Story Title: Move Along

Chapter Title: Prologue

Pairing: OrochimaruSakura, ItachiMitsu

Rating: M (Swearing, Later chapters)

Author: backlash-­­artemis

Music: "Move Along" by The All-American Rejects
"Whatshername" by Green Day

Summary: Sequel to 'Dirty Little Secret'. With Mitsu an active Akatsuki member with a vendetta against Konoha, it's up to her newly resurrected parents, Kabuto, and Konoha's loudmouthed Hokage to stop her before she surpasses Itachi. ItaMitsu OroSaku

Disclaimer: We don't own naruto. Seriously, it'd be a hell of a lot more exciting if we did. And we don't own the song "Move Along" by The All-American Rejects.

Extra: The sequel!! So yeah, here's the sequel to the story "Dirty Little Secret". This story is being cowritten with Artemis, so we made a new joint account to post it on. This takes place probably about one to three days after the epilogue of "Dirty Little Secret". The two bodies Kabuto had weren't Itachi's and Mitsu's. They were two random people he needed to be able to resurrect Orochimaru and Sakura.

Alright, well the ages are listed below, and please try not to have a heart attack. I nearly did when I realized the age gap.

Sakura, Naruto, Sasuke, Ino: 34
Itachi, Kabuto: 40
Orochimaru, Jiraiya, Tsunade: 72
Mitsu: 17
Kakashi: 48

Text means normal writing.
'Text' means thoughts.
'Text' mean Inner Sakura's thoughts.
Text means flashback.

"Orochimaru, take it easy! You aren't healthy enough nor are you strong enough to be moving yet," the voice instructed.

A grunt was heard as sheets rustled, the dark haired man's body being forced back onto the bed he was supposed to be resting in.

"She'll be fine, she just needs rest, like you," the voice said in a calming tone.

"Don't act like you know more than I do on this," the older man hissed.

"Don't forget who resurrected you," the voice countered icily, "and warned you about Mitsu's betrayal."

"Sakura is-"

"Nnn..."

They say that as you die, a bright light fills your vision and draws you toward it. They say that your life flashes before you,-

She'd cried on the bench that night, over a week ago, almost two tomorrow.

-mistakes-

"So I'm taking this as a yes to my proposition?" She nodded her head when he didn't say anything.

-and regrets-

He was dead.

-and precious moments-

Her fingers spread out and he slid his fingers through hers.

-a blend of emotion.-

"You do love her."

She couldn't force herself to deny the more than growing possibility that she was falling for him.

They say that the moment you see your life is the time where you feel your greatest hatred in yourself and wish to change all the bad things that've gone wrong because you'll never get another chance to fix anything.

Sakura was on the floor and Orochimaru was hanging off the edge of the table, neither moving.

They also say once you die, you never come back to life.

A man with silver hair approached the house of Orochimaru carrying two bodies, one over each shoulder. "Where would you be without me?"

For once you die, you move on to receive your fate as one with minimal sin, worthy enough to enter the gates of heaven, or be burdened with evil and become damned to an eternal existence where torture and suffering are all you'll come to know.

"How could I let something like this happen!"

"This isn't your fault, now please keep it down. You don't want Sakura to know yet, right?"

"I want her to wake up! It's been two days, Kabuto! What's wrong with her?!"

In a world like this, anything is possible.

"Orochimaru!!"

Gasping for air. Panting, breathing panicked and desperate.

Emerald eyes hurriedly scanned the room for the face of her lover, gut wrenching in fear of abandonment. Where was he? Why was she alone? Where was Mitsu!

"Mitsu!"

She felt incredibly weak. Drained. What happened? All she remembered was eating. Mitsu left the table and then...then what?

Despite her feeling like her bones were made of rubber, she forced herself to sit up, body trembling with the exertion. She had barely made it to a sitting position, already entirely out of breath, when two figures burst through the door to her room. She let out a cry of surprise and nearly fell back down on the bed. However, upon closer inspection, only one of the two people who arrived was someone she had called for.

"Orochimaru...what's Kabuto doing here?" she asked suspiciously, throat dry, making it hard for her to talk.

Orochimaru walked over to the side of the bed and without a word of warning, pulled Sakura against him as he lowered himself down next to her.

