Quietus

by Seraphina Scribes

When first he laid eyes upon her, he thought her the very personification of spring. He watches, from the depths of shadow; waiting to steal her away from the land of the living. Waiting to make her Queen of the Dead. Hades/Persephone retold. SasuSaku/AU.

82. Chapter 81

Thrilled with the feedback for the last chapter. I hope you'll enjoy this one, with all its development, too. Happy reading.

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Chapter LXXXI

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Ino landed roughly on the hard stone floor, the completed teleportation hand-seals depositing her and Sai in the entrance hall within the High Council's unbreachable walls.

Her chest burned with grief, her heart in fragments over the fresh loss of her loyal, guardian seraph. Inoichi and his female companion had been assigned into Ino's service by Zeus just before the start of the war, and although their relationship had started out rocky given Ino's general distaste for being monitored in any manner, they had both grown immensely dear to her over the course of time.

Inoichi had never been a parent to her by blood and yet he had been a constant pillar of strength, wisdom and reliable support and had served as a father figure to her in every other way. Now, he was gone. His light snuffed out in seconds, snatched permanently from Ino, taken so cruelly by the enemy that had infected him with its deadly, cloning spores and reduced him to nothing but an empty shell of his previous form.

She blinked up at Sai, her cheeks smeared with dirt stains and tears. He hovered over her, his hands caged on either side of her head, his face pale, contorted with pain. She recalled that he had been struck by a Zetsu clone just before they'd managed to warp out, and reached up to him with trembling fingers.

"S-Sai…" she choked out, fresh tears welling in her eyes. Just like Inoichi, he had been wounded protecting her.

His disorientated, dark gaze met hers briefly - and then he abruptly collapsed right on top of her, succumbing to his injuries.

Ino froze, her heart hammering riotously against her ribcage. Carefully, she pushed him off her, only to gasp in horror when she caught sight of the alarming pool of blood that was oozing heavily out his back. A piece of the Zetsu's branch was still wedged between his shoulder blades. Cut off from its source, it had turned to an angry black.

"Help!" she turned her head desperately, looking for aid from the others who had already warped in. "Sai's hurt!"

"Take him to the healing room at once," Koharu's voice instructed. Ino blinked through her tears, looking behind her to discover that three of the four members of the High Council had arrived to meet them, dressed in white robes.

Immediately, robed apprentices surrounded Sai's unconscious form and lifted him slowly from the ground, carrying him away to be tended to by healers who had been trained in the mending arts by the Council themselves. Ino automatically began to rise to her feet to follow after him, when Naruto and Shikamaru alighted on the teleportation panel, causing her to halt in place.

Where was Sakura? Her heart raced as she waited for her best friend to appear with Kakashi and Sasuke.

"Naruto-kun!" Hinata gasped, relief flooding through her at the sight of him. Without hesitation, he rushed toward her, gripping her gently by her shoulders as he looked her over closely, his eyes full of open concern.

"Hinata! Are you alright?"

She nodded. "I'm fine. I'm so glad… so glad that you're safe, Naruto-kun," she whispered, her pale, winter-grey eyes shining with unshed tears.

Kakashi landed seconds after them. Tsunade, who had been standing some distance away from everyone else, still dazed and stricken by the loss of Shizune, blinked, slow to perceive the absence of her daughter and what it had to mean. Seconds trickled by, and still Sakura didn't appear. Finally snapping out of her haze, she strode forward toward Kakashi, her heart lurching when his visible eye lowered, as if he could not stand to meet her gaze.

"Kakashi…?" she began, her voice wavering. Her maternal instinct screamed at her that something had gone terribly wrong. Tight knots of dread rooted themselves in her stomach, accompanied by a smothering sense of foreboding.

"Forgive me…" he murmured, his voice low, plagued with remorse as she came to a stop directly before him, her eyes wide, full of a near-hysterical light.

"Where is Sakura?" Her voice was terrible, little above a whisper in its tone as she stared at him, her mind still struggling to accept the only possible conclusion. "Where is my daughter?"

"Where is the Uchiha?" Danzo demanded sharply, his voice echoing authoritatively through the vast hall.

"They were ambushed," Kakashi admitted, stifled by his own short-comings, his failure to see them home at the final hurdle. "I underestimated-"

"The relics?" Homura questioned urgently.

"I have them," Kakashi confirmed quietly.

"What has happened?" Koharu frowned in dismay. "Were you not successful in your mission?"

"Tsunade Baa-chan!" Naruto tried to defend his mentor, the sorrow palpable in his eyes as he moved away from Hinata, toward Sakura's distraught mother. "We're sorry! We thought the borders were safe, and it all happened so fast-"

Ino lifted her hands to her head, overcome with panic. Sakura. Sakura was gone?

"Ambushed…" Tsunade repeated numbly, the blood draining entirely from her face, just as Jiraiya and Kurenai alighted behind them.

Kurenai immediately collapsed to the floor, sobbing inconsolably. Shikamaru hurried over to her, reaching out to place a hand comfortingly on her shoulder. Something twisted violently in his gut, like the wrenching of a dagger when his eyes discerned the unmistakable grief in her face.

"Asuma…" His heart constricted within his chest, immediately growing heavy as he registered that Kurenai's beloved had likely not survived the fray.

"Oh, no…" Ino placed a palm over her mouth, trying to fight back the fresh sob that was mounting in her throat. They'd lost Asuma and Guy, too? It was a further crippling blow, after the losses of Iruka, Shizune and Inoichi.

"He stayed behind," Kurenai wept, lifting her hands to her face as she mourned him. "He and Guy stayed behind to…to..." she broke off, unable to continue. Shikamaru swallowed, feeling helpless, angry, stunned by how swiftly so many of them had been wiped out at once, right when they had all been so close to unsealing their full abilities.

"Guy-sensei..." Lee said quietly. His head bowed, his hands curling to form tight fists as he fought against the tears that threatened to fall.

"Who took her?" Tsunade was demanding of Kakashi. "How could you let this happen?!"

"She was with Sasuke," Naruto exclaimed. "We didn't think-"

"Sasuke!" Tsunade uttered, incensed. "What was she doing alone with Sasuke?! Without either of you accompanying her?! I asked you both to keep an eye on her at all times!"

"We- it was just for an hour!" Naruto's agitation was escalating by the second. "Somehow that bastard Obito got to them and we-" he squeezed his eyes shut, guilt-ridden. "We screwed up, I know we did, and we're sorry!"

"Obito." Tsunade's breath hitched, caught between the throes of ice-cold panic and the white heat of fury. "You mean-" All the blood drained from her face as she stared at Kakashi in open-mouthed horror. "Cronus has her?!" she recoiled, as if scalded.

Blind panic slammed Ino's mind to a stall. "No!" she gasped in terror. "No, no!"

"Cronus?" Koharu's eyes widened. She looked from Kakashi to Naruto, visibly perturbed. "How came this to happen?"

Kakashi's gaze remained fixed at his feet. "We were low on chakra and without transportation." He explained. "We decided to rest and recuperate as we awaited Jiraiya's arrival. Naruto and I… headed to visit a local tourist destination. We assumed Sakura and Sasuke were remaining behind in the hotel, but it seems that they chose to venture outside, and-"

"How could you?!" Tsunade had to be physically restrained by Jiraiya, who bodily dragged her away from Kakashi before she could throttle him in rage. "I trusted her well-being to you, Kakashi!"

Kakashi's head bowed. He had no excuses. "I failed you, at the very end. I failed Sakura and Sasuke."

A hysterical Tsunade wrestled against Jiraiya's hold on her as she glared murderously at the masked deity. "Cronus has her! He has her! It's all over!"

"Enough, Tsunade!" Jiraiya's deep voice rumbled. "We don't know that. Kakashi led them safely through all the relic sites, they were exhausted and entitled to rest!"

"Not apart!" she seethed. "If anything happens to her, Kakashi, I'll-"

"Stop!" Jiraiya interrupted, scowling. "They couldn't possibly have foreseen the enemy possessing a local boy's body, or that they'd use it to ambush Sakura. She isn't alone! Sasuke is with her. Calm yourself, Tsunade!"

Tsunade struggled for several more seconds, before abruptly breaking down into frustrated, angry tears, unable to shoulder the grief of losing the woman who had been a sister to her, and the added blow of knowing the peril Sakura was in. What if she had already died? What if Sasuke wasn't able to protect her? She couldn't stand the thought.

Jiraiya held onto her, jaw tightly clenched as he turned his eyes onto the Council members.

"Why didn't your ANBU assist us?" Shikamaru, still kneeling by Kurenai's side, looked accusingly at Danzo. "We called for your aid. Inoichi sent out a telepathic message, and Kurenai sent one of her kestrels!"

"It was our understanding that they had been already deployed to you," Homura and Koharu angled a questioning glance at Danzo.

"That is correct," Danzo confirmed. "I did send a generous amount of ANBU to your very location as soon as I received word of the attack," he answered gruffly. "However, it seems that they, too, were intercepted by the very same creatures you described; plant-like beings that travel through the earth."

"Son-of-a-bitch," Shikamaru cursed.

"It would appear the beings are able to track movements. Perhaps one tailed your kestrel from the ground, and found my ANBU as it accompanied them back to the scene."

"Aren't your ANBU always supposed to be nearby?" Naruto demanded. "Isn't that what they're trained to do, to look out for hidden threats?"

"We surely would not have lost Iruka-sensei, Shizune-sama, Inoichi-sensei, Guy-sensei and Asuma-sensei had aid reached us!" Lee stated.

"It is as I have said. My ANBU soldiers were also intercepted, which prevented them from assisting in time." Danzo repeated calmly.

"And how do we know that?" Naruto stepped forward, his eyes glittering with confrontation. "How do we know, other than your word for it?"

"Naruto-kun," Hinata lifted an alarmed hand to her lips in disbelief. Was he accusing a member of the High Council of lying?

"Insufferable insolence! Do you dare to bring my honour into question?" Danzo's voice rang thunderously against the stone walls.

Naruto pointed a finger angrily at him. "Your ANBU didn't help us when we were attacked at the ball, too! Is that just another coincidence?"

"He's right," Kurenai finally rose to her feet, eyes red-rimmed from shedding tears. "This isn't the first time the ANBU have failed us."

"Ingrates. Who came to your assistance within the research facility?" Danzo reminded them coldly.

"They're shady! Everything about them has always been shady!" Naruto glowered. "And you're the one in charge of-"

"Naruto," Jiraiya interrupted harshly, finally releasing Tsunade who had grown still and fallen silent. "We're wasting precious time. Our priority now is to retrieve Sasuke and Sakura. Everything else can wait. We must go up to Olympus right away."

"And are we to believe," Danzo's unbandaged eye narrowed. "That the Uchiha played no deliberate part in this kidnapping?"

Naruto inhaled sharply, every muscle in his body tensing, like a spring ready to snap. "What... did you say…?" he finally managed, incredulously.

"Perhaps, in resentment of the sentence placed upon him, he chose to retaliate and hurt us in kind." Danzo suggested. "By delivering the girl to the enemy."

Naruto stared at him, dumbfounded. Tsunade turned her head toward Danzo, her eyebrows drawing together as she considered the possibility. Her honey-hued irises then flicked to Kakashi, who shook his head at her.

"No. Sasuke would never intentionally put her in harm's way. Besides, he was still under contract."

"Then you propose that it is a mere coincidence that this calamity occurred as soon as you were apart from them…?" Danzo pointed out. "As soon as Sakura was alone in his presence? It would not have been difficult for the Uchiha to stage it to appear as if he'd had no hand in it..."

"Indeed…" Homura murmured. "Could it be…?"

"A most unsettling a notion," Koharu agreed.

Without warning, the sun deity lunged forward with an enraged shout, prompting Ino and Hinata to gasp in alarm.

"Naruto!" Kakashi leapt after him, grabbing him by the midsection before he could launch himself at Danzo, who remained aloofly in place, staring haughtily down the bridge of his nose at the agitated son of Zeus.

"Take that back!" Naruto's eyes were livid blue fire as he struggled against Kakashi's hold, all his manners forgotten as he jabbed a finger viciously in Danzo's direction. "You watch your mouth, you cranky old asshole! You have no idea what Sasuke's been through! What he's done for us! How many times he saved us all! You have no idea what he's lost!" His chest heaved with emotion, outraged by the fact that Sasuke was still being viewed as an enemy after everything he had done to help them survive in their quest.

"It changes nothing," Danzo replied frostily. "He was merely fulfilling the terms enforced upon him. Do not be so misguided to think for a minute that he possesses any sympathies for any of the surface deities."

"You're mistaken," Kakashi defended. "We learned many truths on our quest, and I truly believe Sasuke's interests now fully align with ours. Cronus is an enemy to him as much as he is an enemy to us."

"It seems you have been duped," Danzo retorted disdainfully. "Nobody is capable of changing so much in the space of so short a duration."

"You're wrong!" Naruto yelled. "You're wrong about him, you were wrong about all the Uchiha being traitors, you're wrong about everything! We saw my dad's memories! Sasuke isn't our enemy! He's lost more than any of us! We wouldn't have made it without him, and I won't let you-!"

"Enough!" Tsunade cried. She couldn't believe they were arguing about Sasuke, when time was of the essence. "Every second we waste here is another second that Sakura's life is in danger!"

"Agreed," Homura nodded gravely. "We must devise a plan immediately to attempt their retrieval. Everything else, we will address following their return. To the assembly chamber at once!"

---

After much discussion, it was decided that the High Council members themselves would venture to Olympus, to procure an arrangement for Sakura and Sasuke's release, despite intense protests from the surface deities - particularly Tsunade and Naruto - who argued they stood a better chance of saving the pair if they stormed the summit together.

Homura had firmly rejected this. Their foe's kidnapping of Sasuke and Sakura was clearly intended to lure them all to the mountain, and they would likely be walking into a trap. It was the safest option, the most diplomatic, and the least likely to provoke any hostile retaliation if only the enforcers of divine law ventured to the skies. Obito's presence would pose a significant risk to the sealed surface deities, and escalating the situation in any way would dampen their chances of securing a successful exchange. In addition, their numbers had already dwindled; they couldn't afford to lose anyone else, and an entourage of ANBU would accompany them to act as their guard.

In the event that things took a turn for the worse, a signal would be sent to the Guardians of Olympus to move into the summit to assist.

In the meanwhile, it was determined that it was best for the surface gods to remain within the High Council building to avoid any further encounters with the enemy before their powers were unsealed.

Leaving them waiting in the assembly chamber, the Council members took to their private meeting room, preparing to leave.

"Chiyo does not answer." Homura shook his head. "Quite unlike her."

"It would appear she prefers to sit this one out," Koharu shook her head. "As is her way at times."

"Better we have one of us remain behind, I suppose," Homura mused. "Cronus is ever unpredictable in his disposition." He glanced across at Danzo. "So it is settled? The terms of release? We do not know what Cronus will request in exchange."

Danzo turned his nose up at them. "The girl is the priority. If he deigns to release only one, it must be Sakura that we retrieve."

"We must retrieve them both, Danzo," Homura disagreed. "We briefly had a moment to study the relics given to us by Kakashi. Some of the seals must be performed by a wielder of the shadow element. Besides Cronus, and perhaps Obito, Sasuke is the only one who commands that element available to us. He is required to unlock their powers."

"We bring Sasuke here," Danzo's gaze narrowed. "He assists in the unlocking of their powers, and then he serves the remainder of his sentence, as agreed. I will have him in confinement."

Koharu exchanged an uncertain glance with Homura. "Is this necessary, Danzo? By Kakashi and Naruto's accounts, he is now more open to assisting us against Cronus. Would it not be more prudent to play on this change of heart, than to risk antagonising him further?"

"You truly believe the words of two who have always foolishly held a soft-spot for him?" Danzo demanded, greatly displeased.

