Standard disclaimer applies.

Sakura was bored.

She'd come to the human realm nearly six centuries ago, and while the never ending inventions and new social norms never ceased to amaze her, she missed home. She missed her court. She missed how wild everything was, while in the human realm it was like they were forever inventing new ways to conceal the wild life around them. Forests? Cut them down. Natural plains of land, stretching on and on in a brand new country some settler or another had discovered? Build towns. When more and more people were born, build cities. Then came skyscrapers, and eventually there was nowhere left in the world undiscovered. Nowhere was left pure. Even the sky and oceans were claimed.

She'd stuck around in different lands over time. When she'd first exited the Black Forest six centuries ago, she stayed in Germany for a short time. After that was France. After that was Spain. Then Austria and Russia and Prussia and Croatia. She was in England when the British Empire was at its height, when they and a few other countries were traveling the world, greedy to claim new lands and stick their flags in new soil.

She was getting a bit tired with the ruling monarchy at the time, was ready for new people, new life. (There was also a duke of some sort or other who was annoyingly persistent.) She left shortly after news had spread about the new land, about what would become the thirteen original colonies in America.

Sakura was more than used to the religious practices around the world, the strictness of them. Sakura sometimes would think back to how England was thrown into disarray for so many years, forever deciding if they were Catholic or Protestant. She'd sit in her overly lush chair in her condo in New York and think how pointless it all was, how at that point humans had lost sight of what religion even was and was too occupied in arguing over the most redundant aspects of it to pay attention to the important things.

But when she left to go to America for the first time, it wasn't long after that she was burned at the stake for being a witch. Completely false, of course. She was a faerie, not these petty humans' idea of a human with magic. Honestly, though. It was rather insulting.

Her hair and eyes were already a good enough reason to be prosecuted as a witch (heck, being a woman and not the most "obedient" or "humble" person were more than enough reasons), but she'd also insulted one of the town "leaders" by not letting him put his hand up her skirt.

When they'd come for her and tied rocks to her hands and feet, the religious leader saying something about praying for her soul and how if she drowned it would prove her innocence, Sakura laughed.

She let them drop her in the river. At that point she was just so done, and she wanted to screw with them a bit more. They'd already drowned three other girls—drowning, of course, proved that they were indeed innocent and just plain, stupid girls, how good for their souls but, oops, now they were dead; what could you do?—for no other reason than having the misfortune of being born female in this century and living with idiots.

She could have broken the ropes around her wrists and ankles at any time, but instead just talked with some of the fishes under the water while she waited until the good for nothing villagers decided to pull her up again to see if she alive or dead—the fishes were rather put out about all the drowning girls, some even had hidden their young so as not to be mentally scarred—which turned out to be about a half hour.

When they did pull her out, Sakura played dead. She went limp and stopped her breathing and listened as the priest (or pastor or whatever the holy fuck he was calling himself) pray over her body and give a very long and boring speech about souls and damnation and what-have-you.

When someone went to pick up her body, her head shot up and she said, "Surprise motherfuckers," in the best reenactment of a demon she could manage. (If she may or may not have let her glamour swirl around her eyes to making them seem completely black, well, they fucking started it with drowning random girls.)

Obviously, they tried to burn her at the stake.

And they obviously hadn't thought this far ahead because they then had some problems in even lighting the fire. They kept on bring over their touches to her and the wood and dry grass around her and nothing would catch fire. Someone, however, finally noticed that Sakura was ever so softly blowing on the flames when they came near—not enough to put out the flame of course, and technically not nearly enough to prevent the wood around her from catching on fire, but she was a witch, after all, so who knew what she could do?—and so they then gagged her.

When still the flames still wouldn't take, one of the more annoying girls that liked to point her stubby little finger at others and call them witches noticed that Sakura was twirling her hand around the ropes. They then had to bind her hands completely, but when one of the gruff men who wouldn't stop mumbling prayers under his breath and damnings of the wickedness of the female race came near her with a wicked looking knife in his hand, well, Sakura didn't care much for the way he was eyeing her fingers.

