It was a waking nightmare, something out of his worst nightmare come to a reality. Their village was gone. The gates remained, a battered, broken remnant of its former glory, holding in place the wrecked aftermath of what looked like a flood or an almighty push from a center focal point.

Whole buildings were pushed and shoved as though they had been slid by some insanely powerful push across the ground to be shoved forcefully up against the walls of the village and crushed by its fellows in the flow.

The three stood horrified on a tree just outside of the village looking in on the destruction. What had happened here, what could possibly be this strong, to do this much damage. They were speechless.

"Let's go, we need to find someone , anyone who can tell us what happened and what the plan of action is, if there is one." Kakashi moved first, his movements jerky his eyes wide, he looked...desperate, sharingan uncovered.

"Is it, is it a genjutsu?" Sakura doubted but hoped.

"No." Kakashi told her "It is a nightmare come true."

"I didn't know the Akatsuki were this powerful." Sasuke too was in shock.

Sakura took in the full shock of the damage, she hadn't either. The real question though, was why? Why had they done this?

"KAKASHI, SASUKE, SAKURA!"

"Is that? Is that Naruto?" Sakura spoke surprised. She turned to where the voice had called them from. A bit of orange, yellow hair and blue eyes met hers.

"Naruto!, What happened here, you're back!" She called to him as they changed course and made their way to him.

Two of his shadow clones flew up beside her each holding a Rasengan in their hands, "Goodbye Sakura" and just like that, just as soon as she became aware, they went for her, she dodged, they came at her again, she fell, Kakashi was in front of her….

"CHIDORI!"

Poof poof.

"Naruto! What the fuck!" Sasuke lunged at three more clones that had come at her as she tried to stand, Kakashi touching down in front of her again.

Sasuke stepped right, poof.

Cut left then up, poof poof.

"No, not possible." Sakura was shaking her head, standing behindKakashi.

"You? You did this?" Sasuke waved his hand out from his body encompassing their village and all the destruction.

"Me." Grinned Naruto.

Her Mind screamed no, as her hands wove the signs.

"Earth Style, Earth Dragon Bomb!" She screamed and a mud dragon erupted from the ground at her feet.

"Water Style, Water Dragon Jutsu!" Kakashi sent his water dragon after her mud one and they collided with Naruto bringing him to his knees.

"Enough!, explain yourself Naruto, why would you attack the village, you betrayed us!" She was screaming at him, how could he do this to them.

-So, not Akatsuki after all hum?-

"Where is the Hokage, did you, did you kill... your father Naruto?" Kakashi asked, eyes narrowed, trying to hide his confusion. This turn of the unexpected had riled him more than he was letting on.

Sakura had only heard Kakashi hesitate one time, when they had been in bed together and he had been unsure….

That scared her more than anything, he wasn't sure what to do. She hadn't realized how much she relied on his confidence. He was an asshole, he pissed her off but he had been her solid, if volatile team captain, he had held her in constant suspicion, but it was constant, routine, he was always there and sure of his movements, his loyalties and now he was...unsure, and it scared the shit out of her.

"Not yet, but I will." Wind and chakra swirled around him, drawing to a point in his left hand

"I will kill you three first."

Naruto jumped into the air high above them, "Tailed Beast Rasengan!" He shot like a bullet down upon them at an incredible speed, they didn't even have time to blink.

Something hard hit her head and her vision was fading, she struggled to keep her eyes open. Sasuke's voice came to her from her left...or was it her right, she didn't know…

"So, he managed to do it out of his nine tailed fox form after all, knucklehead."

Grey, it was grey, she could feel Kakashi's chakra signature spluttering, was he dying? Sasuke, where was Sasuke, her hand twitched, there, she could feel him but his signature was faint. Was he dying? They needed her, she had to get up to check on them, to heal them. Her eyes closed, so heavy. Sasuke, his chakra, where was it, her eyes closed.

-Don't pass out now, get up, open your eyes, get up! They need you! Get up!-

"I'm trying ." She called, who had said that? "I'm trying." She said again and opened her eyes. Red eyes looked down at her green ones. "Itachi" and she faded out, vision gone black.

She was weightless, was she dead? No she was being carried. Sasuke, Kakashi, Konoha. Her eyes snapped open. Itachi.

"Sakura, I'm sorry. I didn't make it in time." Itachi hugged her close as he carried her.

"Did you know, did you help him do that, to Konoha" she asked him.

"No, never." Itachi said as they ran, wind in her ears, drops of blood dripping and falling from her face, her arms and her chest.

"Sasuke, where is Sasuke?" She asked.

"Dead." was the only word he said.

Tears, so many tears flooded her vision, she hesitated, "and, Kakashi?"

"We didn't find his body, we don't know for sure." Itachi was slowing down now.

"We?" She asked.