"Oh, God, Sakura," he murmured against her hair, fingers moving up to stroke it.

"Orochimaru? Where's Mitsu? Why is Kabuto here?" she repeated, starting to get really worried.

What reason would the medic have to be there? And what was with her dream? Resurrection? Betrayal? Lies? What was she, crazy?

"Why can't I move without feeling like I've just run a lap around the continent non-stop?"

"It's one of the side-effects, Sakura," Kabuto explained with a fake smile on his face. "It'll pass within a day or so."

"Side-effects of what?" she pressed.

Orochimaru let go of her, finding himself unable to look her in the eye. Sakura knew without a doubt that something terrible had happened. Mitsu wasn't there, they weren't making eye contact with her, and they had only answered one question. Had she been killed? No, that couldn't have happened. Her last memory was of dinner when Mitsu got up to wash the dishes and...and...nothing...

"Did I pass out or something?" she whispered to herself, brows creased in intense thought.

"Orochimaru, perhaps I should be the one to tell her," Kabuto offered, taking a step closer to the bed Sakura was sitting on.

In a world like this, villains can charm innocent females into devoting themselves to a lie.

"She's my daughter," Orochimaru snapped, raising off of the bed to face his grey-haired advisor.

"Will the two of you shut up and just tell me what the hell is going on!!" Sakura screeched, glaring daggars at the two men occupying her room.

What she assumed was her room. She vaguely noticed that the color wasn't the same and that there was another bed a few feet away.

"And where the bloody hell am I!"

She was met with silence once again from Orochimaru while she could practically see the wheels turning in Kabuto's head. Seriously, what the hell was he doing there?!

"Sakura, I'm going to need you to calm down."

And there was the bastard's 'professional' response. Sakura's fingers clenched around the sheets that weren't hers, nails biting into her skin through the thin cloth. If she could move normally she'd chase him right out of wherever the hell it was they were.

"This is calm!" she hissed. "And if I don't get some answers soon you're going to regret being here, so start. Talking!"

Orochimaru let out a frustrated sigh, bringing a hand up to rub his eyes tiredly.

"Kabuto, I'll take care of what we were working on earlier. Sakura," he paused, pinching the bridge of his nose between his fingers and finally looking at her with amber eyes that seemed almost annoyed, "listen carefully to Kabuto. You're receiving one explanation for this."

"One explanation for- I'm the one who's getting the bad treatment here!!" she cried out, releasing the sheets from her grip and holding her suddenly shaking arms out at either side of her body.

Orochimaru closed his eyes momentarily before he turned and left the room, slamming the door behind him and effectively startling Sakura. She felt rage building up inside of her.

'What the hell's his problem!'

'He actually had the balls to look annoyed!'

"Sakura..."

The pink-haired female snapped her head to see Kabuto and allowed her arms to rest on her lap. She raised a brow at the medic and would've tapped her fingers had she posessed anough strength to do so.

"I'm waiting," she stated bitterly.

He nodded slowly and Sakura swore she saw those wheels turning again in his head. He walked closer to the bed.

"Why don't we start with what you remember from the beginning of that day?" he began, sitting down and facing her.

With a heavy sigh, Sakura ran over her memories in her head.

"I made breakfast for Mitsu before she went off for training. Once she left, I cleaned the house a little bit while Orochimaru slept. When he finally woke up, I fixed him something to eat and...we spent the rest of the day together..." Sakura's eyes flickered up to Kabuto's face to see if he was going to have any reaction to the last statement and was relieved to find he remained with the same thoughtful expression from before. "She came home at her usual time...she went to cook dinner while Orochimaru and I sparred...We ate dinner...and she finished first...I think...and..." Sakura's brows furrowed.

'Didn't I just know what happened a few minutes ago?'

Her eyes closed tightly as a sudden pain ripped through her skull. She sucked in a breath through grit teeth when a hand pressed down over her temple and a cool feeling filtered throughout her head, soothing the pain. She opened her eyes to see Kabuto's slightly concerned face and he pulled his hand away.

"That's en-"

"No, no, there's more, I know there is-"

"Sakura-"

"There's mor-"

"Sakura."

