This is my first story since I decided to open an account. I didn't intend to post it initially; it was merely a present I was working on for my friend. However, I got some positive feedback, so... I'm posting it up for the public.

This is ItaSaku, before the massacre, and I will be writing a few more with those two, as I have some AU ideas. So, here you are! Please, let me know what you think; I always am looking to improve.

Destiny

No matter how much time she had with him, she never ceased adoring him with every fiber of her being. Something about the moonlight made Uchiha Itachi more fascinating than he already was.

The crepuscular atmosphere made him seem younger, somehow more innocent when the world-weariness was bleached off his handsome face with the blue light that washed through the window. Sakura felt she would never tire of memorizing every crease and feature, from the high planes of his cheekbones, to the creases that slid down his cheeks. His black hair was soft and glossy around her fingers, and his pale skin was still so warm under her touch.

It was another night where he had fallen asleep before her—a rarity and certainly a treat… They were precious few minutes, or even hours, where he appeared fully tranquil. No remnants of pain were etched onto his jaded expression, and no mask, however diluted for her it was, remained on his countenance. It was just Itachi, so relaxed and innocent in his slumber.

And perhaps more fascinating to her than his strikingly handsome appearance was the mystery that still lay raveled within him. How long had it been since they had met? And yet, even so, she had not scraped into the very depths of who he was. He had taught her nearly six months ago what it meant to look past the misconceptions of a person's character… But even longer ago he had shown her the concept of destiny…

The young kunoichi raised herself onto one arm in bed, while the sheets creases and rippled beneath them. Her green eyes were pensive and intent while she loomed above him, her expert, nimble fingers lightly tracing the ridges of his bare torso. When he stirred, she exhaled softly and patiently, raising the hand to cup and caress his cheek.

Slowly, his dark eyes slid open to pierce her with that unfathomable stare that sent tremors to her very core each time. For a few seconds, they merely stared into each other's eyes, both expressions calm and filled with a groggy sort of tenderness. Hers was unabashed from being caught, and his unperturbed by the situation.

His chest expanded as he inhaled, and she smiled at him when she felt his muscles ripple beneath smooth skin. Lazily, he rose into a sitting position and slid his arm over her so that his hand rested by her head. Unresisting when he hovered above her, she laid supine against the mattress, enveloped by smooth sheets and bodily warmth.

"What are you thinking about?" Itachi asked mutedly, his expression unreadable.

However, Sakura could read past the placid façade he wore into the adoration in his onyx eyes. "How we met," she replied in no more than a whisper, her fingers twisting a strand of dark hair around her grip. When he continued to merely eye her, a wider smile flitted over her pink lips, and she slid her small palm to his cheek. "The first time."

Something flickered across his expression—just enough for his own lips to crease into the faintest, most alluring of smiles. "Ah, so long ago," the Uchiha mused.

"Yes," she agreed, her eyes falling closed for a moment while his large, warm hand meandered down the expanse of her ribcage. "And here we are still."

His fingers entwined in hers, and she felt her body heating with passion and an unconventional love she wondered why hadn't been there all throughout her life. "Destiny," he whispered into her ear, bringing chills down her spine while her other arm wrapped around her neck.

"Destiny," Sakura parroted, nearly in a purr, pulling him down while she drowned in his essence: heat, rain, and pure masculinity that was so much him…

Ever teasing and skillful, his lips brushed the very cusps of hers, eliciting a pleasant sensation that pervaded through her and forced the blood in her veins to run now with pure adrenaline. Itachi kissed her fully, melding their lips together while they clung in a chaste but passionate exchange. At last he withdrew, leaving her breathless and doe-eyed.

Her skin glowed incarnadine, and her head lolled to the side to look up at him through a thick rim of lashes. How he was so capable even after rousing from sleep, she would never know, and how he managed to keep a hold on his thought processes when he was wrecking havoc upon her, she would never master.

"Please… Remind me how it happened," he requested softly, his voice velvet and genuinely curious. She blinked in surprise, but struggled to settle her racing heart while she studied him intently. Her verdant eyes, still glimmering with his effect on her, met his, and finally, a slow smile spread on her mouth.

