Disclaimer: I do not own any part of the Naruto franchise. Except for an Itachi plushy one of my friends sold me for three dollars (that counts as part of the franchise, right?). He has such an adorable face, oh yush, he does! X3

Explanation: So I was looking at some ItaSaku artwork by yuna2025 on DeviantART, and I suddenly got the inspiration to write an ItaSaku oneshot. I figure if I can do three (going on four) NejiSasu oneshots when I've never done a yaoi/shonen-ai before in my life, I should be able to do an ItaSaku, too, right?

Red Lily

A young woman sits alone in the center of a small, nondescript field in the middle of the forest, kneeling as though she is paying respects to the grave of a close, unnamed friend. The slight breeze that rolls through th clearing tugs at strands of rose-colored hair as emerald eyes stare down at a small stone slab, barely-visible under the soft dirt in which it is firmly tucked. Upon the stone there is no name, no date of birth or of death. The only inscription is a solitary, meaningless character: heiwa.

As she stares sullenly down at the dark gray slab, the girl, a woman now in her early twenties, feels a deep pang of grief well up inside her chest, a painful stabbing that bubbles into a pained outcry. She doubles over and hides her face as tears begin to fall.

She weeps over the grave of a man she loved in secret for fear that her friends would despise her if they knew the truth. This man had driven the object of her childhood adoration to the edge of insanity, had endangered and even helped to kill one of her friends. Later, he had even killed her childhood crush himself, pushing her to the same knife's edge the boy she had loved had once fallen from. By all rights, she should have despised this man – and, for years, she wished for his death and the relief and peace she had assumed it would bring.

And yet, when she finally had the chance to confront him a second time, things were set in motion which would eventually make it impossible to despise him anymore.

As she closes her eyes against the stinging tears, the woman sees the image of his face, not quite smiling (he never smiled in all the years she knew him), but still somehow conveying true comfort and trust in the way his features would soften ever so slightly, so that only she could see it. In his eyes she sees contempt, but she knows by now that it was merely a show – he was a very good actor, as was demanded of him by the life he had been forced to choose. She has gained the ability, after living as his "prisoner" for so many years, to see through his pretenses and decipher the meaning behind his every word and action.

She is able to see the smiling face, the adoration in his eyes; she can sense the love he never dared to show her.

An angel's face smiles to me under a headline of tragedy…

Itachi had killed her childhood crush nearly three years before, and the hatred in Sakura's heart had doubled until she finally stole away from Konoha to pursue him. Her plan was to kill him or die in the attempt – it was the night after she'd received word of Sasuke's death, and now that the Five Great Nations were buzzing with the news, she knew there was no way Itachi would set foot into any village for a long time, no matter how small and rural it may have been.

When she first received the news, the only word Sakura was able to utter before she blacked out was a simple negative, and denial of the terrible grievance that had been dealt to everyone who had known Sasuke.

Just a week before, Sasuke and a few other ninja had been sent on a mission to assassinate a traitor threatening to leak Konoha's weaknesses to enemy countries. While returning from their successfully-completed mission, Sasuke and his team had accidentally encountered Itachi Uchiha, Sasuke's older brother and the man responsible for wiping out the Uchiha clan. Sasuke's teammates fled, having gone unnoticed by Itachi, but Sasuke had stubbornly refused to run and charged Itachi without thinking.

According to one of the ninja who witnessed the battle, Sasuke hadn't had a snowball's chance in hell against his much more powerful brother. The fight had lasted for maybe ten minutes before Sasuke was struck in the throat by one of the kunai Itachi had thrown at him. The knowledge that Sasuke died almost immediately, leaving him with no time to suffer any pain, brought no comfort to Sakura – in fact, it made her hatred worse. In her mind, it only solidified the idea that Itachi wanted his brother dead into a fact, and as she mulled and grieved over her loss, her heart began to twist with the same fury that had driven Sasuke to his death.

Her friends knew something was vitally wrong with her, but she hid the extent of her abhorrence well, and so she was able to escape the possible house arrest Tsunade would have placed her under otherwise.

