There's no such thing as a coincidence; it's only a matter of time before we meet on the basis of chance.
Chapter 1 – First Meeting
SLAP!
Mindless shoppers along the village street turned to stare at the couple standing under the oak tree, curiosity getting the better of them. None of them was making an effort to be indiscreet with their outright eavesdropping as the heat began to brew and smoke diffused out of Mimiko's ears.
"I can't believe you lied to me!" Ignoring the pulsing sensation from her merciless slap, Itachi twisted his head back and found Mimiko's enraged eyes locked onto his impassive face.
"I'm sorry," He replied, not sounding sorry at all. She huffed and rolled her black round eyes in a complete arc, clearly not buying his apology.
"Never mind that I've been dating a log, but I can't believe I have been dating a log and murderer for six months!" Itachi's eyes dropped to her fanning hands, once again wondering how he had stand her dramatic acts for six months, as she kindly pointed out.
"I'm sorry you have to hear it from someone else." At his pointed tone and intentional emphasis on 'someone else,' Mimiko's penalizing glare significantly decreased by several notches and her eyes were suddenly roaming anywhere but at him. From guilt, perhaps? Or it could be just shock that he had somehow managed to find out about her discreet affair with her lecherous landlord. In all honesty, it could have gone on forever and he would never find out if not for that chanced timing.
He managed to complete Pein's assigned mission a day earlier than expected, and he figured he could use the spare time to visit her. She was always complaining about him not spending enough 'quality time' with her, and how lonely she would get whenever she saw her best friend getting all cosy with her boyfriend. Flaunting her candy, she had called it.
As recompense and remembering her funny phrase, he purchased a bag of grape-flavoured sweets, her favourite, along the way to her apartment. He always liked how her eyes would light up at the sight of free-flow candies, even though he could not say the same when it was just him. He climbed the creaking timber stairs up the three storey building, the overpriced candies swinging merrily by his leg when he stopped dead in his tracks.
Since the drunken was given the boot a month ago, Mimiko had been the only occupant of the entire floor, which added to another justifiable reason of her grievance towards his inattentiveness. However, instead of a new neighbour, the foreign presence was coming from her apartment. Perhaps she had invited the new tenant over to be her ignorant guinea pig to try out her baking.
When he was about to knock the door, he thought he heard a heavy thud. He smiled inwardly; she must have dropped her phonebook-thick recipe hardcover in her forlorn attempt to multi-task.
"Watch where your hands are touching, you pervert!" He felt like he was hit by a pointed ice berg into his eyes – nobody would utter words like that to giggle non-stop. Not unless you were encouraging it. Not unless this 'neighbour' was a male. Not unless this male was currently roving his hands on his woman while his woman was relishing in it.
He left as quietly as he came, all along with his fists clenched till his knuckles turned white from the lack of blood circulation. He caught the stray dog loitering by the alley next to the building from earlier, and dumped the contents of the bag towards it. Within seconds, it pried through all the foiled aluminium wrappings and was busy helping itself to the costly sweets.
The least he could do was to give those to someone more deserving.
"A-Anyway I just want you to know it's over between us, since obviously you don't trust me enough to be wholly truthful to me!" She caught the bag of candies in Itachi's grasp and promptly snatched it over.
"This is the least I deserved, and it's not like you like candies anyway. Bye Uchiha Itachi!" Itachi watched his girlfriend turned ex sashayed and faded into the suddenly animated streets and heaved a sigh. Whether it was in relief or for the sorry state he was in, he had no idea.
"You can come out now." There was a sound of feet landing followed by shuffles coming from the woods next to him, and Hoshikagi Kisame came into view, his burly form easily towering over Itachi's lithe built.
"So you knew huh? Man that slap looks awfully painful since I can hear it all the way from the canopy!"
"I would prefer you keep the comments to yourself, Kisame." At his flat but not nearly as non-threatening tone, Kisame chortled good-naturedly but obeyed his request. A quiet man he was, Itachi could be pretty dangerous if you hit enough wrong buttons or misread his mood.
