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Author's note: I know I shouldn't be starting another fanfiction until I finish the others I have out, but this story was called for. I'm a bit tired of seeing too many Naruto fics where some of the characters are portrayed out of character. So with this fic, I've asked a very good friend Sarehptar to be my beta reader to make sure I have the characters played well. Plus Itachi is her love…and he's mine too! Well, I hope you enjoy this, and please review!

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The Tortured
Chapter 1:
Crying
By: Serenity Komoshiro
Beta-read By: Sarehptar

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The night sky was a dark, warm cobalt; a few wisps of day clouds drifted their way mindlessly across the stars over Konohagakure. The village itself seemed still—voices had been drowned out by the delicate breeze through the tree leaves. Atop an electric pole, one young man, whose eyes blazed a deep blood red, watched the still homes below him, silently. A puff of cloud drifted across the wide full moon, casting his starkly pale skin into shadow. Those eyes... Someone had once compared those famous red pupils to the eyes of the Devil himself, and no man could look into them without a shiver of fear. Over them, he indignantly wore the silver head protector of his people, of the ninja who had once been his comrades…

A gray vest and scar-like black tattoo revealed his truth nature—assassin, of Konoha's ANBU. The eyes of the youth slowly bled from crimson to a deep midnight. A breeze tore at the black strands of hair hanging to his shoulder blades, but he didn't seem to notice. He wouldn't have cared in the slightest, even if the wind caused tangles. His eyes were lifeless, blank and clear, not betraying in the slightest the horrible crime he had just committed.

Soundlessly, as was his nature, the midnight-eyed youth turned away from the moon-drenched red roofs, leaving behind the bleeding bodies of the ones who had held him precious. His aunts, uncles, cousins, mother and father. No one left, no one but him….

"To measure the height of my capacity…"

He stared silently at the full orange moon before him, and then disappeared into the forest that bordered on his once home. In such a strong ninja village, screams would not be left unattended for long, and as soon as the situation was assessed, an ANBU team would be on his trail.

Itachi began to run through the gnarled trees, thanking years of training for improving his speed and stamina. Within a few minutes he would be on the edge of the village. The leap from branch to branch was effortless, and his mind managed to remain blissfully blank.

A tiny, lilting noise assaulted his ears as he ran. Though his expression did not change, a vague sense of curiosity welled up inside him. Who was crying so far out here? Itachi knew he should have just ignored the distant weeping. He knew he should just have continued toward the border, but…something about this voice... He turned sharply and continued at his breakneck pace toward the source of the noise. The stronger the sound became, the more clearly he felt a tiny, burning chakra signature. Whoever it was so far out here, they were weak… or pretending to be. The chance that it might be a trap filtered through his mind, but he dismissed it. ANBU would not even have been at the scene yet.

His assumptions were correct—the chakra signature was truly weak. There, against the roots of a giant oak, was a tiny girl, slumped over, face in her hands. He stopped a few feet away, unwilling to make his presence known. A quick sweep with Sharingan confirmed what he already expected: they were completely alone. His eyes slid back to their deep black. He ought to leave; there was no time to be wavering here…

Itachi turned to go, to escape the place that had held him captive for so long, when a tiny thought flittered across the back of his mind. How has she managed to come so far out here if she truly is so weak? Why has she left the village so far behind? Why is she all alone? An almost inaudible groan escaped the thirteen year old genius. Of all the times to remember courtesy… He dropped down before her, a little too silently; she did not even look up. He glared (a vague sort of look that might have been anger on someone else's face) starting to become annoyed with her incessant wailing.

"Why are you crying?" he asked sternly, his voice far too low and cold for his age. She acknowledged his presence by jerking slightly, and her crying skipped a sob before continuing unhindered. She couldn't get any words out, or perhaps she chose not to answer.

"I asked you a question girl, why are you crying?" he queried again, loud enough that she couldn't go on ignoring him. With pale green eyes, the girl looked up slowly, and her wan face was stained with tears; the bangs that had been crushed by her small hands were tossed and wet. Her tiny arms were covered with a long white shirt, at least a size too large, and the knees which were pressed into her chin were wrapped in loose red pants. He thought he caught something glinting beside her, but she dropped a hand, blocking his view.