She stopped talking and looked at him again.

"It's alright."

The expression she had resembled that of a helpless one. Her memory had become tainted within minutes.

'Please be because her mind is protecting her,' Kabuto pleaded mentally.

"Where do I start?" he asked quietly, reaching a finger up to push his glasses higher up on his nose.

"Mitsu...where is she?" Sakura responded hopefully.

"Sakura, Mitsu...this goes to even before she moved with you to your home in the country," he began slowly. "Orochimaru and I had been...working...before we came to get you. We..." Kabuto sighed and shook his head. "Sorry, Sakura, that's something Orochimaru will have to explain to you."

"But-"

"I'm going to tell you about Mitsu, don't fret," he assured. "There's absolutely no easy way to say this but because you're an important person to me, I don't want to make it as painful as I normally would for anyone else...Sakura...Mitsu...to put it simply, she betrayed you and Orochimaru."

Kabuto didn't even have a few seconds to let it sink into Sakura's head before she was talking again.

"What do you mean she 'betrayed' Oro and I?"

"You can't remember and Orochimaru had trouble remembering, too, though not nearly to the degree of difficulty you had."

"It was like most days we dealt with, Kabuto," Sakura huffed. "She seemed perfectly normal apart from the embarassment, but I know I would've passed out if my parents admitted to anything sexual in front of m-"

"She killed you, Sakura."

She froze, staring in disbelief at Kabuto. He was lying. He had to be lying.

"And Orochimaru."

"That's bull," she whispered. "We're alive right now!"

"That's because I resurrected the two of you a little while after she left with-"

"That's a lie!"

"-Itachi."

In a world like this, the killer always wins.

Sakura felt cold for some reason. Icy fingers were tracing up and down her spine and a blanket of ice had seemingly been wrapped around her body. It was the only way she could explain why she was suddenly trembling so terribly.

"I-Itachi?"

Even her voice came out harsh in its intensity yet quiet in its power. It wouldn't take a genius to recognize the reasoning behind such a decision and in Sakura's current conditon, even being able to understand such a thing was amazing.

"For power?"

Kabuto didn't say anything for the next part he wasn't even sure he could bluff. He refused to lay Orochimaru with all of the burdening important topics to discuss with her, but there were some things that needed to be said and Kabuto wasn't the one Sakura had sealed her fate with no matter how much he wished he had been the one to have a child with her. Orochimaru was the one she had to hear it from, but Kabuto knew he couldn't make the man who was suffering just as much as Sakura was be the one to tell her everything Kabuto had discovered; how Orochimaru had known what was going to happen long before it actually did; how Orochimaru knew what it was his daughter was to be trading for this power she was supposed to gain.

And how much the situation reflected everything he had put Sakura through.

The lies.

The pain.

The betrayal.

The sacrifice.

To return her beloved Sasuke to her side only to fall in love with someone who refused to love back, was incapable of something so foreign.

He'd used her just to be used.

He'd played her just to get played.

He'd destroyed her and any possible future she had ahead of her...and she'd gone ahead and destroyed him and everything he'd spent a lifetime trying to achieve.

And now their daughter? Were his genes really the ones to dominant hers? How had Sakura's pink hair become dominant over his black while her kindness and compassion had lost to his selfishness and love for destruction and manipulation?

"On her part, yes" is what Kabuto wished he could say, but he knew Sakura would ask him, "and what of Itachi's?" to which he'd be forced to reply, "your daughter's virginity" or "her body."

He couldn't. He refused to, but if he was having such difficulty saying something like this, how would Orochimaru be? He nearly broke down when he was in the room with her, just at her questions! How could he be expected to answer what he was fearfully running from? Kabuto's love for the woman he coveted was making him soft, he realized. Where was the manipulating bastard that had betrayed Sakura's team during the chunin exams?

"Yes. For power."

In a world like this, murder is meaningless if it guarantees power.

Sakura nodded her head slowly. She couldn't feel them, but tears were building up in her eyes. And Kabuto should've known to give Sakura more credit than she ever received.

"So what does Itachi want?"

Kabuto's body tensed. No, he couldn't do it. He couldn't tell her.

'I'm sorry Orochimaru...Sakura...'

