A.N - The world needs more Itachi and Kisame fics that are not romance. I hope it will accept this one.
Disclaimer - I don't own 'em, I just write about 'em.
Recuperatio
o
Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art… It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.
- C. S. Lewis
o
Itachi tasted the metallic flavor of blood in his mouth as soon as he woke up; he frowned and tried to open his eyes, only to shut them again with a gasp of pain. They were almost too sore to move, and the early sunlight filtering in through the inn window made them ache horribly. Experimentally, the young Uchiha pushed himself up on one elbow. His left arm was still hopelessly weak, and the air rattled in his chest when he tried to take a deep breath. Still, he could move, and see, if blurrily, and he was not actively coughing up blood.
He'd had worse mornings.
Itachi forced his eyes open and peered at the clock across the room, taking a moment to read the hands. Seven o'clock. He let his hard-won breath out in an irritated rush. Kisame had let him sleep late. Itachi swung his legs out of bed, and stood up, pausing a moment to allow himself to recover from the blood rushing to his head, and made his way to the little bathroom down the hall. He was glad that none of the other inn's patrons seemed to be around when he finally looked in the mirror; it appeared that he had been bleeding from both eyes and his nose during the night, and the result was not pretty.
Kisame had warned him. But there had not been any other choice, unless he'd wanted things to get a lot messier. Engaging with a squad of ANBU would have only caused more people to get hurt, both Konoha shinobi, whom he had no desire to fight with, and Kisame. Itachi had no illusions about his senior partner's abilities - he would have been able to heal easily enough from any injuries - but he also had no illusions about his own weakness when it came to protecting the people he cared about, even when they needed no protection.
The cool washcloth soothed the ache behind his eyes a little, and he rinsed his mouth to get rid of the metallic taste. Amaterasu. The word tasted like fire and blood in his mouth. Tsukiyomi. That tasted like guilt and pain. Itachi shook his head as he wrung out the washcloth - all that had been missing was for him to pull out Susano'o, and the trio would have been complete. All for a simple intelligence mission. No wonder Kisame had scolded him.
The dark-haired young man leaned his forehead against the cold glass of the mirror and willed the deep-seated ache in his heart to disappear. Nothing was ever simple where Sasuke was concerned.
He nearly fell twice on his way back to the room that Kisame had obtained for them the night before - Kakuzu remained immovable on his simple stance that as long as you could put one team in one room, they were going to pay only the amount required for that - but overall his steps were growing steadier, and he felt fairly certain that once he pulled his cloak on, the soothing chakra that was woven into the material would help him to pull himself together.
Then he ran into Kisame just inside the door.
"What are you doing?" his senior partner asked bluntly, taking him by the arm and steering him back towards the rumpled bed. "You have no business trying to get up right now, Itachi."
"I do not require any further rest, Kisame," Itachi protested quietly. "We have to get back to Ame -" He faltered to a halt as Kisame gave him a stern look, and then sighed, his shoulders slumping. "Yes, Kisame."
So it was going to be one of those days.
"I require you to stay in bed today," Kisame told him in a firm, no-nonsense voice as he pushed him down onto the mattress and arranged the covers neatly over him. "And if I catch you trying to sneak out, it'll be three days, got it? Leader-sama can wait that long."
"Yes, Kisame."
"I also require you to keep your eyes closed. I warned you, you didn't listen to me - all right, so they got us out of a tight spot. Now they need to rest. You keep them closed, or else."
"Yes, Kisame."
It was rare that Kisame pulled rank on him - Itachi never argued with the tacit authority he held as the senior partner of the team, but on most missions Kisame, displaying an oddly gentle kind of sensitivity to Itachi's desperate need to control every situation he found himself in, allowed his junior partner to take the lead in analyzing the situation and coming up with a plan. But if he decided that Itachi was taking things too far, he was completely unafraid of staring the younger man down and firmly reminding him of the rules that Leader-sama had laid down when he was forming the Akatsuki, and of the authority and parental obligations it gave to the senior members of the teams.
Every once in a while, Itachi found his senior partner checking him in whatever he was trying to do, and realized that it would be one of those days where almost everything he said would be an obedient, "Yes, Kisame."
And every once in a while Itachi realized - a coughing fit shaking him, and there was no reason for Kisame to give him that look, it wouldn't have happened if he'd stayed upright - that he didn't mind, being reminded that there was someone looking after him.
"I'm going to make some of that tea we picked up last week. I'll require you -" was it something you picked up in Kirigakure, Itachi wondered muzzily, that power to emphasize one word so devastatingly? - "to drink all of it. No excuses. It worked miracles the last time you drank some."
"Yes, Kisame." Itachi caught himself opening his eyes, and closed them again promptly. It wasn't worth the scolding he'd receive.
He didn't mind, being reminded that he wasn't alone.
When reading the manga, I always got the impression that after they'd escaped from Jiraiya, and Itachi said his piece about needing to 'rest himself', it was only going to be about three seconds until he dropped unconscious from sheer exhaustion. All you would have needed to do, in the anime, was add a little 'thud' sound effect before moving on to the next scene.
Anyway - don't forget to review.