"Minato's memories would not lie. You deemed Thanatos and Hypnos traitors. Yet it seems that they were aligned with Minato, at the very end."

"For their own designs, I wager. To deny Cronus, and then what? They would have surely sought to lead their kin and the threat of the Uchiha would have remained. One of them surely would have wished to avenge Cronus. None of them are to be trusted with their gifts. Sasuke will serve his time as agreed."

"And to what end? You cannot place any seal on his Sharingan. He has a Kingdom to run," Homura shook his head, slotting a teleportation scroll under his belt.

"They are not required to judge the dead." Danzo's words were chilling.

Koharu and Homura turned to him, confusion evident on both their faces.

"Danzo," Homura finally said. "What are you saying? What, precisely, do you plan to gain from Sasuke in his confinement? There is nothing the boy can tell us, that we do not already know of Cronus and his plans."

"If Minato's memories are indeed true then he has surely suffered and paid enough." Koharu added.

"A pity," Danzo sniffed. "That you are so easily misled."

"Our priority is to prevent Cronus from unleashing his wicked scheme upon the world. Sasuke will be an ally to us." Homura argued.

"You do not see that he can turn those eyes against us at any moment."

"Enough, Danzo," Koharu gestured. "The boy's confinement is but a formality. Interrogate him if you wish, but you will not place any further seals on him. If he truly cares for Sakura, as Kakashi and Naruto have insisted, then he is unlikely to raise any hand against us. Cronus is an enemy to us all."

Danzo was silent for a long moment. Finally he said, "So you will stand against me in this."

"It was never agreed," Homura scowled. "We did not state any further restraints would be placed upon Sasuke following his sentence. As we have said, if he is willing to work with us now, then we should utilise that to our advantage."

"I see," Danzo said coldly.

Koharu and Homura exchanged looks again, then turned their back to him.

"Let us go now," Homura said, lifting his hands to form the teleportation seals required to bear them to Olympus. "And pray we are not already too late."

The doors suddenly swung open at that moment, revealing none other than Chiyo, clothed in brown robes.

"Stay." She held up a hand. "It would be unwise to ascend."

"Chiyo," Koharu frowned. "What is the meaning of this?"

"We must." Homura protested. "Their lives hang in the balance."

"It is too late," she shook her head. "Believe you that Cronus would leave them unharmed for this long? We have nothing to bargain with that Cronus would accept, and alighting at the summit places you all at risk. The enemy seeks to slaughter as many of us as he can. Obito is not to be underestimated. It would be foolishness, to storm the summit now when we have nothing to trade but our own lives."

"Then how else do you propose they are retrieved?" Danzo questioned stiffly.

Resting both hands atop her staff, Chiyo advised simply, "We must wait, and have faith that Sasuke will pull through. I have supplied him with a tool to use in desperate circumstances. I believe it will come to his aid, now."

Her fellow council members exchanged skeptical glances.

"Of what tool do you speak?" Danzo demanded.

"A means to transport himself and the girl away from harm." The old crone supplied.

"That is a risky plan. What if he cannot use this tool? At least let us send a clone, to check their status?" Homura suggested.

"And you believe Cronus would allow one to simply waltz in?" Chiyo raised her eyebrows. "Heed my words. You would walk into a trap."

"We cannot sit idle and do nothing!" Danzo's lips thinned, displaying his disapproval.

"We are waiting. That is a choice of action in itself." Chiyo replied.

"You are remarkably unruffled, given the circumstances," Koharu eyed her suspiciously. "You have seen, for certain, that they shall live?"

"I see many things," Chiyo informed them. "But of even less of them I am permitted to speak, as you are all more than aware."

They fell silent at that.

"And if Sasuke doesn't?" Koharu pressed at length. "The girl's demise would be a catastrophe. She is Spring itself, after all."

Chiyo smiled a small, mysterious smile.

"You underestimate the lengths the Uchiha are prepared to go to, for the ones they cherish."

---

Blood. There was so much of it.

Sakura was dying. Her eyes had closed, her crimson life-force staining the water rust-red, and with every passing second, Sasuke's agitation intensified, climbing to impossible peaks. Everything he had feared and dreaded would happen, was unfolding right before him, trapping him in a waking nightmare. Inside his chest, his heart was galloping dangerously fast, hammering against his ribcage as he struggled frantically with all his might to swim down to her, using every ounce of strength he possessed in his legs to propel himself forward through the water.

Sakura!

It was hopeless. A most futile endeavour. Every time he seemed to be getting closer, he was ruthlessly dragged further backward by the chain still held in Obito's hands, compelled to watch in horror as an unconscious Sakura sank ever deeper into the water.

Sakura!

He had seconds to act. Seconds before she would drown and her heart would stop. If that happened, if he couldn't reach her in time, she would be gone. He would never again see those beautiful vivid green eyes turn to him. Would never again hear the soothing sweetness of her voice. Would never again feel the gentleness of her touch, whenever she unexpectedly reached out to him.

No!

Sasuke's eyes burned as he struggled more desperately to move his entrapped arms, inching his left one closer to the supplies pouch, his index finger finally brushing tormentingly against the top of the secured clasp. He could feel the curse seal throbbing in his arm, responding to the incredible physical stress he was under, as Kakashi's seal struggled to contain it, but he couldn't bring himself to worry about that. Only Sakura and her survival mattered. The chains locked around him had already exhausted his own chakra supply that had not yet fully recovered from their last battle, absorbing everything he tried to channel into his body, leaving him scraping at his reserves.

He knew, all too well, what Madara was forcing him to do. The reason behind his torturous, brutal methods. He knew it, knew that Madara had heartlessly thrown him into this horrendous situation with a very precise outcome in mind and he knew there was no conceivable way of avoiding it, as he wrestled furiously against his binds, cursing the God of Chaos with every fibre of his being.

A sudden sharp pain exploded in his left eye, and thick, red liquid blurred his vision. There was no time for alarm, or to worry about his own sight. He blinked against it, fighting to push himself onward again, clenching his jaw tightly as his entire body was suddenly strewn alight by an agonising burning sensation, akin to freezing venom corroding his veins.

The curse seal, he dimly registered, as Kakashi's workings finally failed and Sasuke felt Orochimaru's chakra begin to spread over his skin like a raging wildfire.

Again the chain mercilessly tugged him back, tormenting his emotions. As his frantic gaze focused onto Sakura once more, he saw that the distance between them was now surely too far for him to ever hope to retrieve her in time.

No! Horror and anguish ripped through him. The sanity-stealing talons of icy hysteria clawed at his heaving chest, sheer panic exploding within him. He couldn't give up! He needed to make it to her! Her life was in his hands. He couldn't fail her!

Having no other choice, he angrily dragged as much chakra from the curse seal as he could. It responded eagerly to his pathways, flooding instantly into his system, burning against the chains which absorbed it at a slower rate than the incredible speed with which Sasuke was drawing from the seal's extremely generous reserves.

Another more violent stabbing sensation forced him to squeeze his left eye shut, wincing against the incredible agony. When he opened it again, his breath caught in his throat in astonishment.

Something felt off. Strange. It took him a moment to realise what.

His vision. It had altered.

Suddenly he could see. The smallest molecules contained within the water bubbles dancing around his form as he battled to swim down. The slow thumping of Sakura's heart as she sank further into the deep, ebbing and weakening by the second. He could see her chakra-pathways in the murky distance. Hauling yet more chakra out of the curse seal, he finally succeeded in moving his left hand far enough to slip it into his supplies pouch, his fingers scrambling frantically to feel for the feather Chiyo had given to him.

Where was it? Where was it?! The water saturating the pouch made it more difficult to feel it between the metal of all his weapons and other supplies he'd carried along their quest.

He felt a slicing jolt of pain in his right arm, at the point of the curse seal's centre. It shot through his veins and a second later, a thin, slender white snake had shot out of his palm, flying through the water, straight down toward Sakura. Sasuke stared at it in revulsion and astonishment, his mind racing to think of how he could possibly utilise it. But he could already feel that the monstrous supply of chakra was rapidly dwindling. Unable to sustain it at such large capacity as the restricting chains began to devour it once again, he watched, helplessly, as the snake broke off from his hand, his vision blurring once more, the clarity he had been able to see with, fading out of focus as fine streaks of blood clouded his sight.

The chain began to reel him steadily back and Sasuke realised with alarm when it did not relent, that this time he was being drawn out of the water entirely. The chakra chains were depleting him, allowing the curse mark to ravage his body freely. Wholly disregarding the water that flooded into his mouth, he released a frustrated, muffled yell, gritted his teeth and pulled at every last available drop of chakra that the curse seal could lend to him. His blurred vision cleared, the clarity returning as his left eye burned in protest, and as he focused on the snake swimming ahead, one, single, deafening thought entered his mind. That somehow, somehow, he needed to get to where it was, to grab it, to use it to get hold of Sakura-

He blinked, and felt a strange, unsettling wrenching sensation propel him abruptly forward, followed by a disturbing weightlessness that settled around his body. Stunned, he looked about him in a daze, finding that the chains were no longer locked around his arms. The snake had vanished, and Sakura had almost hit the bottom of the deep pool. Not stopping to question how or why, he used the last scraps of chakra to immediately flash-warp to her side, his body screaming with agony as he finally grabbed hold of her, pulling her prone form against him.

Then his left hand closed tightly around the feather, crushing it into his palm, and shadows instantly seeped out from his fist, staining the water with tendrils of smoky black ink before rapidly enveloping them both.

---

"Bring him out." Madara instructed, looking disdainfully down at the water, beneath which Sasuke was locked in a desperate, vain struggle to retrieve the girl.

There was no doubt in his mind after witnessing Sasuke's reaction. It was just as he had suspected; his descendant was foolishly enamoured with this Sakura. It was of no consequence, however, for it seemed that she was indeed nothing more than a pitiful mortal, after all, and had surely already perished in the waters. From what Obito had reported to him, her body was responding as any human's would when fatally wounded. Her life-force was fading.

His masked minion steadily began to reel Sasuke back up to the platform by the end of the long chain he gripped firmly in his hands - when the metal links suddenly grew unexpectedly lighter. Yanking at it more quickly, Obito hauled it rapidly out - only to reveal nothing but a knot of chains at the end. He stared at it in confusion, unable to fathom how Sasuke had broken free so suddenly.

Madara stepped forward with a start, disbelief etched onto his features.

"Impossible!" His face contorted with rage. "How?!"

The God of Chaos felt something clench tightly in his gut. An unpleasant, unfamiliar twisting sensation, akin to dread, that infuriated him greatly.

Had his Rinnegan already materialised? Was is possible? Were they already too late?

"Don't let him escape, you fool!" He snarled at Obito, who immediately dove into the water. Madara's hands closed into furious fists as he paced the platform, impatiently awaiting his servant's return.

It did not take him long to resurface.

"They are gone," he reported, confirming the worst outcome as he pulled himself back onto the platform. "Somehow, Sasuke was able to warp them out."

Madara's hand shot out, closing around his throat with the speed of a striking rattlesnake. Jerking him in close, so that his face was inches from the patriarch's own, he bit out, "You imbecile! How could they have vanished into thin air?! You were monitoring his chakra through those chains the entire time!"

"He…" Obito struggled to respond. "Was… out… the chains were… barely absorbing… any more-"

"Then how could he have possessed enough to teleport out?!" Madara snarled. "Answer me!"

His descendant shook his head, struggling to draw a breath. He'd seen nothing except remnants of shadows dissolving into the water. He had no answer as to how Sasuke could have summoned enough reserves to warp not only himself out, but Sakura, too.

Obito was roughly thrown to the ground by an incensed Madara, with enough force that his mask was knocked from his face and sent clattering upon marble. He did not move, as the Uchiha patriarch advanced upon him. "If he has awoken the Rinnegan and returned to the sanctuary of the Underworld, then how am I to obtain it now?!" He unsheathed his blade, his eyes blazing with rage as he advanced on a floored Obito. "I had him right in the palm of my hand, and because of your useless incompetence-"

"Worry not," a voice calmly interrupted. Madara paused and looked back over his shoulder, to find a smugly smirking Orochimaru had warped into the chamber. Kabuto was behind him, and they both stood on the bridge that crossed over to the platform.

"My Zetsu have devoured five membersss of the surface deities. As for the curse ssseal... it has accelerated and he does not possess enough chakra to stop it. There is no way Sasuke-kun can possssibly escape its paralysis now… we need but simply wait, until it consumes him. Then, he will come to usss of his own accord."

Madara's eyebrows raised, and a slow sinister smile curved his lips.

---

Ino lifted her legs, hugging them close to her chest as she sat in miserable vigil at Sai's bedside, watching the steady rise and fall of his chest, moving in time to his breathing. He had been healed. There was nothing more to be done but to wait.

Her thoughts gnawed away at her, turning endlessly in her mind over and over. Grief, despair, pain, terror, desperation and anger. She buried her face in the cradle of her arms, squeezing her eyes shut. The enemy's barbaric attack had cost them her guardian, Iruka, Guy, Asuma and dear Shizune. As if that wasn't crippling enough, the news of Sakura's abduction to Olympus had further rocked Ino's already splintering composure, sending her out of her mind with worry. Hysteria was bubbling with her chest, and refused to settle no matter how hard she fought to quell its rising tide.

What if Sakura had been hurt? What if Sasuke couldn't protect her? She'd be lost to them eternally. There would be no way to retrieve her soul then.

Anxiety and horror seized Ino in an asphyxiating hold.

No, she tried to reassure herself. If Sasuke truly cared for Sakura, if he truly loved Sakura as Ino suspected, then he would do everything in his power to protect her. She needed to believe that - though the tale that love prevailed over all was nothing but a lie. She knew that better than anyone. Sometimes love wasn't enough. Sometimes hatred prevailed.

A quiet exhalation of breath caused her head to snap up, drawing her from the doom of her thoughts. Immediately she lowered her legs, eyes widening to find that Sai had awoken. He blinked, looking dazed for a moment, before his bleary gaze fixed onto her. He seemed to focus, as soon as he recognised her.

"Sai…?" she whispered thickly. Reaching out, she slipped her hand gingerly over his, gripping onto it as she leaned toward him. "Are you alright?" Fresh tears welled in her eyes as she was overcome with guilt. She was responsible for his sustaining such terrible wounds.

He regarded her for a long minute in silence, then slowly lifted his other hand, hovering his index finger over her left cheek. Ino felt her heart unexpectedly flutter inside her chest when his ink-black eyes trailed slowly over her features, as if he couldn't comprehend why she was shedding tears over him.

"You…" he murmured, "...look really ugly when you cry."

Her breath caught in her throat at the inappropriate remark, and a strangled sound escaped her lips, a cross between a broken laugh and a suppressed cry. Squeezing his hand, she bent forward to rest her forehead against his shoulder and sobbed, allowing herself to feel the fleeting relief of knowing with certainty that he, at least, would fully recover.

---

Sasuke hit the rocky ground roughly, deposited by a rain of black feathers, cocooning Sakura's body against his to absorb the full brunt of the fall. Dizzily he registered that the feather infused with his brother's chakra had worked. It had transported them both out, saving Sasuke in his plight when he hadn't possessed enough chakra to help himself.

They were back in the familiar, comforting darkness of the Underworld, but he was much too disorientated to accurately pinpoint their precise location.

The pain that was ravaging his body was immense, like a searing, inextinguishable fire raging ruthlessly through his blood-stream. Every single nerve ending in his body was screaming in agony, strewn alight by the malicious, foreign cells that invaded his veins, afflicted by the venom of the curse seal. Struggling to take control of his own limbs, Sasuke lifted violently trembling hands to Sakura's shoulders, gently pushing her off him and onto her back on the ground beside him. With great effort, he rolled himself over onto his front, dragging himself onto his hands and knees.

