Yo! Happy Easter! Hope you get good candy.

If you don't celebrate Easter, then I hope you still get good candy.

Without further ado, wow, I'm really thinking about candy a lot today...

Chapter 87: Emotional Weight

"I can't accept."

Tsunade's eyes widened, though perhaps not to the degree of someone who was incredibly shocked by something, but more… simply surprised.

"I must say, that's not exactly what I'd expected to hear." She spoke, sitting forward in her chair she addressed Sakura further. "Is there a particular reason why? Or…?"

"Well… for one, I've based my entire style around the Curse Mark's abilities." She began. "Firstly, with its strength, but also with the Wood Style, which I'm granted from Hashirama's cells."

Tsunade hummed, as if not quite convinced.

"And also… well… because if I didn't have it, then…"

/-/

On the bright side, Kakashi, Guy, Ino, Hinata, Tenten, Kabuto, and Tenzo were absolutely demolishing the combination of Sasori and Reanimated Deidara. The former had been knocked out of his outer puppet, revealing the red-haired form beneath that Kabuto and Guy were dueling, with some help from Hinata, Tenten, and Ino, and the latter was currently being trapped within a wooden fortress by Tenzo, and having Kakashi run an electric current through it that kept him from exploding at all.

That was the good news.

The bad news…

Sakura swallowed on some spittle at the back of her throat as she forced her legs to move backwards. The space she'd occupied mere seconds prior was almost immediately beset by her master's 'Striking Snakes', the venom of which began melting at the stone beneath them.

The bad news was that she had no means of fighting Anko at all, given that her strengths were almost entirely absent.

"What do I do…" She bit down on her bottom lip, trying to ignore the aching of her back from where she'd been struck earlier. "What do I do!?"

"Sa…kura…" Anko murmured, her eyes hazy, entirely unfocused despite her razor-sharp strikes. "Run!"

She was certainly trying! Despite her progress as a ninja, without having access to her Curse Mark's strength, she wasn't exactly a Jonin-level fighter any longer. If anything, she was more in line with her Genin self, if not admittedly smarter in terms of strategy, and stronger when it came to build and muscle mass.

Still, in terms of raw strength in a one-on-one, the difference between the two of them was likely just about where it'd been when they'd first met and sparred during the second round of the Chuunin Exams, nearly four years ago now.

Their initial duel: Anko trying to make her angry so that her curse mark would activate, and her trying her absolute best to kill the damned woman for annoying her so much. Thinking on it now made her feel almost nostalgic…

She wished she could simply fall into old memories, instead of having to block the woman's kunai once again, which forced her hand back, and allowed the woman another strike, which she narrowly jumped away from. Even still, it cut across her chest, leaving a thin, almost papercut like line running down her left breast.

A second later… a second later, and, well…

She'd have been going cyclops for the rest of her life, which would've been rather unfortunate.

As Anko moved in on her again, though, her strike was blocked by Zaku, who grunted under the weight of the woman's attack.

"Zaku!?" She questioned.

"We decided at least one of us should come and bail you out!" Zaku shouted, smirking back at her as he jumped away from Anko's next attack. "Kin and Dosu should be able to hold Orochimaru, well, at least while he's controlling–"

Almost instantly, they heard a scream from over where the Sound duo were currently fighting and saw that Kin had been knocked into the wall just behind them, slumping against it as she held her left arm gingerly, evidently injured.

"Shit, Kin–"

"No!" Sakura spoke, shaking her head as she stepped in front of him, and intercepted Anko's blows. "They can't win that alone, and we both know it! I'll…" She swallowed once more, this time, managing to bring some wetness into her dry throat. "I'll win here."

"Are…" Zaku gulped, clearly wanting to help both parties, but being only one man. "Are you sure!?"

"I am." She spoke, looking up at him and smiling. "Even without my Curse Mark… I refuse to be so weak as to perish here."

"I… alright, Sakura." Zaku shook his head, dashing back towards his friends. "Don't you dare die!"

She smirked as she ground her teeth together and turned towards Anko's snarling face.

"I'll try."

She… well, saying she had a plan was perhaps overstating it, but she had an idea.