"W-who are you?" she croaked, tears still dripping slowly down her cheeks.

"I won't answer your question until you answer mine…Why are you crying?" The young man did not even try to disguise the note of impatience in his voice. Pink strands of hair wavered out of place as she lowered her face from his and began to speak into her red-clothed knees in a quivering, young voice.

"M-my family….d-disowned me…he said…I-I wasn't s-strong enough…" Despite the muffled, barely audible tone, Itachi's well-trained senses caught her stuttered answer. It was the most inopportune of moments, but he couldn't help but feel the barest bit of interest. If he had ever been as weak as this girl was, would the Uchiha clan have disowned him? He scoffed lightly at the thought, the smallest of dusky 'hnh's escaping his hardly parted lips.

"You remind me of my foolish brother." It was a passing comment, devoid of emotion. The girl didn't look up from her knees; she continued to sniff weakly. Itachi looked more closely—analyzing the figure in front of him as only an ANBU member could: coldly, without any thought beyond discovering hidden secrets. She was small, he gauged her age at roughly eight or nine, which explained her childish behavior. Unlike the Uchiha clan, most ninja families did not expect their protégés to graduate the ninja academy at seven.

"What is your name?" Itachi crouched down beside her, more to facilitate hearing her answer than to seem kind. His angled midnight eyes looked at her, waiting for reply—what he got was something he had not expected. The girl looked up from her knees to glare childishly at him, emerald eyes flashing with not only tears but a strange inner light.

"Y-You didn't answer my question… I won't answer your question 'til you answer my question. Who are you?" Her voice, still wavering with the remainder of tears, was a great deal stronger than before. At first Itachi could not help but feel the slightest frustration. Who was this child to be ordering him around? Who was she to glare at him? She was nothing compared to him! But he controlled the feeling, schooling his mask into its ever-present coldness. At the very least, the girl was a swift learner. He leveled a firm gaze on her, determined emerald and ebony clashing for the first time.

"Uchiha Itachi," he drawled at last, something of a smirk ghosting across his delicate lips. She stared up at him resolutely for a few moments, turning the name over and over in her mind, planning on never forgetting it. There was a reigning silence before she finally managed to offer her own name.

"Sakura… Haruno Sakura…" muttering the name desolately, another silvery tear rolled down her cheek. Was she really a Haruno anymore? Ignoring the silent sob that wracked her form, Itachi noticed again the glimmer she'd hidden from him before. Halfway covered by her over-sized clothing, he could make out the metal etching and blue material of a Konoha Hitai-ate. What could such a weak girl be doing with an official ninja's band?

"Why do you have this?" Itachi asked, his pale and immaculate hand pointing to the head wear. Blinking moist eyes, she shifted enough to pull the material of her shirt off the band. Looking at it, she began to tremble. For a moment, the tiny girl could only stare, tears welling over. Finally, she turned away, and answered his question in a shaking voice that grated on his nerves.

"My father… H-he told me I will never have one. H-he said I'm too weak to be a ninja, so I-I should take a good l-look at his, because I'd n-never get another chance to hold one… I d-didn't mean to! But when he told me to get a-away… I just took it! " She curled in on herself, as if the weight of the exclamations and the actions were too much for her tiny form.

Though he appeared listless, it was not without interest that Itachi listened to her. In less than two minutes, this girl had treated him to a level of complexity he did not expect from anyone as weak as she was, as young as she was. But talking to her without causing a fit of tears was straining, and time consuming. The dark-haired man rose to his feet, blood red Sharingan scanning the area for any encroaching threats. Sakura and he were still alone.

Turning back to look at the tiny girl, Itachi found the tears had finally stopped falling, leaving drying trails on her pale cheeks and redness in her wide eyes. A dark look of hopelessness seemed to settle over her entire form. For a moment, the black-eyed genius simply stared at the pink-haired girl so near to his heels. Finally, with a humorless half-laugh, he turned to the side, pale hands slipping into the pockets of his dark, blood stained ANBU uniform.

