It was the first good dream he had in recent memory.

No one seemed to realize that he could think, just not act. His ability to reason had its limits but the internal world was still there, and it was a fragile thing. He didn't delve too deep or stress it too much. That meant keeping himself floating somewhere between aware and numb.

The longer he was away from the cold cells of that research facility, the greater he struggled to stay in that headspace. Loud voices were everywhere, particularly from a single source that managed to bang on the walls of his mind. A blond. An idiot. An obnoxious loudmouth who he'd probably kill gladly if given the order.

But there were no more orders.

For a while, it felt horrible. In the absence of memories, he had orders. And now he had neither. Or at least, he didn't have memories which felt real. The blond idiot told him things every day. It sounded like nonsense. Incidences and antics that apparently involved him but felt like listening to the life of someone else.

For him, it was easier to just pretend he didn't care, rather than admitting that not remembering was humiliating. He was staring into brilliant blue eyes every fucking day and they swam with hope and annoyance and a million other things that screamed "friendship."

But there was nothing.

He was looking at a pool of memories in the form of a person and not a single thing registered. It was pathetic that this fool knew things he didn't.

Maybe that's why having a good dream almost made him smug. Well, not smug. Something akin to it, though. Hopeful? Not quite. Relaxed? Maybe. It felt like the ice around him was thawing—like being warm wasn't going to result in more shredded memories. He knew they were stripped away, but where they went, no one could tell him.

And in that dream, it felt as if he was alive. Able to grasp thoughts and claim them as his own again. It had been so long since he could call anything his own.

Warm hands. Very warm. They held his hand that was encrusted with glass. Although he couldn't see anything, the sensation was clear as day. Careful fingers maneuvered tweezers around to clean every bit of glass out of the wounds. There was a methodical clink each time a shard hit a metal bowl. It would scratch along the smooth surface and then quiet.

Sometimes, the hands would glide up his forearm, trace the delicate veins pulsing beneath his flesh, and press down as if in reassurance. Usually, pressure meant an injection, but these fingers were gentle—too gentle. They were affectionate.

That's what eventually jolted him awake.

When his eyes fluttered open, sunlight was streaming through the paper screens and his wrecked hand was properly bandaged. It had been dealt with when the incident first occurred, but whoever had been maintaining it was doing a meticulous job. The gauze was neatly secured and sometimes, he couldn't even pinpoint where it was tucked in until after careful observation.

It was probably the man who kept calling himself his brother. The one that looked like him. Sasuke believed it, but the acknowledgment was detached. Rather than living, it felt like watching life happen around him. He observed how they interacted.

The blond, Naruto. The guardian, Kakashi. The brother, Itachi.

At first, he was blind with rage when they shielded his target. She was all he had lived for—the only thing that gave him purpose. And then these ingrates had hidden her. Even now, he wasn't privy to where she was being held. Sometimes, on the news, he would hear her name but one of those three would inevitably turn off the broadcast before a photo could appear.

They seemed to believe just seeing her face would turn him into a shrieking monster. Maybe they were right. Maybe… Sasuke wasn't even sure what anymore. Her presence was lined with hatred. And the burning desire to choke the life and light out of her was almost unbearable.

But…it was complicated.

Everyone loved the light. And she shined brighter than anything he knew.

That was why seeing her, touching her, seeing the fear nearly jolt her heart to a screeching halt—it made him want to stop and continue simultaneously. He wanted to watch her from a distance and admire everything he felt, but when he got too close, snuffing out her existence was all that came to mind.

Like the sun. It's beautiful and brilliant from afar, but get too close, and all you want is to make it go away. It hurts at that proximity. Burns you alive.

Tries to end you before you can end it.

"Dinner is ready, Sasuke."

He looked up, blinking slowly. His "brother" stood in the doorway. It was rare that he got a direct summons. The blond usually came around first and barged in without regard for anyone or thing. Standing quietly, he followed the older man out of the room and into the living room next door.

No one else was there.

"They're working tonight," Itachi explained, settling down at the square table.

Sasuke sat down opposite him. With just this man to restrain him, could he escape and find his target? The thought was fleeting though. Orochimaru's orders were like physical restraints. He had been told to come here and he had also been told to kill his target. Well, running around searching for his target wasn't an order, therefore he couldn't bring himself to make a move.

The longer he mulled over those tethers though, the more annoying they felt. The notion of defying them still sent him into a cold sweat, and that's how he knew there was nothing he could do but endure this strange domestication.

Almost three months had passed now and there were no new orders in sight.

"You're looking much healthier these days," Itachi remarked as they began to eat.

He nodded slightly.

"Perhaps you're getting a little…soft though."

That made him pause. Sasuke looked up, eyes narrowing.

The man appeared unperturbed, chewing thoughtfully around a mouthful of food. After swallowing, he slowly smiled. "Your face is looking quite round. Do you indulge in every snack Naruto gives you?"

For some reason, that irked him. Annoyance was becoming a remarkably familiar emotion. He growled low in his throat, biting down a little too hard on a slice of fish. "Then stop buying the snacks. I know he's not spending the money."

"Already that familiar with Naruto?" Itachi mused.

His tone was condescending, maybe it always was, but this time it rubbed Sasuke particularly wrong. "No."

"As a child, you preferred tomatoes over chips and other salty snacks," he went on, unfettered. "Who would have thought eventually you'd be craving all those fat-filled foods."

