nor do I own the characters. I own the story and not much else.

Of Slaves & Lovers

*A Love Story*

She was a prize.

He didn't care about her in the least. She was like a treasure of some sort rather than his woman. What she wanted or needed was of little concern to him, as long as he got to flaunt her, and flaunt her he did. She was a pretty little thing, and the thing about pretty little things was that they did garner interest. Interest was his concern, what he wanted. It brought to him company, and oh, did he like his company. Especially when that company was female. And especially when he considered them prettier than the pretty little thing he already had.

She was a prized bird in a cage forged from fire. She tried to escape him, but it didn't work out in favor. It ended with a busted lip and bruised arms. It ended with him screaming at her, calling her ugly or useless or stupid. It ended with her curled up in a fetal position, sobbing her eyes out, her blood dripping from her mouth and into her long, black hair.

It ended up with him having to pick her up. It ended with him wrapping a hand around her shoulders and gently bringing her to her feet, walking her over to the bed and dressing her wounds, whispering his sympathies. He hated watching her get hurt, hated watching her cry. He hated being forced to watch this endless cycle of pain and suffering, hated having to see her in such pain. He wished he could hit the person who caused her suffering, but he was his 'boss', though the word was a little bit of a stretch considering the fact that it was more apt to say that the man owned him, similar to the way he owned her.

When his boss was near her, he treated her like absolute shit. He kicked her like a dog and laughed, walked away, and then came back with flowers and chocolates and apologies. In the beginning, she'd believed him, but that had been when she was eighteen and naïve. She was no longer that little girl anymore. She wasn't a tank, but she was no longer as so stupid to think she was here by her own volition. She was here because her father had a debt he needed to pay somehow, and she was the best option. If she left, it was her father that was endangered. She didn't want that for him. Sure, the man had basically sold her like a dog, but she had her humanity—she couldn't just allow him to be endangered. She took the brutality of the punishments instead, and then covered up the healing bruises with make-up and fake smile. She'd really perfected that fake smile—it had become almost sincere.

Almost.

He could see through it easily. It pained him to see the fake smile on such a pretty face. It pained him to see her cover up her pain with make up. She was a natural beauty; she didn't need the lipstick or the mascara. She was perfect to him without all of that crap. When she wasn't near his boss, when she was near him, she allowed herself a smile. She allowed herself to laugh. She allowed herself to pretend, even for a few minutes at a time, that she was a normal person. He was more than happy to provide this sort of relief for her. On more than one occasion, she mentioned that he was her sanity. That had made him almost float with happiness.

It did not make watching his boss use her like a fancy object any easier. That still pained him to see. She deserved better than that. He could see her unhappiness with it, and he wished he could really be that better for her. He knew it was a stupid idea—it was asking for him and her to get killed by his boss—but he wanted it. He wanted it despite the fact that it was an unachievable goal.

His reality was what made it an unachievable goal. Their shared reality. She was his boss'. He was his boss'. They were slaves of different sorts—her for appearance, him for protection. He'd been bought by him after losing his eye in the war, making him useless for a sniper. He kept in physical condition, though, and had retained all of his fist-fighting skills. He was damned good, too; fighting in the underground for the money to survive. Veteran's checks meant less to nothing when it came down to it—enough to buy a single grocery and a cheap motel room for a week. The only reason his boss ever heard about him was because he had seen him in a fight. In return for him becoming his personal bodyguard, he'd buy him an apartment, keep him afloat. At least, that was how it started. It was good pay, and a good apartment. But as he began to make more enemies, the tighter the leash had become, until he was living inside of his boss' house. He had no idea at which point exactly he became his boss' bitch, but he did, and he had to live with it.

Of course, his situation was not as bad as hers. He didn't actually have to sleep in the same bed as him. She did. He didn't have to allow him to use his body, allow him to touch where he didn't want to be touched by him. She did. As far as he knew, she didn't know of the pleasures of intimacy. They didn't make love. He fucked her, and she just laid there. None of it was for her pleasure; it was all for his. He didn't think about her. He just used her as much as he wanted, fucking her over and over again in a single night, even when she didn't want it, and leaving her sore in the morning to come. The first few times, she'd screamed and begged for it to stop. But he stopped that quickly—he threatened to kill her precious family if she didn't let him fuck her the way he wanted to. That time, there'd been blood on the sheets, and she had been limping around the house, tears dripping down her face with every step she made.

