NotesFromCaitlin: Hey guys. I was prodded to continue this and I am! I have a faint idea of what needs to happen, so as long as the words don't fail me we should be good to go. FYI I updated and changed the first chapter a little bit, so I would suggest rereading that. But other than that, please enjoy this chapter!

OtherNotes: After this chapter I'm planning on going back in time in the story and switching to Sakura's POV. Just so you know what you're getting into here.

Update: I had to tweak things. The small details keep changing in my head. Sorry.

Dedication: To smileysgoboing who prodded me to write more of this and had a few Naruto rant pow-wows with me! :)

Disclaimer: I don't own anything except a shitton of make-up future gobbly-gook that I had way too much fun with.

The world was fuzzy and distant when Itachi's brain came back online. He blinked at the sky, smog and dust covering what had once been black ink and twinkling lights, or so the stories said. Growing up in Konoha Itachi had never met anyone who had seen the stars in the sky. They had been a myth; stars had been the only bedtime story that had stuck with him into adulthood, leaking into the leftover code-dreams he had until everything glittered beneath his eyes.

"Take a deep breath," a soft voice instructed him. His heart arched toward panic before he wrestled it back under control. The voice continued, level and even, which he knew was done one purpose to give him something easy to focus on. The woman leaning above him had gone for the speech training instead of modification, an unusual route. Most took the faster modification instead, but not this woman. This woman was different.

The thought was strange and random, but when he waited for that thought to spark ten different questions in his mind it was quiet instead. He felt the tug toward a thought, one about the woman above him, a tangent that could have continued on and on, but he carefully pushed back that urge until it settled away. Then there was just silence and the faint presence of distant pain. He breathed easier once he had proof that the poison had been taken care of and the voice continued.

"I got out all the poison I could, so it shouldn't harm your organs, but your mind should still be a little bit jumbled. You need to stay calm and let it pass."

"You're late," Itachi said. It almost took too much energy to keep from mumbling, but it was something to focus on so he didn't mind too much. He blinked again and the fuzzy outline of the world sharpened. Eventually he followed her instructions and took a long breath, slow and deep, but it was only after she jabbed her finger into his shoulder pointedly that he complied. He could still feel his skin tingling with the chemicals of the sewer pipes, but the pain was strangely far away.

"Pain killers," she said lightly. "It isn't the good stuff, but it was what I could bring."

He scoffed in the back of his throat, but it came out more as a cough.

"Have they upgraded you to read minds now?"

She made a small sound, like a mixture between a laugh and some kind of choked off noise of pain. She shook her head and he tracked the motion of the corner of his eye. More than see it, however, he felt it in the way her hands pressed against his side and transferred the motion to him, jolt by jolt. He breathed deeply again, even more slowly, and fought to lift his head.

"Head down, Uchiha," she snapped. Her electric pink hair was bound in a messy coil at the back of her head, but loose strands stuck to the sweat on her cheeks and neck. She was wearing civilian clothes, ill-fitting and just as neon as her hair. He wondered how she had gotten past the cameras without suspicion like this. Why had no one asked questions?

Sakura rolled her eyes at him and then pressed a hand against his shoulder, forcing him down. He cursed her unnatural strength in his head, but didn't fight her. She huffed at his expression and blew at the wisp of pink hairs that hung before her eyes.

"I wore a hat, you bolt-brained fool. And no," she continued, "before you ask; I'm not reading your mind. That upgrade is still only in the hypothetical stages, which, if you would mind recalling, I've told you before." Her breath puffed vaguely against his neck as she moved closer, but then she leaned back and sighed.

"I know what you're thinking because you're mumbling under your breath."

Itachi scowled at the sky. "I do not mumble," he argued. He considered fighting his way into an upright position and then decided that it wasn't worth it. The painkillers were making him numb, a false state of relaxation that could cost them their lives. But, if he had to be honest, it was better than the sting of the poison and chemicals in his wounds. Sakura gave him an uneven smile, her lips chapped and painted specter red. But her eyes were some kind of blue, the murky but not watery, which made his stomach clench with discomfort. He reached up to touch her cheek and she smiled again, uneven and sad, before pressing his arm back to his side before he could carry the motion very far.

"You're all over the 'screens," Sakura said. He couldn't look at her eyes for long without feeling some kind of glitch in his chest, so he turned back to stare at the sky above him instead. "Your partner's on his way to meet you just before the Wind border. He should be there in three days."

"You're not staying," Itachi said to the smoggy, starless sky. It was not a question and it was not a request. He just spoke at the sky and let her make of it what she would. But then, instead of the indifference he had almost expected, she smacked him lightly on the side of the face with her open palm.

"Hey," he said dryly. "Aren't you supposed to care for the injured?"

"I was also trained to kill someone with three brushes of my hand, you chromehead. Stop being such a blazin' dramaborg, yeah?"

But her harsh words were eased away as her hand came up once more and brushed his hair aside. Her fingertips were cool against his face, since his skin was still flushed from the after affects of the poison and almost drowning in the near boiling sewer fluid. He wondered at the sheer difference between the soft and open nature of her expression and the sharp edge of her voice, like the weapons they had been handed as very small children. He wouldn't admit it unless drugged like he was now, but he wondered a lot about the woman above him.

"You tried to kill the Council," she said suddenly, softly as if someone would overhear. He wanted to roll his eyes at her, since they were so far from the city he could barely see the gleam of the lights from the Barrier in the distance, but he didn't.

"Uchiha," she said sharply, drawing his attention back to her. "You're the most wanted man in the country now. They're calling everyone they can to come to the capital as soon as possible and they're doubling the security. You're on your own now."

The moment felt like one of those utterly terrible sim-borg daytime dramas Kisame indulged in when they were stuck for weeks on end laying low in some shitty little bunker. It felt fake, forced and stilted and unreal, but he knew that what was happening wasn't just a lucid haze-sleep; it was real and it was going to change everything. He closed his eyes as a tight feeling overtook his chest and nodded vaguely up at the genetically engineered medic solider whose hand was still pressed softly against his face.

He had failed the mission and now he had to deal with the consequences.