Chapter 9: No Redemption

His shriek echoed for miles. It carried so much pain that even the birds cried out in empathy. Its soundwaves resonated with her long-stilled heartstrings and she could feel any caring she had left for her former teammate quiver at the very core of her being.

She was the only functioning person remaining on the battlefield and that left her with an important decision to make: what should she do next? Sakura could take advantage of their incapacity and interrogate Itachi as she had been yearning to do. Or, she could attend to Sasuke, who appeared to be swimming upstream in dire straits.

Maybe it was more of a moral dilemma than a personal one. After all, the personal answer was obvious: she should leave Sasuke to his fate and capture Itachi while she had the chance. Though, upon further deliberation, she supposed that the moral answer was just as obvious as the personal one: any person in possession of an uncorrupt moral compass would help Sasuke. Surely her medical jutsu could do something to ease his agony.

So, why was she still caught in the throes of mental debate? The path of righteousness was clear. She had taken that path until now, had she not? It would be foolish to taint her conscience when she had lived so well up until this point.

Sliding to her knees, she drew Sasuke's pained face into her lap. Any empathy she had left was shaken awake as she looked at the agony sewn into his grimace and the tense lines cramped around his closed eyes. After researching the tsukuyomi, she knew that he was probably reliving the worst of his memories surrounding the Uchiha massacre. This is what Sasuke looked like as he re-experienced his most nightmarish realities. Stricken with this realization, Sakura felt that she suddenly understood the weight—and the madness—that he had been carrying all of these years.

Sakura furrowed her brow in conflict. She knew that she could attempt to flood his nucleus accumbens with dopamine in hopes of pleasure overriding the pain he was experiencing, but she also knew that toggling with brain chemistry could have a lot of serious repercussions. Chances were that the tsukuyomi muddled the brain's chemistry enough on its own, so her inexperienced interference would likely exasperate that.

After weighing the risks and benefits, Sakura decided that dopamine flooding was not an option. However, the syringe of morphine she had in her pack would do the most that could be done. Even if it could not ease his mental anguish, it would totally numb his physical pain.

She brushed his hair from his face with one hand as she reached for the syringe from her pack with the other. His older brother's blood had dyed his lips a lovely shade of burgundy, but Sasuke would likely be sickened to know that his lips had been sullied by his brother's tainted blood.

"Don't, Sakura." She froze. She had forgotten that Itachi was still present.

"His pain isn't physical. There is no medicine or jutsu that can combat the pain of being forced to watch his family's slaughter again. His outward injuries are hardly enough to warrant morphine," Itachi stated hollowly. She debated looking up at him and decided against it.

Sakura asked angrily, "Why would you do this to your own brother? Why even let him live if you intended to wreck him like this?"

"I did what I had to." Itachi spoke so plainly and without hesitation that it almost sounded like he was telling the truth.

Sakura sighed. "You'll lie even in a state of paralysis."

"I don't lie unless it's necessary," Itachi countered calmly.

"And is it necessary to lie right now?" Sakura inquired with raised eyebrows.

"No."

Not buying into his claim, she probed, "And why not?"

"Audience is everything."

Sakura risked an upward glance and swore that he wore a ghost of a grin on his face. As his lips faintly smirked, hers parted in disbelief. His concise statement was a roundabout way of saying that he did not need to lie to her about this.

Itachi Uchiha was disinclined to lie to her.

What alternate universe had she been transported to and how did she get there?

"Alright…if you're feeling friendly with the truth today, I have some questions for you. If you cooperate, I'll let you out of your paralysis unharmed," Sakura bartered. Her steady voice indicated that she felt fully comfortable lying to the prodigy.

"I'll answer what I can," he stated. She had hoped his current state would make him more eager toward compliance, but she would have to take what she could get.

Sakura cleared her throat and began, "First, what are your intentions with Sasuke?" She was not concerned about Sasuke's well-being, but his intentions in that regard were totally unclear and seemed to be intertwined with his intentions for her.

"…I can't answer that." A stonewall at the first question. This interrogation was going really well.

"There's that honesty you were flaunting, I suppose." Sakura rolled her eyes at his audacity and then continued, "Alright then. What are your intentions with me?"

