Yosh! This is an Itachi One-shot and it's a part of the mini 'the fallacy of...' series. After this one, it's probably going to be a Kisame one-shot, but only time will tell.
Uchiha Itachi- The fallacy of silence.
"Kisame, why is Itachi staring into space?" Hisana asked innocently as she limped over to the partners.
"It's his hobby, but you shouldn't be moving around, your leg hasn't healed yet," the shark man warned.
"I'm fine and thanks again for helping me out of that collapsed building," she gave them both a charming wide smile and sat down on a nearby log.
"Don't worry about it, Itachi was the one that noticed you were in there," he said and turned to look at the Uchiha, who hadn't moved in over twenty minutes.
Hisana closed her eyes to rest for a few seconds. The last two hours had been so strange and hectic.
One second she was walking through a building in search of provisions and the next she was under a pile of rubble with a broken leg.
She had called out for what seemed like an eternity until suddenly someone had lifted the beam on her leg as if it was a feather.
It must have been the most amazing thing she had ever seen anyone do and she was thankful for it. Had Kisame and Itachi not saved her, she would have died.
"Sorry if I'm prying, but what are you two doing in this uninhabited area all alone?" she asked and looked at Kisame, he was probably the one who would answer her question.
"We're on a mission," he said and she noticed he seemed to be a little tense so she didn't ask anything else on the subject.
"The same question goes to you, what are you doing here?" he said after a few seconds of silence.
"Uh... I was looking for any supplies," she said without looking into his eyes.
Luckily, he didn't say anything else about it and they sat in silence once again.
"Kisame, Hisana, we have to go," Itachi stated suddenly and stood up.
She gave them another smile and replied, "Well, thanks again and good luck in your journey."
"No," the Uchiha said and for a second she wondered if he was refusing her kind gesture, but then he clarified, "You are coming with us; you cannot survive in these woods with a broken leg."
Kisame looked slightly shocked at his partner's proposition, or more specifically order, but he didn't say anything because he didn't mind the company.
"Are you sure that's a good idea? I will only slow you down," Hisana began to politely decline.
"Kisame can carry you," Itachi said with a nod.
She furrowed her brow and wondered why they were helping her, but did as she was told and climbed up on Kisame's back.
"Thank you," she whispered and then they were dashing through the woods at a speed she had never even known existed.
They stayed silent for a couple of hours and everyone was comfortable with that.
Kisame and Itachi needed the silence to review the details of their mission and Hisana took the silence to look around the quickly changing scenery.
By evening they had travelled tens and tens of miles and she was in completely unfamiliar territory.
"Where are we?" she whispered into Kisame's ear as she looked around the large town they were currently in.
"Konoha," he replied and her eyes widened. She had always wanted to visit Fire Country's capital.
A few minutes later, they were standing in front of a small hotel, where Itachi calmly ordered a room with three beds.
The hotel's manager led them to their room and after they paid for it, they left Hisana in it.
"We will be back soon," Itachi stated before closing the door.
She limped over to the bed and sat down to try and fix her make-shift cast. During the journey it had loosened and the bone began to hurt.
Gritting her teeth, she did what was necessary and tried to ignore the pain as best she could.
When she was done, she took a good look around the room, which had three beds, a large window, a large bathroom and a small kitchen.
She hopped over to the farthest bed to the left and lay down on it. It was already late evening and she needed all the sleep she could get for her leg to heal faster.
Soon enough, she started dozing off and she managed to fall asleep for a couple of hours.
That sleep was interrupted around midnight by the sound of Itachi and Kisame walking into the room.
Hisana was going to greet them cheerfully, but stopped when she saw Kisame drag a corpse inside.
Itachi saw her shocked expression and said, "This was our mission."
Her confusion only grew and she hesitantly asked, "That man has a Konoha head band, why did you kill your own man?"
The Uchiha didn't reply, but instead took off his forehead protector and showed her the line going through it.
Instantly, she understood everything and said, "You are against Konoha."
Kisame chuckled suddenly and said, "Too bad, if you had not figured that out we would have left you here to live a new life."
She narrowed her eyes at the new information and Itachi finished, "Now you have no choice, but to come with us. You are now our prisoner."
They closed the door behind them and the room went pitch black.
Hisana looked at the spot Itachi had been and she gasped when she saw blood, red eyes staring back at her.
The next thing she knew, everything went black and she was falling.
"I wonder what leader will say about this," a blurry voice echoed inside her head.
