A/N: Merry Christmas!

First Flower of Spring

-Chapter Twenty-

I, Monster

The plan, such as it was, was to inspire a few moments of true terror into the young jinchuriki, for Akatsuki was a very real threat. No matter the care Itachi took in delaying the collection of the Kyuubi, his protection or prevarication could never become obvious and so could never be a wholly secure shield.

Kisame might act the part of a man capable of being led by his bloodlust, but he was a shinobi very much in control of his actions. Itachi had possessed few worries that he would actually maim the child before Jiraiya would conveniently intervene, though he didn't doubt the Sage was enjoying acting the fool with his genjutsu.

The Sannin were all three incredible ninja, but more than their strengths, they were made unforgettable by their...habits.

But he had not anticipated the appearance of Sasuke.

He looked well, was his first relieved thought, though he seemed to have developed no resistance to his embedded suggestion with the development of his own Sharingan. That was worrying, because a lack of resistance to genjutsu or the hypnotic-eye component of the Sharingan meant an inherent weakness to the monstrous Curse that fueled their kekkei genkei. It was telling that he had chosen to hear only of 'hatred' rather than Itachi's desire for him to live.

He would have charged Itachi recklessly and Itachi would have been forced to put on a very convincing display of the infamous clan-killer.

Itachi would have done so, because his actions kept Sasuke inviolate from the monsters Itachi could not slay.

But there was a presence even more wholly unexpected than his brother. He'd tracked his brother's progress as best he could, but though he'd known Hatake Kakashi and the Kyuubi's newest vessel and thought long and hard about the implications of that upon Sasuke's development, there was very little information to be had about Haruno Sakura.

The obligatory kunoichi, whose only shinobi relative was a jounin better known for his gentle temper than any of his skills. Water affinity, remarkable resistance to genjutsu. But without established clan traits, it would be impossible to predict if the young girl would inherit any of that. It hadn't even been terribly clear how they were related, though his mother had taken the girl in after her parents had died.

Genin had no business being so controlled in the face of Kisame, whose chakra might well have been that of a tailed-beast aside from his frightening physical appearance. And though he himself was not frightening in the same ways, he should have inspired at least some measure of trepidation even if the girl wasn't fully aware of him and his capabilities.

But despite petal-pink hair and a petite, delicate frame made more so by an ill-fitting top, her expression reminded him of nothing so much as a more lively version of the Root operatives he'd had the misfortune to work with in the past. No fear, just an unnerving kind of consideration.

And then had walked in a man he'd known of only through Bingo book entries, though it was very likely that Kisame might have known him personally. Kurutta-inu had seemed a distinctive moniker to bear, but with his first words Itachi began to sense that it was well-earned.

And that insane dog knew his little brother's team. Identified himself as some kind of 'pet' to the little kunoichi, asked permission of her for something Itachi didn't understand until his chakra shifted. He'd been going blind since he'd first developed the Mangekyo, using it recklessly because he had no plans of living long enough for it to become a handicap greater than the disease preying on his body. The Sharingan was not the Byakugan and he was no sensor-type, but the man was projecting so freely he didn't need either.

With the shift in his chakra came a change in his eyes, his pupils pulling in as spines radiated out to touch the rim of his irises, expanding to become black-edged petals. First three, but before it had finished, they were too many to count so easily. The last time he'd seen such a clear ecstatic state it had been in Hidan. He'd known other shinobi who enjoyed battle, of course, but that heavy-lidded look that this Haruno Jun wore should never have a place where other people could see.

Uchiha Itachi was a private person by both nature and training and if saying it aloud wouldn't have earned him a ribbing from Kisame and broken his personal protocol of maintaining an air of inscrutability during missions, he would have said he almost felt sullied by it. Like it was something that might be contagious.

But whatever his opinion of the shinobi's state of mind, he was undeniably very good. Close-combat styles fared badly against Kisame. The former Kisa-nin had strength, reach, and chakra on any opponent, even without factoring in Samehada's unique abilities. If he didn't have the bad habit of baiting his opponents, Kisame could kill most shinobi on their first approach. Jun used clawed gauntlets, which necessitated extremely close combat, extending his reach by less than eight inches.