Back when she'd first gotten her curse mark, when it'd raged out of control without her being able to do a thing to stop it… Sasuke had been able to break her out of its control by soothing her. Hell, he'd calmed her down to prevent her from killing Kin, and the other members of the Sound trio.

And now… she was going to take that idea and use it herself.

She was going to talk Anko down.

Well… she was going to first and foremost hope that was a possible thing she could actually do, because if it weren't, this was about to be a very quick and painful death at the hands of her teacher.

"Y'know, sensei," She opened as she brought a second kunai into her left hand, blocking the overtaken Anko's strikes of both metal and fang as she backed away. "I… have a confession to make. The reason why I didn't tell you that my curse mark had been taken away… was because I was scared."

The controlled Anko said nothing, though she noticed her face flinch somewhat as if in reaction to her words.

"And… it didn't feel like it was for a very good reason that I was afraid, either." She admitted, smiling a bit sadly. "To me, the reason we became so close in the first place was because of these stupid marks. Whereas Kakashi and Sasuke fell apart after a while, and Naruto and he barely had a connection at all… I felt like because of our curse marks, we were almost bound together."

"Because of them, we kept talking, and we kept hanging out. We… we became more than master and student. To me, you're someone I feel I can rely upon entirely. But… I was afraid when I lost my curse mark that… because of that, the bond you and I shared…"

/-/

"If I didn't have it, Anko wouldn't have to hang around me all the time…" Sakura admitted, running her hand through her pink locks, which every day grew just a bit longer. "I know maybe… maybe I'm being weird about that, but…"

She told Tsunade of her concerns relating to Kakashi, Sasuke, and Naruto, and received a sad nod in return.

"I… I suppose you're right there. It's true that your curse mark is an integral part to the relationship you two share, but… don't you think–"

"And, well," Sakura cut the woman off, smiling a bit embarrassedly. "I like having her around. Just… don't tell her I said that."

Tsunade stood there for a moment, before shaking her head, sighing audibly. "You both are such imbeciles sometimes."

"H-hey! What's that supposed to mean?"

"Your Curse Mark is not what makes you strong, Sakura."

"What do you mean?"

Tsunade hit her atop the head with her clipboard, smiling like she knew all there was to know.

"I'm sure you'll figure it out someday."

/-/

"Back then… I took what Tsunade said personally."

She spoke just as Anko rounded on her, and the expression on her face disappeared near instantly as her master's leg connected with her stomach, sending her flying into the opposite wall. She slid down it slowly, seething as she took stock of how badly she was injured.

Her ribs were close to cracked, if not having already been so, which wasn't something she needed to be dealing with right now, but aside from that, she seemed like she could continue fighting.

She would have to, the woman across from her would be giving her no reprieve.

"But… now I see." She barely got out as she dodged underneath Anko's next strike, which broke the stone wall she'd just been leant against. "She was right. My concerns… my fears… my weakness… they were so incredibly asinine. I was afraid you and I would fall apart, that we wouldn't be as close as we are just because we wouldn't share the same darkness…"

She forced herself to laugh, even as she made her aching body dodge a plethora of snakes that gunned right for her. One ever so slightly grazed her, but luckily, the venomous snakes' fang hadn't pierced the first few layers of skin. She hadn't bled.

"Absolutely foolish." She smiled at the woman who was slowly advancing on her, even as she keyed into the Sound Trio's fight, saw them steadily losing to the Snake Sannin's might, and realized that if something didn't change soon…

They were all going to bite it.

"We're not just… just going to drift apart like those guys did. Our connection… it's special. You may annoy me. You may make me want to kill you sometimes, but… inevitably…"

She stopped moving, and planted her feet firmly on the ground as the overtaken Anko stepped towards her menacingly, the expression on her face unreadable from the curse mark's flames running across it.

"You're someone I've looked up to for years and years, the idol I've wanted to overcome," She smiled as she looked down at the trench coat she was wearing, a sign of just how deep that respect ran. "And… also…" She smiled at the woman, one pure and full of nothing but adoration. "You're the older sister I never had. I love you, Anko. And so…"

She held out her hands at her sides, and stood ramrod still as Anko charged towards her, kunai primed to rip out her heart.

