How to say this...I'm really, really sorry this came out so late. I've been real busy lately but that's no excuse. Eitherway, this marks the end of my undeclared 'break'. So I'll be updating all of my stories from here out- especially since vacations are in!

Nobody really reviewed my last chapter so I have no idea if you guys liked it... I for one really liked writing it so I guess I'm gonna continue with this mini arc for now. Do tell me what you think!

Disclaimer: I wish I did, but don't we all. Unfortunately, I don't own Naruto.

25th April, 2032, San Francisco, Time- 21:25.

Shaking out of his doleful reverie, Itachi revved the engine, pulling out of the dead end he had been stagnated at. Home be damned, he didn't care what anyone thought of his absence that night. He knew where he wanted to be, and his hands took him in that direction.

The car pulled onto the highway that would take him to Mount Diablo.

"You can help her."

It had taken him so long to track this man down. Now finally there, Itachi could barely contain himself.

"What makes you think I can?" the long haired man asked, turning towards Itachi from across the desk, in the small study of the house Itachi had finally located.

"You cured the pandemic-years ago."

Pale eyes widened with surprise. "How- how do you know that?"

"It doesn't matter what matters is that you cured it." Itachi said, only one thought on his mind.

"That's only because I knew how it happened. It was years ago. Times change." the other man said, his tone even and deliberately light.

He was trying to send him away. After so long spent trying to locate the man who could help save Cynthia, said man was trying to turn his back on them. A small sliver of desperation crept into his voice as he further explained her situation. "She-she's dying. She's an -"

"An experiment. A child experiment. Dying probably as a direct result of the experimented genetic mutation." he said, long hair shadowing his face.

It was Itachi's turn to feel his own eyes widen in surprise. "How did you-?"

"Know? I cured the pandemic. I know all about what the Uchiha Corporation really is." he said grimly.

"Then- then why haven't you done anything yet?!" Done something. Something to stop the experimentation. Something that could have stopped it from happening to Cynthia. And all the other kids.

"I did. I tried. They killed my wife for it." he said, his face darkening into a scowl as he continued, "I try again; they take my son. Put him through the same thing your girl went through."

"But-" Itachi started.

He cut him off before he could speak. "The Uchiha have eyes everywhere. The police. The government. The jury. Hospitals. Mafia. FBI. You can't escape. The only thing they can't infiltrate yet is the Hyuga -but if take refuge there, that changes."

"But you have to-" Have to help. Have to do something to stop it. Or help in some way.

"I don't have to do anything. If I help you, they'll know. They'll kill me. I have to be strong for my son. Support him. They'll take him away. Even if I risked my own life - I can't risk his." he said, before walking to the door and saying, "Get the hell out of here before they find out you were here. I can't help you."

He opened the door and motioned for Itachi to leave.

Itachi stood there frozen. She was slipping through his fingers. Like sand. Just when he finally found a lead on how to help her, she was slipping even further away.

" She's dying..." he said, letting his emotions take control of him against his better judgement.

"She's dying at 17 years old, and you cannot help her. She's there, and so are countless other kids who are no older than your son. You could've helped them. Stopped this. You're not being strong for your son. You're being a coward." if he hadn't angered the older man before, he certainly had by then. And yet desperation laced his voice as he continued.

"But you know what? I'm not even asking you to make up for not helping them. I'm asking you to help me save one life. One girl. A girl who means more to me than life itself. A girl who's lost far too much to ever have to lose again. A girl whose never once seen daylight in all of the last 7 years. A girl who... who... who deserves a chance to be free, and to never feel pain again."

He had had enough. The other man's expression hadn't changed.

"I'm sorry. I can't help you. Now leave before they find out you were here."

Itachi's jaw clenched. This man wouldn't help them? Fine. They didn't need his help in that case. He stalked away out of the open door.

As he left the front door of the house, about to walk to his motorcycle which he had left outside, he was stopped.

"Wait!"

He turned around to find the scientist striding towards him.

A hint of annoyance seeped into his voice as he said, "What do you want now?"

The man had already refused to help. What more would he do? Rub it in?

"I'll help you."

Itachi stared at the long haired brunette. What had made him change his mind?

His lips curled up in a smile as he extended a hand of greeting. "Itachi Uchiha."

Pale eyes surveyed him one last time before sighing resignedly and shaking his hand. "Hisashi Hyuga."

"Itachi..." she started, a serious note to her voice as she saw him at the door, before he walked into the room and pulled her into his arms, her back pressed flush against his chest.