Samehada didn't even graze him close enough to shear his chakra, but his claws opened furrows in Kisame's Akatsuki cloak. For a shinobi, not terribly close, but close enough to really draw Kisame's interest. His Sharingan automatically catalogued and processed things other shinobi would never see as he did-how Jun was unusually flexible for a male ninja, though the terrible scarring on his back should have compromised it, how quickly his eyes began to track Kisame's movements, the almost unnatural rapidity with which he recovered from his headlong lunge, a movement normally so foolish that it wasn't an action to be expected from someone who'd once carried a jounin rank- but his attention was drawn to his brother.

Because the girl's hand was very close to Sasuke's throat and though she was wearing a smile, that wasn't a genin's killing intent at work. It wasn't even a jounin's, truly. It was something eerier than that. It wasn't something as intangible as the fear he'd known when the Kyuubi came or in the innumerable battles he'd seen. This was almost something shifting in the air-like to believe in it might make it real enough to kill. He couldn't decide if it was genjutsu or ninjutsu or some kekkei genkei fusion of the two, but that was immaterial.

Her eyes turned to meet his fearlessly-or foolishly-and her eyes seemed to brighten. Her question hung heavy in his mind, as did Jun's innuendo-filled follow-up. She hadn't asked why a brother might turn on his clan. Her question had been, Once you'd gotten a taste, why...

It didn't take any tricks of Sharingan prognosis to imagine what her question was.

If his purpose was to truly test his capacity, why had he stopped? Why had Uchiha Itachi slaughtered an entire clan and then faded in obscurity to re-emerge as part of Akatsuki, which was not in the business of mass murder so much as underselling established villages?

He had many answers prepared for many questions, but none for that one. Because that wasn't a question that belonged in the mouth of a village-nin. And if fellow missing-nin experienced much curiosity about his person, they tended not to ask.

"You're Haruno Sakura," he observed, modulating his tone carefully so as to not express any of those thoughts.

"Yes, Itachi-san," she said, not loosing her regained grip on Sasuke, but carefully keeping the guan-dao she'd unsealed in a defensive position.

"Your companion identified himself as a Haruno as well, but when he was still affiliated with a village, that wasn't the name he used."

"The blood wasn't as telling back then," Sakura replied. "We don't need the name. It doesn't make the difference."

Sasuke tried to jerk his arm free, but it was a futile exercise. "Let me go," he snarled. "Let me go, Sakura! I'm going to kill him!"

"Let him try, if he likes," Itachi said.

"There will be lots of paperwork if Sasuke-san dies and we don't have authorization to be outside the village. And scolding by Kakashi-sensei." Sakura peered at him. "You really don't feel it at all, do you? You're free," she said enviously.

"...free?" Itachi had never once felt free in his entire life. First the expectations of his father, then the orders of his village, then the plotting of a madman had left him nothing more than a very cleverly jointed puppet to act in their plays.

Her eyes slid over to Sasuke, then back to him. "The fascination." Her pupils began to retract, the black spines emerging as nubs but not becoming fully blown petals. Just enough for him to see them, then they were swallowed up again. As is she'd forced them back. "You don't enjoy it," she said accusingly. Then she seemed to consider her own words. "That must be very difficult for you, Itachi-san."

"Sakura!" Sasuke barked, wrenching himself loose at last.

This time she really frowned at him. "Itachi-san-"

"Why are you still talking to him like that?" Sasuke bellowed. "What don't you get? He murdered my family? If it was your family, would you just step aside?"

Sakura blinked. "You don't want me to answer that, Sasuke-san."

"Yes, I do! Because you'd do the same, so get the hell out of my way!"

"No," Sakura replied softly, "I wouldn't."

Jun laughed again, his concentration apparently not wholly on his battle with Kisame. It cost him, blood spattering as Samehada tore off all the flesh on the top of his left shoulder. He didn't even flinch. "You always did look like a cold fish," he jested, "but I think you'll be warm inside. Cold hands, warm chest cavity. That's the way humans work, jou-chan."

Itachi's attention was not distracted, but he couldn't say he'd expected her to choose that moment to sign a retreat to her teammate trapped opposite them, the hand that had been so recently keeping Sasuke back full of kunai trailing streamers of paper explosives. Jun was clearly more aware of this tactic, as he launched himself out of the way, catching up the slower genin before the blast could catch either of them. Sakura had caught Sasuke a blow with the pole of her guan-dao, digging in her feet and leaping with him still partially doubled over the shaft. Neither he nor Kisame were injured either, which meant that pursuit wouldn't have been an issue.

