Let me not then die ingloriously and without a struggle, but let me first do some great thing that shall be told among men hereafter.

Sakura's eyes opened before she'd really meant them to.

She had always seen herself as the kind of girl who woke in bed after a bad night with the rusting-red light of the sun glowing through her eyelids, and had little more than a groan to offer before turning over to mope. If that were the case, perhaps the weight of her actions would be a little more bearable. But the truth of it was that she always snapped to attention the moment sleep left her, the memory of whatever-the-hell-stupid-thing she'd done the night before fresh in her mind.

She tried to take it slow. Her joints and muscles burned with pain—even her skin felt raw, like the time she'd spent sunbathing with Karin for far too long. Back then, she'd healed it swiftly all on her own. Now, though, as she fought her spinning head to sit up, she could feel that her chakra was so drained that she felt hollow. Her stomach was sour, her head was throbbing, and of course it was when she slumped forward and vomited that she saw Kisame's sandal-clad feet appear on the grass before her.

"Those marks on your forehead," came his voice, "are gone."

Sitting there on her haunches, she wrapped her arms around herself and squeezed her eyes shut. A violent chill racked her frame, another wave of bile spilling out of her dry lips. Never in a million years would she have thought that these were the aftereffects of such a jutsu, but maybe she shouldn't be surprised. Orochimaru had taught her time and time again that knowledge and power both came at a price, one that was often steep.

As for Kisame's astute observation, Inner should've had a quip at that. But there was nothing in Sakura's head but her own self, and as she mused on it, the sharp edge to her stomach pain finally began to calm. Perhaps Inner needed a healthy amount of chakra to be able to say anything at all, but it was no matter, really. Sakura instead cracked open her eyes and shot Kisame a disdainful glance—well, shot his knees a disdainful glance, because it ached her eyes to look too far in one direction.

Her wits were slowly returning, and she noted that she was surrounded by thin, straight-trunked trees she'd seen on the borders of Rain. It was dusk, and though the light was fast fading, the deep green of the grass was cast over with that orange glow of sunset she so loved.

When Kisame bent at the waist and stretched out his hand to her, she did not hesitate. She gripped his forearm with both of her hands and all of the feeble strength she had, and at that he clicked his tongue.

"Let me do the lifting," he said. His voice was as gentle as she'd ever heard it, and if she'd been feeling any better she may have teased him for such softness. "You're in bad shape."

She hummed her agreement, letting him bring her to her feet. His hulking hands came to rest atop her shoulders, and he stooped once more to look into her eyes and ask,

"You're good to stand—"

"Yeah," she answered readily, not fond of the feeling of being looked after like she was back as her old useless genin self. The sweat on her body was cold, followed by a flush of heat. She swallowed, bracing against the strange sensations. "I'm fine."

She did not miss that Kisame's hands lingered for just a beat too long on her biceps before he pulled back. "Itachi-san is on watch for the night." He cocked his head to the side, gesturing towards a cluster of those skinny trees shooting straight up into the sky. Among them, Itachi stood still as a statue, his black robe blending him there as if he were simply part of the landscape. "So you just focus on feeling well enough to travel."

To see him there...

Deep in her heart she felt as if a gong had been struck, the heavy, eerie sound reverberating through her body, echoing and humming in her bones. Her exhaustion-enduced sickness momentarily forgotten, she could not tear her eyes away from him. The thrum within her would not cease, and her heartbeat began to speed away, pounding in her ears. Adrenaline was racing through her now, and with a stunning clarity she remembered something she had once thought was a mere hallucination, induced by the introduction of a foreign chakra signature into her veins, returned to the forefront of her mind:

That imposing man, looming in the doorway of a lab room in Orochimaru's estate and marching towards her with a sinister purpose.

She'd felt as frozen then as she did now, and on repeat in her thoughts were three simple syllables, the name alone threatening to drive her mad.

Uchiha.

Uchiha.

Uchiha.

There was some connection there between that man she saw that day and Itachi, but the more she tried to reach out and catch it, it ran far out of her reach like a dream she was struggling to recall. Beside her she was vaguely aware of Kisame catching her collapsing form, gently lowering her onto her knees in the soft, damp grass. She fought to stay awake, to not burden anyone anymore, and so she kept her eyes trained on Itachi.

Her mind was abuzz, the residual fear prickling her skin as it finally began to subside. Memories through her chakra-seared vision were popping up left and right: the excruciatingly boring Phantom Dragons jutsu, how she'd monitored Han's heart rate from afar, his agonized screams that only worsened as the days wore by, the great jolt of excitement and fear when she leapt from her place. The thrill of activating the curse mark, the rushing waves of accomplishment that she'd successfully recreated the Rebirth Technique—she'd felt like she could fight a thousand enemies at once, if she needed to. The torment she'd felt when she thrust her hands upon Han's dying form, his torment, and the outpouring of a healing chakra so tremendous that she never would've believed was real if it hadn't been flowing from her very own hands. And then—

A blood-red sky, buildings and treetops silhouetted blacker than pitch, and Itachi's lips on hers.

