Authors note: Howdy do! I don't dabble much in fanfiction anymore, but after re-reading an old piece of mine, Spur of the Moment, inspiration struck. This is the sequel to that story, but it can easily stand alone. In tone and theme, it is a lot like SotM. I think the mood is maybe a bit over the top here and there, and it seems a little long-winded even to me, but overall I'm very pleased with this and happy to be able to share it with you guys. Please enjoy, and feel free to share your opinion, I'd be happy to hear it.
Long Time Coming
Rain fell in heavy drops on the patio and the lush forest beyond it, obscuring the light of day. The pitter-patter of it on the ground, the trees, and the roof of the small hut was as soothing to Uchiha Itachi as anything ever was these days. He liked the rain. He had always liked the rain. When he was thinking too many thoughts, and seeing too many faces behind his closed lids, he would count each drop of rain that hit any surface around him. He could do it, of course. He was the Uchiha. The last one. Save the first one that ever was, of course. But did that monster count? Did anything at all count anymore? Well, Itachi was counting. Counting raindrops.
His short reverie was, predictably, broken.
"Oi! Fucking Uchiha, guess what I found? Well, if you wanna get technical, the bitch found me."
Through the curtain of rain, Hidan was striding along, a maniacal grin on his face and blood spattered on his robes. He carried a limp form over his shoulder, secured by a hand firmly set on her behind. Itachi did not move from where he sat on the wooden bench, sheltered from the weather by the protruding roof. Hidan stepped onto the patio and shook his head like a dog to clear his face from the rain, then proceeded to dump the small body before Itachi.
"Fucking happy birthday!" he laughed.
"It's not my birthday," Itachi deadpanned.
"Who the fuck cares? I'm trying to be fucking nice to your sorry ass, get some fucking manners!"
Itachi remained stoically silent.
"Well, fuck," snarled Hidan savagely. "If you don't want the bitch, I'll take her. Was bloody murder getting her knocked out, too. Anyway, I saw she was that bitch your fucked up brother used to fuck around with, a leaf, right? And I just thought, 'Itachi's been moping around for so long, maybe some pussy from back home would loosen that pole he's got stuck in his fucking ass.' Well, fuck me for trying!"
The tirade went on, but Itachi wasn't listening. He was looking at the body in front of him. The girl was unconscious, but there was not enough blood on her to suggest that she would be dying soon. After years of witnessing Hidan's penchant for bloody slaughter, this was a surprise. But things had changed over the last year and a half. Drastically. Now even Hidan was suffering the results, filled up with all the horror he could have wished for, allowing him room to spare one girl.
Or else he was just stepping further into madness. Both were plausible options.
"Well?" said Hidan impatiently. "You want the bitch, or not?"
She had hair the colour of leaves on a cherry tree. This was indeed Haruno Sakura. But she was not only relevant because of her ties to Itachi's late brother or the also late Uzumaki Naruto.
"This is the kunoichi that killed Deidara," Itachi noted quietly. "The hokage's apprentice."
"I fucking know, alright? That little shit tried to get me next. So when you're finished, I want a go at the bitch."
Smoothly, Itachi rose from his seat, and bent down to scoop the girl up. Without another word, he disappeared into the hut, heading for the humble room where he slept.
"Well, don't fucking say thanks or anything!" he heard Hidan shout out behind him. "Hey, and when she wakes up – ask her what the fuck is up with that goddamn fucking candyfloss on her head!"
The door clicked shut behind Itachi.
At first, Sakura thought it was the pain that woke her up. It was intense, rolling in dull waves over her abdomen and right thigh. Quickly though, she realized she was being shaken awake by a pair of hands around her shoulders.
For a girl who had had no friendly bodily contact with anyone in months, this was a troubling scenario to wake up to, and Sakura reacted as such. She pulled chakra into her hands and began a motion to shove – the kind of shove that removes heads from bodies. However her hands met nothing but air, and her bewildered eyes, struggling to adjust to the light, the surroundings, found no-one to land on.
"Be still," said smooth voice in her ear.
Sakura bolted off the futon she'd been on, spinning around to face the man behind her. She was in her battle stance, but as soon as she realized just who she was sharing a room with, she faltered, terrified.
Uchiha Itachi was sitting on the futon.
