The wind whistled through the trees. Sakura tilted her head back, allowing the gust to whip the hair back from her face. The guttural protest of displaced branches did little to appease the primal rage burning in her chest.
Her face contorted in the dark.
This— She had let this happen. Barbed wire had wound around the pulsating, meaningless mass in her chest, and she had done laughably little to deter it, had decidedly enabled it. If she could have, if the mass had been vestigial, she would have torn it out herself.
She raged at the bark beneath her fingers instead, wreaking pointless violence. She was determined to do so until dawn. The lone tree she had chosen as her resting place was perfect for this task, as far she could manage from the rest of the team.
This isn't satisfying, the Voice growled, if you're going to tear up our fists before they've even healed, at least do it on someone's face—
Sakura's head snapped to the side. She waited, though some part of her already knew what she would find. A few moments passed before the moon peaked through the canopy of gray-black clouds, casting light on the black feathers of a crow.
"Shisui."
"Human," it returned.
She watched it quietly, anger still smoldering in her chest, as it encroached on her space. She shifted seamlessly into a crouch, hand on the katana Yamato had returned to her only an hour ago.
It paused. "You dare?"
"Oh, I dare," she said. Her gaze was dark, intent upon the creature before her. "It just so happens that tonight, I don't actually happen to have the patience for your brand of casual cruelty."
"And once again, you've managed to get it quite wrong," the crow said equally coldly, sharingan spinning with malevolence. "It doesn't matter what you think or feel. All that matters is what I demand of you, human, and you will give it."
"Why would I do that?"
"Because that, Sakura, is your payment."
She smiled humorlessly at it. "That's not going to work anymore, Shisui. I'm no longer scared of you."
She hadn't been for a while now. And she had killed and killed and killed until she had forgotten what it felt like to have clean hands—what was one more on her ledger? Her mouth firmed, and she began to pull out the blade. The soft, sibilant hiss, which had once disturbed her, was nothing more than static noise.
Shisui's gaze flashed. It extended its wings, and feathers seemed to sprout from the end, flying into the air in dizzying amounts.
"Listen, then," it cajoled. "For Itachi."
Those two words had a profound effect on Sakura that she could not have anticipated. A torrent of emotions, none of which were truly her own, overwhelmed her—terror, desperation, and rage. Uchiha Shisui's legacy, she recognized belatedly: the memories that had somehow become partially her own.
She loathed the creature in front of her for it.
Her hand released the handle of the katana without conscious permission. It slid back into its sheath with a high pitched ringing sound.
"Sasuke is chasing Itachi," the Crow continued calmly. "And the copy-nin is chasing Sasuke. Between them, Itachi will not survive."
Sakura straightened, voice hard. "He's managed to evade capture for almost a decade now."
"He's sick."
Her heart had no reason to drop at that, not a single legitimate reason. She didn't know Itachi, had never even truly met him.
Still, Sakura found herself stalking the length of the branch until she was in front of the crow, eyes pinched. "Sick?"
"Sick from an ordinary, human disease that he could have had treated but has refused to," it relayed stoically. "He won't survive an attack from the copy-nin, and he doesn't want to survive an attack from his brother. He will die unless you extract him."
"Extract him," she echoed blankly. She blinked, and then her gaze sharpened. "You want me to take him and—run?"
Shisui's head cocked to the side.
Sakura's mouth worked soundlessly. This wasn't— But he was— She let out a frustrated hiss.
"Fine." She regretted the word, mostly because she knew it meant the crow had gotten its way.
"Good," it said blandly. "Your plan?"
She arched a brow warningly. It didn't blink.
"I'll slip away at dawn," she muttered, picking at some of the bark she had decimated. "A new disguise…not Saori Mori. Black hair, maybe, this time; I've never used black hair—"
"No," Shisui snapped. "No disguise."
Sakura didn't know how to react to that but to laugh. The alternative was too ludicrous to consider. She would lose it all—everything precious she had managed to scrape together between the bleeding and the killing and the futile attempts at being clean.
"You want to make me a traitor?" she asked scathingly. "After all this time? That's your grand plan?"
"No, you fool," the crow said icily. "You've built credibility now as a shinobi of Konoha, if a well-meaning, inept one. Your mediocrity, your perceived simplicity, the fact that you are the hokage's protégé— Itachi has been alienated by Konoha for too long, but its doors will crack open, if at all, for you and not a stranger."