Thankfully, the Toad Sannin chose just that moment to make his appearance.

But Itachi had seen enough already, the Mangekyo giving him an unnerving momentary glimpse when he'd tried to probe deeper in Haruno Sakura's mind. Just for an instant, a tall, sober figure in billowing robes had seemed to meet his eyes from where he loomed protectively over the young shinobi. And, from the scene of Kisame's battle, he had sensed human chakra emanating from the bone-white senbon the insane dog wore in his hair.

There was far more to Haruno Sakura than had appeared in her dossier. He would discover whether or not she was a danger far closer to Sasuke than either Danzo or Madara. And if she was, he would protect his little brother. Just as he always had.

-[-]-[-]-[-]-[-]-[-]-

Naruto's jacket was liberally soaked in blood. Not his blood, but Jun's. His shoulder looked like someone had tried to wedge him into a meat grinder, but he'd tossed Naruto over it with a grinning carelessness that bypassed 'cool' and edged toward 'all is not right with this one'.

As Naruto kept a wary eye on the escalating argument-alright, so mostly it was Sasuke revealing more emotion than Naruto had ever seen from the other boy-that was occurring what Jiraiya had decided was still a safe distance away, the old man was trying to bind up Jun's shoulder.

"You're going to have to have this looked at by a medic-nin. Though you're not acting like it hurts-kekkei genkei?"

Jun's grin didn't waver as he tilted his head toward Sakura, his long bangs and dangling earrings shifting with the movement. "It's part of the kekkei genkei, yes. The pain will come when jou-chan decides to bring it."

A skeptical expression crossed Jiraiya's face. "What? You just do what she tells you? Isn't she a little young to be in that kind of a S&M relationship?"

As Naruto tried not to decide whether he should snicker, gag, or marvel at how much sense that made, Jun's eyelids fell, not so much masking the expression of satisfaction that flowed into his face but enhancing it. "Jou-chan's learning. As a child, she's got me. If she survives, when she's grown, she'll bring them all to their knees. Then, she'll be the oyakata-sama."

Deep satisfaction just seemed to spill from him as he lounged, shirtless and bloodied, eyes fixed on Sakura in a way that made Naruto want to snap at him to stop that, Sakura-chan was weird enough already.

"Is all the girl's family like you?" Jiraiya asked him in consternation.

"That would be why it's called a kekkei genkei," Jun replied.

"I don't remember any bloodline that manifests like yours in Konoha."

Jun laughed then. "No, you wouldn't. Konoha doesn't like bloodlines like ours."

"Like ours?" Jiraiya prompted as he finished he field treatment and made the med-kit he'd produced disappear back into a dozen hidden pockets that apparently served him instead of more standard equipment pouches.

But Jun offered no more answers.

Naruto thought that was probably for the best. If this conversation moved into the spirit of confessions, he'd have to think about explaining to his teammates about the flooded basement room and the truth he'd discovered while suffering through training with Ebisu-sensei. About chakra and red chakra and a voice that wasn't his, offering things he didn't want to take. But he had. In the battle against Gaara. It was why he'd come out here, with the pervy-sage. He could live without summoning giant toads, but he'd seemed to know. About the thing inside him. He wasn't stupid, he could guess what it was, but he didn't want to admit it.

It had helped against Gaara, but he didn't think it could be trusted. People hardly ever showed their cruel face first and he didn't that it would be much different. If the old man could teach him to control it, it would worth bearing with the sad realization that Jiraiya of the Legendary Three reverted to a mental age of about sixteen every time he laid eyes on a girl with a B-cup or better.

Naruto had been really unimpressed so far, but he held out hope that the pervy-sage would operate like Kakashi-sensei. The more general weirdness, the more impressive when he was actually serious.

Unfortunately, unlike his two teammates still at it across the way, he'd pretty much blinked in the hall after Jiraiya had sealed away the black fire Sasuke's brother had used to escape and all the awesomeness had pretty much evaporated, even though he was pretending to be a total idiot at the moment. He had a feeling that would change.

