Chapter Text
“Caves are creepy,” Sakura told her sensei, doing her best to avoid touching the damp walls as they squeezed through yet another narrow passage. There was allegedly a cavern opening up soon, according to the map that Tsunade had provided when she’d assigned them the mission. It was impossible to tell from the oppressive darkness and the seemingly tangible weight of the rocks and earth above their heads.
“It could be so much worse,” Kakashi said from ahead of her. He was taking point at Sakura’s insistence, after they’d disturbed a flock of bats when they’d first entered the cave through a crack-like opening in the earth. She’d shrieked, he’d giggled, and she’d decided he got the honor of disturbing the next sleeping creature.
“Please don’t elaborate,” Sakura said. Her sensei had a myriad of stories about missions gone wrong that he would cheerfully tell at the most inopportune times. Usually just in time to give Sakura new things to fret about when in an uncomfortable situation like this; his years as a ninja had been eventful.
This mission was meant to be a breather for them while the rest of their team – in this case, Naruto, Sasuke, Sai and Yamato – took a mission to the Land of Glaciers. Sakura had been thankful that their mission had headed into more temperate lands right up until dozens of bats had flown directly at her face.
She bet there weren’t any bats in the Land of Glaciers.
While the rest of the boys were on their C-rank mission, she and Kakashi had been assigned this B-rank. Though, admittedly, the higher rank was less because of the risk of combat and more because of lack of intel. They were supposed to be locating a scroll of Uzushio customs from this cave that Tsunade hoped would help with her attempts at training more sealing masters. The discipline was in desperate need of more users, and Sakura privately thought that Tsunade was a little embarrassed that Konoha had failed to foster more sealing experts, given their history with Uzushio, and was trying her best to mend that.
Since the islands themselves were inaccessible, Tsunade had put some paper ninjas to work in the archives looking for references to places likely to have stored information, and this cave had been mentioned with enough frequency and with enough warnings that it seemed like a likely place to start.
So she and Kakashi had been tagged for the retrieval. He was checking for seals with his Sharingan eye as they progressed, but so far the cave had been devoid of any traps.
It was frankly suspicious, and Sakura suspected that the cave was a dead end. They’d go until they found some sort of cavern, then make their way back to the surface to return to Konoha empty-handed.
Still better than spending three weeks in the Land of Glaciers.
Especially since the cave, while smelling decidedly damp and earthy, wasn’t actually that difficult to navigate. Sure, passages like this one were more narrow than was comfortable, but she’d seen caves with much smaller and claustrophobia-inducing passages. Ones you had to shimmy though on your belly, or crawl through thick mud and guano.
She kept reminding herself how much worse it could be, while keeping close enough to her sensei that she could grab his sleeve in case their lights went out.
Finally, though, the passage widened enough that they could walk side-by-side, casting a wider net with their light, until they reached an actual cavern.
Kakashi stopped abruptly before stepping into the cavern, holding his arm out to prevent Sakura from stepping forward. He pointed his light to the ground, and Sakura saw delicate lines of fuuinjutsu on the ground. She swung her light, and the lines continued along the border of the cavern even past the opening they were entering, like it was creating a giant circle around the perimeter.
“Is it safe?” Sakura asked. Kakashi was staring at the sealwork, Sharingan exposed, and he slowly reached out and prodded at it with his chakra.
Nothing happened that was visible to Sakura. She didn’t feel any backlash from the chakra, either.
“Seems like it,” Kakashi said, now poking the sealwork with his finger. Still no reaction. Sakura reached out and did the same, just in case it reacted to her differently. It didn’t.
They carefully stepped over the line, and it remained inert.
Perhaps they were being overly cautious, but when dealing with sealmasters… They both knew enough to make them wary.
Once they lit up the entire cavern, Sakura’s concerns about the line of sealwork surrounding them surprisingly faded. There was an altar in the center of the room; if Naruto were there she would bet anything that he would be loudly theorizing it had been used for ghoulish sacrifices, because it was also covered in the same sealwork as around the perimeter. The rest of the cavern was mostly empty; the space was only just large enough to echo slightly. There were a few shadowy areas that indicated that they hadn’t arrived through the only entrance; Sakura kept an eye on those.
There were, however, several sets of human remains at various parts of the room. A couple clustered together, and a few leaning up against the cavern walls. They were all in advanced states of decay; the stench was long gone, and mostly just skeletons and scraps of cloth remained.
“That’s not great,” Sakura said. She immediately stepped back out of the cavern, across that line of sealwork, but nothing impeded her exit.
“Probably killed each other,” Kakashi said with a shrug. “There’s two sets of corpses, see? And they both look like they’re at the same level of decay. It’s actually a good sign, says there’s something here worth killing over.”
Sometimes Sakura was reminded that her sensei had spent his entire life as a ninja and thus had a very skewed idea of what good signs were.
“I’m assuming the scary altar is where we’ll find the scrolls?” Sakura said, rather than delving deeper into Kakashi’s theories.
“It’s the only spot in here,” Kakashi agreed.
They approached it cautiously, but the stone was actually quite pristine. The seals were carved into it, unlike the inked ones along the border, but the stone was a pale granite and didn’t have any dark stains.
Sakura’s brow furrowed. “Why isn’t it scary up close?”
Kakashi looked just as surprised at the lack of bloodstains. “Maybe it’s for ceremonial purposes?”
Sakura rolled her eyes. “I’m just hoping it’s for storage purposes.”
With the use of the Sharingan, it only took a little searching to find a suspicious seam in the altar, and soon enough a well-placed kunai used as a lever let them open up a secret hiding space that did, in fact, contain a few scrolls, dusty and yellowed but in remarkably good condition for the age they were supposed to be.
“That was almost too easy,” Sakura said. Kakashi had done everything on his own; her presence had been wholly unnecessary.
“It really was,” Kakashi said, glancing back at the nearest corpse. “Nothing to murder anyone over.”
They hadn’t opened the scrolls, their contents might have been worthy of murder, but the fact that they were still in their hiding place meant that the previous searchers had resorted to violence before even opening up the hiding space or confirming that anything was even present.
It was weird.
“We should get out of here,” Sakura said, nervousness curling through her stomach instead of the satisfaction that a completed mission would inspire. She’d been a ninja long enough to trust her gut.
Kakashi nodded. They replaced the stone covering of the hiding place, despite it now being empty – a sign of respect – and headed back for the passage they’d arrived through.
Only there was a sound across the cavern, and Sakura glanced back to see two figures entering the cavern through one of the shadowy entrances she’d noticed when they arrived.
“Kakashi-sensei,” she hissed, because those red clouds were distinctive, but then there was a bigger concern.
“Shit,” Kakashi said, grabbing Sakura’s arm as a flash of golden light filled the cavern, pulling her to the ground.
Only it wasn’t an explosion.
It was a barrier.
The golden light continued to glow, casting the cavern in a soft light. Sakura would welcome the way it illuminated the cavern fully, except it was emanating from the sealwork that had troubled them when they’d first arrived – it now glowed around the entire perimeter, with a faint shimmer following the curves of the cavern roof to form a dome high over their heads.
Sakura glanced back at the two figures, hoping they were on the outside of the dome.
No such luck.
She knew who they were, of course. Itachi Uchiha was impossible to not recognize, and his partner was giant and blue, not exactly difficult to identify.
Kisame was letting out a string of curses, while Itachi’s eyes were dark and intense as he looked at the golden dome, and–
Yeah, they had definitely noticed her and Kakashi’s presence.
Kakashi did not let go of Sakura’s arm as they rose. “It looks impermeable.”
They were close enough to the golden dome to touch, and Sakura, knowing that she would likely be able to heal herself if anything went wrong, was the one to reach out and prod at it.
It was like touching a steel wall; cold and thrumming faintly with energy, but solid. She narrowed her eyes at it and threw a punch at it. She didn’t put her full strength behind it, which she was thankful for when her arm reverberated painfully as the wall didn’t give an inch.