The shock of it made her throat go dry. She could not remember all of it, not every small detail, but what mattered was there. He'd ensnared her with his Sharingan eye, forced her into some fairytale reality of his own making, to stop her.

He tried to make us forget. Inner's voice was a weak thing, stripped of all of her usual passion. Her presence brought an immense comfort to the real Sakura, who was still shaking as she sat uselessly on the forest floor. Dunno how much we can remember, but...

That was all she could say, it seemed. It was as if she'd woken from a deep sleep only to remind Sakura what Itachi had done. She sucked in a shaking breath, feeling her face flush to know that her would-be success had been undermined by someone stronger than her. How many reminders would she need?

Uchiha. Uchiha. Uchiha. It seemed these bastards were more an obstacle than motivation.

Weary from, well, everything, such thoughts were so heavy on her mind that she blinked slowly and turned her attention back to Kisame. It would help, she figured, to be distracted.

"Thank you," she started through her hoarse voice, "for bringing me along." She didn't think she'd have the courage enough to handle being alone with Pein or any of the other strange men in the cave, regardless of how sick she was feeling.

And to not be forgotten or left behind by her teammates was always a good feeling.

"Wasn't me," he said, his gaze similarly fixed on Itachi up on the horizonline. "When Pein shooed us out of headquarters like we were pests, Itachi-san insisted we take you with us. Unconscious and all."

Of course he did...

But the sound of their boss's name made her shiver. After the stunt she'd pulled...

"Does he want me dead?"

"He's not an idiot," he said with a humorless chuckle, turning his attention down to Sakura. "If anything, I think you sealed a fate far worse than if you'd just lied low. Your little technique didn't interfere with the ritual, and we all felt your healing chakra. You can't perfect such a technique for his benefit if you're rotting away in the ground."

She sighed, hugging at her knees. She could hear Orochimaru chiding her for such an impulsive decision—and though she would argue back that she'd thought it through plenty, he would click his tongue in distaste. She hadn't been able to see the situation and its outcomes at every possible angle, and it had cost her.

"Thanks for carrying me, at least."

There was a bit more levity in his next chuckle. "That wasn't me, either."

She stared at him, too tired to emote but feeling the twist in her chest that would've made her jaw drop.

"He insisted."

Slowly she shut her eyes, the stinging pain returning behind her eyes now that the fear had left her completely. Hearing that Itachi had been so kind after being so cruel to her? Of course it didn't sit right, and she fought her flipping stomach to stand.

"Oi," Kisame fussed, leaping to his own feet. "Don't be stupid, little sis. Sit down and get some more rest."

But she was already walking—or rather, stumbling—away, as far from the two of them as she could manage. She hugged herself, gripping her biceps in her fists so tightly they ached. Her muscles were all but screaming at her from the effort, and it was only about two-hundred yards from her teammates that her knees buckled and she fell to them, her breaths ragged and burning.

The sun had set, and clouds had settled in the night sky. As if adding insult to injury, a raindrop fell onto the crown of her head, followed by another, and another, and finally too many more to count.

She had failed, for the first time in many years—and the result of that failure was so much more than getting the wrong order at a restaurant or botching a mission or increasing the learning curve on a jutsu.

Han was dead.

She had almost died.

The Tailed Beast was now in the possession of the Akatsuki.

She was supposed to be better than this! She was the disciple of Orochimaru, a sannin and a master of his craft. She was imbued with the power of the First Hokage, and had chakra control that rivaled only the Fifth's. And she'd made those choices all on her own—picked herself up off the pathetic floor of her own misery and shortcomings and marched her way to power on her own two feet.

Thunder cracked through the sky overhead, and when she squeezed her eyes shut, tears fell from them and streaked down her face.

When was the last time she'd cried? No matter the answer, she fought the tears as hard as if they'd shamed her day after day. She couldn't do something like that in the company of these men, no matter how far from them she sat or how kind they seemed just the day before. They were dangerous, and this was a weakness.

She was alone there with her quiet sobs, her clothes long since soaked as thunderclaps sounded off above her; her heart full in the worst way, overwhelmed and exhausted and hopeless.

Then, around her shoulders there was a warmth draping over her back and down her arms. She recognized it right away as one of their heavy black cloaks, and though she was far too tired to push for chakra, she did not need to. Of course it was Itachi.

His hand fell upon the top of her head, his fingers noticeably cold even through the chilled wet strands of her hair. The both of them were very still for some time, his presence stirring in her a strange calmness that she knew she should not feel, her sobs softening back to nonexistence. When he sunk to his knees to sit beside her, her shiver was not one entirely of displeasure. His palm fell over the back of her head, swiping slowly down her back before he pulled it away.

The bite of anger within her, the only evidence she had that Inner's spark hadn't died, boiled to the surface.

"I could've saved him," she ground out in a harsh whisper, "if you hadn't stopped me."

He offered nothing in return for so long that she turned to watch him from the corner of her throbbing eye. He was staring straight ahead, his lips parted just so. The memory of kissing him from being caught in his Sharingan eye nearly made her head spin again, and she couldn't wait until she felt well enough to kick his ass. As if inadvertently killing someone wasn't enough weight on her conscience, he had to go and add something like that to the mix...!

