So here it was, she had caught up to him at last. For a while, words failed her as she stared at him, seeing the boy she had once loved. The cold, haughty look on his face seemed familiar, but the burning hatred that flashed in his eyes was something that she could barely stand to look at. He had been different, the last time she had seen him. Then, she thought she had seen a moment of hope and longing flash in his eyes before it had been crushed by his need for revenge. Now, there was nothing in his gaze but bloodlust, hatred and contempt.

She realised, then, that his opinion of her no longer mattered, because this was not the Sasuke she had known. This was an S-rank criminal, a member of the Akatsuki, a threat to the safety of Konoha, and of course, Naruto. Determination flooded through her body.

'Sasuke, I wish to talk to you privately,' she said. His team-mates bristled, looking angry, no doubt mirroring the expressions of her own companions.

'Sakura,' Kiba hissed, 'what are you doing?' She looked at him over her shoulder.

'Kiba, shut up,' she warned, glaring at him. He tried to shout a warning but she already knew. She could feel Sasuke's menacing chakra in front of her. Turning slowly, she met his black eyes with her own green ones.

'I could kill you now and no one would be able to stop me,' he said musingly. She shrugged.

'Go on then,' she said, fairly sure she knew what he intended. As she had thought, he blinked as his eyes quickly morphed into the blood red of his Sharingan. It looked different now; the tomoes had altered into a spiral star of some sorts. It was his Mangekyō, no doubt.

She fell into the Tsukuyomi gradually, until she was in a black and white world. It was vastly different to what she remembered of Kakashi describing Itachi's Tsukuyomi.

There were no torture implements or nasty looking swords, no menacing Sharingan eyes peering down at her, just Sasuke, standing before her, looking down at her with a blank expression.

'I suggest you speak then, if you're going to,' he commanded, 'I can't keep this up forever.' This confused her a little.

'I thought that time was slowed down in Tsukuyomi,' she said. He shook his head.

'Mine is different to Itachi's,' he explained in a distant voice. 'I can't alter your perception of time like he could. This is real time.'

'You're fighting them, aren't you?' She asked, interpreting his distraction that way.

'No, actually,' he responded, sounding amused. 'I picked you up and started running away.' His smirk then was so utterly Sasuke that it made her heart race a little in her chest. He was more handsome now than he had ever been as a boy.

'You're acting differently than I thought you would,' she said, trying to figure him out. Even back when they were Genin it was unlikely for him to be speaking to her in such a cordial manner.

'I'm probably going to end up killing you,' he said with a shrug, like it was nothing. 'I didn't think it mattered how I spoke to you.' She inclined her head, seeing that he was probably right. At least he would hear her out, first.

'I remember back when you and Naruto fought, the first time. I ran and ran, trying to get there in time to stop the two of you from killing each other. I would have been the one killed if Kakashi hadn't stepped in like he did. Things are so different now,' she mused.

'How so?' He asked.

'You speak so carelessly of killing me now, like it was trivial. Naruto, I told him I loved him, you know. He said it didn't matter, that I was just lying to myself. Neither you nor Naruto care about me at all, not anymore. That, more than anything tells me that there is no hope left for our team,' she explained. He raised an eyebrow, but didn't object to her conclusions.

'He would forgive you anything, you know,' she said, looking up at him as if trying to peer into his soul, 'even this.'

'You think he wouldn't care if I killed you?' Sasuke asked, looking surprised and a little confused. She shook her head.

'He would care, but he would still forgive you. Naruto chases after you, even now, with no care for the danger he's putting himself in, or Konoha, or even the world. He doesn't care about any of it because his love for you is the most important thing to him.'

'Now you're being ridiculous,' he said dismissively.

'I'm not,' she said defiantly. 'Every word I'm speaking is the truth, and you're going to listen to every word of it.' He gripped her arms then, glaring at her.

'Even after all this time, you still pretend like you know me, or understand me. You know nothing of my life, of the things I've endured, of how much I've lost,' he snarled, looking demented in his anger.

'No,' she said softly, 'I haven't the faintest clue, but Naruto does.' This stopped him, and he pulled back from her again, removing the hands that had been bruising her arms.

'Naruto has always understood me better than most, but not anymore,' he said. She took this as a sign that she could continue.