Steel would have given under the force she’d put into that punch.
She looked down at her hands, confused. She’d gathered her chakra correctly. Even if the barrier wasn’t something physical she could break, it shouldn’t have felt like that…
“Fuck,” she muttered. Was the barrier interfering with their chakra?
She turned to Kakashi, who was raising his headband to look at it. She was greeted with a strange sight – two dark eyes, one the same deep black as Sasuke’s, but no Sharingan in sight. Kakashi’s brow furrowed as he blinked, confused.
“Try a jutsu,” she hissed, her own hands forming a simple water jutsu she could do in her sleep. She could feel the chakra within her system, but as soon as it tried to exit her body…. It dissipated.
Kakashi’s hands flew through a familiar pattern, trying to call up pure lightning, but he didn’t create as much as a spark.
There was a look of panic in his eyes as he tried another one, and then a final one – something Earth, she thought, probably intending to tunnel his way out if somehow the chakra-dampening properties of the barrier faded – before his shoulders slumped. “Nothing?”
She knew he was asking because her chakra control was finer and if either of them could work around it, she should be able to. She attempted something more direct – nothing elemental, just pure chakra, a chakra scalpel she’d used a thousand times in surgeries – and couldn’t get the chakra to form outside her body. “Nope. Something about it’s blocking our chakra. It feels fine in my body, but…”
“It just won’t form,” Kakashi said grimly.
External, obviously. She prodded at the glowing barrier again, more cautiously now knowing that she was unable to heal herself. She cast her eyes to the other threat in the room, to see that they were likely making a similar discovery– Itachi had his hands on his temples, looking like he was straining to see, while Kisame’s hands angrily flashed into ineffectual patterns that likely should have been devastating jutsus.
Not just them, then. “What are we going to do?”
“Figure a way out,” Kakashi said, and knelt by the barrier, scraping his kunai against the spot where it met the cool stone of the cavern floor. “It goes underground,” Kakashi said after a moment of kneeling and inspecting the way the barrier hit the ground. “It’s a sphere.”
No going under it, then.
“Interfere with the sealwork?” she suggested quietly, deeply aware of the two missing-nin that would no doubt be attacking soon. It was likely only the curveball of losing their chakra that had given them this grace period in the first place.
“That’s our best chance,” Kakashi said. He glanced sideways at her. “I’m going to do something ill-advised.”
An alarming amount of the things Kakashi did were ill-advised, but at least he was warning her beforehand.
He let go of her arm, turned on his heel to face Kisame and Itachi, and… waved jauntily.
Sakura stared at him, as she turned away from the golden dome herself. What was he doing?
Across the room, Kisame stopped cursing at the wall and Itachi looked at Kakashi, head tilted in an oddly cat-like manner. It was strange, seeing him dark-eyed instead of gleaming with the threat of the Sharingan, but it was still just as alarming.
“The fuck you want, Hatake?” Kisame called after a second, when it became clear that Kakashi wasn’t going to break the terse silence.
“Looks like you guys are as stuck as we are,” Kakashi called. “I was thinking we could call a truce until we figure out how to deactivate this seal.”
More silence. Sakura stared, disbelieving, at her sensei. That was his ill-advised plan? A truce? They were absolutely not going to agree to a truce.
“And after the seal is deactivated?” Kisame called back.
“That sounds like a problem for future us,” Kakashi replied.
She was pretty sure Kisame let out a little huff of laughter at that. Itachi was still doing his best impersonation of a cat stalking a bird, though she was pretty sure she saw him glance briefly at Kisame, like he was seeking his lead in the matter.
“What if I decide I want to fight it out then figure out the seal myself?” Kisame said after a long moment.
“Well, pretty sure it won’t go as smoothly as you think,” Kakashi said. At his side, his fingers flexed, like he was itching to let his lightning out, but he settled for curling them into a fist. He was deadly without his chakra; everyone knew it. “Also, my partner’s a medic, so we stand the better chance of walking out of here when all is said and done.”
He never faltered, like he never doubted his and Sakura’s ability to fight two of the most dangerous members of Akatsuki to the death and walk away after, even without her enhanced strength.
Sakura hoped her own doubt didn’t show. She cracked her knuckles, more to give herself something to do than as a threat, but she saw the way they both eyed her like she was one anyway. It dawned on her that without their chakra, they were all on a more even footing.
It sent a warm curl of pride through her; some of the most notorious missing-nin in the world thought she was a legitimate threat.
“We agree to the truce.” Itachi’s voice carried across the room easily despite how quietly he spoke. Kisame glanced down at him, then shrugged and holstered his sword. “What he said.”
Kakashi stood still for a second, then slowly eased his posture into something less threatening. “Good, good.”
It was quiet for a long time. Their two groups stayed separate; no one seemed willing to step any closer to a potential enemy. Sakura thought privately that this was actually worse than if they’d all tried to kill each other. The awkwardness was excruciating.
Finally, Itachi stepped forward. Sakura managed not to flinch.
“Do you know what triggered the seal?” Itachi asked.
“Not a clue,” Kakashi said. “It was completely inert when we got here. We checked it out before stepping over it.”
His voice took on that mild lecturing tone he’d sometimes taken when they were genin and had done something particularly idiotic, and Sakura realized that this time it was directed at Itachi and Kisame.
Kisame shrugged it off, but Itachi actually looked mildly contrite. Sakura remembered then that he’d served under Kakashi in ANBU, and he had likely already been conditioned to that tone, just like her and her team.
“It’s worrisome,” Sakura added, mostly to derail Kakashi in case he decided to go into lecture mode. “We’d theorized that the corpses–” She gestured towards the skeletons, in case they’d gone unnoticed by Itachi and Kisame “--had fought each other for some artifact, but now it could be that they starved.”
“So we need to discover what triggered the seal,” Itachi said thoughtfully.
“I mean, we know what triggered the seal,” Sakura pointed out. “It was fine until you two came in.”
She tried very, very hard to not sound accusing, but she was pretty sure she failed. Itachi had no reaction, but Kisame looked like he was suppressing another huff of laughter.
“Did you bring any other seals with you?” Kakashi asked. “Did you check the seal before entering?”
“Nope,” Kisame said. “Didn’t even realize it was there.”
“What were you here for?” Sakura asked, trying to not figure out a tactful way of asking why they hadn’t been alert for seals when knowingly entering a cavern used primarily by Uzushio.
“Our leader intercepted some intel that indicated Konoha was interested in the contents of this cavern, and sent us to investigate why.” Itachi at least sounded wry.
“And you didn’t stop to do any sort of preliminary intel,” Sakura said disbelievingly. “Just blindly waltzed into a mysterious cavern filled with who knows what, just because someone else wanted it.”
Was the Akatsuki actually a cult? Were they brainwashed? That would actually answer so many questions she had about why they would be willing to do basically everything they were willing to do.
“That’s what we do,” Kisame said, sounding proud of it. She supposed that he was taking pride in being able to handle everything. Sakura rather thought it was idiotic.
Kakashi elbowed her gently. He knew her expressions well enough that he was probably afraid she was going to call them idiots to their face and break the very new truce between them already.
“So what are you here for?” Kisame said, eyes following Kakashi’s movement.
“Just some old paperwork that got misfiled,” Kakashi replied.
Sakura sighed. She couldn’t help but notice that Itachi did, too. He’d been ridiculously young when he’d been under Kakashi’s command in ANBU; had Kakashi treated him like he’d treated his genin team?
Sakura had not anticipated feeling empathy for Itachi Uchiha today.
Kisame, on the other hand, just said, “Think it’ll explain what the fuck is going on here?”
A beat of silence. “It might, actually.”
Kakashi made no moves to pull out the scrolls, however. Sakura understood; it was a risk to allow the Akatsuki access to any of the intel, and they didn’t even know what information the scrolls contained.