"Pein's waiting; shall we head back now? Or is there anything else you want to settle here?" Itachi glanced back to the Hidden Village of Grass, at the scorching sun beating down on an endless stream of people and the gossiping eyes trained in their direction. He turned and headed towards the woods where his partner came from.
"I have no more business with this place as I have with my village."
After the brief meeting with Pein at Rain, they were off on their way south towards one of their hideouts in the Land of Rivers. Mercifully, Kisame left Itachi for the most part to his stormy thoughts, a huge contrast to the zephyr and beams of afternoon sunlight filtering through the tree canopies on them. He could use the silence to slowly banish memories of Mimiko and everything associated with her.
At the sound of the door slamming, the four males gathered around the coffee table snapped their head towards Kisame, and he shrugged his brows in a way that said 'chill guys, it's just me.' Judging by their various stiff-as-sticks postures and gravely expressions, he wondered if they just had a huge quarrel. That happened almost on clockwork. The other possibility would be that he was busted for missing his turn at doing the laundry this week. Now, that was a first.
For a criminal organisation, the members, or rather some of the male members, were exceptionally particular about keeping to the laundry schedule and maintaining a steady supply of fresh garments, which he thought was ludicrous. When confronted, Pein's only explanation was 'first impression counts.' (He was one of the aforementioned fussy males.) He thought he heard Samehada snorted; as though an opponent would deem him less dangerous just because he had a stain on the cloak's sleeve.
"Kisame-san, you came back at just the right time, hmm," Deidara, the elegant blonde greeted without his usual mirth.
The hunky swordsman did a frown that paralleled theirs; was this how things were going to turn out? So he was away for a week long mission, inadvertently neglecting his duty for the first time and now he was treated like a sinner (for not washing clothes).
"Yo, what cha guys talking about?" Kisame started causally as he approached the assembly. He was prepared to justify one against four, waved Samehada a little if talks turned to fights. This was time to use his built and height to his advantage.
"We have a situation," Sasori began coolly.
"And the fate of our money lies in your hands, Kisame," Kakuzu added at the far end.
"Okay… What is it?" Were they seriously planning on charging him for not dry-cleaning their filthy cloaks? His hand slid sub-consciously to his hidden pouch of cash. Never. They parted to let him into the circle.
"We're...debating whose three hearts is a counterfeit," Sasori answered matter-of-factly, pointing to the pair of identical poker cards in Deidara and Hidan's splay of cards on the table.
"Danna has already expressed his undying confidence that mine is the real deal, with Kakuzu supporting his partner, so the deciding power is with you, Kisame-san, hmm," He said with his arms crossed and looking confidently at a blinking Kisame.
"I didn't say that, and most of the money from our team is forked out by me so obviously I'm on your side," Sasori corrected with a pointed glare, knowing Deidara's tendency for bad debts.
Huh, all this brewing testosterone and it was over a bloody card game? Well the good news was he still had time to sneak to the washing room to settle the 'unfinished business'…
"Don't be a sore loser and just own up; I promise I won't call you a pussy for the whole week," Hidan offered and shrugged his brows at Deidara enticingly.
Just then Itachi strode through the living room and immediately all males turned towards him.
"Hey Itachi-san, do you mind coming over here for a minute…" Deidara trailed off as he silently passed the corridor without sparing them a glance and entered his room. Everyone flinched from the uncharacteristic slam of his door.
"Now what's his problem?" Hidan scowled at his direction.
"Was the mission a failure?" Sasori asked despite knowing the answer.
"Nah, he…" Kisame thought about the fuzzy relationship he shared with Itachi and the wonders it would do if he were to spill his dating life to this bunch of 'concerned' males. "It's just one of those bad days."
"He looks under the weather though, hmm," Deidara quipped, wondering if he received a dressing down by Pein and sniggered inwardly.
Under the weather… Under… Could it be…? Kisame set his Samehada by the sofa and bent to look under the table, snorting as he extracted a three spades card with its back lined with white clay.
"Doesn't this sticky shit look familiar?" He dumped the dirty and damaged card on the table, and everyone turned to glare at a retreating Deidara.
"Deidara…" Sasori growled as he attached chakra threads to three kunais in his thigh pouch.
