Disclaimer: This is a purely non-profit story for entertainment purposes only. The characters of Naruto belong to their respective owners.

Author's Notes: Ah, that took an eternity. Again, sorry that this took so long (and sorry it's a bit short). The good part is that I know where I'm going and where I'll end up, but the bad part is that it's so difficult for me right now to get there. Thank you so, so much for those who take the time to leave comments. Although I can't say that they help me to work faster necessarily, they do help motivate me to want to work on the story. I will try to update far sooner than that in the future.

And I finally rediscovered the fic that sort of set this whole story off: Triste's Darkest Desires, a highly recommended read that explores the relationship between Naruto and Itachi.

Chapter 10

It was the first time he had visited the grave since their return.

He treads on the cobblestones with a trepidation that had never haunted him before. Kakashi had grown accustomed to cemeteries, even remotely fond of them after prolonged exposure. The neat rows were mocking and the grass was too happy for its due, but there was a sense of homeliness in the atmosphere that beckoned to a part of him that he long thought dead. He didn't believe in ghosts, but sometimes he wondered.

If he had expected an answer more than usual today, he would come back disappointed.

"Long time no see." He paused. "Actually… the strangest thing happened to me the other day. This story even has you in it."

And so he talked until his throat was dry, about the thing and Sasuke and the weather, and Naruto and Itachi and Sakura. He talked until he could taste the fabric of his mask chaffed into his dry lips, until the midday sun started to peel the skin off the back of his neck, until his own words sounded foreign on his tongue and his thirst was like to kill him. He asked what he should do, what he should say, what he should dream. Unloading his burdens into a plot of dirt, he would finally fall, exhausted by grief, into a deep slumber with his sweat-drenched back against the base of the headstone. When he wakes up – many, many hours later – a sense of calm will shroud his mind.

He didn't believe in ghosts, but sometimes he wondered.

-----

"Are you sure you want to do this?" She had asked him many times before, and his answer had always been the same. Regardless, Tsunade couldn't help asking it again.

"If you're trying to change my mind, it might work pretty soon," he grumbled irritably, looking anywhere but at her face. Tsunade rolled her eyes in exasperation, although she knew his point was valid. She had been hoping, wishing, even praying that Sasuke would change his mind, that he would agree to let her help him, but now that the moment was upon them she found herself hesitant. In preparation for his acquiescence, she had read and re-read the scroll time and again, memorizing every word, every pen stroke. She could recount the process backwards and forwards, could trace every letter with her eyes closed. Why was she so unsure?

"I did mention that this is going to be extremely painfully," she offered unhelpfully, trying to push the thoughts out of her head. "And that you might not survive?"

"If I had bothered to keep count, that was probably the 17th time." He finally turned a glare in her direction, and somehow that served to alleviate her fears.

'We haven't lost him yet. Not yet.'

"Look, I just want to make sure that you're positive about—"

"I'm not going to change my mind now."

She sighed, giving him a rueful smile. "You're going to hate me."

"If you say so."

All the materials she needed had been laid out on the medical cart beforehand. They were in an unused room deep inside the medical centre, with the door locked and curtains drawn: Tsunade and Sasuke on the inside, ANBU guards without. Given the situation, she was impressed despite herself at the boy's calmness.

Releasing a slow breath, she reached to touch the curse mark on Sasuke's neck and he flinched back before their skin met. Startled, she gave him an annoyed look.

For his part, he at least had the grace to appear sheepish. "Sorry. Natural reaction."

She reached for the mark again, and although Sasuke still stiffened at the contact, this time he did not move away. "Then maybe you shouldn't play with snakes," she said wryly. She rolled back his collar and doused the area with various cleansing ointments.

'So much for the easy part.'

But the question had been nagging at her mind since he first came to see her, and should anything go wrong she wanted to at least have an answer for his teammates.

Gradually gathering chakra, she asked, "What made you change your mind?"

She never saw his face, but he never moved. For a while she was certain he wouldn't answer, until he gave an indifferent shrug and said solemnly, "I know what it's like to beg for nothing."

And then she could begin.

