Many years later, the terrifying, gruesome moment would replay itself over and over in Sakura's dreams.

She was teetering on the edge of unconsciousness when a wickedly sharp blade slashed down a mere three inches from her nose, slicing through the bone-white arm holding her up and neatly severing Orochimaru's hand from his body. Like a puppet with its strings cut, Sakura's body instantly folded, and she slid down the wall, gulping for air in heaving gasps, trying not to choke on the sudden, blessed influx of oxygen. Almost as an afterthought, she tugged the bloody hand from her neck and threw it aside, gagging at the putrid, rotting smell.

"Sakura!" Itachi's voice was sharp with urgency and concern. In her shell-shocked state, she'd barely registered that he'd plunged the knife into Orochimaru's chest in a move that was as lethal as it was efficient, before shoving the body away. Worried eyes, as red as the blood splattered on her cheek, swam across her blurry vision as Itachi knelt before her. A pair of warm, bracing hands came to rest on her shoulders.

Sakura had never been so happy to see someone in her life.

With his back turned to the one-armed corpse of her attacker, she was the only one who saw the wounded Orochimaru roll to his feet, shuffling towards them like her worst nightmare made flesh. Sakura's eyes widened in horror. In the time it took her to cry out a warning, however, Itachi was already spinning around with impossible speed to deliver a powerful, sweeping kick at Orochimaru's shins. The man toppled over with a loud thump. Then, before he could struggle up again, Itachi picked up the bloody knife he'd set down on the ground beside him and hacked Orochimaru's head clean off his body. The headless body twitched once, before finally going still.

A shuddering cry of relief and revulsion escaped Sakura's throat. Immediately, Itachi dropped the decapitated head he was holding and turned towards her, seemingly unaware of the radiant glow that was emanating from his body, like a shining halo of angelic light. Sakura squinted, unsure if she was hallucinating from the shock, as the unnerving crimson and black swirls leeched out of his eyes, tracking sanguine tear-tracks down his cheeks, leaving only soft slate grey behind.

"I—" he tried to say, stumbling towards her, before the unfamiliar, now pupilled eyes rolled back and his whole body went slack.

The air was forced out of Sakura's lungs once more as Itachi collapsed onto his knees, his face planting directly into her chest.