"Go back to sleep, Sakura," he commanded softly. "I'll bring you some food when you wake up and a nice hot, relaxing bath, as well. How's that sound?"

Jade eyes met with onyx ones and Kabuto could feel his chest tightening, being swallowed by the pain reflected in those once innocent eyes of hers. He stood from the bed, walked a little closer to her, and gently pushed down on her shoulder, guiding her down onto her back. She didn't protest when his lips brushed across her forehead affectionately; when his thumb stroked her cheek soothingly.

"I promise you we'll make this better. I'll make this better."

And he was away from Sakura, away from the bed, away from the room she was in. When he reached the living room on the first floor, he took in Orochimaru's slouched position on the chair in front of a table piled with maps and scrolls and books, his head held in his hands with his eyes closed in complete focus and concentration.

Sakura forced herself to remove the covers from her body, straining herself to get off of the bed without making too much noise. She needed to speak to Orochimaru. How the hell could Kabuto expect her to be able to sleep when so many things were whizzing around in her brain? "How much did you leave for me to tell her?" the pale-skinned man muttered, not even opening his eyes or altering his position.
"What we worked on before you came to get her and Mitsu...what Itachi wants specifically from her...the subject of Itachi altogether...she may have some issues with her memory, but we'll just have to wait until tomorrow before I can tell if it's permanent memory damage or just a sign of protection from her mind."
Sakura moved quietly on her hands and knees, not trusting her legs when she wasn't near a wall. She made it to the door before she had to take a break, arms shaking already. Orochimaru exhaled slowly, hands sliding from his face as he stood.
"You look exhausted, Orochimaru. She asleep upstairs. Why don't you go-"

"I can't face her after how I just treated her," Orochimaru interrupted. "I'll get angry with her-"

"Even if she's asleep?"

She had successfully climbed up using the wall as support for her tired body. She opened the door with minor difficulty and was met with a long hallway that split in three directions. The one in front of her had stairs at the end and she decided to go that way. He fixed Kabuto with a glare that prevented the younger man from saying anything else for a few moments.
"She saw the way I looked at her, too, and I know I'm going to hear about it when I see her again," Orochimaru continued.

"I wouldn't need to worry about her yelling at you so much as I would worry about protecting her-"

"Protecting her from what?"

"-from herself, Orochimaru."

Orochimaru raised an eyebrow, looking at Kabuto skeptically.

In a world like this, pain is equivalent to existence.

As Sakura neared the stairs, she could hear voices that sounded like Orochimaru's and Kabuto's. Not that she was going fast to begin with, she slowed down and her body thanked her for it. She reached the railing of the stairs and used it to quietly move into a sitting position, chest nearly heaving and body feeling numb as it trembled with the exertion. She settled for not being able to see their faces. Their voices were good enough to her mind.
"Herself?"

"You never saw what she went through when she was taken back to Konoha. She had to deal with Sasuke's execution and having Mitsu taken away from her only to be given to her best friends, watch as they got married and were made Hokage and Hokage's Wife. You didn't see how many times she attempted to kill herself, Orochimaru, how many scars covered her body that day I found her to take her to you, the ones I had to heal!"

Orochimaru narrowed his eyes at Kabuto, reaching down for a glass that was on the table and taking a drink from it.

"It sounds to me like you've still got feelings for her," he said in an eerily calm tone.

'He doesn't even sound jealous, just irritated...' she thought. 'Kabuto's practically declaring his feelings for me and Oro's just...' Kabuto abruptly brought a finger to push up his glasses again, shaking his head.
"Do you even understand where I'm going with this?" Kabuto nearly hissed.

"I'm not exactly in the right state of mind to be analyzing things right now, Kabuto!"

"Are you going to leave her?"

The glass in Orochimaru's hand slipped from his fingers and his face looked like someone had just slapped him. He barely caught the glass before it hit the ground but the look remained.

He didn't respond.

'W-What? No, no, Orochimaru, say something!'
"Do you regret everything you've done with her?"

Orochimaru, for once in his life, looked genuinely confused.

"You do, don't you!"

Nothing.