"What do you want?" Sasuke snapped, slamming his bowl of rice down.

Another infuriating smile.

"What?" he demanded, lips curling back.

"Why don't we spar? After our meal, of course," Itachi offered, continuing to eat.

Sasuke stared. And then stared some more. Eventually, he pushed the food away from himself and crossed his arms. "I could kill you."

He chuckled, brightly amused. "Foolish little brother. You won't even be able to land a hit."

XXX

Sakura was aware of the risks she took. In the three months since Sasuke's return, she had begun working on another procedure. Weighing the pros and cons was difficult, but she hadn't wanted to present the idea until she was somewhat confident in the chance of success.

After two months, she considered halting her research and trusting in Naruto to break through the conditioning. By the time three months passed, she was waning. There were small changes based on the reports her friend shared, but it didn't seem significant—not in the way they needed it to be.

They were on a time limit and each day it felt like Orochimaru was edging closer. Public unrest had quieted somewhat, but the medical community was increasingly aggravated. They wanted details and were not above harassing everyone around them. To put it in perspective, Sakura wasn't sure if she had stepped foot off the Uchiha estate in three months.

Even Naruto and Sasuke had been allowed off the property. How was that even fair? Or rather, that's how different their positions actually were. Orochimaru wasn't threatening Sasuke anymore. He was going full force after her and she could feel it in every move.

"Not hungry tonight?" Naruto asked around a mouthful of food.

She didn't even have the energy to scold him. Shaking her head slightly, she pushed back from the table. Across from her, Kakashi and Naruto stilled as well. A part of her was guilty for springing this on them when they had gone out of their way to join her for dinner, but her ideas were beginning to gnaw at her.

Usually, the three of them ate with Sasuke to try and jog his memory or perhaps just implant newer, better ones. It had been an unusual request from Itachi that evening. He wanted to be alone with Sasuke – for what reason, no one really knew.

It would've been much better if Itachi was present for her presentation, but it was alright. She would tell him later. She had to.

"Is something the matter?" Kakashi asked, eyes crinkling good-naturedly.

"I have an idea."

Naruto frowned, wiping grains of rice off his face. "About what, Sakura-chan?"

"About a way to unlock Sasuke-kun's memories." Her words shrank as she spoke, eyes dropping to her fidgeting hands. "It's going to sound crazy, but you have to hear me out."

"Honestly, anything you have up your sleeve has gotta have some merit," Naruto responded earnestly, eyes suddenly seeming tired. "I know that I've only been saying good stuff about teme, but he's just…"

"It's what happens to people who have seen too much and know too much suffering," Kakashi finished. "Sasuke isn't the type who can normally talk about his feelings. Stripping someone like that of their dignity, memories, and self makes it near impossible to bring him back to the level of a functioning human being." His brows drew together, fingers tightening around one another.

Sakura nodded in understanding. "That's what I think, too. It'll take drastic measures to get him to a better place, otherwise I doubt he'll ever recover."

"It's only been three months though," Naruto hastily interrupted, "you both are talking like it's a fatal condition. I think we're overreacting."

"If he's functioning in five years or ten years, we'll have already given Orochimaru all the time he needs to get away with this crime," Kakashi replied forlornly. "I hate to gamble, but there's no choice. He's our best and most reliable lead to stopping all of it."

Taking a deep breath, Sakura spoke in a flurry, "Do you remember when Itachi-san returned and said he had accidentally tapped into someone's mind and killed them? At Orochimaru's research facility? What if he could utilize that same ability but instead of crushing someone's mind, he unlocked Sasuke-kun's. Trauma-induced amnesia is a complicated matter, and no one has ever had the ability to reach directly in and manipulate the fibers of someone's mind. However, with Itachi-san, we could hypothetically traverse those complex networks and undo the conditioning."

As the silence settled, Sakura felt a deep dread in the pit of her stomach. Saying everything out loud made it sound even crazier than in her head. Their lack of a response didn't help to ease the nerves either. Rather, it seemed like they were preparing to treat her with the caution of a normal person handling the clinically insane.

Deciding to just go on before they could do that, Sakura explained, "It's not far-fetched. If we consider everything, he's basically a walking-talking corpse. The Sasuke-kun we all know would rather risk death than live like that. This is the most desperate situation he has ever been in and I want to treat it with the severity that he would've treated it."

"It's not that I'm skeptical of your logic," Kakashi began gently with only a fraction of the delicacy she feared, "but I'm more concerned about Itachi's ability to do it. He's a very reliable man but asking him to walk a tight rope and potentially kill his own brother in the process is a heavy request."

Sakura clenched her fists. "I think if it were up to him, having a brother who never really came home is just as good as having killed him."

The two men exchanged a complicated look. She studied them with growing ire but held back the urge to snap. They were saying things she understood and had considered herself. The difference was that she had weighed the pros and cons at length already.

They were faced with potentially burying Sasuke for good or letting him run amok as a monster grafted by the hands of a maniac.

In the end, she thought the answer was clear, if not intensely difficult to make peace with.

"One more week."

She looked up, surprised to see Naruto speaking. Kakashi appeared resigned, though she didn't understand how they had communicated so deftly. Her friend was watching her gravely, bright eyes dark with sobriety. "What?" she swallowed hard.

"Let's give it one more week. And if there's really no hope, we pitch this idea to Itachi."

"Deal."