"I'm not going to cower away from you. No matter what." She spoke with a firm conviction. "Because I believe even now that that connection can't be broken."

She closes her eyes as the woman takes the final step, hears the sound of her boot impact against the stone beneath them… and then hears a horrid, squelching sound. After a moment of silence, a voice calls out to her.

"You…" Anko sounds so horrendously angry. "Do you understand how dangerous what you just did was?"

She opened her eyes and looked on in discomfort at seeing that Anko had driven the knife in her hands into her left thigh, panting harshly as she tried to cope with the pain.

"I…"

"You absolute… IDIOT!" She screamed out, evidently channeling some of the pain she was feeling into her words. "You could have been killed so damned easily! I… you… I can't believe you!"

She reached down on instinct to begin trying to heal Anko's leg, before once more remembering she had no access to the Wood Style without her Curse Mark's power. She bit down on her bottom lip, feeling horrible, but Anko letting out a quiet laugh as she slumped down, falling onto the floor below, had her looking at the woman with a confused expression.

"I love you too, you idiot." She murmured, not quite meeting her eyes. "But in case you haven't been paying attention, we established that already. Honestly, why do you have to go and be so dramatic?"

She tried to approach Anko, but the moment she took a step forward, the woman shouted, "Don't come near me! I'm still under his control! I can't move thanks to this," She gestured to the knife currently buried in her thigh. "But if you come within my range… I could still hurt you."

"I… Got it." She said, stepping away.

"Go." She spoke. "Help the others beat Orochimaru. Don't falter now, miss "I've overcome my weakness of heart"." She smirked, even as she grinded her teeth together, evidently in pain from her Curse Mark's urging her to get off the ground and attack Sakura, and from the knife buried inside her muscles, preventing that. "Win."

"But… even still, I'm–"

"Weak?" Anko questioned. "No. You're strong, Sakura. Your Curse Mark wasn't what made you so, and don't you ever think otherwise." She looked down at her hand, smiling a bit sadly. "My Curse Mark… all it ever did was hold me back. Prevent me from seeing past what I was doing to what I could've been doing. To turn that feeling of darkness, of absolute powerlessness, into power itself…" She stared Sakura in the eye, seemingly utterly convinced. "Is a strength. One all your own. Do not underestimate that."

She was initially unsure as to just how to respond to the woman's words, but the sounds of combat behind her, the sounds of Zaku, Dosu, and Kin struggling against Orochimaru's strength…

She couldn't just sit there and contemplate.

"Alright, I'll go."

Anko nodded, and just like that, she was gunning it towards the battle at the back of the room. Whilst moving, she took a second to check in on the other fights. From the look of things, Orochimaru and Sasori were the only combatants still standing, and Kabuto himself was now dueling solo against his old master, whilst Tenzo and Kakashi held back the reanimated Deidara with a combination of lightning in a wooden cage. The man shouted obscenities out at them… but, well, that seemed to be his only method of attack.

Ino, Hinata, and Tenten seemed to be taking a quick breather, preparing to jump into the fight against Orochimaru in but a few moments after they'd gathered themselves fully.

She also took a moment to inspect the injury on her back. It wasn't a shallow cut, but luckily, given the trench coat she had on, the knife hadn't exactly gone clean through her, either. She'd make it to the end of the fight, at least… well, she hoped.

"Sakura!" Zaku shouted as she finally made it over to them. "Good job handling Anko!"

"Thanks!" She responded. "What's the plan here?"

"Good question." Zaku laughed a bit worryingly. "We're kind of sort of going even, but it's pretty clear that Orochimaru is taking things… Well, not easy on us, but that he's being a bit of a dick in terms of not quite trying his hardest."

Almost immediately upon saying that, Orochimaru, who was trading blows with Dosu and Kin, smirked knowingly. "I've no idea what you're talking about, Zaku. But, if you really think I haven't tried my hardest, I suppose I could put a little more effort into it…"

The man instantaneously blew off both Kin and Dosu, knocking them aside, and slammed his hand into the ground below him with a smile. From out of the ground came twin coffins, much like Deidara's.