He bled the beautiful life out of her.

When she had first come to the house, she had smiled and laughed and played with the animals the boss had bought on a whim. She had pressed flowers from the garden he allowed her to plant and made food. She talked and sang and dance and dreamed—oh, did she dream. She dreamt of becoming the owner of a bookstore. She loved to read, loved to write. She could spin a tale from thin air, whether a poem, a song, or drabble. The boss had tolerated it, but he had loved it. She was, admittedly, much younger than he was, but she was so beautiful to him that he wanted to hear whatever came out of her pink lips. He loved reading the stories she would write on whatever scrap of paper she found around the house. He loved listening to her making up a story of anything she could think of at the moment. He loved to talk to her about the most inane subjects, just to see that beautiful smile and to hear that beautiful laugh. But after a few years, this faded with the treatment she received. Her beautiful flowing voice turned to a stutter. She became afraid to laugh aloud or to dance. The garden's plants began to wilt and die. She stopped coming up with a story, and she couldn't even try to sing—the stutter would make the lyrics incomprehensible, and the boss would just laugh at her.

It was painful to watch this mistreatment. It was actually physically painful for him, but he was forced to watch. It was like watching a horror movie, except worse, because this was not just two or three hours—this was all day, every day that he had to watch this. That he had to watch her die a little bit more on the inside. In effect, he died a little bit on the inside as well. She had such potential, to make something of herself, and she was wasting her life in this house, with this man, by no choice of her own. She was trapped.

Maybe it was because they were trapped together in this hell that he began to fall in love her. Or maybe because he understood her better than any other person in their life. Or maybe it was because he thought she was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen. It didn't matter, in the end. He loved her. He loved a girl he couldn't have, nor could he dream of having her. She belonged to someone else. She couldn't be with anyone else. She couldn't be his. She was his boss'. The long, slim bruises on her arms indicated as much, as did the bruising on her lips, and the fake smiles she made only to please his boss.

But, dammit, did he love her. Despite the fourteen year difference between their ages, he knew she was his one. He needed her like he needed air to breathe. When she was hurt, he was hurt. When she was happy, he was happy. Everything about his life was dictated by her emotions and her status. He was completely and totally head-over-heels in love with her.

For the strangest reason, he was almost sure she loved him too. It was like he could feel it in his gut. He somehow saw it in the way she looked at him, in the way she attempted to speak to him without her stutter, in the way she gave him her only sincere smile. A large part of him hoped she was just being nice—that way, she wouldn't get into trouble with the boss—but a small part hoped that she really did love him. He wanted to be loved by something so perfect. He knew he could love her the way she needed to be loved. He knew that he could give her the life she wanted, the life she deserved.

The day everything changed had been the day of her father's funeral. It had been a sudden death that shocked her to her core, and she immediately wanted to go to her family's home to pay her respects. So she begged with the boss, asking, pleading for permission to come home. The boss refused her begging, and threatened her by saying if she'd ever asked again about her bastard father; he'd be forced to do something she'd really regret.

He didn't know why he did it, but he told her he'd take her.

"Why" had been her only question, her pale eyes giving him such an intent look that he was sure that she doubted every word he said.

"Because," he'd responded, "He is your father."

He'd told the boss that he was taking her out to eat and to relax, to flaunt his reach on the town, which the boss had agreed with readily. He packed a black dress for her while the boss required her to wear a tight-fitting lavender dress, one that went with her eyes of the same shade, and black high heels that obviously hurt her feet to walk in. He didn't like the way he forced her to dress up because she didn't like it, but he couldn't fight him and nor could she.

When they had gotten to the limo, he turned away as she stripped out of it, doing his best not to watch his boss' woman in her underclothes, though he did get a peek of lace before she pulled on the black velvet dress, one that didn't show off her breasts and legs, one that was more fitted for her liking of hiding her body. She was cold, though, so he gave her his blazer, despite her fuss and fight against it. She was too kind, he knew it. He simply smiled as he insisted to her to wear it, which, by the time he got her out of the limo, she did.

