Kill Your Heroes

-Chapter Forty-One-

Aphenphosmphobia (Part I)

Once, she'd been certain that there was nothing worse than the pain and fear to be had in the midst of battle.

Nowadays Sakura knew better.

She breathed very shallowly in an effort to stop the movement from pulling at the cable speared through her belly, but between the pain and the poison she was already light-headed and that only made it worse. Very gingerly, she took the cable in hand, pulling her focus from the voice in her mind shrieking profanitiesto channeling wind-natured chakra into the blade of her black knife.

She almost didn't think she'd get it to stabilize, but when it did she severed the cable roughly a foot from where it protruded from her skin. When she or someone else pulled the rest free, they'd need a firm grip.

"Sakura...," Naruto said worriedly from where he'd come to hover at her side, his hands held outstretched like he'd like to help but didn't know how. All traces of the Kyūbi had retreated, taking the rage and leaving only a comrade whose eyes were wide with fear and apprehension.

Sakura briefly considered apologizing, intensely aware that sometimes second chances for conversations didn't always come around, but then she decided that she had nothing to apologize for. Once senpai had stepped outside the cave, it had been her mission, her decision to make.

Chiyo came up on her other side, her gaze on Sasori's motionless shell. She knelt next to the fallen puppet, her movements full of the weight of her years in a way that they hadn't been before they'd discovered that her grandson was not only a criminal, not only a Kage-killer, but also apparently a mad genius able to fuse his mind into a body of wood and steel and defile corpses in new and exciting ways.

After only a moment, she exhaled, a long sigh that skittered along the torn edges of Sakura's nerves. She'd only ever heard that sort of sound in one context. It was a death sigh, the sound a soul made when it left the body. "You poor little fool," she muttered, before bracing her hands against her knees and shoving herself upright.

Her eyes flicked to Sakura, then over to Naruto.

"Alright, boy," she said, "time for us to make ourselves a little more useful. That one," she said, jerking her head toward the fallen marionette that had once been the Third Kazekage, "and this one will need taken out and burned. Use those clones of yours and search Sasori beforehand—even if they've already got what they came for, if he has anything on him that incriminates anyone else in the village, it'll save us the time and effort of looking for them."

"You're going to burn them?" Sakura asked in surprise, wincing and instantly regretting the decision to speak. Her hands were busy, pulling her sealing scroll from her kit and retrieving the antidote she'd used to neutralize the poison he'd used on Kankuro. There was no guarantee that this was the same poison, but she hoped that the chemical makeup was similar enough that it would help.

"Sasori started out with good intentions," Chiyo said ruefully. "Just as I did, when I decided to seal a bijū into an unborn child. And look at the mess we made in the end. I tried to protect Sunagakure once through raw might, but I won't make that mistake again. There are some lines we shouldn't cross. Sasori's corpse-puppets are something best burnt and scattered to the wind. And you should get on that," she said sharply to Naruto, "before this girl keels over."

"Hey!" Naruto protested defensively even as he folded his hands and surrounded them in a fresh sea of doppelgangers, who gathered up the last remains of the Third Kazekage and Sasori of the Red Sand. "You were talking. I was listening."

Chiyo just made a shooing motion with one hand, crouching down next to Sakura.

Sakura wasted no more time, explaining what she needed the older woman to do. And, without complaint, without further comment, Chiyo did as Sakura asked. Sakura kept topical anesthetic in her gear for use with her knives, but she wasn't a dedicated medic-nin, which meant she didn't carry a full surgeon's kit and wasn't conveniently equipped with a local anesthetic to make this process easy. She did, however, carry soldier pills.

Whatever complaint her liver might make against their use, the potent chemical cocktail offered among other benefits a temporary deadening of the ability to feel pain. There was a reason their sale was restricted and monitored.

Chiyo pulled the cable out slowly and even with the soldier pill, it was...unpleasant. Sakura clotted the blood on the exit wound on her back, but didn't seal it completely. She'd had Chiyo pull slowly so she could seal the holes torn in the walls of her intestine as the cable exited, preventing as much leakage into her abdominal cavity as she could.