"Of course… Has it really been seven years since it began?"

---

Silence with something common in the Uchiha compound. And despite how rampant it ran, stilled the hallways, pervaded through every room, it was never something that was comfortable. It was not just the motionlessness of everything in the monochromatic home, but rather the emotion of its inhabitants fueled the perpetually tense atmosphere.

It was palpable bitterness and anger and pride. It stalked him in the shadows. It haunted his every waking thought. Its intensity hung over him in a cloud, and its influence dictated his very future. But in his thirteen years of life, it was something that was inescapable but a constant presence. A diaphanous force whose grip on an entire household was so strong, it was tangible on the boy's shoulders.

He felt its exhausting effects even more now that his brother was absent from the compound for the afternoon. Left alone to his thoughts left room for stresses to fester within, to plague him with his own musings and haunting images from his past. And perhaps a more recent engagement was the unbearable notion of his mission: one that was meant to take place in but a few days.

It was a thought that he did not wish to consider, and it took far too much to fathom—why dwell upon it now. He received his order, he formed a plan… There was nothing more to do but wait and endure his existence… alone.

Though, the irony proved almost vatic, for a knock sounded on the door to the main building.

The thirteen-year-old boy turned over his shoulder at the source of the sound; he hesitated for only a moment. With a quiet grunt, he rose to his feet , set his weapon down—a fine, steel katana blade… A pure and glistening blade that would soon be stained with precious red…

The Uchiha pulled himself to his feet, and when he walked, he nearly glided, with his footfalls light upon the tatami mat floors and his hair trailing out behind him. He was marble and ebony, with his back straight and is head downturned with upward-drifting eyes in a most wraithlike and peculiar matter of walking humbly. His slow steps carried him to the door, and as he reached forward, he drew in a deep breath.

Fear was everything to him now. He breathed it, ate it, and slept with it haunting his dreams. In these days, while the massacre drew near, it could be anyone coming to his door. The police, the ANBU, the Hokage's servants, even his own Clansmen… Dread curdled within when his long fingers curled in the door handle, and his eyes were narrowed and alert when he slid the rice paper pane away from the threshold.

Tension gripped him out of reflex, and a brief jolt of panic surged through the wary and tired boy when no one stood before him in the door. However, a small sound forced his gaze downward until he gazed into a set of wide green eyes.

The irises were the most striking color of green he had seen, and behind them, only innocence and naiveté was captured behind their gemmed surfaces. When his own exhausted ones clashed pierced into them for a few moments, the smile on her small mouth faded but her eyes continued to glimmer with childish uneasiness.

Finally, she submitted and lowered her eyes subserviently. "Is Sasuke home?" she asked shyly, chancing to peer up at him only once.

For a few seconds, Itachi only eyed her with a sort of skepticism. "No," he said tersely.

Looking down at her in such dewy disappointment… It gripped his heart, his soft side, and he stepped aside reluctantly. "Please come inside. He will be home soon."

A sort of surprise fluttered over her young face, and his resolve slowly broke away until a kind smile replaced his stern countenance. Her own fear chipped slightly until she blinked gratefully with those emerald saucer eyes and brushed past him into the house.

Even if he had shown a degree of hospitality, it did not mean he had a plan. They stood regarding each other for a few long moments, and she clearly was uncomfortable under the weary taciturn boy's gaze. However, she seemed to bolster her courage enough to introduce herself.

"I'm Haruno Sakura."

The raven-haired boy clenched his jaw uneasily, before a sigh passed his lips. "I am Itachi—Sasuke's older brother."

She seemed somewhat alarmed while she studied him before a small blush crept across her cheeks. In return, he smiled thinly, knowing he could not just leave her here. "Are you hungry?"

Timidly, she nodded, and he marveled at how such a young child could be so cripplingly shy. He approached her slowly to brush past her into the kitchen, and the girl, having never ventured without Sasuke into the compound, gripped his hand reflexively. Instinctively, every muscle in the Black Ops agent's body tensed and pulled warningly taut, but he relaxed slowly with his own volition and allowed the simple touch.

