Sleeping Beauty

Pairing: ItaSaku

Summary: Akatsuki is on the move again and Team 7 has been confined to the village until the threat has passed. Sakura, after only a few weeks, is restless and wants to leave the village for a 'vacation' of sorts. She knows the only way she'll be allowed to leave is if she can convince Tsunade she is completely kidnapper-proof and invents a jutsu that will make her, for all intents and purposes, dead. Her vacation won, she sets out, unaware that cogs are turning within Konoha and of the fact that she is soon to be Akatsuki's ransom for her best friend. As her would-be kidnappers, Itachi and Kisame, close in, she uses the jutsu knowing it's her only chance of escaping. Imagine her disappointment when she finds out Itachi is not as easily fooled as she had hoped and finds herself trapped with no hope of escape.

Thoughts/Dreams

Flashbacks

Inner Sakura

Disclaimer: DNON

Sorry for changing it again! (previous readers know what I mean)

Prologue: How it begins

Itachi leaned against the boulder and crossed his arms, knowing the summons would come from Pein soon; the five-tails jinchuuriki had just been captured by Zetsu, the plant-man had told him and Kisame so only a moment ago. Kisame sat above him on top of the boulder, legs folded, Samehada, his shark-skin sword, lying across his lap and acting as a kind of elbow rest for the blue-skinned man.

"How much longer do you think it'll be?" Kisame asked, closing his eyes lazily and toying with the ring on his left ring finger, twisting it round and round as they waited for the tingling that would signal the beginning of the extraction.

"Maybe ten minutes." Itachi replied, rubbing his own ring with his thumb and looking up through the canopy of leaves above their heads at the pale grey clouds wafting past in a huge mass. It was probably going to rain later, but not for hours; Itachi pushed away from the boulder and sat crosslegged under a large pine that had had all of its branches under six feet lopped off by travelers following the game trail. The pine needles pricked him through his thick shinobi pants but he didn't mind; the extraction would take three days and he didn't feel like being soaked to the bone the entire time. Kisame, on the other hand, loved water; the rain wouldn't bother him at all.

A bird cheeped loudly and abandoned its nest in a flurry of wings as the two men waited in silence. Squirrels raced each other through the branches above, showering Itachi with needles and small twigs and disgruntling several birds that had to abandon their perches to avoid colliding with them. Next to Itachi's right foot, a small mouse was sniffing the ground, searching for seeds; Itachi twitched his toes when it got too close and the mouse ran to its den only a few feet away.

Finally, just as Itachi was about to stand and stretch his legs, the signal came; he performed the handsign that activated the jutsu that put his incorporeal spirit in the new cave of sealing (the old one had been destroyed by the jinchuuriki's companions when they fought Sasori), and waited as the ghostly forms of the other members appeared, each on their respective finger of the sealing statue. No one spoke; it wasn't necessary to because they had performed this ceremony several times now and each knew exactly what he and she (because there was one female member) was to do. The jinchuuriki's body rose into the air and began to glow eerily; the glow—the bijuu's chakra—began to converge above the body and floated toward the mouth of the statue, which had opened; Itachi watched it with only mild interest, noting the color of the chakra—pale yellow. The ichibi had had a pale green chakra, the very color of its host's eyes, while the niibi had had a pale blue glow; the kyuubi had red chakra—that Itachi knew because his sharingan had seen it within Uzumaki Naruto, the bijuu's host. Naruto was his assignment, because only the sharingan could control that particular bijuu, and keep it from breaking loose.

It would be a while before he would have to hunt Naruto down like an animal and not the human being he was, but he had no choice; he had to keep being a member of Akatsuki for the sake of peace in the shinobi world, but on the day the organization fell and the five great nations could once again rest easy, he would go, and he would find his brother.

And he would die.

That had been his plan for nearly a decade now.

Itachi closed his eyes, slipping into a state of half-consciousness because his full concentration was not needed for the ceremony and he wanted to keep an eye on his and Kisame's bodies. Under the pine tree he could smell the earthy scent the rain brought up from the ground as it soaked in; the rain had started earlier than he had predicted. He sighed; it was going to be a long three days and an even longer week; he and Kisame were in Fire Country on the eastern border—a dangerous place to be if you were a member of Akatsuki, made even more dangerous by the fact that his chakra was going to be lower than usual once the extraction was through.