A few breathless seconds ticked by. Every nerve in Sakura's body was alert, but strangely, the Uchiha did and said nothing. In fact, he seemed oddlyunthreatening, of all things. His posture was passive, his hands turned upwards in his lap. He didn't wear his Akatsuki cloak – though there was no point either way, at this day and age – just a basic ninja getup that any Chuunin could have worn. And Sakura was suddenly reminded that he was only a little older than her. Still young, though the furrows of a ninety-year-old lined his eyes.
"Itachi," Sakura spat with more gusto than she felt. Her voice was low and trembling, but not just with fear. "Why did you bring me here?"
Itachi blinked slowly. She saw the motion out of the corner of her eyes, but was intensely focused on not looking at his Sharingan directly. "I didn't," he said.
"Don't play games with me…" Sakura began, when she started to remember what had led up to this predicament. Hidan. She'd gone for him. Kami, but she was out of her mind. Once Deidara was dead, all she'd wanted was to get the next son-of-a-bitch, and Hidan'd been her choice. Why then? Because he was next in the succession, because she had a plan in which he figured? No. There was no plan, not this time. Just a lot of rage and hatred, and the random circumstance of a sighting of him not far from where she was recouping. She fashioned an idea of defeating him basically on the way there. It had taken her so long to track Deidara down, letting this chance slip by now was just too much.
She didn't remember much after that, but if she had succeeded in her endeavor, she would not be where she was now. Namely, in confined quarters with one notorious Uchiha Itachi.
Who at this point decided to speak up.
"You are trying to kill the Akatsuki."
Sakura's eyes hardened. "What's left of you," she said harshly.
"For what happened to Uzumaki," Itachi elaborated, as though he was the one explaining the matter to her.
"For what happened to a lot of people," she snarled, "the whole world, at that."
"Yes, but Naruto-kun was special."
Was he goading her? Sakura breathed deeply through her nostrils. Now was not the time to lose her head. Last time that happened, this happened. No, she had to evaluate the situation. She was standing with her feet slightly spread and her hands half raised, fully clenched, and ready for battle. Only, Itachi looked the exact opposite, still reclining on the bed calm as you please. What was his angle?
Sakura took a deep breath and tried to stay on topic. "Uchiha Itachi," she said levelly. "What do you want from me?"
"You think I want something from you?"
Alright, there was definitely a teasing sort of lilt to those words, as astonishing as that sounded. Sakura bristled. "I think I would be dead if that weren't the case."
He rose, she froze. But he only turned to the window and closed the shutters, dimming the sound of rain and the light of day. For a brief moment, he remained standing there with his back to her, his hands resting on the wood. He might be hesitating, or he might be anticipating what was to come.
His head turned minutely to the side. Voice suddenly chilling to the bone, he spoke just one word: "Stop."
Only then did Sakura become aware that her whole body had tensed up. She had been a split second from moving in on his unprotected back. That Itachi would be aware of this before even she was, simply spoke to his inconceivable level of skill.
He had turned around. Like a thundercloud, he moved in on her, and Sakura had to fight the urge to flee.
Itachi did not stop until they were almost toe to toe. Then, in a voice both quiet and deadly, he spoke.
"You cannot defeat me. You never will."
Sakura stared straight ahead into his chest and breathed hard.
"But, with my help, you can defeat Hidan."
Her eyes snapped to his.
What a crimson hell they were, and how they reminded her of Sasuke. This is some sort of genjutsu, she thought, a trick. But he met her gaze steadily, and the seconds ticked away without any horrible pain, or change of scenarios, or anyone dissolving into cawing ravens.
Itachi just stood there, patiently, while Sakura opened and closed her mouth a few times. She wanted to yell, You can't seriously believe I'd fall for that! But the problem was, why on earth would he want to fool her? She would have more luck counting the stars than the number of ways he could kill her, and with his Sharigan he could mind-fuck her every which way he pleased, claw his way through her memories and make her relive the death of Naruto, of Sasuke, of Kakashi and Tsunade again and again and again until her sanity had shattered like glass on a mountain side. It seemed redundant for a man such as Uchiha Itachi to make such a ridiculous claim, only to get the chance to yell, "Psyched!"
There was an obvious question to be asked here, and Sakura did just that. "Why? Why do you want Hidan dead – and why would you want my help? If you can't do it, I don't see what use I'd be."
Itachi cocked his head to the side. She had moved from him, she realized, increased the distance between them to something safer. But his eyes she couldn't seem to look away from, and that was the most obvious danger of all. "I want Hidan dead," said Itachi quietly, "because he is evil."