The lids of those two caskets fell open, and from out of them stepped two figures.

"Where is…" The first, one whom Sakura knew rather well, was an older man with his black hair tied up in bandages, and with a horrid amalgamation of a thing for a right arm. "Orochimaru… You bastard…"

"Welcome back to the world of the living, Danzo." Orochimaru smiled. "And to you as well, Yahiko."

Sakura's eyes, as well as nearly everyone else's who recognized the significance of the man standing before them, were as wide as saucers. The orange-haired teen, and somehow, Sakura recognized the fact that the man they'd suspected to be Pain was perhaps even younger than her, stared down at his hands, as if in shock he was here at all.

"What… is this?" He turned to his left, seeing Danzo stood there, and ground his teeth together. "Danzo of the Leaf… you damned–"

"Ah, ah, ah," Orochimaru almost immediately held his hand up in the same position he'd used to control Anko earlier, which stiffened the two men he'd just revived. "No fighting, you two. You're on the same side now. My side."

Yahiko grinded his teeth together, though Danzo seemed far more accepting of what was taking place. "I see. So, I truly did die when that Tobi figure attacked… how annoying."

"Oh, you think your death is annoying!?" Yahiko shouted, trying to reach out and grasp at the man beside him. "You and Hanzo had me kill myself on my best friend's knife, forced Nagato to go through something like that, you think I'll ever forgive you, you rotten piece of shit!?"

"Forgive me? No, I do not think you'll ever forgive me at all, nor would I expect you to." Danzo seemed entirely nonplused about the situation. "Even still, I do not believe we have been summoned here to forgive each other."

Yahiko bit down on his bottom lip as he turned towards the room full of figures and nodded his head. "Suppose you're right there, asshole."

"Isn't he…" Zaku pointed right at Yahiko's body, seeming to question exactly what it was he was looking at. "Hold on a minute, I thought Yahiko was the name of the Akatsuki's leader, I thought that was Pain's true name!?"

"Pain?" Yahiko looked at him oddly. "Who the hell are you talking about?"

"Hm…" Orochimaru hummed interestedly. "Interesting. I hadn't been expecting something this intriguing when I snagged a hair off of Pain's main body… but truly, this was worth that small risk after all."

"Well… I suppose that answers that question." Kakashi spoke from the back of the room, running a hand down his chin as he considered his options. "Right, for the moment, Ino, Hinata, Tenten the three of you handle Yahiko. He doesn't seem all that powerful in terms of raw combat strength. Guy, you take Danzo. Tenzo, you go and assist Kabuto with Sasori. I'll keep Deidara inactive until we get someone in here who can seal them away."

"You damned bastard!" Sakura heard Deidara shout out from inside Tenzo's wooden prison.

"Hey, I'm plenty strong!" Yahiko did the same.

The three girls ignored the boy, stepping up and each drawing weapons and stances that suited them. Yahiko grimaced but held his hands up. "Well, I ain't no fan of fightin' the ladies, I mean, Jiraiya specifically told me not to, but… I guess needs must."

"Hm. Might Guy, the veritable king of Taijutsu." Danzo stepped towards the man, cracking his neck. "I do not believe I would stand any chance at all in this battle, were I not an unyielding corpse."

"Hah, I'd say I appreciated the praise," Guy spoke, before his smile died. "But you betrayed the Leaf Village. You killed Lord Third. I'll show you no mercy. Gate of Limit… Open!"

Guy's body glowed a brilliant green with energy as he immediately stepped into combat, knocking Danzo's body aside, and sending it hurtling into the nearby wall. That was all well and good, but Sakura had realized something fairly disconcerting.

Namely, that as long as Orochimaru was around, he could continue reviving people from beyond the grave continuously. Sure, the technique probably had limits, but Sakura didn't exactly know them, so as far as she was concerned, this was a never-ending stream of bad guys to deal with.

Kakashi seemed to think similarly. "You four, drag down Orochimaru. If we can take him out, we can buy ourselves the time we need to seal the rest of these people."

They nodded, even if all of them seemed to share the same general notion of being unsure they could actually beat Orochimaru.