Sighing heavily through the rather disgusting cloth in her mouth, Sakura disappeared in a very climatic puff of black smoke. She added some maniacal laughter to complete the scene.

After that whole event, Sakura took to living in the woods. It wasn't difficult, not when it was similar back then to home, all the wild abandonment. She didn't have to wear the hideous dresses and bonnets that she would've had she gone to another town. She even met up with some natives who saw her as she was and were not afraid.

For a while, it was nice.

And then humans did and humans do, and there was war and expansion to the west. The natives were eventually killed by a mixture of the Spanish and the English and everyone in-between.

Sakura had been peeking in on the settlers every once in a while and had overheard the disquiet about the British Empire and King George the Third. She mostly did this because every once in a while, she was tempted to steal away someone, just like in the olden days.

She could always take them back to her home realm. But she wasn't quite ready to go back there yet for her own reasons, and so when she'd meet humans she was fond of, those she could tempt away from their boring little lives and wander into the woods to find her, sometimes she stole them away.

Mostly it was only for a short while. A day or so, and when they'd stumble back into their little town they could make up some story about getting lost or being chased by wild natives.

Sometimes, however, they stayed with her. She had to keep them away from the natives of the land, but she was more than able to provide for their human bodies.

Those were her favorites. Whatever was left of her true nature from centuries back home, when she'd only ever peek out into the human realm to grab hold of a lost human and pull them back with her, still dwelled under the surface. It was simply her nature.

She'd offer the human food. An apple, a handful of berries, a tart, a slice of pie— whatever it was the human in question craved. After she'd spent some time in Greece, sometimes Sakura would offer a human a pomegranate, a secret smile on her face.

If they ate what she offered, they were hers. Centuries and centuries ago, Sakura wouldn't have told them what it all meant, what they were giving her if they ate anything from a faerie.

But she'd always tell the newer humans. Sakura could still remember their names, though sometimes their faces were fuzzy. Kiba, Temari, Karin, Konan, Tenten, Hinata, Neji, Deidara, Gaara, Ino . . .

She'd warned them of the price. She would care for them, make sure all their needs were met, but they'd never be able to go home. Never be able to stomach human food ever again, nothing that didn't come from her own hand.

Some agreed. Others didn't. She'd always take them home if they so wished, even altering the memories of their families and the town to make them believe they were never missing in the first place.

When they did stay, sometimes they were lovers. Sometimes they were just friends, comrades. Sometimes it was like looking after a child.

Sakura let them set the pace. Her nature made her impossibly greedy; if they let her, she'd encompass everything about them. But she wouldn't push anything on them either.

When the war for America's independence broke out, Sakura participated. It wasn't something that was really planned, but only being an observer could be boring. So if she whispered plans into leaders' ears while they slept or gave them informative dreams they could never quite explain away, well, it was only ever a push in the right direction.

Time went on. Sakura found that besides the whole being burned at the stake thing, she was rather fond of this country. It didn't have the centuries of blood and pain other European countries had. It didn't feel the same down in her bones.

Mostly she kept to herself, sans the handful of humans she collected. When the wars broke out—as they were always going to do—Sakura found herself being nosey and again traveling and participating. She found herself sailing out to Dunkirk. She found herself shaking hands and smiling and flirting with a young Adolf Hitler before WWII was even a thought. She found herself in Berlin when the wall went up. She found herself in Soviet Russia and sending information back to the United States. She found herself more than a little obsessed with making sure an American was the first man on the moon. She'd immerse herself in human culture and laws and customs.

Sometimes she was a painter, other times she was a scholar. Sometimes she was a field medic and sometimes a spy. Other times she made herself invisible and whispered ideas and plans into generals and rulers' ears. As the years went on, she began to elevate herself to more positions of power, shaping the world how she wanted it to.

Sakura had always been more than a little greedy.

She had stood in New York City and was sipping a cooling coffee, walking down the street when the first plane crashed into the Twin Towers. She found herself dropping the cup, watching it splatter across the ground and listening to the screams around her. She found herself wrapping the humans around her in shields before it was a coherent thought. When the second plane crashed, Sakura's hands were curled into claws and her fangs were out. When she started to see and understand that the objects falling were human bodies, her glamour was almost completely gone.