"Deidara is with us and a few others. You will see." he slowed and stopped setting her down gently. They were at their cabin.

"What are we doing here? We have to go back to the village, are there any survivors? We need to find Kakashi!" She was panicking.

"There is nothing more we can do but to prepare for the next battle, and there is something here I need so we may do that." He kissed her forehead and released the protective seals on their cabin, she noticed there were many more than usual and that it took him longer to unseal them. So, he had hidden something here, something important.

They opened the door. It was much the same as it had been a few months ago when she had visited it and cried for him before her mission that had brought him to her again.

He went to the corner of the small room and kneeled down making several complicated hand signs. A pit appeared and he drew something out of it, a medium sized wooden box, it's craftsman ship was exquisite she noticed and wondered what was in it.

Itachi brought it over to their table and bit his thumb dripping a few drops of blood onto the box lid. The blood was absorbed into the wood and the box clicked open.

"Blood Jutsu?" She stared at the box.

"Hn." He pulled out a small jar and a scroll setting them side by side on the table.

He turned to her then. "Sakura, listen to me, this next battle is going to be unlike anything you have ever seen. It is war. We are at war with the nine tails. I have made some adjustments to a previous plan of mine and I need you to listen and try to understand."

"I'm listening." She stood tall and looked him in the eye.

"I took Sasuke's eyes and want to give them to you." He said calmly.

-WHAT?-

What?" She said , she must not have heard him correctly.

"You are talented, a genius, with my little brother's eyes, you will be almost unstoppable. Even now, you can keep up with some of the quickest shinobi, your evasion is unparalleled even against my sharingan, think of what you can do with a sharingan of your own. Sasuke would have wanted you to live, he would have wanted you to have his eyes." Itachi said

"War? With the nine tails, with Naruto, but why, what happened to him to make him like this." She didn't want to acknowledge Itachi's desire to give her his brother's eyes.

"He tried to overcome the nine tails with the help of jiraiya, jiraiya is dead, Naruto killed him when the nine tails took him over. Naruto is no more, he is now the nine tailed fox in human form, instead of Naruto Uzumaki in nine tailed form." Itachi told her.

Jiryah was dead! Shit.

"Sakura, this is a lot to take in, I understand but we do not have a lot of time, we must meet the others at the base. I told them I would do this alone. They are placing a lot of trust in me, we need to continue." Itachi said but made no move to force her.

"So, Sasuke is really gone?" Tears slipped down her face as she looked up at Itachi.

"Yes." His face was blank, he was holding desperately onto his control.

"Please lay on the bed, this will take some time and you need to be relaxed and I need to concentrate." He motioned to their bed.

She shook the covers out and laid down on her back. Sasuke, oh Sasuke, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry I couldn't have helped you. Kakashi, where are you?

"Try not to cry anymore, I need your eyes clear for the procedure, you are not an Uchiha, this will be...complicated, and I'm sorry, it will hurt. You must lay still." He brought out a glass container from under his cloak, Sasuke's eyes, glowing red.

"I understand. I'm ready." She lay her head back and waited.

Itachi leaned forward and kissed her mouth gently.

"I can't talk while I do this, I really need all of my concentration, but I will try to make it as painless as possible." Itachi squeezed her hand, and slim, aristocratic fingers held her eyelids open while the other reached in and ripped out her left eye.

Her whole body froze, pain exploded in her head, her untouched right eye rolled back into her head. She gripped the covers in her fists and willed herself to stay still and not to cry out.

"Don't pass out." he told her.

-Easier said than done-

Itachi put her old eye in a separate jar then took her right one and put it in another jar. Taking Sasuke's left eye, he put it with her left eye in its jar and then the right with her right eye. Unrolling the scroll he had taken out of the wooden box he did the complicated hand signs in a blur and released almost all of his chakra into his hands placing them on both jars.

His eyes were closed as he pushed his immense chakra into the jars, one hand on each jar, the eyes glowing green and then red, pushed and rolled together then merged into one eye.

Making the final hands signs he released his chakra flow.

He struggled to stay upright, it had taken more chakra than he anticipated, he blinked, his sharingan activated, he opened the jar with her new left eye and placed it back in her eye socket.

"Cold." She gasped.

"Sorry." he mumbled.

He took the right eye from the jar and placed it in her right eye socket.

"I need your help with the next part Sakura. You remember how the Uchiha eyes are connected to the main chakra veins to our brain right? I need you to attach and heal the connection of a normal eye and then that of an Uchiha eye to connect your new eyes. Go slowly." He told her sounding very tired.

She lifted her hands to her temples, her hands shook. He reached out and gently clasped his cold hands to her wrists to help steady her.

"I'm here." was all he had to say and her hands steadied themselves.