It stared at her with chilling ferocity. "Tomorrow, you will extract Itachi, and then you'll do everything you power and mine to bring him to Konoha to make him…safe."
A curious thing happened to creature's voice as it shaped that final word, but she didn't have the chance to examine it. Without warning, its wings snapped out. In seconds, it had dissipated in a burst of feathers, swept away by the breeze.
Leaving Sakura there alone, with nothing but her thoughts. She wondered if she imagined the taste of blood on her tongue, or if she had actually bitten it at some point and had not noticed.
(Shisui had alluded that saving Itachi would mean not only crossing Sasuke, but also crossing…)
She bared her teeth at squirrel staring at her. It scuttled off, alarmed by the jolt of killing intent she sent into the air. She settled back against the thick trunk of the tree. A bell could have rung from the heavens in that moment, and she would not have blinked twice. On the contrary, probably would have thought it fitting. Tomorrow was to be…doomsday after all—or something like it.
She contemplated that for a moment.
How disturbingly normal this night was.
Some wind, yes, perhaps stronger than normal. A neither too-clear nor too-obscured sky. A moon caught somewhere between waning and waxing. A taste of rain, possibly, but it was too slight to tell.
Sakura's mouth twisted as she shifted her weight, wondering how on earth she was going to pass the time until then. When a bird chirped, she contemplated whether or not she was, in fact, above throwing kunai at woodland creatures. There was going to be no sleep for her tonight. Every sense was on high-alert, preemptively activated for what would come once the sun rose.
She forced her fingers to relax, slid them down from the handle of her katana toward her lap. She paused midway, eyes widening infinitesimally. Tilted her head to the side, considering.
Something made her feel reckless. A careless curl manifested across her lips. Her fingers slipped beneath the band of her pants.
It was, some part of her recognized, the worst of times, the most terrible of times to do this. And she did it, nevertheless.
Because she never could have imagined—
Because, for all her careless abandon, she had never expected that her body's response might be, as she immediately found—
So brutal it eviscerated all rational thought in her, leaving behind only one impulse. She felt unequivocally debilitated, and worse, it was by her own hand. She hadn't known, couldn't have known she would feel herself part so easily, like she had already (had long-been) prepared.
What the fuck?
Her expression shifted to incredulity even as her body moved, positioning itself unthinkingly into a better position, to a better angle, as she pressed fully into herself in one hungry, ruthless thrust. Her head hit the bark hard.
Fuck.
As it happened, that was the general idea. A flurry of sensations and scenes washed over her. Hands entwined in her hair, a sultry moan—moans, male, female—, fingers digging greedily into her skin, rough, gentle, soft, coarse, and…
And she could feel herself dripping in a steady stream around her fingers—that's how ready she was—and it was no one in particular but everyone in particular—
Precisely at that moment, it flashed through her mind: painfully clear and vivid in detail.
A mouth, hard and cruel, on the thinner side—and yet, with a persisting sensuousness, an unmistakable generosity. A slight curve, too: an ephemeral impression of arrogance and condescension, of irreverence. A subtle parting, and the flash of tongue.
She recognized it immediately.
The visions changed, and suddenly it was him, and he was between her legs, his head resting indolently against the inside of her thigh like he was bored, his hands curled firmly against the tensing muscles of her thighs, steel against steel.
His mismatched eyes stared at her, there, until she could feel it throb in agony, and then—only then—would that gaze slide up, hot and challenging, until it found hers.
"Fuck you," she would whisper.
And that imperious, enigmatic face would finally lower, without shame, with feral, cunning intent. And fuck—it would finally be right, that mouth finally doing the work Sakura had known it would excel at.
Her lips parted silently, stifling furiously the noise she wanted to make with a fist to her mouth.
Because she knew how it would go. For hours, and then hours upon that. His head there firmly between her legs, driving her mad, like this task required it all—his legendary strength, his ruthlessness, his feared intelligence—this precise task.
And how could Sakura withstand that?
She came with sudden ferocity, her teeth biting into her fist until she drew blood.
When she woke up in the morning, she tried and failed to convince herself that it had never happened.
It didn't get much better from there.
"No," was Yamato's greeting once she joined them.
To be fair, it wasn't really his fault.
Admittedly, it was rare to observe (beyond the obvious fact of Sasuke leaving and Sai joining) the differences each Team Seven member had undergone in the last three or so years. No one knew Sai well enough from before to realize what he had been prior to Team Seven. Sakura herself was essentially a sleeper cell at the crow's behest.