They stepped forward, even as Ino, Tenten's, and Hinata's strikes were answered fairly evenly by Yahiko's own, who, while holding his own, was clearly weaker than the Jonin present, like Kakashi and Tenzo, but seemed a bit stronger than any of the three on their own. Sakura was fairly sure, had she still possessed her Curse Mark, that she could have beaten him fairly easily, and hell, those three would've killed him already if he weren't by nature unkillable.

Still, that wasn't her fight.

"Oh ho?" Orochimaru seemed rather intrigued as the four of them stepped up, and he cracked his neck as he laughed a bit airily. "You cannot possibly think the four of you stand any chance against me when I'm actually trying, can you?"

"I see very little reason we'd be coming over here, otherwise." Dosu deadpanned, sending a nonverbal signal to his two teammates as they charged in. "Sakura! follow in with a D-formation!"

She nodded, taking said formation as she watched those three go first. Kin's initial charge and subsequent Genjutsu cast upon the man's general area were followed by Zaku's scything winds. Dosu followed up after that, blasting the man with some close-ranged sound from about five or so feet out. It seemed to affect his balance, rattling the man's head somewhat, but the range didn't seem to be close enough to truly shake him, or leave him vulnerable to Sakura's strike, which he easily parried, sending her collapsing to the floor, clutching her chest in pain.

"Shit," Dosu let out, panting somewhat as Orochimaru charged away from them, and towards… "That's not going to – ZAKU!"

Sakura saw what Dosu had seen just a little bit too late to do anything about it. Orochimaru was gunning it straight at Zaku, his odd sword held up in front of him as he licked his lips. "I told you kids; I won't go easy on you anymore! Besides, I truly want to see it, just how much you're worth!"

He brought the blade back as Zaku's tried to parry the first strike, but Orochimaru took Zaku's blade with his bare left hand, allowing the knife to sink into his skin, but otherwise being entirely uncaring as he stabbed his sword forward…

At the last possible moment, Zaku was shoved out of the way by Dosu's shoulder, and though Sakura couldn't see what happened, she heard a horrid squelching noise. A second later, though, as Orochimaru processed the events, Dosu channeled what appeared to be nearly all of his chakra into his gauntlet, and, holding the man at point-blank range, fired off a sonic shot next to the man's ear.

Sakura had been standing nearly fifteen feet away, and even she was nearly knocked on her ass by the force of the Jutsu.

Orochimaru was knocked back, surely, but the majority of the force seemed to have been applied directly to the man's head, for he shook where he stood, his balance, hell, his brain likely barely even functioning in that moment.

"SAKURA!" Dosu shouted desperately. "END IT!"

She tightened her jaw as she charged forward, channeling her chakra into her right fist as she'd seen Tsunade do, as she'd done once upon a time in the Sound Village to buy them a moment to escape. She jumped into the air and aimed her fist square at the side of Orochimaru's forehead.

The man had barely the strength to look up at her and smile villainously before his skull was caved in by her fist, driving the man's head, and his body with it, for that matter, straight into the floor below him, which cracked horrendously under the force.

Orochimaru didn't so much as twitch.

"Got him!" She shouted as she turned back towards the sound trio, who were all standing ramrod still as they stared at Dosu, who was clutching his chest. "Guys, what's–"

Red spread across Dosu's chest, all originating from a single point on the left side, over his heart. He moved his hands over the rapidly expanding spot, as if wondering just how such a thing had happened, as Zaku and Kin took another few steps towards the man, and she herself did the same, stepping forwards and holding out her hand.

"Do…su?"

The man gave the tiniest of smiles, as if to reassure them all he'd be okay…

Before he collapsed upon the ground.

/-/

Sasuke had been travelling for well over an hour at that point, and though normally he might've felt aggravated or upset at that fact…

He found he had other things on his mind that prevented such petty thinking.

If he were truly to see his brother… what he would say if he saw him, what would he do if his brother was dead, what if, upon hearing his brother's reasoning, he for some reason agreed with his decision, what was he going to do then? What if, upon hearing his brother's reasoning, he wanted nothing more than to stab the man in the gut, to watch him bleed upon the ground before him?