He hesitated. It was something that she never imagined the cold-blooded man guilty of genocide would do. Even in this awful situation—as he tortured his own brother—she found her view of him to waver on the border of uncertainty. With each encounter they shared, it seemed to do that a little more. He had turned out to be a strange, yet enticing person. He was the type who left you wondering what he would do next because even if you thought one thing about him, he went ahead and did another.

"In this instance, I don't have intentions," Itachi explained.

Her eyes narrowed. "Then, what do you have?"

He did not hesitate this time.

"Remorse."

It was one succinct word. However, it held so much power that Sakura audibly gasped—she felt like she had been slugged in the stomach.

"What are you getting at, Itachi?" she demanded fiercely. This was starting to sound like a sick game. Of all the people for whom he should feel contrite, he claimed it was her?

"It's the truth. Isn't that what you wanted?" he countered rhetorically.

She stood up, totally forgetting that Sasuke's head had been in her lap, and dropped her teammate to the ground. Even though her actions probably did not help his pain, she was too consumed with ire to notice.

"Explain," she commanded.

Itachi's face was solid as stone as he warned, "No matter how thorough of a background check you've done, Sakura, everything you think you know about me is wrong."

"I'll believe it when I see it. And that's not an explanation," she spat.

"Fine," he responded with a flicker of his eyes that was uncharacteristic of his frozen expression. Sasuke moaned in pain at their feet before she could reply.

Itachi called, "Sakura."

As an instinctive response to her name, she looked in his direction. It was a dire mistake. Sakura was unable to move after her eyes met the glowing swirls set in his face.

"While my dear brother's trapped in a world of pain, I'm going to one-up your interrogation and burden you with the truth. It's knowledge that you'll be disinclined to accept, but it's even more honest than my habitual silence. I call it a burden because you'll be the only living person outside of the guilty who'll carry this truth. Do you understand?" he asked slowly.

Sakura nodded sluggishly, trapped in the dance of the sharingan. The swirling increased to a speed that blurred its design like the blades of a fan on its highest speed.

"Good. You'll get what you want and for that, I'm sorry. But, if you'll believe it when you see it, then welcome," he paused, "to the tsukuyomi…"

On his last word, she felt the material of her consciousness being torn from her body and drawn into a dark abyss. She fought against the tearing with every bit of willpower she possessed, and her resistance was successful at first, but eventually she fell out of the dizziness and into a color-bleached, barren landscape with only Itachi in sight.

She gasped. "This is the tsukuyomi?"

"Welcome, Sakura, to the world woven from the fabric of my will."

"You finally gave in," she grinned in a combination of delight and disbelief. Sakura could not believe that he had finally granted her wish to experience the tsukuyomi.

Itachi spread his arms as his voice echoed, "You said you'd believe the truth when you saw it. Here that wish will be fulfilled. Perhaps, from now on, your wishes will be more carefully worded. Now, let's begin."

Their bland environment spun—literally spun, with the sky blending into the floor—and when it stopped, Sakura found herself in a building that she did not recognize. It had a high ceiling, so high that it seemed to reach the full height of the building. This height made enough space for the walkways of each floor to crisscross from one side to the next. Despite the vast space, the only people present were Sakura, Itachi, and…Danzo?

"What's a village elder doing here?" Sakura wondered aloud. Much to her chagrin, neither Itachi nor Danzo acknowledged her question, much less her presence.

Itachi looked different. He was a little shorter than his usual looming self, and his eyes looked a little less tired. He looked…young. He was crouched submissively in front of the village elder and a white animal mask hung around his neck as if he had just removed it.

Before she had time to question any further, Danzo's voice boomed, "Itachi, you're my most faithful and effective subordinate; the will of the Leaf burns deep within you. As such, I have no doubt that you know why I've called you here today." He paused to let Itachi respond.

Recognizing his cue, Itachi remarked, "You've called me here to address the state of my clan."

"Perceptive as usual, Itachi," Danzo confirmed, "Their plans to lay siege to the village are unacceptable. I'm sure you understand this."