And Naruto: well, there were days where you could hear him in pissing contests with just about any other hotheaded shinobi in the village, and on those days, one could easily imagine that no time had passed at all.
Of course, Sakura was forced to acknowledge now, time had passed.
Because the fact that Naruto had managed to sneak past all of them (granted, they had been separated: Yamato had gone to check the perimeter, Sai to find kindling, and Sakura had only recently opted to leave her isolated tree) would have been entirely beyond the scope of possibility three years ago.
"Kakashi-senpai entrusted me with keeping an eye on all of you. And given Naruto's condition, in particular—I alone possess the capability of containing him without harming him if he loses control." Yamato looked like he was going to have a panic attack.
"The dickless can't track for shit," Sai reasoned. "Even given the fact that he's miraculously managed to leave, I doubt he'll have any idea where to go to locate Kakashi—"
A massive explosion rocked the ground beneath them. A mushroom-shaped cloud of smoke could be seen kilometers in the distance, even above the trees—it was rapidly expanding.
"I correct myself: he might know where to go," the black-haired boy said with a blank smile.
"We have to go find him," said Sakura quickly.
"I'll go," Yamato declared curtly. "You two turn back and head toward Konoha."
Sakura nodded immediately. Sai's eyes drilled into her from the side with confusion. Ultimately, however, he remained silent.
If Yamato had had the luxury of time, he might have interrogated them more rigorously. As it was, his face rapidly paled as more time passed and the noise of the far-away battle continued.
He gave them a sharp tilt of the head, before he was off.
Sakura's placating smile dropped. She exhaled, and the sound was somehow deafening in the silence between her and Sai.
He stared at her expressionlessly.
"You are going, aren't you," Sai said finally. "And you're going to tell me to stay. Which, actually, I don't think you have the right to ask of me."
Sakura considered that. "Maybe not. But it would be for the better."
His mouth curved into a full smile, teeth bared. It looked painful. "That's not what being on this team has taught me."
"Do I have to say it outright?" she said softly.
He took a slow step forward. "You think that I'll try to stop you."
"You should," she said stoically. "You're on thin ice already because of Root."
"I'm not going to fight you," Sai said firmly.
She fought against the softening of her voice, kept it hard. "You can't help me."
His eyes flicked to her hands. Sakura read his actions immediately for what they were. She was willing to use genjutsu to subdue him, and he knew it.
Sai's face contorted. "Is that what it will take?"
"Yes," she answered unflinchingly. "Don't intervene—no matter what happens."
"Fine," he said coolly. "If that's what it takes. If you won't let me stand by you, you can't stop me from standing by Naruto."
Sakura's gaze softened. "Promise?"
Sai's dark eyes flashed. "Promise."
Sakura drew back, wiping her expression of all feeling. She couldn't afford to lose any more time. She launched herself into the trees.
As she passed through the tall evergreens, the air became thick with smoke and dust. Leaves, branches, and other debris hurtled through the air. She darted between them, maintaining her speed though finding footing became harder as the damage increased. She passed through the final remnants of some trees, stopping short when the ground ahead of her became abruptly barren.
This, she realized, was where the blast had begun; and it had destroyed almost everything living in its vicinity. This part of the forest was now lifeless—except for the tableau of figures that had survived the blast and still spanned the field.
She found Sasuke immediately.
Clothing as black as his hair—indeed, the garments of an executioner—covered him from head to toe, a jarring contrast to the extreme paleness of his skin. Even from her position hidden in the trees, she could identify stains of blood along his arms and open chest. His katana was stained with blood as well.
He flicked his blade, and droplets of blood rained from the metal onto the scalded stubs of grass below.
"I see you haven't learned from our last encounters, Naruto," her former teammate said lowly, sharingan spinning.
Her chest tightened at the pained look on Naruto's face. No injuries, she concluded as she scanned his body. At least, no physical ones, she corrected. Yamato's hand rested on his shoulder, his own expression a mixture of stress and graveness.
And then beside them, though she could only see the smallest sliver of his profile, was—
Sakura leaned a little further out from the branches, risking exposure for closer examination. Because there was a tension, a hawkish watchfulness, that she could read in an instant in that body, and it wasn't directed at Sasuke.
She craned her head further to complete the revolution she had started, and she found two more figures. A tall, muscular man with colorless eyes and grey skin, cloaked in the characteristic black and red cloak of the Akatsuki, and next to him, Itachi.