Naruto sighed and consoled himself on the thought that at least he wouldn't be making the journey back to the village with Sasuke and Sakura. He was more than happy to let his two emotionally stunted teammates fend for themselves this once. Because he could see both their points and wanted none of their little-alright, not little-argument. For once, they were going to have to figure things out for themselves.

-[-]-[-]-[-]-[-]-[-]-[-]-[-]-

Sasuke had raged at Sakura until he was hoarse, but she'd just watched him with those impossibly impassive eyes. "Don't you even care?" he shouted, aware that the white-haired man who'd saved them was eyeing them from the edge of the field he'd brought them to after Itachi had escaped. Right there, within his reach, and he'd never even gotten to attack. "He's a murderer!"

She finally looked a bit piqued at that. "Sasuke-san, I used paper explosives in a civilian place of business. If, by chance, someone had died in one of the rooms because of that, I would also be a murderer. We weren't here on a sanctioned mission. And after thanking Jiraiya-sama, we should return to the village before someone notices we're missing. You wouldn't let me stop and fill out the log properly."

"...I can't stand you," Sasuke snarled at her. "Don't you ever feel anything at all? All you do is stand there and judge me and you don't know anything!"

Her eyes slid to one side, taking in something that wasn't there, then she looked at him. "No, I don't. I don't know what you're feeling, Sasuke-san. But I would like it if you tried to explain. And if you come to Ran-oba-san's house tomorrow, he'll be there." She said 'he' with an odd intonation, almost as if it should be a proper noun. "If he says I can, we can...talk," she ventured uncertainly.

Sasuke didn't want to talk to Sakura. He hardly even wanted to look at her, even when they'd gotten a quasi-lecture by the man-apparently the Sannin Jiraiya-and been sent back to the village like civilian children caught doing something they shouldn't.

But he found himself at her house the next day regardless, because there had been a moment in the hallway when he'd considered cutting through Sakura to get to Itachi.

He reassured himself that he didn't feel guilty for that, both because she had no right to stand between him and his brother and because he hadn't actually done it. But he felt...odd. Like he wasn't quite comfortable in his own skin. He hadn't slept, instead revisiting obsessively the long minutes in the hall, but the closer it grew toward dawn, the more he felt like the hot-headed boy who'd tried to lunge at Itachi wasn't him at all, but a stranger.

Sasuke had mercilessly mocked Naruto for using the same tactics on far less dangerous enemies. It was as if all the grueling hours of training, the careful minutes where he'd mapped out how he could counter each of his brother's techniques, the careful bridle he'd put on his emotions-all that disappeared, as if it had never existed. Though it galled him to admit it, even if he'd better jutsu, it wouldn't have been his jutsu that had lost him the fight. It would have been his loss of control.

That was why Itachi always won, after all. Because nothing could touch him.

Almost like nothing could touch Sakura.

He rapped on the door and the older woman who'd been so dismissive of them when they were preparing to leave for Wave answered. "You're here after all," she said shortly as she let him in. "This way."

She led him inside and showed him into a room they hadn't visited last time he was here. The woman closed the door behind him, not entering the room herself, which was so odd it would have made him question regardless of what was waiting for him inside. Sakura was inside, sitting patiently in the seiza position with her back to the door. The scroll in which he knew she sealed her weapon was sitting carefully to one side.

She wasn't alone.

The rest of the house was modern, but this one room was an aberration. As far as Sasuke knew, Sakura's guardian was a baker. There would be no need for a formal room such as this, done in the Shoin style. But the very strangeness of it better helped it hold the three very different men in the room with Sakura. Two sat about midway along the room, just behind Sakura, turned at roughly 45 degree angles to the wall so that they could easily watch both Sakura and the man who sat at the far end of the room.

He focused on the nearer men first. One was the odd nin that called himself Sakura's dog. The other was a stranger, but he dismissed him almost immediately.

Because the real threat in this room was watching him with eyes that were the exact shade of green that Sakura's were, but infinitely colder. And he was smiling.

"So this is the littlest Uchiha," he said, beckoning him forward. Begrudging, Sasuke came to sit next to Sakura, but he pointedly did not sit seiza. This seemed to move the man not at all. "You have been in our Sakura's care. I hope you did not find it too rough. She has informed me she should like to speak with you more frankly. However, to do so might raise some sensitive topics and therefore she brought you to me."