The next day, Sakura packed every weapon and scroll she owned, as well as money to buy herself lodging if she would need it and military rations pills to keep her strength up. Again she played the role of the grieving female, quietly biding her time as her friends worked desperately to soothe the pain she was in. She appreciated their attempts, but knew in her heart they were futile efforts – only one thing could bring her peace now, and that was Itachi's last breath. As for her grief: the hatred that now curdled her very blood had dried the last of her tears. There was no time to cry now.

She searched for weeks, dodging ANBU and hunter ninja whenever she felt their presence and staying out of the larger villages. She couldn't afford to be caught until she'd seen this self-assigned mission through to the finish. Then, provided she survived, she would let the chips fall where they would and receive any punishment without argument, even if she lost all of her friends.

Her plan hadn't quite gone so smoothly.

She had found Itachi wandering alone still – Kisame had been nowhere in sight, and the rosette had foolishly believed that for the time being the Uchiha was alone. He gave no signal that he'd sensed her approach in any way, and in her moment of blind fury, Sakura had assumed that this meant he truly hadn't realized he was being followed.

She had attacked, but he whirled at the last moment, spinning away from her on the ball of his foot. In the next second she found herself pinned against a tree, staring into dispassionate eyes the color of blood.

Out of the corner of her eye, Sakura saw Kisame jump down to stand a few feet behind his partner. The blue-skinned man had almost immediately started insisting that Itachi let him kill the rosette, but Itachi – never glancing away from Sakura's eyes for even the smallest fraction of an instant – had silenced him by stating the obvious: she was Tsunade's pupil, and the Akatsuki could use her abilities in medicine and power.

The suggestion that she would be used by the organization that had caused her friends so much agony enraged Sakura even more, but before she could struggle, something in the Uchiha's eyes changed, and she had sunk into a deep pit of blackness, having fallen victim to the potency of the Sharingan…

When she awoke, Itachi and Kisame were of course in the room, Itachi sitting calmly by the door and Kisame appearing distracted by something on the other side of the room's only window. Stationed to stop any attempts she made to try and escape.

Of course she was threatened with her very worst fears when the leader, Pein, tried to force her into compliance (it did raise her spirits in a petty way to know that they needed her cooperation, so low were their numbers now). When that failed to scare her into submission, they had Itachi put her through what seemed like an eternity of hell, watching Sasuke's death repeatedly for the seventy-two-hour-long second of the Tsukiyomi's effects.

Finally, broken by watching the worst tragedy of her young life not once but thousands of times, the kunoichi shattered, agreeing to cooperate under the condition that Naruto stay unharmed for another year. Sakura hoped that would give her friend enough time to realize that danger was coming and train so that he could protect himself when the Akatsuki's contract with her ended. Then, provided he survived and the right members were taken out, Sakura would be able to escape with him, back to Konoha or any other place that could fight against the Akatsuki.

They were pretty dreams, nothing more than useless fantasies meant to bring her some sort of comfort for the searing acid that burned through her whenever she was forced to heal and save a member who's mission had not gone as well as their precious leader had wanted it to go. Seeing that leader take his "disappointment" out on them after they were fully healed helped to take the sting away, too.

She had eventually grown used to the dark, underground caverns that were the halls of the Akatsuki's main hideout. She knew which hallway led to the bedrooms, which led to the bathrooms, meeting room, and dining hall, and which wall the interrogation room was hidden behind. She had a vague idea of where the plant man, Zetsu, nursed his herbal garden – though he frequently supplied her with medicinal herbs, the man never allowed her to visit his garden and only told her it was above ground, hidden behind several permanent illusionary jutsus to prevent intrusion from the other members or ignorant outsiders.

Another more frightening development also made itself known to her after her third or fourth month in captivity (the days had begun to mean very little to her – she didn't relish the idea of counting down the days Naruto had left before they were on his trail again): she had begun to think of several of the members of the Akatsuki as people, rather than bloodthirsty, soulless monsters – although Hidan (who had been found by Zetsu and reassembled about a month after his supposed death), Pein, and Zetsu did not fit into that category by any means.

The first member she started treating more humanely was Deidara, the eccentric pyromaniac Sakura had first met during her mission to save Gaara. The man was hard to despise even then – he was so carefree and almost childish in the way he sometimes behaved that Sakura sometimes felt she was dealing with someone who didn't quite understand how the ninja world worked, though on each of the incredibly few times she was foolish enough to voice that thought, he was quick to remind her he'd been "at the game" (his term for living as a ninja or as a missing ninja, depending on the conversation) a little longer than she had.

