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Bathed in the moonlight, Sarada grips Boruto's tanto desperately as she faces down death itself. The Grass nin is tall and tanned, sun-bathed skin ashen in the pale light above, blood staining his clothes carelessly. His face is too sharp to be handsome, and his smile is too cruel to be comforting. He brandishes a kunai threateningly as he licks the blood from his lower lip.

"You don't have to worry," he drawled lowly, stepping closer. She swallows. "I'll make sure you won't feel a thing."

Behind her, Boruto trembles.

The son of the Nanadaime clutches his bleeding stomach weakly as he pressed his broken body into the tree behind them. It might be the only thing keeping him upright. Sarada feels him gasp in pain and curl into himself further. His dislocated shoulder, deep stab wound, and broken ankle keep him from making a proper escape without her, and his chakra is dangerously low. She wonders how he can find the strength to hang on to the belt of her skirt as frantically as it was.

He jerks her back towards him. A warning.

"Run," he croaks. "Please run."

"Shut up," she mutters.

Sarada, on one knee, shifts backwards against Boruto, between his legs. He jerks her back again and manages to pull her closer to him.

"Take one more step," she hisses, glaring at the Grass-nin for all she's worth, "and you'll regret it."

They're only sixteen, only jonin three weeks into their rank, only children who haven't had violence like this branded behind their eyelids. Sarada doesn't know what it means to be an avenger, or keep herself going through the strength of her hatred, but she suspects she might learn today.

Papa, her heart whimpers. Will she see him again after this?

The Grass-nin takes another defiantly. Another. Another. "What do y'think the Bingo Books will say about me once I take your eyes, little girl?" he asked, a sadistic playfulness in his tone. Behind him, she can see Mitsuke laid face down on the grass in a pool of his own blood. It makes her flinch. "No one would fuck with me for the rest of my life. Or maybe I could just sell them to the highest bidder. Who knows? I have options. Unfortunately, I can't say the same for you."

She could feel the frantic spin of her Sharingan, desperation and horror and the ache of her body pushing it into overdrive. She pressed further into Boruto until she could feel the warm blood of his chest pressing into the back of her flak jacket.

This boy, made of sunlight and smirks, has thicker skin than she's ever thought. Leave me to my death, he asks of her. Leave me here to die.

It's almost insulting. There's a reason why she's always squad leader, and gods help her if both of her boys end up dead tonight.

The four broken fingers of her left hand make ninjutsu an impossibility, and facing against a man that all but destroyed her team within moments, within the space of her shuriken slicing into thin air, she knows her odds with only close combat are skim. He steps closer yet again and laughs heartily as she tries pulling him into another genjutsu. Through her mind's eye, he's plunged into a black lake underneath a navy sky.

It's still no use. To taunt her, the Grass-nin takes his time with releasing it. His smile is still in tact as he saunters forward.

"How many more tricks do you have up your sleeve little girl?" the Grass-nin taunted. He brandished the kunai outward, ready to strike.

Sarada dropped her teammate's tanto all together and scrambles backwards, arms spread wide. Boruto gives a little gasp, but whether from pain or shock, she can't tell. She doesn't care to. If this is the only way that she can protect him, if even for a moment, then she'll do it.

"Sara-chan," Boruto mumbled miserably, a whisper of fondness, a pair of lips against the back of her neck. She shivered at his toneless horror. "Please run. Please, Sara-chan."

"Quiet. Save your energy," Sarada spat, dark hair falling into her eyes. The world around her painted in shades of blue, inverted colors of darkness and chakra streams, was not comforting anymore. Her Sharingan zeroes in on her other teammate, terrified of what she knows she'll see.

She watched the life fade from Mitsuke's body, precious life blood spilling around his too-pale skin, his soft white kosode, as she breathed in the smoke of the forest that suffered under her ninjutsu. The precious gold of his eyes fluttered away behind his eyelids, and they echo Boruto's pleas.

Run, he begs silently. It's a tremble of desperation as he fades into a corpse.

Sarada stared down the Grass-nin with a violent hatred that shook her to the core. She pressed farther into Boruto, to protect, to feel the uneven gasps of his breath, as her eyes began to burn. I hate you, her heart growled, as butchered as it was, I hate you I hate you I hate you I fucking hate you.

She isn't sure if it's the desperation or the pain that gives her strength. Somehow, as if her Sharingan still holds secrets she's not yet privy to, she calls the Grass-nin into another genjutsu with only her left eye. Chakra flooded from his sight to her own, binding him into the nightmare she'll craft, securing her prey. The midnight blue sky of her usual illusions is altered completely. Only the depthless black remains.

The blood moon that rose above their heads filtered the world into into the red and white of something monstrous that's yet to unfold. Sarada flexes outwardly, breathing deeply - there isn't a doubt in her mind that this world is her's to command.

The Grass-nin gasped, choked, fell limp onto the black waters, and sank beneath them once more; Sarada sank with him in ghostly grace. She forgot the throbbing pain of her fingers and the sharp bruising of her ribs as they drowned together.