The rain was soothing—not a heavy downpour, the clouds hadn't been holding anything remotely near that amount of water—a light mist that made visibility poor and dropped the temperature considerably. He shivered despite the fact that the cloak he wore to mark his membership in Akatsuki was not only thick, but also waterproof. The same went for his pants.

Fire Country... always raining at the most inopportune of times... The corners of his mouth twitched at the thought as he recalled the seemingly freak summer storms of his childhood that had always popped up just when he least expected them to.

"There's just no predicting the weather in the Land of Fire," his father had once said after a heavy downpour that had lasted only a few minutes.

Sasuke had always liked the rain, he remembered, had always snuck out of the house to run and jump in it and splash in the puddles. He had caught a nasty case of pneumonia one summer, and been confined to his futon for nearly a month. The entire clan had shown up to visit and wish him well—not all at once, they would never have fit into the main house where he and Sasuke lived—and had showered him with gifts. Mikoto, their mother, had stayed by Sasuke almost the entire time while Fugaku stopped by when he could, busy with a serial killer that he finally caught because Itachi had noticed the factor that had tied the killings together: the women had all been wearing a white dress when they died.

After Sasuke had gotten well, Fugaku had told him to keep an eye on him whenever he was home (which had not been often because between ANBU duty, and missions there had been very little time for him to spend at home).

Does Sasuke still like the rain? Itachi wondered, opening his eyes briefly to watch it come down.

Sasuke watched the rain fall from the windowseat of his white bedroom, lips pressed together so tightly they formed a thin, colorless line; they were in the old fort Orochimaru liked to use when they were in the Land of Fire, the one on the eastern border, close to the Land of Lightning. He scowled at the mist coming down sourly; the rain only ever reminded him of one thing anymore: the empty walls and streets in the Uchiha compound in Konoha. He had gone back after escaping the hospital, sure it had all been a nightmare. The white chalk outlines and yellow crime scene tape had not convinced him everyone was gone. It was not until a week later, after trying to sleep in his old house (against the Hokage's wishes), that the reality sank in like an inkstain in clothing. What had done it was a nightmare—a regular one like he'd used to have, usually involving a monster—only the monster had had Itachi's voice and when he'd woken no one had come to comfort him. After that, the massacre had become his only dream and he'd relived it nightly.

But his old nightmare had not happened for about three years because of Naruto. After he had become a part of Team 7, the nightmare had abruptly stopped occurring. In fact, he had not had any nightmares until a few minutes ago, and it was still replaying in his head....

Sasuke was standing in the middle of a courtyard, a light breeze pushing at his bangs until they slid in front of his eyes. His katana was red with blood and dripping onto the paving stones by his right foot, forming a small puddle.

He raised the katana to study it, puzzled as to how the blood had gotten there; he couldn't remember using it on anybody. Couldn't remember why he had come to this place at all.

Dark clouds slid in front of the moon—A full moon... Sasuke thought, just like that night.—and he was plunged into darkness for a few brief moments.

"Foolish little brother..." Itachi's voice broke the silence in the courtyard, seeming to come from behind him.

The small scar on his upper left arm twinged and Sasuke closed his eyes tightly; the image of his parents' bodies on the floor, their blood trickling across the floorboards toward his prone body flashed before his eyes as he spun around. The katana made contact with flesh, there was a scream of pain. He kept his eyes closed even when he felt warm blood splash across his face and torso.

"Look what you have become." Itachi's voice continued softly. The sound of heavy, labored breathing reached his ears.

"Sa... suke..." a new voice, very female, moaned slowly.

Sasuke opened his eyes, startled. "Where the fuck are you, Itachi?!"

"See what you have done, pathetic little brother?" Itachi said, appearing in front of him. He appeared older, more weary than the thirteen year old version he had known. He was still wearing his ANBU gear, still holding the short katana all ANBU carried. Only it was clean, unbesmirched by their parents' blood. Sasuke frowned, took a step toward his brother—Itachi did the same—, felt something squelch under his foot.

"Wha—" he began, making a face, and looked down.

Pastel pink hair mingled with an already congealing pool of blood. The slash on her neck told him how she had died, and Sasuke stared at his katana in horror. Sakura's bright green eyes had dimmed in death, her pale skin was spattered with arterial blood, blood she had obviously tried to halt, because one hand rested on her neck; her small hand didn't even begin to cover the wound, which had nearly decapitated her. Her other hand was stretched toward him, the fingers spread wide, as though she had tried to touch him just once more before she died.