Though she resisted the feeling of friendship growing between herself and Deidara, Sakura eventually had to admit that if she had any friends in this hell she'd sentenced herself to, it was most likely the Akatsuki's explosions expert.

Not far behind him was Kisame, the man who had been so eager to kill her just a few months before. Though he was sadistic, crude, and sometimes a little crasser than she'd like him to be, the shark-like man was easier to get along with than Hidan, and not quite as hideous as Zetsu, so it wasn't long before she thought of her relationship with him as an uneasy acquaintanceship, if nothing else.

Actually, when she considered how strange the friendship was, it was probably similar to being friends with a Viking.

The last to be considered among the people Sakura no longer exactly despised was Itachi himself. He had been instructed with keeping watch over her for the first year she was held captive, which had made communication with anyone impossible without Itachi's permission. It was like putting up with an overprotective father who feared his daughter was whoring herself out to the entire football team – except that Itachi couldn't possibly have cared less about her sex life, and really only protected her when Hidan decided it would be fun to get into a fistfight with her. In the rosette's mind, Itachi probably thought she was an even bigger disgrace than he must have seen his brother to be.

During the first several months, Itachi was Sakura's constant shadow, staying just close enough to be able to sense the tiniest shift in her chakra. It strained the relationships she built with Kisame and Deidara a little, but Kisame got over it after a while. Deidara took another week before he decided that grumbling about having a guard dog was a pretty clear indicator that Sakura didn't appreciate the Uchiha's constant presence.

Sakura never did quite understand why the fact that she didn't like Itachi at all seemed to warm Deidara to her so instantly. Apparently there was some kind of grudge between the two of them, or maybe it was just a conflict of personality types; the rosette couldn't imagine Itachi could be able to put up with someone like Deidara longer than he absolutely had to.

Itachi's constant presence had led to a few strained conversations here and there; these usually came when she was eating, or reading, or headed towards the bathroom and had opened her mouth and snapped at him. The eyes that never quite seemed to leave her face even when there was a wall between them sometimes seemed to drill into her skull with their unnerving intensity, and she was most keenly aware of his gaze when she was doing something she usually didn't have an audience for – although he was thankfully decent enough not to follow her into the bathroom.

Each time she had grumbled or even snarled at him about giving her some space, he had said nothing, and had instead looked at her with what she assumed was his version of an amused grin. His lips would twitch into the slightest of condescending smirks, lightening his usually stony face by a token amount. After the seventh time this happened, he finally voiced the thought that must have run through his mind every time she forgot herself: "You do realize that you're about as intimidating as a kitten, don't you?" His voice had been fairly unreadable, but he allowed a hint of his amusement to seep through, and the sound warmed his voice the way his entertained smirk warmed his face.

That was the most emotion she had heard from him – and the first time he'd ever actually spoken to her in all the time she had known him. He had the same irritating habit of grunting instead of actually speaking when he could get away with it; in fact, he took that habit one step further, and at times he would only blink or tilt his head just enough to convey whatever response would fit whatever question someone had asked him.

She had taken a second to recover from the shock of finally hearing him say something, and then she had turned her back on him without another word, hiding an enraged flush from those piercing black eyes.

After that, conversation was a little easier to strike up with him. They would talk about random things – usually the topic was something one of them did out of habit, and they never really spoke for more than a few minutes at a time. Still, it was something, and it made him seem a little less like a monster to the rosette's eyes, although she stilled loathed him with every last cell in her body. She never allowed herself to forget who he was or what he had done and helped to do. He was a heartless killer; to forget that was to forfeit one's chance of survival around the man.

More than once she wondered if he ever actually slept, of if perhaps he was an insomniac who didn't need as much sleep as a normal person. She tried to tell herself that it would serve the kin slayer right to be haunted by nightmares that kept even someone like Itachi from sleeping, no matter what they were about, but she never quite believed herself entirely.

