"Our freedom can be measured in the number of things we can walk away from" -Vernon Howard-
Itachi led the way rather quickly through the streets as the rain poured from the sky making the smell that much more unbearable. Rotten sewage, the trash scattered across the cobblestone walk ways. If he had been warm and cordial before, now he was cold, and as distant as the sky from the earth. He was angry, and walking as if he intended to loose her in the crowd. He nearly did.
The rain fell in miserable sheets, the grey closing in on them and overtaking the industrial city. Sakura was quickly soaked to the bone. It was crystal clear that he was upset by the line of tension in the middle of his back, his clenched fists practically shaking in concealed fury. She had never seen him like this, had never pictured him capable of the wave of emotions he so freely displayed for her. It made her want to trust him. It was exactly why she shouldn't.
"So...you used to work with Madara?" Sakura prompted, hoping that he would for once explain it to her. That somehow this would all be made right if he would only talk about it. Sakura was grasping at straws here. There was probably nothing that could straighten this twisted mess. She wanted to understand him and yet it hurt that he was holding her at arms length. As usual.
"Did you think I could pull off the culling of the entire clan alone?" Itachi snapped suddenly, surprising Sakura with the depth of his emotion, anger that only someone who had lived through it, experienced it with him, could have brought to surface. She had never heard this tone from him before and was bitter anger that faded into sorrow. This was what had etched the lines on his face prematurely.
"Of course I needed him. How else was I to manage such a feat?" He demanded of her, sharingan eyes flaring.
"Everyone except one..." Sakura replied hollowly, as she thought of the man who both of them loved and simultaneously hated.
Itachi visibly flinched and turned from her, redoubling his efforts for haste. Madara always had the uncanny ability to make him feel unclean, detestable and unworthy and he hated him for it, the insecurity it wrought in him that he'd thought he'd conquered so long ago. The man who had steered him through his icy adolescence was also the man to blame for the vast amount of turbulent emotional trauma he had. And he had brought Sakura into it, straight into the eye of the storm.
"Is what he said true?" Sakura asked.
Itachi felt the pain that question brought and he hated Madara all the more for actually succeeding in his plans of dissension. But what else was she to think, really? What more could he expect from her? He was angry that he had expectations in regards to her. But the truth hurt. They hadn't known each other long enough, and he certainly hadn't shared enough about himself. He had thought himself justified for it. He had feared he would reveal too much, and she would flee from him. Others had. But what he was doing now was seeming to be just as effective at driving her away. Damn it all.
He needed his body, needed to be sentient again, needed some sort of normalcy, a pulse just to confirm that the nightmare he'd been living was real, that he was still real. He wasn't sure how long he could be insubstantial but it felt like he was flickering, snuffing out completely. It was already draining him, taking a toll on his psyche being inbetween worlds. He wasn't going to be able to take much more of this emotionally physically or otherwise. It was taking everything he had not to be consumed by his own darkness. He could feel the pull of insubstantiality and being invisible was catching straining against him. But he had come too far to stop now.
"Is that all I am? Bait?" She finished, dark purple beneath her jade eyes making them all the more verdant, all the more poignant.
Itachi froze and turned to her, taking a sharp breathe as he controlled the raging emotions beneath the surface. The carefully sculpted apathy he had worn so non chalantly in his previous life was cracking, wearing thin and through in his semi translucent state and it was bitterly ironic that this mere slip of a girl, with bright obnoxious sakura pink hair, and such an open smile was the one to unhinge him so. He had the kyuubi bearer to thank for that, though didn't he? But as much as it irritated him, as much as it complicated things, he also couldn't seem to hate her for it.
Sakura took a step back assuming a defensive position as she started to crouch lower misreading him. Itachi for his part tried not to take it personally. His hand was gentle on her arm. She looked into those sharingan eyes, and she saw the depths of his feelings and it scared her, as it warmed her in this cold place. But This was foolishness and she knew that well. He wanted her disarmed, disengaged from who he really was. Her eyes knew nothing about him, and everything he said was merely to entangle her further. He wasn't actually trusting her, he was using her manipulating her like some piece on a shougi board.
Itachi saw the look and fought to hide the hurt he felt at her lack of faith. She wasn't the only one who hated feeling helpless. Those eyes rendered him useless to any other task. These feelings scared him, made him weak, weaker than he already was without a body. He had never felt so strongly for anything before in his life, aside from kin, and responsibility, but neither of those things were like this. He loved his brother and he loved his country, but kin and country didn't make him burn, make him want like this.