There were about 1000 other questions, but he found those were the main concerns.

He heard the faintest sound of an explosion echoing out through the base and thought of his comrades that he'd left behind. He thought of Naruto and Jiraiya, who apparently laid elsewhere in the base, he thought of Kakashi, Tenzo, Anko, and Guy, who they'd only very briefly seen before breaking in…

Though, mostly, perhaps unsurprisingly, he thought of Sakura.

They'd only gotten the chance to reunite for maybe ten minutes, and for most of that time, his thoughts had been on Itachi because of her explanation. He'd gotten a single hug and a single kiss, and perhaps his introversion was disappearing somewhat (or he just really liked her) but he couldn't help feeling like that had not been nearly enough.

And naturally, while he was thinking on such aimless things, he rounded a corner straight into a hallway that looked like a hellscape.

The walls around him appeared like they'd been charbroiled, with massive swaths cut out as if a huge sword had physically rent them apart. In other places, there were kunai sticking out, or burn marks upon the ground. It seemed as if a terrible battle had taken place here.

He followed the trail of destruction to an offshoot, which he took into a room that glowed blue from the horridly bright lights hanging on the ceiling. It took his eyes a moment to adjust, but when they did, he saw two figures.

His heart skipped a beat as he identified both of them.

The first, standing ramrod still as it under the control of something, was Obito Uchiha. His eyes were glossy, entirely glazed over as he stared at the wall opposite them. His lips were sent a thin line, as if even in the trance he was likely stuck in, he was still filled with fire and fury.

The second…

Was his brother.

Itachi panted horrendously from his space on the ground, blood seeping from his mouth as if he were hemorrhaging it from a wound, and yet, as he activated the Sharingan and scanned the man's body, he found no signs of any major injury. A few cuts here and there, but nothing to write home about.

More uncomfortable, however, was the way Itachi struggled to stand, and as he gripped hard on the wall off to his left, holding himself up just barely, as if balanced upon a knife's edge. He took a single, solitary step and nearly fell to the ground, but Sasuke was just the smallest bit faster.

"What are–" His brother almost immediately tried to disarm him, or to face off against him, but something about the way the man stilled after a moment had Sasuke gulping down on some spittle in his throat as he supported the man's frame, holding him up. "Sasuke?"

He took quite a while to speak, and when he finally did, it was nothing of the confident bravado he'd often fantasized about saying to the murderer of their family, to the man who'd taken everything from him…

It was a quiet, "It's me… Itachi."

His brother's single, blind eye stared up at him, and he had to swallow painfully as he watched the man's mouth flutter open and closed confusedly. He was… so terribly vulnerable. Evidently that'd come from incapacitating Obito Uchiha in some way, and yet…

Right now, Sasuke could bring a knife down upon the man's heart with little difficulty. It would be… easy. Effortless.

"I spoke with Sakura and Kabuto… I heard what you did for them." He said instead.

"In that case… I suppose you're here to ask me a question."

He nodded, before realizing that that wouldn't really do when his brother could no longer see. "I am."

He knew what it was Itachi expected him to ask, hell, he wanted to ask it himself, but first, there was something else on his mind that, for some reason or another, took priority.

"Your eyes… what happened to them?"

Itachi stiffened somewhat, and for a moment he assumed his brother would simply withhold that information, as he'd withheld everything else.

"I… My right eye was stabbed out by Obito as we tried to make our escape about a week ago." He explained, and Sasuke, after a moment, gave a quiet hum of affirmation. "My left was taken from me by Obito soon after we'd been defeated. This eye in my socket now… is Shisui's left eye. I blinded it in order to cast the Uchiha clan's strongest Genjutsu upon him, Izanami. His right eye, and my own left eye, still lie within Obito's captivity."

He looked over at Obito's body and saw the mask-less man standing there idly. He thought for a moment as to just what he could do… and settled on leaning his brother up against the wall behind him.

"Sasuke?" he heard Itachi's voice as he walked over towards the man. "What are you–"

"The eye in his left eye right now… is that Shisui's?" He asked.