She fed off of his terror like cool spring water, and she ached for more. Sarada searched her body for more strength as her chakra compounded around them. The Grass-nin's eyes bulged in fear, and terror, and pain. He thrashed like a dying fish.

With her right eye, she molded the chakra around and between them with ease. She turned the lake water freezing cold, then burning hot, and embedded needles conjured from thin air into his flesh. She breathed, and the needles were coated in a flesh-searing poison, slipping into his eyes. She stretched and shrank time within his mind to her pleasing as the screams grew louder, less strangled and more startling. The animalistic sounds resounded outside into the real world where her body shook with over exertion.

Sarada blinked away from the illusion as she fell completely into Boruto's chest, exhaustion weighing down her chest. The sound of his voice lulled her into sleep, though his shouts were just as loud as the Grass-nin's. Her name, over and over and over.

Sarada! he called out, the echo following her into the dark.

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Sasuke watches his student rest his head against Sarada's stomach through the hospital door's window. His daughter stares at the ceiling blankly, playing with the blonde's wavy hair, fingers too restless to stay still. They're deathly silent. Her face contorts into a sudden snarl of pain, or terror, or anguish. From this distance, it's hard to tell. His body aches from the last week of political mayhem with Grass Country and Naruto's incessant stress-induced insomnia, and so do his eyes.

It physically hurts to know that Sarada's eyes will ache just the same.

"Maybe we should call in Tsunade-sama?" Sakura murmured. The fright in his voice . "I-I mean, I might have made a mistake. The psychological damage was...extensive. I could have missed something. It's possible."

"It's not. You're thorough, Sakura. You don't make mistakes," Naruto murmured quietly. Sasuke turned to watch his wife and best friend huddle together, arms crossed, voices pinched. "She's just- how do you undo this sort of stuff? How do you fix a dead friend? What can we give her but time?"

"It's been two weeks," Sakura spits, not able to keep the tremble of sorrow from her voice.

Team Konohamaru's mission to eliminate a well-organized crime ring in Grass Country went smoothly, per usual, until they'd gone to battle with an S-rank missing ninja. Travel weary and low on chakra, they had no options but to engage. The way Boruto stitched together the story from his concussed, bludgeoned memories just barely add up; the completed mission, the attack, the Grass-nin's trap laid so perfectly for them on the border between Earth and Grass, all of Sarada's failed genjutus, Mitsuke's death, and the one successful illusion killed their enemy with a stroke.

Tsukiyomi has left wounds on him that still find their way into his nightmares, a man well into his forties, and even Kakashi admits to the flickering leftovers of trauma. But he never knew genjutsu to kill like this. This is the type of speculation he keeps to himself.

All Sasuke knows is that his student came home carrying more than one corpse.

As Sakura tended to the children personally, as they frequented visitors from a distraught Konohamaru, a mothering Hinata, a concerned Kakashi, a frightened Naruto, and himself, who spent the long night hours sitting on Sarada's left side as Boruto held his stead on her right. The young blonde regaled them of the tale again and again, detail upon detail coming together, until his daughter had finally awaken.

The foreign kaleidoscope of her pin wheel eyes spun in a panic, refusing to dissipate.

She hadn't spoken a word since opening her eyes.

Catatonic, Sakura had told him.

Broken, Boruto had muttered under his breath.

"I don't know what else to say. We have no clue how Tsukiyomi affects the caster, but even if we did...don't you see this stuff at the mental clinic all the time? She's been- been traumatized. There are some wounds that heal at their own pace. You two need to be there for her for now," Naruto said, reaching out to grasp Sakura's hand and give Sasuke a heavy look. It's weight is physically painful. "And I...it might as well be Boruto laid out over there. These brats are all the same to me. Sarada...she's...I'm sorry. I'm so fucking sorry. I wish I could say something that mattered. I'm sorry."

"Ah," Sasuke says.

Naruto apologizes as brokenly as his son. It hurts worse, coming from him, acknowledging that they were powerless.

Sakura gasped out a soft, pained sob and pulled away from Naruto, walking brusquely down the hospital halls towards her office. Sasuke sighs after her. They both know what Naruto won't say - some wounds heal at their own pace, and some wounds never heal at all. How long has their daughter been festering?

"What do you think, Sasuke?" Naruto murmured, watching his wife whisk down the ammonia-laced halls in a billow of red and white clothes. "You've been too quiet."

"I...," the Uchiha murmured to himself, watching as his daughter caught his gaze through the door's window, "she's always had Itachi's eyes, hasn't she?"

Nii-san, he croaks in his head, watching Boruto curl his body into Sarada's prostrate form, the precious children that he seems to fail again and again, I can't lose her too.

Through the window, blood red eyes met his own.

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A/N: Because Sarada has Itachi's eyes and no one can convince me otherwise and how fucking cool would it be for her to be able to use Tsukiyomi even when Sasuke couldn't because like Sakura's a genjutsu type so she just has a natural apt for it. Like. That would be so cool. And of course horribly frightening because someone would have to die for it to happen but I mean...Kishi didn't have any problems with making that happen.