AN: I wanted to write something darker for Ita/Saku. Haha and of course with Valentines day looming over me it's not hard to find the inspiration for something morbid and a bit beyond sanity. And here we are. Sakura gets a bit of clarity.

She knew. She knew with a startling sense of clarity, a shocking sense of calm that ebbed and flowed through her veins who Uchiha Itachi really was. Oh yes she knew. Knew what he was capable of, knew what he had done. There was no one she could blame, no scapegoat but her own treacherous actions, her own doubt plagued mind, her conscious thoughts. It was utterly entirely and arbitrarily her fault no matter how she looked at it, or what picture she tried to paint of the situation at hand. She knew, but the problem was that she couldn't seem to stop.

Uchiha Itachi was her enemy. He was a man that had done horrible unspeakable acts against her country, against her teammates, her precious people. He had committed further acts of violence in joining the organization hell bent on destroying the way of the ninja. Akatsuki were the terrorists of their world, having neither a country or allegiance but to their own twisted thoughts and plans and motives. Further more, Uchiha Itachi was a cold and calloused man. He had killed in cold blood outright murdered his family, people that should have been close to him. He had tortured and interrogated. The man had been an anbu captain at the tender age of 13. Any emotions he'd had, must have been seared from him, stolen so long ago from wars past. He didn't show emotion, and he certainly wasn't the kind you'd ever want to mess with much less take home.

He was dangerous in any and every sense of the word, unpredictable, rational and yet utterly capable of acts of irrational behavior without any warning. Perhaps that was part of the appeal. Playing with fire, messing around with someone far more dangerous and deadly than you were, was a shot of adrenaline with every look, much less touch. Even as they did wanton things to each other she knew in the back of her mind that he could just as easily turn on her and kill her as he would kiss her. It kept her startlingly aware in the midst of a passion filled haze. He was as treacherous as a snake, the man holding allegiance to one person; himself. Not even the other Akatsuki members knew his true motives. He was a man who kept to himself.

He would never love her.

Cognitively she acknowledged all of this. She accepted it even point blankly as fact. She knew that Uchiha Itachi simply wasn't capable of love. Given his past and the unspeakable acts he had committed for the sake of his own power, it truly was unrealistic of her to think him culpable of that heady emotion. He had willingly, proactively made that sacrifice in order to gain the ground he stood on now. And he was one of the most powerful shinobi in the world, without a doubt. Surely that should have had a bearing in her current decision making? The problem was that yet again, she couldn't stop herself. Her actions hadn't changed because of this costly information. No, she still met with him, in their forbidden tyrsts.

She still warmed his bed, still allowed him to run those treacherous hands across her body. Allowed him to make her scream his name, raking her nails down his back as he took her hard. He did things to her that lacked words. He was cruel, unyielding, drove her mad, and yet he was tender, maliable, and soft spoken, endearing in the way he looked at her, touched her. He deliberately played with her, toyed with her, made her beg to feed his already overwhelming ego. He was so damned arrogant, so damned proud of everything he did, of everything he'd done to her. And her heart exulted in the fact that he wasn't ashamed of what they did, of what they were still doing to each other. She felt for him, in spite of his calloused demeanor and general abrasiveness. Feel for him, she scoffed. That was a severe understatement.

Sakura had accepted that she loved him, as impossibly sick and twisted as that fact was. Given all of the information she had on him it should have been a sheer impossibility. He wasn't worth it, that was for god damn sure. Leave it to love to taint and paint every way she saw that cold hard information. She wasn't stupid enough to think that those things didn't matter. In her eyes they did, he had done the things she swore she would protect his victims from. She wasn't stupid enough to think he wouldn't turn on her, that he wouldn't use her and throw her away once he was done. This was all simply an amusement to him, a game of pleasure and pain so sweet that neither of them could let go just yet. But once he tired of her, it would end. He would probably kill her.

She knew all of the information, had memorized his files. Could quote which in incidents he'd been involved with, and which family had been sent a notice that their son or daughter, husband or wife wasn't coming home. She could explain details on the deaths, she herself had performed several of the autopsy's on the lifeless corpses, the life that had been leached by his hands. Somewhere along the way Uchiha Itachi had become something of an obcession. He fascinated her, a living mystery, shrouded in unanswered questions, puzzles that he left behind in the dead bodies. He was a man of many secrets, something she would never be able to wrap her mind around, much less logical rational thought. None of it mattered, though it did at the same time, in the way it changed her behavior…because it didn't. It simply didn't hinder her enough to stop this…him.