"D-Danna, I can explain-" The kunai pierced through the clay clone's heart and Sasori went after him, cursing his luck.
"The guilty fucker never gets away," Hidan said in a singsong as he swiped all the notes and coins into his palm, but not before Kakuzu extended his heavily stitched arm and grabbed most of it.
"Hey!"
"Remember you owed me, Hidan."
"Aren't we a team? Why do you have to be so calculative…" Kisame picked up his sword and left before Kakuzu would get started on his nothing mattered more than money preach.
Itachi shrugged out of his cloak and placed it on his chair backrest before settling down on his bed. He felt fractionally better by the knowledge that Kisame had spared the juicy information of his break-up to the others, or the fact that he even had a woman.
A faint explosion reverberated through the walls of their compound, and he figured they must have found the missing card he saw a week ago underneath the table.
He turned to look at the pen and paper resting on the side-table, set there as a reminder to write a birthday wish for her when he returned from his mission. He picked them up and kept them in the drawer, the gesture no longer relevant.
It was over.
What was I thinking, throwing my heart out there and getting all carried away with a woman? What was I expecting out of that relationship?
Was that even a relationship?
Frustrated by his lack of answer, he grabbed his cloak from the chair and headed out of his room towards the training ground at the back of the building. Only by immersing himself in bloodshed and deadly weapons, could he find the momentary inner peace he craved so much for since young.
Under Pein's new order, Itachi and Kisame dismissed themselves from the group meeting and set out for their next mission. They were headed for the Hidden Village of Waterfall to apprehend the Nanabi's Jinchuriki's elder sister, Yuu, to obtain intel regarding her missing sister's whereabouts, who was their primary target.
"'I don't care how it's done, so long as it's done by the end of next week' huh," Kisame pondered aloud. He turned to wait for his partner's reaction but there was none. He tried again.
"We were back for barely a day and we're already out running his next errand. He sure is working us to the bone eh, Itachi-san?" Still no response. Kisame was not one you would describe as soft-spoken, so he was pretty certain that Itachi was just ignoring him, and he felt somewhat hurt by that.
The guy's mood was darker than his hair and he hated times like this where he felt like a child who had made his mother angry. Kisame sighed. As though attempting small talks with him over the years were not taxing enough, he had to take travelling in awkward silence to the next level and made him all uneasy.
"Look Itachi-san, I know you're still upset over that woman-"
"Kisame, you go on ahead. There's a place I need to go," Itachi said suddenly, his eyes staring ahead.
"What's wrong?" He released a small breath when his broody partner finally spoke up.
"There's something I need to take care of." The shark guy eyed the mysterious purple bag in his hand and got the message. He had seen Itachi fiddling with that bag on numerous occasions, usually when they were resting by a riverside and Kisame was not around.
That was how he knew that Itachi had found someone, though it was not until today that he saw her. He had no idea Itachi's taste was so exotic, with that gaudy purple shoulder-length hair and feline eyes. And boy, did he know how to pick – those generous breasts and round butt itching to be groped must have given the young lad his share of temptation and enjoyment, well, used to.
Anyway, he needed Itachi to move on as badly as he did for the sake of a happier companionship, not all these heavy silence. Although he would never admit it to his face, he did enjoy his company, despite his complaints. Itachi was also a good listener, showing the highest level of patience during his womanless rants over their occasional sake sessions during missions.
"Alright; as we discussed, we'll meet at the border of the forest at the end of the week after we have gathered the respective intel. Hopefully by then we'll be able to find the elder sister." They nodded and parted ways. Given that the village was divided into two by a river, it would be faster if they split and searched.
Itachi unloaded the contents of the bag onto a clearing at the border of Grass, a well-secluded spot in the dense forest where he and Mimiko used to meet. He hated how his feet instinctively knew the exact turns and steps to take to this space that once held his fond memories. Why couldn't he move on as easily as she did?
He glanced down at the motley of useless yet sentimental gifts by his ex-lover – a hand-made braided purple bracelet with a metallic heart securing the ends from their second date, a glass bottle filled with tiny seashells they collected over an impromptu competition, another bottle of melted snow from her trip to the Land of Snow last month when he said he could not accompany her and she promised to show him their amazing snow. He did not expect her to be so literal.