"What—" Sasuke shook his head, backed away from the still body of his old teammate. "What—" He dropped the katana in horror and wiped his hands on his once pristine white top.

"Sasuke... why did you do it?" Itachi asked, for some reason still mirroring his actions. "Did she really deserve to die?" He was backing away as well, his body becoming blurry as tears began to fill Sasuke's eyes.

"I could ask you the same—" Sasuke began, his voice louder than he had ever raised it, but stopped as he realized just why Itachi had seemed to mimick him. There was a mirror covering the entire wall of the courtyard. Itachi had never been there. Only his scared-looking reflection remained.

Sasuke looked at Sakura's body once more, and recoiled when he realized that she had been replaced with the bodies of his dead parents. A short katana was in his hand and he looked at the mirror-wall once more only to find that he had become Itachi.

"Look what you have become...." Itachi said as Sasuke screamed...and screamed...and screamed....

Sasuke's eyes flew open in shock and he fell out of his seat onto the cold floor below just as a loud crash of thunder erupted; he had fallen asleep once again, despite trying not to.

"Sakura..." he whispered.

Sakura sat up suddenly in her bed, gasping as if she'd just run a marathon with no chakra. The scar on her abdomen stretched painfully, still fresh although mostly healed. She traced it slowly with a finger, starting from the bottom, which began just below her bellybutton. Up past the bottom of her ribcage, past her collarbone, and up her neck to the bottom of her chin. Sasuke had sliced deeply when he had attacked her, more deeply at the bottom than the top, and so swiftly that the pain had knocked her out before she could react. She had heard, somehow, his last word to her and it rang in her ears even now, a little over two weeks later.

"Pathetic."

The word cut more deeply than any katana ever could; the reason she had trained this hard, trained to be so strong, was to gain Sasuke's approval above all others. And in the three years they had been apart, the gap in their strengths had not shrunk at all but had grown. Sakura gripped the edge of her pale blue comforter tightly, wanting to rip something to shreds to keep the tears welling up from overflowing.

When will I be strong enough to protect them both? Sakura wondered, wiping her eyes on her arm roughly. She had tried so hard to fight him, but she hadn't even gotten one blow in.

Sasuke... Sasuke didn't care about her, or Naruto, or Konoha anymore. She had seen it in his eyes when they met again; there had been a flicker of recognition when their eyes met, and hints of something else. She had seen him and Naruto exchange that look. It was rivalry. She'd never have imagined that he'd give her that look one day. Had he wanted to see how much stronger she had gotten while he was gone, was that it? It wouldn't surprise her if it was. Sasuke was obsessed with power, had been ever since the curse mark had activated that first time during the chunin exams. She should have seen it then; there had been a lust for power there, one that could not be sated in Konoha, though she disagreed with that. She had become nearly as powerful as Tsunade in Konoha, and was even beginning to pass her.

I have a mission in the morning, I should go to sleep.... As if reacting to this thought, her eyes suddenly seemed heavier. Sakura gave them both one last rub, wiping away the last remnants of her tears, and lay down again.

Sasuke... the next time we meet, you will be the one lying on the ground bleeding. I will prove just how strong I am.

A/N: I am so pleased with this, you guys have no idea.

I was re-reading the fic over spring break, and I started typing a scene that I had no idea how it would fit in and realized 'holy shit. my writing has gotten better. my old writing is crap.'

So I decided to redo the story over spring break. It's plotted out now despite my nervousness at doing so, and the timeline is better, more organized, and Sasuke is going to be in it from the beginning to start setting things up. I'm not going to update again for at least a couple of weeks because 1) I want to get a good backlog of chapters built up, 2) Like most of you on here, I do have a life outside of fanfiction—though it's nothing to brag about, I'm still pretty anti-social, aaaand 3) It's my senior year, and I don't want too many distractions from the copious amounts of homework my teachers have been giving me.

That's it for now. Read and Review please. Tell me if you like, don't like, or just plain hate.

And I apologize for once again changing the story. It's still pretty much going to be the same, just much better.

Also: What do you guys think of the new summary?

Any typos, grammar errors, or general suggestions on how to improve: review or pm me and I'll fix them as soon as I can. I do not bite. I take criticism better than most and I won't sic any of the other readers on you if you flame me either as an anonymous reader or with your actual account.