He gasped for breath. Even the slightest movement left him feeling exhausted and drained, felt like a herculean effort. The simple act of filling his lungs with air seemed like a gargantuan feat. He knew, from the angry black markings he could glimpse staining his hands through the hazy veil of his vision, that the curse seal was uncontained, out of control.

Being in his realm, in the Kingdom over which he ruled, was working in his favour, and he could already feel his body responding, feel himself slowly recovering small amounts of chakra, drawing strength from the darkness contained in the very ground beneath his hands and feet.

But whatever he recovered, was swiftly swamped by the foreign chakra running rampant within him. It was almost impossible to separate the two, required a level of focus he did not know how he could possibly manage, and yet, Sasuke knew he had to.

He cried out, doubling over in anguish, clenching his teeth tightly as he lifted his left hand and reached out unseeingly, feeling Sakura beside him. Spreading his palm over her chest, he detected the faintest, slowest, irregular and distressed flutter of heart-rhythm. Mere seconds more and it would cease.

Fear tasted bitter and metallic in his mouth. He couldn't care about himself or the state he was in. She was all that mattered. Channelling whatever tiny reserves he had along his left arm, he pumped the final remnants of chakra left in his body into Sakura's, gritting his teeth with effort as fresh waves of mind-numbing, crippling torment washed over him. His sight was blurred with hot tears, the breath in his lungs robbed from the excruciating intensity of the pain that cascaded through his body, slamming into him with the force of an icy tidal wave, pulsing unabating electrical shocks through his overloaded nervous system.

He didn't know what would happen if he exhausted all his own chakra again, or how much more his body could endure. Whatever the ground beneath him was lending to him, was being directed to her. Perhaps the curse seal would then consume him entirely and Orochimaru would finally possess his entire consciousness. Perhaps the Fates would have mercy on him and he would finally be permitted to fade, and be rid of existing, be rid of all the pain that was swallowing him whole, physically, mentally and emotionally. A relentless turmoil that left his body shattered and his mind fragmented.

Was this it? Was this how his legacy ended? In pain and in suffering, sacrificing himself to save the person most important to him - just as his brother and cousin and parents had before him?

It didn't matter. None of it mattered. Only Sakura's survival did, and that was the sole remaining thought in his mind as he screamed in anguish, squeezing his eyes shut when the world lurched violently on its axis around him and a debilitating onslaught of nausea seized him in its chilling grip, causing beads of cold sweat to surface at his forehead. Roiling chakra corroded through his infected pathways like acid. The more he used, the more he consumed, the more his body hurt, protested and burned, pushed to its absolute physical limit.

Live, he fiercely willed Sakura, pouring every last drop of what death-reversing power he possessed into her own chakra pathways, to heal the grievous, critical wound, mending damaged tissue and triggering the seeds within her to assist in the healing process, even as he buried his face into the cradle of his right arm, a ragged, shuddering sob escaping his lips when wave after wave of agonising pain pierced through him, scorching him alive from the inside.

Still he would not give in and break the flow, though his body pleaded for him to cease. Still his chakra surged into Sakura relentlessly.

Live, live, live…!

He felt the last of it dissipate just as her heartbeat suddenly beat forcefully against his palm and the sound of lungs dragging in a deep gulp of air distantly filled his ears over the rushing of his own blood, just before he finally lost all of his own reserves and a prickling numbness began to creep over his entire body, gradually trapping him in a state of paralysis.

Sakura awoke with an unpleasant start, her eyes flying open to find pitch-blackness all around her. Her body felt stiff with cold and was instantly afflicted with relentless shivers. Panic exploded within her, setting her heart pounding wildly inside her chest as her mind quickly recalled what had happened to her. She then became aware of an incredibly heavy pressure and stabbing pain in her lungs, as if they had been deprived of oxygen for far too long and she coughed violently, bringing up alarming amounts of water as she pushed herself up, rolling onto her right side, lungs rattling until the hacking coughing fits eventually subsided, leaving her gasping for air.

The ground was cold and hard and damp beneath her hands. She blinked, her mind flung into turmoil, trying to attest how she was even still alive. Where was Cronus? What had happened?

She lifted a palm to her chest, recalling the horrific wound the God of Chaos had inflicted upon her. The skin there felt tender, but seemed to have almost completely healed otherwise. She looked down at herself in astonishment, her vision quickly adjusting to the dimness, spotting the heavy dark blood-stains that marred the water-saturated fabric of her white top. Gulping in disbelief, she realised she was back in the Underworld, and turned her head to the right - only for her heart to lurch at what she saw.

"Sasuke!" she gasped in dismay.

The death deity was hunched over on the ground beside her, panting desperately for breath as if his own lungs were failing him. A sudden, blood-curdling scream tore from his throat, sending Sakura's heart hurtling even faster as she watched him writhe in agony, sick to her stomach with fear. Ignoring her own discomfort, she scrambled over to him and reached out, gripping onto his left hand, lacing her fingers with his, her eyes welling with tears as he squeezed reflexively back, almost hard enough to crush the fine bones of her fingers.

"Sasuke!" she cried, instinct guiding her to take him into her arms, to offer him what comfort she could. Terror tore through her as she caught sight of his face, contorted in anguish, ominous black markings blemishing every last spot of skin her eyes could see. He didn't seem to be able to see her, or to hear her. Sakura released a choked sob as he buried his face unseeingly against her left shoulder, his entire body seizing in her hold. "What's happening to you?! Sasuke!"

Then, even more terrifyingly, he suddenly froze in her arms, growing motionless as he collapsed, slumping against her. His body was rigid, ice-cold. Terror and guilt weighed Sakura down like lead, caused her heart to slam riotously against her ribcage. He had saved her life, of that she was certain - but at the expense of a horrendous cost to himself.

It was all her fault. Her foolish actions had led to a maelstrom of pain raining down upon him.

"Sasuke…" she wept, cradling his head gently. She had no chakra, no way of healing him, and had never felt so useless, so helpless. "Sasuke, no, please…!"

She lifted her head, looking desperately around her. They had landed by one of the rivers, but she had no idea which, or how far the palace was from their present location.

"Help!" she called out. "Someone, help me! Please!"

When nothing happened, and only silence roared in her ears, her arms tightened around Sasuke.

"Please…" Sobs racked through her body as she recalled the horrific extent of torment he had suffered at Cronus's brutal hands. His body was battered, overcome by what she recognised was the curse seal. She wondered if his mind had snapped, too, how much pain and loss one person could possibly endure. Her heart felt heavy, grieving for his suffering, for all the memories that had been stolen away from him, reinforcing that he, just as much as herself and Naruto, had been a victim of the war, too.

Somehow, she had to get them up. She had to try to drag him back toward the palace, to ignore the exhaustion plaguing her own body and help him as best she could.

She shifted, meaning to sling his arm around her shoulder and haul them to their feet, when the sound of footsteps shuffling over gravel drew Sakura's attention to the figure that was approaching them.

Her entire body sagged in relief, recognising them immediately. She wiped at her tears, still embracing Sasuke's unconscious form close.

"Well," Chiyo tutted disapprovingly, tilting her head at the pair. "Another fine mess you have gotten yourselves into."

---

For what seemed like an eternity, he drifted peacefully in a lulling sea of darkness, until he was at last roused by a mysterious glimmer of light dancing behind his closed eyelids. The flitting rays enticed him to wake.

Sasuke fought against the pull, against the stiffness and coldness plaguing his broken body as consciousness slowly seeped into him. No. He didn't want to wake up. He didn't want to go on. He wanted nothing more than to sink back into eternal slumber. It was easier, safer to remain floating in oblivion, where all time was suspended and nothing could hurt him. Where lies and cruelty and heartache ceased to exist, and he didn't need to worry about a thing.

But the light was incessant, unyielding. With great reluctance, his eyelids fluttered open, and he found himself staring blearily up at a golden, sunset sky. He blinked at it in confusion, his lethargic mind struggling to recognise where he was, what had happened to him. He knew only that he was tired. So drained and exhausted, that simply breathing seemed to be too much of a chore upon his depleted lungs.

He felt warm, fine particles of softness beneath his twitching fingertips.

Sand? He dimly registered, his bewilderment growing by the second.

Where was he? What had happened?

Sakura.

Her name caused a roaring panic to detonate through his chest, setting his heart-rate skyrocketing as recollection slammed back into him with the devastating swiftness of a striking tsunami, flinging him careening adrift. Sakura. Where was Sakura?! She had been hurt. Had he managed to heal her in time? Why was he here, when he needed to be there, with her?

He sat up, disorientated and dazed, his eyebrows drawing together in incredulous astonishment when he realised that he had awoken on an unfamiliar beach, close to the edge of a pristine blue shoreline. A glorious, glistening ocean stretched out to the horizon before him. The low sun's glare glinting upon the water's rippling surface briefly blinded his vision. He lifted a hand, squinting as he shielded his eyes against it, only to notice that the curse marks that had blotted his flesh almost entirely with black streaks had vanished from his hands.

A pleasant breeze stirred the strands of his hair, and the sun's rays felt warm against his skin. Sasuke swallowed. Where was he? What had happened to him, after he had passed out? He no longer felt physical pain, and warmth was already returning to his limbs. Turning his head, he looked to the left, finding nothing but an endless stretch of sand.

Was he on the surface? How could he be? Hadn't the feather he'd used transported himself and Sakura back to the Underworld? Had he hallucinated it all? Had it all been a nightmare? Had any of it really happened at all? How was it possible that he had awoken in such a place?

Movement in his peripheral vision drew his seeking eyes back to the ocean, and his breath caught in his throat at what he found, what the sun's glare had initially caused him to carelessly overlook.

Standing atop a low boulder overlooking the waters, was a tall, broad-shouldered figure, heavily cloaked in black. Everything about their proud, poised bearing displayed dignified, effortless grace. The sea breeze tossed the silky ends of long, raven hair bound in a gold clasp high atop the individual's head, and in an instant Sasuke had leapt to his feet in startled, stunned disbelief.

His thundering heart lodged itself in his throat, as he wondered whether the waning sun's light was playing the cruellest, most wicked of tricks upon his eyes, painting a vivid mirage that would vanish as soon as he stepped toward it. Or perhaps he had died and was trapped in an illusion. But no matter how many times he blinked, the image remained firmly before him, unshakeable and unmistakable. Both agonisingly impossible and comfortingly familiar.

Itachi of the Uchiha stood alone on the flat-topped rock, his back turned to Sasuke as if in wait. Terrified that he would disappear before Sasuke could get to him, the death deity sprinted forward, drawing to an abrupt, stunned stop just behind the boulder, too afraid, too overwhelmed to venture onward. What if he dissolved into air the moment Sasuke touched him, the moment he opened his mouth?

His eyes welled with tears of sorrow, frustration and grief, and the desperate need to have his brother turn, to look at him, to acknowledge him, was like a wailing, crushing ache upon his chest. Knowing what he now did about every unspeakably vicious burden that Itachi had been forced to bear sent Sasuke spiralling into a bottomless well of grief.

This wasn't reality, Sasuke thought. How could it be? How could Itachi possibly be there, living and right before his eyes, the ends of his cloak billowing in the breeze, the fine strands of his hair so lifelike and real?

When he spoke, his smooth, composed, quiet voice was everything Sasuke remembered it to be, and anguish anew ripped through his heart.

"I had hoped never to encounter you here, Sasuke."

Itachi's figure blurred briefly before him as fresh tears overflowed. Sasuke didn't bother to keep them in check as a ragged, unsteady sob ripped through his chest. He hardly dared to form words, for fear that any slight wrong movement or sound would shatter the illusion he had surely awakened in.

He half-whispered, half-choked out, "Is it... really you…?" Shaking his head incredulously, he added, "How…?"

Itachi's head turned slightly to the left, giving Sasuke the briefest glimpse of the side-profile of his face.

"I sealed a remnant of my chakra within you, as a precaution if ever your body was depleted of its own." Itachi paused, before concluding, "That you are here now, confirms the serpent's curse is upon you."

Sasuke exhaled, rendered speechless at the implications of Itachi's words. Had he anticipated that Orochimaru would attempt to track him down again in future following his initial, failed abduction attempt when Sasuke had been a child deity? Had he foreseen the likelihood that Orochimaru would seek to trap Sasuke with a curse seal, and planted an emergency line of defence within him, to prevent it consuming him entirely in the event his own chakra stores completely diminished?

It was precisely the kind of meticulous, forward planning his brilliant brother had been renowned for, excelled at.

"However," Itachi went on to caution, "my chakra will soon fade. It can reverse the effects and contain the seal but once."

Sasuke shook his head numbly, opening and closing his mouth wordlessly, his throat constricted from the gravity of his emotions. Sorrow was smothering him whole. How many times had he yearned for this very opportunity, one more moment in Itachi's company, to scream at him, to curse him, to simply see him again...?

If this meeting - akin to Team Seven's with Zeus at the first relic site - was possible through Itachi leaving his chakra behind, then that meant the death deity only had a small window of time in which to talk with his brother. It was more than he had ever hoped for, everything he had given up hoping for, the final chance to speak to Itachi, to demand answers, to understand, and here was his opportunity to do just that, triggered inadvertently by the curse seal that had ravaged his body.

And yet all his previous anger and confusion had been drained upon his discovery of the truth at Madara's hands. All the words he had once wished to say eluded him as he stood in Itachi's presence. The calming aura that radiated from him, even in this dream-like state, filled Sasuke with woe and a deeply profound longing. For a long moment, he stared silently at Itachi's back, simply overwhelmed to be in his company again.

It brought into sharp relief just how much Sasuke had missed him. Just how much he had never really gotten over his loss. The huge, weeping, gaping chasm of a hole Itachi's absence had left in his heart and in his life. What he wouldn't give, what he wouldn't trade, to have just his brother back. Kind, wise, patient Itachi, who had suffered and sacrificed and selflessly given everything of himself so that Sasuke would live.

There was so much to say. So much he'd always wanted to communicate. To yell at his brother and express the millennia of misery, betrayal, pain, confusion and fury he had been forced to endure. With every passing second spent in silence he was losing his chance.

"Why…?" Sasuke finally forced himself to speak, his voice trembling from the intensity of his warring emotions. "Why didn't you tell me the truth about Mother and Father's deaths? Madara showed me everything! Why didn't you tell me he forced you to kill them?!"

Itachi's head bowed, almost as though hearing those words saddened him greatly. But Sasuke was going on, too upset to consider anything but his burning, imperative need to obtain answers at last.

"Why did you let me believe it was you, Itachi?!" Once the questions had started, they spilled from his lips, tumbling uncontrollably like an unstoppable landslide.

"You wanted me to hate you! Why?! Why didn't you tell me the truth about the war?! Why didn't you tell me you and Shisui were in league with Zeus? Why did you save me?!" His voice was climbing higher and higher, and Sasuke could feel hysteria creeping into it, and yet he did not care. All the pent-up feelings he'd kept suppressed for so long were boiling over, refusing to be contained any longer. He had never been capable of remaining aloof around his brother for long, and clearly that fact hadn't changed. "It should've been you who ruled! I- I was nothing! I never asked for the throne! It makes me sick, knowing what it cost you and Shisui, Father and Mother!"

Itachi was silent.

"Tell me the truth!" Sasuke's chest heaved with the effort to suppress the sobs that were trying to claw their way out his throat. "Why did you lie to me?!" His shaking hands closed into frustrated fists. "Answer me! You owe me that much, at least!"

When his brother still did not respond, Sasuke shouted, "Damn it! Look at me, Itachi!"

"..." Another long, tense silence ensued. Then, slowly, Itachi shifted and turned slightly, angling a look back over his left shoulder at Sasuke.