"Do you want to become stronger?" It was a rough question, sounding more like an order than anything else. His own eyes dark eyes settled away from her, into the impenetrable wood all around them.

"Yes…" her soft reply was not without conviction. He turned to look at her, still clutching her knees, back to a molding oak tree.

"If you come with me I will make you stronger…but you must strip yourself of all emotion. You are weak because you have no control. The only thing that will be useful to you is hate. You will use that hate to become stronger under my guidance… Can you do that?" Itachi asked, voice once again distant and as sharp as the end of a kunai blade. Sakura rose slowly to her bare feet, turning to look up at him, green eyes wide and unsure. He was offering her a chance to get stronger, to show her parents what she could become… She could show them how wrong it was to disown her… Wouldn't they regret it?

Itachi waited impatiently for an answer, growing more and more aware of the danger of lingering as each second passed. Finally, she gave the barest of nods… and then did something so bold he had not expected it: she rushed into him, wrapping her slender arms around his own thin legs. Tears once again pushed through her attempts to hold them back, and he could feel the chill of the saline water through the black material. For a split-second, his eyes widened in surprise, but the look was gone the moment it was born. Momentarily, he wondered if having her beside him was going to be a terrible mistake. But at the same time, plans for training the girl forced their way into his mind easily, ways to make her a tool, a powerful, manipulated weapon... With a cold glare that illustrated his displeasure with the touch, he deftly pulled out of her reach.

Sakura bowed her head in shame, reproaching herself for showing emotion other than hate. She waited, fidgeting, for Itachi to leave or punish her. Instead the boy reached down to her tiny hands and pulled the shining forehead protector from her. In one movement that Sakura couldn't describe as slow or fast, he drew a kunai and ran it across the pale metal, cleaving the once flawless surface nearly in two. Betrayer, the word rang in her mind. Silently, frozen, she watched as he reached up with delicate hands and drew the band from his own forehead. She could not help but shudder at the blankness of his face as he ran the kunai through his own mark of loyalty.

Without a word, he threw Sakura's father's band to her, and she struggled to catch the scarred metal before it slipped from her fingers. A cold breeze that promised rain on the way made the once proud blue fabric of the Hitai-ate dance in time with the leaves above them. She shivered, just once, and them closed her hands over the jagged edges. With determined eyes, she watched Itachi tie his damaged forehead protector back over his brow. She could only wonder, in that moment, why an ANBU member, beloved protector of the village, would mark himself as…

"I-Itachi-sama…" Sakura began, feeling that no other designation fit him but something so high; he was the one about to take her after those of her own blood wanted her gone. With nothing, not even her own name, to call her own, respect was the only way she could repay him. Beautiful eyes blinked once, slowly, in her direction, wordlessly asking what she needed.

"Why did you do…" she wasn't even sure how to ask a question like that, "It's a mark of betrayal to the village!" As unsure as she was, she still managed to keep her voice from trembling. For a moment, he stared through her, inwardly amused at what the scar meant to her.

"We are no longer a part of this village," he stated, bringing his eyes to meet hers directly for the second time that night. In the emerald depths he could read clearly her confusion, her desire for a deeper explanation… But he did not humor that desire.

"Put that on. We're leaving." He simply turned his back, not even bothering to wait for a response. Itachi didn't feel the need to explain his actions to this little girl at the moment—she would be lucky if he ever explained. Behind him, she hurriedly tied the band onto her wide brow, the over-sized ends trailing out of the knot. He walked away with soundless footsteps. Out of the corner of his eyes, Itachi saw the little girl running to catch him. Without warning her in the slightest, he leapt back into the trees, landing without a hint of effort on a wide branch. Sakura followed suit, utilizing the ninja training she had had—it wasn't enough to reach the heights and speed he could, but it was enough to keep him, barely, within her sights.

The wind picked up as the night grew deeper, rustling every leaf and setting Itachi even further on edge. Behind him, he felt Sakura's chakra struggled to keep up, making more noise than he felt appropriate. Neither of them spoke as they made their way, too slowly, towards Konoha's border, and neither of them looked back at the village filled with memories both bitter and sweet.

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