The place he had told the limo driver to drop them was a quarter of a mile from the church, so he hailed a cab and had it drop them there. She was pleasantly received by her older brother and younger sister, who had both doubted she was going to make an appearance, but was more than glad that she did. They had both thanked him profusely, which he refused but they ignored, drawing them both into the church. As the funeral began, she leaned against him, her eyes red and her body wracking with tears that wouldn't come out. All he could do was wrap his arm around her and squeeze gently in response.

He didn't know when it began, or why, but at some point during the funeral, he'd kissed her. Maybe it was a way to take her mind off of what was going on. Maybe it was because he couldn't hold himself back from it anymore. But the fact remained that he did kiss her, and the fact also remained that she returned the kiss.

"Why?" he'd asked her when he pulled back from the kiss.

She bit her lip and blushed for the first time in years.

"B-Because I-I think I-I l-love you."

They had been six of the most powerful words he'd ever heard before in his life. They were more than enough to make his decision for him. He was going to get her—them—out. Too long they'd lived this life. Too long they'd given up their sanities for this life. They'd given up too many precious years of their lives, and too much of their happiness. They deserved more than what they had. They deserved to be happy, and he'd decided it.

The boss had been waiting for them when they came back. Just one look and he knew that he had been informed about their deceit. He grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her away, and he had his other employees grab him and drag him for disposal. He'd preformed many disposals himself, many of them the largest rats and worse men than his boss was. He knew what it entailed, and he had no doubts about what they'd do to him. So he refused to let it happen—he'd stepped hard on the back of one man's foot, damaging their Achilles' tendon and forcing them to let go of him. He then took their gun, shot them in the gut, and shot the remaining guard in the throat.

Usually, he would've thought about the guilt he should've felt from killing them. Not that day. No, that day he was focused on something else entirely—getting her out. He ran through the house, giving death threats to whoever was stupid enough to threaten to get in his way. Nothing would stop him. He would get her. He would save her. He had to. He made that promise to himself to save her.

She had managed to fend for herself long enough for him to reach her. The boss was only beginning to bend her over the bed when he came to them. The sight of his naked ass, and her frantic screaming filling his ears, was enough to make him want to vomit. As it stood, he was already murderous. He grabbed onto the back of the boss' hair, yanking him off of her and throwing him to the side.

"Do you really think you can do this?! I own you!" the boss had screamed at him, angry that he got in the way of her and his cock. "I fucking own the both of you! People will come for you!"

He simply shrugged. "Let them!" he barked back, leveling his gun and shooting the boss right in the eye, much to the shock of the woman. She screamed out when he crumpled to the side, and he automatically dropped the gun and grabbed her, wrapping his arms around her smaller body and holding her tight against her, apologizing for having done that right in front of her. He did his best to soothe her in the limited time space he had, which actually seemed to work.

"Don't forget, I did it for you and me."

"I-I w-won't."

News came out the next day that the gang lord, their boss, had been shot in his bedroom, and that police were looking for the two of them, but by that point, they were already in another country, listening to the last radio waves of their home country as they got further and further away. He had no plans on coming back to their old country. There was nothing left for him there, nor was there anything left for her. Her family wouldn't be able to keep her out of prison for assisting in the murder of their boss, especially since she was his property. She loved her family, but she knew that if she left without them knowing where she was, no harm would befall them. They just had to keep moving. They just had to keep running.

It was a whole month after the murder that they finally felt safe enough to make love for the first time. It started off clumsy, as she had no idea what to do and he was scared to hurt such a beautiful flower, but after a while, instinct took effect. She figured out what to do, and how to move, and he figured out how to do what he needed to without hurting her. For the very first time, she understood, truly, what 'fucking' was, and what 'making love' was. Making love was a passion on both parties, with pleasure thought through for both. Fucking was rough and abrupt and single-minded in its focus. The boss fucked her. This man made love to her, and she managed to make love right back to him, in her own clumsy way, and that was what matter to him. The boss might've fucked her, but he would be her first and only true lover.

Her smile afterwards was megawatt as she ran her slender fingers through his silver hair.

"I love you, Kakashi Hatake."

He smiled right back and kissed her on her cheek.

"I love you, Hinata Hyūga."