The death deity's breath hitched in his throat, his heart clenching as he beheld his beloved brother's face. Itachi was unmasked, and as he stood, illuminated against a sky of fiery gold, the long strands of raven hair that framed his face stirring in the breeze, Sasuke was all at once struck by just how young he had been at the point of his demise. A deity who had not long passed the age of full maturity in comparison to all the other elders in their clan, who had shouldered more trying and horrendous burdens than most. And not once, had he ever spoken a word in complaint, or allowed anyone else to perceive his internal suffering.

Those impossibly heavy-lashed dark eyes, so long at the corners that they seemed to tangle, met Sasuke's, softening upon witnessing his open agitation.

"It is as you have implied, Sasuke," he replied, his expression solemn, his soothing voice like a salve to Sasuke's ears, even as his heart ached hearing it again, knowing that it was nothing more than a remnant of his brother's life-force, left behind to aid him. Once it had served its purpose and healed his body, he would have nothing of Itachi left.

"You would not have ascended the throne, knowing its cost."

Sasuke stared at him in dismay.

"But why me?!" He cried, his vision once again flooding with tears. "Why did it fall to me? I knew nothing about ruling- about anything!"

"How much time has passed since the war, Sasuke?" Itachi murmured.

"Over two-thousand years," Sasuke glared. "I still knew nothing of it all, up until these past few weeks."

A poignant sadness that cut Sasuke to the quick flickered briefly across Itachi's eyes, before the emotion was quickly swallowed up into the fathomless blackness of his irises.

"And yet…" he observed. "How you have grown."

"I found Mother's letter. I had no choice but to live on, to honour her!" Sasuke countered. "But if you had saved Mother and Father instead… maybe you might have all survived. You might have ruled!"

Itachi regarded thoughtfully him for a moment. "You are mistaken in your assumption," he then responded quietly. "Madara does not share power."

"Then why did he choose you as his heir?" Sasuke scowled.

Itachi shook his head, directing his gaze back toward the rippling ocean pensively. "That was merely a ruse designed to cloak his true intentions - and a way to keep me closely monitored. In truth, he would never have suffered any other to truly rule or replace him. Madara tolerates only those he can manipulate."

Sasuke's eyebrows drew together in bewilderment. But Madara had consigned him to the Underworld himself. Had he not given him the crown, allowed him to have it by agreeing to keep him alive for as long as Shisui and Itachi served him?

"I don't understand. He gave me to the shades. On the battlefield-"

"Is that so?" Itachi prompted gently, returning his gaze to Sasuke, something in his eyes challenging his younger brother to reconsider, to reevaluate what he believed had happened.

"We live bound within the confines of our own perceptions, constantly defining reality according to what we perceive as correct and true."

The air stilled in Sasuke's lungs. Those were the very same words Itachi had spoken to him so long ago. And with an awful suddenness, they clicked into place in his mind, and finally, he understood their true meaning. That nothing had been as it seemed back then. Reality had been hidden away, deeply entangled in heavily-spun webs of deceit. Webs his own kin had woven, to keep him sleeping in a cradle of ignorance.

"Let the shades take you, boy. I gave you enough chances."

He recalled Madara's words to him, sometime before he'd chased Zeus to the summit. Had they meant something else? Had he foolishly comprehended their meaning at face-value?

"After securing Olympus, it was Madara's intention to release Obito to rule the Underworld in his stead." Itachi was going on. "He never intended to spare you, Sasuke. He would have had you devoured by the very same shades over which you now rule, and all the abilities endowed to you would have transferred to Obito instead."

Sasuke's thoughts derailed, rocked by the deviousness of Cronus's schemes, and yet, he wondered that he should feel surprised at all.

"It was forbidden to be spoken of within our Kingdom," Itachi continued, each word he spoke deliberate, unhurried. "But Madara slaughtered his own consort and sons. To him, the rest of us were but expendable minions."

Sasuke stared at him, appalled. "How do you know that?" he asked dubiously, baffled by just how much his brother seemed to know about affairs that had surely never even been discussed in their realm.

But Itachi was already steering the conversation elsewhere. Sunlight caught the edges of the multiple earrings that adorned both his ears, glinting gold as he turned to face Sasuke fully.

"When you regained consciousness on the battlefield," he explained. "Madara had already broken the accord we knew he would not honour. He gave the order for you to be slain. However, Shisui manipulated the clan's thoughts to ensure they shielded you. It was imperative you lived, that you were the last of us to survive, so that all our abilities would transfer to you when Madara was sealed upon the summit, thereby denying him any further influence in our realm."

Sasuke exhaled, shaken to the very core by the lengths his brother and cousin had gone to, in order to ensure that he had been the last Uchiha left.

"We kept the truth from you," Itachi admitted. "For it would have made you spurn the throne. You would have refused your newfound role, and our sacrifices would have been for naught." He paused, before confessing, "In truth, I wished you to live on, free of the chains of the crown - and yet the only alternative was to allow our home to fall back into Madara's hands."

Sasuke vividly recalled the pain of waking up alone in the Underworld, on the day that had been the darkest of his existence. Itachi was right. He had almost given up, without even knowing the entire truth. If he had been aware of it, surely he would have washed his hands of the throne and all the blood spilled to place him on it. Surely a madness would have consumed him, a madness from which he would have been unable to recover.

Itachi knew him well. And while Sasuke could understand that he, their parents and Shisui had sought to spare him from excruciating grief, that didn't make their actions any more acceptable - or excusable.

"Then you manipulated me, just so that I would ascend, giving me no choice in the matter!" Sasuke accused.

Itachi's eyes searched his, before lowering, as if wordlessly conceding the fault of their actions.

"You let me believe for all those years that you betrayed us!" Sasuke added angrily, tears spilling down his cheeks. "You let me hate you, Itachi! Curse you for a traitor, a murderer! I woke up alone, with no-one, without answers! Do you have any idea what that felt like? What that did to me?!"

"Sasuke-"

"Everything has been a lie!" Sasuke yelled at him, inconsolable. "Everything I've known, everything I thought was true about the past, none of it has been real! I lived consumed by hatred for millennia, thinking the Olympians were the enemy, when all along Madara was to blame for everything!"

Itachi was silent for another long moment. "We could not tell you," he said. "For fear of drawing Madara's suspicions. I made mistakes," he acknowledged, his eyes lifting to meet Sasuke's once more, transparent in their regret. "I cannot ask your forgiveness for the pain my actions have inflicted upon you. I sought only to shield you from a grief I feared would end you."

"You treated me like a child!" Sasuke snarled. "All of you!"

"You are right." Itachi agreed quietly. "Perhaps, had we trusted you instead, had I shared the truth with you, we might have found another path forward. Perhaps you would have been able to save our clan. But these are my regrets to bear, not yours."

"Shut up," Sasuke responded resentfully, sniffling and wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. In his adored older brother's presence, all his walls had crumpled, and it was as if time had suspended around them. Even despite the countless centuries that had passed since Itachi's death, these precious minutes felt to Sasuke as though he had never left his side. The death deity knew a cold, merciless rude-awakening awaited him, one that would leave him feeling even more bereft and hollow, when he woke up to discover that his brother was gone forever. He pushed the thought aside, mindful that he had no time to waste wallowing in despair. With every second, Itachi's chakra was fading.

"Don't patronise me. You were the smartest amongst the Uchiha. If you and Shisui couldn't find another way, what makes you think I ever could?"

Itachi raised a dark eyebrow. "You underestimate yourself, Sasuke," he answered seriously. "You forged strongly rooted bonds with the Olympians. The plan you agreed with Apollo had a small chance of succeeding - but I could not allow you to risk your life in the event it failed. We intercepted you, to ensure your survival."

Sasuke swallowed thickly. There could be no more doubting his past ties of friendship with Naruto, Kakashi… and the goddess he had no recollection of. His heart thudded almost painfully against his ribcage. Finally they had arrived at the crux of the conversation, the root of all mysteries.

"My memories…" he began. "Madara changed them."

Itachi inclined his head slightly. "It was to his advantage for you to consider the Olympians your enemy."

Glazed green eyes and pastel-pink hair floating around a pale, drowning face drifted hauntingly in Sasuke's mind.

"The Goddess of Spring." Sasuke forced himself to ask, a part of him terrified of the answer he would receive. "Why have I no memories of her?"

Itachi blinked. To Sasuke's astonishment, a faint, almost rueful smile tugged at one corner of his lips.

"So you have met."

The death deity faltered, unsettled by the unexpected remark, by the knowing look in his brother's perceptive eyes. Uncertainly, he shook his head. What did he mean by such a statement?

Then it suddenly struck him, as surely as one of Zeus's lightning bolts.

"Wait." He exhaled. "You-? It was you? You planned this?"

His brother simply looked steadily back at him, his silence all the confirmation Sasuke needed. It was a most disturbing realisation, one that left his mind spinning in dizzying circles.

"I don't understand." He could feel fresh frustration cresting within his chest. "Why? Why would you seal my memories of her?"

"Shisui altered them for precisely the same reason you were denied the truth," Itachi informed him.

"What?" Sasuke struggled to accept that, incensed by how much his mind had been tampered with for the sole purposes of ensuring he lived and that he was crowned the Underworld's ruler. "So I would ascend?" At Itachi's nod, he pressed desperately, "But why? What did I do, that made that necessary…?" He hesitated, near stifled with dread, before compelling himself to form the next words. He had to know, once and for all, whether Madara had been lying to him. "Was it really me? Did I truly betray her? Did I deliver her into Madara's hands?"

"You did not."

The words were an exoneration upon his ears, and yet Sasuke had no time to come to terms with the relief of knowing at the very least, he had not been the one who had led Kore to Madara.

"Then who?" Sasuke demanded.

Itachi was silent.

"Tell me, Itachi!"

At length, he responded, "I did."

Sasuke inhaled sharply, horrified, the revelation slicing through him like a cutting blade. Itachi had kidnapped Kore? Done Madara's bidding? It made no sense. His thoughts ricocheted in all directions.

"Why…?" he got out.

"The goddess's fate was sealed the moment Madara learned of her existence," Itachi answered levelly. "It was not from you that he came to know of the true nature of your acquaintance. You concealed that well enough. Rather, it was by learning of her sentiments for you, that he was able to manipulate her."

The true nature of their acquaintance. Sasuke's eyes widened. Then it was true. They really had been romantically involved in the past.

"Her death was unavoidable. In being the one to retrieve her, I was able to work the first of a number of seals that ensured her soul could not depart to the pure realm following her demise. Seals that allowed her to be reborn in the event of her death." Itachi clarified.

"That cycle has damned her," Sasuke uttered angrily. "Why did she have to be reborn a mortal at all? Just now, Madara almost killed her!"

"Her memories and abilities were sealed, to keep her hidden from his eyes. Had we not done so, had we allowed her to be reborn a goddess, Madara would have certainly targeted her again, and with the surface gods all stripped of their abilities, there would have been no way to save her again. He also knew her to be a weakness to you. He would have surely manipulated that to compel you to do his bidding, had we allowed your memories of her to remain." He paused, before venturing, "In addition… your sealed memories would allow you the opportunity to reacquaint without the intrusion of... past misunderstandings."

Sasuke's heart skipped a beat, and he grew very still. "What…" he finally managed, "...'misunderstandings'?"

His brother hesitated. "Sasuke…"

"Tell me," Sasuke whispered, his blood turning to ice. Whatever the truth was, however terrible it was, he needed to know. He needed to know whether he could ever look Sakura in the eyes again. "If you intended for us to meet again, then I must know."

Itachi released a quiet sigh.

"Very well," he relented. "You assisted Persephone in escaping from her confinement within our realm, and yet, by releasing her onto the surface, unknowingly triggered the activation of the poison that lay dormant within her. You happened upon her and Aphrodite, just before Shisui and I briefly left the battlefield to complete the sealing. We sealed your memories in turn, to spare you the torment of recalling her fate, before bearing you back to the battlefield."

"You…" Sasuke's voice quivered with rage. "You had no right-!"

"Understand, Sasuke." His brother interrupted, his tone suddenly harsher. "You would have taken the blame upon yourself - wholly ignorant to the fact that Madara had already administered the poison within her long before that point. There was no way to save her, and with the loss of our kin already a great strain upon you, we did what we deemed necessary to keep your mind from breaking."

Sasuke's heart was ready to burst from his chest. He felt physically sick.

"However…" Itachi was going on. "Shisui left one single, small fragment of memory within you. He made it so that your soul would recognise her light, if ever your paths crossed again."

Suddenly he was dragged years back, to the funeral. To the precise moment when he had first set eyes upon Sakura, and Sasuke found he could barely breathe. Even if he hadn't been the one to poison Kore… his actions had inadvertently led to her dying. He imagined that had he possessed memories of that, on top of everything else, the guilt and heartbreak would have eaten him alive, prevented him from continuing on. But at least, if he had known, he would have known never to approach her again. He would have never dared. And because he had been forced to forget her, she was now irrevocably tied to his realm, with the enemy's eye fixed upon her, and it was all his own, stupid, selfish fault. Yet had he ever had a choice? He had forgotten her - only to meet and desire her, to care for her all over again.

They had sealed off his memories - but left him with a lifeline to find the same goddess again. To start over anew - only he had screwed it up by abducting her, by damning her, because everything that had happened to him had left him messed up, cold, bitter, anger, unsympathetic toward anyone else.

"You think you did me a favour?" Sasuke demanded, horrified and disgusted by his own actions. "I- I took her, unwilling, from the surface." Confessing what he had done caused an endless pit of self-loathing to churn inside him. He couldn't even recognise the person he had been back then. How naive and selfish and clueless of the wheels of Fate he had inadvertently turned. "Before I knew what she was, and now she's bound to our realm, by the seeds of the Forbidden Fruit."

"It is as it must be," Itachi stunned him by answering. "The fruit is no curse within our realm."

Rippling shadows were starting to appear around Itachi's form, signalling that his chakra was almost completely spent, that Sasuke's time was almost up.

Sasuke stepped forward in alarm. He still had so many questions. So much he needed to say. "Wait!" he pleaded. Suddenly, he didn't care for his own memories. Itachi had told him enough - and he didn't need to know any more of his past with Sakura, to be sure of his present feelings for her. He had only one priority - to save her life. To restore her to immortality, now that he was strong enough to protect her. That was all that mattered to him.

"The seal on her - Zeus said we need the same eye that cast it to undo it."

"Only with True Death's eye, can the goddess's memories be awakened," Itachi replied, his voice beginning to echo around them, drifting along in the ocean breeze. "Only in dying, can she be reborn."

"What does that mean?" Sasuke asked, his thoughts turning frantically. Sakura had to die? But how did that fix anything? Overrun with confusion, he frowned, "Then it is your eye? But you perished. How then can I find it?"

Itachi's figure was starting to grow intangible, pulsing between solid and shadow form.

"If it's your eye that's needed to unlock her seal, then I don't have it!" Sasuke said desperately.

"You will," Itachi offered cryptically. "Once the crow awakens."

Chaos ran rampant in Sasuke's mind. What did he mean? He recalled the crow that had appeared, only to mysteriously vanish at the last relic site. Was that the crow his brother meant? It was no time to be speaking in riddles and yet he feared he had no time to ask him anything else.

"I know not what I must do," he whispered, feeling adrift, out of his element, shouldering something that was beyond his capability to bear. He battled to weather the storm brewing within him, fighting to keep his composure from splintering entirely. The uncertainty of Sakura's fate, of not knowing how to change it, of feeling so powerless to do anything about it, was crippling him.

Itachi stepped off the rockface, and slowly approached him. Overwhelmed by his proximity, Sasuke froze to the spot. He wanted to shake Itachi. To scream at him. To throw his arms around him and embrace him. To tell him that he loved him, more than anything, and that he had never truly hated him, only hated how he had hurt him. That although he didn't agree with their family's methods, that although they'd had no right to manipulate his thoughts and should have allowed him the option of choosing his own path - he knew that bearing all those truths the moment he had woken up alone in the Underworld would have finished him. He would not have been able to live on, would have succumbed to his own death. And Madara's puppet, Obito, would have taken the throne, allowed the God of a Chaos another stronghold from which to plot the fall of humanity and all surface gods.