“Maybe we should try to disrupt the seal another way first,” Sakura suggested. “That’s a thing, right? You can nullify a seal by changing it?”
She had only minimal knowledge about sealwork. Tsunade had insisted she learn the basics before attempting the Byakugou Seal, but Sakura hadn’t so much as cracked a book about them since.
Most people were likewise uninterested in the field; it was why they’d come here in the first place after all. She wished for the first time that Naruto had been chosen for this mission instead. It had been considered, after all – he’d taken a shine to sealwork after learning some during his time with Jiraiya, and Tsunade had wanted someone with Uzushio ancestry on the mission because sometimes blood counted in seals.
But he’d been requested by name for the Land of Glaciers mission, and Tsunade had decided to send Sakura instead, since she’d had a great-grandmother born in Uzushio and Tsunade figured that was good enough.
And now she was trapped in a cave with a pair of missing-nin.
Kisame took her suggestion to heart, and pulled out his giant sword, not hesitating to swing it at the barrier.
The sword bounced off, momentum causing Kisame to spin in place in his attempt to keep the sword under control. There was no disruption in the seal itself, not even on impact.
“We could attack the force field with swords, yeah, or we could try to disrupt the seal another way,” Kakashi said in a tone not unlike what he would use when Naruto and Sasuke were doing something particularly idiotic.
Kisame looked faintly abashed. “It’s a chakra-eating sword,” he said defensively.
Sakura did not point out the many logical fallacies of attacking a fuuinjutsu barrier with a chakra-eating sword, mostly because she wasn’t entirely sure that there were many. She was a little shady on whether the chakra fueling sealwork was the same as the stuff used for jutsus or if the seal itself transformed the energy somehow.
Tsunade really was right, they needed more experts in the field.
Everyone else held their tongue as well.
Kakashi ended up being the one to lean in and inspect the seal, both eyes trained on it. Itachi hovered, close enough that Sakura felt the need to stand there like she was guarding Kakashi. She realized it probably looked ridiculous, but once she took up her post near Kakashi’s shoulder she could see some of the tension leave his body.
He made an attempt, pulling out some ink and drawing something Sakura thought was a disruptor seal, but he couldn’t get it to adhere to the main sealwork.
Itachi shook his head; they both gave up on it at the same time.
They needed to figure out what had triggered the seal.
They had to read the scrolls.
Kisame and Itachi agreed to return to the opposite side of the cavern so that they could read them in relative privacy.
Sakura wasn’t entirely sure why they were being so agreeable; she doubted she would extend the same courtesy if the situation was reversed. She knew Kakashi wouldn’t.
The scroll she started on didn’t seem relevant. It detailed Uzushio arranged marriage stipulations, for the most part. She had to admire how they looked after their own. Both parties were required to be sealed, and the seals seemed to function as a safeguard, requiring proximity and preventing any violent acts.
“Think they held weddings down here?” she wondered aloud as she didn’t find anything relevant in the scroll.
“It’s pretty cozy,” Kakashi said. “The glow of an unbreakable death seal, an altar, what more could anyone want?”
She laughed.
Kakashi’s scroll was equally unhelpful. “Trade agreements,” he said. “Apparently they liked to use this as an impartial meeting ground with outside nations.”
Sakura looked at the barrier glowing overhead again with renewed respect. “Pretty efficient security system.”
“As long as we can figure out what set it off,” Kakashi said. Then, quieter, “How are your provisions?”
“Enough food for a week, if I’m stingy with it,” Sakura said. “Water, a couple days.”
“Same,” Kakashi said. “That’s our timeline, then. Figure this out before we’re too dehydrated to think.”
Sakura nodded, feeling the weight of the problem for the first time. She always sort of assumed that Kakashi had a handle on things, that he would be able to pull them out of any situation they found themselves in. It was partially because he was her teacher, and partially because she’d seen him pull off wildly improbable tactics before. He was, despite his flaws, deeply brilliant.
And the fact that he was that uncertain?
She took a deep breath. “We’ve got a few scrolls left. The answer will be there.”
She opened her next one, to find that it was what Tsunade had sent them here for – a scroll explaining various seals, starting with the one she’d read about that was used for arranged marriages, and branching out into a variety of other things, including…
Yes, including barrier seals.
She whacked at Kakashi’s arm, hissing, “It’s in here?”
“What?” Kakashi’s voice was a little strange. Flat, a little hoarse, like his throat was dry. She narrowed her eyes at him. “Are you okay?”
“Fine, fine,” he said. “The barrier seal. What does it say?”
There was an urgency to his voice.
“It’s been adjusted to only activate if certain requirements are met,” she said. “Nice and vague, thanks, whoever wrote this.” She rolled her eyes, but Kakashi didn’t laugh. “It says that once the requirements are met, it will deactivate until the next time it’s needed. But! There’s a chart here showing where the deactivation takes place. Looks like it’s the altar.”
She paused, thinking of Kakashi’s strange reaction. “Oh god, it’s not human sacrifice, is it? I didn’t think Uzushio did that!”
“No, nothing violent,” Kakashi said. “This one says, well. That the criteria for the barrier activating are if someone of Uzushio blood and a virgin enter the cavern.”
Sakura blinked. “What?”
Kakashi said grimly, “Arranged marriages.”
Sakura said, “But someone of Uzushio blood and a virgin didn’t enter the cavern.” That she knew of, but… Kisame was from Kiri, which famously had a bad relationship with Uzushio. And she knew Itachi was Uchiha through and through.
“Tsunade sent you because of your grandmother,” Kakashi reminded her.
“Great-grandmother,” Sakura corrected. “But… the barrier didn’t go up until they got here.”
“Guess we’re going to have to ask them,” Kakashi said, but he didn’t sound thrilled about it.
They were going to have to ask them if they were virgins. Sakura couldn’t see that. And also…
“What if one of them is?”
Kakashi didn’t meet her eye. “Apparently the marriage ritual is the only way to deactivate the barrier.”
Sakura was hyper-aware of the skeletons in the cavern, the souls who’d been trapped here before and perished. Had they not known? Or were they unwilling?
Kakashi stood up, brushed off his pants, and walked purposefully to where Kisame and Itachi had retreated. Their heads were leaning towards each other, like they were having an intense discussion, but they stopped talking as soon as they got close enough to make out words.
“So we think we figured out why the barrier went up. There’s no delicate way to ask this,” Kakashi said. “Who’s the virgin?”
Kisame looked like he was about to burst into laughter. Itacho just sighed. “We’re not in the mood for jokes.”
“Neither am I,” Kakashi said, and they looked at him closer, at the tension in his shoulders and the set of his jaw. “This scroll says that the barrier will only activate if a child of Uzushio and a prospective virginal suitor cross it.”
“What does it mean by suitor?” Kisame said, brow furrowed. “And shouldn’t you be asking us which one of us is the child of Uzushio?”
“This cavern was apparently used as neutral ground to conduct arranged marriages,” Sakura said. “And we already know who comes from Uzushio blood.” She gestured towards herself.
“No one fits the other criteria though,” Kisame said.
“The barrier was inert when it was just us,” Kakashi said. “One of you two was the missing piece.” He was looking directly at Itachi.
Sakura was very carefully not thinking about what they would do with the information once they had it. What did a marriage ritual entail? Especially one that hadn’t been used in generations?
“We’ve both had sex,” Kisame said plainly. “So no, neither of us is this missing piece. You sure it’s not the girl?”
Sakura was saved from having to share her sexual history by Kakashi lifting up the scroll and reading, “The presence of a daughter of Uzushio requires a pure suitor, who has never found release in a woman’s most sacred place, to activate the barrier.”
Sakura leaned over Kakashi’s shoulder to see that the scroll also had criteria for sons of Uzushio to have virginal brides.
“That is very specific,” she said.
Kisame said, “You’re barking up the wrong tree.”
“There aren’t that many trees here,” Kakashi said. “And I seem to remember that the Uchiha had certain rules that they were expected to follow in matters of the heart.”