She frowned slightly, a hint of affectionate exasperation in her voice as she tried again. "Itachi-"

He distracted her, his lips pressing slow, gentle butterfly kisses along the sensitive nape of her neck.

He felt her melt under his touch and lace her cool, slender fingers into his hair as she tugged him closer. Suddenly stiffening, he felt her push him away, once again assuming a serious tone as she said, "Itachi."

Reluctantly, he pulled away, allowing her enough room to turn around and face him.

"Hisashi agreed. He's going to help us." he said. Though his expressions did not give away much to the untrained eye, she could practically see his overwhelming happiness at the fact. It seemed to further dampen her mood.

"He can cure you-" Itachi started, feeling as though he were grasping a rope that led him out of the pit of despair the idea of losing her had brought.

"Itachi." she said, cutting him off. "I think we should stop seeing each other."

A moment's silence followed. "What?!" Itachi asked, unsure if he had heard her properly.

"You should stop coming to meet me."

"What?! But I just said-" he started, surprise evident at her words.

"What are the chances that he'll actually be able to heal me? What makes you think I want to be cured like that?" she asked, clear blue eyes piercing his.

"What are you talking about? You can't be serious." It didn't make sense. He couldn't understand why she would bring this up now when he was hell bent on saving her. He couldn't understand why she thought her words would deter him either.

"Serious? I'm dead serious. It'll be better this way. In a few weeks, they'll move me into intensive genetic alteration. They don't plan on me coming out of this alive. And then everything goes back to how it was before. Before we met. You'll move on. I'll be gone. As though we never knew each other." she said, a sad smile on her face.

"Stop." he said, his voice ragged, as he stopped her in her tracks. "Just stop." she took a step away from him, but he took another step forward, saying, "Do you have any idea how much it's been tearing me apart knowing that you're sitting here, slowly dying, as a result of something my father did, while I've had to go about my daily life, acting like it doesn't matter at all?" he said.

He was hardly one for expression emotion. But then again, there were never any limits with her. There never would be. She knew him better than anyone could. He had no reservations around her.

She looked at him, her eyes reflecting the anguish in his own.

"I-Itachi-" That single word conveyed so much of her pain. Desperation. Desolation.

"I don't care if it's less than 1% a chance of you coming out of this alive.. I will grab at it. You can't- you can ask me a lot of things, but you can't ask me to stay away from you. I can't...I mean, if you die..." he couldn't finish his sentence. He couldn't even think of a world without her. Perhaps people thought it silly or melodramatic for him feeling so strongly at such a stage. But for him, it was her. It was always her.

"You think that I asked you to do this? I didn't ask you to find me. I didn't ask you to come into my life! My sister already thinks I'm dead. She was all I had before. I would have been able to accept that I'm going to die without a single regret if you hadn't shown up in my life and embedded yourself so deep ion my mind that I can't spend even a moment without being flooded by thoughts of you. As you said, it will hurt you so much if I die, and I know it, and it's tearing me apart knowing that, and its hurting me far, far more. Stay- stay away from me! If you don't see me, you can forget about me...forget I ever existed...forget I died. I-I ..I love you too much to know that you'll be hurt by me if I die...I'd rather die than hurt you..."

He could feel the raw, unbridled emotion in her voice as tears flooded her cheeks, clenching his heart as though it were being shattered into a million broken fragments. Her tears hurt him. And the selflessness yet underlying selfishness of her words was what struck him the most. Sh loved him selflessly; and for his sake tried to make it so that he wouldn't be hurt if she died. Yet it was selfish of her on some level; she without giving him a choice, chose to distance herself from him out of love- yet that was what she wanted, not he.

"I don''t care if you've accepted that you're going to die. I haven't. I. Will. Not. Stop. Until I find a way to save you. And if I can't then I deserve to be as hurt as humanely possible for not saving you." he meant every word of it. And in a test of stubbornness, he always won.

Her hands flew to her eyes to try and wipe away her tears as she spoke. "You don't get it. I've done everything possible to find out about my condition. I'm not even supposed to have this disease. It shouldn't exist. It would never have harmed me. It was their experiments which destroyed the normal genes, and activated the abnormal genes. This isn't any normal disease. It can't be cured. No trying in the world can save it. So it's just...better to stay away." she said, her voice sinking to a dejected whisper as she finished.

But her words did not deter him. They just convinced him more that Hisashi could help her. And fuelled his hatred towards his father's operations.

And even if Hisashi couldn't help...