Itachi and Shisui had sought to save Sasuke's life - and by placing him on the throne, had denied Madara any further influence in their realm, thus protecting the surface world and upholding the balance of life and death. They had outwitted the God of Chaos, securing Sasuke's survival and stealing away Madara's intention to install a mindless Obito as the Underworld's ruler. Who knew what terrible, unlawful actions he would have taken, following Madara's orders? Surely the Titans would have been let loose again within days of the war ending. It was a just punishment for the one who had orchestrated his own clan's near extinction.

Sasuke was no fool. He knew that it was the time he had spent in ignorance, in hatred, in locking away his emotions that had fuelled him to grow stronger, that had allowed him to perfect his inherited powers, that had disciplined him and forged him into the King of Shadows.

A warm, heavy hand on his shoulder drew Sasuke's eyes back to his brother's face.

"You must stop Madara. You must not suffer him to regain control of the Underworld."

Sasuke's hands balled into fists. He wanted to scream with grief. Meeting his brother again had afforded him many answers - but had opened up the wound of his loss all over again. Sasuke felt it all too acutely, as if he were about to witness Itachi's death all over again.

"How? How can I stop him?!" he cried. Gritting his teeth, he faltered, "I-! I'm not you! I'm not-"

He broke off sharply, at the feel of a light, two-fingered poke to his forehead. He lifted his hand, stunned and overwhelmed with emotion at the affectionate, personal gesture, pressing it to the spot that had been prodded as Itachi drew his hand back.

"No." He said softly. "You are so much more. And you are not alone. You hold the power to avenge our clan in your hands, Sasuke. Mother and Father believed in you. As do I."

The tears returned, causing his brother's form to blur out of focus briefly once again. "You all decided this path for me." Sasuke whispered. "But my life is not worth more than yours. Or Shisui's! Or Father and Mother's!"

Itachi's eyes were full of love, acceptance and kindness. "And yet, to us," he answered gently. "Protecting you was worth every sacrifice. Our legacy lives on through you, Sasuke."

A deep, ugly sob tore from Sasuke's chest. He wanted to stay angry at Itachi, even though he understood the reasons behind his family's actions. They had sought only to ensure his survival and to ensure their home and its throne did not fall into the hands of a tyrant and his mindless puppet. And yet it was so much easier to be furious, to feel wronged than it was to succumb to the paralysing guilt and sorrow that finally brought Sasuke to his knees before Itachi's feet.

He reached up, clutching onto his brother's cloak, deeply inhaling its scent. Pine and woodsmoke. His heart constricted in agony as he finally addressed the last question he had spent the entire duration of the encounter trying not to think about.

His body trembled as cruel recollection slammed into him. Words Madara had spoken, filling him with anguish and remorse. He would find no peace, until he knew for certain. And if it were true, then all hope of ever achieving peace would elude him.

"Nii-san…" he wept in a broken whisper, as he buried his face forlornly into the heavy fabric of Itachi's cloak-ends. The material felt solid in his grasp one moment, turned to tendrils of darkness the next. "Is it true…? That you found me on the battlefield? That I…" he could barely bring himself to choke out the terrible words. "That I killed you with my own blade?"

There was a long pause, that triggered a horrific wrenching in his chest. Sasuke took the silence as dreadful confirmation, causing a searing pain to skewer through his heart. What Madara had told him had not been a lie. He had murdered his own innocent, wounded brother. Ended his life with his own, filthy hands.

He couldn't stand it. He sobbed harder, clinging to his brother for the forgiveness he knew he would never find.

A light, gentle touch brushed over his hair, as Itachi briefly laid his palm affectionately atop Sasuke's head.

"No, Sasuke," he murmured softly. "You did not."

The air fractured in his lungs, the weight of the words leaving him winded. Sasuke's breath hitched in his throat, and his eyes flew open in surprised confusion. Heart pounding, he looked tearfully up, to find his brother smiling tenderly down at him - just before his form dispersed into black feathers. With Itachi's final words resonating in his ears, the landscape around Sasuke began to dissolve, and then he was falling, plunging into impossible blackness that rushed up to meet him.

---

After Chiyo had found them, she'd whisked them both effortlessly away from the riverbank to the King's chambers, and summoned two alarmed servant boys to clean Sasuke up, procure him some dry, comfortable clothing and then leave him to rest. Wordlessly, they had obeyed.

A reluctant Sakura, likewise, had been ordered to change out of her drenched outfit before returning to his chamber. She'd not wanted to let Sasuke out of her sight for fear of something else terrible happening to him, but had nevertheless relented at Chiyo's scolding, because her very bones felt saturated from the cold.

Wandering through the Underworld palace's magnificent halls again after so long had filled her with the strangest sense of nostalgia. How very different things were since the last time she'd been there. Her feet had found their way easily back to the resplendent bed-chamber she'd been assigned during her stay, the memory of the steps ingrained into her mind's eye, and she'd been flooded with emotion as soon as she'd stepped inside. She'd recalled the fateful moment when she'd first awoken in that very same king-sized bed, the day when her life as she'd known it had changed forever.

As she had cleaned herself up and peeled the wet clothes off, swapping them for a comfortable sparring outfit with a brown, butterfly-sleeved corset top, a matching, pleated leather skirt that grazed mid-thigh in length and darker brown leggings underneath, tucked into knee-length dark brown sandals - the most practical choice in the event she needed to move quickly - Sakura had mulled over the last time she'd been in the room. On the day Sasuke had discovered her treachery. The day he had kissed her. The day she had poisoned him.

Thinking of everything he had done for her sake since then, had filled her with such remorse, such sorrow for the deplorable state that they had been in for so long. Always warring. Always fighting, when they had never been enemies to begin with. She saw that so clearly now. Yes, he had greatly wronged her on many counts, and she made no excuses for that. But without his appearance in her life, she would have remained living in ignorance. Perhaps she would have already long since perished.

Besides, the Sasuke she knew now, wasn't the same callous deity who had kidnapped her on a whim. He had so many sides to him, so many complex layers, and the more she saw of them, the more she was desperate to keep searching until she found the truth of him hidden away at the very centre. The more walls he erected, the more she felt the need to push through them. To make him understand that he wasn't as friendless and alone as he had always believed.

After travelling on their quest together and witnessing how valiant and reliable Sasuke was, Sakura knew with certainty that she could trust him with her life. He had not failed her, not once - even when Madara had almost broken him to pieces, tormenting him with visions concealed from Sakura's eyes, before impaling her ruthlessly through the chest, only inches away from her heart, then flinging her into the water to die - Sasuke had found a way to break through his own binds and to save her life.

How many times had that now been? Surely she was losing count.

She'd hoped to encounter Ume and Chizu, but had no time to linger. After casting one last glance around the room she'd soon be returning to, Sakura had then hurried back to Sasuke's quarters, where she'd found Chiyo waiting alone. The servants had disappeared.

A clean and dry Sasuke lay motionlessly on the dark silken, midnight-blue sheets. He'd been changed into more informal clothing; a plain, loose black shirt with long, baggy sleeves, on which the strings at the collar were untied, providing a teasing glimpse of the top of his chest. He wore black trousers that bunched loosely at the knees, secured at the calves by the straps of black sandals.

His chest was rising and falling steadily, much to Sakura's intense relief. He seemed to be sleeping peacefully, no longer in any visible discomfort. How long until he woke up? Sakura lifted a thumb to her lips, biting nervously down on her fingernail as she fretted over the nature of his injuries. He'd been completely drained of all chakra, with nothing left to ward the curse seal back, and those unsightly black marks were still blemishing his skin, all over his face like angry black tattoos.

"Stop pacing so, child," Chiyo's voice admonished disapprovingly.

Sakura, who had taken to immediately walking aimlessly back and forth, spun around to face the wise goddess who sat perched on the edge of Sasuke's bed. She pressed a wrinkled hand to his forehead, and frowned lightly.

Sakura wrung her hands anxiously. "I'm sorry," she apologised automatically. "I'm just so worried. And so angry. The things he did to Sasuke... if Cronus is like this now, then I can't even imagine what kind of monster we'd be up against if he's ever unsealed."

"A fearsome one, indeed," Chiyo mused.

"He tortured him!" Sakura cried. "His own family!"

"Cronus cares not for the bonds of kinship," the goddess sniffed. "He renounced such ties long ago." She leaned forward slightly, peering closely at Sasuke. "Aha. There it is." She nodded in satisfaction at the Underworld's unconscious ruler.

Sakura drew closer to the bed, watching with wide-eyes as the curse marks slowly began to recede along Sasuke's feverish skin. She held her breath in hope, tears stinging at her eyes. Her heart clenched, an unfamiliar warmth flooding through her as she gazed emotionally down at him.

He was going to make it.

"You healed him," she said in wonder.

Chiyo shook her head, a small smile on her lips. "Not I. My interference is not required here."

Perplexed, Sakura glanced at her. "Then how...?"

"He is being healed from within." Chiyo sat back, leaning her hands on the top of her staff. "His chakra is steadily being restored. He should quite soon awaken."

They looked on in silence for a minute, as the marks continued to fade.

"I don't understand," Sakura shook her head, the tears pricking more insistently at her eyes. "He could have lost control of his body forever. Why would he do something so... so reckless?"

Chiyo was silent. Then she said, "Do you still wilfully refuse to see what is as plain as day, Little Flower? Are this young King's feelings for you not made transparent?" Tutting at Sakura's startled expression, she stated simply, "The boy is quite hopelessly in love with you."

Sakura quietly exhaled. Hearing the words spoken with such finality, with such certainty, by a goddess who was all-knowing, sent her thoughts scattering, propelled her heart into a frenzied rhythm within her chest.

Sasuke was in love with her. Hundreds of butterflies broke loose and fluttered within the cage of her belly. Thinking it, acknowledging it, finally letting herself believe what she had long since known and feared, awoke something within her. An awareness she'd scarcely allowed herself to pay heed to, but that she could no longer ignore. That of her own feelings, forcing her to confront, at last, every maddening, conflicting thing she felt for him, too.

"Why else," Chiyo added, "would he choose to expend his final drop of chakra in healing you, with no thought or care of the consequences that would befall himself? It mattered not to him whether he was lost. He thought only of saving you."

The tears brimming in her eyes flooded over, spilling down Sakura's cheeks.

Chiyo watched her quietly for a long minute, before rising slowly to her feet.

"I will leave you, now."

Panicked, Sakura blurted out unthinkingly, "Wait- please-"

Chiyo chuckled and rasped, "Still afraid? Perhaps, with some courage, young Sakura, you will find that you had nothing to fear all along." With that, she winked out of sight, leaving Sakura alone with Sasuke in the candle-lit chamber.

Her throat felt oddly dry as she gazed at him. Gulping, she perched on the edge of his bed, watching with awe as the black marks finally vanished completely from sight. She reached out, hesitating for only a fraction of a second, before slipping her right hand through his left one. He was warm to the touch, the cold frigidity melted away from his body. She kept her eyes trained on his face, watching the mesmerising glow of the firelight that illuminated the room around them, dancing upon his handsome features as she waited patiently for him to rouse. She thought back over everything he had done for her, all the things he'd gone out of his way to do, and recalled the moment just before Cronus had stabbed her, when she'd been filled with so many regrets.

In that second, she had mourned the time they'd wasted. Wished they could go back and start over, no more fighting, no more conflict. She was so tired of running and being on edge around him all the time, and it surely had to be exhausting for him, too, to push her away, to constantly shut her out. That time had unexpectedly been returned to them now. How did they move forward? How did she want them to?

It was her last life. Her last chance. What did she want?

Sasuke was in love with her. What were her feelings? Sakura could no longer evade them, or skirt around the topic. Not after everything they had been through together, not when she would have to return for six months to his world. It was time, she knew, to face up to them, to come to terms with her emotions at last.

After waiting in nervous agitation for what seemed like an eternity, Sasuke finally began to stir and Sakura's breath caught in her throat when she spied tears leaking from the corners of his eyes.

Was he… crying?

His heavy-lashed eyelids fluttered open a moment later, to find an anxious looking Sakura leaning over him. He stared blankly at her for a moment, his tear-rimmed eyes full of disorientated confusion - and then, with a sharp intake of breath, he sat up, bolting abruptly upright, causing Sakura to jerk backwards with a startled gasp, her hand leaping to rest over her heart in alarm.

"Sasuke!"

He stared wildly ahead of him, chest heaving, a look of such stricken anguish on his features that Sakura felt tight knots form within her stomach.

What had he seen, that had him looking so shattered, so bereft, as if he had been caught in the snare of a most upsetting dream - a dream that clearly still had purchase of his senses?

Feeling the urgent need to reassure him, she reached instinctively out to him. "Sasuke," she soothed gently. "It's okay. You're safe. We're back in the Underworld. Goddess Chiyo brought us here."

He swallowed thickly, blinking through the dampness in his eyes as he slowly recognised his surroundings, the remnants of the meeting he'd had with his brother while unconscious weighing severely upon his mind. He lifted his hands, to find that the blotchy curse marks that had blighting his skin had vanished completely, and pushed up the right sleeve of his shirt to discover that the seal had receded. His body had healed entirely.

Just as Itachi had informed him, the chakra he'd locked within Sasuke had pushed the curse seal back. Even in death, his brother had saved him. Had left him with tools that would protect him. Without the feather and the emergency supply of chakra, what would have become of him? He recalled the black flame that had attacked Madara upon witnessing the fully-evolved form of his Sharingan, despite the fact a bound Sasuke had been unable to summon such a powerful attack himself. Somehow, he was certain that Itachi had been responsible for that little surprise, too.

The death deity felt a mangling weight crush heavily upon his chest, Itachi's last spoken words to him, of his kind smile, etched in his memory.

'No, Sasuke. You did not.'

The sorrow was suffocating. Waking to a world without his sibling in it once more, was more than Sasuke could bear. He recalled everything his brother had said to him, the truth behind their family's actions, everything they'd done to ensure his survival, to keep the Underworld from falling into ruin, and it felt to Sasuke that all the stitches surrounding his old wounds had been ripped open anew. He was cruelly compelled to mourn their loss all over again - this time knowing the true extent of their selfless sacrifices, the way they had valued his life over their own.

What other choice did he have but to seek vengeance? It was Madara who had trapped them all. It was Madara, Sasuke vowed to himself, who would pay.

Drawing in a quiet, unsteady breath, he sought to quell the racing of his heart, to restore his composure. He couldn't dwell on it all now. It was not the right time to grieve. First, he had to take Sakura back home, before the surface gods did something reckless, like go looking for them on Olympus.

He turned his head to glance at her, finding her still sitting on the edge of the bed beside him, a hand clasped to her chest and open concern reflected on her features. The relief of seeing her safe and well mingled with the remorse he felt now knowing for certain that he had been the one to lead her to the surface in her first life. Even though he had not administered the poison into her system, his actions had still been what had caused it to activate and ultimately kill her.

Would things have been different if his past self had chosen not to intervene? Could she have been saved, somehow? Itachi had stated her fate had been inevitable, and there would have been no way to prevent her death. If that were true, then Sasuke rationally knew he couldn't hold himself fully responsible when all he had likely sought to do was set Kore free, and yet, even despite telling himself that, his remorse lingered.

It also didn't change the fact that Sakura had been hurt in her present lifetime, was once again trapped in a fate not of her own choosing as a result of his selfish, ignorant actions.

"Sasuke," she began worriedly. "Are you alright?"

His subdued gaze returned to his hands. Closing them into fists on his lap, he answered dully, "I'm fine."

She stared anxiously at him for a long minute.

