Itachi liked to think he was a patient man. He'd put up with his fair share of temper tantrums from Sasuke when they were younger, but Sakura's behavior was completely unacceptable in his opinion.

He knew, of course, that he was in no position to reprimand her. That would surely only exacerbate the situation.

But he didn't like the way she lost her temper in front of the children. He didn't like the way she had said such cruel things about him while they were listening. It was different when they had been alone – when the bite of her words only stung him. It was entirely different to see Sachi and Yamato frightened of the woman who would supposedly be taking over care of them in the near future.

It occurred to him that he was the reason she was so volatile. She didn't know the sacrifices that he had made, the horrible things he'd been through. All she knew was that he was the source of her pain.

But there was nothing he could do about that.

"Itachi-san, will you read us a story?" Sachi was tugging on his sleeve with a stack of children's books propped under her arm.

"If you and Yamato can agree on which one to read," he replied. He leaned back against the headboard of Sachi's bed and stretched his legs out.

Sachi toddled over to Yamato's bed where he sat fiddling around with a kunai he had "borrowed" from Itachi's weapons pouch. She tossed the books on the bed and climbed up next to her brother.

Itachi closed his eyes and smiled, listening to Sachi and Yamato discuss which book they'd like to hear. He was surprised they hadn't begun to argue yet.

He tried not to think about Sakura downstairs, probably still sitting at the table with her head in her hands – not cleaning the dishes that ought to have been properly rinsed off by now.

He felt Sachi pull on his sleeve again and cracked open an eye. She extended a book to him and began climbing into his lap. The book was pink with a picture of a little blonde girl holding a purple cake on the cover.

"Princess Coco's Baking Adventure," Itachi read the title aloud, "Did you approve this, Yamato?"

Yamato shrugged his shoulders indifferently and continued spinning the kunai around his fingers.

"Princess Coco's Baking Adventure it is," Itachi said, pulling Sachi fully into his lap and tucking her head under his chin. He held the book open to where she could see the pictures and began to read to her.

He felt weirdly calm and pleasant reading to Sachi. She giggled as he read, pointing with excitement to things little girls liked like Princess Coco's fancy dress or trays of cupcakes with rainbow frosting.

He realized with a start that he was feeling happy. In spite of being so close to enemy territory with a Konoha-nin essentially taking care of him, he felt happy.

Sachi was the source of this happiness – he couldn't really deny it at this point. He felt a strong affection for the girl, and her older brother to a lesser degree. The thought of leaving her with Sakura pained him. The thought of leaving her at all pained him.

He knew what was best for her: being in Konoha where she would be taken care of and loved. He could think of no better place for her. It certainly wouldn't be with him in Rain or on the run.

Itachi turned the page and continued reading softly. He spared a glance at Yamato who had abandoned his kunai practice and was engrossed quietly in a book of his own.

Flipping the page, Itachi began to read the caption underneath a picture of Princess Coco wearing an apron and holding up a spatula coated with pink frosting when he noticed that Sachi had not pointed to anything in a while. He looked down into his lap and saw her even breathing, her chest rising and falling in a steady cadence. Her eyes were shut, her thick lashes resting lightly on her cheeks.

Itachi shut the book and set it down on the bed beside him and pulled the blanket over the both of them. Sachi had the right idea. He could use a good nap, too.

.

He was awake the instant he felt Sakura's presence on the other side of the door. His immediate reaction was that he needed to move away from Sachi. Sakura already had the wrong idea about their relationship. He didn't feel the need to explain it to her (it was none of her business), but seeing the pair of them dozing off together probably didn't paint the best picture.

But he didn't want to wake the poor girl who looked so much like a cherub when she was sleeping. Her cheeks were tinged and rosy and her breaths were soft, nearly musical. She looked like she could have been a character from her book or an angel from a painting.

Instead of jostling her, Itachi stayed put but shifted himself up higher so that he was sitting up. He saw from the light pouring through the window that it was somewhere close to noon. He had slept for most of the morning. He noticed that Yamato appeared to be missing, his kunai and books left scattered about his bed.

"Itachi-san," Sakura said, not bothering to knock before she entered the room. If she had any particular feelings about him holding Sachi against his chest while they both were in her bed she made no indication of it. Her gaze was steely and sharp.

"I was hoping to get in a quick healing session," she said, "If you feel well-rested enough."

Itachi gingerly stood up, cradling Sachi in his arms and set her down in the spot he had just been. When he had covered her again with the blanket he turned back to Sakura.