After perhaps her sixth month as the Akatsuki's healer, Itachi started very subtly giving Sakura a little more room, waiting for longer periods of time before following her out of her room and turning his attention to the stack of books they shared more readily. Once he even let himself appear to be asleep before Sakura turned in – though she knew there was no way he would be that careless.

Conversation became a normal, though still somewhat rare occurrence between them, and sometimes branched into deeper subjects than preferred literary and musical genres. Their conversations grew in length, until they managed to spend up to thirteen minutes talking about personalities that irritated them. Sakura knew the length of their conversation because she glanced at the clock on the wall in order to avoid eye contact after accidentally blurting out that loud-mouthed idiots like Kisame could be extremely infuriating under the right circumstances.

Itachi had been silent for the length of one heartbeat, and then very quietly and calmly said, "He is annoying, isn't he?"

It was the first time that Sakura had truly laughed since she'd heard the news of Sasuke's death; the expressionless tone he had used was too much when it was used with the only degrading thing he'd ever openly said about his teammate. Out of the corner of her eye, she could have sworn she'd seen Itachi smiling, too. But of course that was impossible.

Uchihas never smiled. They just cracked jokes in order to make other people look stupid – which is what happened to Sakura when, still laughing at Itachi's nonchalant agreement, she lost her balance and fell off the bed, tried to claw her way back onto the mattress, and landed gracelessly on the floor when her hands failed to grab anything but the comforter. When she had managed to fight her way out from under the stupid comforter, she saw Itachi watching her with a full smirk on his lips. She could see his deceptively lean shoulders tremor with silent chuckling as her face flushed bright red.

That smile used to give me warmth…

That day seemed to mark a turning point in their friendship; for example, Sakura was finally able to start calling relationship a friendship, rather than a forced acquaintanceship. She even became comfortable enough to joke around with him on occasion, something that brought a strange sort of relief to the rosette, as if she had been left without humor for too long.

As more time passed, Sakura found that she was beginning to compare the members of the Akatsuki to her friends back in Konoha. Zetsu began to seem more and more like Shino each time he interacted with her. Deidara was like an older, more effeminate (at least in appearance) version of Naruto; Kisame was sort of a mix of Asuma and Kiba. Hidan was like Ibiki's evil twin brother.

Itachi was never like Sasuke, though. As the days began to mean something to her again, Sakura found herself realizing she almost preferred the older Uchiha to her fast-fading memories of his younger brother. It was dangerous and traitorous and downright wrong to think that way of an enemy, but she couldn't make herself remember any of that when she was near Itachi. It was as though his presence forced every uncomfortable thought from her mind.

Four more months passed, and suddenly Sakura found herself unable to keep from worrying as Itachi went out on mission after mission, freed at last from his commitment to keep watch over her as the anniversary of her agreement with the Akatsuki finally passed. Her latest assignment was to see to the Uchiha's deteriorating eyes to preserve his sight as long as she possibly could. She knew he overused them more than he truly needed to, and the thought that he might one day make himself so unable to see that he would be vulnerable for even the tiniest fraction of a second scared her to death. Always, as she caught herself worrying, she would scold herself and stalk off to find Deidara, who's usually bubbly mood was hard to resist even for someone who was as terrified as she was hopeful that a man who was both her most despised enemy and the secret object of her love may never come back again. Always, she would have to struggle to hide her eagerness as Deidara's face darkened at the news that the Uchiha had returned safely and needed Sakura to see to his eyes again.

With his previous orders to guard the rosette nullified by the one-year marker of her time in Akatsuki, Pein had finally granted Sakura her own room – directly across the hall from Itachi's, naturally. The rosette sometimes wondered a little bitterly how stupid they really thought she was.

Because they no longer shared a room, the only chances Itachi and Sakura had to interact were the few times they encountered each other in the surprisingly vast underground hideout and during those periods where the medic would tend to the damage that had reappeared due to Itachi's injudicious overuse of his Sharingan. It was those tender moments – as tender as they ever could become, with Sakura forced to look Itachi directly in the eye and continue to do so for sessions that last for hours on end – that seemed to tied the final cord in the braided steel cable that tied Sakura's heart to the murderer of her childhood love.

Then the day came when she remembered who the Akatsuki were.