It had been some time since someone had dared to, after all… His eyes distant, he led her slowly into the kitchen, their feet nearly silent upon the floor, and he led her to the table where she sat patiently. She said nothing, and he did not either, though his eyes were gentle and wishing he could still muster enough of himself to play the role of the brother.

But these past few days had just been so… hard. It was hard to play a caregiver when it felt as if the world was crashing down at his feet. But, he had endured more, and he turned to the kitchen to begin making a simple lunch for the girl—onigiri. His fingers were dexterous as he wrapped seaweed around fruit and fish, and he melded the small rice ball into his hand and set it out on a plate.

His actions were mechanical and practiced while his fathomless black eyes gazed past the counter to rest on the little girl who sat at his kitchen table. A small frown overtook his placid expression, for somehow despite his pain, he was able to notice that she looked so very sad sitting alone.

Gathering the ceramic plate into his hand, he approached her tentatively again and set it in front of her. She looked up through her bangs, which had come loose from the ribbon tired about her head, and the sadness in her eyes melded into a sort of gratefulness he was surprised to see. A grin overtook her lips, again so shy, and she whispered, "Thank you, Itachi…"

Itachi smiled his reply and slowly sat down across from her while she began to eat. "Are you all right, Sakura?" he asked carefully, his brotherly compulsion finally demanding that he ascertain for her welfare.

The pink-haired child adopted a look filled with surprise, and she lowered her eyes to the table. Supplying another goad, Itachi murmured, "You look sad."

"I'm just… sad Sasuke-kun isn't here," Sakura replied, subconsciously plucking grains of rice from the morsel of food she held.

He eyed her skeptically until she looked up, and she bit her lip to suppress its slight wavering. "I was just being teased," she whispered, as if even the very notion of speaking it ripped her from her tiny seams. "About my forehead…"

His brow creased thoughtfully while he regarded her, and he sighed patiently while he rose from his seat and walked around the table. The boy, wizened beyond his years in the mind, knelt beside her and braced his weight upon his calves. Very gently, with some deep-rooted instinct in one who was only meant to give, he brushed the hair from her eyes.

"You will be a beautiful woman someday," he promised with such sincerity, her cheeks immediately began to adopt a lovely shade of red. It was a simple, quiet reassurance, but enough to have her lowering her eyes this time out of some strange embarrassment rather than shame.

Quickly, she nodded so that her short locks splayed out about her. His eyes creased kindly and a few notes of laughter escaped his lips; with that, he returned to his seat and waited in patient silence while she slowly regained her confidence enough to eat. A new sort of aura settled about her—a childish infatuation that he himself could not place. But he could feel something amiss—or at least something knew—by the way she became even more avoidant of his eyes, but how those deep green depths sparked with hidden emotion.

Sakura thought quietly upon Sasuke, of Ino, and her school… Of all the harsh words and abandonment, and how her crush had not once said something so kind, so soothing. But his older, mysterious—and honestly quite unnerving brother—managed to strike something. Youthful infatuation on a teenage boy… Oh, how natural, but so very frightening for a young girl newly delving into this strange feeling. Uncertain of even how to approach it, she recalled a conversation with Ino…

"Itachi," she whispered, meeting his eyes when he looked up. "Do you like when girls have long or short hair?"

Slightly taken aback, the Uchiha heir eyed her for a long few moments. "It does not matter much… I suppose it is what is inside," he replied thoughtfully, though he could see from her eager, but so hesitant eyes, that she desired an answer. "But… Maybe long?"

Sakura seemed to take in this information slowly, noting that the brothers apparently shared a preference. "I'm growing mine out."

Itachi smiled crookedly, beginning to read into what she believed to be discreet. "Is that right?"

She nodded eagerly, and then pinned him with an intent stare. "Is it because your hair is long?" When he appeared confused, she shifted in her chair slightly. "Well… So that you don't feel weird when yours is longer than hers?"