A feeling of dizziness swept over him – not as severe as the first time it had happened, but strong enough that Itachi had to brace his hand against the wall beside the bed.

Sakura was at his side in an instant, her fingers looped around his arms. She tried to pull him toward Yamato's bed, but he pushed her away.

"I'm fine," he said, though he was not feeling fine, "Where is Yamato?"

"Rokuda-san has put him to work," Sakura said, "He's outside pulling weeds."

Itachi didn't know who Rokuda was, but was pleased to know that Yamato was doing something to pull his weight – their weight, he thought. He had made a deal with Sakura, but that had nothing to do with the inn in which he and the children were staying for free now.

"So how about that healing session?" Sakura asked.

He took a good look at her now. She was wearing what he presumed was her standard gear – red vest, black shorts with a pink apron buckled over top. They were rumpled like she had slept in them. Her eyes were dry, but bloodshot. She had most likely been crying and had the good sense to wash her face afterwards.

"Are you alright?" he asked. It was probably not a good idea to ask such a question. She seemed volatile enough to explode at even an innocent inquiry. He figured she might have taken offense at the fact that he was either telling her she didn't look alright or that she wasn't in the best condition to facilitate a healing session.

But instead her shoulders appeared to droop and she cast her eyes downward toward his feet.

"I should be the one asking you that," she said.

Itachi had nothing to say to that and they stood in silence for a moment before Sakura spoke again.

"Let's take this across the hall so we don't wake Sachi," she said, "I'd really like to make some good progress today."

Itachi followed her to his own room and took a seat on his bed. Sakura stood in front of him – too close for his comfort – but then her hands were on his chest, funneling her sweet, cooling chakra into his lungs.

"There will have to be two phases to your recovery," she said, her tone clinical and nothing like the way she had spoken to him in the kitchen, "The first phase will be to clear the new infection, but because you are the key to my cure for it, that phase will likely be prolonged."

Itachi nodded and resisted the urge to let his eyes fall shut. The pain in his chest had begun to fade away and he felt like his lungs could take in a full and deep breath without causing him to careen into a coughing fit. He didn't want to test that theory just yet, but the sensation was relaxing all the same.

"As for your autoimmune disease," Sakura began, "It will take much longer to fix. Longer than I original thought."

His posture went rigid and he locked his eyes onto hers. "So you're unable to hold up your end of the bargain?" he asked.

"Not in the time frame I slated," she said, her tone still clinical, no trace of the volatility he had been expected, "But if you can spare a few extra days, I can still make sure you leave here a perfectly healthy man."

Itachi thought about this for a moment. He was already defying his orders from Akatsuki. He should have arrived in Rain by now and people would be wondering where he was. Kisame might cover for him, but he couldn't know for sure.

He could potentially tell them the truth – a portion of it at least. He had fallen ill with a highly contagious disease and had gone to the nearest town with a force able to handle such an infection.

But if they chose to investigate these claims they would find Sakura at the heart of the operation. It was an entanglement that was questionable at best – traitorous at worst.

He didn't really have a choice – he supposed. He could leave after she had cleared the infection, but he was likely to get sick again and die. He couldn't fathom dying any way but by Sasuke's hand – a fate he could no longer predict now that he had no idea where his little brother was. Last he had heard, the boy had killed Orochimaru and fled from Sound.

If he stayed here, Sakura could heal him and Sasuke would have his chance at revenge. That was more important than anything else.

Distantly, as if the thought was not his own, he was pleased to know that staying a few days longer meant more time with Sachi as well. He did not dwell on that.

"I guess I'll have to stay a few extra days, then," Itachi said.

Sakura peered at him, head tilted. A strand a pink hair had fallen into her eyes and she flicked it away with a slender finger. Itachi wondered briefly what Sasuke thought of this very pink woman in front of him. Did he put up with her sometimes violent antics? Did she even have those spurts of anger when Sasuke was around?

"You're nothing like I thought you would be, Itachi-san."

She was looking at him with an expression he recognized to be regret, but he couldn't quite determine why she would feel that way. Looking into her eyes, bloodshot as they were, made him feel uncomfortable so he shifted his gaze to the floor.

"I thought you might be more like Sasuke," she ventured. He could tell by her voice that she was nervous to bring up his brother in front of him.

"The way you are with Sachi…" she said, her words trailing, falling, sinking, "I can't imagine Sasuke acting that way. He's always so cold. Maybe he wouldn't be that way around kids. Babies. I don't know."