Almost indistinguishable from his cloak, perched on that shoulder, was the crow.
She felt Sai reach the field, his chakra a de facto siren to every figure already there. A small sound of shock emerged from his lips as he too took in the scene.
Kakashi's gaze darkened and snapped towards him as he broke through the trees and into the clearing, his killing intent suddenly exploding across the field.
"Tenzo," Kakashi snarled.
Yamato's confusion dissipated when he saw Sai; his face reddened, and he looked torn between murderous rage and sheer terror.
"Come. Here," Yamato strangled out. Sai flickered from his position to just beside Naruto. She watched as his hand rose—just slightly, discreetly—to grasp Naruto's arm, bolstering him. She ground her teeth, wishing she could do the same.
"You fucked up," the copy-nin said coldly. Yamato was stockier in build, but it was hard to remember that fact looking at the two of them now. He towered over the older man, his sharingan glowing an unholy red. The older man's head was bowed.
Yamato seemed to regress to old habits. "Taichou, I should have—"
"Not now," Kakashi growled, his gaze scanning the figures around them. "Sasuke will go after Itachi first, and I will help him. When Itachi is subdued, I will deal with Sasuke. You, Naruto, and Sai keep Kisame in check; make sure he does not interfere."
"But—" Naruto began to protest. One look at Kakashi's face silenced him. "Fine," he muttered sourly.
Without another word, Sai and Naruto veered toward Kisame. There was a mix of disappointment and resignation on Naruto's face, while trepidation had washed over Sai's features . But Yamato was right behind them—and that brought a measure of relief to Sakura.
She felt a small, almost unnoticeable genjutsu suddenly take hold over her. She didn't even blink, because she was so used to it by now.
"Pay attention," Shisui's voice instructed coolly in her mind.
She turned rigidly toward the fight she would inevitably join. She understood why the crow had intervened a second later. This fight had already begun.
Sasuke was a blur in the air, so fast that Sakura could only distinguish him by the black streak of his clothing and hair; he wielded his blade with a surety that spoke of hours of practice and many more hours of real use. And yet, despite the exponential growth he had visibly undergone under Orochimaru's tutelage, he was met unfailingly by Itachi again and again.
If Sasuke had gained mastery, Itachi had made his craft as natural to him as breathing. His eyes glowed and bled tears—Sakura winced sympathetically, as she now knew how that felt—and, still, he fended Sasuke off effortlessly.
She quickly realized, however, that while Sasuke was making little progress, someone else was.
Kakashi watched with a savage kind of boredom as Sasuke made his attempts, then lunged with the feral calculation of a more experienced predator, wielding his sole sharingan with a terrible efficacy. When it was Kakashi who attacked, then—only then—Itachi gave ground, skidding several meters back.
Sakura couldn't help but stare, heart pounding.
Kakashi's reflexes were, admittedly, probably the kind that occurred in nature as often as lightning struck the same spot twice. Often, she knew, it was implied that the copy-nin was nothing but animal instinct when he fought: this was an accusation of both lack of self-control and incomprehensible physicality. But it was a prodigious intelligence that had made him a prodigy feared even in his own village—potentially beyond all the terrible dojutsus and missing-nin of their generation—and that was on overt display here.
Right now, Kakashi was far more than Sasuke's match; and he was more than Itachi's too.
Sakura would be lying to herself now if she didn't acknowledge a lance of nervousness piercing her somewhere in her core. Even so, there was also an…undeniable, certain amoral thrill in knowing that she had never truly tested herself against Kakashi—not since that moment in another forest, and then, Kakashi had not been in his right mind—
And that she would now.
She generated small amounts of chakra to warm her muscles. Her shoulder blades shifted beneath the weight of the sheath on her back, which, generic, hid the unusual blade contained within.
"Faster," the crow snapped.
Sakura's features shifted to a glare as she skirted the surviving undergrowth along the edges of the field. Her glower strengthened as Kakashi made a long incision in Itachi's side, causing the latter to take a step back.
As he retreated, the older Uchiha coughed into his sleeve. Sakura had enough medical training to know what accompanied a cough that sounded like that, though it was disguised by the black of his Akatsuki cloak.
He was sick, and he was coughing up blood. The crow had not lied.
"I don't need your help," Sasuke declared icily. "Your misplaced sense of obligation as my old captain is meaningless."
