Ugh... WARNING! This is a pretty dark oneshot. The first few paragraphs are a bit bloody, so I'd advise you not to eat while reading, please. It's sorta AU too. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

Disclaimer: Naruto is not mine.

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His Faithful Servant

By Frog-Wallet

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Drip, drop, drip…

The sound of blood hitting the cement floor cascaded through the room, bouncing off the walls and successfully creating an eerie echo. The noise was sickening; enough to make one's stomach queasy with distaste. The strong, metallic, salty tang in the air that was capable of invading everyone's nostrils lingered in the air along with the dripping sounds.

No matter how vile the two things were, they worked in harmony, one complimenting the other. After all, the sound of a life slowly and painfully slipping away and the smell of a life rotting away into the oblivion sounded… so right.

As an S-ranked criminal that lurked in every dark, macabre corner waiting for his prey to come out and get massacred, he often liked those things. The way his victim's blood spattered all over his face, dripping down into the corner of his face, and then falling down into a pitiful blood-red puddle that pooled at his feet secretly amused the Nuke-nin.

After that, he would just leave the lifeless corpse lying on the ground, waiting for scavengers to feast on the plentiful flesh or Ninjas that were faithful to their lowly villages to come and uncover it… or what was left of it anyway. If he were a normal ninja, then he would have hidden the body in somewhere dank or damp to avoid detection or risk of being hunted down. He didn't care at all; no one could find him and no one ever would. He was part of the Akatsuki, after all.

That was what he thought about those ghastly things… usually. Today, he didn't feel that way. He couldn't. He wouldn't.

Why?

His faithful servant was dying in his arms, blood staining his black cloak; the one that helped him succeed in the destruction of his clan, the one that lent his eyes to him when his sight wasn't so keen, and the one that nurtured and filled his heart with hate, was dying.

He frowned as its feathers started oozing out some more blood. He sullenly ripped off a piece of his Akatsuki cloak and wiped the black feathers, preening them gently, and earning him a weak, yet grateful squawk from the crow. Yes, his faithful servant was in a form of a crow, the accursed bird that held ill omens for the people he saw it; all except for him, Uchiha Itachi, the great Sharingan wielder.

Instead of giving Itachi calamitous things and happenings, the crow gave him luck, fortune, and made his power prosperous. With it, he was able to perform an array of Genjutsu and escape from perilous battles without harm with a barrage of crows.

As he was thinking of these things, the bundle of black shivered from the cold in the stone chamber located near the Hidden Village of Stone, which was one of the hideouts of the notorious Akatsuki.

Itachi's breath hitched in his throat as he tried his best to warm it up without harming its fragile body. He rubbed his smooth fingers over it, transferring some of his heat to it. With his calm and calculating mind, he appraised the amount of time it had left to live. He sighed as noticed how helpless he felt at that time when he finally came to a conclusion a few seconds later.

'Damn, it only has one day left to live… that's too fucking short!' thought Itachi, who mumbled a few incoherent curses under his breath.

It gave another shiver, but this time it was not from the cold that bit and nipped at the flesh that was deprived of a couple of feathers. It was because it was transforming…

The bloodied night-colored feathers morphed into ripped, slightly torn skin. The naked flesh was left the same, except it turned a darker shade of red and miniscule scabs started forming around it, trying to halt the continuously flowing blood. The body started swelling bigger and bigger until it was less than a few inches shorter than Itachi's height.

Basically, it was turning more human-like every passing second. The slightly hooked beak pulled back into a dainty, pale nose and the tail grew thinner, longer, and pointier. It looked like the tail of a devil's. The wings were the only things that stayed the same.

This process took approximately a few minutes until the crow obtained its true form: a demon or more specifically, a winged demon.

Unlike many demons, this particular one happened to be beautiful. The body structure was of a human's yet wings of a crow protruded from her torn clothing and so did her tail which stuck out from her butt. However, those were not the parts of her that made her stunning.

It was her face.

It was completely flawless, even in the state that she was currently in. Pale, creamy skin covered her perfect jaw line and skull. Her eyes were of a bright emerald color that shone in the darkness. Her nose was high, in a perfect angle, and her lips were plump with a soothing shade of pink to compliment it. To top it all off, she had silky pink hair that shone in the moonlight. It was enough to even take the breath away of the silent, expressionless Uchiha Clan Murderer.

Itachi gaped inwardly, startled at her beauty. Sure, he had seen her in this form a couple of times in his short life, but it never ceased to catch his attention and observant red eyes.

"Sakura…" he whispered to the weak demon woman in his arms.

Upon hearing the familiar name, her head lifted up to the man who called it, otherwise known as Itachi. She gave a weak, crest-fallen smile before collapsing back onto his lap again.

Smirking at the little greeting that she gave him, he cooed her name numerous times to appease her, earning him a couple mewls of pleasure from his female friend. He finally decided to stop as her eyes drooped, signaling that she was tired. He replaced his calls with gentle pats on the head, right between her ears, discouraging the use of her voice the whole time. Sakura then succumbed to a light slumber, curling towards the warmth that the Weasel provided unconsciously. He took a couple of gauzes out from his pouch and wrapped her bloody form to stop her from losing the precious liquid.

