Let It Begin

14. Itachi's Truth Part 1

Sakura awoke abruptly, panting heavily, and looked around wildly at her surroundings.

'Where am I?' She thought, 'What happened to me? Am I dead? Did Itachi kill me?'

She looked up but she saw neither ceiling nor a blue sky, but a red moon in a red sky.

"What is this place?" she said aloud and got up from the dark ground, looking around a bit more sedately. Off in the distance, she saw a small village. The black ground petered off into green hills just in front of it, and the sky above melded from red to blue in roughly the same area as the grass. With no other ideas, she headed toward it...and gasped in surprise as memories started flooding back to her.

~Flashback~

"Even if for a second, I believe that it's true, that it's all true...then..." Sakura said, "Here I thought you were this monster who killed his own clan, his own parents....This strong Uchiha who was capable of a such thing. This Uchiha whom I hate so much, that is the cause of the person I love's suffering."

"What am I now?" Itachi asked curiously.

"Now.....I don't know," Sakura whispered, "You loved your brother so much. You did this for Sasuke's survival....but how come you didn't love him enough to tell him the truth? It almost seems like you ran away.....like a coward."

Sakura looked at the ground, clenching her fists in anger, and continued without letting Itachi answer her.

"You even pushed him to join Orochimaru."

"I wanted to be punished for my actions and I choose Sasuke to be the one to administer that punishment. I never wanted him to join Orochimaru....to choose the dark path." Itachi replied.

"When you met Sasuke, you taunted his weakness and encouraged him to get strong enough to kill you!" She looked up at Itachi, "What did you expect would happen?!"

Itachi stayed quiet, and Sakura became suspicious.

"Why were you really there? I know you came for Naruto, but now after this....the whole truth....now I'm not sure..."

"I pretended to pursue Naruto in order to covertly let the Leaf know what Akatsuki's goals were. I also came in the wake of Lord Sarutobi's death; I needed to remind Danzo and the rest of the Leaf Council that I was still out here and that they shouldn't harm Sasuke."

"Meeting Sasuke was never your plan?"

"No....."

"Then why push him further? Why taunt his weakness? Just when he was thinking about letting go of his vengeance, you just had to push him further to make him think that the Leaf, his teammates, were making him weak and that leaving them to join Orochimaru would give him what he needed."

Once again, Itachi stayed quiet. His silence gave Sakura the answer she needed.

"You didn't know, did you? He told me himself, when he was on his way out of the village...when I begged him to stay. He is driven to gain power because he lost his family, yet sacrifices the family he still had, us, Team 7 in order to gain that power. He could have taken the right path to have vengeance, but you just had to push him....." Sakura's voice echoed in stillness of the room,

"And after he kills you? What then? You'll have your punishment and he'll have his revenge, but what do you want to happen afterwards?"

"Sasuke will be hailed as a hero and never learn the truth about the Uchiha's massacre," he answered.