"Get out!"

The toss of a backpack.

"What, no, you-"

Before the boy could say any more, wood snatched him, just as the bomb exploded.

They were clever. An inn, a bar, a soup or cloth shop. They would congregate, then scurry out like sewer rats in the face on light.

Amidst the tar, gunpowder, and charred wood, Sasuke juggled another grenade. Their little toy against them, a small invention ten times more effective than a thousand explosion tags.

Every ant hill was being stomped, every mole hole caved in. His target could only hide for so long, because soon, there would be no place to run and no people to protect him.

.

A vial of black liquid. Glorious, Sakura thought, watching the consistency thicken, less like a fog and more like a syrup. She brought the drink to her patient's lips.

As promised, the uppers levels of epidermis began to heal. A miraculous remedy, a burst of regenerative chakra that could save any creature from the brink of death with a drop.

Whoever invented this had one sick, creative mind. It was a wondrous work of efficiency, to churn the trash into fuel. Sakura had to wonder, how many victims were swirling in her hand. She could feel their screams evaporate and graze through her skin, into her pores, tingling with contradiction.

The liquid itself smelled of decay, tasted of rot, defiled the soul with stain after stain. But as the cells multiplied, tissues of muscle renewed, split bones reconnected, all without a hint of senescence, it was undeniably the height of science.

A biological immortality. As long as you kept drinking it. Because this, like all others, was a contract of the devil, a sip enough to bind you to sin for eternity.

And her patient was a fine sinner, chained within his own crypt below the holiest land in Fire. A descent of stone, through the echoes of hymns, the flares of flames, the basins of water, the spiraling pillars, all to pay homage to a beautiful whore.

Beautiful indeed. The closer she looked, the more beautiful he was. Almost as beautiful as he was hideous, a delightful twist resulting in sultry eyes at half-mast. The dip of his head exposed the nape of his neck, let hair cascade down. The cross of his arms uncovered the peaks his shoulders, collected the folds of the falling kimono. The withdrawal of his foot drew in spectators, exposed his thigh and the brand of the State prison.

Almost as seductive as shameful. A decade of guilt that finished metamorphosing into pure shame, as he bowed his head, tried to cover the extent of his filth.

He did not want her here, she with the power to provide relief, euthanasia. He did not want to be seen, only the more he tried to hide, the more alluring he became.

Sakura turned her back, ascending the stonewells. She wouldn't have stayed any longer regardless. The atmosphere was poisonous. An imprisonment with no duty, no goal, no sense of time, all with the distant chants ruinous for the mind and sanity. Her own body would rot, her life drained away.

Besides, he was a secret. A macabre secret no one was meant to see, no one dared to touch, a secret that served as a vessel for an even greater one.

Sakura understood her own death was imminent.

.

"Damn."

A three-pronged kunai dug into the tree bark, as a kunoichi settled down her wounded comrade. There were fragments of rusted metal and glass in his arm. He would lose the limb altogether if it wasn't treated soon, granted the infection didn't kill him first.

Though the rain had originally masked their trails, it was now an enemy in their battle for survival. Diseases would worsen. The cold was harsh and unforgiving. The remaining survivors nestled around the camp, a close congregation of tarps and branches strapped together last minute. There were only eight of them. The ninth had passed away from a splinter in her lung, and the dog never made it out of the blast. Everyone was sick, wounded, or dead under the pelt of the rain.

The only one moving was a man, who ripped his shirt and withdrew an aged flask. He knelt besides a boy with a shrapnel caught in his foot, two of his toes already turning black. The boy kept brave, and bit down when the shrapnel was extracted and alcohol hissed with his blood.

A minute later, fingers fell limp, and there remained seven.

A scream broke the silence.

"This is fucking ridiculous!" The kunoichi stabbed the bark over and over again, before she furiously stomped through the downpour, into the adjacent tent.

The boy did not have the chance to give thanks when the man was yanked up.

"You die today!" she hissed, a kunai flashing into her hand.

Someone caught her wrist. "Mitarashi!"

She spun around to face her commander, who threw her arm back down. His eyes were calmer, wiser, face solemn, the rain dripping across his scars and down the edges of his hair. In contrast, hers were wild, skin darkened with charcoal, flesh torn and trekked with streaks of dirt and blood.

