Authoress's Note: Hi, everybody! Now that we are past the prologue, I would like to post some general information about the story. First, the are heavy themes in this story spanning mental illness and trauma, so I urge you to keep this warning in mind if you stick around for the upcoming chapters. I tried to write it as sensitively as possible, but I am only human and can't imagine all triggers-so, consider this a trigger warning. Second, the story sticks with the canon until they're about 15/16-years-old. From there, I pull some things from the canon, but everything is tainted by my alternate plotline. Dun dun dun. Third, this entire story was based around my one-shot titled "Misconceptions." This chapter is a heavily edited version of it snuggled into a brand new plotline.
That's all I have for now! I hope you enjoy the read!
Chapter 1: Misconceptions
Itachi stood across the clearing, his midnight hair gently lifting from his face with the breeze. He was so dark that he stood as a shadow even in the brilliant, noonday sun. This man looked so soft and so lonely, but he was proof that looks are often deceptive in an injurious way to the perceiver. Itachi was nothing less than lethal. He had such a blood-soaked reputation that only the insane would actively seek his company.
As Sakura had long since descended into the depths of madness, she spent the last five years training for this moment. Every drop of sweat shed by her pores and every ounce of blood dripped by her cuts were sacrifices for this battle. Regardless of her preparation, she was no fool: Sakura knew well that this would be the fight of her life or the fight of her death. Even if it was a possibility, she was not interested in settling for the latter.
In her mind, losing was not an option. She had been in direct pursuit of this stone-hearted demon for over two years now. Even if it was by the nature of ripple effect, he was at fault for the event of her undoing. Itachi was a puppeteer who had strung his marionette of a brother down a path of destruction: Sasuke's life had been a candy trail of self-loathing and shattered friendships all laid out by his older brother. Itachi was the perpetrator of this grief.
When she told people why she trained so hard, they laughed and replied, "But don't you specialize in genjutsu, honey? You'll be useless against him. I mean, he uses the sharingan. You should dedicate your time to working in the hospital more." That was alright, though. Sakura had stopped honing her affinity for genjutsu a long time ago, anyway.
The lack of faith in her skills was something that had not changed since her early childhood; over time, she became indifferent to it. With Sasuke dead, Naruto silenced by a coma with no foreseeable end, and Kakashi withdrawn into the depths of guilt, Sakura learned to train on her own. When help was necessary, she consulted with Tsunade. Otherwise, she learned from books, practice, and creativity.
As Sakura stood there in the empty space that would become their battlefield, she knew that she should have been more excited. Instead, no matter how hard she tried, she found her thoughts governed by apathy. The many years of training had emptied her heart and hardened her head. She should have been thrilled, overwhelmed, or nervous—this fight would consummate all of her efforts. But, regardless of how Sakura should have felt, she knew that her current state-of-mind was preferable for the task ahead: she was here to win and her stoic mindset would enable that.
Justice would reign on this day. This wretch would pay for his vile sins. Surely, he would not beg for his life and he would not show his pain, but he would feel it. She did not need a display of agony to be satisfied—she simply needed knowledge of its presence.
Sakura turned her attention to her foe; he seemed to be waiting for her to do something. Perhaps he was unsure of her malicious intentions or maybe he was just another skeptic who decided that she did not warrant his interest. Either way, Itachi was her enemy.
With the empty, but perceiving eyes of a reanimated corpse, she announced, "This is the day that a great prodigy shall fall to never rise again."
At these words, his head shot up and his coal eyes narrowed. Still, he waited for her to take action—and so she complied. Without hesitation, she clapped her hands together in front of herself like a cymbalist and folded down all of her fingers except the pointers. Onlookers would probably be confused, as a normal person would not be able to see what she was doing. However, a trained viewer could see that a slice of air raced out from those fingers and speared in the direction of the man's heart.
This would not do the job, but it would certainly force him to come out and play. The ground where he had been standing exploded into a cloud of dust as her jutsu made contact. Without waiting to see the results, she lifted her leg into the air and slammed it down onto the ground to lay out the limits of their battlefield. As planned, an enormous crater spread from the focal point of where her heel had stricken the earth; trees, rock, and shrubbery shook as her damage shattered the foundation of the landscape.