"If he can't heal you, I'll go elsewhere. I'll track as many scientists or doctors as possible. I'll go to the ends of the world for you. Just don't...don't ask me to give up on you." he said, once again walking up to her, pulling her into another strong embrace as he sat down, her curling up on his lap, her head resting on his collar bone.

Gently stroking her hair, smoothing it around one shoulder and away from her face, he heard her unsteady breathing slowly even out. Along with it, his racing breath and heart calmed, as he drank in her presence. The soft feminine woodland scent which enveloped her, the silky feel of her hair between his fingers, the way her slender body fit snugly against him, and the gentle feel of her heat radiating off onto him. Moments like those, they would last forever. He wouldn't let her die. He couldn't.

"When I die..." she said, after a few long moments of calm. He frowned at her words but didn't interrupt her as she spoke. "When I die, you're going to find someone else. Love someone else. Grow old loving them; just as much, if not more than you'd love me. You're going to become head of this organisation. Stop anything like this from happening ever again. Help the kids to get their lives on track."

Aside from the 'find someone new' part, he would have done that without being told either way. But her compassion was another thing which made him love her more.

"You're going to find that sweet little girl- the one who your mother helped escape a few weeks ago- Gaara's sister."

"The one who Sasuke is attached to?" he asked.

"Yes, her. You're going to find her and bring her back to Sasuke. I can't see either of them ever being anywhere else if not with each other."

"Really?" he asked with a slight chuckle, remembering his brother's trio of inseparable friends, of whom the pink haired girl was part.

"Those two- they have something beautiful. They're still so young...but there's really nothing more perfect than how they are together. Seeing them, I actually believe that soulmates exist. Make sure they stay that way."

'Like we could have been.' remained unspoken.

"You're going to wake every morning surrounded by the people you love...you won't need me any more, then. You'll have your brother, and your wife, kids...And if you have time, in all that, find my sister. Make sure she's okay. Make sure she knows...that her sister loved her." her voice cracked as she returned to nuzzling his chest.

He didn't need to be asked. His world revolved around her and his brother. He'd do anything for them.

"Alright." he said, a smile curling his lips.

She drew back, blue eyes widening in surprise as she looked up at him. "Really? All of it?"

"Yes. All of it. I'll do it."

She looked at him in disbelief, surprised that he had accepted her words so readily. "Really?" she asked again.

He grinned. "You started with 'when I die'. I don't plan on letting you die for a long time now. I'll grow old with you. Be a family with you. Be loved by you. And everything else you said? We'll do it together." he said, looking down at her with nothing held back. He could always be free around her.

And as her eyes widened again with surprise, he saw a glimmer of hope in them.

A glimmer was all he needed.

He pulled her up so she straddled his legs, her head now inches above his, and caught her off guard, capturing her lips in a passionate kiss.

"Your friend has a particularly vicious type of anaemia. It's practically unheard of."

Itachi looked at the pale eyed scientist from across his laboratory. It was near midnight, and it was the only time he could visit the Hyuga scientist's laboratory without observation.

"Then how do you cure it?" Itachi asked.

"I have my ways.I know what kind of experimentation led to it happening. I can fix it too. It will take time. But it can happen."

"So she's not going to die?" Itachi said, hope bubbling.

"There is a separate complication." he said hesitantly.

Itachi frowned. "What? What is it?"

"The cure itself. The process of healing. It's called gene therapy. It's quite dangerous in itself. Her body could reject it. Or it could turn virulent and kill her."

He bit his lip in frustration. "What are the chances of her surviving?"

"For a normal person, with this disease, none. But with hope, her genetic alteration can work to her advantage too. I can use it and manipulate it to help the gene therapy."

"And so you can cure her?"

"I'll say there's an 80% chance of her coming out of it alive. Compared to other figures, it's as good as a cure."

Something was better than nothing. He's do whatever it took to help her. And 80%... she could survive that, right?

"I'll take any chance we have."

"I'm going to ask you this once more, Mikoto."

Fugaku's steely cold whisper was what drew Itachi's attention and stopped him in his tracks just before he entered his mother's chambers.

His eyes widened in surprise. His mother and father hardly spoke any more- what was his father doing now, in her room of all places, in the late hours of the morning?

"You should know by now, Fugaku, it's no use playing this game with me." his mother's condescending cold voice instantly told him that something was wrong.

Quickly moving to the neighbouring room, he watched from the keyhole of the door that adjoined both rooms. His father stood towering over the slender frame of his mother, his expression manic with rage, while hers was impassively calm.

His father spoke in a low, menacing whisper.