The corners of Sakura's mouth tugged down in a grimace fuelled by a number of emotions. "Kettles and pots, Uchiha. A lot of people would call you evil, as well." She counted herself among them.
"I have done evil things. I know this. But I've had reasons."
"I don't suppose those reasons mattered greatly to the people you butchered," she replied, temper flaring, thinking of Naruto more than anyone, more than Sasuke. "Or the people who loved them…"
"I am no fool," Itachi said. "I know what I've caused. I know the damage I have done in my lifetime is irreparable." Was that a note of grief she sensed underneath those words? Or chagrin, or something else, or nothing at all? "But I never did anything I didn't feel I had to. Hidan does what he does because he likes it. The world has crashed around our ears, yet he continues. He feasts on pain and terror like a thirsty man on water. It's distasteful, Sakura-san."
When he said her name like that, it sent chills down her neck. She was transfixed by his voice and words, but she was not seduced. "Say all that is true."
"I am saying it's true."
"Say I believe you, then. What role am I to play in your little scheme? If you're hoping to double-team him, I have to warn you. I am not at my sharpest." She was stoically ignoring the pain the throbbed persistently in her body, but she was not forgetting it. Hidan had smashed her up pretty good, and she didn't feel up for round two just yet.
"You don't listen well," said the Uchiha coolly. For the first time in several minutes, he broke eye-contact with Sakura as he turned slightly to glance at the barred window. "You are no-where near my level, you must know. But you are of use to me, despite your shortcomings."
My "short-comings" got the better of two of your team-mates, Sakura thought darkly, remembering Sasori and Deidara. But he had the right end of it, she knew. Itachi was in a league of his own, in near every damn discipline known to the shinobi world.
That was when it hit her. "I'm a medic," she blurted – "You need a medic?"
"To kill Hidan, yes. I can decapitate him, and have thought of it often as of late. But that will only rid the world of him for a time. Thanks to his god, he will live on in whatever shape I leave him in, to be collected and resurrected in ten years, or a hundred, or a thousand – it makes no matter. It will only be a question of time, and his cruelty will live again. Think of this – I have caused endless amounts of suffering, but I am dying, and my memory will wash away through the tides of time. But an immortal like Hidan can go on…"
"I get it," Sakura said, though she was still thoroughly confused as to Itachi's motives. "But what is it you think I can do?"
"Shut him down," the young man said plainly. "Snuff out any and all electrical surges that keep him going. He may be powered by a god, but even a god needs a functioning tool to work his ways. Destroy the tool, and the god will discard it."
"Or so the theory goes," ventured Sakura boldly. "And the details are up to me, I suppose?"
"You are the expert," said Itachi, and she thought he was teasing her again, although he sounded somehow intensely sad and tired.
Sakura nodded grimly. She saw some sense in all of this, but one thing remained nagging her. "You want something from me," she guessed. "This is going to be a sort of pact, isn't it? You give me my kill, and you'll want something for it. But what?"
He swept his blood-red eyes slowly to hers. "I have use of your skills," the shinobi replied cryptically.
I bet you do, Sakura thought darkly. She hadn't missed his earlier words; I am dying. She supposed he could have meant that in an encompassing kind of way, sort of like "We are all rushing for death" or some such deep philosophical notion, but something in her disbelieved that. He is sick, she thought, or his Sharingan is suffering like Kakashi's did. He wants me to annihilate Hidan, so in return I will heal. Well, we shall see about that.
But to his face, she simply said, "We have a deal, Uchiha."
And he nodded curtly in return.
Sakura waited on his futon while Itachi left the room to deal with Hidan. It was a strange sensation, sitting on the bed of Uchiha Itachi. She couldn't help but think of the irony of it all. Here she was, hanging out in the sleeping quarters of the man that had tortured the mind of Sasuke, her childhood love, beyond all repair. What had the world come to? Everything from her time as a kunoichi of the Leaf seemed little more than a distant dream, a memory that belonged to someone else, a silly movie she had once seen. She still wore her forehead protector, though. Sakura had earned her hitae-ate with blood and sweat and heartbreak, and she would wear it until the day she died. It was also a reminder that the life she had lead before this current one had been real. Once she'd had friends, and family – and a lover.