"What happened?" she finally asked. "That curse mark… it was spreading all over you. How did you even get it? You-" she hesitated, before adding, "You didn't accept it as part of some trade with Cronus, did you?"

He blinked, refusing to look at her. She saw the tension lining his jaw, and wondered whether her words had upset him.

"Is that what you think...?" The hushed stillness of his voice was unnerving.

She gulped, hot guilt flushing through her. "I- I don't know what to think," she confessed. "I just want to understand. Cronus said something about Senju cells. What did he mean?"

"That isn't your concern." This time his tone was familiar and brusque. "I'm taking you back." He shifted and rose from the bed.

Sakura clamped her mouth shut, indignant and frustrated that he was still choosing to lock her out. In her mind's eye, she saw the haunting moment that Sasuke had been thrown into the water after her, the frantic, hysterical look in his eyes as he'd wrestled against the chains to swim down to her. She wanted, so desperately, to reach that Sasuke again. To see his true emotions, raw and real, instead of the cold mask of indifference he constantly wore before the rest of the world.

She had already seen him at his lowest, most tortured point. Why did he continue to act as if he felt nothing? When she had seen, with her own eyes, just how much he was hurting? Why wouldn't he let her help him?

She clenched her teeth in determination. She was ready to stop running. She told herself she wouldn't let him anymore, either. Not when she had just experienced how fleeting her life was. The reality of just how little time she truly had was terrifying, a harsh reminder that any moment could be her last. She didn't want to have any more regrets - and she hadn't realised that Sasuke was one of them, until faced with the frightening permanence of death itself.

If he still insisted on burning their bridges, then Sakura adamantly told herself she would keep building them until he let her cross. He had started this all by kidnapping her - he didn't get to do everything he had, only to keep her at arm's length and ignore the elephant in the room that was the fact that they had been involved in the past - both the most recent one, and in her first lifetime.

Standing up, she took a deep breath, and lifted her chin defiantly, "No. Not until we talk. We're in the Underworld, now. Nobody can see and hear us down here, right?"

Sasuke, who had moved to retrieve Kusanagi, which the servants had placed neatly on an arm-chair by the fireplace, paused before proceeding to secure the brown-leather belt it was attached to around his waist. He reached for a long, black cloak, threw it over his shoulders and fastened it wordlessly.

"Please tell me," Sakura went on. "What happened up there, Sasuke?"

"I told you to keep quiet," he intoned matter-of-factly.

"I couldn't!" she shook her head. "He was tormenting you!"

"I was handling it."

"It didn't look like it to me!" she retorted, folding her arms defensively across her chest.

He turned to her, the muscles in his jaw clenching briefly. "If I am wounded," he stated curtly, "I recover. My injuries do not matter. You should have stayed silent."

"It does matter," Sakura exclaimed, horrified at his dismissal of his own significance. "It matters to me! He was mentally torturing you, Sasuke!"

He stalked toward her, the eyes locking onto her blistering in their intensity. Feeling her pulse flutter in her neck, Sakura told herself not to cave in, to stand her ground.

"Tell me why you have the curse seal. How did you get it?"

"Why," he demanded, scowling, "do you care?"

"Because I was terrified, Sasuke!" she cried, fresh tears welling in her eyes. She didn't bother to wipe them away. "I woke up, and I saw you covered in those marks, and I didn't know what to do! I thought you were going to die! I read about it, in the High Council's library - I know what that curse does. I know it'd paralyse and consume you, and you'd be lost forever, and I was so scared!"

Sasuke's frown had morphed into an expression that bordered on genuine confusion. He watched the tears streaming down her cheeks, as if he could not comprehend for the life of him why she would bother shedding any over him. They stared at each other for a long moment, before Sasuke abruptly began to turn away.

"We're leaving."

Sakura gasped at his casual dismissal of her fears. No. She would not be intimidated into silence. She stepped resolutely forward after him, growing more and more frustrated with every movement he made to keep distance between them.

"Wait. Sasuke." When he wouldn't stop, she rushed after him and grabbed hold of his right arm, tugging at him to halt. "Please!" she implored, doing her best to root herself to the spot. "Stop pushing me away. I'm so tired of this, Sasuke. We're not enemies! Haven't we wasted enough time, not communicating with each other?"

"Not now, Sakura." He could feel his own frustrations building, all the staggering emotions he'd experienced over the duration of the previous few hours still bubbling precariously close to the surface.

"Then when?" she pressed. "It's never the right time! You can't avoid me forever! How does that help anything? In four months' time, I'll have to come back here and then-"

"Sakura." The warning edge in his voice was unmistakably clear. She could feel the steely tension in the forearm she was gripping onto, and yet Sakura still obstinately refused to back down.

"-we'll have six months together! We can't leave things like this! You kidnapped me, you offered me those seeds, I poisoned and betrayed you because I was angry, we can't change any of that now, but look at everything we've been through together! Please! Things are different now. I can help-"

"With what?" he hissed, deliberately disparaging in his choice of words. He knew she didn't deserve it. But guilt caused him to lash out at her. He just wanted her to stop, just once. To stop provoking him. To stop insisting. To leave him alone, the way he ought to have remained, back when he'd lost everything.

"Can you undo the past? Can you bring them back?"

Her lips parted. She stared up at him, emerald eyes shimmering with tears, and he suddenly hated those expressive orbs. Hated the way they made his heart ache heavily within his chest. The power they held over him.

"No," he refused, his tone hard, unyielding. "You can't help."

"Why is it so difficult for you to accept letting anyone in?" she burst out.

He didn't respond.

"Why do you keep shutting me out, when we can put everything that's happened behind us?" she persisted.

"Because it isn't behind us!" Sasuke erupted, before he could stop himself, wrenching his hand angrily out of her grasp. "I've trapped you! Back then, and now!"

Sakura sucked in a sharp breath, her wide eyes meeting his. The blazing fury within those ebony irises wasn't directed at her, she suddenly realised. It was directed at himself. Anger, loathing, disgust; she had always assumed those negative feelings were reserved for her, and yet, looking at him then, at the way he barely seemed capable of even holding her gaze, she understood with a start that he was hating nobody but himself, drowning in his own ocean of remorse.

Why had she never seen it before? It was so painfully clear to her at that moment, that it left her breathless.

"Sasuke…" Her voice was hushed. "What do you mean, back then?"

Sasuke gritted his teeth. She always knew precisely which buttons to press, a stark reminder of the power she wielded, a power that she probably had no idea she even possessed. She wanted to know the truth? Would it finally shut her up? Would she finally come to comprehend what a monster he truly was, and stop her infuriating, incessant pushing? Would it make her hate him, the way he deserved her to despise him? The way he wished she would? At least if she did, then he would feel that he had been delivered a just punishment. After all, nothing else alive could hurt him.

Acknowledging that fact unsettled Sasuke greatly. He was too emotionally exhausted to be furious about it. Sakura had been his exception, his weakness, for far too long already, including in a lifetime he could not even recall, and following the events on Olympus, she now surely knew it. There was no use deluding himself otherwise.

"I released you, Sakura," he confessed, turning away from her, unable to look her in the eye as he informed her of the very same truth Itachi had imparted to him. "To the surface, before the poison was activated."

For an awful moment, she was deathly silent and still. "How can you know that?" She whispered at last. "You don't remember."

Sasuke slowly inhaled, closing his eyes as he grappled to regain his composure.

"Itachi," he got out with difficulty. Simply speaking his brother's name felt like his insides were being split apart. He couldn't shift the harrowing image of his brother weeping over his unconscious form from his mind. Even in their last meeting, he had not complained, had only looked at Sasuke with patience and acceptance. "His chakra is what drove the curse seal back."

Sakura's lips parted in surprise. "You mean you saw him? You spoke to him?"

Sasuke clamped his mouth shut. Realising that he had, Sakura carefully laid a hand on his arm once more, gently encouraging him to confide in her.

"Whatever Cronus showed you, whatever he said about what you did in the past, he was lying. He was just trying to hurt you!"

Sasuke's lips pressed together, forming a thin line. Would that Cronus had lied - but everything he had shown Sasuke, at least, had been reality. Itachi had confirmed it.

He turned his face away from Sakura, the words tumbling from his lips, before he could stop them. "Itachi killed our parents." He uttered tightly. "All this time I blamed him, hated him, called him a traitor. But Madara showed me the truth. That he made him do it."

His voice trembled with rage, as he continued, "He forced Itachi to take their lives, to spare mine. My Mother… my Father… Shisui… Itachi… they sacrificed everything to ensure I was the last Uchiha left. They hid the truth from me, sealed my memories, so that I wouldn't fall to despair. So that I wouldn't reject my function. So that I'd ascend the throne."

Sakura listened in disbelief. She could feel fine tremors beginning to run through her body. She couldn't imagine how much pain he had to be in, finally forced to come to terms with the sacrifices those closest to him had made. And to encounter his brother in a dream-like state, only to awaken again, to find him gone once more? It was cruel beyond comprehension.

"Your memories…" she hardly dared to speak the words, afraid he might cold-shoulder her again, and yet knew that she had to. She needed to know the truth about them, about how things had ended, as much as he did. "Of… of me…? My first life? But why…? It wasn't you who poisoned me. Cronus is a liar! It wasn't you, Sasuke! I know it wasn't!"

Sasuke shook his head. Wasn't she listening to a word he was saying? "The poison was set to work as soon as you set foot on the surface. I let you out."

"You couldn't have known!" she protested. "You know how much Cronus has manipulated others - maybe he made you do it. Maybe it would've happened anyway!"

"What if he didn't?" he whirled around to face her. "How can you be so sure I didn't betray you at any point, when neither of us can remember?"

"You wouldn't hurt me," she answered tearfully. "You wouldn't!"

"I," he advanced on her, a wild, almost destructive light in his eyes, "already have."

"Stop," her lower lip quivered. "Stop saying that. That's in the past. Things are different now!"

"You're wrong. Knowing me damned you back then," Sasuke's eyes burned through hers, "and it has damned you again, now."

"Stop it!" she screamed at him, covering her ears with her hands. "You want me to believe there's no good in you, you want to push me away, but I won't listen! You're nothing like Cronus! You're good, Sasuke!"

He stared at her, equal parts shocked and horrified. How could she possibly believe that? How could she see anything in him that was worthy of even a sliver of her good opinion? Hadn't he manipulated her, too? Given her no choice, no say in her future? Inflicted pain and grief upon her and her kin? Emotionally traumatised her? Done everything to her that had been done to him? Her foolishly trusting words were making him grow angrier by the second.

"Save your pity, Sakura," he snapped, his pride wounded. He was well aware that she had seen him in his hour of weakness. He needed no reminders of that.

"It's not pity!" she cried desperately. "How can I make you believe that I mean it? I know you're good. I know it from the way I feel safe beside you!"

"Safe," he repeated the word harshly, contemptuously, spitting it out as if it were venom in his mouth. "You are in danger, because of the things I have done."

"No! Cronus would have had his suspicions about me anyway. Kabuto was already watching me at the hospital! I am safe with you, because you do everything in your power to protect and help me! Just earlier…" she sobbed, "you were ready to give up your last ounce of chakra to save my life!" She reached out for his left hand, desperate for him to understand. Desperate to erase all his doubts, to prove to him that he could trust her - but he pulled it out of her reach.

She felt despair clog her throat. She wished, in that moment, that he would read her feelings. That somehow he could look into her heart and believe that she didn't hate him or bear him any ill will, or blame him any more for anything the way he seemed to be so awfully convinced she did. The very fate of the world depended on them stopping Cronus together. There was no time to waste, no sense in rueing a past neither of them could change.

"You were ready to lose yourself, just to keep me alive!" She wept. "And the seeds you feel so guilty about? They've saved my life! For six months of the year, at least, I'll be safe with you here, in your Kingdom! Maybe I once thought it was a trap, maybe I hated the idea, back when I was afraid, back before I knew better…! Before I knew the truth about myself and before I knew you better!" She stepped in closer, reaching up to grip hold of his shoulders, willing him to see things the way she did.

"You've changed. We both have. Everything you've done since I've gone back to the surface has helped us. This curse seal - I don't know what those cells you traded were for, but I know you must have had a reason for that, too. I trust you, Sasuke. I trust you with my life."

He didn't want to hear anymore. He couldn't stand it. His emotions had been battered by storm after storm, and he couldn't handle another confrontation. Everything was hurting and yet Sasuke felt empty, drained, exhausted. He wanted nothing more than to vanish into the void. To take Itachi's place. The burdens upon him were too heavy to bear alone. His brother had been wrong. He wasn't the strongest amongst them.

He began to turn away from her, but she followed him, refusing to give up, resolved that this time, she would get through to him. Her heart was hurtling. She knew she was playing with fire. But if she stopped now, she didn't think she would ever find the courage to try again.

"Do you know what I thought about while I was drowning? All my regrets! How I wished we could've had just five more minutes alone together, to forget everything that we've been and start over without guilt, without judgement, without lashing out at each other! Please!" Her voice broke. "Please, Sasuke, stop tormenting yourself over things neither of us can change. Stop living in the past! Haven't you suffered enough? Haven't we both?"

His jaw clenched, tension coiling around his body like a tautly wound spring. He turned his face away, stubbornly refusing to meet her gaze. She felt her heart sink. Still her words weren't reaching him. No matter what she said, no matter what she attempted, he still would not lower his walls to her.

Had she truly lost her only chance, when she'd poisoned him? What would it take, to convince him that she meant everything she said? Sakura was at her wit's end. She wanted to shake him. She wanted to scream at him.

The words that tumbled from her lips next were instinctive.

"I forgive you."

She felt him stiffen, saw the way his eyes widened in disbelief. Immediately his face turned back toward her, and she realised that she had startled him. The anger melted away, replaced by bewilderment and a brief moment of raw, vulnerable confusion.

He released an astonished breath, as if he could not quite believe what he had just heard.

"I forgive you," she repeated. "Even if you won't forgive yourself, even if you're determined to hate yourself for all your past actions, nothing you say, nothing you do will make me hate you. Because I know who you are, Sasuke, and I believe in you!"

He shook his head, thunderstruck, speechless at the blind faith she had in him. What had he done to deserve it?

"You're not wicked, or cruel," Sakura insisted. "None of what's happened is anyone's fault but Cronus's. Don't listen to his lies! There's so much good in you."

His eyes widened incredulously at her, his parted lips incapable of forming any manner of coherent response. Encouraged by his lack of resistance, she stepped closer, the front of her body brushing against his. Inside her throat, her pulse was hammering impossibly fast, overly aware of their proximity. Of how his hands closed around her upper arms, as if he sought to push her away, and yet seemed robbed of the physical strength to do so. Of how electrifying and intoxicating it felt, to be so close to him.

The room around them faded away. His beautiful, mournful onyx eyes were suddenly all she could see. They mirrored anguish, anger - and a barely contained flicker of alarm.

Sakura exhaled. He was afraid. Of her. Of letting her in. And suddenly, she understood. He feared the past, in which he had failed to save the girl he could not remember. He feared it repeating itself. He feared hurting her any further, than he already had.

"You're not a monster," she said in a hushed whisper, as she reached up and pressed a palm gently against his left cheek, searching his eyes as if she was seeking something, something he could not perceive in himself. "You're not."

"Sakura-" Sasuke's breath hitched sharply in his throat at the feel of soft lips brushing hesitantly, tentatively, over his own. He froze in wide-eyed, stunned surprise, his fingers tightening around her arms, fully intending to shove her firmly away, to snap her out of whatever madness had befallen her - but when Sakura resisted, and instead pressed herself up against him, he was powerless to fight against the irresistible pull that seemed to resonate at his very core, drawing him into her like a magnet to metal, like a moth to a flame.

Sakura hadn't intended to kiss him. She had felt herself flowing toward him, and then somehow, it had just happened, in the heat of the moment of their highly charged emotions, and now that it had, her body didn't seem to want to stop. Heat bloomed in her cheeks and she forced herself to jerk back, mortified by her own actions.