Surprise flickered in his eyes, and while he dryly nursed his young—and therefore fragile—masculine pride in his mind, he could not help but to laugh gently. "Maybe that is it," he humored her quietly, folding his hands at his lips.

"You shouldn't, though," young Sakura amended softly, her eyes growing gradually wider. "It's pretty—your hair, how it is."

The child appeared soundly humiliated, but he leaned forward slightly to console her with his expertly feigned interest—though with how strangely endearing he found the girl, was it really so fabricated? "So I should not cut it?"

Eyes still appearing as if they would bulge out, she shook her head wordlessly, frozen to the spot. His smile, almost curling into a smirk, remained unflagging. "So be it. I shall leave it for you."

She was left staring quite stupefied at the teenager, and he only closed his eyes in his charming beam. Even when he took her plate and carried it to the sink, even when the water began to run over the plate, she could not quite figure out why she had been so utterly captivated with Sasuke when his brother… She silenced the thought, perceptive of what was right and wrong, what was fantasy and reality, even at the tender age of eight.

Itachi paced back around the counter and hovered in the threshold between the dining room and kitchen; she rose slowly from her chair just as the door to the house slid open.

"He is home, Sakura," he murmured lightly, and when the girl, only up a bit past his waist, flung her arms around him to hug him, his cobalt eyes widened in subdued shock. Her small, feckless body was pressed close to him, and he could scarcely reorganize his thoughts enough to hold her in an innocent embrace.

"Thank you, Itachi…" she whispered at last, before letting go and taking a step back. A pause ensued. "Can I see you tomorrow?"

Still somewhat thrown off by the display of affection, he regarded her tentatively, running over his mind everything that he needed to do. At last, he came to a conclusion. "Of course… If you would like."

At his reply, she beamed genuinely and waved. With that, she turned and bounded down the hall to meet his younger brother.

Weakly, Itachi slid against the wall and stared after her for a long few moments. Yes… Yes she could come again.

If one thing could keep him sane for his last week in Konoha, it was that smile. Those eyes…

Only a child, pure of heart and emotion for him, could show that sort of innocence.

---

Sunlight filtered in through the window of the Uchiha compound, casting a mosaic of light upon the tatami mat floors of the complex. The day was young, early afternoon, while the clouds lazily drifted by on the backdrop of a blue sky.

Uchiha Mikoto stood behind her kitchen counter, cooking a meal for her two sons for when they were finished with their respective business. Her young face was beautiful, but still so worn—especially with what she knew was to come for her eldest child. Her firstborn son, Itachi. How sad it was; she knew very well how much he adored the village. It was truly a shame that it needed to be brought to its knees, yet… Just yesterday, an unbelievable uplifting of his mood and actually surprised her.

The boy had always been melancholy—understandably with how deep his scars ran.

Calmly, she sliced vegetables with an expert, narrow hand and a lethally sharp blade. As she prepared to brush them into a pain, a rap on the side of the house sounded, startling her somewhat. She did not believe they were meant to have visitors today…

Mikoto furrowed her brow and wiped her hands calmly on her apron while she wandered to the door. When she opened it, a young girl stood with a lovely flower held loosely in her small fingers. Maternally, she smiled, tilting her head. "Hello, Sakura-chan. Sasuke—"

"Um… I was actually wondering if Itachi was home." Her face colored a faint pink.

Mikoto parted her lips, as if genuinely surprised her oldest boy would have anyone—especially the girl who was Sasuke's friend—coming to visit. Nodding quickly, she turned only to see the brooding teen standing cross-armed in the hallway. Sakura, upon seeing him, slipped past the older woman and bounced up to his side.

Itachi regarded her with a smile, but when he raised his chin to Mikoto, his jaw tightened infinitesimally with a narrowed-eyed, glinting look that clashed with her curious one. A slow sigh passed her lips when the two slid down into the darkness of their home.

Uchiha Mikoto knew better by now not to question her eldest son.

---

The inside of the compound was oppressive and encroaching with the heavy pall of emotion and the whites that threatened to drown him with every moment. But one thing he—and apparently Sakura—enjoyed was the lovely gardens that sprawled over the back of the property.