"He will probably make us kill her."
...
Hisana slowly opened her eyes, but then closed them when she saw how bright everything was.
When she was adjusted to the lighting, she reopened her eyes and stifled a gasp after she saw she was on Itachi's back and they were dashing through the woods.
Kisame was beside them and he was carrying that corpse from before on his back.
"You are awake," Itachi stated, startling her out of her thoughts.
"Yes..." she trailed of for lack of what to say. She was still extremely confused from the night before.
Closing her eyes, she tried to figure out if the voices she heard before she passed out were a dream or reality.
She hoped it was all a horrible dream because she wasn't too keen on dying because of this leader person.
"Where are we?" she whispered into his ear, but then mentally smacked herself upon remembering she was no longer on Kisame's back.
"In the eastern mountains," Itachi surprised her by saying.
After that, no more words were exchanged until mid afternoon, when Hisana realized she had not eaten anything for nearly two days.
"Do you have anything to eat?" she asked hopefully. Once again, Itachi surprised her by pulling an apple out of his pocket and handing it to her.
They briefly stopped to wait for her to finish it, but it wasn't for long because she practically swallowed the poor apple whole.
When they continued running, she noticed the eastern mountains were getting closer and closer.
Had the partners wanted to go farther east, they would have taken the route around the mountains, but since they were going head on, they must have something important to do there.
She had never heard of any towns of villages being near this mountain range, so it confused her.
But then again, what didn't confuse her these days.
Evening crept up on them once again and she thought they were going to sleep in the forest, but instead they kept going.
By nightfall, Hisana was starting to get seriously worried that Itachi and Kisame were going to leave her in the forest alone.
The moon came out soon after that and the dark, sombre forest was lit up with its pale shimmer.
Time seemed to blur as the minutes ticked by and soon enough, the injured female was dozing off on a murderers back.
"Kisame, what will we tell leader?" Itachi asked blankly when he was sure Hisana could no longer hear them.
The shark man looked thoughtful for a moment before he replied, "We can say that she witnessed everything and we had to bring her to wipe her memory."
"I could have wiped her memory back where we found her," came the answer, purposely raining on Kisame's parade.
"Well… we'll say you were too tired," he retorted hastily.
Itachi turned his head to stare at his partner with that trademark Uchiha stare as he said, "Then we would have killed her."
"Fine, be a party pooper. Just make up a lie or she's dead… or Hidan will get his grubby hands on her. I don't know which one is worse," Kisame said and sped up to avoid more of the piercing blank stare.
Itachi took his partners point into consideration and tried to think of a suitable lie that would allow Hisana to stay with them in more favourable circumstances than prison.
He may be a murderer, but he still had enough heart left in him to take pity on an abandoned injured girl.
To him, she was a small probably futile attempt to stay human.
Some time later, they were at a cave entrance and they briefly put their passengers down to move the giant rock that covered the entrance.
"You are late," a blank voice that slightly resembled Itachi's spoke.
"Yeah, yeah, sorry," Kisame started as he put the unconscious body of the man they had kidnapped from Konoha down.
"We got the guy… and we found this chick along the way," he finished and nodded in Itachi's direction so that he could explain or lie why they had brought her with them.
"She is our slave now," Itachi stated and began walking in the direction of his room.
Their leader, Pein, did not seem entirely convinced so he stepped in front of Itachi and said, "Why would you need a slave?"
"To cook," Kisame chimed in, but sighed and looked away when Itachi cast him a dark glare.
"To cook," Pein repeated before narrowing his eyes, stepping aside and letting Itachi pass.
As they were almost out of the large cave and in the tunnel, Pein said, "Make sure you know what side she's on."
…
"Itachi, she still isn't waking up," Kisame's muffled voice seemed to echo in Hisana's head.
"Poke her again," Itachi stated and she flinched when she felt a finger practically stab her in the side.
"I'm awake…" she muttered to stop him from repeating the painful gesture.
Hisana opened her eyes to look around and she saw that she was now in a medium sized room with dark brown walls, a door and no windows.
She tried to stand up off the chair she had been put in, but she bit back a gasp when she felt a stabbing sensation in her leg.
Right, it was still broken.
"Where am I?" she asked quietly and rubbed her eyes. It felt like she had been sleeping for days.
"That doesn't matter," Itachi began and she gave him a sharp glance before he continued, "you already know too much."
"Alright, how long will I be here for?" she persisted in search of any valuable information she could get.