Sometimes Sakura forgot that her generation was the first one to not know any Uchiha outside of Sasuke, that there had been an entire clan with its own culture that had been wiped away. That older shinobi likely knew more about Sasuke’s family than Sasuke did.
“There were certain standards we were expected to uphold,” Itachi said slowly. Up this close, he was pale, almost unhealthily so.
“And do you?”
Itachi nodded once, a faint movement.
Kisame nudged him and said, “Stop speaking in riddles. What the fuck are you two talking about?”
“The Uchiha considered certain acts sacred and suitable only for the marriage bed,” Itachi said stiffly. “It was a matter of practicality, meant to prevent bastards and bloodline theft. It felt prudent to continue to adhere to it.”
“So now, because you never busted a nut inside a girl, we’re stuck in a cave by some ancient seal,” Kisame translated. “If we get out of here, I’m going to tell everyone about this.”
“I’d really prefer you didn’t,” Itachi said.
“Don’t worry, things are about to get way more awkward,” Kakashi said.
Sakura reached over and plucked the scroll out of his hand. She didn’t want to know, had been shying away from what she knew was about to be discussed, but now she had to face it head on. And she knew she’d prefer to know what needed to happen for them to escape before Itachi and Kisame did.
The scroll detailed the marriage ritual required to deactivate the barrier.
Her cheeks flamed and she said, “Absolutely not,” before shoving the scroll back into Kakashi’s hands.
“This I’ve gotta read,” Kisame said, and Kakashi wordlessly handed him the scroll.
Sakura got up to pace, not wanting to watch Kisame read what she’d just read, especially with the knowledge that if they wanted the ritual to work, it would have to be her and Itachi acting it out.
Fuck. Was it even acting if it was a binding ceremony?
She remembered the scroll of protections that the seal offered the couple, and instead of seeming like safety measures they suddenly felt like chains.
“Holy shit, this is specific,” Kisame said. He nudged Itachi, who silently took the scroll.
Sakura especially didn’t want to watch him read it. She kept pacing.
“I see.” Itachi said mildly. He rolled the scroll back up and laid it on the ground in front of him, his movements more apt for someone handling explosives than a simple scroll. He didn’t have any outward expression, but Sakura was close enough to Sasuke that she could see they had the same tell – his ears were a deep red, half-hidden in his hair as they were.
At least she wasn’t the only one mortified by this.
“I don’t see the issue,” Kisame said. “You two fuck, we get out of here. It’s idiot proof.”
Sakura let out a huff. Kakashi said, “We’re not forcing anyone to do anything.”
Sakura said, “It’s not the sex that’s the problem.” Not just the sex, but it felt rude to say that, somehow. “It’s the marriage seal.”
“There wasn’t much about that,” Itachi said.
“There was in another of the scrolls,” Sakura said. She didn’t bother to pull it out. “It’s incredibly binding. This wouldn’t just be a one-off ritual. The marriage seal forces both parties into close proximity for years.”
There was silence for a beat while Kisame and Itachi processed that.
“Well, shit,” Kisame said eventually.
“There has to be another way to nullify the seal,” Kakashi said. “Every seal has a weak point.”
Sakura nodded slowly, but she pulled the scroll that detailed the terms of the marriage bond out and silently passed it to Itachi. He was careful to take it by the edge, never so much as brushing her fingers, like touching her would make the ritual somehow begin.
“Some sort of countermeasure,” Kisame said. “Blood, maybe?”
Sakura thought that bleeding on the seal would only make it worse, given how it seemed to be in place to protect the parties inside from harming each other. From Kakashi’s grimace, he thought the same.
“Perhaps not prudent,” Itachi said diplomatically. His expression was carefully mild as he read the scroll, and Sakura thought vaguely that they’d have a lot to explain to Tsunade when they got out of here. If they got out of here.
She didn’t want to die in some cave.
She pushed down the panic that threatened to overwhelm her.
“Well,” Kisame said from where he was reading over Itachi’s shoulder. “How do you feel about going missing nin, girlie?”
“Absolutely not,” Sakura said.
“You wouldn’t have to do anything nefarious,” Kisame said. “We could hide you from the leaders.”
“No,” Sakura said, more forcefully.
“Perhaps we could modify the marriage seal?” Itachi said. “Make it less binding?”
“But then it might not deactivate the barrier, and we’d still be right back where we started,” Kakashi said. He looked like he regretted not paying closer attention to his own sensei, decades ago. They were in dire need of a seals expert. “I’m not adept enough at sealing to pull off something that delicate.”
It was clear none of them were.
“Back to finding weak points in the barrier,” Sakura said. She thought about suggesting that Itachi lose his technical-virgin status without the seal and see what happened, but she knew that she was the only one equipped to assist him with that, and the risk that it wouldn’t work, that without the marriage seal they would just be condemning themselves anyway…
Fuck, this was a bad spot.
She wondered for the first time if some of the skeletons had tried that, had figured out that sex was part of the ritual, but hadn’t found the scrolls with the marriage seal that acted as the key.
Why hadn’t they left some sort of warning for future victims? Or at least a list of what they’d tried? It was irresponsible. She scowled at the corpses.
Kakashi caught her doing it. “Did they do something to offend you?”
“If any of them had left some sort of record of what they tried, it would give us so much more to work with,” she complained. She was a medic; her studies relied on the documentation of what had been tried before, what worked and what didn’t, and it was incredibly frustrating to be in the dark like this.
“I’m sure that given a second chance they would be worried about paperwork, rather than their impending deaths,” Kakashi said, patting her on the head. She turned her scowl on him instead.
“She’s right, though. If we had some idea of what didn’t work, it would give a starting point for what might,” Itachi said thoughtfully.
“We know what will work,” Kisame said, pointing to the scroll. No one had picked it back up, it still rested in front of Itachi.
“Sakura is not going anywhere near the Akatsuki,” Kakashi said firmly.
And that was the problem. They knew how to get out of the cave, but the afterwards? When she and Itachi were bound together, unable to separate? What then?
If only the seal didn’t do that, she thought despairingly. She could stand to be technically-ritually-married to a missing nin that she never saw. It could be like a fun fact about herself. No, I can’t marry you, I’ve already got a husband. Who? Just a mass murderer, don’t worry about it.
But there was no way to do that. No way she could sneak Itachi back into Konoha, somehow hide him in her apartment. It was unthinkable.
She guessed she could take him back and let Sasuke try to kill him, but there had been some concerning references to harm shared in the scroll that made her think that it would put her own life in peril, as well.
“This was meant for treaties,” she said suddenly. “That’s why it’s so binding. It was meant to bring peace between warring factions.”
It made sense – if this was a Warring Eras treaty, then making sure that neither party was suddenly murdered by the other party’s clan was important. And if the bride or groom was murdered by someone outside their own clans, then both clans would turn on whoever had committed the act, because both would have lost someone important.
It was clear from the language that this was meant to be a marriage between clan heirs, between people important enough that their deaths were unthinkable for the rest of their clans. That their lives were enough to hold sway over the rest.
It also explained how Uzushio had held its own power for so long – they wouldn’t be giving up anyone of their own blood without collateral.
“That’s… unfortunate,” Kakashi said. “Because that would mean enough effort went into the sealing that it would be airtight. No work arounds.”
Sakura gestured around the room, at the permanence of the seals carved and inked into the stone itself. At the beautifully carved altar. “This wasn’t done in a day.”
“I think we all need time to reflect,” Itachi said, somewhat abruptly. Sakura couldn’t read his expression, even with her knowledge of Sasuke’s. Kisame nodded sharply in agreement, looking almost… protective?
Sakura took her cue and left, going to the other side of the altar and leaning against it, putting herself completely out of sight of the others. Kakashi followed her, giving the altar a glare, like it was somehow responsible for all this, and then settling down beside her.
Neither spoke for a few minutes.