After a moment of silence, Itachi nodded.

"In that case…"

As it turned out, an eye transplant was perhaps not the cleanest thing to perform out in the field. Surely, Sasuke had been trained to heal just about every part of the body by Tsunade, and even if that included the optical nerves, lenses, and other such parts of the eye…

Well, it wasn't exactly entertaining to look at.

Still, after perhaps ten or so minutes, he'd removed Shisui's eye from Obito's skull as cleanly as possible, and even taken, from out of the man's pocket, another eye suspended in a green fluid. The Sharingan there was the same as any other, but at the same time, Sasuke had a feeling, judging based off of Sakura's story, and Itachi's words, that he knew who this belonged to explicitly.

"Can you sit back for a moment?" He asked as calmly as he could.

"Sasuke… what are you…" His brother shook his head after moment, evidently deciding it was perhaps not worth arguing about this. "Actually… alright."

Taking out Shisui's now dead left eye was a much quicker process now that he'd done it once. He couldn't make the process entirely painless, as he would've liked, but at the same time, here in the bowels of the Akatsuki's base, with mercenaries on the prowl, and hell, other members of the organization lurking everywhere, having to carry around a blind man…

Well, that just wouldn't work.

It took him far, far longer to actually get the twin orbs inside his brother's skull. Thirty minutes of sweaty, messy work, and by the end, he was almost ready to call it quits, but… He succeeded. After that, he took to casting a blanket healing Jutsu over the man's entire body, to try and help with… well, whatever was causing him to cough up blood.

Even if, at this point, he had a feeling he knew just what that was, knew such a thing would be, in the end, pointless.

"Sasuke, you…" Itachi stared up at him with his newly regained vision, seeming… quite pensive. "I had no idea that your knowledge of healing came so far."

"Ah, well…" He looked away from the man, staring at the floor below him. "I had to learn how to protect my friends if they were injured… And, well… I was taught by the best."

Itachi hummed out as Sasuke sat on the floor just in front of him, and it was only then, slightly delirious from exhaustion at having done all of that, that he questioned when it was that he'd started believing in his brother to such an extent that he would actively grant the man the power to kill him if he so desired.

He felt no fear even then.

"That's… very impressive." Itachi spoke, taking a moment to collect himself. After, however, he said nothing, and so Sasuke realized he would likely have to start this conversation.

"Sakura told me that the two of you spoke. She said you helped her to try and escape from here, and even if you failed… I still respect that. I… I want to hear from your lips the truth." He looked up at the man, trying for the most serious expression he could muster. "No… no half-truths, no missing pieces… I want it all. Every bit. And then… once you're finished… I'll…"

He couldn't quite finish speaking.

"I… then… I suppose I should tell you the truth." Itachi smiled a bit depressingly. "The truth of what happened all those years ago."

He nodded, even as he helped the man stand, and gestured towards the door at the back of the room. "We should walk and talk. I want to meet back up with the others. They could use our help."

"Our?"

He shot the man a questioning look. "You'll help, won't you?"

His brother, after a moment spent contemplating, gave a tiny smile.

"I will."

He hummed as he turned back, taking out his sword as he prepared to strike down Obito. Itachi's hand in front of his chest, however, had him stopping.

"What's the matter?" He asked, curiously. "He's vulnerable like this, isn't he? Shouldn't we take advantage of the situation and strike him down now before he recovers?"

Itachi shook his head. "As he is now, he physically cannot recover. The Izanami… the Jutsu he's trapped within is something beyond the realm of a normal Genjutsu. It is… repentance itself. It is truth. It is destiny. He cannot escape it without confronting that which he has denied for so long."

"So, what, we just leave him here?"

Itachi nodded as he turned towards the door. "Indeed. In the hopes that it is still not too late for Obito Uchiha to return to those he's left behind."

He took a singular look back as he followed his brother into the hallway, and they walked along the corridors as the man cleared his throat, smiling a bit sadly.

"So…"

"Where to begin?"

End Chapter 87

Sasuke and Itachi get to talking, and Dosu is gravely injured. What will happen next...?

Idk, probably stick around until next week.

See you all then!