The subsequent mini-earthquake sent oversized debris flying into the air. Once the earth finished its trembling, these pieces came crashing down as quickly as they had ascended. Using her gloved fist, she shattered a chunk of stone before it could crush her. Then, she folded her arms over her eyes to shield them from the resulting bits showering down onto her hair and into the crevices of her clothing.
When Sakura lowered her arms to inspect the premises, she found Itachi standing directly in front of her. Seemingly unruffled by the grand display of her strength, he still wore his default mask of stoicism. As she assessed the short distance between them, Sakura smirked like a hungry vulture smiling upon its prey: close-ranged battles were her specialty, after all.
Wasting no time, he took the offensive and stepped on the ankle that had not moved since using it to kick a crater into the earth. He quickly followed up his first attack by launching his fist into her gut while he had her trapped.
Sakura cackled as if she were watching a bad comedy: she had been stomped on and punched much harder by her fierce teacher. To her, this man's taijustsu was like a combination attack of a tickle and a poke—hilariously ineffective.
Her grin did not falter as she grabbed ahold of the wrist sinking into her stomach and leached a poisonous jutsu into his chakra system. Itachi went wide-eyed and silent just before melting into a cloud of cawing ravens.
A clone. Her eyes narrowed and she sent out a backward kick. To her surprise and satisfaction, she felt cloth brush up against that foot—she had almost landed a deadly blow. Sakura spun around to face him and, as expected, there Itachi stood in all of his repugnant glory.
"Who are you?" he asked.
She sneered, "A girl who doesn't enjoy small-talk." His sharingan flashed on and he jumped backward.
Slipping into stance, she punched the air in front of her and sent out of a wave of tornado-like winds. It whipped his velvet hair in every direction, but did not shake his posture.
Suddenly, Itachi stood to her right and stated, "I don't know you." The winds died down.
"Ah, yes. But I know all about you," she smiled wistfully, and then specified, "Kakashi told me quite a bit of useful information. And I had to deal with a particular someone pissing and moaning about you at every chance. Really, I know you well enough that you could be my best friend."
Sakura decided to be upfront about her desires. Knowing the bizarre nature of her request, an ill-begotten smirk spread across her face like a staph infection—she would bet that he had never heard anything like this before.
She leaned in with her eyes fixed on his and hissed, "Use it, I dare you. Take me to the land of the dead, the place so miserable that even the devil cries, where angels turn to dust and souls are sucked out of the mouths of the living. Take me to the place where there is no sufficient metaphor for pain—there's just pain." She allowed a weighty pause before finishing, "Show me the terror of the tsukuyomi."
His chest grew full, his cheeks puffed out, and then a large ball of fire came roaring in her direction. She flipped to the side to dodge and the flame darted on past her, continuing on its path into the distance. She guessed that he had used it to further stretch the distance between them.
"Are you afraid to use it? Or am I so weak that you would be putting your mighty skills to waste?" she called with contempt and challenge dripping from her words.
An unkindness of ravens flew overhead. Her knees collapsed inward under sudden pressure and he stood in front of her, offering her a hand up. Not her opponent, but him. He looked as lovely as he always had; but he looked just as algid as he always had, too.
She sighed heavily—she was tired and he was dead.
"Kai."
The world un-warped to its rightful appearance and he was no longer there. He was never there to begin with because it was only genjutsu.
Her laughter rang. It was a mere imitation, though—it lacked the heartiness vital to laughter's true sound.
"Can your special eyes search my soul to pit my deepest desires against me? Or do you just have a developed intuition? I bet you get your jollies from making girls cry; too bad you're out of luck today." Her sarcasm held plenty of bite.
Suddenly, a wall of black fire sprung up between them. She had been warned about this—this was serious. However, she quickly noticed something strange about the situation: her opponent had disappeared. He should be watching her from a perch of safety and smirking as the flames engulfed and smothered her. He should be resting comfortably as his art melted off her skin until there was nothing left of her but ashes.
This fire was just a distraction—Itachi was up to something else. But, the amaterasu was not a circumstance that could just be ignored. Sakura would have to play his game in the meantime.