Instead of responding this time, Itachi lowered his head even further into his already deferent position. He seemed ashamed, but Sakura suspected that he was feeling a lot more than the shame evident on the surface. Since her presence was seemingly invisible, she walked over to where Itachi crouched and lowered herself to study his hidden expression. Despite her bold move, neither Danzo nor Itachi paid her any heed, so she continued her inspection without restraint.

Sakura was shocked by what she found: the pain that decorated his face made Sasuke's agony from the tsukuyomi look like an unaffected expression. His lips were pulled back in a grimace and his brow was crinkled with tension. But, his plaintive eyes were where the pain was most visible—they were so strained and red that he seemed ready to cry at any moment. She would have never expected Itachi's face to be capable of contorting into such vivid expressions.

Suddenly, his face relaxed and he spoke, "I'll do it on the condition that I may spare my younger brother. He's young enough that he's unaware of the dirtiness that's polluted his clan. He remains untainted by their treachery. He can be saved."

"You've never been one to place conditions over what must be done for Konoha, Itachi," Danzo countered. Even though his face was mostly covered, no mask could hide his displeasure at Itachi's entreaty.

Itachi shook his head and responded, "Sasuke poses no danger to Konoha. You know that I would do anything to preserve the Leaf, but killing him would be wasteful excess—if he's raised as a ninja of the Leaf, his Will of Fire will surely glow."

"And you accept that, as a consequence of this choice, you must forever remain the demon who slaughtered his parents in his eyes?" Danzo warned.

Finally, Itachi lifted his eyes from the ground and locked his gaze with that of his superior.

"Yes. It's a meager price to pay for the life of my brother and I'll readily accept it."

Suddenly, like a kunai between the eyes, the meaning of this exchange hit her: one of the village elders had ordered Itachi to kill his family. And, even worse, he had to make a case to spare his brother's life. If he had not made that case, he would have been the only remaining member of the Uchiha clan.

Itachi was a victim when he had been painted the perpetrator. He had not spared his brother out of malice—he had spared him out of mercy. Every facet of the schema she had constructed for Itachi was wrong. Where she deemed him cruel, he was moral; where she saw him as a traitor, he was most loyal; where she marked him as loveless, he was full of devotion; and where she saw him as unfeeling, he was motivated by empathy.

Sakura swore that the world was capsizing; this was a nauseating bouleversement. How was one supposed to handle a revelation like this? Who could she tell? And who would believe her if she did?

Suddenly, the physical setting inverted in color and started spinning. She would have been startled if it had not been so fitting for how she felt at the moment. It was an appropriate ambience, even if it made her stomach ill. The spinning increased with no sign of deceleration.

Soon, it was a little too much speed. Sakura forced her eyes shut before she became sick.

At last, she was spat out from the centrifugal fun ride with enough force to steal the breath from her lungs. Not yet re-attuned with her surroundings, she felt like she was floating. Well, maybe not floating, but rather as if she had been lifted from the ground by her wrists and held there by someone with strong hands. It was strange, yet she was unafraid.

Willing her tired eyes to open, their response was slow. When her lids finally parted, Sakura registered that she did not just feel like she had been lifted off the ground—she had actually ascended into the air. Looking at her wrists, she found shackles instead of strong hands; her ankles were trapped, as well. She had been bound to a wooden crucifix.

"I always thought books about the Roman Empire were just trashy fiction," Sakura scoffed aloud. Even though her voice was nonchalant, she could feel panic creeping inward from the tips of her toes and fingers.

Amid the world of black and red, Itachi materialized. The crimson lighting took his natural beauty and transmuted it into something like fire—lovely to look at, but not something Sakura would touch. In fact, this fire was hot enough that she would like to take a step back before she started sweating.

"Not what you expected, Sakura?" Itachi inquired.

"By no stretch of the imagination," she confirmed. She was still struggling to cope with bearing witness to the dirty exchange of Konoha's buried past.

"By no stretch of the imagination, you say? Think of where you are right now: you're being held captive in my imagination. Are you sure it's not just a stretch?" he pushed.