It was intricate work, she connected, healed and fused the muscles and fibers together of the chakra lines to the stem of her brain, the optic nerve and then, after what seemed like hours, it was done. She ran her hands over the front of her face to double check her work before she lowered them to her chest.

"Don't Open your eyes yet. Rest for a bit, it took a lot out of both of us." He laid down next to her in their bed and held her to him kissing her forehead.

"I didn't abandon you Sakura. I never left you. Even if you couldn't see me, I was with you. I'm sorry I made you feel so alone. I thought it was the best way to keep you safe but I was wrong." He hugged her close and kissed her cheek.

"You are the only family I have left now. I will never leave you again. A promise." He bite his thumb and hers and pressed them together. "A promise in blood." and they fell asleep.

Itachi woke not long after he had drifted off. Sakura was still in his arms sleeping. He had been such a fool to let things happen as they had.

The Akatsuki had been watching Naruto since he had left the Leaf monitoring his movements.

After Naruto had killed jiraiya they had confronted him, tried to reason with him, help him control the beast within, but he had almost killed the four members that had been sent on that mission. They returned badly damaged close to death.

Itachi had been dispatched with Sasori and Deidara to monitor Sakura Haruno more closely and see if she would be open to their way of thinking, that shinobi could be used as a weapon for peace, but things had gotten out of control.

Naruto had been making his way slowly back to Konoha meandering around the countryside in no recognizable pattern. They thought they had more time. They were wrong and this was the result.

Itachi had arrived at the village with Deidara, Kisame and Sasori to find it in ruins and his little brother's team fighting the Nine Tails Naruto. He had been teleporting to her when Naruto had struck down in the middle of the three with his Tailed Beast Rasengan.

Earth had exploded up around them. With his sharingan he saw her go flying, rocks hitting her body relentlessly as they flew through the air. She had landed hard in the rubble he hadn't been fast enough to catch her. Her body was bloody and broken, he almost wept but he didn't have time. Sasuke lay just feet away from her, dead.

Without hesitating he lifted Sakura in his arms and took the few steps needed to reach his brother and laid her down beside Sasuke. Sasuke's eyes were open...Mangekyo...just now?

Had his brother's eye changed in that moment? Had he thought Sakura was dead, maybe even Kakashi, or was it seeing his village destroyed by his team mate, his friend, someone he thought of as a brother?

Taking a glass jar from his cloak Itachi took his little brothers eyes and put them in the jar. He sealed it with a jutsu and closed Sasuke's lids. He lifted Sakura up into his arms.

"We need to move." It was Kisame. He was looking down at Sasuke's dead body. "I'm sorry Itachi."

"We need to move, but I need to do something first. I need a day, tell the others I will meet them at the base, Haruno San will be coming with me." Itachi hadn't waited for a reply before he jumped into the air.

Deidara stepped up beside Kisame." Is he going to be okay?" He asked the shark.

"He is Uchiha Itachi, if this breaks him we are all fucked. Come on." and they went to join Sasori who was waiting for them at the former gates to Konoha, no doubt impatient he had to wait.

Itachi looked out the window of their cabin, it was late in the afternoon. They would eat , rest a little more. They would need to leave by morning at the latest, but hey also needed to replenish their chakra. Sakura was starting to stir in his arms.

"Don't open your eyes yet I need to tell you how to do it slowly, the shock might activate the sharingan and do damage to the newly transferred state." He kissed her forehead and she nodded.

He sat her up and then sat opposite her on the bed so they were facing one another. He took her hands in his and squeezed them for reassurance,or his reassurance or hers he wasn't sure. The only non-Uchiha with a sharingan that he knew of was Hatake Kakashi.

"Try to feel around your eyes with your chakra, sooth them, reduce any remaining swelling and make sure everything is connected properly before we proceed." he said.

She nodded and he could feel her chakra run through her eyes in small little ebbing waves.

'Everything is perfectly connected, no swelling, I'm good." She told him.

"Slowly, very slowly open your eyes Sakura." He held his breath. He wasn't sure if they would be green or red. He had never combined eyes before. It was, in theory, supposed to allow the person receiving the eyes to maintain the uses of them like a natural born Uchiha but he had never seen it done. He had only read it in a scroll, the scroll that was open on the bed beside them.

Sakura was holding her breath as she opened her eyes. She could see the outline of Itachi but he was a little fuzzy. She blinked, and he came into focus.

Itachi watched as she blinked a smile forming on her lips. "Itachi." She breathed.

"Sakura." He looked into her beautiful green eyes. "Thank goodness." He said.

"What?" She tilted her head to the side.

"I had hoped it would work, that you would keep your green eyes. I love your green eyes. Sakura, you are so very beautiful." and he kissed her lips gently but quickly.

"Want to see if you can use the Mangekyo?" He smiled at her. He was excited, he couldn't wait to look at her and see the sharingan eyes on her.