To say it was all lust would be a travesty to the emotions he held or perhaps the kyuubi bearer had held for him. He wanted more. He wanted her and it led him to desperation as he struggled for the words to say, to keep her with him. And it frustrated him, chaffed him more than anything had, because he couldn't for the life of him explain why. He had never felt this yearning, this desperation when he lived aside from insuring Sasuke's life, but never his own, and never for anyone else. Perhaps dieing had changed him, but he doubted that, so much as Naruto's interference. How had the Kyuubi bearer dealt with the intensity of these feelings all those years? Was there some sort of strength found in him that Itachi was lacking?
"You may not believe me when I say it, but I will tell you about it-them- the incident." He told her swallowing hard. "I've never spoken about this." Itachi struggled with words, a new sensation for him as he hung on her every expression.
Sakura regarded him suspiciously but it was clear with just how much he was struggling that this wasn't some farce. Or if it was, it was a damn good one.
"It's true that I killed my clan, my own parents, my cousin, everyone within the Uchiha with these hands of mine." Itachi said, eyes taking on a haunted look.
His face was firm, but his hand shook. He seemed to notice the movement and the slight frown in his face the movement ceased.
"But not once did anyone ever ask why I did it. No one ever knew why, at least not the real reasons for it. Perhaps they didn't want to." Itachi told her. "No one knew that they were traitors planning to overthrow the Sandaime Hokage, and to betray the leaf; to overthrow Konoha and gut the village for it's wealth and prosperity in the midst of the ninja wars." Itachi told her.
Sakura could scarcely believe her ears, her eyes wide. Itachi swallowed, hard continuing forward before she could fire off questions.
"I was under the order of the Sandaime Hokage to watch them, to be a spy amongst my own clan, to keep them from rebelling. My father wanted me to be the same for them, spying on the leaders of leaf because I was a captain and privy to classified information. My allegiance was clear; to my country, first and foremost." He told her, forcing his emotions down as he focused on the memory.
"You're telling me, that Sarutobi Oji, the Sandaime Hokage, asked you to kill your entire clan?" Sakura exclaimed incredulously.
"He didn't have to ask me, Sakura." Itachi told her, with a haunting expression. "I volunteered." He told her with certainty, his eyes meeting her own.
...
Sakura's thunderstruck expression was real and also impossible to read. She was shocked to the core and she was unpredictable in this moment. She was so pale, all the lovely cream color had vanished from her face until she was as washed out as everything became in this town. She took a moment to process, taking all the information he'd given her in, and Itachi thought he would loose what little sanity he had left as he stood, letting the rain pour down on him in the back streets of Rain.
The only thought that continued to resound and taunt him was simple. He had no proof. The only other living person to be able to verify was the old man himself, dead, in advertendly, by Orochimaru's hands. Madara probably knew, but he would just as likely lie as soon as help him. If Sakura didn't believe him...What would he do? What would he do if she left him?
"Why?" She rasped, heart rendering tone breaking as she looked at him with such sympathy. "Why would you do something like that? To your own family?" She pleaded tears in her eyes for him.
Itachi swallowed. He had to continue. Those eyes asked him to speak. To not be able to finish the tale he had started, to speak of what he had sworn a oath never to say in his former life...This too was unforgivable, but he needed to see it through to the end. He would finish what he set out to do.
"You know why I did it. The same reason you take your missions, the same reason you fight; to protect your precious people." Itachi told her with conviction.
"You killed your own flesh and blood! You joined Akatsuki! You killed good people! You tortured your brother as a child and might as well left him for dead after the mangekyou! You put him on the path of darkness and you're telling me you did it for your country?" Sakura demanded of him arms stretched wide in accusation and frustration. She couldn't understand this, couldn't understand him. What kind of love caused this much pain? This much sorrow?
"I was weak, Sakura and it was because of my weakness that this happened." Itachi told her, his tone soft but firm. He was not sorry for it.
"Weak? You were weak to slaughter everyone you knew and loved?" Sakura exclaimed.
"Yes." Itachi replied and Sakura recoiled in horror.
"I lifted these hands of mine and bloodied them, sullied them so much that I ended the woman who had given birth to me, the father that had raised me and made me his heir. And inspite of being an anbu captain, of obeying every order ever given to me; I could not go through with it; I could not kill my own brother." Itachi told her, eyes holding the sorrow of the memory.
"I would hardly call that weakness, though I might call it sociopathic." Sakura replied trying to distance herself from him, from this.
