AN: This is going to be the type of trashy, angsty romance that I crave to read yet rarely find any of. Expect this fic to be Problematique™
The garbage: it's my home.
If this isn't what you want to read, I suggest you use the back button.
Enjoy
-Val
I. Superego
"Think this is it?" Kisame asked.
Itachi gave the girl running - stumbling, really - a once-over: Suna hitai-ate tied on one arm, indigo hair, pale skin.
She tripped, righted herself, and skidded to a stop approximately three meters away from them. She beheld them with a blankness atypical of someone who was encountering two S-rank missing-nin. The one visible eye was icy pale, the other obscured behind a mat of hair and dried blood.
So this was Hokori.
Her eye widened and she wrenched her gaze to the sand.
"Yeah," Itachi replied.
She flinched away from Kisame dashing forward, but did not try to bolt. Itachi turned his focus to her injuries as he stepped forward. Black eye, broken wrist. The eye not visible was probably popped, useless. The swollen ankle and fresh blood on her clothes seemed to be the result of her flight from Suna.
Kisame tensed. They exchanged a look. The dossier specified that she be completely unharmed upon delivery, among other things.
"Let's get out of here...this place isn't my style," Kisame said aloud.
Itachi grabbed her jaw and pulled her face up, into the moonlight. It took less than a second of eye contact to cast a sleeping genjutsu. Kisame picked her up, draping her over one shoulder. The incoming sandstorm swept away all the evidence.
The inn they were using for the night was a seedy sort in a trading town. For convenience, they rented adjacent rooms. Kisame set her facedown on the bed in Itachi's room.
"Let's discuss this in the morning, yeah?" Kisame said.
He didn't wait for a response before leaving. The door shut with a click, then the clunk of it automatically locking.
Itachi yanked his cloak off and tossed it at the lone chair. He pulled a kunai from his weapons pouch. This was the easiest way, he told himself, slipping the point under the hem of her shirt and slicing it open. It would need to be disposed of regardless. He made two more cuts, one at each shoulder-strap, and peeled it away from her exposed back. The hitai-ate was untied, removed, set aside.
His work was certainly straightforward here. Clean the scrapes of debris. Reset the broken wrist. Look at the eye when she was awake. But he stood over her, kunai dangling from his limp fingers.
He slotted it back into its pouch and forced himself to continue.
There were a number of wounds reopened by whatever fall had given her the scrapes on her shoulders. They looked enough like electrode burns and needle marks to give him pause.. Would Suna's intelligence division go so far? It was irrelevant.
While preparing his field medical kit, he made note of the swollen right ankle, the par-healed black eye. Further examination of the other eye could wait on her lucidity.
The most pressing matter, while she was still under genjutsu, was the broken wrist. The odd way her hand rested, with the palm aloft, suggested it had been left as-is without proper care. To set it now would mean re-breaking, most likely. It would absolutely pull her from the genjutsu.
He got on the bed, placed the splint and wrapping nearby, and steeled himself. The one-two crack was a single movement. He held her arm still as she gasped awake, jerked her head to toss the hair from her eye.
"Don't move."
The only indication she gave of pain was a sharp whimper as he tightened the wrapping on the splint. When he let go, she scrabbled at the sheets until there was distance between them, however slight. Her breath was ragged enough to sound close to a growl.
He looked away, down. He held his hands in fists on his lap. He knew if he turned them over and opened them up, there would be four purple-red crescents impressed on each palm. Listening to her breath, the harshness, was preferable. Eventually the rasp slowed and dissipated. The wait was like a dull knife.
There was one last, long breath.
Then she said, in a strangled little voice, "I thought you were going to kill me."
He swallowed. "No."
"Then...who?" she asked.
He looked at her again. He was under no obligation to respond, but a response would be unlikely to jeopardize the mission. There was not really an answer available as to the nature of why or who, not even in the files. Not even if he extrapolated.
She gasped, looked down sharply. She was scared.
"That is not an answer you are allowed to know," he said, evenly. "But you are wanted alive."
Digestive silence. She held her hand forward, then jerked it back to her chest as if he had burned her. He had not moved.
"Why...fix this?" she mumbled.
He did not respond to that. Instead, he deactivated Sharingan. The mission would proceed more efficiently if distress were minimized.
"I won't use genjutsu." Yet, at least. "You have my word."
She peered up at him. Their eyes met. Her face was a motionless, blank mask. Transparent fluid crawled in two lines from beneath the matted section of her hair. It cut through the sand and grime, leaving pink streaks in its wake.
"How would I know either way?" she whispered.
From the impartial, analytical compartment in her mind, Hokori took stock of the situation.
The Uchiha - Itachi, as no other Uchiha missing-nin existed to her knowledge - was kneeling on the mattress like he was meditating. The other he was with, the tall blue one, was not present in this room. Sword could mean he was one of the seven.
If the stories about the Uchiha massacre were true, then Itachi must be about the same age as her. No older than nineteen or twenty. She stopped just short of considering how or why a boy could murder an entire clan. He was thin, with long musician's fingers and a face that made her question if she was right about his age. She saw his bicep twitch. Thin did not mean without muscle, of course.
He lifted a satchel by its belt-loops. It was made from thick canvas and smelled of adhesive and ointment. Sensation was beginning to properly stream back to her wrist, ankle, the scrapes on her back.
The adrenaline was finally wearing off.
Salt-burn-sting pain ripped through her right eye like a sudden glare of sunlight. Air entered her lungs in spasms. The keening sound she was dimly aware of was coming from her own throat. The room melted into a beige and green blur; the bedsheets became ripples of white. There was only breath, dark, and static down her spine.
She came to with a lurch and a gasp. Itachi had two fingers on the side of her neck.
He said, toneless, "Did you take more than one soldier pill?"
There was no way to discern his expression from seeing only the planes of his jaw and neck. As if he had any to begin with. When she knew opening her mouth would not result in vomit, she responded.
"I don't know," she tried to say. What came out was a slurry mess.
The noise Itachi made wasn't quite a 'hmm.' It was clipped, guttural. He pressed the back of his hand to her forehead, the one with the ring. It all felt cold, slick. A buzzing whiteness was at the edge of her vision. She saw his lips move. Then it all went to black.