-----

For days he tried to have the same dream, to see the war that he was not a part of unfold before his eyes. But the fever was on him and most nights he had trouble sleeping at all, drugged into a cloud of confusion by his illness. Sick as he was, Itachi would not decrease their pace to accommodate his needs. More than once he had stumbled on the root of a tree and broken off branches in a resounding cacophony in his effort to stabilize himself. The third time it happened, Itachi had knocked Naruto out cold and carried him for the rest of the day.

He tried to keep track of where they were going, but one tree looked like the next and he had no way to discern their direction in his current state. Before it had become too difficult to move he had tried to mark their passage by scratching the nearby trees, but Itachi caught him after only the second attempt and warned him never to do it again with those blood eyes. When they stopped for a drink later on, he was tempted to push his bounds; but then he remembered the way Sasuke had screamed when his brother looked at him and thought better of it.

Itachi fed him three consistent meals and a bottle of water each day, although the food was hardly nourishing and the water was sometimes muddy. It felt oddly discomfiting to be nursed so gently by a mass murderer, but he was in no condition to protest. Once, waking from a cold sweat in the dead of night, he thought he heard voices whispering farther in the woods and strained to listen, only he made too much noise as he rustled in the blankets and the voices fell silent. He feigned sleep when Itachi returned and the man said nothing in the morning, although his eyes seemed to glimmer as they had when he had caught Naruto and his tree markings. Itachi never seemed to sleep, and Naruto began to fear that he could even sense his thoughts.

When he finally regained his voice and the worst of his fever had died down, he ventured to ask a question of his captor.

"Where are we going?" The words were dulled, his voice thick with disuse, but even so he was glad for the small victory. If he knew their destination, he could mentally plot their relative distance from Konoha and the direction they were travelling in. He had been east of the village enough times in his life to know the surrounding area well, and if that's where they were he might chance to flee when he was stronger. If they were west, however… he had never ventured that way far enough or often enough to be confident that he had at least a passing chance at escaping.

But Itachi only regarded him coolly, his eyes drinking in the light of the moon. "It's useless to try and escape."

So the days wore on, and his fever came back on him again. This time there was no moving him, so Itachi had to grudgingly permit them to stop until Naruto could walk. They rested close by a stream, and that night they had a proper fire and a proper meal, and Naruto had the dream that he was hoping for.

-----

The sounds were absolutely dreadful.

She had been overjoyed to hear that Sasuke finally agreed to Tsunade's treatment, but what she hadn't been expecting to hear were these ghastly noises emitting from within the quarantined room. As she sat outside the door, she heard the notes of Sasuke's voice explode in degrees of pain and clutched her hands together tightly as the ANBU guards watched on. Their porcelain masks frightened her a little; it seemed their expressions never changed, and the fact that people could be as stone in the face of such agony disturbed her more than she could say. It was late afternoon when the process had begun, and now she watched the scarlet rays of light vanishing below a dark line through the tinted glass.

She hated waiting. It would have been different if there had been someone to talk to, someone to share her doubts and her fears, but Tsunade would not permit this news to leak out to the public and Kakashi-sensei was nowhere to be found. So her comfort would have to be in the solidarity of those frozen masks, and her faith in Sasuke's strength and Tsunade's skill.

"You're still here, Sakura?"

She turned at the sound of her name, and Shizune appeared from around the corner, looking somnolent from a long day of work.

"I want to be here when they're done," she explained, getting up to give her seat to the other woman. "And—in case…"

Shizune waved away her gesture as well as her words. "Even if they finish tonight, Sasuke probably won't be awake until tomorrow morning at the earliest. And if anything goes wrong, we'll contact you immediately."

She nodded her head absently, seeing the logic but not liking it. "I know you're right, it's just—he's… he's…" She tried to find the words to explain that Sasuke was a quarter of her team, a quarter of her shinobi life; that he was the only one here while Naruto had been captured and Kakashi-sensei was too distant to reach. The words never came but Shizune understood her anyway.

"They'll all be fine. Go home and get some rest."

Another scream pierced her heart, but she was so tired and hungry that she finally agreed.

"If anything happens—" she began, not daring to finish the thought.

"You'll know within minutes, I promise."

Sakura walked home with a heavy heart.

At the cemetery, Kakashi lost himself in toasts to phantoms, flinging the empty bottles of sake to smash against the night's silence. Drunk on his fears, the moon looked on in reprimand while the wind howled the same tune as one little boy who was unfortunate enough to be cursed.

TBC