Itachi was listening with rapt attention. He had been keeping tabs on Sasuke to the best of his abilities, but he longed to know more. There was only so much information he could glean from a distance. But here was Sakura – his teammate, someone who would know him better than anyone else – confessing things she ought not confess to a man like Itachi.

"You're not like him at all," Sakura continued, "He would never have made me breakfast – not even when we were on missions together. And he would never have tolerated me yelling at him the way I yelled at you today."

Her hands were still on his chest, but the sensation of her chakra had receded. She let them linger there a second longer than was probably appropriate and Itachi wondered if she was thinking about Sasuke, imagining that it was him on the bed in front of her instead of Itachi.

"I'm sorry," she said, "for yelling at you. I shouldn't have done that in front of Sachi and Yamato."

His heart ached a little bit when he caught the pained expression on her face. She looked so much like Sachi when she was about to cry that he felt a sudden urge to pull her into his chest and stroke her hair.

"I'm just so angry," she continued, "At Sasuke for leaving us. And you for making him want to."

"You really love my brother."

She looked up at him and he saw a flash of anger in her features before it faded away just as quickly as it had come.

"Of course I love him."

Itachi felt a pang of jealousy tighten in his chest. He was happy, of course, that his little brother was loved. It was so hard to remember what having loved ones felt like – what it felt like to know that someone out there loved him. An image of Sachi presented itself in his mind, unbidden. He blinked several times and let out a labored sigh.

"I'm going to extend my chakra into all of your chakra points now," Sakura said, her clinical tone back, "It won't hurt, but it will require a lot of my concentration – so no more talking."

Itachi was grateful for the shift in mood. They were approaching dangerous territory. Maybe later he would ask her about Sasuke some more.

"I appreciate your apology, Sakura-san," Itachi said.

Sakura, who had her eyes closed and her hands back against his chest, shushed him.

"I'm sorry if my presence is painful for you."

"Be quiet, please."

"I will do my best not to provoke you any further."

Sakura glared at him but continued to work in silence, threading her chakra into his system. It felt different than before – stronger and tighter, like she was winding up all of his nerves and stretching them taut. It was unpleasant, but not painful.

When he had familiarized himself with the sensation and was no longer distracted by it, he noticed that her hands were trembling. She was unguarded now, with her eyes closed as she worked. Itachi took that moment to really look at her face. Beneath the thin skin of her eyelids, he could see her eyes darting about as if she were dreaming. Her lashes – a dark pink, he noticed – shook against her cheeks. Her lips were parted when she caught her lower lip between her teeth and chewed it pensively before releasing it.

Itachi cast his eyes down to the floor, feeling as though he had somehow invaded her privacy by looking at her.

.

Sakura had spent nearly an hour funneling her chakra into Itachi and when she finally left, Itachi felt relieved. She had exhausted a massive portion of her chakra – he could feel that her signature was weakened severely. It made him wonder just what she had been doing to him and just how much chakra med-nins usually used.

But with his room to himself again, Itachi felt like he could breathe. Being around Sakura made him uncomfortable. She was a variable he couldn't have predicted when he formulated his plan to bring Yamato and Sachi to Toyeiki, and now he wasn't quite sure how to deal with her.

She was predictably hostile toward him, save for when she slipped into her medic mode – a mode Itachi much preferred. He couldn't blame her for that. They were enemies to be sure. At least as far as she was concerned.

Her hostility kept him on edge. She had been the one to propose the deal to him, yet he couldn't help but feel like she would somehow stab him in the back. Once she had found the cure she needed, would she really just let him go? If it came down to a true fight, Itachi had no doubt that he would win. But there were many other ways that Sakura could subdue him.

He wondered what Sakura might do with him if she did manage such a thing. Surely she wouldn't want to kill him knowing that Sasuke wanted desperately to be the one to strike the final blow. Would she take him back to Konoha? What would happen to him there? Hiruzen had known the truth – been a crucial part of it, in fact. Did Tsunade know as well? He had no way of knowing what information the Fifth had learned.

Itachi felt a deep longing to speak to Tsunade, just to confirm what she might know. He didn't know much about the woman, but she had been chosen as Hokage and he trusted that she could look after Konoha just as well as her four predecessors.

Uninterested in letting his thoughts sour his mood, Itachi decided to peek into Sachi's room and see if she was still asleep.