Sakura shook her head and disagreed, "Definitely not, Itachi. It makes a lot more sense than a prodigy killing his family with no sound reason. Plus, Tsunade always grumbled about Danzo being a snaky bastard. I never knew what she meant—now I do."

His lips thinned into a hardened line. "Okay, so you believe what you saw, then? And what do you think about it?" This might have been the most flustered she had ever seen him and definitely more flustered than she had ever imagined him.

"Well, it's obvious, Itachi," her brow furrowed in determination as she declared, "You need to tell Sasuke the truth—you need to show him what you've shown me just now." Her moral compass was adamant on this one. Sasuke hearing the truth from his only remaining family might be the best opportunity for healing that he would ever have.

Itachi's face relaxed. While the frustration melted away from his eyebrows, something akin to sorrow coated his lips.

He responded, "I was afraid you'd say that, Sakura, even if it was the expected response. Maybe your answer would change, however, if you'd seen the version I've shown my little brother."

Again, the world twisted like it sat at the center of a peppermint candy. She was going to lose her stomach at some point during this affair if all of this warping continued. As it slowed to a halt, she was still floating and unable to move; it seemed that this landscape was not as freely navigable as the last. The fabric of the universe settled so that she found herself at the end of a dirt road with buildings lining each side. The sun looked ready to sink, but the people bustling in every direction did not share its sentiment.

As the sun dipped lower, the sky took on the brilliant rubicund hue of a candied apple—similar enough that she felt her stomach grumble. Even if it looked tasty, it was odd enough that she reckoned it might be the color of poison berries instead. After all, she had never seen the sky dress itself in such a color.

Suddenly, someone hit the fast-forward button to the point of darkness. The moon hung high in the sky and its illumination showed that the sky still glowed crimson.

The color whispered to her animal instincts, "Run."

Sakura attempted to obey, but found that the grip of immobility had not left her body. She could not even move her head to inspect the source of her restraint. Her range of motion was nonexistent and she could not close her eyes.

The color brought its whisper to gentle urgency, "Flee while you can. Do not stay here."

Every atom in her body wanted to heed its advice, but she could not. Agoraphobic fear flushed her limbs with heat while panic tightened her throat.

With each moment, the volume of the voice increased. As Itachi stepped onto the scene mere feet from her frozen pillar of a body, its sound became deafening. Unbeknownst to the unaffected villagers, he was clearly the source of danger rattling her alarm bells.

He spared her no backward glance before unsheathing his katana and running it through the bellies, throats, and eye sockets of every clansperson in sight. There was blood everywhere—not a single surface was spared the spatter of his sins. There was so much blood that even she was probably covered in it. As he slaughtered his cousins, aunts, and uncles of every age, Sakura struggled against her invisible restraints; no decent human could watch this depravity without intervention.

The stench of death forcefully entered her nose like a vampire into a house without invitation. While Sakura was a kunoichi who had experienced the sight and scent of death many times before, this was too much—it was an apathetic abattoir. This was utterly reprehensible. She thought that most sins could be forgiven, but for this there could be no redemption.

As her eyes were forced to watch, Sakura felt horror settle in her soul. Not being able to act while such a tragedy took place in front of her twisted something in her chest. If only she could stop him, she could save all those people—and maybe she could save her team in the process. But, instead, she could do nothing.

She sputtered and choked in an attempt to speak despite her paralysis. She heaved like one stricken with the death rattle; Sakura sounded like another victim to Itachi's katana with moments left before she passed from this world to the next.

Unwilling to go without uttering something passable as last words, she forced syllables out between throttles. "Stop…killing…your…loved…ones…"

Itachi paused his rampage and looked in her direction as if he had heard something. She felt a glimmer of hope in her heart, but Sakura knew that she was simply witnessing the past and that her words were futile in the present.

When he noticed a little boy trying to scamper away, he refocused and snapped the child's neck with his free hand. And that was all Sakura could handle. It was all she could take before the thing deep inside of her that had stopped working restarted again—the emotions that she had tucked away for no further use were back with a vengeance.