What had she been thinking? What had possessed her to lean in and do such an impulsive thing? She had wanted only to erase all his doubts. It had been sheer desperation that had fuelled her to bridge the distance between them physically, when all words had failed.

"I-" she stammered, gulping. Her eyes flicked nervously up to find smouldering onyx fixed onto her, so intensely that she was left flustered and breathless. "I'm sorry- I don't know why I just-"

The shock on his face walled off entirely. Something snapped in those fathomless dark eyes. A severing. Before Sakura could finish her sentence, his lips crashed hungrily against hers - and then, all at once, his arms had wrapped around her, crushing her close, and he was kissing her back with wild, furious abandon, with a heated, searing, all-consuming passion that left Sakura's head spinning, her mind reeling, sent her heart fluttering and galloping erratically in her chest.

They kissed desperately, as if their lips contained the oxygen they needed to live, as if they would die even a moment apart. Sakura squeezed her eyes shut, overwhelmed by pure sensation, and threw all her inhibitions aside as months and months of suppressed emotions and tension and unresolved issues shattered between them. She lifted her arms, slipping them around his neck, raking her fingers through his hair, wanting to feel more of him, all of him, gladness and giddiness filling her veins like liquid sunshine.

She was kissing him without cause. Without motive, other than desiring it. And the liberation of that set her soaring to dizzying heights. Why had they even been fighting at all? She forgot all the reasons, could think only of how much time they'd wasted, how much time they could have spent on growing closer and stronger together, rather than bitterly warring and punishing one another. His lips on hers felt like they belonged. His arms around her felt right. They all but melted into each other and she realised, then, that it was fear alone that had stopped her from giving in. That fear, all along, had been their mutual enemy.

What did she have to fear from someone who would give his life for her? Someone who she knew would wait with open arms to catch her, anytime she stumbled and fell?

At that moment, all time was suspended between them. Love, requited, roared through Sasuke's blood-stream like an unstoppable tsunami, crashing against his frozen, pain-crippled heart, pouring through its cracks and crevices, thawing it and filling it with warmth. Letting it beat again. All the agony, all the anguish, all the tension and torment, dulled, fading into nothingness. There was only Sakura left.

It was Sakura in his arms. Sakura who had initiated a kiss of her own volition, who was clinging to him desperately as if he were the only thing left anchoring her to this life. Sakura who was touching him with tremoring fingertips. Sakura's lips, that were moving so sweetly against his.

She had forgiven him. She accepted him. Even despite every horror he had caused to rain down upon her, she had stubbornly sought to bridge the distance between them, scaling the endless walls he'd put in place to lock her out. How could he fight such an unstoppable force of nature? What choice did he have, but to drown in her? No matter how hard he tried he shut her out, she remained. Like a burning, blazing, inextinguishable candle in his perpetual world of night. He knew he did not deserve her pardon. He knew he did not deserve her affections. He knew he did not deserve to hold her in such a way, in his arms. And yet still, his body chose to be selfish. To take what she offered to him, like a blind man offered the hope of glimpsing even the faintest trace of sight. Like a parched, lost wanderer offered a single drop of water, he reached out to her for the salvation he had not even consciously realised he'd been seeking.

Her lips were like an elixir of life. Her warmth and softness filled him with a yearning that stole the breath from his lungs. No matter how hard either of them fought to deny it, there was no stopping the dangerous chemistry that sizzled between them, crackling like lightning, blazing like flame, freezing like ice, leaving them both trembling and helpless.

She had chosen to give him a chance. He wasn't worthy. Not after everything he had done. And yet, she had chosen to, anyway. His thoughts were spinning in disarray, coming undone. His body was acting of its own accord, starved of her touch, regardless of his mind's inhibitions. Holding Sakura in his arms again, kissing Sakura again - nothing felt more natural than this, and for a few more seconds, he allowed himself to selfishly indulge in everything she was freely giving to him.

He broke the kiss abruptly, and they both stared breathlessly at one another in wide-eyed wonder, equally as stunned by their newfound discovery of one another. As Sakura slid her hands down to rest her palms on his chest, she could feel his heart thumping, as fast and hard as her own; a further confirmation she no longer needed, of the sincerity of his feelings for her.

She was overwhelmed by dizzy exhilaration. A triumph that accompanied the acceptance of returned feelings.

Whatever had happened in her first life, she couldn't remember it. In her heart she knew that Sasuke could never have harmed her. Not if they had once been even closer than they were now. And the deity who stood before her, was unrecognisable compared to the one who had heartlessly stolen her away. He had proven to her, shown her on countless occasions, that he would keep her safe. That he was willing to do whatever it took, no matter the cost, to ensure she survived.

He had been alone. He had suffered, carrying taxing burdens with neither friend nor family to turn to. Isolated, left to exist in grief and anger and hatred for so long, his memories warped, the truth denied to him, the very circumstances around his ascension to the throne a lie. Growing colder and colder, deprived of all warmth and light in his solitude, with only the dead for company. He was one who had known unspeakable loss, one starved of love for so long. She saw the bewilderment in his eyes, the way his walls had crumbled to rubble around them at her touch. The open, haunting vulnerability she had been so blind to before. How could she never have noticed it? How could she have never realised, just how much he needed warmth and kindness?

She could see the open alarm in his gaze. As if he was afraid. As if he dared not believe she stood there before him, reaching to him of her own will. As if a part of him, the part that acted on survival instinct, still wished to push her away, to restore distance between them. To shield himself. When he staggered backward a step, looking disorientated and stunned, she stepped forward, reaching out to him again desperately, afraid that he was about to shut her out all over again.

"Sasuke," she whispered, seeking to reassure him, closing the distance between them again. "I'm not afraid anymore. Whatever happened between us in the past doesn't matter."

He shook his head in response, eyes wide, haunted by her words. Struggling to process and accept them. How? How could she say that? How could she find it in herself to forgive what he could not? How could she accept him? He didn't understand. His mind was flung into turbulence, into turmoil. He, who had always prided himself on his iron-willed self-control, felt so totally removed from it at that moment, as if the world was spinning in an unstoppable hurricane around him. He could control nothing. Everything was not as he had expected it and he was powerless to fight the tide.

No, he told himself. He couldn't. This was wrong. Everything he had done- how could she stand even looking at him?

He turned his face away. They needed to leave. He needed to get her out, before he lost his sanity, before he lost his ability to block her out. He could feel all resistance slipping rapidly away from him, the result of extreme exhaustion, both physical and emotional. His feelings and mind had been battered by the most punishing storm and he barely had the strength to remain standing upright at that moment, let alone to keep a persistent Sakura at arm's length.

But she would not allow him the reprieve. Anticipating that he was about to retreat, she lifted her hands to cup his cheeks once more.

"Sasuke. Please, look at me."

She saw the muscles in his jaw tighten. His eyes shifted to her, despite himself.

"What matters is now. You've saved my life, so many times." Meeting his eyes, she added earnestly, "Thank you."

Her sincere gratitude tore at his heart. The euphoria of basking in her waned, turning to suffocating guilt once more. It clawed him to shreds. She had nothing to thank him for. No reason to believe in him. And yet she had done both. She now freely gave, what he had given up hope of ever attaining for himself. Her forgiveness. Her affection.

"Sakura…" he lowered his head in defeat, and the warmth of his breath tickled against her lips. His hands lifted, barely daring to touch her as they ghosted over her sides, as if he were afraid that any concrete touch would result in her evaporating before him. "Why...?" He struggled to get out hoarsely. "Everything I've done-"

She pressed a silencing finger to his lips, cutting him off. "When I saw him torturing you like that I…" she gulped, feeling her cheeks redden. Her heart skipped a beat, but she told herself she had to say it. She needed him to understand. "I couldn't stand it. It made me realise… how important you've become to me. Without you, I wouldn't know who I really am. Without you, I wouldn't have ever had the courage to change, to grow stronger. And I was so afraid, that I'd die without getting the chance to tell you."

He listened in silent astonishment.

"You're the strongest person I know, Sasuke," she looked up at him earnestly. "But you don't have to shoulder your burdens alone. It's not a weakness, to rely on others, to let people in." She bit her lower lip. "I don't know why we wasted so much time, angry with each other. I'm so tired of fighting, of looking for excuses. Aren't you? We can be so much better. I can't bring your family back. I can't change the past but... I want to help you avenge them. I want justice for you, as much as the rest of us."

A long silence stretched between them. Sakura waited, heart in her throat, full of hope, that he would reach out and accept the olive branch she was offering to him at last. That finally, he would stop pushing her away.

His head bowed, gaze lowering to the floor. The hands at her sides dropped, closing into fists.

"Sakura..." He hesitated, before swallowing thickly, "I'm..." His jaw clenched, before he supplied, "...sorry."

Her vivid green eyes widened, surprise flickering through them. Sasuke was apologising?

She could scarcely believe her ears.

"Sorry?" she echoed, feeling light-headed, like she was caught in an impossible dream. Standing so close to him afforded her warmth and strength and comfort and fire and she wasn't quite ready to step away from him yet. "For what...?" Her mind reeled. She felt breathless.

In response, he closed his eyes and bent his head, until his forehead rested against hers. He was quiet for another long moment.

"For everything," he mumbled. "Up until now."

Tears welled in her eyes. A choked, emotional sound escaped her throat, half a sob, half a laugh. Sasuke had apologised. His eyes opened, meeting hers. In a moment of overwhelmed emotion, she shyly reached out, wrapping her arms carefully, tentatively around his waist, and rested her head against the solid wall of his chest. The jerk. She didn't even realise how much she had needed to hear those words, until they had fallen from his lips.

She heard him tense and release a quiet breath, allowing her embrace awkwardly for a moment - before his hands slowly, hesitantly moved, sliding to a stop at the small of her back. His touch was light, hesitant, almost as though he feared reciprocating - and yet it was enough to cause tingles to surface throughout her body, the attraction between them electrifying. A part of Sakura was still frightened of the unknown - after all, getting close to him in her first life had led to the events that had ultimately doomed her. But she knew now, with certainty, that it had been Cronus who had orchestrated everyone's misery, suffering and demise. Seeing him in the flesh left no doubts in her mind as to the truth of that. So long as they all stood together, they would find a way to end his reign of terror and avenge every wrong he had inflicted upon them.

"You'd better be." Sakura whispered, burying her face into his chest, allowing herself a few minutes to enjoy the security of being in his embrace. Was she really standing in the circle of Sasuke's arms? What would her mother say? What would Ino think? But surely, when they came to know the truth about Cronus's actions, when they realised that Sasuke had also been a victim, they would understand? Surely they would see in Sasuke, the goodness she knew existed? A powerful ally who would stand by their side and help them rid the world of the greatest evil that plagued it.

How could she leave Sasuke frozen out any longer, seeing the way her closeness and touch chased the shadows from his eyes? Caused him to open to her? It made her want to keep touching him. He had been in the darkness for too long without any light.

At length, he drew back, and they sat beside each other on the edge of the bed, their defences lowered to one another at last. Sakura asked him once more about what he had learned, and listened patiently as he told her in more detail about his meeting with his brother, about Itachi's sacrifice, about the reasons behind his memories being sealed. She listened in astonishment when he informed her that his cousin had left behind one small fragment of memory that had allowed him to recognise her soul upon first sight, to be drawn to her should they ever cross paths again, affording them both a second chance at getting acquainted, free of all the traumatic memories of everything that had gone wrong in their past lives, cementing the belief in Sakura's mind, that Cronus had been entirely responsible for their demise.

Why else would Sasuke's brother and cousin bestow upon him such a great mercy, if no terrible injustice had been inflicted on him by losing her?

She listened to him relay the harrowing visions the God of Chaos had tormented him with, giving him as long as he needed, allowing him to share as much as he desired without pushing too far. When his hands closed into tight fists, and he struggled to continue, his jaw locking with tension, she reached out, placing a gentle, comforting hand on his arm. When he fell into silence, lost in his own thoughts, she remained quiet beside him, offering him silent support. At the end of the tragic recount, Sakura herself was in tears for him, and reached over to hug him. Once more she felt him tense - but he did not draw away. Instead he wordlessly accepted her embrace, another quiet breath escaping his lips.

"We'll stop him," she vowed. "For everything he's done to us all - we'll make him pay."

They only broke apart when the arched double-doors to the chamber opened, to reveal an amused-looking Chiyo.

She met their eyes, a mischievous, knowing twinkle in her own.

"Well, now," she rasped wryly. "Your extended absence has everyone quite out of their wits. How impertinent of you both, to keep them all waiting."

---

They alighted in the secure entrance hall of the High Council's quarters. Chiyo had sent word ahead that Sasuke had safely retrieved Sakura and that they had both been taken to the Underworld to heal, and so when the three arrived, they found everyone already waiting for them.

"They're here!" Naruto exclaimed.

"Mother!" Sakura immediately sprinted forward, into her mother's open arms, sobbing in relief against her. Tsunade held her close, trembling, wrestling to keep at bay the tears that threatened to fall from her own eyes.

"Sakura…" Her voice was thickly-clogged with emotion as she clutched her daughter tightly to herself, burying her face in her hair as she breathed her in, her heart drumming against her rib-cage. Sakura was warm, safe and alive. Her red-rimmed gaze then lifted, settling onto Sasuke who had not moved beside Chiyo and was watching them with a detached, unreadable expression. Swallowing thickly, she gave him a brief, curt nod, wordlessly conveying her gratitude to him for returning her daughter safely to her.

The death deity's eyes slipped away as Sakura was quickly surrounded by Naruto and the other surface gods.

"Sakura-san!" Lee cried. "Are you well?"

Hinata embraced her gently. "We were so worried…"

"When Chiyo told us it was too late to retrieve you from Olympus, we didn't know what to think," Shikamaru remarked.

"I lost it," Naruto shook his head. "Sakura-chan, you guys really freaked us out!"

"How did you escape?" Jiraiya questioned.

"Sasuke saved me." Sakura glanced across at the death deity, until his dark eyes flicked briefly up, to find that all the surface gods were staring at him. He folded his arms across his chest and turned his face nonchalantly away.

Chiyo leaned into him, amused. "There is no shame in accepting gratitude, little King," she commented lightly.

"Hn," he dismissed. He didn't want their gratitude. Even if they were no longer the enemy, it didn't mean he had to like any of them, and he certainly didn't care for the majority of them.

Tsunade's eyes darted between the two, noting the lingering way her daughter looked at the God of Death, the faint blush on the apples of her cheeks. She swallowed thickly, and remained silent as Sakura retold their terrifying ordeal, detailing the way Cronus had chained and tortured Sasuke, stabbed her ruthlessly through the chest and flung them both into water in an attempt to trigger the curse seal to overtake Sasuke's body. The surface deities listened, disturbed, to the recount, reminded anew of the chilling extent of Cronus's barbaric savagery.

When Sakura noticed absent faces and inquired after them, Jiraiya solemnly informed her of the coordinated Zetsu attack that had taken place while they'd been on Olympus. Sakura's home had been destroyed, and they'd lost Guy, Asuma, Shizune, Inoichi and Iruka. Sai, who had been badly wounded, was still recovering in the healing chamber.

"No…" The dreadful news slammed into Sakura with the force of a demolishing wrecking ball. Devastated, she looked to her mother. Tsunade's honey-hued irises were lowered, her features crestfallen, weighed heavily by fresh grief. Sakura swallowed and reached out to embrace her again, tears spilling down her cheeks. Shizune had been like an Aunt to her. Though all their deaths were tragedies, it was Shizune's, in particular, that hit Sakura hardest, filling her heart with anguish.

She held her mother for a long time, grieving with her, until at last Tsunade pushed her gently away.

"There's no use," she said hoarsely, "for tears. The only thing we can do now, is fight on for them."