Grief clutched at her heart. One kiss. That was all it had amounted to. One kiss from the lips of Naruto, before he raced off to face Uchiha Madara. It had been a promise of more to come, but nothing else was afforded to her. Fucking cowards, she thought, swallowing hard. Seven against one, where is the justice in that?
The door opened, and behind it stood Itachi.
"Come," he beckoned.
Hidan lay sprawled on his back in a modest dining room just across the hall. Drool tickled out the side of his open mouth, but he looked unharmed. Sakura glanced at Itachi.
"A genjutsu," the nin explained.
Sakura nodded. "Will he be out, even when I'm shutting his body down?"
"Yes. I don't make mistakes."
Sakura crouched by the unconscious man. She felt his pulse were it beat at his neck. It was steady and strong. She would have to do something about that.
Her fingers glowed. Sakura pushed her chakra slowly into Hidan, probing as she went. She categorized everything she gathered. There was the regular people stuff, like the state of his organs and his blood-pressure, there was the shinobi stuff, namely the chakra reserves – and then there was a third thing, another kind of power. It felt sort of like chakra, but it moved differently within Hidan's cells, and was stored in another way, too. It must have been the gift of his religion, the god-like abilities he'd been bestowed for being a priest of Jashin. She didn't dare touch that, so instead she set to work on his cells.
As a medic, she knew just what to do. You can't learn how to mend something without at the same time learning how to destroy it wholly, and destroy she did. Sakura's first order of business was to disrupt Hidan's blood-flow, which would kill any normal human being within minutes, but this simply prompted the god-like energy to action. "Yes, I see," muttered Sakura out loud, sensing how this divine energy compensated for the failure of Hidan's body, and slowly began to repair it. "Slowly" being the key word. She could destroy him a lot faster than that blood-thirsty god of his could restore him.
Sakura turned her attention to his brain, and here she began annihilating everything on a microscopic scale. With cool professionalism, she set to disrupting the sparks of energy – not chakra, or anything divine, but pure, human electrical impulses – in a pattern she devised on the spot, a grid where she worked everything over twice, in small portions of his brain. Methodically she worked her way through Hidan's scalp, destroying his memories where they were stored, his knowledge of actions like eating, breathing and fighting, and anything else she found. She whisked away his body's knowledge of the most basic functions, and that was when it started to shut down. And as it turned out, the divine energy didn't have Sakura's penchant for healing. She hadn't thought it would have. The energy reacted predictably, and foolishly, by moving to Hidan's organs to keep them going. Heart, pump blood, it seemed to order, lungs, draw air. Meanwhile Sakura was obliterating everything that knew what to do with blood and oxygen, and the body was faltering.
Where's your god now, you murderer? Sakura thought with savage glee. It doesn't seem like he knows as much about keeping a body together as he does ripping it apart.
How long she worked, she didn't know. The divine power in Hidan was strong, and it focused equally on all parts of his body, even the brain. When she had snuffed out one part of it, the energy called it back to life. But Sakura simply went over it again, and again, and again, and even though it seemed like she was getting no-where, she knew she was. Hidan's body had begun a slow process of rotting, and it seemed like this could not be countered by his god, no matter how hard he tried.
When Hidan's god finally left his subject, it was wholly tangible.
Nothing was fighting Sakura anymore, nothing was ordering the broken body beneath her hands to go on living. Like a sigh it left him, and Sakura now straddled a corpse, a broken shell of a man. She tried to feel triumph, but all she felt was exhausted, and when she tried to get up, she fell sideways instead.
Cool hands caught her arms and lifted her up. He brought her outside and sat her down on a bench on the patio, and Sakura was surprised to discover that morning had come. The sun was rising behind the green fir forest in front of them, turning every drop of dew into a diamond. The world was wet with rain, but for now the clouds had gone.
"How long?" she muttered.
"All afternoon and through the night, as you see."
She would have nodded, but lacked the energy. Still, the fresh, clean air was soothing in her lungs, and she breathed deeply, feeling just a hint of strength returning to her limbs. Sakura began to sense it – the immensity of what she had done. She'd killed an immortal. Fought his god and won. That sadistic son of a bitch wouldn't do anybody any harm any more. A hint of a smile tugged at the corners of her mouth.
"About our agreement…" began Itachi.
Sakura grimaced. "I have the barest shred of chakra left, Uchiha. I won't be healing anybody before at least a full day, and a few meals." And even then, I would rather fight you and die than bring you back to full potency. Those last words she kept sealed tightly behind her lips.