Sakura wasn't proud of what happened next.

She couldn't show what she was. Burning witches may not be a threat anymore, but revealing her inhuman nature wasn't possible. The humans around her were coughing from the dust storm the falling tower had produced, it was beyond loud—loud as war, loud as gunshots, loud as hell itself—

They wouldn't pay her any attention, not her inhumanness, and even if they did it would be chalked up to fear and adrenaline and the dust and horror around them. But if she had stopped the towers from falling, if she'd directed the second plane with the wind before it crashed—

They would have seen. They would have noticed. Cameras were everywhere. And if she was caught, no one would be around to help her. Getting out of being burned at the stake by lonely settlers in colonial America was one thing, being hunted by the most powerful country in the world was another.

So she stood and watched the towers fall, one right after another. She listened to the screams around her and she did nothing but protect the few humans around her that she could without revealing her heritage.

Later—much, much later—Sakura ruined her apartment. She was covered in dust and filthy in a way she hadn't been since indoor plumbing had been invented and screamed, her claws scratching into the hardwood and her fangs tearing into pillows and bedding.

The humans she'd been so fond of wouldn't have sat around and done nothing. This—this beautiful country—was their home. Some had been original settlers. Some had left with their families to escape persecution. Some had fought and died for this country and what it represented. And now—

The next few years Sakura didn't stay in the country. She left and she shed so much blood.

Some were innocent. Some belonged to unfortunate people who just so happened to know a piece of information she needed. Others deserved the hours of torture she delivered before finally killing them or handing them over to other American operatives like a nicely packaged present. Many were women and children. Wives dedicated to their husbands and their self-proclaimed causes. Children being trained since they could walk to carry bombs into civilian and military spots alike, because who could shoot a child carrying a grenade? Victimized wives. Innocent, naïve children who were used as hostages.

Sakura wouldn't regret any of it.

She was feral those years. Sakura had been that way before, more than once. War was not something she was unused to, even before she came to live in the human realm. Faeries were just as violent and bloodthirsty as any human, perhaps even more so. She'd led warriors to the front lines and schemed and plotted and sacrificed to win battles.

The courts had hated each other. Sure, they tended to meet up once a century for some gathering or other, perhaps one winter solstice if the Winter Court had their way or the first day of spring if the Spring Court got their way, but it was with thinly veiled hatred and threats at each other, dancing until the human pets some of the courts had danced their way to their death, heels cracked and bleeding, dying from thirst and exhaustion. Some wore down their feet until you could see bone.

Sakura didn't go back to America for some time after that. She spent some time in Russia and considered wrecking mayhem just to see what would happen. She didn't take any human lovers or friends and stayed in the shadows, participating in human events but still holding more than a few grudges from over the years. She still had trouble going back to France after the whole beheading and French Revolution business.

The night she met Itachi Uchiha, Sakura had only been back in America for about a year. She'd found herself a nice condo and had hired an interior decorator who came highly recommended to furnish the place. (If the amount she was paying the fabulously dressed man was any indication, he was quite good. When she saw the final product, full of pastel colors and animal decorations and mahogany cabinets and lush chairs and couches that were inviting, Sakura gave him a rather generous bonus.)

She wasn't sure what had come over her. Itachi Uchiha was an interesting human, but she was also betting he was a sociopath. Sakura had met her fair share of sociopaths and psychopaths long before those terms were even invented, and while they proved to be a fun bit of amusement, after a while Sakura would either have to put them down herself or watch others do it for her. On the rare occasion, sometimes they even got away with it.

But, goodness, she was so bored. It was in the dead of winter and she hated winter; it reminded her too much of the Winter Court and the wars she'd fought there. She hated how there was almost nowhere left in the human realm to go that was nothing but nature, where she could go see the stars and name them and not have to worry about an airplane flying overhead.

She hated how breathing in this kind of bone deep cold made her insides freeze, made her lungs feel like they were icing over. How it brought back memories of the Winter Court, when winter fae warriors would ice their enemies from the inside out, how if Sakura didn't heat herself at the exact right time in the exact right spot her whole body would stop producing warmth.