But then, looking at him now as he sat beside her, she could not deny that he seemed troubled. There was a slight furrow to his brow, a cloudiness to his expression that tugged at that need inside of her—that desperation to protect. He seemed frailer somehow, his thin frame softer and less sharp, less intimidating. To see him hurting, to know that they both were hurting, well, perhaps Inner had missed the full context of the genjutsu.

"I am not of the opinion," Itachi began, "that that's the truth."

A blush spread across her face, her own brows furrowing to hear him say such a thing. She looked away from him, haughtily lifting her chin to keep from crying in frustration.

"I shouldn't be surprised," she spat. "You Uchiha breeze through life. Bet the ANBU-at-eleven guy never fucked anything up."

Itachi's silence this time was different, and she knew she'd struck a nerve somewhere. In a place far back in her memories she heard herself talking trash to Sasuke about Naruto's upbringing, inadvertently offending Sasuke himself in the process. Regardless of where Itachi had been during the massacre, surely he was still as affected by it as her childhood crush. Not only had she let Han die, nearly died herself, and drawn even further attention to her power in the process; she was letting her anger out in a way that wasn't constructive. If she was going to be mad at him, she may as well do it for the right reasons.

"Why did you intervene?" she tried. In her mind she heard his voice from the genjutsu, explaining that he could not afford to make an enemy of his employer. Could he really, truly be so heartless?

Another long pause before finally he spoke again. "Your control of the jutsu was not refined in the slightest. It was more a hemorrhaging of chakra than channeling it with any care."

"That's not—"

"You may not be able to see what my eyes do," he said over her, silencing her to his attention, "but I know you're skilled enough to have felt that it is the truth. You would have killed yourself, even if you'd managed to save him."

"Idiot," she muttered, hugging her knees to her chest. It would have been worth it! Wasn't that all that mattered? Her heart felt pulled in every direction: angry that she'd been thwarted, frustrated that she wasn't strong enough to handle the technique anyway, mortified that she'd been willing to die, horrified that someone had died in her place, grateful that Itachi hadn't let her, and still so, so sick from the aftereffects of the technique itself.

There was nothing more for a long time but the rain, falling in gentle sheets all around them. She tugged at his cloak around her shoulders, sinking into its lingering warmth. It smelled of him even dampened by the rain, a wood-burnt scent that caught in her throat and filled her lungs.

When a small cough broke from him, she cursed inwardly. He'd given up his only protection from not just the chill of night, but from the cold rain, too, only for her to snap at him in return. He'd advocated to bring her along, away from Pein and whatever he might've hoped to do with her, and even carried her despite Kisame being far more suited to that task. And though she couldn't be sure that he was aware of her spotty memory of the Tsukuyomi—Inner was confident that he'd tried to erase it all—she supposed this would tip him off.

With a sigh she scooted over to close the small gap between them, extending out her arm to wrap him in half of the cloak. The gesture seemed to catch him off guard, and he sat frozen for a few seconds before finally pulling it around his shoulder. He leaned into her, their clothed thighs pressed together as his head came to rest atop hers.

The ease at which they sat like this was a quiet shock to Sakura, but the inherent comfort that came from being so close to another person soothed her regardless. She listened for his breathing, that sharp sound in the space between each inhale and subsequent exhale. Briefly she thought of Karin, how the sound of her steady breaths had always grounded Sakura in her darkest of moments.

"Will you tell me something?" he asked then.

She hummed her encouragement, closing her eyes and matching the pace of her breaths to his.

"Am I correct in my assumption," he said in a low voice, "that you left Konoha with the intent to take my brother's place?"

Her exhaustion was too great for her to be guarded at such a question. With his Sharingan, he could extract any secret from her that he wanted. It was more a courtesy, if anything, that he bothered to ask now.

"That's right."

"And now you wish to save the jinchuuriki."

That had been the current plan, all stemming from her original goal to rid the world of useless bloodshed. But her confidence had been put to the test, and she pushed her forehead into her knees. "I don't really know what I'm doing anymore," she admitted with a frown. "I want to save everyone."

The stray croak of a far-off frog sounded somewhere in the small forest while Itachi considered that for a long while. "Your goals can't be achieved if you're dead."

Her next hum was sleepy. "I'll pretend that's why you stopped me."

He gave a small laugh at that. "I believe in you, you know."

Pulling away from him slightly, she angled her face to watch him curiously.

"It's not your fault that he was killed. Truthfully, I wanted to see you succeed. I was...intrigued, to see you do such a thing. And I wonder—should you choose to stay, will you make another attempt?"

Uchiha Itachi, intrigued? By her?

But he was watching her intently, awaiting her answer. Sticking around with these two ensured her safety, and if she wanted to know anything about the mysterious man—or even about Itachi and her ever-growing list of questions about him—she couldn't well go off on her own. And if Inner was out-of-commission, then Sakura's response would need to speak for the both of them.

"You're damn right I will."