The smell wasn't pretty in itself, but it combined with pain-and-drugs to induce vomiting, which was even less pretty and threatened to overcome the ability of the soldier pill to keep her functional. As it was, she blinked away starbursts of light and shoved herself mostly upright again.

What she needed next—aside from an actual hospital—was someone else capable of water manipulation, because while she could do it, her hands were shaking now and her ability to focus was being challenged by cramps, seizing muscles tight in her calves, her belly, threatening control of her bowels. Just as she'd feared, Sasori was too much of an expert, too much an artist, to blindly duplicate a weapon he'd left for them to decipher. But she didn't have access to a lab, so she could only do what she could with what she had, attempt to give her body a fighting chance against whatever it was that pulsed through her bloodstream.

Infection was the next great risk even if she survived the poison; bacteria that had been previously been contained would flourish in its new environment. Sepsis sounded far less dramatic than impalement, but was just as capable of killing her.

She smeared her topical anesthetic generously over her skin and with Chiyo's assistance—she had the surety of a butcher if not the skill of a surgeon—they widened the entry wound and while Chiyo held it open, Sakura roughly flushed the blood and...other things out.

She'd just managed to coax the flesh back together in a tender, raw-looking scar when the black that had been nibbling at her peripheral vision washed over her with the inevitability of the tide, sweeping away her consciousness.

[Kill Your Heroes]

When she woke, it was in one of the border stations. Neji and Genma had made arrangements with the extraction network for a proper medic-nin to meet them there while they'd carried her from the Land of Rivers back into Fire Country. Last they'd heard before they'd passed out of wireless range, Naruto and Chiyo had successfully rendezvoused with Gai and Shino and were in the process of tracking Kakashi-senpai and his target.

Between the poison and the inroads of the bacteria—her medic-nin had been mostly impressed she'd had enough resolve to even make the attempt, even if she hadn't had enough control to do the job cleanly—she'd developed a dangerously high fever almost immediately and had only disjointed memories of the trip. Sakura was actually grateful for that, because she hadn't been the delicate-deep-swooning kind of sick; no, she'd been the losing-control-of-bodily-functions kind of mess that was best remembered dimly and not spoken of afterward.

She'd lost two days.

She thanked her medic, professed gratitude and obligations of the meal-buying kind to Neji and Genma, and then they parted ways. Neji and Genma had received orders to resume their own mission, while Sakura was under medical advisement to rent a hotel room, drink plenty of fluids, and spend the next several days sleeping if she insisted on leaving the medic's care.

But Sakura had an appointment to keep.

Her muscles felt weak and sore, her throat and sinus passages still felt raw, and she was miserably tired, but she was alive and living people had obligations. If she spent some of the time walking civilian-slow, well, she still made it to Tsubaki House in plenty of time for her meeting.

A meeting prefaced by spending seven minutes all but hyperventilating just within sight of the cabin where she'd be alone with Uchiha Itachi. Regardless of the fact that he was working with Konohagakure and it had been orders rather than ambition that had led to the massacre, he was dangerous. Anything he was involved in would put her in the path of people just as deadly as he was.

Which was magnitudes more dangerous than Sakura.

Just a minute, she'd promised herself when she'd first stopped, which had soon turned into just another minute, which had turned to an unnerving round of mental math in which she considered the window in which the killings had been carried out and the size of the Uchiha ie. Her mind automatically calculated just how many people had needed to die per minute on an average to see the entire doujutsu-wielding clan massacred in a single night.

The number she produced was not reassuring, but she eventually told the voice that if Uchiha Itachi wanted her dead, that was that and senpai would probably feed her cat.

Wiping sweaty palms against her pants, Sakura walked toward the cottage, which looked charming and well-kept from a distance and remained so as she approached. The plants that clustered around the engawa were both colorful and selected with care; she recognized several that would naturally ward off mosquitoes and make the narrow walkway a pleasant place to sit in the evenings, other aromatic herbs mingling with brighter flowers. She also spied several of the namesake tsubaki flowers planted on the grounds and someone with a fine hand for calligraphy had painted the kanji that was framed to one side of the door.