There had been too many wars back home. The courts never, ever stopped warring with one another and—

But there hadn't been another war in centuries, Sakura knew that much. She'd made sure of it.

When Sakura disappeared from Itachi's sight, leaving him to catch his knife and wondering who and what she was, she'd already begun to berate herself.

She didn't worry too much about the world finding out what she was anymore. She was too powerful after all these centuries to not be able to take care of something like that, if he could even get anyone to take him seriously when speaking about a pink haired girl with burning green eyes and the ability to control the wind and disappear into thin air. Yeah, good luck with that.

But Itachi didn't seem like the type to start blabbing about her. About anything, really. And not just because no one would believe him, and even if they did, he would have to explain what he was doing in the alley behind the Akatsuki club. And Sakura was sure he wasn't about to start talking up people about his homicidal tendencies. He was too smart for that.

Actually, Itachi seemed too smart for a lot of things. For one, he might actually figure out what she was, if she let him. And Sakura was actually considering it.

She was bored. She got dangerous when she was bored. Fucking with a sociopath—a rather good looking sociopath—seemed just like the thing to make life a little more interesting.

Chewing on her bottom lip, Sakura ran her hand over her cat, fondly named Tsunade after one of her more favorite humans. When she'd first found it inside a rusted cage, beaten up and watching her with steady blue eyes, Tsunade's face had flashed behind her eyes for the first time since she'd died decades ago.

(And when Sakura slaughtered the humans who'd harmed the blue-eyed cat, if the feline had watched her with a fearless air and darted its tongue out to lick at the blood it was sprayed with, well, it only cemented Sakura's belief that this cat was kin to Tsunade. Tsunade, who was a doctor before her time, who would never be remembered because she was a clever woman born into a time that would never notice any clever woman, no matter how many lives she saved or the new medical treatments she founded.)

Tsunade purred and thrust her head at Sakura's hand when she paused in her petting. Sakura chuckled and flicked through her phone. She had contacts here, gathered up over time. Some had been in her pocket for decades, their families having passed down the stories of her to each generation.

After a moment, Sakura dialed a number and held it to her ear, listening to it ring not even two times before she heard a click.

"It's me," she sang out. "I need you to do me a favor."

Tsunade looked up at her, blue eyes to green eyes, and it almost looked like she was smiling at her.

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

Sakura was walking through a park when Itachi found her.

She always tried to live somewhere there was forest or at least a park, somewhere it was green and alive and didn't make her feel suffocated with all the iron around her. It sometimes helped when she was feeling especially homesick. Usually, though, it only made her feel worse.

It was nighttime, a little after eleven if she had to guess. It was quiet, or at least as quiet as it could get in a busy city. Most people wouldn't come out to a park at this time of night unless they were homeless or hungover pedestrians getting lost. Maybe a serial killer or two, though Sakura almost wanted someone to jump her, just because it would give her something to do.

When she felt the wind shift and caught a whiff of a cologne she recognized, Sakura stopped walking and said, without turning around, "How are you, Itachi? Did you manage to hide the body before someone left to take out the trash or did you just leave it there to rot?"

She hadn't seen anything on the news about a murder, but Sakura supposed that murders didn't usually make the news unless it was part of a stream of murders or was someone important to the public.

Itachi chuckled and she heard him step out from behind a tree. "I don't usually like to leave messes. How are you, Sakura?"

Sakura turned. He was smirking at her with those dead, dead eyes. Sakura had seen eyes like his before, sometimes with power-hungry politicians or Holocaust victims or just people, like Itachi, without empathy.

She blinked slowly at him. "Bored, mostly. How did you manage to clean everything up? You made quite a mess."

He shrugged one shoulder. He was wearing all black. A black, soft looking sweater underneath a black leather jacket with black pants and shoes. Paired with his black hair, he almost blended in with the night.

"I have my ways."

Sakura snorted. "What a turnaround answer."

Lips curling at the corners, Itachi said, "I know some people who can clean up any messes I tend to make. They're very good at what they do."