The news came, nearly two and a half years after she first left Konoha, that a squad sent out to track down an informant for the Akatsuki had been completely demolished. Among the seven ninjas killed or permanently incapacitated were Sakura's friends: Ino, who had been the first to die; Tenten, who had tried to fight even after receiving wounds most people would have crumbled under, and who eventually died from a mixture of overexertion and blood loss; and Kiba, who was now paralyzed from his waist down because of a blow he'd taken to the back. Their attackers had been Itachi and Hidan.

Deidara was the first to feel Sakura's returning hatred – he had been amusing her as usual by creating tiny animals out of a type of clay that exploded in the same manner as fireworks when the news reached them. Pein himself had ordered Sakura to get to Itachi's room – he had returned from a mission that had left his eyes nearly sightless, and their condition was deteriorating by the minute. He had gone on to very heartlessly add that there were now seven Konoha ninja who would never look for her again before he stalked away.

Deidara's little clay boar was kicked into his face the second before he blew it up as Sakura leapt to her feet and stormed out into the hallway. He hadn't said the exact words, but Pein's meaning had to plain enough to her: people from her village, maybe even people she had known personally, had lost their lives as shinobi because of people she had foolishly let herself begin to trust.

Itachi didn't seem surprised when she all but ordered him to sit down and activate his Sharingan. The patient, emotionless façade that had been absent from his face for so long was suddenly back in place, as if he understood this was a very bad time to infuriate the rosette further by playing ignorant. That, at least, was something that put him ahead of his brother; Sasuke would have played innocent just because he knew it would piss her off.

She could see her reflection in Itachi's blood-colored eyes, and tried to focus on her work while stifling the curses and punches she very deeply wanted to throw at him now. The face she saw staring back at her from those ruby depths was not the face she was used to seeing, not even in her darkest moments of fury. It was a face she had only ever seen on Naruto's features: the face of someone who had just lost everything.

What made it worse was that she couldn't see any remorse in those eyes that seemed as bottomless as the ocean. She felt one, two, seven of the cords on the steel cable snap, each scratching shallow wounds into her chest, trying to tear into it, to destroy her from without.

Three hours later, she was finally able to restore his sight to normal – again. She shoved angrily away from him and started towards the door, but his cold, dispassionate voice stopped her in her tracks.

"What did you think we were, kunoichi?" He'd asked her quietly. "Were you beginning to see us as people you could trust? We aren't the good guys – you were a fool to forget that."

She had whirled, turning to glare furiously at him as she spat, "I never trusted any of you, and you're an idiot for thinking I did!" Do not cry, she willed herself, Don't even think on it – not one tear. Not in front of him.

He looked at her silently, measuring her anger, seeming to dare her to put an action of any kind behind her furious denial. Only the tiniest narrowing of his eyes reminded her of one of the many things she had learned about him during the year and a half she'd spent in the Akatsuki: he hated being lied to.

Before he could say anything in response, she turned and stalked out of his room, slamming the door so hard the stone wall surrounding it cracked in several places. She even heard a large fissure open in the heavy wood of the door itself.

She treated the door to her room with only slightly less brutality, not caring that the little voice of reason in her head was forgetting to remind her how like a spoiled child she was acting. She was surrounded by enemies in this place – she could not afford to show weakness of any sort here.

The next several months seemed like years – time had halted altogether now. There was no day or night, only an endless rhythm of sleep, eat, train, avoid everyone, bathe, and repetition. Pein, angered by her behavior, had forbid her to leave her room for more than bathroom breaks. Itachi was once again her watchdog, though now he very wisely stayed outside her room and out of sight when she ventured out.

There were long, long hours where she had nothing to do but brood and berate herself for being stupid enough to love a bastard like Itachi Uchiha. He had killed his own family – every last member – and it had taken the deaths of her friends to make her realize that again. She felt as though she had become as naïve as she had been when she had first become a part of Team Seven. There were very few nights when she was too tired to silently cry herself to sleep.

The nights when she did not see Sasuke in her nightmares were even fewer. Itachi's old illusion of his brother's death replayed in her mind, night after hellish night, so that it was a miracle if she was able to sleep for more than a few hours each night. Some nights the memories were so painful she feared she would become an insomniac simply because she was afraid to close her eyes and face her most agonizing nightmares.