Sakura nodded, wiping at her eyes, as she moved to offer comfort and condolences to Kurenai next.

"By the Power of Youth, we will avenge them!" Lee gestured, in honour of the fallen Guy.

"Believe it," Naruto vowed. "We won't rest until that bastard is done for!"

"But our home..." Sakura glanced at her mother.

"Gone," Tsunade confirmed. They would need to return, at some point, to go through the wreckage, but that would have to be after they unsealed their abilities.

"We're safer within these walls, for now," said Jiraiya. "The enemy cannot breach them."

"..." Sasuke's eyes narrowed, his suspicions immediately ignited as he recalled how Madara had known the details of his sentence. Just how 'safe' were these walls, truly? His gaze flicked from face to face, seeking out a potential culprit. Not a surface deity or seraph, surely. That left only the High Council and their apprentices. Where were they? Besides Chiyo next to him, the others had yet to arrive.

"Sakura!"

His attention returned to Sakura, watching as she ran to Ino who had just entered the hall, before shifting away. Feeling eyes on him, he glanced to his left, briefly meeting Tsunade's gaze. She was watching him intently, a grim expression on her face. Sasuke blinked, before turning his own away. He just wanted to get the rest of his sentence done with, and felt thoroughly out of place, watching the reunions occurring before him.

"I'm so glad you're safe!" Ino squeezed Sakura tightly, crying against her shoulder.

"I'm sorry, Ino," Sakura whispered tearfully as she hugged her best friend close. "About Inoichi, about everyone. I'm sorry I wasn't there for you."

"You're here now, Forehead," Ino choked out emotionally. "I missed you so much."

Naruto and Kakashi approached Sasuke.

"Sasuke," Naruto greeted, his expression subdued. "I knew you'd get Sakura-chan out of there, 'ttebayo."

It was a displacing sensation, looking at the sun deity, and recalling the past that had been vacant in his memories just hours prior. But Sasuke chose to remain silent about it.

"Sasuke," Kakashi began, his visible eye lowered. "Forgive me. It was my lack of judgement that resulted in Sakura being taken. I didn't account for Obito's ability to possess a mortal."

"It's not your fault, Sensei," Naruto muttered, rubbing the back of his sunshine head sheepishly. "It was my stupid idea, to go to the hot springs." He glanced at Sasuke, a wry smile on his face. "Wouldn't be the first dumb decision I've ever made, right, Sasuke?"

"Hn."

"You have returned," Homura's voice echoed through the hallway, drawing everyone's attention to the three other members of the High Council who had finally joined them.

"We are glad to see you unharmed," Koharu nodded.

Sasuke's gaze immediately locked onto Danzo. He recalled the vision they had seen in the orb. Shisui, bleeding heavily from the eye-socket. He had forgotten to ask Itachi about that incident. His hands curled into fists, and his eyes narrowed menacingly as roiling anger swept through him.

A touch at his shoulder startled him out of his thoughts. He turned his head slightly toward Chiyo, who had been watching him intently.

'Do nothing, yet.' She warned.

He blinked at her. 'You know.'

'I do.' She telepathically responded. 'And now, as do you. Stay your hand, Sasuke. Until it is forced.'

He stored the cautioning words in his mind, his eyes shifting back to Danzo, who was now looking in his direction.

"Let us not waste any further time." Homura gestured. "We must make arrangements for the unsealing ceremony at once. Everyone, await us in the trial chamber. Kakashi, Naruto, Sakura and Sasuke, we would meet with you first, before this."

---

Fifteen minutes later, Team Seven stood in the High Council's private meeting quarters, relaying in detail the specifics of their journey to retrieve the relics. Sakura filled them in on their abduction and what had taken place on Olympus, and by the end of their account, the High Council members - save for a silent Danzo - had agreed that the remainder of Sasuke's sentence would be waived, a gesture of goodwill for his services and his succinct assurances that he had no plans to align himself in any way whatsoever with Cronus and his abominable plans.

"You must understand," Homura began carefully, "that although your travelling companions vouch for you, we nevertheless need to exercise an element of caution. After all you possess the serpent's seal. We still do not know the circumstances around how you came to acquire it."

Sasuke was silent. Sakura, who stood beside him, bit her lower lip, looking hopefully up at him.

"Sasuke," Chiyo began slowly. "It would perhaps be in your better interests, to state the truth about this matter." When he remained silent, she sighed heavily. "Very well. I shall rectify the ambiguity about this issue myself, since he so stubbornly refuses to do so."

Sasuke opened his mouth to stop her, but she held up a silencing hand.

"You will recall that the enemy had in their possession two phials containing liquid that bore some similarities in properties to young Kore's blood? One of these phials went missing. It came into Sasuke's possession, and he kept it hidden from the enemy."

"Huh? You had it all along?" Naruto blinked at Sasuke in confusion. The death deity remained silent, inwardly seething at Chiyo. Now she chose to meddle, when she always remained infuriatingly silent or cryptic? In his opinion, they didn't need to know about the Rinnegan - and yet, he supposed if they were to fight in an alliance of any sort, the surface deities would eventually have to know of it - whenever he permanently awakened it.

He knew the process of its awakening had well and truly begun. He recalled the clarity of vision he'd had in those desperate moments under water, which were indicative of what he knew about the way in which the most exalted of Kaguya's ocular gifts appeared, but any attempt to activate it again had resulted in only his Sharingan materialising. Sasuke knew he hadn't imagined it. The Rinnegan did not form immediately, but gradually fused itself into the Sharingan, presenting only briefly at first, before the metamorphosis was fully complete. Now that it had begun to manifest, it was only a matter of time until it appeared in its permanent form.

"He seeks to find a way to remove the curse of rebirth upon the girl. And so he brought to me the phial, which I was able to clone perfectly - thanks to a single lock of hair from the very one whose powers they seek to replicate."

Sakura's lips parted in astonishment. She recalled the moment when the ancient goddess had made the strange request of her. Had she known, back then, that it would be needed for the future? How maddening it was, to think that Chiyo had all the answers - and yet was unable to reveal them, or risk defying her own function.

"But my powers aren't active," she frowned, puzzled. "How could that work, from a strand of hair?"

"Your genetic material is merely an extension of you, young Sakura," Chiyo smiled. "And every part of you is bound to the Underworld by virtue of the seeds. With your cells brewed into the phial's contents, Sasuke can effortlessly tap into and activate the phial's components, to instigate immediate cellular death."

"Whoa," Naruto exclaimed. "I have no idea what Old Granny just said, but that sounds really cool!"

Sakura's jaw dropped. She recalled the Zetsu, compelled to their knees in seconds. That was possible because of the link she shared with Sasuke? She glanced at him, stupefied. His dark eyes shifted slightly in her direction, but he otherwise gave no reaction.

"Ah. That's very clever," Kakashi mused.

"Sasuke ventured to Olympus to trade the corrupted phial for cells that would allow him to awaken the Rinnegan. The eye that can perceive even hidden seals."

"What?" Naruto again looked at Sasuke in bewilderment. "Sasuke-!"

"The Rinnegan!" Danzo barked out. "The very same eye Cronus himself seeks!"

"Indeed." Chiyo nodded. "You see now, why they were so desperate to place the curse seal upon him."

"The Rinnegan can only be awakened under very particular, and stressful circumstances," Homura commented.

"That certainly supports their account of what transpired on Olympus," Koharu blinked.

"Where did Cronus obtain these cells to trade?" Kakashi's eyebrows drew together - and no sooner had he asked the question, he immediately realised the answer. "He has Minato and Kushina."

Naruto sucked in a sharp breath. "You asshole!" he exploded, jabbing a finger toward Sasuke. "If you wanted Senju cells, all you had to do was ask me!"

Sakura raised a hand to her forehead. The likelihood of Sasuke asking anyone for anything - least of all Naruto - was about as likely as she was to willingly tell Cronus the truth about herself. In other words, impossible.

"The purer the merged Senju cells, the more likely it is that the Rinnegan will manifest." Chiyo stated. "Given that Sakura's time is limited, he sought to obtain the purest available."

"You placed yourself in a very dangerous position, Sasuke," Kakashi censured disapprovingly. "Why compromise yourself in such a way?"

"The seal was not part of our arrangement," the death deity responded flatly.

"You were blindsided?" Naruto shook his head. "I knew it!"

"Did you not perceive he would break his promise?" Koharu raised her eyebrows. "It is known that Cronus is not a god of his word."

Sakura stared at Sasuke, speechless. He had gone through all of that - just to try to find a way to free her from the cycle of rebirth that had been enforced upon her? Her heart swelled with warmth, overcome with feeling. Once again, he had laid his well-being on the line, prioritising her own - and he had done this over their months apart. All that time, she had spent believing he hated her, he had been actively working to find ways to help her.

"That is the reason he came to be in possession of the seal," Chiyo finished with finality. "The boy has made reckless decisions, to be sure. But his actions have also ensured that he has the means to cripple a large portion of our enemy's army, something that would not have been possible, had the trade not taken place."

"And the Rinnegan," Homura peered at Sasuke. "I take it has not yet been awoken, even despite your most recent traumatic ordeal?"

Sasuke shook his head.

"Prove it," Danzo challenged.

"Hey, he said it hasn't!" Naruto exclaimed defensively.

"If you truly do not have it, then show us." Danzo challenged.

One corner of Sasuke's lips curled to form a faint, disdainful sneer. He allowed his irises to bleed to red, confirming that he possessed only the awakened Sharingan.

Danzo seemed to relax, satisfied. "Very well. Draw it back."

"Why?" Sasuke taunted, his crimson eyes blazing into Danzo's. "Does it remind you of another's?"

Kakashi, who stood beside him, placed a hand on his shoulder.

'Not now, Sasuke. I have a plan to find out about his involvement in the event that we saw. We'll discuss it after the unsealing. Play along for now.'

Sasuke wordlessly accepted his advice. Chiyo had told him to wait. That spoke to him enough of the Council member's dishonesty.

"Who is to say it will manifest at all?" Koharu tilted her head. "It is notoriously rare and difficult, and sometimes, even a most powerful deity who fuses Senju and Uchiha cells fails to acquire it. It can take a week in one god - a thousand centuries in another. And for good reason - wars have been started, hoping to harvest its powers."

"Nevertheless, it is unacceptable." Danzo's eye narrowed. "The Uchiha cannot possibly be allowed to wield such a dangerous weapon in the event it does manifest. With the Rinnegan, he would possess the power to control all Tailed Beasts, the power to bend the flow of time and space itself to his whim. We should enforce a seal upon it."

"Oh, enough of you," Chiyo waved a dismissive hand. "It has not even manifested, and we have not even removed the current restrictions upon the poor boy for you to speak of further seals. I have told you before, I keep careful watch over Sasuke. Much to his displeasure." A small smile curved her wrinkled lips as she mirthfully met Sasuke's gaze.

"I suppose it will doubtless be useful in the fight against Cronus," Homura pointed out.

Koharu and Chiyo nodded their agreement. Danzo remained silent, inwardly fuming at their failure to back him up.

"Sasuke can be trusted." Sakura lifted her chin. "We know he can!"

"He's on our side, believe it!" Naruto enthused.

"He has proven that to us," Kakashi corroborated their words.

Koharu unrolled the scroll that would allow them to terminate the blood-contract prematurely.

"Very well," Homura said. "Kakashi, Naruto, Sakura, you may await us outside as we dispel the binding contract on Sasuke."

"My presence is not required," Chiyo walked slowly forward. "You may see to this simple procedure without me. Come, Little Flower." She reached a hand out to Sakura. "Let us find you a new arm-brace and chakra-crystals before the unsealing ceremony."

Sakura gave Sasuke a small, reassuring smile, before they all exited the room, leaving Sasuke alone in the presence of Homura, Koharu, and Danzo.

"Place your hand atop the seal, Sasuke," Koharu instructed calmly. Sasuke wordlessly stepped forward, and did as he was bid.

"This shall not take long." Homura assured him. "You will feel only a-"

He didn't get to finish his sentence. A moment later, he collapsed to the ground. Koharu blinked at his motionless form in surprise, and turned her head to Sasuke in bewilderment.

Sasuke, equally as surprised, blinked blankly back at her.

They then both looked to Danzo. Sasuke's eyes widened when chakra chains suddenly whipped out of the air, seeking to ensnare him. He leapt back to avoid them, outraged as masked ANBU soldiers burst into the room from a side door.

"What are you doing?" he snarled.

"Have you lost your mind?!" Koharu cried in horror. "Cease this immediately - guar-!" she broke off, choking, unable to raise the alarm.

"I will not have you meddle," Danzo hissed, his hand lifted toward her. Koharu clutched onto her throat, struggling for air. "I have told you before, and yet you refuse to listen. The Uchiha are a threat to us all, and if the curse seal overcomes him, this boy will turn against us if we do not act to protect ourselves now!"

Sasuke stared at him, appalled.

"St...op-!" Koharu gasped, before he struck her with a paralysis jutsu a moment later. She fell in a crumpled heap to the ground.

Explosive tags were tossed at Sasuke. He ducked, skirting backwards, and the loud explosions that followed were strong enough to blast the doors behind him from their hinges. Sasuke was flung back from the force of it, his back slamming against the stone wall in the corridor outside.

Naruto, Kakashi, Chiyo and Sakura, who had still not reached the end of the corridor, turned at the sound of the commotion.

"Sasuke?" Sakura called, her eyes widening at the sight of his form impacting against the wall with enough force to momentarily stun him. Immediately he drew Kusanagi from its sheath, surrounded by an abundance of armed ANBU guards.

"Sasuke!" Kakashi dashed forward, followed closely by an alarmed Naruto.

"What the hell's going on?!" The sun deity demanded. "Hey, get away from him!"

Sakura ran after them, heart pounding with dread. What had just happened? It had only been minutes since they'd left the room. What in the world had set Sasuke off in so short a space of time?

"He has attacked us!" Danzo's voice shouted. "Just as I warned you all he would!"

"What?" Naruto frowned.

Sasuke froze. Realisation slammed into him, ripping the air from his lungs. Shisui. The eye that had almost been taken from him. The blade Itachi had held to Danzo's throat. His conflict-avoiding brother would never have raised his blade against an Olympian - unless they had intended harm to his most precious of people. And Shisui had been one of them.

The unknown Olympian who had informed Madara of Shisui and Itachi's treachery.

His eyes honed in on Danzo, and fury simmered in his veins, roaring into a raging inferno. Somehow, he knew it in his very bones. Was certain of it. Instinct screamed it at him. The prejudice he had seen from this deity in particular all but confirmed it.

This was the god who had framed his brother and cousin to be traitors. The very same god whose actions had ended with Itachi having to take the life of his own parents.

"You…" Sasuke uttered darkly, terrifying shadows falling over his features.

Sakura's blood turned to ice, witnessing the frightening, cold, murderous look on his face. Her mind was sent spiralling in disarray. What in the world had happened to trigger such maliciousness in him? How could he have flipped so suddenly? She didn't understand.

"Sasuke!" Naruto yelled, as they continued to sprint desperately toward him, only for the ANBU guards to bar them from reaching him.

"No! Stop!" Sakura cried in distress. "Sasuke!"

"Get out of our way!" Naruto snarled.

The death deity did not look at them, his eyes focused fully on his quarry. The eyes of one who would not rest until he hunted his prey down and struck them down lifeless. He drew Kusanagi back and lunged forward - straight into a swirling vortex that snatched him out of midair.

Sakura screamed. There was no time for warnings.

A heartbeat later - he was gone.

---

Author's note

What can I say except you're welcome?

Kindly review. No excuses not to; you were all waiting for this, and there's lots of reveals to talk about! Sharing your thoughts motivates me, so please do take the time to leave feedback, even if it's just a sentence or two.

Next update may take a bit longer. I need to map some content again. Watch my page for a status update.