"That also doesn't matter," came the reply and Hisana frowned slightly.
"Are you going to tell me anything?"
He didn't say anything so she continued, "I'll take that as a 'no'."
He finally turned to look at her with his intelligent onyx eyes and said, "You are assuming things. What if I had been about to tell you something, but your assumption made me decide against it?"
"… Were you?" she asked hesitantly, slightly confused from what he had just told her.
"No."
She sighed and the room went silent, thus revealing the sound of Kisame's muffled chuckling.
They turned to look at him and he cleared his throat before saying, "I suppose we should tell you that you are now going to be our cook."
Hisana looked away and tried to rethink her options at this new revelation.
She could react angrily and refuse the job, but she wanted to live and she did owe them her life after they saved her.
"Okay, do I have to hunt too or do you have ready food?" she asked calmly, only wanting to find out how hard of easy her job was going to be.
Itachi turned around to stare at the wall, but then said, "No, another one of the members get our food for us. All you have to do is prepare it."
She nodded; though she doubted the gesture was seen by the wall-staring Itachi.
The room went tensely silent so she took that time to look around the room again.
There were two beds, but it doesn't take a grand mathematician to realize that it wasn't enough for all of them.
"…Where will I sleep?" she muttered and wondered if maybe they would put her in a separate room.
She had been away from people for many months so having to sleep in the same room as two murderers bothered her.
"We can pull a mat in from the other room," Kisame piped in helpfully.
Itachi didn't move, or react to the statement so the shark man got up off his bed and walked out of the room in search of a free mat.
Oddly enough, it was much harder than it sounded because Sasori insisted on having a mat for each and every one of his puppets.
Hisana and Itachi were left alone in the room and she resisted the urge to hobble over to the door and run after Kisame.
She wasn't afraid of Itachi, but being alone with him did give her goose bumps.
He was just so… unpredictable and she never knew whether he would say something or stay awkwardly silent.
"So…" she started to say out of a habit she had back before she lived in the forest.
"What?" Itachi asked and she nearly repeated what he had just said, but then she remembered that she herself had started the conversation and twitched.
"Uh… I… I was just thinking," she gushed in hopes of being in silence again.
More specifically, to stop herself from being any more embarrassing.
"About?" the Uchiha continued the conversation and she nearly choked on her own spit.
"Nothing, that's why I compensated for it by saying something," she tried to sound intelligent, honestly she did.
"One word cannot compensate for a lack of thought because a thought must have motivated you to speak in the first place."
She sweat dropped. "Sorry, I'm still a bit scatter brained from everything that has happened so far."
"You are confused that you were saved and brought here?" he paraphrased and she mentally swore.
"Yes."
"Are you trying to end the conversation? Women are supposed to be more relaxed upon speaking, but your heart rate has been going up every second I say something," Itachi surprised her again by saying.
Hisana tried to think of a respectable reply to his oddly worded question, but luck was on her side and Kisame walked in with a mat.
"I found a mat for you to sleep in Hisana," he said as he put it along the wall beside Itachi's bed.
"Thank you very much, I won't be much trouble I promise," she said with a small bow and hobbled over to assess her new sleeping quarters.
"You know, we never actually bothered to ask you if you were good at cooking," Kisame noted.
...
"Alright, today I have spaghetti, alfredo sauce and I was going to make meatballs, but Hidan brought them in with the suggestion that they were human so... I think you understand," Hisana chuckled nervously as she put two plates out on the Akatsuki kitchen table.
It had been two weeks since she had been made Itachi and Kisame's personal cook.
"Thanks Hisana," Kisame muttered before grabbing his plate and wolfing the food down.
Itachi, on the other hand, was more polite and he gave her a formal thank you before he delicately took a fork and started to eat.
"Can Tobi have some food?" a shrill voice appeared out of no where and it took her a lot of muscle control not to scream and run out of the room.
"Sure thing Tobi, take as much as you want," she offered warmly, but the smile did not reach her eyes.
To her, Tobi was just a lunatic that could snap at any moment and kill them all.
She was pretty close.
"Hisana, go straight to our room after you are done," Itachi spoke and she did as she was told.
Reluctantly, but she did follow his orders.
That evening, Hisana sat in the room with a deeply furrowed brow.
Maybe tonight she would ask 'that' question.
No, what if they were offended by it... or was she right?
Just as Itachi walked into the room, she sighed deeply and decided to forget the question until a more suitable situation.