Sakura leaned her head against her sensei’s shoulder, blinking away the few tears that threatened to fall. She wouldn’t let them; she wasn’t going to go into this weepy and pathetic.
Kakashi was the one to break the silence. “I know what you’re thinking.”
“You know it’s the only way,” she said. All their talk of circumventing the seal was just that: talk. She knew none of them possessed the skill for it. Maybe Naruto could have pulled off some insane act, something lucky and incredible, but he wasn’t here.
Though if he were, this wouldn’t have happened. She thought back over the language of the scroll, and realized that actually, it might have. The language around gender had been somewhat flexible.
She wondered what he would have done, then. Would he have announced his intentions to marry Itachi and convince him to lead a heroic life instead of the one he’d chosen? Or would he have quietly submitted, like Sakura planned on doing?
She was glad he wouldn’t have to.
“We need to give it a little more time,” Kakashi said. “Because…. Sakura, you can’t bind your life to his.”
There were so many reasons why not. So many that she couldn’t even pinpoint which was the worst.
“I don’t want to,” she said. Kakashi curled his arm around her, squeezed her. She knew it was bad; he didn’t instigate hugs often. She brushed the back of her hand across her cheeks, scrubbing away the tears that had fallen. “But I don’t want to die.”
Not like this, waiting around for starvation to take root. Staring at the cave walls until death took hold.
“Maybe you just have to outlive Itachi,” Kakashi suggested. “He looks a little pale.”
“Do you really want to bet your life on that?” Sakura didn’t.
“I don’t want to bet your life on anything,” Kakashi said lowly. “But.. if you’re considering this for anyone’s sake but your own, don’t.”
Sakura didn’t look up at her sensei. Didn’t want to see the expression on his face, the way he was offering up his own life like it was nothing. Offering to let himself die here, slowly, just to save her from the discomforts and the unknown dangers of binding her life to Itachi’s.
The worst part was, she was tempted.
She had food and water packed away. Not much, but enough that if she rationed, she could make it last longer than her earlier estimates. They could turn this into a waiting game, see who died first, leaving the survivor with all the spoils.
But it was a big risk. They couldn’t bring harm to each other, so it would come down to whose body could withstand the longest. Then, if it even worked, if the barrier dropped…
She remembered the long walk down here. How weakened would she be? Would she be able to make her way out of the cave?
Something in her rebelled at the very idea.
It felt cruel. Cold.
Waiting on someone to die first.
Gambling her own life and Kakashi’s too.
“I don’t want that to be my last act,” she said quietly. “Sitting around waiting on someone to die? That’s not who I am.”
Kakashi’s fingers tightened on her side. “The alternative–”
“I’m still trying to wrap my head around it,” she admitted. There were so many factors. Like Sasuke. God, how could she explain this to Sasuke?
That she was going to bind her own life and well-being to the one person he hated most in the world? The person whose death he sought, whose death was his entire driving force?
A small part of her worried that he’d do it anyway, that he would use this to kill his brother, and that she would still end up collateral damage along the way.
She pushed down that fear.
“The Hokage won’t let you into the village,” Kakashi said. “You might end up…” He trailed off, unwilling to say that Kisame might be right. She might end up a missing nin over this.
A good ninja would sacrifice herself to bring down someone as notorious as Itachi Uchiha. If she was thinking like she should, it wouldn’t even be a question. None of them would leave this cavern alive.
But she knew Tsunade, loved her like a second mother, and she knew that feeling was mutual. She couldn’t see Tsunade being pleased at such a death for her apprentice.
“We’ll figure out something,” Sakura said with more confidence than she felt. “She wouldn’t abandon me.”
“So that’s it?” Kakashi said. “You’ve made up your mind?”
“I don’t see any other way,” Sakura said.
From his silence, neither could he.
“But I don’t think we should tell them until tomorrow,” Sakura said after a moment. Sleeping on the idea felt prudent. If there was another solution, she would gladly take it.
And it would give her more time to observe Itachi. See who she was going to bind her life to.
She took out the scrolls, began reading them again. Part of her was searching for a loophole. Part of her was trying to figure out a timeline. The descriptions of the limitations – protections – of the marriage seal were lacking in concrete timelines. It implied that they lessened over time, but that implied that at the beginning they would be especially binding.
Maybe she should go with Kakashi’s suggestion. Her Byakugou seal wouldn’t function properly without access to her chakra, but surely it would do something to improve her longevity.
Kakashi looked over them, too, clearly looking for the same loopholes she was. The furrow between his eyes only got deeper as he read. “Maybe we should reconsider.”
“He wouldn’t be able to harm me,” Sakura said levelly. She hoped; there was no explicit mention of genjutsu. Surely mental harm was included in the aspects that prevented harm? Not just physical?
She hoped.
“There are a lot of types of harm,” Kakashi said.
“And all of them better than a slow death,” Sakura said, though the words made her feel queasy.
She ended up falling asleep there, back against the altar, head resting on her sensei’s shoulder.
It was a fitful, troubled sleep.
*
Things did not look better by the light of morning.
Kakashi was on edge. He was a man of action; sitting around like this wasn’t something he thrived at. Sitting around like this while two missing nin stared at them from across the cavern, knowing the only way out was for one of them to do a weird, sexual ritual with his student? She was probably lucky Kakashi hadn’t attempted a murder in the middle of the night.
Maybe he had. Maybe that’s why everyone looked so grumpy.
Or maybe they’d all hoped someone would come up with a brilliant solution overnight.
They ran through all the options again, made a few more attempts at taking down the barrier with their limited fuuinjutsu knowledge – admittedly half-hearted, all of them knowing that it was futile – and even contemplated tunnelling out.
It didn’t work; the barrier continued underground, just as Kakashi had thought.
Sakura couldn’t seem to bring herself to say the words, the ones that would bind her fate to Itachi’s forever. He seemed equally reluctant.
It was Kisame who finally brought it up. “I’m not going to sit around and twiddle my thumbs anymore.” He gave Itachi an unfathomable look. “We’re getting out of here.”
Itachi just blinked back at him, but Sakura got the distinct impression that there was a lot going on between them. They’d had quiet conversations into the night, just like her and Kakashi, and she wondered what conclusions they’d come to. Kisame’s was obvious; he wanted to go through with the ritual.
She couldn’t tell if Itachi was equally on board.
Kakashi gave her a level look. She knew that look; he was letting her take the lead. He’d done it throughout the years when they’d gone on missions together when he wanted her to practice her leadership and decision making skills. He would let her make whatever decisions (and mistakes) she wanted, and would stand back, letting it happen. He would only interfere if someone was about to die, and sometimes not even then.
Like right now. He was putting his life in her hands.
Kisame was staring at her intently, and she had the feeling that Itachi wasn’t going to say anything one way or another until she did. The illusion of consent, perhaps. Letting her feel like the one who said yes, the one who approved the plan, so that what followed didn’t feel coerced.
Nevermind none of them had a real choice; the spectre of a slow death made sure of that. None of them were built for it. They’d all chosen lives that meant death would come suddenly, and Sakura didn’t think she was alone in finding the thought of slowly starving abhorrent.
More abhorrent than tying her life to someone like Itachi?
Apparently. She took a deep breath and said, “I don’t want to die in here any more than you do.”
Not quite a decisive answer, but the one she was willing to give. She wanted to hear from Itachi himself. She had no real idea what he was thinking. How he saw all this playing out.
Itachi gave Kisame another look. She wondered at their relationship; they could read each other with just a glance. When he spoke, his voice was terse. “I told you, it’s useless to go to such lengths to leave when we know what the leader will do.”
Sakura met Kakashi’s eye; this was interesting and definitely something Tsunade would want to know. Itachi Uchiha was worried about retaliation from someone else; the elusive leader of the Akatsuki. Someone dangerous, judging by the way Itachi clearly deferred to them.
And he was willing to sit here and face a slow death rather than face the Leader’s wrath.