Cobblestone pathways wound their way around the property, while fountains tumbled languidly down their stone confines in tandem with the louder babble of the small stream that ran through it. The stream, Itachi thought grimly, that emptied out into the river just a few miles from the compound.

The river that he had drowned Shisui in…

His eyes clouded over and he forced his mind away from the thought. What was done was done, but how could he pretend to be so callous when it felt as if his body was being crushed from the inside? When his mind was splitting in two from his near insanity and grief? How an encasement of ice slowly built its way in ominous claws up to his heart… How they dug in painfully with every arduous beat.

Itachi clenched his jaw and forced himself over the tense surface of his madness he was suffocating him. What awaited him on the other side, what kept him very faintly latched onto the world, was the sight of a child sitting in the grass.

Sakura splayed out fondly among the kempt grass, her pink hair flowing out in a rivulet of pink while the blade of dew-beaded grass swept along her small frame. She looked innocent and nature, amongst the shining and rippling foliage while the wind swept by, and somehow more mature and almost ethereal. The moon illuminated her young features in a wan blue glow, and the pollen lazily drifting above meandered in yellow clouds upon the breeze.

It all wafted around her: the air suffused sweet, the wind played through her hair. Petals drifted down about her, while she stretched sleepily out after their day together. His heart twisted for what he would have to do to her when she learned what had transpired, and suddenly he wondered if he truly was a monster to connect to this girl when his first life was about to come to a screeching, clattering stop.

But she knew nothing. Slowly, her head tipped back and she pinned him with a green stare that glimmered even in the velvet night that blanketed them. Her lips parted into a smile. "Itachi?"

Obediently, the boy rose from his perch upon a wooden bench. She giggled girlishly and beckoned him forth with her eyes; obligingly, he dropped to all fours until he seemed to meld into the shadows and slunk forth. He stopped beside her, peering down curiously.

Another breeze drifted by them, ruffling his hair in a neat black cascade, and the load of the overhanging trees was dropped onto the sweet air's caress. Petals tumbled gracefully through the still, evening air until one snagged daintily into his black hair.

Sakura grinned at him and laughed softly. "I'm glad you're my friend," she whispered quietly.

And while he knew it was a mistake, while the words painfully left his throat, the boy spoke sincerely. "Me, too…"

His eyes fell closed, deep in thought. Had he not been able to see this show of innocence, the purity in this child… Would he have completely lost faith? Sakura, sensing his pensiveness, said nothing and merely beamed up at the fragile blossom atop his head.

Feeling her eyes, Itachi slowly reached up to retrieve it. His rolled the small stem through his fingers before pinning her with the intense stare that shook her to her very core. And how she loved it.

"I think we were destined to be friends," he said at last, his eyes heavy and intent while he looked down at her. His countenance was always so serious, but now… Now she could see the humanity behind him, the emotions bubbling up from the surface of those deep, onyx eyes.

Young Sakura's lips parted quietly, and she looked at him dreamily, clearly in a daze. It did not held when his hand approached her, to brush her hair behind her ear. She swallowed harshly, but when he withdrew, the small blossom was tucked behind her ear.

"It looks better on you," he murmured quietly, his irises wavering while he struggled to maintain his emotionless façade.

The girl, not fooled by his guise, eyed him but blushed fiercely nonetheless. "Destined…?"

"Yes…" He paused, seeming to think. "We were meant to find each other, and we are meant to stay together forever."

Despite his words, he looked terribly forlorn, and she furrowed her brow at his pain. He murmured something under his breath, but the only phrase she could distinguish was 'more like star-crossed'.

She was not sure if was him or the wind that chilled her, but nonetheless, the heat he had instilled was set ablaze in her mind, all for him. "It seems like we've already been friends forever," she mused, her words unpremeditated.

His eyes snapped up to her, patiently tired but still kind in his amusement. "A week is hardly forever."