Her ex-teammate's dismissive tone, as well as his rather off-base assumption, took her aback. That was when she realized that the last time Sasuke had spoken to Kakashi, the copy-nin had convincingly been performing his very benign, laid-back caricature of a persona.
Sasuke was decidedly ill-prepared, she reflected, for Kakashi's deadly gaze slowly to turn from Itachi to him, mismatched eyes glinting. As well as for the decidedly predatory way the katana rotated slowly in his hand, until the blade pointed in another direction.
"You," the copy-nin murmured, voice thick with mockery, "talk big for a whelp."
He covered the distance between them faster than any human eye could track. When he stilled, hair and clothes settling into place a second later, his blade was inches from Sasuke's eye, held back only by the latter's blade. Sasuke's katana had slotted into place just in time, catching the copy-nin's blade near its tip.
Sakura thought for a brief moment that Sasuke had managed, until she spotted a second glint of metal. Kakashi's second hand loosely handled a kunai that just ever so slightly pressed into Sasuke's ribcage, exactly where it could be driven into his heart.
"Unlike Naruto, I could have broken every bone in your body when you threatened to leave. I gave you the chance to choose then. You are here now, in front of me, because of that choice."
Sasuke's eyes were slitted.
"Your brother may be a more pressing threat to Konoha, but I haven't forgotten that you are a traitor too, Sasuke," Kakashi finished with dark amusement, "I serve my village whether I eliminate you or him—remember that."
Sakura might have observed longer, if she had not then caught a small, almost negligible movement from the corner of her eye; her head twisted to its source. Itachi's expression was as implacable as ever, but she had seen it. In that fraction of a second, he had leaned forward at Kakashi's words—toward Sasuke. To intervene, even as the blood from his cough still stained his sleeve.
Sakura's frown deepened.
"Do it," Shisui whispered. She turned and found him by her shoulder. "The copy-nin will fall to you with certainty today because he will underestimate you. You will never have this advantage again as long as you live. Today, every disguise you have worn, every deception I have made you enact, will bear its natural reward—it has all been for this advantage, at this critical moment."
She stared at it for what felt like an eternity. Finally, however, she exhaled and made the hand signs. Because, yes, even she wanted to save Itachi—even she knew that whatever ending he deserved, it was not this.
When she opened her eyes again, one of them had been replaced by the crow's sharingan. For the first time outside of a genjutsu, Sakura forced its transition to the mangekyou sharingan. She was not prepared for the pain that followed. Somehow, when she had practiced it in Shisui's genjutsu, it had been subdued, maintaining that odd dream-like quality even the most nightmarish illusions somehow possessed. Now, however, the pain was brutal and real. Her knees buckled slightly.
Sakura bared her teeth in response.
The crow's talons dug into her shoulder; a feathered wing grazed the nape of her neck.
"I have mitigated the risk to the greatest extent possible," it hissed. "And you will perform, human. Not for me, but for yourself—because this is the conclusion you have hungered for."
This was, perhaps, the best motivational speech the crow could have given in that moment. Sakura's muscles tightened in acute anticipation.
Itachi was still watching the pair across from him intently—biding his time. Her eyes slid left. Sasuke was still suspended between the two blades, one which pressed into his ribs. And Kakashi—
Kakashi's head was cocked back. He had noticed Itachi's unusual behavior and watched now with a feral sort of curiosity, eyebrow arched. He hadn't put it together yet, Sakura guessed. Possibly, she acknowledged, because he hadn't been handed the missing pieces Shisui had provided.
Sakura shook her head until a few strands of hair fell forward to hide the sharingan. She shunshined onto the field, feet settling onto the ground between them.
Slowly—almost lazily—charcoal and red eyes shifted from their original subject to her. Sakura's jaw hardened in preparation.
"Why step out now," he said languidly, "when you were doing such a good job of hiding?"
Sakura's nostrils flared. Had he noticed her, even though she had been suppressing her chakra? Or was he merely theorizing based on his impression of her as a coward?
Stifling her temper, she turned to look at Itachi briefly. His face revealed nothing at her abrupt appearance. She glanced irately at the crow, which was now perched on the ground between them. Had Shisui not told Itachi why she was here?
Probably not, she considered glumly. It seemed from the crow's desperation that the older Uchiha had no wish to survive, and possibly would not welcome her help.
Kakashi's gaze was derisive now. "Go back to wherever you were hiding." He tossed the words at her like he expected her to greet them with gratitude.