“I’ve got a plan for that,” Kisame said firmly. “But my plan won’t work if we’re rotting down here.”
Itachi stared at him another minute. Sakura thought if they could access their chakra his eyes would be gleaming red and the two would be having this conversation in private, but instead they kept the details close.
“The seals are extremely restrictive,” Itachi said. He wasn’t looking at Sakura or Kakashi; his words were solely for Kisame. “Does your plan account for that?”
“Yes,” Kisame said. “It’s a brilliant fucking plan, and the only way you’re finding out what it is if you break the barrier already.”
Itachi’s shoulders slumped, and he gave a sharp nod.
“Great,” Kisame said.
Kakashi finally spoke up. “None of that exactly inspires confidence.”
Itachi met his gaze; Sakura wondered if the eye contact felt strange, since no threat could exist behind it. “Once the barrier is broken, I will be unable to harm your student.”
Because they were going to be ritually married. Sakura felt a strange pit in her stomach, like she was making a mistake.
“Once the barrier’s gone,” Kakashi said, sounding vaguely like he was mocking Itachi for talking around what was about to happen, “You're going to be seal-bound to her, but he certainly isn’t.” He nodded towards Kisame. “If your mysterious plan involves–”
Kisame cut him off. “I’m not going to hurt your girl. Not when she’s tied to my partner.”
Sakura was beginning to feel like a prop. They were all talking around her, and no one was talking to her.
“Is he still going to be your partner,” and Kakashi put a little extra emphasis on the word; he’d clearly picked up on the same thing she had, “once this is through?”
Kisame didn’t reply. His face was stony.
Sakura spoke up. “I’m not going anywhere near the Akatsuki afterwards.”
Kisame said, “That won’t be a problem.”
“How?” Itachi said, eyes glued to Kisame and Kisame alone.
“You think I don’t know?” Kisame said to him, voice low, and it was like a lover’s confession. Itachi shook his head slightly, as if to deny that there was anything to know, and Kisame forged ahead. “You’re going to take your secrets with you before they get you killed.”
A flash, like Itachi was hoping these secrets would in fact get him killed, and Sakura was beginning to feel like there was a lot more to Itachi Uchiha than she knew, that any of them knew. She thought of Sasuke, of the broken, angry way he spoke of his brother on the rare occasion that he would, and the picture she’d formed did not match the quiet, sad-looking man standing before her.
She glanced at Kakashi, wondering if he got more out of this than she did, and from the intent look on his face, he apparently had.
“Maybe we shouldn’t do this ritual,” Itachi said, voice stiff.
For a second she thought Kisame would call his bluff; she certainly wasn’t going to force the issue if Itachi was unwilling. But it was Kakashi who spoke up. “If that’s your decision, fine. But you’re going to have to explain why.”
Itachi looked between Kisame and Kakashi.
Then Kakashi said, “Or will we have to root it out?”
It was like he’d delivered a devastating blow. Itachi’s shoulders slumped, and he looked for a moment utterly helpless, like a small child caught in a lie, waiting for his parents to punish him.
Kisame stared down Kakashi. “He’s a good kid.” There was something in his tone, the way he said kid, that made Itachi’s shoulders slump even more. Sakura was caught up in something much larger than herself, and she could only see the faintest outlines – Itachi as a martyr instead of a monster, perhaps. Secrets on secrets.
And Kisame, forcing his hand. Not letting him drag them all to the grave to protect his secrets.
It spoke of a deep caring, of emotional depth that Sakura had naively thought missing nin incapable of. She was used to seeing Sauke’s side of things, seeing Itachi as nothing more than the creeping spectre of death, the mastermind of a massacre, that she never stopped to question it.
She knew the math; he’d been impossibly young when it had happened. And the way Kakashi looked faintly ill, like he’d realized how many lies he’d unthinkingly accepted…
She knew suddenly that completing the ritual, that moving forward into the terrifying future bound to Itachi, was the right thing to do. That he held information that Konoha needed, that Tsunade needed. That he held secrets that Sasuke needed to hear.
She squared her shoulders. She thought about making Kisame promise he would keep his word, but it was a ridiculous thought. She just had to trust that he cared for Itachi as much as she thought he did, that he wouldn’t do something to deliberately harm him once the ritual was complete.
The marriage, that incessant voice within her reminded her. That felt more intimate than ritual, felt more like she was putting herself in a stranglehold. She was going to bind herself to this man she’d barely exchanged any words with to ensure her own survival, Kakashi’s survival, and even the survival of the secrets that Itachi held close.
The longer they waited, the more doubts would arise. Sakura glanced at Kakashi, who seemed to be in agreement with her. They needed to just dive into this, before Itachi had second thoughts. Before he chose to take his secrets to the grave, and all of them with it.
He looked like he was considering it. Something about his posture was curled inwards.
“I think that we should do the ritual,” Sakura said plainly, allowing no room for misinterpretation. “I don’t want to die in here. I don’t think any of you do, either.” That was a slight lie; Itachi’s desire to die was clearly up for debate. “I think there’s a lot to decide, but we’re not working with all the information. We don’t know how binding it’ll actually be. Once we’re out, we can decide…” she trailed off, unsure how to word it.
Kisame, though, looked at her approvingly. “See? The girl’s got the right idea.”
Sakura didn’t let the fact that Kisame approved so quickly falter her confidence.
Itachi looked at Kisame, then really looked at Sakura for the first time. Sakura didn’t know what he saw when he looked at her, what he was able to discern from her body language, her direct stare, but whatever it was, it seemed to help him make his decision. He sighed. “I agree.”
And just like that, her future took a sharp turn.
There wasn’t a lot of prep work for the ceremony. No fancy words, just a simple seal drawn on both of their wrists. The ritual itself was more of a problem, one she had been trying to avoid thinking too hard about.
The instructions were clear: the groom was to “worship” the bride with his mouth until she reached completion, and only then were they to “interlock their bodies and consummate the bond,” culminating in unlocking the lynchpin of the barrier seal with their “combined essences.”
Sakura could see why it was designed that way – the barrier necessitated the presence of a virgin, and the ritual was designed to make sure the bride didn’t experience too much discomfort from her inexperienced groom. It also was meant to forge a more intimate bond between the new couple, and clearly the final step was meant to ensure that the couple immediately started trying for children.
But this wasn’t some text she was examining and theorizing about the components. It was the step-by-step guide of how she was going to have sex with Itachi Uchiha and bind herself to him. A small part of her was panicking. A larger part of her was trying to pretend it wasn’t about to happen, that the what-after concerns were the biggest worry she had.
Another part of her wished there was some sort of privacy available. Kisame and Kakashi would have to turn their backs, but they would clearly be able to hear everything. Sakura’s cheeks flamed at the thought.
She was also worried about the part specifying she reached completion. Would she even be able to manage that? Would they all be stuck in here forever because Sakura couldn’t loosen up enough to have an orgasm with an audience listening?
This all felt like the plot to a particularly salacious novel. Probably Kakashi had one similar. She imagined herself asking him for it, so she could do some prep work, and the thought nearly made an actual giggle escape her.
She’d gone through more uncomfortable things than this for missions. And when she’d reread the scrolls it hadn’t mentioned any other requirements for intimacy; this was a one-time deal. She could have sex with Itachi once to save everyone’s lives. Especially now that she had the suspicion that he wasn’t quite the soulless monster she’d assumed.
She could do this.
The seals were small, unobtrusive things. There was a brief debate on who should do it – Sakura had the steadiest hand, but was inexperienced with fuunjutsu and reluctant to bet her life on her first attempt. Kisame shook off the suggestion, saying he wasn’t one for fine work. Itachi flat refused and didn’t give a reason.
Kakashi agreed to do it. Sakura was thankful; she had set her life in his hands before and had no problem doing it again.