She was awake, sitting on her bed with her book in her lap. She was humming softly – nonsensical notes, not in the slightest bit musical – and swaying back and forth. Itachi watched her, unnoticed. She would flip a page, giggle to herself and then flip to a new one.

"Sachi," Itachi said, "Did you have a good nap?"

The girl slammed her book shut with a loud snap and rushed over to him, arms wide so she could circle them around his legs.

"Come on," Itachi said, "Let's go find your brother."

They found poor Yamato outside with the woman Sakura had said was named Rokuda. They were in what appeared to have once been a garden, now overgrown with weeds and shrubs. Yamato was yanking weeds up with a gloved hand and tossing them into a wheelbarrow. His face was red and a sheen of sweat coated his skin.

"Rokuda-san," Yamato whined, "I'm hungry."

"No whining," said the woman, who was carefully tilling the ground in an area that Yamato must have already cleared.

"Itachi-san!" Yamato exclaimed when he caught sight of Itachi and Sachi standing near the garden's entrance. He dropped the weeds in his hand into the wheelbarrow and crossed the garden, "Itachi-san, I'm so hungry and this mean old lady won't let me eat!"

"I told you that you can eat when all the weeds are pulled," Rokuda said, leaning her hoe against the wooden fence. She extended her hand to Itachi with a friendly smile, "You must be Sakura's new patient. I'm Rokuda."

Itachi shook her hand and gave her a weak smile as he introduced himself.

"Itachi-san is in charge," Yamato said, crossing his arms with an angry huff, "And he's here now, so I can leave."

"Not quite, Yamato," Itachi said, "Rokuda-san is nice enough to let us stay here at no cost. The least you can do is help her pull the weeds."

"But—"

"No buts," Itachi said, "Sachi and I will help so it won't take as long. Then I will make you some lunch."

Yamato sucked in an angry breath, but returned to his spot and began yanking weeds from the ground.

Itachi and Yamato continued to pull weeds while Sachi played in the dirt. Too late, Itachi realized that he should not have let Sachi play in the dirt. Now both she and her brother would need a bath before they could eat. He was certain that Yamato could bathe on his own, but Sachi would need assistance and he wasn't sure what Sakura would think of him bathing her.

Itachi wondered if Sakura would be willing to bathe her while he made their food, but he didn't feel comfortable asking her. It was a hard enough subject to broach without the added factor of having to ask a hostile enemy.

While he thought of this, Itachi made quick work of the rest of the weeds in the garden. Yamato had followed his lead and started to put a little more effort into the task, but with Itachi doing most of the work the garden was cleared in less than an hour.

"Thank you so much for your help, Yamato-chan," Rokuda said when they had finished, "And you, too, Itachi-san."

Itachi nodded to the woman and took the children inside for their baths, leaving Rokuda to work in peace on her garden. He left them to play in their room for a moment before resigning himself to asking for Sakura's help.

He knocked on her door.

"Come in," Sakura yelled from the other side.

Itachi was surprised to see Sakura's state when he entered her room. She had changed into sweatpants and her hair was wet, twisted into a messy chignon on the top of her head. She was curled into a desk chair, her legs bent at an angle he would have found uncomfortable. She held a journal in her lap and tapped the eraser end of a pencil against her lips. Beneath her eyes were dark purple shadows, and Itachi could sense that had not regained much of her chakra yet.

He wanted to turn around and forget that he'd entered the room at all. She was working hard and obviously still tired. It wasn't a good time to ask a favor of her.

"Oh, Itachi-san," she said, uncurling herself, "I thought you were Amika."

She stood up and tossed her journal onto the desk. Standing up, it was easier to see just how small she looked inside her baggy clothes. He would not have believed that this pink-haired mess in front of him was a ninja if he had not already known.

"Are you feeling ill?" she asked. He wanted to ask her the same thing.

"No," he answered, "I wanted to ask a favor of you, if it's not too much of an imposition."

She raised a brow and folded her arms across her chest. He could only imagine what types of things were running through her mind – what things she presumed he might ask her.

"Yamato, Sachi, and I helped Rokuda-san clear the weeds from her garden," Itachi said before Sakura could come to her own conclusions. They would likely only cause her to become angry with him. "Could you give Sachi a bath while I make food for everyone?"

"Oh," she said, clearly not expecting his question, "Yes, I suppose I could do that. Or maybe I could get Amika to do it. I have a lot of work to do."