She lowered her eyes shyly, and the two fell into a sort of comfortable silence. Her doe eyes hardly seemed to part from his face, before she glanced away once more. "Do you really think we'll be friends forever?"

How he had promised her it, he would never know, but he looked far off in the distance, where the flora blossomed into a myriad of colors. "In a way, yes," he replied slowly. "You will always remember this, no?"

Sakura nodded, but furrowed her brow in childish worry, as if afraid he would slip away at that moment. He sighed quietly. "I wish I could promise for certain, but…"

"Destiny," she interrupted, her thoughts adorned on her face. "You'll find me."

His eyes were pensive and somehow, he felt some sort of liberation surge through him, followed by an intense wave of some uncertain happiness he had not felt in a long time. "Yes, Sakura. I will always find you."

---

Though he had known for quite some time what his mission entailed, there was nothing in the world that could have prepared him for the overwhelming emotion he was now burdened with. His heart surely was cease to bit if its beat persisted in this quicksilver pattern, and his mind definitely would stop functioning when it was too overloaded.

Old scars from deep within him, spider-webbing down to his very soul, were suddenly and grisly ripped apart until fresh blood seeped from them all. He saw read, was drowning in red… And there was so much upon his lithe form, from the emblematic liquid that ran from the corners of his conscious, to the newly split blood that clung to his skin and caked upon his clothes, he could not be certain which was his and which was not. He could not distinguish, either, if his wounds were physical or mental, but he could only make sense of the fact that one begat the other.

Harsh pants and muffled sobs pierced the stillness of the night, and though the only true cadence of the night was the thrum of footfalls upon the ground, young Uchiha Itachi could hear nothing but metal through flesh, nothing but screams of agony and raw fear…

No, he never should have been afraid, his scarred subconscious seemed to rationalize. It was the Hokage, it was the Uchiha, the elders that should have been afraid… Of him.

Trails of tears cut glimmering pathways down his aristocratic features, once so composed, but now broken and wild with the indescribable pain that was present there. Everything was coming to pieces around him. His world was shattered, everything was so clear was misconstrued and hued now in confusing scales of grey so vivid, he swore he would fall into oblivion with every step. His body, even, was failing him. His limbs were heavy, motions mechanical, and his heart…

Oh, his heart wrenched with every beat, and the ice that had crept up through him now squeezed relentlessly within to gouge in a deeper wound within his heart. His stomach churned wildly, with sickness and grief so intense, they intertwined and wrought new, unfamiliar rolls of nausea through him. His eyes squeezed shut from the headache, and more tears fell from the very corners while his throat struggled through its burns to release his soft whimpers.

His home was gone, his family was annihilated, and his reputation was in shambles. And despite the inexplicable sadness, there was a somber sort of accomplishment in the only sane and collected part of his mind. And perhaps the one other sentient piece, whose jurisdiction stretched over his few to nonexistent impulses, wildly drove his feet in one direction.

He was a black streak in the night, with his hair billowing out behind him in a mussed ponytail. Red followed behind him in the blood that spattered his blade, the grey of his vest, to the zuri that rapped rhythmically upon the cobblestones pathways of the village he had supposedly just betrayed. His eyes bled to black from crimson, while his gaze sought something wildly out from the rows of houses that he swore began to close in around him.

What was once a welcoming village was now a prison, threatening to kill him, to capture him, to send this poison through his veins with the many memories it still held within its large, stone gates. Yet despite his thirteen years of existence, his mind seemed to cling to ones that were still fresh in his mind, though… Since he had eradicated nearly every trace of his past life, was it not only natural to crave what was still left in this world?

He had been running for some undistinguishable amount of time, but his lungs heaved in desperate relief when his legs had found his subconscious goal. His face wan and still utterly petrified from what had just transpired, but he managed to focus his chakra enough to leap from the stone pathways beneath his feet and close the distance between himself and a small ledge. His energy clung to the leeway he had to perch atop it, and he closed his eyes for a moment.