After she had been relatively calm and somewhat diplomatic for a full week, Pein released the restriction he'd placed on her movements throughout the lair, although Itachi continued to shadow her movements. They didn't speak to each other anymore – neither wanted to start an argument that could land them both in very hot water. Neither wanted to be around the other.

Deidara eventually won his way back into Sakura's good graces, providing the crying shoulder she had so very desperately needed for months – or weeks, if she had paid closer attention to the calendar. He forgave her for trying to kill him with his own explosive, even complimenting her on her speed while Itachi rolled his eyes from across the large sitting area where the only television was located.

As the friendship between pyromaniac and medic ninja began to grow anew, Itachi's attitude toward Sakura became even colder, until there were times she could swear there was ice covering every word he was forced to speak to her. His skin began to feel like cold granite when she placed her finger to his temples during their healing sessions. It was as though he'd turned into a living block of ice-stone.

One day, while Sakura was walking into the television room, Deidara threw a harmless little ladybug explosive near her feet and detonated it. The rosette had predictably shrieked when the tiny clay model exploded in a flash of color and light. In an attempt to avoid getting her toes blown off, she danced to the side, tripped over her own feet, and landed right on top of Deidara, who, after a moment of stunned silence, burst into a fit of hysterical laughter. Sakura's face burned bright red as she scrambled off to sit on the opposite end of the couch from the blonde.

From across the room, Itachi had leveled a cold glare on Deidara, who only laughed even harder when he saw it. Sakura, on the other hand, tried to very subtly sink into herself as the room seemed to chill with Itachi's fury.

The Uchiha had become openly hostile towards Deidara after that, glaring and refusing to greet him or even speak to him directly. Sakura couldn't understand his behavior at all; so Deidara had thrown a mostly-harmless firework at her. That wasn't exactly an attempted murder, considering what he was like when he actually tried to hurt someone. It wasn't like Deidara had tried to make Itachi fail at his job of keeping watch over the medic, so why had Itachi suddenly turned so resentful of the artist?

Three weeks – weeks? Months? The days were mashed together at this point – passed, and finally the rosette had taken all she could stand of Itachi's antisocial behavior. When she caught him glaring at Deidara – again – during a rather violent game of Chinese checkers (which, when played with Deidara, involved the opponent's game pieces landing on landmines he had stuffed into the holes before the game started), she had very casually said to her friend, "You know, Itachi's starting to bug me. A lot. All he ever does is mope and glare at you. Almost like he's jealous that I ended up landing on you, huh?"

Deidara picked up the not-so subtle hint with a grin and said, "Yeah – guess all that time as a monk's finally starting to get him, hm."

Itachi had stiffened and stalked in a very graceful manner out into the hallway, glaring poison-tipped kunai at both of them as he passed. Sakura made sure he couldn't see them before reaching up to give Deidara a high-five.

It wasn't until Sakura finished her third let's-piss-off-the-medic checkers game with Deidara that she realized she was hungry, and Deidara laughed at her when her stomach roared like a starving lion. The rosette stuck her tongue out at her friend before stalking off towards the dining room. She figured Itachi was probably still moping in the dining room, and hesitated before shaking her misgivings away and walking into the large room.

Itachi had been in front of her almost before she'd let the door close, seeming to appear out of thin air as he had looked down at her with the closest thing to an irritated snarl she had ever seen on his perfect features. He had looked so much like Sasuke that she found herself fighting against her arms as they began the nervous quivering that signaled her desire to raise them like a feeble wall of defense – the way she had whenever Sasuke had called her irritating or told her to leave him alone.

The older Uchiha had pushed her up against the heavy wooden doors and stared down at her with a smoldering in his eyes she didn't immediately understand. She had stared back, seeing her wide-eyed reflection in those blue-black eyes as she tried to make herself think of something to say, something that would make him back off… Or at least stop glaring.

"You shouldn't taunt me like that," he had whispered. His voice had sent chills rolling down her spine almost at the same time that a strange warmth had filled her stomach, as intense as if she'd swallowed a fireball. "Especially when you have no idea just how right you are."

