Note/Disclaimer: None of the Akatsuki were killed here. Everybody's alive and well, though I may not be, considering I don't own Naruto or its characters.

"It's ironic, holding life and death in the palm of one's hand."

-Captain Jack Sparrow, on holding Davy Jones' heart and a dagger in his hands

Moral questions had never plagued the pink-haired kunoichi known in the Bingo books as Sakura Haruno. She always knew right from wrong, just as well as she knew white from black. If something was wrong, she fixed it. If not, then she went along her way until something, or someone, screwed up, and then…she would fix it. That was her job as a medic-nin, but it was also her personality, her life. There was never any middle ground merging good and evil for her, but merely a clear, bold line for a boundary.

Just black and white.

Sakura had realized this, accepted this, and nurtured this idea since her long-forgotten academy days. It was the strongest public Konoha idea. Privately, many of her fellow shinobi knew from hard experience this was not the case. She, however, had whole-heartedly embraced this idea, for it allowed her to harden her heart enough to kill. If she never believed in that black and white, she knew she would never have been able to stain her hands with the blood she now saw constantly. So she had immersed herself, so much so she could lie and trick her own mind. Her world was dichromatic.

Just white…and black.

So why, why was she suddenly seeing gray, while looking at a known enemy's heart in her hands?

"Alright, alright, Ino! I'm coming already!" The rosette kunoichi, having just turned a mature 19 years old the day before, awkwardly stumbled out of her bedroom into her bathroom, rubbing her eyes. Last night was no more than a blur to her. Naruto and a newly-returned Sasuke had all but dragged her to a bar to celebrate, hers being the earliest birthday in the year. Upon entering the bar, Naruto had apologized in a stage whisper, saying that it was really all Sasuke-teme's idea, and he had only gone along with it because he really needed a drink after all the badgering. Sasuke, on Sakura's other side, had heard him and promptly bopped him upside the head, letting out a simple "Hn," before skulking to one of the bar stools and moping about something or other. Sakura and Naruto had cheered him up by buying the first two rounds.

She smiled with an almost dazed expression on her face, recalling her last clear memory of the celebration with fondness. After a few seconds, she shook her head, remembering the impatient blond tapping her foot on the floor in her hallway. Ino hadn't said anything yet, which was strange, but she probably had a wicked hangover.

Speaking of which… Sakura tentatively reached up into her medicine cabinet, standing on her toes to reach the highest shelf. There, at the top, was her special invention: a hangover remedy that worked wonders.

Her mentor and the current Hokage, Tsunade, had confiscated it some time ago, on the grounds that if it got into shinobi hands, she would be summoning her nin from the bar anywhere between 8pm and 3am every single night, for the rest of her life. She also stated when Sakura was Hokage and had to deal with irate, half-drunk shinobi, she could give the hangover cure to whomever she pleased. Sakura, however, knew this was all just an act to use the remedy for Tsunade herself, and promptly stole it back at six the next morning, with Tsunade snoring loudly at her desk, empty sake bottles surrounding her sleeping form.

Smiling again, and wondering yet again why Ino hadn't said anything yet, even as a greeting, she got dressed in the same style gear she had worn when she was fifteen, excepting her shirt. She had finally given in to her team's reasoning that pink clashed horribly with red, and had instead inverted the colors of her shirt and began wearing her standard-issue vest. Sakura had realized quickly that while the vest wasn't the most attractive gear out there, it held a lot. More than even Ino's purse, which is saying something. It was often said that Ino could kill an S-Class Shinobi by knocking them upside the head just once with her purse.

"What's wrong with you, Pig? Cat got your t-" Sakura broke off as she looked more closely at the figure in the doorway, tense and alert. While he definitely had an effeminate air about him, this was a man with a man's figure, not the womanly one Sakura had been so envious of lately. His hair was a darker golden compared to Ino's flaxen tresses, and that sheet of golden hair covered his left eye, not the right. Sakura instantly recognized him from her long-ago fight with Sasori of the Red Sand.

Deidara.

The dead Sasori's surviving partner.

In the Akatsuki.

She had a split second to gasp until she saw his lips twitch in an upward smirk: her last image, taken in with wary, widened eyes before a sharp blow to the back of her head courtesy of someone behind her sent her sprawling into blackness.

Deidara's lips moved higher into a grin. "Too easy, un."

Well. That wasn't very nice. . . I just hope Deidara doesn't kill me for describing his figure as effeminate….

P.S. I am abandoning this story. Forever. I'm not sure exactly what I intended to do here, when I started.

I believe I was caught by the rather interesting image of Sakura healing Kakuzu's heart...literally, and figuratively. I liked having her struggle with the choices she'd have to make in light of all the other stuff I was going to make her go through with the Akatsuki. (She would've enjoyed a companionship entirely unrelated to Stockholm Syndrome.)

There would be this one man, broken, spent, and disillusioned, with hope/distrust shining in his eyes, looking at Sakura holding his heart in her hands, as well as her own future. What she'd choose, how she'd suffer the consequences no matter what she chose... I had this scene in my head, and I think all of this would still make a great story. She would've won him over with her compassion and badassery until there was...more, between them.

I do still believe the plot could be a viable one. I just don't want to write it anymore. This was a plan several years ago, and now I'm simply not interested in the work it would take to write such a story (now, as I theoretically plan it out in my brain, I must say that I was getting in way over my head. If I wrote it with 3000-4000 words a chapter, minimal A/Ns -nothing like this essay of an A/N- then I project it would've been a monster, around 60 chapters long at least).

I leave this note and the first chapter up on my profile in the HOPES that someone will steal my plot. I will mark this as complete, even if it's not even close. I'd like to have this written, but I don't care who writes it, so go ahead, knock yourself out. Change whatever you wish. Steal my story, and make it your own. Adopt it. I don't mind. Seriously, no arguments here. The only reason this will stay on my profile is in case someone takes it. Just notify me if you do, so I can delete this story once you start.

Good Luck and happy writing,

~WinterJade.