His eyelashes swept his high, patrician cheekbones while his heavy breaths fanned out quietly against the windowpane to leave a thin miasma that clung to the glass. Through the transparent surface lie a futon, on which a small girl curled into the sheets. He strained his tear-bleary eyes through the glass and carefully pressed upon the pane until it slid open to allow him passage. The boy carefully slid through and closed it behind him before his feet alighted gracefully upon her floor.

Itachi approached the bed in silence, his expression distant and still quite troubled—as a vast understatement. Why he had come here, he could not quite fathom, but something about the steady breathing of the slumbering girl soothed him. But despite his attachment, like everything else in the past few hours, he would have to sever his bonds… Tears again welled within his eyes while he gazed upon the innocent child who had kept him at least relatively sane for the last few days of his first life…

Tears began to well to the brim of his eyes once more at the mere thought of departing and crushing her. As if on cue, the small body beneath the sheets stirred, and dread curdled within the boy at the thought of saying goodbye… Groggily, her eyes fluttered open, and she regarded him with a glazed look that slowly dissipated into clarity.

"Itachi…?" Sakura asked sleepily, slowly sitting up in her bed. The sheets fell and creased about her, swathing her in trails of fabric that flowed onto her mattress.

"Sakura," Itachi replied, his voice tired and incomprehensibly poignant. "I have to leave."

Immediately, the sleepiness was purged from the girl's eyes and a fervency overtook it. "What?"

"You will know soon," he whispered quietly, his brow creasing desperately while he fought the urge to run… Anywhere, any way… He just needed to escape. "I am not coming back."

Though she did not understand fully the circumstances, the eight-year-old was perceptive—far beyond her years. The sheer material of her nightgown fell around her small body, and she padded lightly on the floor until she stood before him. Her arms entwined around his waist while her cheek was pressed to his hip.

"You're shaking, and you're bloody," Sakura whispered quietly, her concern flowing through her small, wavering voice. She could feel the boy stiffen beneath her, and the sadness emanating from his body washed over her in waves… She had never seen him this way before, and the thought of him leaving…

He said absolutely nothing in reply; Uchiha Itachi now remained as not much more than an empty shell of what a teenage boy was supposed to be. Her arms held him tighter, and while he felt as if he would proverbially slip away, she could sense something within him that let her know it was not far from the truth.

Her voice dropped even lower—a soft whisper, seeming to catch on the breeze that ominously rustled outside her ajar window. "What happened to forever?"

He had promised. He had promised they would be friends forever, promised that they were meant to find each other for a reason her young mind had not yet concluded… What destiny, then, now broken between them, or had it never existed at all? Tears, small, rounded beads of clear gems, now pooled at the corners of her eyes.

He drew back from their embrace just enough to kneel in front of her. "Sometimes reality complicates that," he whispered quietly, his thumbs brushed away the few tears that began to streak her small, flawless cheeks.

Her small hands gripped his palms tightly. "You said you would find me."

"I…"

"Please stay," she entreated him desperately, those wide, innocent eyes pleading with him with every ounce of influence she possessed. He felt himself being torn in two, but he resolutely shook his head.

It was not as if he had a choice.

"Then take me with you," she persisted adamantly, and in her childish obliviousness, she knew not the heaviness of her words nor any of the repercussions that were attached to her request.

"I cannot," Itachi replied, his voice nearly cracking from emotion. Every temptation and desire screamed a resounding 'yes', but logical thought and his own compassion for her dictated his simple answer.

Now, the tears were incessant, unstoppable, and he felt himself crumbling just looking at the young girl. Why had he done this to her? His larger hand cupped her cheek softly, and while his own pain threatened to pull him under, her own must be palliated.

"I will find you again one day," he whispered firmly. "Do you understand?"

Her bangs fell in front of her eyes, concealing her expression, but the infinitesimal incline of her head moved the pink strands enough to let him see even a bit of the color behind them. "Yes… Destiny."

Before he could repeat the word back to her, she pressed her small lips to his on an impulse and her cheek colored vividly. He, while devoid of a true physical attraction due to her age, melted inside by the first genuine emotion that had overpowered him in years…

Suddenly, life did not appear an entirely lost cause.