The ink somehow hadn’t dried up, the seal on the small pot they’d found tucked into the hiding spot keeping it fresh despite the decades since it’d been stowed away. She wondered at what might be in the ink; the exact components of Uzushio’s recipes had been lost with the nation itself. It felt cold and then searingly hot as Kakashi applied to her skin, a set of interlocking lines on the inside of her wrist.
Itachi’s were placed on his opposite hand according to the scroll’s directions, and Sakura thought it was designed that way so that if they held hands the seals would press together.
No one said much as the ink dried. Sakura frowned down at her wrist, then said, “I can feel it already. It feels… inert.”
Not at all like the one she’d placed on her forehead; that one had just felt like cool wet ink until the moment she channeled her chakra through it. This one was different; as soon as the final lines crossed each other, she could feel something faintly buzzing under her skin.
Itachi agreed. “It feels like it’s waiting on something.”
Kisame raised his eyebrow and looked meaningfully towards the altar. The ritual.
“Are you sure about this?” Kakashi said quietly, one last time, as Sakura angled herself towards the altar, ready to approach it.
She nodded, not trusting herself to put her feelings into words. All she knew was that this was going to happen.
He gave her the briefest hug, the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it press of his lips against her hair, and he sent her off without another word.
The feel of that kiss – thanking her for his life, reassuring her he was there, promising to take care of her no matter what this wrought – gave her the confidence to move to the altar, standing before it and waiting on Itachi.
He was having another of his complicated wordless conversations with Kisame, something fragile and pleading in his expression, before that vulnerability dropped away after Kisame pushed his shoulder slightly with a, “Go get ‘em, tiger,” and turned away.
Kisame and Kakashi stayed close to one another, settling with their backs pointed to the altar as far away as they could decently manage. Sakura thought neither fully trusted the other and they were staying in arm’s reach to defend their respective charges.
Her wrist throbbed. Not quite pain, but something else, some strange… potential.
Her eyes drifted to Itachi’s wrist, saw him flexing it in a way that told her he was feeling the same thing.
“Is yours getting worse, too?” she asked quietly, conscious of how her words would carry across the cavern.
He nodded; he seemed somehow set adrift without Kisame. Like he didn’t know what script to follow.
She thought about asking him again if he was sure about this, but she didn’t want to give him an opportunity to give up or let him think she was having second thoughts. So instead she took in a deep breath and pushed her shorts and underwear down in a quick movement, leaving just her overskirt to shield her modesty as she stepped out of them. Itachi blinked at her, clearly surprised by her actions.
But she somehow thought it would have felt more intimate, more uncomfortable to have him remove her clothing. She wanted to take charge of herself.
She looked at the altar closely. It was surprisingly clean, and she just gave it a quick swipe with her hand to make sure there wasn’t anything to dig into her ass before she turned and settled onto it, using her skirt as a barrier between her bare ass and the cold stone. She left her top and shoes untouched; this wasn’t a romantic tryst and she was only baring what was necessary.
Itachi stepped forward, not quite in between her knees but close enough to reach out and touch them if he so desired. He seemed to be on the cusp of an apology. What for, Sakura couldn’t imagine. What was about to occur? The events that led him to remain a virgin, at least by the standards of this seal?
Sakura cut him off before he could. “I’m on birth control,” she said, conscious of the reason he’d given for avoiding having sex with women. She was thankful; she couldn’t imagine bringing a potential child into the unending complications of this situation.
He nodded, apology dying on his lips. “Should I…” he trailed off, glancing down to her crotch, seemingly unable to put things into words. She remembered his terse explanation of his sexual history earlier, and wondered for the first time if he was shy.
She nodded. “I’m ready if you are.”
She wasn’t, not really, but the seal on her wrist was getting harder and harder to ignore, and she had the sense that once they started on the ritual, it would abate.
Itachi nodded once, steeled his shoulders, and dropped to his knees.
Sakura opened her legs, spreading them to give him room to kneel between them. She hooked her heels against the edge of the altar and without thinking too hard about what she was doing, flipped up the front of her skirt as she leaned back, staring up at the glowing ceiling instead of at Itachi.
There was nothing. No touch, no sound from Itachi, and after a moment she lifted up onto her elbows, staring down the length of her own body to Itachi, positioned between her legs. He was looking at her with an analytical expression, like he was superimposing the image of an anatomical chart between her legs and was figuring out his battle plans.
The effect was startlingly unsexy. Sakura wanted to laugh, thinking of herself explaining to Ino that she was half-naked doing an ancient sex ritual with a beautiful man and she mostly felt like she was in the middle of getting a gynecological exam from a very new intern.
Maybe he needed explicit consent? “You can touch me,” she offered. Didn’t point out that he was going to have to, in order to complete this ritual.
Itachi nodded, and leaned forward, running a single finger up her slit, close enough that she could feel his breath on her.
She nodded, leaning back to stare at the ceiling, as he continued his ministrations, feeling him spread her open before she could feel the wet touch of his tongue.
It felt strangely timid, a soft hesitant touch.
She fought the urge to squirm; he felt like he was following a textbook set of instructions, but it wasn’t doing anything for her. His touch was too timid, too soft. She would never get enough friction like this to get off, and she had a sudden vision of them being stuck like this forever.
But the alternative was to speak up and tell him what she wanted, how she liked to be touched, but that wasn’t an option because she knew that Kakashi and Kisame could hear everything they said, and it was preferable to just lay here and eventually die than to announce her sexual preferences for all to hear.
Sakura was being ridiculous.
She lay there another few minutes, trying to work up the nerve to actually tell Itachi how to go down on her, when he finally applied enough pressure, combined with how his fingers slid up against her, and she let out an involuntary, breathy sound.
He stopped briefly, she could feel his gaze on her, and then he repeated that motion, and, apparently realizing he shouldn’t be so delicate with her, began to work at her with more confidence.
She could feel something building already; once she began to get into it, the seal on her arm sent corresponding tingles through her body. She knew now without a doubt that the ritual wouldn’t have worked if they’d skipped this step, like she’d briefly thought about suggesting. Thankfully the thought of talking about it had been too embarrassing to actually make the suggestion, because the seal was absolutely reacting to it.
The orgasm built up as Itachi worked at her, and it was when he slid in a second finger and crooked it just right that she fell apart. She muffled any sounds she might have made into her own fist, body arching briefly, and when she relaxed Itachi was pulling away. He stood up and loosened his pants, only lowering them as much as he needed to.
He was half-hard, and he fisted himself roughly a few times. She could see the color high on his cheeks, likely embarrassment, but she didn’t avert her eyes. The way he handled himself sent a pulse through her body; it was like he was punishing himself, and she thought that if circumstances had been wildly different, this encounter would have gone a lot differently.
Once he was ready, he met her eyes and said softly, so his voice wouldn’t carry, “Are you ready?”
Sakura nodded; and without any further conversation he pushed himself slowly into her.
It struck her, then, the absurdity of this: if she could have imagined herself in this position twenty-four hours earlier. The fact that they had only touched each other where necessary. The way they hadn’t had any real discussion, the two of them.
And now he was inside her, and the two spots of color were still in his cheeks, his eyes closed for the moment, which made her feel better. She couldn’t read his expression. His lips were slightly parted, but it didn’t reveal anything.
She wondered what her own expression revealed.
The seal on her wrist was pulsing, demanding her attention, and she had the feeling it was trying to get her to do something, though she wasn’t sure what. Too much was happening – Itachi within her, starting to move, though his brow was furrowing and he was twisting the arm that held his seal like it was bothering him.
She stared at his arm, at that dark ink on pale skin, and she realized only when she had clasped his hand in her own that she was reaching out. The seal, this was what it wanted, she realized, as their hands intertwined and wrists pressed together, the seals joining.
She gasped; the feel of it was overwhelming. Itachi froze, eyes wide, and she knew that he was experiencing the same. He leaned into her, their joined hands pressed against the altar, while he breathed heavily against her neck, thrusting into her.