The Uchihas' blood mixed with snot and saliva as Sakura broke down into relentless sobs. She sobbed for the slaughtered innocents, for her inability to save them from their tragic fates, and for the knowledge that this tragedy would have a ripple effect of wicked misfortune. She cried even harder at her gains: she got what she had wanted and the end for which she had wished, but the means were something that she had never anticipated. She cried because she was finally able to cry again. Even though her body was frozen, this scene had caused her emotions to jitter more than they had in five years.

But, most of all, Sakura wept because Itachi was right: how could Sasuke forgive his older brother when this was what he had witnessed? There was no smoothing over a transgression of this magnitude. Sakura wailed because she knew that Itachi's sin had no redemption.

"So, do you understand now, Sakura?" Itachi asked. They had returned to his dreamscape, but tears still rolled down her face in somber silence.

"There's no explanation good enough to make those images leave my brother's head. I've burned each bloodstain and scream into every fold of his brain. Do you think he'll forgive me so easily?" he continued with a hint of fire in his voice.

Sakura contemplated his words. She understood what he meant—it was hard to think of him as a human being after what he had shown her. However, the first scenario—the one he had shown her before everything went ugly—made her doubt the veracity of the blood, guts, and un-glory pictured in the second stream of images. She knew the events to be true, but she could not ease the feeling that something about them had been misrepresented.

"No, I don't think forgiveness would come easily if those are the events you've replayed for him. But…," she hesitated, "Is that how it really happened?"

Itachi's brow furrowed. "Yes, I really did kill my whole clan, Sasuke the lone exception."

Sakura shook her head and insisted, "No, that's not what I meant—I know that you killed them. But, were the images you showed me how it all actually happened? Was each action and expression left un-doctored?"

The still air broke when he let out a bark of humorless laughter. Sakura flinched—laughter was an action of which she never imagined Itachi capable, even of the heartless variety.

"I'm lucky that my brother isn't as smart as you, Sakura. Otherwise he might've figured me out by now."

Sakura had no time to construct a response even if there were so many things she wanted to say. Instead, she was sucked belly first back into a new dimension—or rather, the old dimension.

As her consciousness slammed back into her natural body, she realized the variety of injuries that had accumulated throughout the battle. However, the pain wracking her skull trivialized any of her physical wounds.

She forced her eyes to peek open and the world wobbled. Once it stabilized, she found Sasuke standing upside-down in front of her. Sakura rolled over and the world was right again; she had been lying on her back.

As she began to sit up, Sasuke spoke, "Impressive work, Sakura. You did the right thing to capture him while I was unconscious."

At this, her head snapped up and she assessed the situation: Itachi stood frozen and bound by chakra strings. He even had a blindfold covering his dangerous eyes. Beside him, Sasuke appeared proud of his trapped prey.

"You see, I always thought that the battle between Itachi and me would be to the death. But, it didn't turn out that way. I thought about it, and it seems that an easy death would be too merciful for a cretin like him. So, I've decided to keep him around to torture him until his body finally can't handle it anymore. I know he's strong, though, so I'm sure he'll hold out for a good, long time," Sasuke explained with mania dancing in his smile.

A sense of horror settled deep in the pit of her stomach and she panicked, "No! Sasuke, I have to tell you something. I have to tell you…"

She tried to explain, but the words were lodged in her throat. Instead of expressing themselves, they teasingly tickled her uvula and blocked the passage of air to her lungs. It seemed that no matter how hard she tried to speak, the words would not come forth.

"Sasuke…You…" The harder she tried to speak, the more her own words fought against her.

Once she could take no more gagging, she retched hard enough that blood and vomit spewed from her mouth in place of the message she was trying so desperately to convey.

Sasuke's voice demanded, "What did he do to you?" He did not wait for her response, though. From where Sakura crumpled to the ground, she heard a thump followed by a sickly crack and a second thump.

She looked up from the pool of blood and illness that had spattered her hands and soaked into the mud. She found Itachi lying immobile and limp on the ground; her lips trembled. Sakura had to stop this chaos before it progressed any further—Sasuke needed to know the truth lest he perpetuate the cycle of sin.

"Sasuke, he showed me all the things you've seen…" she trailed off unable to finish her sentence. It felt as if something had a leash on her tongue that was stopping her from telling Sasuke what she wanted to say.

