Disc: We don't own Naruto.

Prologue:

Her lavender lips were half-submerged in the shallow puddle. Her dull green eyes were half open, reflecting clearly in the surface of the water. She might have been observing the bloody kunai barely contained by her muddy fingers.

Her gloves were torn, revealing the lines of crimson on the cold skin of her powerful hands. The fabric of what was left of those famous gloves was congealed with ruddy syrup, her sweet lifeblood that had leaked out from the nail-shaped puncture wounds on her palms.

Her body lay in the mist, in the bloody field. One shoulder was buried in the mud, the other was still at the angle it had been in when she had tried to roll her broken body over. One leg was clearly fractured beyond repair, resting in a pool of water that was turning crimson from the gash on her thigh. The shuriken that had ripped that gash was proudly wedged in the soft earth near her hip, waiting for the ninja who had thrown it through the kunoichi's flesh.

But the shuriken wouldn't be returned for. It was just a shuriken--not one of the windmills either. Sakura's murderer didn't have any more need for it.

But perhaps Itachi did. He walked forward through the fog before crouching and taking the little weapon out of the ground. He brought the blade to his eyes, watching the blood drip off of it into the puddle below, hearing the droplets cast their ripples in the murky pool.

His sharringan eyes fell on each individual spike, searching for any sign of poison. But there was no venom on the blade.

His eyes narrowed at this discovery. He laid the shuriken back on the ground quietly and wiped his bloody hand on the grass beside it. Even though that only made his hand dirtier, the moisture from the soaked, muddy vegetation cleared at least a little bit of the redness.

The wind rippled across the clearing, stirring the mist slightly and carrying the sounds of the continuing battle to the north. Clashing iron and the roar of fire jutsu lingered in the air after the breeze had passed, playing around the older Uchiha's ears as he pulled Sakura's body the rest of the way over, in the direction she'd been trying to roll in.

And then he saw It. Them. The bite marks on her neck and collar bone-- human looking, yet distinctly inflamed by whatever had been on the biter's lips. One or two were distended by the act of dragging the teeth along her flesh, probably because the girl had been desperately pulling away from the hungry mouth.

Foolish little brother. The snake overcame you.

And the boy had tried to compensate by overcoming his old teammate.

Itachi sighed to himself and brushed two warm fingers over Sakura's pulse to confirm what his red eyes had seen: the tiniest pulse of blood beneath the pale and fragile skin of her throat.

Sure enough, he felt the weak and erratic beat of her heart under his fingertips.

The cold, rigid, nearly-blue kunoichi who was staring blankly at the sky beside him would be alive for a little longer. And now that he was certain of the poison's point of entrance into her body, he could fix her.

With Konoha laying in ruins behind him, the Hokage crucified on the gates, and the young woman's team dispersed to the winds of war, there was no one else who could do so.

Sakura Haruno would live to see another moon rise. Uchiha Itachi had a purpose for her.