He wouldn't love her.

She couldn't stop it even if she tried. And she had tried. She had walked away, several times, and others had suffered for it. She had tried to bring in other anbu members on her predicament and he had killed them all the same. He had found her, and swept her back into the game as he called it. It let her know what he thought of them. It should have given her the strength to break it off. It should have inspired her to hate him. To loathe him to her very core. A part of her would hate him, would always hate him, but it didn't overwhelm the part of her that loved him. That wanted to love him.

Uchiha Itachi was such a lonely man, that it made her heart ache. He was always alone, always bearing the burdens of his actions, the costly choices he had made. Somewhere inside of him was the child that was crying from the blood shed and death. She knew it, she simply knew it, as she knew her own name, her own convictions. She couldn't believe that anyone was entirely evil, completely corrupt. And therein lay her defeat at his hands. She couldn't give up on anyone. He was no exception. She loved him. Damn it, and it made it all the worse, all the more complicated. Knots within knots, tangles within tangles. Nothing was ever easy, nothing ever black and white anymore. Sakura longed for the days of simplicity, when friends were friends and enemies were enemies. But she'd even been naïve then. Sakura didn't want to live a lie anymore either. So she'd dirtied her hands, sullied herself, so she was a gray and as bloody as everyone else. She had a bitterness buried deep within her that Kakashi sensei might have been jealous of.

He couldn't love her.

She wouldn't tell him of her inclined affections. She simply couldn't. After all what would it mean to a man who couldn't understand? Couldn't comprehend how she would feel. He could never reciprocate such feelings and so it was a useless endeavor to start with. He was a hard man, a tool of war that was tired of being used. He had joined Akatsuki after his disillusion with Konoha. He was more than likely incapable of love. And Sakura didn't need him to know beyond her own heart. It was enough for her that she knew she loved him. It was enough, but bittersweet knowledge nonetheless.

Sakura had developed something of a spine after having her heart trampled over so many times. After all, it was only a matter of time before she finally learned her lesson and guarded herself a little more carefully. She was tired of the state of what the men of her life had left her in after they abandoned Sakura was cool and aloof, guarded and careful around men now. Obviously not enough to keep clan murdering heartless S class Nins out, but she hadn't just let him trample over her and step on her. No Itachi had been gradual, like a frog boiling in a pot.

She was truly pathetic. Wretched. He was everything she stood against. She should have hated herself time and time again after he sated himself. After he had fully had his way with her, trailed burning kisses down her entire body's length. She should feel disgusted to smell him on her skin, to feel the bruises and love bites he left, to remember his taste and sigh with longing. She should…Gods she should do anything but be in the position she was, cheating on the love of her country with a man who'd betrayed it so long ago…but she couldn't.

He could never love her.

Perhaps she really was weak in that sense. Perhaps she had always been weak in that sense. Sakura was a girl that believed in love above all things. It had never mattered who and in all honesty Sakura had a knack for loving those who didn't love, couldn't love, weren't capable of returning such heartfelt feelings. But Sakura also had the curse of holding on. She refused to let go when she should, she held on and on and on, hurting herself in the process until the very bitter end. She cherished her feelings too much to let go. It was a bitter, vicious vindictive cycle that played like a bad record in the surface of her memories. It had happened to Sasuke, who was long gone, dead by Kabuto's hand. Once she found something to fixate on it was hard to stop. A craving, an addiction.

Uchiha Itachi wasn't a simple craving. No, addiction didn't begin to describe the delectable feelings that would course through her, when her name came from his lips. Those thin lips that burned as they laved at her tender skin leaving marks on her body and soul. The feel of those hot lips, hard and needy, demanding respect and attention from her own. He was a disease, festering, attacking her cellular structure until she looked like him, resembled him, reflected him. She couldn't tear herself away, couldn't come apart from him.

But it didn't matter. It wasn't important.

She dropped into the surrounding area, crouching as she sheltered her fall. She rose, sensing him as he intentionally let her sense him. She shivered in the cold, the dark light of the moon hard, the light from the lightning bugs the only other source available in the shadows. She closed her eyes as she felt the lingering burning of those Sharingan eyes on her. His lips brushed tantalizing tingles down her neck, as he pulled her anbu turtle neck lower.

"Itachi" She said, cherishing his name on her lips.

"Sakura.." He replied with the delicious lilting tenor.

And she was lost again in him as he led her, as she followed him into the darkness.

Because Sakura loved him.