There was even a pair of house slippers set out for her.

Wrestling herself free of her boots, she stepped up onto the engawa, slipped her feet into the waiting footwear, and padded softly over to the entrance. She rapped her knuckles gently against the frame, somehow hoping that no one would answer.

"Come in," called that smooth, cultured voice that had made such an impression at their last encounter.

Sakura slid the door open and stepped inside.

Uchiha Itachi sat across the room from her on a thick cushion that billowed up around his thighs, his back supported by the wall. One leg was partially drawn up toward his chest and he cradled an open book in his hands—by the look of it, some kind of novel, not a reference text.

He wasn't wearing his cloak, wasn't looming across from her on the battlefield, and she was suddenly struck by how delicate he seemed. He wasn't especially tall and his shoulders weren't as broad as senpai's, his musculature lithe and deceptive. On first glance, if you didn't know his history, your first thought wouldn't be, This is a monster.

"I am glad you could make it," he said, marking his page and setting his book aside, the Sharingan fading from his eyes. "Are you hungry? It won't take long to finish lunch. Sit," he insisted as he rose nimbly to his feet, indicating the low table that occupied the center of the room.

With that he turned and left the room.

Sakura could only stare after him for a long moment, because she'd built a complete, harrowing experience in her mind before she'd even laid her hand on the door and Uchiha Itachi had just shuffled off to make lunch like he was someone's grandmother.

That thought was reinforced as he reemerged from the kitchen, a tea service ensconced on a tray. One brow arched fractionally and she thought she saw what might have been amusement in his dark eyes before his expression returned to being unreadable.

Left alone again with the tea, Sakura gathered her shredded expectations and sat. She discovered he'd left a damp towel, neatly rolled on one side of tray, for her to wipe her hands with. She made use of it and then poured herself a cup of tea. She sipped at it gingerly, wincing at the heat, her eyes mapping the space she'd found herself in. Tsubaki House had been built quasi-traditionally, meant to embrace nature rather than sit apart from it. The sliding doors that made up the better part of three walls were presently closed, the sunlight filtering through their paper panels giving the room a warm, natural ambience.

There wasn't much in the way of furniture: the table, two zaisu and kyōsoku, more of those plush cushions stacked neatly in a corner, a tiny television set whose main purpose seemed to be the flower arrangement atop it.

There were two doors that led further into the cabin. One led to the kitchen, presently occupied by one Uchiha Itachi. She supposed the other led to a bedroom, with a bathroom further in.

As he'd promised, it didn't take long for Itachi to reappear. He arranged in front of her a meal that made her glance up at him incredulously, her eyes making it to his chin before she remembered who he was and jerked her gaze back toward the table. It paid homage to color, seasonal appropriateness, nutritional balance, and was arranged so nicely that it was going to be a shame to eat it.

"Itadakimasu," Sakura murmured.

Of all the men she'd ever eaten with, only Sakuya and Neji had table manners as pretty and as natural as Itachi's, like they weren't just something they took out for special occasions. Naruto jabbed his chopsticks at people when he was talking, Sasuke had tended to begin without thanks, inhale, and then stalk away before anyone else finished, and eating was something Kakashi-senpai did in theory rather than in observable practice.

They made it halfway through the meal before Itachi spoke again. "When we met, you seemed more open to cooperation than I expected. "

Sakura glanced up, made it to his cheekbones and caught the first glimpse of crimson and abruptly dropped her gaze again.

That inspired a soft, almost inaudible sigh. "I apologize for my use of the Sharingan, but as Hatake-senpai pointed out, my vision has degraded significantly. I can no longer see you clearly across this table without my bloodline limit active."