"But it was weakness, Sakura, with an assignment like mine. No Uchiha was supposed to walk away after that night and I could not face that many alone, so I sought out Madara's help." Itachi told her.
"How could you trust a snake like Madara?" Sakura demanded hating this, hating him in this moment. She felt trapped, suffocated and smothered.
"I had no other options left. They were going to revolt and things were moving too fast. I had to stop them. Though I loved my country and I would have done almost anything for leaf, he was my brother." Itachi replied quietly.
"So you tortured him and left him family-less instead. How considerate of you. What the hell is wrong with you?" Sakura cried.
"Though what I did was harsh, it was better than killing him. He needed to be strong to face the coming challenges. I knew Orochimaru would come after him. He needed an objective and a goal, and I provided him one. Even if it meant casting me as his enemy forever, I was willing to do that, to sully myself, and to be that for him." Itachi said, the passion, the dedication and the only other word she could see to describe it; the love he had for Sasuke coming through.
Gods he had dragged himself, his name through the mud, the blood and the rain for him...what terrible love she thought staring at him. What malevolent hatred.
Sakura took a deep rattling breathe, trying to get a grip on the magnitude of this news. Itachi had been ordered to commit the massacre? There was no other assumption she could make about him. He was acting in the interests of Konohaor so he claimed. Then this man truly was no longer her enemy if he was acting on the same side. The enemy of the enemy is a friend and thats what he had done, or so he claimed. Itachi was... leaf?
"Why Akatsuki? Why leave then if you were following orders?" Sakura demanded trying to make sense of the information he'd given her. Leaving only incriminated him. This was impossible, a ridiculous lie so far fetched he was thinking she would buy it. He was lying, no one would do something like this. But he didn't flinch as he spoke those words. He looked her in the eye. And What other explanation was there to explain this?
"Because I could not stay, Sakura. I should think that would be obvious." Itachi told her. "There was no more that I could learn from the Sandaime. I was a jaded... cynical after what I had done." Itachi replied.
"You ran away. You were ashamed." Sakura said in a hard tone, her arms crossing.
"Maybe I did. Maybe I didn't want to face what I had done. Maybe I didn't want to see my brother's face and have to try to explain that his mother and father really were corrupt and planning on over turning the village and creating a ninja civil war and that I slayed them to stop it." Itachi replied tone equally harsh and reproachful.
It hurt, her attitude towards him. He sighed. She deserved better than this, than his anger. She deserved the truth.
"I left ultimately because I knew that Sasuke would never be able to look at me the same, that I could never go back after what I had done; but he would be safe until he could protect himself and I was satisfied with that. Danzou wouldn't touch him because he knew I still existed and Sasuke would be taken care of by the Sandaime and the rest of the village to be kept from Orochimaru. It was the best I could do."
"Bullshit! You could've stayed with him. You could have explained! You coul have kept him from going to Orochimaru" Sakura cried, feeling the tears at the situation. How could the sandaime have put them in this situation. How could he have done something so foolish? How could this have been allowed to happen?
"I am not God, Sakura. I have already taken so much from him. I could not take his right to choose. I allowed him to go to Orochimaru, just as I had chosen to become a missing ninja. It was his choice to make."
"You let him make the same choice you did. You let him walk into darkness" Sakura accused.
"Ours were completely seperate cases. I walked into darkness for his right to choose. Akatsuki was the only option I had aside from execution. The villagers would never trust me again after what I had done. I could never redeem my name, and I didn't want to stay. Akatsuki was the only way and it allowed me to keep an eye on high profile S classed criminals and report on their status."
"You were an informant?" Sakura exclaimed the new information alarming.
"How do you think Jiraiya got his information on Akatsuki? on rain? It was an informant I hired to lance the information to Konoha." Itachi told her.
Sakura's mind spun. It was too much, this was too much. He was too much. If she believed him...well didn't she already? She had seen his expressions. One couldn't fake that sort of agony, that sort of emotion lightly. But all of his sources were dead, long gone. There was no way to verify his words. There was no proof. This was why he had waited, why he had revealed them to her now, now when she couldn't get out, when he had her caught in his web, entangled in his darkness, too deep to get out.
"This isn't a manipulation to get you to stay Sakura." Itachi told her, practically reading her mind. "You asked me to tell you the truth, and I have, for better or worse." He said, eyes downcast on the last part.
"And yet you have ulterior motives for wanting this." Sakura snapped at the end of her rope. For wanting me...