"I think you have enough for what I need you to do," said Itachi quietly.
She glanced at him suspiciously. "What would you know about that?"
"You'd find I know quite a bit about taking lives."
For the first seconds, she was at a loss. But it dawned on her, like the sun behind the fir trees, a truth not near as pretty, but just as inevitable. "Why?" she gasped.
"For the same reasons you have."
"Because… because of what you did to Naruto?"
A sardonic smile graced his lips. "For what I did to a lot of people," he said, mimicking their earlier exchange. "The whole world, at that…"
Yes, but Naruto-kun was special. God, but he had been. Sakura felt close to tears.
Itachi was looking straight ahead into the grove in front of them, breathing, still, the fresh wet air, seemingly enjoying the sun on his skin. "I should like to go peacefully," he said matter-of-factly. "You have the skills for that, I trust?"
She did. She could make death drift up on him like a lover, and he would never even know. She could make it feel good.
Sakura didn't know why she did it, but at that moment she reached out and touched Itachi's hand. His gaze fell on where their hands met, then continued a path up to her eyes. "Death is the only soothing I have any want of," he said flatly. "And I am still the same murderer, Sakura-san. Still the same evil man."
You're not so bad, Sakura wanted to say, as she had wanted to reach for him like she did. But he hadn't welcomed her touch, and he wouldn't welcome those words. Just a few years older than her, he was, yet ages from her, a man bent and broken by the things he had done. A solitary figure, wanting to embrace nothing and no one… except death itself. It was Sakura who wanted embraces and warm words and comfort, to give it as much as to receive it, despite everything she'd been through, despite all the anguish Itachi had caused in his life. You know what he's done, she told herself. Don't go soft.
Sakura withdrew her hand, and schooled her features. "How would you like it?"
"Quietly," he said instantly. "Slowly, like sleep."
She nodded. "I can do that." Even with her chakra reserves as they were, she could do it. It took next to nothing. You just lulled the brain into a stupor, told it to fall asleep, and not wake up. A human brain was desperately susceptible to such gentle probing.
Itachi nodded. "Thank you."
Sakura rose and moved to stand in front of him. She lifted her hands to rest them at Itachi's temples. This felt wrong, but she reminded herself of what he had done, what he had been a part of. There was justice in this. He did deserve to die, as much as any of them. Maybe he was a gentle soul underneath it all… but the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and Sakura couldn't think of anyone who'd paved a wider one than him. You've done so many evil things, she thought, looking into his eyes, though he was looking straight ahead. Maybe you meant it all for the best, but then you failed. Massively.
She decided she wouldn't feel bad about this. She would not regret, and not look back.
Chakra hummed at her fingertips.
"One last thing, Sakura-san," intoned Itachi with his smooth, quiet voice. "As I understand it, luck has brought you the heads of three Akatsuki members. That is three more than it affords most people. I shouldn't think to trust luck to grant me four."
She understood his meaning. Luck was not something she could rely on, though it had favored her up to this point. She'd lost against Hidan, and might as well have been dead. Come to think of it, she didn't know why she hadn't been killed, or how she'd ended up in Itachi's bedroom. Sakura thought of asking – but what was the point?
"I'm starting the procedure now," she said quietly.
The chakra hummed once more. Itachi closed his eyes under her ministrations. Once she was done, Sakura took her place beside him, and Itachi opened his eyes again. They still burned with the Sharingan. Maybe he couldn't see without it.
"Do you want to be alone… Itachi?" Sakura asked.
He said simply, "No."
And so Sakura remained by his side while Itachi's breathing gradually became deeper and slower. She could see how his eyelids grew heavy. For her, it was near unbearable, much worse than beating the life out of someone. Something was fundamentally wrong about him just sitting there and welcoming it. But, for all that it troubled her, he did look content. A small smile even graced his handsome features.
Under the light of a rising sun, the legendary Uchiha Itachi, notorious clan-killer, S-ranked Akatsuki member, and second-last of his name, passed away quietly next to a kunoichi of his old home.
All Sakura was left with was a modest hut, two corpses, and a deep-seated hollowness in her gut.
Notes on continuation: As for continuing the story with Sakura vs. the rest of Akatsuki… I'm not currently planning on doing that. I might, and I also have a few ideas for an epilogue, but I'm not making it a priority, so it all relies on when and if inspiration strikes.