Sakura stared back, unmoving.
His features altered slightly, sharpening.
"Not a genjutsu—he wouldn't have chosen you," the copy-nin appraised her laconically. His voice lowered into a mocking rasp. "So perhaps you really are just that stupid. Are you that stupid, Haruno?"
Her eyelids slid to half-mast over her eyes. "No, taichou."
"Then what are you doing?" And this time, there was no mocking amusement in his words: only the usual, unmistakable disgust and possibly, beneath that, a thread of warning.
She could hardly look at him, so she stared around him, in the space between his hair and his shoulder, the gap between his arm and his side—
Do it, Shisui's voice echoed in her mind.
Sakura's head snapped up, eyes narrowed.
His eyes narrowed fractionally as well as she raised her head, displacing the hair that covered her eye. And then, suddenly, the upper half of his face was terrible to behold as it contorted, even more so because it somehow retained an ineffable, wrathful beauty.
And it felt—it felt.
Blissful, euphoric—like vindication—to see him hurt, this man who had been the captain of Team Seven, who had erased her from his view like she was nothing, who would have had her weak and at the mercy of the others for the rest of her life.
Sakura would have rejoiced whole-heartedly, might have even given in to the inclination to laugh…if only that were it.
Because there was more. There was that smaller, detestable part of her that survived no matter how she tried to repress it, that knew: this man was also the man who had held her when she had feared her own power (and the Voice) the most, who had fucked her harshly and kissed her with insufferable tenderness, who gazed at her like she was—
"He's breaking it," the crow thundered.
Sakura's eyes widened, processing the scene before her again. Her face paled abruptly. Kakashi's body should have crumpled by now; he should have gradually lost control over his limbs as he increasingly succumbed to her genjutsu.
He remained firmly upright.
Worse, his sharingan, as though in instinctive response, had shifted and transformed into a similar pin-wheel design as her own. She hadn't known that he had—
"I did not know that he had the mangekyou," Shisui stated sourly, "A simulation of mere physical pain will not be enough for someone like him. Find something else."
Sakura's nails dug into her palms. How fucking strong was he?
"You've watched him for years, girl," it accused cuttingly.
Her fingers twitched futilely for her blade, wishing she could silence it. As it happened, her mind only relayed back desperation as she contemplated the problem.
She had to remember the fractures in his mask, she concluded coldly.
If she wanted to guess at Kakashi's innermost thoughts…If she were to guess what would truly make him vulnerable…
It arrived to her like a drop of water into an empty vessel, and it swelled like a tidal wave, gaining traction and fuel, the genjutsu she had to conjure.
Her stomach turned. Sakura looked down at it detached shock.
Her eyes flicked to Itachi—whose sleeve covered his mouth again, even though he was utterly silent—and she knew she had no choice.
Sakura's stolen sharingan spun violently as she conjured a new genjutsu, constructing her memories with flawless detail: the leaves that had fallen from those trees, the smell the grass and dirt had retained just hours after a fresh rain, the heat of the sun as it had beat down on them. The way Haku's face had crumpled in both agony and relief; the desperation that had painted every single feature on Kaido's face, even until his last moments. She drew on their deaths with abhorrent, irreverent clarity. She layered, detail upon detail, until she herself had difficulty removing herself from what she had created, as compelled by it as actual reality.
(She was sickened.)
She didn't have a chance to see for herself if it worked. In the instant she enforced the genjutsu, Sasuke broke free from Kakashi's hold and sailed through the air. His katana caught the sunlight, reflecting a painfully bright light, as it drove unerringly toward Itachi.
Which was also, she noted blankly, toward her. Because she stood between them, and the sight of her didn't see to deter him in the least.
He was going to mow right through her to Itachi.
And she didn't even care; not one ounce of her felt a single thing about it. Because after what she had done—
All that mattered was this: her limbs were loose and ready. And just as Sasuke's blade was about to sink into her breast, her hand lashed out with chakra-enhanced strength, diverting it. She saw the instability in his right leg as his arm recoiled upward from the blow. She unsheathed her own blade and struck with surgical precision into the meat of his thigh just above his knee, in one, uninterrupted motion.
Sasuke hissed and darted backward.
His face contorted into an ugly expression. "You're not her."
Sakura felt soulless. She dodged his right hook and delivered a resounding smack to his face. His head whipped to the side.