"Do you know that even though she may not be thinking it now, she will eventually?" Kabuto fairly yelled. "She originally thought that her pregnancy was the only thing keeping the two of you together. Do you remember that? And then when Konoha 'killed' you, she was told the baby would be sent away and she thought it was because you weren't there! And when you came back, she thought you would stay because you had a child together! The child was the reason you were there!

"In Sakura's mind, once the child goes away, so do you! Mitsu is gone now, and whether or not we get her back is dependent on you and Sakura! But to Sakura, you'll leave because there's no reason to stay, unless, of course, the sex is so goddamn good that you'd use her for that!"

'Oh God...'

Sakura struggled to get to her feet but the walking from before made it easier to move. She didn't want to hear anymore. She couldn't hear anymore of this. She moved as quickly as she could down the hall and back to the room she had woken up in. She collapsed onto the bed, door left open, and sobbed into her pillow. She cried until she was gasping for air and until her consciousness escaped her, and for the first time in a decade, she wished she would never wake up again.

In a world like this, death is an illusion to the damned.

Kabuto wasn't sure what to make of everything he'd said. Years upon years of pent up emotion must've made it out during such a vulnerable moment and the thing that surprised him the most that Orochimaru had actually let him.

"Are you quite finished yet?"

Kabuto nodded weakly, waiting for the punishment he was sure to receive after an outburst like the one he'd just completed.

"Let's start with the first question, shall we?" Orochimaru asked calmly, setting the glass down on the table. "Am I going to leave her, you ask? That question, coming from your mouth, is one I would never expect. If I had plans to leave her, I would've done so years ago. I wouldn't have wasted my breath coming back after Mitsu was born unless I wanted her for myself to train. After thinking I'd lost Sasuke, I was going to need a new body, and if this one was anything like the one I already had, it would make the transfer easier than any other task I've ever done.

"Second question: Do I regret everything I've done with her? There hasn't been a day that's gone by that I don't regret something. Whether it's regreting the way that I got together with her or how different I should've been for her first time. I wish I could've respected her earlier and I wish she hadn't been so damned gullible to believe me and put her trust into someone like me. Most of the time I wish she wouldn't have fallen in love with me because I had been doing just fine ignoring the emotion I had viewed as weak just so she would've gone off to marry Naruto or even Kakashi and I could've pretended everything was going my way. I was to be immortal soon enough.

"But when I see how happy she is with me, I feel like some old bastard who is still manipulating her into loving me," and he chuckled at this point. "But I've always thought that I should just get up one night and leave while she's asleep, and sometimes I found myself getting up and packing, and then I'd see the moon shine through a patch of clouds and fall on her. That ridiculous pink hair of hers..the only person I've ever seen who I would truly label beautiful. I'd crawl back into bed and humiliatingly wish that she's the one I want to die with. I don't deserve her."

In a world like this, anything is possible.

Needless to say, Kabuto had never ever thought Orochimaru could admit to something like that.

"God," he chuckled, "I'm pitiful. You see how much she's changed me?"

However, in a world like this,

Kabuto, surprisingly, found that for once in his life, he was glad Sakura was with Orochimaru. For a man like him to admit something so personal, that completely opposed every belief he'd held since birth, all for a woman, Kabuto would be able to say that, contrary to Orochimaru's beliefs, he did deserve her.

"You're human, too, and that's what she wants," Kabuto explained quietly. "She doesn't want someone immune to pain. She wants someone who can share the burden with her." Orochimaru didn't say anything for a few moments, taking into account the words he was being fed. "And," Kabuto continued in a lower tone, "since she's just woken up, it's going to take some time before she's back to normal..."

People are better off,

"What are you getting at?"

"Orochimaru...Sakura isn't stable in her current state, and from what I can tell, she won't be for an extended period of time..."

"What else?"

So much better off,

"Her emotions are going to take control of her body and there may be a possibility of her losing complete control of everything..."

"So are you telling me," Orochimaru stated slowly, "that she was better off..."

Dead.

Alright, so here's the first chapter of "Move Along", well the prologue, actually. Anyways, it's short, yes, but it's just the beginning. The following chapters will be longer. It'll pretty much follow the format from "Dirty Little Secret". We'll be alternating writing chapters for the most part.

So, please review and tell us what you think of this so far! Till later!

Backlash-Artemis