"Oh? They must have been close by to get to you before someone wandered back into the alley."

"Well, they just so happened to be in the club."

She pinned him with her eyes. "How convenient."

When he didn't say anything right away, Sakura turned back and started walking again, keeping her normal pace even as she heard Itachi catching up with her. He came to be shoulder-to-shoulder with her, hands stuffed in the pockets of his jacket.

"You are not afraid to turn your back to me?" Sakura could see him looking at her out of the corner of her eye, but didn't turn her head towards him.

"If you were going to use one of those hidden knives on me, you wouldn't need my back turned for that. Plus," she said idly, "I don't think you're nearly that stupid. Though if you'd like to prove me wrong, go right ahead and see what happens."

He licked his lips. "And what would you do to me, Sakura, if I did try?"

"Probably kill you. I find I'm a tad tired of people trying to kill me, less prone to letting them live." Humans had a nasty habit of showing up when you least wanted them to, and were prone to revenge fantasies.

"Oh? Have you had many experiences with people trying to kill you, darling?"

She almost snorted at the endearment. Funny, how he'd call her that and speak about murder in the same sentence. Though she'd found some other men called her that in a condescending fashion when they thought her a weak little girl, not seeing past the curled pink hair and pouting lips.

But when Itachi said it, it wasn't condescending. It was said like a lull, like a purr.

Funny, how a man with dead eyes and a lack of empathy could fake such feeling in his words. She wondered how long he'd had to observe other people to get it just right, to understand the patterns. Sakura would bet, looking up at him now, it hadn't taken him long at all.

"I've had my fair share," she murmured.

"I've been thinking, darling, about how you disappeared so suddenly. It was quite rude of you, by the way. I thought we were having such a nice conversation."

"A nice conversation in a blood drenched alley. Hmm. It's rude to have a lady stand somewhere her shoes could get dirty. Blood is so difficult to get out."

He chuckled. "Of course. My apologies, then." He eyed her thoughtfully. "I'd love to take you out shopping to make up for it."

She laughed. "Smooth. Very smooth." She made to fake clap for him. He watched her with greedy eyes.

"I mean it, darling."

"Hmm. Why don't you tell me what your clever little mind has come up with as to my 'disappearance'?"

Itachi put a hand over his heart, smirking. "You wound me, darling. My mind is anything but little," he purred.

She scoffed.

"But to answer your question, I've thought about it, and it only makes sense that you're a—"

"If you say vampire, I will slap you," she deadpanned.

He chuckled. "I think my clever little mind could to better than that. I was going to say you're some spy of a sort. Very well trained, I would think."

Sakura thought back to the Cold War. Ah, the Russians. She supposed she was a little biased just because it was so damn cold in Russia, but even before all that nasty business she'd never been fond of the country. Though she had to give them credit for their part in WWII. She'd appreciated their ruthlessness, though when they'd started to take all that famous and valuable artwork at the end of that war she'd been a little peeved. It was bad enough when Hitler had his hands on it; it belonged in a museum, taken care of with regulated temperatures and gloved hands.

She smiled up at him. "You're not wrong."

He quirked an eyebrow at her. "That's not really an answer."

"Hmm."

"You're going to make me guess, darling?" He hummed. "I do like a challenge."

She flashed white teeth at him in the darkness. She watched his throat bob and his mouth open, just slightly.

"Then I think we're going to get along just fine, Itachi."

Author's Note: Here ya go. This was quite a quick update.

I know I'm putting a lot of history crap here, and I 100% blame my history buff of a military father who told me stories of WWII growing up. Yes.

I'm also having trouble with the settings for this story and how it won't let me change the cover picture for this story. It's never done this before, but whenever I go to select the image for this story, it lets me and then five minutes later it's gone. Very troublesome. I am not amused.

Just an FYI: I'm going back to school this next Monday, and so, as always, I don't know when I'll be able to update again. School is hard, guys. A science major is really freaking hard.

Please REVIEW! I appreciate all the reviews I've gotten for this story. Y'all are awesome. I am fond of the idea of Itachi taking Sakura out to shop for shoes and him being a total snob about it.