She held enough of her dignity to keep from moaning; the only sounds escaping her were sharp inhales and panting exhales, but it felt overwhelming. Nothing like she’d experienced before, and that lay entirely on the seal, the way it was sending out pleasure and amplifying everything she was feeling.
Was she also feeling what Itachi was feeling?
It made a strange amount of sense, though – like so much else today – it felt mortifying. Too intimate, especially with someone she didn’t know, didn’t trust.
She hadn’t realized that the seal would make the bond feel tangible like this. She’d imagined an awkward, emotionless physical encounter, then… she wasn’t sure. Not nothing, but definitely not this.
Itachi seemed determined to finish this as quickly as possible, his hips snapping against hers, and she absurdly thought of how he must look, his pale ass out as he thrusted into her, and she used that image to try to keep the overwhelming sensations emanating from her wrist, from everywhere at bay until this was over.
Surely the bond would ease back to intangible once they had completed the ritual. They were almost there.
A few more thrusts deep enough that Sakura wrapped her legs around Itachi’s hips, hooking her ankles together behind his back, and gave herself into the sensations completely, head tilted back even as Itachi’s breath against her throat sent shivers through her. His hips were stuttering, and the sensations emanating from the seal told her that he wasn’t going to last long.
One more thrust and Itachi came with a groan, the sensations coming from the seal cresting and coalescing into something not exactly orgasmic but just as overwhelming. Sakura stared up at the glimmering barrier above, unwilling to move, unwilling to break her grip on Itachi’s hand and disrupt what the seal was doing.
Itachi was the one who moved first, pushing himself up without letting go of her hand, keeping the seals pressed firmly together even as he slid out of her body. A second’s hesitation, a glance her way, then he slid two fingers back into her just enough to gather their combined fluids to break the barrier, complete the ritual, and grant them their freedom.
Their physical freedom, anyway. Sakura wasn’t so sure anymore that she’d ever be free again.
The barrier dissipated as silently as it had risen.
Sakura was the one to let go of his hand, to separate the seals. It immediately felt strange and foreign, like she was always meant to have Itachi’s hand within her own, like her arm was incomplete without his.
She did her best to ignore the feeling and tugged her clothes back on, while Itachi likewise made himself decent again. Less than a minute after and they both outwardly looked the same as they had before the ritual, though Sakura was keenly aware of all that had changed.
Itachi didn’t ask her how she was, though he gave her a concerned look-over that lingered on her arm, and she rubbed the seal with her free hand and said, “Does yours feel….” She trailed off, unsure of the right word.
Itachi raised his wrist slightly, looking at it. She thought she saw a flash of red, like he’d momentarily unconsciously activated his Sharingan to inspect it, though he didn’t offer any insights. “Intense,” he finally said, completing her thought.
She nodded. “I didn’t expect it to be so much
He made a small sound of agreement. She couldn’t tell if he was as alarmed by that and the implications for them as she was. She didn’t ask.
Instead, she took a deep breath and went to tell Kakashi that it was okay to turn around. She did her best to push aside the thoughts of what he and Kisame might have heard – she and Itachi hadn’t spoken much, had stayed as quiet as possible, but some sounds were unavoidable – and did her best to keep her dignity.
Kakashi immediately scanned her, obviously looking for any sort of injury, but Sakura immediately told him she was fine. Saw the way Kisame looked over at Itachi, who had left the altar behind with as little fanfare as she had.
Kakashi had a furrow in his brow that showed he didn’t quite believe her, so she decided to be honest. “The seal is a little more active than I thought it would be.”
“Is it like…?” Kakashi trailed off, no doubt thanks to the company they were in, but he didn’t have to say more. She knew he was thinking of the same thing she was: the cursed seal on Sasuke, and the horrors it had brought him.
She shook her head. She didn’t have a malevolent piece of something’s soul in her arm. “Not what you’re thinking. It’s not overpowering, just… ” She struggled to come up with a way to describe it. “Pushy.”
Like how she was keeping a careful distance from Itachi right now, because her arm pulsed with the need to touch him. Specifically, the need to grasp his hand, to press their wrists together, to have contact between the seals.
From the way he was frowning at his own arm, she thought his was doing the same.
“But the important part is that the barrier is gone,” Kisame said. “Good work, kids.” There was something sharp in his tone, like he was trying to cover something up.
“We can now leave, yes,” Itachi said, his voice as stiff as his posture.
Neither made any sort of move. Another intense wordless conversation seemed to be happening, and Sakura felt obscurely like she and Kakashi were intruding on a private moment.
Whatever was happening between those two was far more intimate than what she’d just done with Itachi. Finally, Kisame spoke out loud. “Might as well tell you the plan now.”
They all looked at him. Itachi’s face was carefully blank.
Kisame spoke directly to Itachi, though he made no attempt to hide his words from the rest of them. “You’re going to rewrite some of my memories. Make me think that this place was a deathtrap, that it collapsed, something. Fake your death.”
She could tell from the sharp twist of Itachi’s mouth – Sasuke did the same – that he did not like that plan one bit.
“Kisame–”
“You’re going to do it,” Kisame said. “And while you’re in there you’re going to erase all the incriminating things I know about you, so if the Leader tries to pry his way in, he won’t know anything.”
Incriminating things? They were in a crime cult. There shouldn’t be anything they would want to hide from their crime cult leader. Unless her growing suspicions that Itachi wasn’t who they all thought were true.
“I can’t do that.” Itachi sounded like he was making a proclamation, solemn and truthful, but Kisame didn’t accept that.
“You’re going to. Then you’re going to go back with this nice little medic and the Copy Nin, and you’re going to figure out some way to carve yourself a life out.” Sakura didn’t miss the extra emphasis on medic, or the fact that Kisame thought that Itachi had a future in Konoha.
Itachi shook his head wordlessly. His mask was still in place, hiding his emotions, but the cracks were there.
“The Leader would see through a genjutsu,” Itachi said.
“He won’t see through shit,” Kisame said. “Think I haven’t noticed that he always uses you to mindfuck people? You’re better at it than he is. Than anyone is.” Itachi shook his head, denying it, but Kisame pushed forward ruthlessly. “He won’t have any reason to doubt the story, anyway, because I’m going to believe it.”
“Don’t make me do this,” Itachi said, and for the first time Sakura saw him as young, as someone just a handful of years older than her.
“It’s a good plan and you know it. We were always going to have to do something about all the shit I’ve figured out about you,” Kisame said, not unkindly. He turned to her and Kakashi. “He’s not what you think, you know. I saw him, when he was first brought in. Just a fuckin’ baby, and broken by what they made him do. Take care of him.”
Itachi made a noise of protest, and the seal on Sakura’s arm felt like it was screaming, somehow, like it was trying to force her to go and take his hand, to give him something solid to hold on to. She ignored it, or tried her best to.
Made him do. Three little words, and she was suddenly doubting everything she’d ever known about Itachi Uchiha.
Kisame reached out, touched Itachi’s cheek. Itachi leaned into it, emotion bare on his face for the first time.
Sakura looked away; it was too intimate. Too revealing. She felt like a voyeur.
Kisame’s voice was quiet, gentle. “I’ve been trying to figure a way out for you for years. Take it.”
“I don’t want–”
“You’ve been keeping yourself from wanting for so long you don’t have any clue what you need. Go ahead, flash those pretty eyes at me, and let me go.”
A quiet sound, and she couldn’t help it, she glanced back at them to see Itachi curl his fingers around Kisame’s hand, still on his cheek, and press a kiss into Kisame’s palm as he pulled his hand away. Then his eyes spun with the Sharingan and Kisame’s body language changed; he looked somehow slumped, like the personality had gone out of him.
Itachi looked away after just a few seconds – she suspected that whatever he’d done had taken much longer, that he’d spent time in Kisame’s head – and blinked once, twice, before saying curtly, “We should leave before he wakes up.”
Their bags were already ready, all the scrolls packed away, and Itachi didn’t say a word as he followed them out of the cavern.
Didn’t look back at his former partner at all.