"I'm sorry," she said silkily, "did that hurt Sasuke-kun?"
"You can't be Sakura," he responded coldly, as his hands rapidly weaved through a series of familiar hand signs. A second later, he roared, and it was fire that left his mouth, not breath.
She launched herself above the flame, and in the same motion, met fire with fire; the combined heat threatened to scald her eyebrows off.
"Really?" she smirked meanly. "Why not?"
Sasuke circled around her, his sharingans transparently scanning her for any sign of weakness. She rocked back onto her heels and then rushed forward in a burst of speed. He dodged her kunai, but that was alright, because she was already making hand signs for a more complex jutsu. Water pulled from the seemingly barren ground to create a writhing, water beast. It shot through the air toward Sasuke.
A gigantic, humanoid form appeared around the black-haired boy's body, protecting him from the blast. Water rained harmlessly down on him. His long black hair was plastered to his head as he looked up, mouth tight with rage.
"Sakura could never do this. Who are you?"
Sakura could have sobbed or laughed with equal enthusiasm. She slowly straightened from the crouch she had landed in, her face obscured by her unruly hair. Annoyed, she swiped the hair back.
A tingling awareness of something behind her cut through her momentary annoyance. Sakura forced her shoulders to relax.
"I'm not going to hurt him," she informed the figure behind her stiffly. She revised a second later: "Not seriously."
Knowing how unconvincing she probably sounded, she didn't give Itachi time to debate the issue. She shunshined into Sasuke's personal space. He reacted instantly, the kunai in his hand already rotating to target her vital points. But Sakura was stronger than he was; she glanced his arm with her fingertips and she felt the bone beneath fracture. His strategy immediately switched from deflection to evasion.
A high-pitched noise pierced the air: chidori, one-handed at that, Sakura acknowledged with distant, reluctant admiration. His fist was a blur, and she twisted just in time. The electricity caught her hair instead of her head; singed stands fell to the ground.
But he hadn't retreated quickly enough. Sakura grabbed his wrist locking him into place.
"I've seen bigger," she sneered. She head-butted him, and he went down instantly. She followed him swiftly, catching him around the waist. She should have felt victorious. She felt empty.
When Sakura looked up, she saw—as she expected—Itachi directly in front of her.
"Haruno Sakura," he said slowly. He hadn't known her name the last time.
Up close, she could see the blood on his sleeve, the severity of the wound Kakashi had made in his side, and the way he was swaying lightly on his feet.
A breath of air brushed her arm, interrupting her examination. She looked down, disturbed, at the unconscious body in her hands. She wasn't quite sure why she had caught Sasuke at all. Sakura dropped him abruptly.
When she opened her mouth to respond to Itachi finally, a jolt of piercing pain entered her brain. Her temples throbbed with a vengeance.
"H-he's breaking it again," she hissed haltingly at Shisui. "I can feel it. I don't think—fuck—I can hold him much longer."
The crow shifted its weight crossly on the Uchiha's shoulder. Itachi's eyes widened.
Sakura laughed weakly. "Did you know Shisui had another human?" She didn't wait for him to respond. "Never mind. What matters is that Kakashi is going to hunt us down when he breaks that genjutsu, and we don't have much fucking time left."
The man swaying opposite her took in this information with remarkable calm, mouth tightening only fractionally. He was rapidly paling, however, so Sakura guessed he was not going to belong much longer to the world of consciousness anyway.
Maybe it was Shisui's memories—a persisting remembrance of that remarkable intelligence and that steadfastness and that gentle introspection—that made Sakura resist the very notion of forcing him. Even though it would be easy now, given his illness and his wounds.
"As you can see, Shisui has been concocting an objectively terrible plan," she said roughly. "And I might be an idiot for reasons you can't yet understand for going along with it, but I'd like to remind you that you're too weak to fight me right now."
He looked at her evenly. She wondered if he could even perceive her still, or if he was already seeing black from the amount of blood loss
Another lance of pain struck her. Panic drove her heartbeat to pound even faster, her pupils to dilate just a little more. She didn't know if Itachi would have given assent or not. He passed out first. Sakura let out a long, passionate curse as she swung him over shoulder, but was also selfishly grateful for it.
She hadn't technically forced him, she assured herself. She cast one final glance backward, and then she ran.
Author's Note: ...I await your response.
P.S. UMMMM ALSO THANK YOU FOR BEING SO, SO GOOD TO ME! :D 3