He mistook her silence as grief and responded, "Why do you think I've been hunting him? What he did to my family is unforgivable."

There he went with the term she dreaded hearing: unforgivable. She had to get through to Sasuke before his festering hatred made him totally unreceptive to the truth. Unfortunately, she could not get the words out of her mouth and she had a sneaking suspicion that Itachi had something to do with it. He had more tricks up his sleeve than a magician and she did not doubt that a silencing jutsu was amongst them.

Sakura pleaded, "Sasuke, I know you're excited. The things you saw happen to your family were horrible and I understand why you would want to avenge them. But…please. I need you to…I need you to look at me." She knew that his level of emotional awareness probably fell somewhere in the negatives, but she had to hope that he might notice something amiss in her expression.

He turned away from his brother and set his gaze upon the place where she sat crouched to the ground. His eyes studied her and slowly softened with an emotion that looked much like concern.

"I didn't realize you were vomiting blood—and you're too low on chakra to even heal yourself. We'll have a healer work on you as soon as possible." He grimaced. "No, we'll take you directly to Tsunade."

She shook her head in hearty disagreement. "No! No. It's you I'm worried about—and your family—but, mostly your happiness and integrity as a human being. Do you really think this is a good idea?"

Sasuke rolled his eyes now. "Are you worried that he might escape? Trust me, his bindings were made by Orochimaru himself—and that man loved nothing more than capturing people to undergo his experiments. It sounds like the blood loss is starting to affect your thinking."

"Happiness and integrity, Sasuke. Do you remember what those are? Those things are at stake if you don't think long and hard about how this situation began and then somehow evolved into what it is now," Sakura persisted. Even if she could not speak the words she needed to convey her message in full clarity, she would circumvent the subject as much as her mouth would let her.

Suddenly, the meaning of her own thoughts stuck her.

"I'm letting my mouth control me. I was able to break through Itachi's jutsu earlier—why not now?"

Looking offended, he pushed, "What are you saying, Sakura?"

She did not care that he sounded mad—she was too thrilled that he was finally listening.

"You're neither looking at me nor listening to me, Sasuke." She reached out, grabbed onto his white shirt, and used it to pull herself up. "Look at me and listen to my words because I'm about to say the most important truth you might hear in your entire life."

He shifted uncomfortably, but Sakura ignored it and pulled herself close to his chest. They were so close that it might be considered romantic if her hands were not covered in vomit.

As she opened her mouth to speak, she broke into a fit of hacks that made the whooping cough sound delicate. She shook her head, though—she would not allow her body to control her at the will of another. Sakura tried speaking again only to break down into a set of coughs worse than the first with substance to accompany it.

Sasuke stiffened and she could only imagine that it was in response to her spewing vomit and sputum all over him. This mission was a Machiavellian one, though, and he could take a shower later.

"Sakura…" Sasuke started with uncharacteristic fear in his voice, "…why are you spitting up feathers?"

Her eyes snapped open and found bloody raven feathers matted across Sasuke's chest where she had been coughing. Did this mean that she had broken through Itachi's jutsu?

"It wasn't Itachi's fault!" Sakura blurted out. Finally, after all the lies they exchanged, she had something true worth telling him.

Before she could elaborate or Sasuke could react, a sound similar to that of a stovetop burner catching flame broke the silent air behind them: Itachi had lit his blindfold and chakra strings on fire with the amaterasu. They were left on the ground next to a bloodied syringe and Itachi was nowhere to be seen.

Knowing that her fate was dismal regardless of anything she might try at this point, she continued, "Sasuke, you don't know the whole story about your family—."

Sakura's words were cut short when she took a jab to the nape of her neck. Despite the magnitude of the situation, she could not help but note that—regardless of their mortal opposition—the Uchiha brothers were remarkably similar.

She let out a chuckle before her world slipped into blackness.

Authoress's Note:

Wooo! That was one of my favorite chapters to write, so I hope you enjoyed reading it. :) Also figured I'd try to put out this chapter ASAP to make up for my previous lag.

Thank you for reading (and reviewing if you have)!

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