'He does love you, more than anything, Sasuke. You come before everything else: before his friends, before his village, before even his own life. His nindo is that he will never give up, or back down, and he will never, ever give up on you, because to him, his love for you is a promise, and he'll never break it.'

Sakura stopped talking then, and tried to imagine feeling that same blind devotion towards anything and found that she couldn't picture it. She had loved, certainly, but not the same desperate way that Naruto loved Sasuke, like it eclipsed everything. She looked down at her hands, which were clenched into fists. She did love Naruto though, he was her brother in all but name, and it broke her heart to see him hurt again and again because of Sasuke.

'What would you have me do, Sakura?' He asked coldly. 'I will not return to Konoha, not after what they've done to my family. They stole my entire life, and I will not abide having Danzo as my Hokage. As long as I breathe I will hunt down that man, until either he is dead, or I have died in the attempt.'

Again, that deranged look of hatred overtook his features, and Sakura stepped back warily. As usual, there were things she still didn't understand.

'Danzo isn't the Hokage,' she said, latching onto the only part of his rant that she understood. 'Tsunade is.'

'What are you talking about? Danzo was at the Kage summit saying that he was the Hokage,' he snarled.

'He was made acting Hokage. Tsunade fell into a coma after Pein attacked the village, but she woke up. I swear, Sasuke, I would not be here if this was a lie. I wouldn't have left her side unless she was awake again.' She looked at him, begging him with her eyes to believe that it was true, because she couldn't help but feel that there was hope. That everything would be alright.

'It hardly matters; he is still alive, as are the Elders, Homura and Koharu, and until they have paid for what they made Itachi do to our family, I am still an avenger,' he said dismissively.

'What they made Itachi do…? Sasuke, I don't understand,' Sakura said, her eyes wide as her mind raced over what he could possibly mean.

'The Uchiha were blamed for the Kyuubi attacking Konoha, when the Fourth Hokage sacrificed his life. We were looked upon with great suspicion and our clan was relegated to what is now the Uchiha section of the town, abandoned now, obviously,' he began, staring off into the distance as he told her the story of his family.

'Over time, the Uchiha started to resent the way they were treated and they began a plot to overthrow the Third Hokage and rule the village themselves. From what I remember of my father, it doesn't surprise me that the clan would go to such extremes.' He paused then, his head tilted as he looked at something she couldn't see. After a moment, however, he continued.

'My father told Itachi that he had to use his position as an ANBU Captain to spy on the ANBU and the village, so that they could decide the best way to take action. Itachi couldn't stand the thought of there being civil war in Konoha. He was only four years old during the last Shinobi War, which had made him a pacifist, at least when it came to large-scale operations. So he went to the Third Hokage and the elders, Danzo, Homura and Koharu, and told them everything he knew.'

Sakura's heart went out to Sasuke and Itachi, and she started to see what may have truly happened. The thought of it horrified her.

'He did it under their orders, didn't he?' She asked faintly. 'They made him kill your entire clan.' A tear streamed down her face as everything she knew and loved about her village was stripped away, leaving only an overwhelming sense of betrayal. That the Third Hokage, a man she had always admired, could condone such acts made her feel sick.

'You understand a little of my pain now,' Sasuke said approvingly, watching as the emotions flicker across her face.

'I can't believe that they would do such a thing. Surely the Elders could have talked to the Uchiha Clan and found a resolution. I just don't understand,' she whispered, feeling lost. So many things made sense now, but all she could think of was if Tsunade knew about this, and if she did, why she had never done anything about it.

'Itachi never wanted me to know any of this. He let me kill him, thinking that he was a murderer, hating him with everything I was, and it was all a lie,' Sasuke said bitterly.

'Wait,' Sakura said, realisation dawning again. She looked at Sasuke with a frown. 'Itachi didn't tell you these things?'

'No,' Sasuke shook his head. 'I found out after he died.'

'Then who told you?' She demanded.

'The founder of my clan, Madara Uchiha,' he said dismissively. Sakura's eyes widened and she moved quickly, surprising both of them as she managed to land a punch on him. He fell back a few feet and brought his hand up to his face, feeling where she had hit him.

'You idiot,' she seethed. 'Why would you believe someone so evil without even checking the facts? Did you think to come back and Konoha to investigate whether or not he was telling the truth? Even something that terrible would be contained within the village's files. Tsunade could have cleared them and you could have found out for sure what had happened.' She felt furious that Sasuke could have allowed himself to be manipulated that way. He was naïve!