"I need my body. He has my eyes. I have to stop him because I know now that I was wrong. He was given a chance to live and he ruined it, and maybe I ruined it for him from the start. But I can't leave him as he is, to wreak havoc on the ninja world, and neither can you. I am your best shot at justice, and I cannot do this without you" Itachi told her truthfully.
"Without your body, you mean. And after I get you back in your body assuming that's even possible, let me guess, you want me to be the bait? He'll kill me before you get that chance, Itachi." Sakura replied.
"No. He won't." Itachi told her, tone resolute. He was completely confident in his statement. It was too close for comfort, too personal for Sakura to accept it.
"You don't know Sasuke as well as you think you do" Sakura scoffed.
"He won't kill you, Sakura, but you know that as well as I do." Itachi insisted. "You're the same as he is now, something he realized the moment the Kyuubi bearer died." He told her.
"You have the same eyes he did before he was consumed by darkness. Why do you think he threatened you and then fled? Sasuke isn't one for idle threats." Itachi said, answering a question with a question.
Sakura's eyes widened and she whirled on him. "How could you possibly know that? I talked to no one about that day outside of Konoha. No one else was there..." Sakura demanded, grabbing him by his Akatsuki cloak. It was the weirdest experience because she could almost feel the fabric flicker between her grip in her hands as his eyes darkened. Itachi did not answer her statement, he pressed his own agenda, moving his face towards hers.
"He fled, he ran away from the perfect opportunity to cut all of his ties in one fell swoop, and you have not seen him since, Sakura. Did you ever stop to wonder why he didn't end it then and there?" He asked her, ignoring her own questions for his own.
Sakura shivered, trembled as she felt feint, weak at the thought. Naruto was the one Sasuke had always cared for, had always loved. But what Itachi said made her doubt herself. Why hadn't Sasuke finished the job that day? He had looked at her after Naruto had died. It was as if he was finally seeing her for the first time. Sakura felt numb, placid as all of his words sunk in and tore her world apart.
Itachi placed his arms gently around her, pulling her, enfolding her in his black and red cloak. The silk of it felt so good, so warm and damp around her. It smelled like him, like rain and storms, enticing and musky. How had this happened? How had she hungered for him like this? How had she become ensnared in something so deadly? She couldn't do this. Couldn't trust him like this. She pushed him back hard.
"No." She told him with finality. "You're a fool, Itachi." She told him, her words drawing blood. "and I'm not going to die for you." Sakura murmured, turning on her heel.
Itachi's face twisted and paled as her words found purchase. He looked as if he had been struck, and he nearly choked on the breathe he had been holding. Sakura was uneasy as she stared at him. She backed away from him, antsy and desperate to keep her distance. He made to move forward, and then his form began to flicker.
"Sakur-" He exclaimed darted his hand forward, and very suddenly vanished into thin air.
Sakura blinked, rubbing her eyes. "I-Itachi?" She called. No answer. The dark haired Uchiha was no where in sight. Sakura didn't .
"Itachi?" She called once more for all extensive purposes but she hadn't expected anything to come of it. Her expectations didn't let her down.
Methodically, she searched for his ki. Not that she could sense it before anyways, but this was what a ninja did when loosing a comrade in enemy territory and Sakura was nothing but methodical, finding comfort in the practicality of it, to keep her from panicking, or at least trying to. If this was some sort of a bad joke on his part she didn't find it funny and she would give him what for when she found him. Then she searched the radius she'd last seen him scowering within a hundred yards of their last rendezvous, as she avoided people by donning her henge again.
It was in the next hour that she had found no trace, no forensic evidence of any sort, not even an inkling of where he could have possibly disappeared to, that Sakura began to tremble, her breathes coming in quick short gasps as panic took over. He had for lack of a better word or description; simply vanished into thin air. Had he been a ghost after all, an apparition? Was she crazy? No. She had seen him, had felt him, tasted him. He wasn't here and she didn't have a clue where he could have gone.
It wasn't a summoning, there was no chakra residue of any sort for her to trace and he didn't even have a chakra signature. No hair or other physical traces that he'd even been there, no marks left from the spot where he had left from. So what the hell was she supposed to do now? Was there a chance he was truly dead? Panic set in, and Sakura gasped, feeling the attacks constricting her lungs and movement. Leaning against the wall, dizzy with panic and fear, she tried to collect herself to no avail.