And then his lips had crashed against hers, and she had forgotten everything. Fear, confusion, anger… none of it lingered now; none of her past hatred remained in her veins, and the fact that at any second they might be discovered did not even flutter against the passion they shared now. There was only him and her and that moment.

Things had never been the same after that. Each day marked an improvement in their relationship, and they breezed through friendship and close friendship until they were both able to admit how deeply their feelings for each other ran. It seemed almost physically painful to remember that, just three years before, she had wanted nothing more than to see this man die the slowest, most agonizing death possible.

She had never guessed her old desires for revenge would come to be fulfilled, with or without her consent.

My love in the dark heart of the night…

Things in the Akatsuki's lair were peaceful for one more year, and then hell had consumed everything.

She had eventually moved into Itachi's room, and Tobi – the newcomer who had finally been accepted into the Akatsuki after three or more years of begging and patronizing every member who was stupid enough to listen to him (including Sakura herself, though after the second time she broke a few of his ribs he had very readily left her alone) – had moved into her old room. It peeved Sakura a little, but for some odd reason it seemed to almost infuriate Itachi when he first heard the news.

Sakura tried to get him to tell her what the problem was, but he remained silent on the subject, usually very artfully changing the course of the conversation without the rosette realizing what he'd done until much later on.

With or without Itachi's silence, Sakura was able to sense that his animosity was a feeling Tobi shared – if in a slightly less aggressive and far less noticeable manner on the masked man's part.

The two men (if you could call a childlike person like Tobi a man, anyway) were careful to behave as normally as they could when they were around the others, but Sakura had more than enough experience in reading Itachi's stone-stiff features to know when there was hatred burning under his perfect façade. Sometimes he and Tobi would exchange words that seemed to be meant as blows rather than friendly banter – and Itachi wasn't one for friendly bantering to begin with, which strengthened her belief that something was very, very wrong.

On day she had been wandering through the compound when she heard Itachi say something that sounded like a threat in a very quietly subdued tone, as if he was worried someone would hear. The answer to his comment was made in a voice she had not heard before, one that was smoother and more predatory than his and filled with such a deep loathing and darkness that the medic felt her heart seize up with fear.

"You can't fight me forever," the man had growled, but his voice had sounded like a purr. "Either help me reach my goal or stand in line and wait for your turn to die."

Itachi hadn't responded, but Sakura felt that he was getting ready to walk away from whoever the other man was and fled quietly, hoping desperately that neither man had sensed her presence.

As the days passed, Itachi became more and more restless, going out to train almost every chance he had and wearing himself down to the point that Sakura was constantly healing his injuries. He apologized for his behavior often, something which worried her even more – he knew she didn't expect any apologies and usually stayed silent so that he wouldn't have to sit through her tirades about how she didn't expect him to change for her. Now, seeing the light of frenzied impatience enter his stoic face for the first time in all the years she'd known him, Sakura felt that it was better not to berate him for apologizing now. It would likely not help his suddenly unpredictable mood at all.

On their last night together, he was so tender and so openly loving towards Sakura that she found herself deeply terrified of the coming morning, even during those incredibly passionate hours before they sank into dormancy. It was to be the first and last night she would ever see how much he deeply, truly loved her.

The next morning dawned bleak and silent, and Sakura woke to a bed that had been empty long enough that the sheets where her body was not in contact were cold.

She had sat up, confused and, after a moment, hurt by Itachi's absence. Where had he gone? Why hadn't he woken her to say goodbye?

But the more she thought about his sudden disappearance, the more she began to feel the stomach-clenching stirrings of dread. The conversation she had accidentally overheard nearly a week before suddenly replayed in her mind, and Sakura found herself realizing that the man Itachi had spoken to may be the reason he wasn't here now.

Ice had flooded her veins; could there really be someone who could beat Itachi in a one-on-one fight? She couldn't make herself think that same person might kill the Uchiha, but it was certainly the fear of the possibility that put a sense of urgent speed into her movements as she dressed and brushed her hair.

The rosette was extremely lucky, to be able to sneak out of the compound and actually be outside for the first time in years without anyone noticing. The thought of using this chance to escape did not cross her mind, though; she could not run away now. Not until she had made absolutely certain that Itachi was still okay. She would have dealt with any punishment for leaving the base without permission as soon as she was positive he was safe… and alive.