His faint smile slipped when he caught the only photo they had taken in their fleeting relationship peeking from underneath the heap– an awkward (it was just him) half-body shot from a festival booth in Grass. That was just two weeks ago, and he wondered darkly if she was already with that scoundrel then.
Tossing the purple bag (also courtesy of Mimiko) on top of the pile, he retreated by a few steps, took a deep breath and incinerated all physical evidence of their affair in one puff. Even as smoke from the fire irritated his eyes and made them water, he made no attempts to step away. He continued to stare hard at the withering pile, willing the heat to thaw his affections and burn off the image of her face stubbornly clinging on to his mind.
Haruno Sakura glanced back, brows dipped in anxiety, certain that any minute the enemy would catch up to their three-man team. Forcing more oxygen into her over-worked muscles, she pushed herself to go faster.
"Ino, what is the distance between us and the enemy?" She asked their sensory specialist, hoping that their approaching chakra was just her imagination.
"Close enough," She answered vaguely. Close enough to safety, or close enough for them to turn around and fight? With six against three, the odds were stacked heavily against them, and that was not accounting for their three days of travelling with minimal breaks.
"There's no choice, I'll try to buy some time with my genjutsu while you guys keep moving; we have to get to Waterfall no matter what," Yuhi Kurenai declared with finality, her stern eyes leaving no room for argument. Nodding, the best friends sped up and disappeared through the dense canopy while Kurenai tapped onto her remaining chakra pool and began her genjutsu.
"Do you think we should turn back and help? If anything happens to sensei I don't know how to report back to Asuma-sensei," Ino asked with a hint of quiver.
"No, we need to trust her and continue the mission." Distracted by the conversation, she failed to detect the thread suspended across the tree trunks and only realised her mistake a second too late.
The peaceful landscape was instantly drowned out by a chain of deafening explosions, the heavy smoke spreading like a plague and shrouding the sky with a grey curtain. Sakura was catapulted across the air from the impact, sailing through pointy tree branches and endless dust.
When she thought she would never land, her back crashed violently into a thick trunk. Her body slid down in a free fall and her head knocked into a boulder by the tree, rendering her unconscious. She went rolling across the ground towards the edge of the bank before tumbling with a loud splash into the moving stream.
The fading prattling of birds and insects heralded the descend of dusk, Itachi's favourite hour. As he sat alone by the tree listening to the animals settling for the night and watching the orange sky giving way to darkness, he shut his eyes and contemplated his existence in this Universe.
Even without him, the creatures of the forest would carry on with their idle lifestyles, rivers would continue flowing and evening would eventually give way to night. He felt so insignificant, his existence redundant and how the world might be a better place if he was not born in the first place.
His presence might be infinitesimal, but many bad things started small. The story of his clan confirmed that theory, he thought darkly.
He padded soundlessly through the clearing towards the sound of flowing water, the stream so clear that he could glimpse through the surface to its slightly rocky bed. The fire from earlier left him smelling like smoke, and he decided to take a dip. Nothing like washing away a day's worth of filth and unpleasant memories in the clean sparkling stream, he thought blithely.
Peeling off his cloak and lavender garments, he set them neatly by the bank and slowly entered the water, the coolness sending jots of goose bumps and tranquiliser through his bloodstream. He ran his fingers along the surface and splashed some onto his face, thinking he could do this the whole day.
Then he felt it. A weak pulse of chakra was moving in his direction, and he went still, trying to pinpoint its exact spot. His eyes narrowed when he realised it was approaching in a similar rhythm as the stream and sure enough, he caught a black form drifting downstream. At ten meters away, it manifested into a figure of a lifeless female body, sporting a head of striking pink hair.
He felt his heart stopped beating for a moment when he got a look at her face. The girl appeared just like Mimiko.
Writing in the ninja era is so darn hard; I have never doubted myself so much since I started this. Alas, hope you guys enjoyed. Damn I need an Itachi dakimakura...