If the eyes of an innocent person were to see these two, then they would describe them as 'inseparable friends'. This was true. These two were inseparable and friends. To make a long story short, Sakura was a rebel demon, which meant that she craved love – love from someone that actually cared for her. In the world that she used to live in, Sakura had no one to be affectionate towards to.

Demons were not allowed to have this emotion whether they wreaked havoc or relaxed, so she was sent (or more likely thrown up) from the depths of Hell to Earth, never to return again. A curse was cast on her: a curse which made her a crow when she was healthy and in a great condition. If she was wounded badly, then she would return to her normal form until she died or got better.

As she ambled aimlessly on Earth, battered and bruised from the beatings of the other demons before her departure from hell, she was found by Itachi (who was ten years old) and was nursed back to health. Ever since that time, they grew closer through vigorous training and committing crimes in the Akatsuki. Soon, she became as blood-thirsty as Itachi and never shed a thought about the innocent's life that she swooped down on and stole away.

However, this was not the only thing that Itachi offered to Sakura.

She served him and in turn, he gave her a home and love – which he often did not show when they were around with the other members.

When his eyes sometimes failed him on missions and he couldn't see his enemies, Sakura was the one who would alert him with her twenty-twenty vision. She was a valuable one; one that could control crows and use them to her disposal and allow her closest friend (which was obviously Itachi) to do so too. During the time he was murdering his entire clan, she acted as a distraction to the clan members with a barrage of crows that clamped their beaks shut on every living human in the vicinity. When he was tired and wanted to rest on his missions, she would fuel him with words of hate. Hate was what got him going through the day, and she knew that the best.

Since she did all those things, he rewarded and spoiled her gentle pats and praises: symbols of love. This is what she craved and Itachi was there to satisfy that need.

Savoring the moments that he had left with her and remembering the good times that he had spent with her, he recalled the horrifying moment that landed her into this deathly situation.

"Die, Itachi!"

A whitish-blue light engulfed the form of Uchiha Sasuke, the little brother of Itachi and the only one that survived his merciless wrath. With an inhuman speed, faster than a Cheetah's, he thrust a sphere that was like lightning mixed with the sound of a thousand birds towards his brother's chest. A bellicose cry erupted from the younger brother as he quickly got closer to the man he swore to kill.

Itachi commanded his 'army' of crows to block the attack, only to have them destroyed in a mass of bloody feathers. He was now out of the very chakra that made him a ninja since he was born. He knew himself, along with Sasuke, that his fate was inevitable.

Suddenly the other 'commander' of the crows, the demon Sakura, flapped her oversized wings and jumped in front of her friend that she cherished so much. Sasuke's attack was absorbed by her body and she blacked out, falling into a pool of her own blood with a gaping hole in her stomach.

At this, Itachi clenched his fist and gritted his teeth. He had run away instead of fighting his foolish little brother like a man, but he had no regrets. Sakura was in his arms, alive… for now.

With that last thought, he picked her up so that her head was now on his shoulder and her legs were resting on his lap. He wanted her next to him until the time she died… and then, he gave her an ardor kiss before he carried her to the bed and got in with her. His eyes drooped slowly until he was no longer awake…

Drip, drop, drip… that was the last thing he heard…

Itachi woke with a start, sweat lining his brow.

'Damn it, I'm still having that nightmare!' he thought with disgust as he sat up from bed.

His onyx eyes that rarely showed traveled to the empty spot next to him, which was the place where Sakura had slept with him before she passed away.

On that fateful day, he had woken up to a dead corpse that was slowly rotting away and no longer warm. Sakura's emerald eyes were dull, yet her smile still remained, plastered on her face. She was dead. His faithful servant was dead, after all the times they spent together, murdering innocents and letting blood run through their fingers or feathers like a river.

He reminisced about that and his past for a moment, and then let it go. He jumped out of the bed, which still had a noticeable red stain, and slipped his cloak on swiftly.

He had enough of the same nightmare that played over and over again, haunting his thoughts. Today was the day he was going to avenge her and kill his brother…

He barged out from the hideout and flew out into the darkness, which engulfed him in black, with his hate and rage boiling in his heart. He reached into the pouch made of Sakura's own dark feathers and pulled out a single kunai.

'Sakura, I WILL avenge you!'

THUD!

The kunai suddenly pierced an unfortunate young deer that was yearning for its mother. It wobbled on its hooves, once, twice, until it fell over, breathing its last breath.

Again, ugh... This turned out to be quite fluffy yet disgusting at the same time :p This was originally for a beta-ing thing for HyuugaVsUchiha (love ya Denise, my awesome friend), but my other friends coaxed me to post it up. Also, it was tied with the DeiSaku pairing in my poll, so it was another reason why I posted it up. Arrg... I'm better off with SasuSaku and something MUCH HAPPIER (because I'm a happy person, not a dark person)!

Review? It'll most certainly help me. It's my first attempt at a dark, awful fic. Flames like this are also allowed (honestly, I think I deserve some):

What is this piece of shit? You suck!!

Hehe, arigatou for reading, wonderful readers.

フロッグ-ワレット (aka Frog-Wallet)