Itachi couldn't quite explain it, but he didn't want Amika to be the one to bathe Sachi. He didn't know Amika, save for the previous incident in the kitchen (an incident that didn't paint her in the most favorable way).

"If it's too much of an imposition, I can do it myself," Itachi said, "I assumed you might be more comfortable if someone else did it."

She looked up at him with a penetrating gaze. Itachi forced himself not to flinch under her scrutiny. It was a wonder that a woman so small and so pink could make him feel ashamed – like he had done something wrong. It was ironic. He could kill her in the blink of an eye, yet he couldn't look at her face.

"I will bathe her," Sakura said with finality, "And Yamato, too."

"Thank you," Itachi said.

A beat of silence followed, neither of them knowing what to say. For a moment, Itachi couldn't draw his eyes away from her. She looked exhausted, grumpy, and damp. He marveled at the fact that his life was in her hands, that her hands were even capable of such a thing.

"Would you like me to make some food for you as well?" he asked, "You look like you've been working hard. Your chakra signature is weak. You must be hungry."

"What's your angle, Itachi?"

"Excuse me?"

She had cocked her hip to the side and placed a supportive hand against her desk. It was a casual pose, but juxtaposed by the growing seriousness on her face. Itachi braced himself for her next outburst

"I mean, why do you care so much about these kids?" she asked, "And why are you being so nice – well, pleasant – to me? I don't understand your motives. You kill your clan, people you should have loved, but these two random children that I still don't understand how you came to possess-" Itachi flinched at her harsh inflection of the word "-are so important to you and you take such good care of them. Watching you with Sachi – it's so weird. If I didn't know who you are and what you've done, I'd have a completely different opinion of you. You seem so goddamn nice and I hate it. I wish you would just be cruel. Why can't you just act like a missing-nin should act?"

During her rant, Sakura had straightened herself up, chest puffed out almost comically with bravado. She raked her fingers through her damp bangs, flicking them away from her eyes. Her eyes were a brighter shade of green now. They had lost some of the dullness, the gray, that had crept in at some point between their healing session and now.

It didn't take a genius to know why Sakura was so confused. Itachi regretted that he had not acted his part well enough. She should not be questioning whether or not he was a nice person. He had cultivated an image of himself that was now rapidly falling apart. He could blame Sachi and Yamato – they were certainly part of the problem. But in reality, Itachi was tired of playing the villain. It didn't seem so necessary at the start, and now it was too late to fix.

"I'm sorry, Sakura," he said.

She seemed to grow more angry, eyes narrowing sharply. He wondered if she ever directed that same pointed look at Sasuke, or if she only looked at him with tender gazes and affection. He wondered if she could have ever looked at him that way, if things had been different. Would they have been friends? Or would she have regarded him as nothing more than her teammate's older brother?

"No," she said sharply, "No apologizing. Just tell me why you act this way. I want to know. I want to know what's wrong with you."

"I wish I could answer your questions," he said, measuring his tone carefully. He felt his villainous persona had already slipped too far from his grasp. He felt so comfortable here in this spot where he was just a man, where he didn't have to hold up the weight of the village on his ever-weakening shoulders.

"Then just answer them."

"We are shinobi, Sakura," he said, "Things aren't always straight-forward."

"Don't lecture me," she snapped.

He went quiet, expecting her to say something else, but she sagged against her desk and let out an exasperated sigh. He watched her expression soften as she seemed to collapse in on herself like a dying star. He moved closer in case he might need to catch her, but she took a step back from him.

It occurred to him that she must be feeling a myriad of things right now. She was on a mission that didn't seem to be going so well for her. Her teammate was missing and she was too far away to do anything about it should any update be made, and the man responsible for it was currently standing in her office.

"If you need me to be mean," Itachi said, "I can do it. If it would help you."

"Shut up," she muttered, "That makes no sense."

In spite of the seriousness of the situation, Itachi laughed. He couldn't recall a time when someone had told him to shut up. She looked up at him with incredulity, no doubt baffled that he was even capable of laughing.

"I understand what you must be feeling," Itachi said, "I'll do what I can to make all of this go as smoothly and quickly as possible. It's not my intention to agitate you."

She cast him a skeptical glance.

"Best case scenario for both of us is to hold up our ends of the bargain and then go our separate ways," he continued.

She let out another pained sigh and brushed past him into the hallway. "I would appreciate if you made some food for me as well, Itachi-san," she said and then disappeared into the children's bedroom.