"I'm a little nervous." She laughed.

"Let's go slow. Think of water moving in a sink, how it swirls around the basin before going down the drain. Let your chakra flow around your eyes and then let it drain into your brain stem to connect to the rest of your system, like water going down the drain in a sink." He told her in a calm soothing voice.

Sakura squished up her face at the thought then suddenly her eyes blazed crimson and the tomes spun in her eyes, changed and spun again, stopped then spun again. She felt dizzy. She closed her eyes and her tomes spun in her head, she opened them and they spun again. She fell back onto their bed eyes closed.

"Interesting." Itachi said. He had picked the scroll back up and was scanning through it giving her a glance every few lines.

"What's interesting?" She asked from her spot on their bed.

"Your tomes, they changed and then changed again...they change five times. I've, I've never seen that before. I wonder ..." He trailed off in his thoughts as he read the scroll.

"I thought they only have two phases, no three, the awakening, the mangekyo and then the final eternal mangekyo." She said.

"Well, those are the only ones we know of. The Mangekyo's power changes with the individual, they can acquire the Susanoo, Amaterasu for example, or Kotoamatsukami, like Shisui had but the possibilities are endless as are the talents of an individual." He continued to read the scroll as she thought this over.

''The scrolls says that the skills of the individual whose eyes you take are transferred to the new user and they combine with the new chakra to form additional possible abilities." he read to her.

"You being a non-Uchiha, with your perfect chakra control and vast chakra capacity may have exceeded the known limits to the Mangekyo, in fact, I think you might have the Eternal Mangekyou. I am not sure yet but I know I saw at least five different tomes spin in your eyes." He was looking at her in wonder, he glanced at the diamond seal on her forehead and tilted his head in thought.

She opened her eyes and watched him.

"You are amazing Sakura. I never know what you will surprise me with next, an enigma." He continued to look at her.

"That's what Sasuke told me, I was a puzzle to him, that he had never figured out." She looked down at her hands.

"He will live on, in you." Itachi told her.

"This will take some getting used to." She said.

"How do you feel?" He raised his hand to her face.

"I feel, strong. I want to see you again with the sharingan, I didn't get a chance to enjoy it before, it made me dizzy. Do you think it is okay to try again?" She asked him.

"Yes," He said slowly. "Try to focus on one set of tomes maybe, try to focus on these." His eyes bled red and his tomes spun into a circle with three points slanting out of the circle on the sides.

She took a deep breath and focused her chakra then opened her eyes to the three point, slanted circle matching Itachi's eyes.

They sat there looking at one another for a moment, eyes locked, sharingan to sharingan.

"Itachi, you're , you're so handsome, I , it's you, but it's more...it is like I never really saw you before, it's so clear. I missed you." she started to cry and she looked into his eyes, her tomes spun again, forming a six point flower pattern.

"Sakura, take a deep breath and calm down." He said and her eyes faded back to green. "Our emotion is what drives our abilities."

For the Uchiha there is no greater thing than love." He looked at her while he talked rubbing his thumb across her cheek, wiping the tears away.

"We love so strongly, so deeply, it consumes us, it blinds us. Sometimes it makes us go insane." He dropped his hand to his lap and looked out the window.

He looked back to her face, into her beautiful now green eyes and sighed. "You drive me insane Sasuke, I love you."

"Itachi ...Itachi, you know I love you too." She sat up in their bed and hugged him.

They sat there holding one another for a time just resting their heads on one another's shoulders, close, warm and comforted by one another's presence.

When he spoke again his voice was quiet, controlled. "I saw you with him Sakura, with Kakashi that night after the fight. I saw you let him touch you. Why? Why Sakura?"

He almost choked, the control in his voice lost. "It made me sick to watch, it made me sick Sakura. You knew I loved you, why let him touch you. He loves you, and you let him come to you and...and…." He couldn't talk anymore.

"I didn't encourage him, but I didn't stop him. I didn't feel anything. I didn't want to feel. I was so...lonely after you left Itachi. I was alone, he was there and I felt nothing." She said still holding onto him.

His hold on her was almost painful but she didn't move.

"I heard you...you liked him touching you. You, said his name like, like he was me. It killed me Sakura. Were you trying to hurt me, trying to get back at me for leaving ?" He whispered turning his head into her hair and sucking air in through his nose noisily.

"I wasn't trying to hurt you, I was hurting and it...was a small comfort, to have him there. I didn't want him, I do not love him...and I did stop him." She turned her head away from his neck looking out the window.

"You did. You did stop him and I am here now, and I will never let you be alone again." He crushed her to his body pushing his weight into her, they fell back onto their bed.

"I will never let you be alone again, I promise. You belong to me Sakura, me." He kissed her hard, almost forcefully, possessively and she let him. He had never showed so much emotion to her before, so much passion, and she let him.