She had done everything by the book. She had searched for any evidence she could possibly have gathered. He was gone. He was gone; completely and entirely without a trace. She had no earthly idea of how desperately she had needed him until he had left her standing in the alleyway alone. Sakura stumbled. What plan could possibly be formed, that would work against Sasuke, without him? Squads of anbu had died at his hands, stratego's and intelligence operatives had worked for years to try and get a shot at him. She didn't have a fucking prayer without him, and through her questioning and antagonistic statements, she had made him vanish into thin air.
Nauseous at the thought, she righted herself on shaky feet as she continued to stalk up and down the block of the alleyway they had been in, trying to compose her thoughts. Until she felt the slice come at her from behind. Blood sprayed in the streets of rain.
Sakura fell, darting to the side as her healing chakra went to work on her backside, kunai in hand as she sliced through whatever it was that had attacked her, able to catch the movement out of the corner of her eye. She staunched the blood flow, unable to hone in on the ki of her assailant as she scrambled up the alley and threw herself over into the next alley as bricks crashed behind her, nearly landing on her head as she fumbled her landing, breaking into a run. She glued herself via chakra to the building, crawling back up it in zig zags, as she turned her head back finally getting a good look at her enemy.
Paper hawks were chasing her, two from above and two from below. She rounded the corner, throwing her shuriken and slicing through the two below. The top left hawk dove with lightning speed, whittling towards her. She tried to slice it, but the hawk saw it, controlled by it's puppeteer, and cut in, hacking into her shoulder, rewarding her failure with a slash on her head as she crouched avoiding them again. Sakura swore, the implications clear. The paper that moved with a life of it's own could only mean one thing. She's here.
Paper rose, like a tidal wave after her, as Sakura scrambled up a sky scraper of industrial rust, pieces breaking off as the paper consumed them behind her. They didn't even slow it down, paper swirling around it. Reaching in her pouch, she pulled a scroll from it, throwing it open and out as she doubled her haste.
"KaguTsuchi" Sakura murmured, throwing herself into free fall off the side of the building.
She turned in mid flight to see the success of her attack. Flames burst into the air, the swollen fire belly, expanding before exploding, igniting the paper in huge tendrils of pyrotechnic flair as she hurtled closed to the ground. She flipped through the air, slowing her descent as she landed on the rooftop without breaking stride.
She jumped down the alleyway and landed, bruising her feet on impact. Gasping for breathe she saw the figure standing before her, thousands of sheets of paper encircling her as the woman flapped her falsified paper wings as more of the fibrous and deadly filament fell from the sky.
"Konan..." Sakura murmured.
"You have precisely three seconds to drop the henge before I sever you limb from limb" She stated. Her tone was neither cold nor warm, like this woman's gaze.
Sakura did as she was asked and dropped the henge, green eyes glaring defiantly as they stared upon the sole female akatsuki member.
Konan did not seem surprised. "You." She murmured with recognition though how she knew her, Sakura had no earthly. "Why are you here, now, at a time like this?" She questioned, paper settling around her. Her chakra, while still easily accessible was now no longer hostile.
Sakura blinked, not expecting this from the pierced pale woman in front of her. It was as if konan had been expecting her all along. She eyed her wearily, confused but not wanting to let her guard down.
"I was looking for someone. I wanted to remain as inconspicuous as possible." She replied carefully.
"Then you chose the wrong henge. Nagato might be dead, and Madara might be crippled, but I still have full reign of my senses and mobility. I do not take lightly the idea that someone is walking around imitating me. So I will ask you only once; Who are you searching for?" Konan told her full voice sharp as a kunai.
Sakura scowled. If she mentioned Itachi's name it could either save her or condemn her, but in either case it might buy her some time to escape.
"Uchiha Itachi." Sakura replied, faking more confidence than she felt puffing out her shoulders as she stared the older woman down.
Konan's eyes widened a fraction, and Sakura was surprised as the paper fell to the floor completely docile as she turned. Konan, pein's partner, a woman a thousand times more formidable, had turned her back on Sakura. She could scarcely believe what was happening.
"Follow me." Konan's voice echoed to her from the alleyway.
Sakura's jaw dropped and she avoided stammering as Konan led the way.
"What-"
"Not here. It isn't safe." Konan replied, flapping her wings and taking flight.
Sakura was about to protest her own lack of aerial ability when the paper beneath her feet surged forward and she stumbled backwards. She was riding a massive white paper crane and she was forced to use chakra to keep her from falling off of it. Eyes wide as they flew up into the grey, they sailed over the rusty industrial capital.