"And who are you?" Sasuke asked boldly.

"To you? No one in particular. A wind that brushes against a flower and moves past. But to Sakura, I am the head of her line."

"Head? You don't look like the head of a civilian clan."

"I make no such claims. However, I fear that I must demand some circumspection from you."

"Wh-" The question caught in his throat, because seals appeared on the walls, the ceiling, and the floor upon which he sat and he felt it take in a tight knot of chakra at his throat. He shoved down his panic, but he could feel his perceptions shift as his Sharingan activated.

"You would need at least Mangekyo to resist my sealing," the man informed him in that off-handedly pleasant way. "Though you seem unusually susceptible to intrusion by foreign chakra. If you intend to keep him, Sakura, you'll need to guard him well."

"Yes, oyakata-sama," Sakura replied demurely.

The man's attention came back to Sasuke. His building outrage was immediately doused by the feeling that if a kunai could have sentience, having its attention might feel the same as this man's eyes. If he leaned forward, he had an uncanny fear that he might bleed. "It does nothing more than require your silence. Your sensei is under the same seal."

Sasuke's mind balked at the thought of this man being powerful enough to fix a seal on Hatake Kakashi. But then, he reminded himself, it wasn't like Kakashi was a renowned fuinjutsu specialist. And if he'd saturated his chakra into the walls before he'd ever entered the room, that might explain why he hadn't sensed the trap. Or, maybe, this man really was that strong.

His eyes had been on him while Sasuke's thoughts raced, but he hadn't spoken. "So," Sasuke said, forcing the words through slightly numb lips, "you're a shinobi clan?"

"In a matter of speaking, though many choose to avoid their bloodline rather than embracing it. So long as it does not manifest, that is their right. I exist for those for whom it does manifest. Our kekkei genkei." His eyes shifted, filling with petals and the sense of dread that Sasuke felt became a tangible weight. It wore very heavily not only on him, because the two men went down in dogeza, Sakura following with a deliberateness that he supposed was meant to show she did it more freely.

Sasuke struggled against it, sweat breaking out on his forehead as he refused to give in to the intimidation. The man chuckled, blood-dark lashes sweeping down over his eyes and concealing the moment when his eyes returned to normal. "If you can't learn to bend," he said, "someday someone with less care will break you. He is yours, Sakura. Take him to your room. I came today to consult with Tsubasa about your lessons, rather than with the intention of facilitating useless bonds."

His eyes were Sakura's shade of green and he too did the motion where they swept slightly to one side, as if he was looking at something Sasuke couldn't see. A brow arched, seemingly in reaction to that invisible entity, but Sakura was already shuffling backwards out of the room on her knees, without turning her back on the seated man. Sasuke stood, ignoring the way his legs trembled, and then very pointedly turned his back on the him.

When they'd escaped-left, he corrected himself-the room, he grabbed Sakura and effortlessly retraced their path from his last visit to the room that still looked as if no little girl had ever stepped foot in it.

"What. Was. That," he demanded tightly.

Sakura looked at him and sighed. She silently tried to offer him a seat on the bed, but he just glared at her. "You asked me yesterday, Sasuke-san, if I wouldn't do the same if someone had killed my family. I could not answer that without the oyakata-sama's permission."

"And?"

She frowned at him. "Shiki-dono-the oyakata-sama-is the head of our family. I am his heir. Chance of birth decides this in other families, but Shiki-dono is related to me only distantly. He is forbidden from having children, so any may put forward their own children forward as one suitable to inherit. They allow us to play together, when they first bring us to the compound. It makes a better test, I suppose, as well as keeping us from being underfoot. And then the heir-candidates are asked to do one very simple task in order to prove that they are the one most suitable to follow Shiki-dono."

"And what is that?" Sasuke prompted with increasing impatience.

"We prove our capacity," Sakura answered him.

A/N: The Haruno clan seemed to take some of their cues from The Bacchae this chapter. Divine ecstatic madness, less the divine, is what Jun embodies, while the head of the clan is the embodiment of cold rationality brought to the opposite extreme. Some people make playlist suggestions, I suggest Greek tragedies. But the last chapter did make something very clear. There are a lot of Itachi fans reading this.