Her plans to return to the base were shattered the moment she found him.

Nearly forty kilometers from the base, she found him alone, lying in a pool of his own blood. His chest did not move with even the tiniest of breaths; his muscles never once relaxed or tensed at the sound of her approach. His eyelids were closed as if he was sleeping, but the emptiness under them told her there wasn't much underneath but gore and more images to haunt her if she looked.

After all of the years she had spent despising him and hoping for his death, Sakura was certain that one night of passionate love would never be enough to erase from her mind the evil that she had always seen in Itachi. Now, as she knelt over his mutilated body and touched his death-cold skin, she was hit by a wave of something too horrific and crushing to be described by any words among the languages of humanity. It was a nameless, hopeless abyss of fire and ice and silence and thunder that flooded into her mind until she would have taken her own life to escape from the agony it brought. Her screams and wails echoed throughout the empty space where her love and lover lay, and as she mourned, in her mind the sky grew black and shed tears of its own. Color and reason fled the world around her, until everything was shades of grey – everything but the corpse of the man for whom she had turned against everything.

I have lost the path before me…

Sometime later – hours or days, she didn't care – Deidara found her near the border of the Land of Waves. The rosette had run away after a few hours of sitting motionlessly next to Itachi's corpse, no longer caring whether or not she would be killed for deserting the Akatsuki.

"They'll all think you're dead," Deidara had told her. "I'll bring back your cloak and tell them you tried to attack me, hm. The thing's torn up enough that they'll believe me, and you'll be free to go back to Konoha, hm."

Sakura had vaguely wondered why he was being so helpful, but she didn't voice her confusion as she handed the ragged cloak to him. The blonde had given her a long, unreadable look before hopping back onto his clay bird and disappearing into the sky.

The one behind will lead me…

She was found a short time later by Naruto and a group of other Konoha ninjas whose names she could only guess at. She was taken back to Konoha and worried over for many long months before it was determined that she was stable enough to live on her own again.

It was two weeks later, when Kakashi came to check on her, that Sakura finally admitted the truth, spilling out every memory she could summon of the last few years – however many they had been. Kakashi had been horrified at first, and while he never told anyone else, it was a few weeks before he was able to visit her again. The rosette had waited until he was comfortable with discussing the matter before asking him to help her with something she should have done months before. To her relief, he agreed, and there had been a look in his eye that made her sure that he'd come to terms with her love for Itachi.

At midnight a few nights later, they had snuck out of Konoha and created a small stone slab at ground level. They didn't inscribe Itachi's name or his dates of birth and death; instead, they carved the character for what they now both hoped he would receive wherever his soul was now: heiwa.

The deed done, Kakashi had left the rosette alone to give her the time to mourn as she should have been able to.

Years passed, and though Naruto and Lee tried to win her affection, Sakura found herself feeling foul whenever she allowed them to take her on dates or hold her hand. She felt no warmth for any of them, and saw them as nothing more than friends. She allowed them to believe she had been permanently scarred by her time with the Akatsuki; it was much safer than admitting to them the truth, that someone they all despised already held her heart.

No love left in me; no eyes to see the heaven beside me…

The young woman rises, wiping tears from her eyes as she gazes one last time at the only thing left of her forbidden lover. The wind swirls, and leaves dance around the rosette. A small, sad smile graces her features, and she turns to leave feeling strong again, knowing that having something to remember him by is what makes things so much easier to bear.

A warmth enters the wind as if summoned by her thoughts. She closes her eyes and imagines strong arms around her, warm breath at her ear. In that moment, she is certain he is there with her.

And maybe… maybe he always will be.

My time is yet to come, so I'll be forever yours…

Author's Note: The songs I used are "Angels Fall First," "Ghost Love Score," "Gethsemane," and "Forever Yours," and are all preformed by Nightwish (the best band ever).

This was actually really fun to write, once I stopped thinking Itachi would pop out of nowhere, read it, hate it a lot, and kill me. And is it just me, or did I break the record for longest oneshot ever with this? (Can't. Write. Short. Stories. Ah!)

Sorry the end sucks so hard – this monster needed to end. Gah.