"I can have you taken away- locked up and isolated for the rest of your life. You'll never see your children again- that is, assuming they survive the procedure." he said, his words cruel, "So I advise you rethink your steps carefully. For the sake of both yourself and your children."

"Our children, Fugaku, not mine. You wouldn't dare harm them." she said, further taunting him.

"If they are are truly my children they will survive what happens to them." he said, his voice a low growl.

"You cannot deny that they are your own flesh and blood." she said, a hint of threatening malice flashing through her eyes.

"Perhaps that is why they have such bad taste when it comes to women." he said spitefully.

"That's not what you say when you bed me." she teased mirthlessly.

If it weren't for the gravity of their voices, Itachi would have left there and then. Hearing about the intimate life of his parents was the last thing on his agenda.

"And yet here you are. betraying me. Tell me- when was it? Did you start after we married? Or were you antagonistic to my operations from the moment we met?" Fugaku asked, glaring at the woman in front of him.

"It is hardly a betrayal if your action are so horrific. You may have sold your soul to the devil but I will not. You can burn in hell alone."

"Your actions have only served to further their suffering. More of these children will suffer if you hide and protect the successful few you have helped to escape. You forget Mikoto, you may hate me as I hate you, but we are tied together. If I burn in hell, you burn with me."

They stood, glaring at each other, locked in a constant battle of gazes, before Itachi watched as his mother sighed and said, "What do you want, Fugaku?"

She was bored, her gaze wandering over his face and then to their surroundings as they stood mere inches apart.

"I will drop this argument and overlook what you have done with the rest of the experiments- provided you give us one location. Where. Is. She?"

"Who?"

"Haruno. Sakura Haruno."

She gave him a long, calculating glare, before saying, "I'd rather die than hand her location over to the likes of you."

He stopped abruptly, and stepped away, speaking to a third party in the room, who had perhaps been watching the whole exchange, but stood beyond Itachi's scope of vision.

"Take her away."

The third party, a hooded figure clad in black, became visible as he moved forward and grabbed Mikoto by the arm,

"Wait!" she snarled, yanking her arm out of the hooded figure's grasp. She fixed Fugaku with a loathsome glower.

"If you do this to me- to our sons- you lose all and any emotion or respect I still might bear towards you. And any further compliance."

His father's lips curled into an almost sadistic smirk as he said, "But Mikoto," he laughed mirthlessly, "I don't need your emotion, or your respect, or even your compliance to get what I want from you. You are mine anyway."

The hooded figure once again took hold of her and Itachi watched as his mother was dragged out of the room, to the hallway.

Itachi raced across the room to the other door, rushing on to the hallway to intercept his mother's captor.

But as he ran into the hallway, he was left with an empty corridor; neither his father nor his mother, nor even her captor, were anywhere in sight.

"'tachi? Brother? Where's our mother? Where's she gone? Why isn't she back yet? Is-is it true what dad said?"

It sometimes struck Itachi how much Sasuke had grown. From a small baby who could fit in his two hands, to an eleven year old, growing young boy. But sometimes Itachi forgot just how young his brother still was.

Now, he did not see any of the rambunctious kid Sasuke had grown to be. None of the subtly arrogance he carried himself with. Now, he saw a young, hesitant boy, afraid and unsure of what to do, and turning to his longest role model on what to do, now that their mother was...gone.

Itachi put an arm on his brother's shoulder. "She tried to help them, Sasuke. She tried to help them. And they took her away. Don't believe what your father tells you. He's the reason why she's gone."

"But-" he watched as Sasuke struggled to comprehend what he had said, the pain of yet another loss showing up raw in his eyes. He watched a small angered glint harden his brother's dark eyes. Anger toward their father? Or the corporation?

In a sense, the boy had lost both parents. His mother taken far away indefinitely. And his father, a traitor to what they deemed right. A harsher loss. A stronger pain. Itachi had long nursed his anger toward his father for what was happening to Cynthia. But Sasuke was naive. Ignorant of his father's involvement in his friends' captivity.

"Don't worry, Sasuke." Itachi said, ruffling the smaller boy's hair. Sasuke looked up to Itachi, and he took the opportunity to endearingly poke his brother in the forehead, "We'll find her. We'll stop this. Find all of them. And everything will be okay.

And though Itachi himself was afraid to believe it, he sincerely hoped it was true.

Plagued by worry and pain over his mother's loss and anger toward his father, which was numbed by the knowledge of Cynthia's impending cure and worry over her in general. Itachi assured his brother that the outcome would be fine. But did he believe it himself? He had no choice but to. What else would keep him sane?

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