"Now is not the time to be turning against comrades."

"Are you fucking kidding!" She gave the man on the ground a muddied stomp to the stomach. "Eight of our bases just blew up into smithereens within the past three months. The first, coincidentally enough, right after. he. joined."

The man felt an especially sharp attack to his kidneys on the last punctuation.

"That is a heavy accusation, Mitarashi."

"I saw the attacker. He was from the STATE!"

The entire camp stiffened. Some subconsciously huddled closer towards each other, while others distanced away.

"Who was it," the commander finally asked.

"ANBU. Root."

"How many?"

"It was a blur. I only saw one, but no one can mistaken a Root. He escaped before my snakes could seize him."

There was an exchange of looks, weary and fearful. Only one man from the State who had joined their ranks before the attacks started, attacks so precise and in sequence that it couldn't have been an accident. And currently, he did look suspect, an unrepentant ANBU of Konoha, regardless of the acts of loyalty he had shown. Everyone became good liars in times of war.

But then, there was a cry.

"It wasn't him!" The boy clutched tightly onto the flask. He was the most unsettled of the group, a sting in his eyes and a quiver on his lip.

"What do you know."

"He saved me!"

"Cute trick, save the weakest link to look innocent," she spat.

"It wasn't him!" the boy repeated desperately.

"It wasn't me."

For the first time, the man spoke. He stared directly into her eyes, weary and defeated as the rest of them, but still with enough strength and conviction to clear his name. He didn't blink as the rain from her hair, stained brown and red, dripped into his eyes.

She nearly flinched. He didn't.

"Then who," she weakly asked, as she removed her foot off him. "Whose revenge is this?"

If only they knew. Betrayal was expected. How they even functioned all those years was a miracle that defied everything the commander knew about the human nature, military strategy, and the game itself. He pocketed his hands, stared at the rain crashing down from the heavens.

For some reason, this betrayal didn't feel so much like call for revenge, than a cry for mercy.

Two days later, a message flew in from the wind. The first base of the Akatsuki had been bombed. Maybe a coincidence, but Akatsuki would draw their own conclusions when an activated weapon from their allying party showed up on their doorstep.

.

"You lied to me, brother."

A sentencing.

A snake had managed to slither in, through the basins and up around the architecture of a pillar. The surface of the water rippled between orange of the flames and sharp blues of electricity.

"He wasn't there."

The strike sent Itachi to the floor, the lash of a whip that disintegrated into crackles of static. He curled in, his arms desperately crossed around his abdomen. He braced himself for the second strike, the third, forth, until he looked like a vandalized painting, a crisscross of torn canvas. A teetered pattern weaved down his arms, as his nails dug into his own flesh until his fingernails drew blood.

"You know where he is," Sasuke murmured sweetly into his ear, his fingers weaving into his hair. "Because of him, you are hurting yourself." A harsh yank, as he dragged his brother across the floor. "Because of him, you are dirtying yourself."

Itachi fell to his knees before the bed. Sasuke rested on the edge, cupping his brother's cheek, staring at him with a fondness that matched his honeyed tone. Threatening, mocking, poisoned. "Again. Tell me where he is."

The response was shaken, barely audible.

"You c-cannot capture him."

Sasuke merely grinned, rubbing his thumb over his brother's quivering lip. No useful words ever escaped his brother's mouth, but that didn't mean it could not be used.

Itachi's eyelids fluttered close when he felt his brother's arousal press against his lips. He was sick, nauseated, but that did little to stop him from taking his brother into his mouth. Nor did he retract when Sasuke dug his hand into his hair again, and slammed himself deep down his throat.

Sasuke could feel him choking, gagging, suffocating with each thrust, he could feel the sob that ripped out and vibrated, and it encouraged him to go harsher and deeper until the last of his brother's voice was gone. There was no need for Itachi to speak; all that mattered was that he remained obedient, swallowed every last drop of release.

After footsteps up the stairwells had dimmed to echoes, the snake moved. It submerged itself into a basin, then slithered around the unconscious body on the floor, buried in the dips and folds of stained fabrics.

It stopped before an unrolled parchment.

It was a map, stained and streaked with blood where trembling fingers once touched. In the highest concentrations of red marked the location of the ninth base of the Underground Resistance.