Sakura blinked, startled by the admission, and met his gaze squarely for the first time. The form might have been the same as senpai's, three tomoe swimming around the central pupil, but she trusted Kakashi-senpai. Abruptly recalling his pointed statement, Sakura glad that she'd given her answer to this particular question some thought on her way here. She had no intentions of admitting to Gozen-san.

"When children are dead in the streets, it makes it hard for people to think with their heads instead of their hearts. The horror of it—it's like the best genjutsu. Every man, woman, and child in a clan as big as the Uchiha—which was composed except for the elderly and very young of active ninja, at least some of whom ought to be absent on mission—are killed in a single night, all within their compound and none of the patrols heard a thing? That isn't a random act of violence. That's something that requires planning and collusion from people in a position to make that happen," Sakura responded, fingers clenched tight on her chopsticks.

Itachi frowned thoughtfully at her. "...that's an unexpectedly pragmatic assessment," was the reply he eventually made. "I could have taken care of the patrols myself."

"They're required to check in on the wireless every half an hour. If they don't, extra patrols are sent to make certain no one's left them dead in an alley or anything. From the reports that were released, it took longer than that for you to—," she censored herself. "So, you couldn't have left them unconscious. If you'd killed them, it would probably have been reported, because there wouldn't have been any particular reason so suppress the fact. Even if you staged an incident elsewhere, there are protocols that should have been followed. They would have been followed, considering the tensions between the Uchiha and the rest of the village."

"Or I could have simply told them to see nothing, hear nothing," Itachi suggested impassively.

"A genjutsu? I suppose you could have," Sakura replied, "but then you'd have had to blanket the surrounding area on your own as well. The Uchiha compound isn't that isolated."

When Itachi made no answer, she only shook her head. "Alright, even if you took care of the patrols yourself, there's no way it was a coincidence that so many members of the clan were there that night. Even for a clan gathering, there would usually be only so many exceptions made in terms of mission assignments and the rota of the military police. Especially considering how heavily the department was staffed by Uchiha," she finished softly. "I can't believe the clan didn't find that many concessions suspect, unless there were also other people in other places snuffing out the last of the embers of the Uchiha rebellion."

Itachi inclined his head ever so slightly. There was an awkward silence, at least on her end, before Itachi asked, "You are here, which means the battle against the pair of Akatsuki assigned to the Ichibi came to a favorable conclusion for Konohagakure, but if I may ask whether you killed them or merely convinced them to cut their losses...?"

"Sasori was dead," Sakura reported, stilling the hand that wanted to drop to her side, where a thick scar testified to the gaping hole that had been there so recently. "Kakashi-senpai was still in pursuit of the other one, but that was days ago."

"Deidara," Itachi commented, "is likely to have run, if Hatake-senpai couldn't quickly bring the battle to a conclusive end. He is...less than committed to the objectives of the organization."

Sakura was less than reassured, but she trusted Kakashi-senpai to survive. Still, for the first time she took real initiative in their conversation, turning it toward the reason she was here. She set her chopsticks aside on their stand with a resolved clink. "I'd like to talk about your plans. I know you want to stage your death and you want to use Sasori's jutsu to provide a believable corpse. However, I'd like more details, if you don't mind. Such as how you propose to die and who you think will see it done. There are very few people that I think could kill you convincingly; since you're going to all this trouble, I don't think you're asking me to help you stage a slow death in bed."

Itachi blinked thoughtfully at her, then set his own utensils aside. "The plan," he said slowly, "remains much the same as it has been. Sasuke will kill me, as he was always meant to, but it appears that my skill for prognostication was not so honed as I had hoped. In return for my continued services to the village, Jiriaya has supplied me with reports of my brother's progress. Sasuke is as strong in some ways as I'd hoped, but weaker in others. Knowing what I know now, I cannot trust what will come after. I am dying and have been for some time, but it is more inconvenient now than it was before," he announced in an unhurried, even tone, like he was reporting to her the time. "If you are capable of treating my condition, it would be useful; if not, we will proceed with the staging of my death on a slightly accelerated timetable. So, I will die, and I will watch, and act if necessary. And after that, perhaps die in truth."