"Welcome to hell," his disembodied voice echoed in her head.
She knew that she was going to have to do something drastic to escape her current predicament. The unnatural flames crept closer to her with each passing moment. Unwilling to waste more time, her eyebrows furrowed and she quickly formed a lengthy series of hand seals. With her last seal, everything began to tremble—the earth beneath her feet and the air around her body subtly shivered.
One short second was all it took for her jutsu to form an earth cover over the angry flames. As quickly as it arose to cover the fire, it swallowed the heat back down into the planet's crest. Once completed, the ground mended itself as if it had never been disturbed; even the trembling ceased. Most importantly, however, the amaterasu had been completely consumed.
Scanning the premises, Sakura found that her opponent was still missing. This left only one option: she jumped backward. As she jumped, a fist popped out of the ground from where she had been standing—following that fist was a body.
Without hesitation, her hand reached out, grabbed his arm, and pulled him toward her. She then seized his vulnerable moment and jabbed her knee into his stomach. The hand in which she held his arm clenched and his bones cracked beneath her grip.
Their eyes met.
Her heart raced.
Nothing happened—he continued to deny her request.
He pulled out of her grip and hopped backward until he felt secure with the distance between them. He seemed to recognize that any more closed-ranged combat with her would be hazardous for his wellbeing.
Uninterested in waiting tamely for his next move, she flung kunai in his direction. As expected of the prodigy, he easily dodged each one as it came. Sakura found that she was not quite as lucky—blades from behind ripped through her clothing and dragged across her back.
The swallowing earth jutsu had drained her chakra reserves significantly and, in turn, had also lowered her vigilance. This fight was quickly becoming dangerous.
The open wounds on her back burned with a fierceness that harkened ill news—those daggers had been poison-tipped. She had to act fast before she ended up in comatose or, more likely, dead. Closing her eyes, Sakura concentrated her chakra around the cuts and worked to push out the toxins.
As she maneuvered the intruding substance out of her bloodstream, she found herself wishing that she had been born to the Hyuuga clan—X-ray vision would be incredibly helpful while fighting an Akatsuki member with her eyes closed. She brought her awareness to its maximum level, but she knew that it would not be enough to stop Itachi if he decided to land a swift and fatal blow.
"Vigilance," she mentally reminded herself. Considering that she had not been dismembered in the few seconds that her eyes were sealed shut, there was an infinitesimal chance that he was giving her a personal moment. The more likely reason that Sakura was still alive, however, was that he was waiting for something—and that was enough to make anyone uneasy.
As soon as she was certain that the poison had been expelled from her body, her eyes popped open to meet the swirling red of her opponent's irises. His face was mere inches from hers—Sakura's adrenaline kicked into overdrive. He was finally going to appease her previous demands; he was giving in and he was going all-out.
Her heart began to beat erratically in anticipation. She knew it would be painful and that it would certainly leave behind a mental agony so powerful that it might drive her to suicide, but she wanted to experience it. Sakura needed to walk through the land of the dead in order to know that she was still alive.
"Are you sure this is what you want?" Itachi whispered. His face was so close to hers that his breath caressed her cheeks. It was comforting compared to the anguish that was surely about to envelop her.
The corner of her mouth twitched. "Absolutely."
A heavy moment of silence passed.
"It's most unfortunate that," he paused, "in these tedious lives we're forced to live that we don't receive everything we want."
Just as the last utterance floated past his grim lips, he disappeared from sight. It happened so quickly that, in the brilliant sunshine, Itachi's shadowy presence might have never really been there at all. She would have thought that she had dreamt it all if she had not been surrounded by the remaining debris to tell her otherwise.
As Sakura stood amid her own wreckage, time wandered aimlessly. It passed her by as she gazed into her inner abyss, not quite thinking, breathing, moving, or even feeling. All she knew was that she had just watched years of focus and training vanish; she should have known that such things were evanescent.
Life and purpose warped in her mind. They warped into spoken words, laboriously pressing against her lips.
"Perhaps…perhaps when I said 'prodigy,' I was referring to myself."
Authoress's Note: Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed it!
A