'I believe him, so what does it matter?' He asked scornfully.

'It matters, you complete and utter fool, of course it does! He's manipulating you because he has an agenda. I'm not saying that Itachi was a bad person, it might have happened the way that Madara said, but how will you ever know unless you find out from a reliable source? Blindly following after him solves nothing, can't you see that?' She entreated him, tears freely falling down her face now.

Sasuke stared at her, thinking carefully about what she had said. Perhaps she was right, and he should check on the facts before things escalated more than they had now. He was sick of doing everything Madara said anyway. He had already intended to go to Konoha anyway, and he could still destroy the place if what he found backed up the story Madara had told him.

'Very well, we shall go to Konoha and talk to Tsunade,' he said stiffly. Sakura stared at him, shocked to the core.

'You want to go to Konoha?'

'That's what I said, isn't it?' He said impatiently. 'I'm going to turn off my Tsukuyomi now, it's draining my chakra. You'll feel a bit weak and out of it so I'll keep carrying you until you get your bearings.'

Sakura nodded and closed her eyes as he released the jutsu. Slowly the outside world began to filter back in and she became aware of Sasuke's arms clutching her to his chest as he ran through the trees. She looked up, watching the trees flash by overhead as she allowed everything to process in her mind.

Had she really done it? Had she really convinced Sasuke to return to the village? It hardly seemed real. He had listened to her, and now she was still alive and he was carrying her. It made her realise something.

'You do care about me,' she said softly. He glanced down at her, bemused.

'What makes you say that?' He asked, a little curious.

'You listened to me, you really thought about what I said, didn't you?'

'So?' Sasuke shrugged.

'So, you never used to do that. You'd hear what they had to say and then ignore them and do your own thing. It was like no one ever reached you, except for Naruto. You always listened to him because he was like you, and you cared about him.'

'Do you want to know the reason why I didn't like you, Sakura?' Sasuke asked after a short time. Sakura nodded. She had always wondered, after all, why Sasuke had always refused to love her back, or even respect her.

'It was after we became a team, you were talking about Naruto, about how he didn't have any parents,' he reminded her. She gaped at him, shocked. She had never really thought about that incident before, though she remembered it now. She felt mortified now about how badly she had talked about Naruto.

'I was angry, because I had lost my parents not long before that, and the rest of my family as well, and so I sided with him over you. I called you annoying, I think, and walked away, because you didn't see his pain, or mine,' he explained.

'I understand now,' Sakura said softly. 'I was an idiot.' She felt shame overwhelm her.

'You appear to have grown out of it, if it's any consolation,' he said, now avoiding her gaze as he paid attention to where he was running.

'How do you mean?' She asked curiously.

'You weren't here for yourself, or even to save me. You were here for Naruto, because you love him, and you can't stand to see his pain. So you were trying to alleviate it, and keep him safe. The old Sakura wouldn't have thought he was worth it.'

'He is worth it,' she said quietly. 'You won't believe how he's changed, Sasuke. He's so strong.'

'He was always strong, though not many people saw it. I remember when we were fighting Gaara. He saved all of us, all on his own. It made me so angry,' Sasuke said musingly, remembering how inadequate he had felt when the dead-last had surpassed him, and so easily at that.

'I guess he was, but he always longed to be acknowledged by the village. He saved everyone from Pein and everyone that had died was brought back to life because of him. To think that Kakashi could have been gone,' she paused, struggling to stop herself from crying at the thought.

'He's a hero,' she said finally.

'Kakashi died?' Sasuke asked, stopping on a tree branch to stare down at her.

'Yes,' she whispered. 'Pein killed him in the attack. Naruto, he came back to the village and stopped Pein and then chased after the last path to find Nagato. They talked and Nagato used a reincarnation jutsu that brought back all the people who died in his attack, which killed him, ironically enough.'

'I never thought that Kakashi could die,' Sasuke said, staring off into the distance. 'It seems impossible.' Sakura nodded.

'You can set me down now. I feel fine,' she said. He did so, and she tested out her legs to make sure they were steady.

'We might as well wait for the others to catch up,' Sasuke said with a sigh. 'My team will be annoyed, and yours frantic I imagine.' She agreed, and so they stood together on the branch, waiting.