"Do you want to ask me something?" Itachi startled her out of her silly thoughts and she flinched at how close to reality he was.
"No... I was just thinking," she turned to give him a small smile, but when she saw his blank gaze on hers, she looked away again.
"Why do you keep looking away?" he asked and she stifled a sigh upon realizing that she had to answer his question and that Itachi was in a talkative mood.
From what Kisame told her and what she had observed, Itachi had two moods.
Quiet mode and annoying million question mode.
Unfortunately for her, he never gave any warning as to when those moods were upon him, until it was too late to run away.
"I'm not going to repeat myself," he said and she shook her head to get herself back on track with the current situation.
"I'm not used to people staring at me, that's all," Hisana tried to cut off any more questions by yawning and pretending to be tired.
"I think I'm going to take a nap now," she said a little too forcefully as she made her way across the room and to her mat.
"You are avoiding conversation," he stated and she gave him a small nod.
"Now tell me what you had wanted to ask me before," he said and she flinched; both because her broken leg spasmed a bit and the fact that Itachi still wasn't dropping the subject.
"It's nothing important, but can I ask you something else?" she retorted with a small, calculating smile.
"No, I only want to know what the first question you wanted to ask me was," he persisted, being completely out of his character.
Still, everyone has a quirk and it seems that Itachi's is to be annoyingly persistent.
Her smile disappeared and she closed her eyes with a sigh.
When she reopened her eyes, she nearly fell backwards when she saw Itachi standing in front of her and staring at her, Sharingan activated.
"You are blushing," he stated as she started leaning away from him.
"It's just the adrenaline."
"I make you afraid?"
"N-No... I wasn't expecting you to be so close," she mentally cursed when she stuttered.
"I'm waiting," he reminded her of the earlier question about her question.
Briefly, she wondered if all of this was his attempt to mess her brain up so much that she would no longer be able to think properly.
"Alright, but first you have to promise that you won't kill me, hurt me, threaten me or Amaterasu me in my sleep," she said with a hoping eyebrow raise.
"I make no promises, now speak," the Uchiha demanded and she made a small prayer before taking a deep breath.
"Are you and Kisame gay?"
"..."
Hisana defensively put her hands in front of her face and closed her eyes.
After what seemed like eternity, she opened her eyes a crack and she saw Itachi was still in front of her, but with a small frown on his lips.
"I'm sorry... it... just seems like that... you know... the only girl I've seen in this base is Konan and it looks like she is with that strange man with piercings so I thought that each partnership equalled a relationship," she tried to elaborate, but she saw the silliness of her question when she said it out loud.
This whole thing sure did made a lot more sense in her head.
"You think that Kisame and I are gay," Itachi said slowly, as if he was still trying to wrap his head around the idea.
"No... That's why I asked," she replied, still tense and ready to be killed.
"Your reasoning skills are far off," he said after another long pause.
"So you're not gay?" she muttered out loud.
"You are assuming things, I never specified," he answered.
"...So you are?" she asked hesitantly, still rather confused.
Itachi sighed and took one step closer to her before leaning to her ear before distinctly saying, "-"
-Slam!
"Damn it!" Kisame yelled in frustration after he slammed the door, right as Itachi had been about to say something.
"You cannot believe who I'm paired with for the next mission!" he exclaimed and Itachi narrowed his eyes, while Hisana tried inching away from the now rather tense body of the Uchiha.
"It's Deidera-I-blow-shit-up-whenever-the-hell-I-want!" Kisame yelled and flopped down on his bed with a groan.
"Worse yet, the mission is for-" he stopped talking when he saw how close Itachi and Hisana were.
Plus, the dark, blood red glare he was getting zipped his lips up, much like staring in the face of a Tyrannosaurus Rex makes you crap your pants and run a hundred miles a minute at the same time.
"Kisame, did you ever learn how to knock?" Itachi spoke in a low, threatening tone.
The shark man got up off the bed and quickly apologized for the interruption.
He was about to leave, but he saw Hisana mouth 'help' so he muttered, "Oh and Hisana, I'm hungry so can you come make me something?"
She smiled and cautiously got around Itachi before following Kisame out the door.
When they were far away from the room, Kisame asked, "So, what was I interrupting?"
"Nothing much, I was just asking Itachi if you and him were gay."
To be continued...
:) This if half of the one-shot and the other half should be up in a week.
Any thoughts on the story so far?