note: There is no chance in Hell subsequent chapters shall arrive this rapidly. High expectations are no friend of mine ;)

chapter one: in sickness

After the trees outside of Sound, the next thing I remember is the feeling of throwing up.

It was bad. The toxin was strong, something I had never encountered before. Rolled on my stomach and dry heaving in a blurry, black world, I could feel the damage. I don't know how to describe it but to say that it was the greatest physical pain I have ever been in. It was like someone had lacerated my guts and filled them with stinking poison that rotted all that was left. It was like some sick thing had crawled up inside me, hollowed me out and made me its home. Considering that I am a ninja, that cuts and stabs and broken bones are as much a part of my life as food and sleep, the fact that I was literally delirious with pain says what I cannot.

Despite the fact that my brain had been stripped bare by hurt, it was still achingly obvious that I had to try to heal myself. So I did. Blind, deaf, and vulnerable, all I could focus on was the feel of my chakra flowing through my veins, knitting up holes that seemed to reappear just as soon as they vanished. I did not wonder where I was. I did not question how I had gotten there. I just lay there, on some unknown surface in an unknown dark, and drifted in and out of consciousness, all the while fighting what seemed a useless battle with my own failing body.

I think it was on the second day that I fell across the murky boundary between sleep and wakefulness to the feel of water on my lips. I remember an upwelling of overwhelming gratitude.

Then I woke up and my brain was working, slow and sluggish but at least I could make sense of something other than pain.

I was in a small, cramped room. It was dark, musty, with wooden floors and wooden walls. The bed I was in was small, the sheets scratchy against my bare arms as I shifted, wide-eyed and still muggy. There was no other furniture, no litter, no belongings stuffed in random corners. Blank. Empty.

I still hurt, deep and throbbing, almost overwhelming but I knew I needed to focus. I tried to roll out of the bed, but it didn't work. My feet hit the ground and when I tried to raise myself up, everything went blurry and there were needles under my skin, pokers in my brain, and I clutched to the sheets, waiting for the storm to pass. My chest hurt and I couldn't catch my breath; there were tears building in my eyes from the effort required to not throw up.

Before that second, I had not been scared. There had been no time, between the painful moments of lucidity and the long stretches of shallow, empty sleep. But lying on those scratchy sheets, gasping for air and trying to calm my heart before it pounded right out of my hot, aching chest – I was terrified. It had been years since I was weak, years since I had felt that certain brand of vulnerability that comes with knowing you are absolutely not strong enough – and it had never been like this, fighting invisible monsters, swinging blind, drowning in helplessness and unable to even reach for the sky.

I fainted.

I was only half awake when he walked through the door. He must have thought I was asleep. If he had waited another minute, I probably would have been. My chakra was running low from constant healing, and the poison had sapped my energy, leaving me brittle and exhausted.

Regardless, when I saw him, I sat bolt up right. Training kicked in and I scuttled back until my I was pressed into the junction of the two walls the bed was against. My hand curled around my canteen, and I gathered my chakra into a tight, controlled bundle even as black spots gathered around the edges of my vision.

Uchiha Itachi stood in the doorway, looking at me as though I was just another facet of his naked room.

My breath was coming in pants, and I was shaking from a combination of adrenaline, fatigue, and terror. It was only when his red eyes caught mine – impassive, calm, bored – that I remembered the danger and focused instead on his feet. Idiot! I cursed myself, mind full of torture and despair. Oh, God. It was horrible, and I distinctly remember praying that he would kill me and not bother with the Tsukuyomi. Watching his feet, steady on the wooden floor, I wondered what had happened to my benefactor. Why was I was so special that Itachi would kill someone to get at me? The thought of someone dead on my account twisted my tight, fluttering stomach.

And Itachi just looked at me, a silent specter, tall and horrible, filling up the room and his chakra – I recognized it immediately. It was everywhere, filling the spaces of the room, all around me, not boiling but simmering, calm and deadly, hot and heavy and I wondered how long I would last, if it hurt to go insane.

In my life, I have fought many people, most of them 'stronger' or 'better' than myself. Hell, I killed an Akatsuki. I was strong, I was fierce, I was a good ninja and I knew it. But I also knew that I was currently weak, sick, falling apart at the seams. And I knew that even in the very best of circumstances, even when I was at my most powerful, I would not stand a chance against the infamous Itachi.

"You have been here four days."

I did not look up, but jumped in surprise, not expecting him to say a word before ending me. The feet moved slightly. Every muscle in my body tensed, and the canteen dimpled beneath my fingers. My mind was whirring, spinning like a hamster's wheel, trying and failing to figure out how to survive the situation. There was a stream of visions going through my head, my 'life flashing before me eyes,' and regret tasted like acid on my tongue.

Itachi set down a bundle, and then kicked it towards the bed. I startled, knew a moment of total panic, and threw myself against the wall. But the bundle did not move and neither did Itachi. I don't know why, but the stillness petrified me. The entire situation was too much to handle. My body was protesting all the excitement; I felt woozy, dizzy, empty and pitiful. The urge to curl up into a ball and sob was overwhelming.

"There is food in there. More water as well. I suggest you make use of it."

Then he was gone.

I waited until that chakra – huge, wild, but contained and controlled, horrible and intimating – had retreated off to somewhere not so far away.

And then I collapsed. Relief. Confusion. Fear. Gratitude. All I wanted to do was be home.

I didn't touch the bundle, even as my empty stomach whined.

I cried until I knew no more.

The next time I woke up, there was the canteen of water propped against my side, full and cool. Around me, the room was empty and barren, its secrets hidden. I chugged down the liquid and tried not to think about where it had come from or the slow-burn fever that simmered through me.

I got worse before I got better.

Later, he told me that it lasted three days. It seemed like so much longer. A thousand years of pain, a lifetime of fear, and a decade of dry heaves.

This time, the shaky, fumbling grip of sickness was much harder to handle. Not only was a significantly weaker, but now I knew who kept appearing from the blackness, whose hands it were that tilted my head and let water trickle down my throat. At first, I thought he was trying to kill me. Delirious and burning with fever, I was certain it was poison that slid liquid-cool from his hands. Futilely, I bucked, squirmed, hissed and spat, feeble as an insolent child. I might have even cried, shamed and scared and furious as I was. I wonder if you can even imagine how weak I was, how helpless and frail, to just lay there, vulnerable to the enemy. I thought he was going to kill me, though I didn't know why he taking so long, when a sword or knife and swift punch would do the job in just a few seconds. I tried to think it through, but my brain was too sticky for reasoning beyond contemplating how much everything hurt.

So it went on, for longer than I thought I could handle. A bought of nausea, a few months spent gagging up burning stomach acid into the bowl that had appeared at the side of my bed, and then collapse. Wait for the hands of death to come and force water to my lips. There was nothing I could do. I was useless, at the mercy of a murderer – I hated it so much, because there was nothing I could do but lay limp and pray that if it was poison, it took me fast.

He says it was in the middle of the second day.

All I remember the pair of hands that rocked me back and forth, that tugged and yanked and when I awoke, were attached to red eyes and long black hair. It is a testament to how weary and resigned I was that his presence – so close, so near, he was touching me – didn't illicit a reaction other than a slow sigh and internal prayer. When he shook me once more I even looked into his face, into those dangerous eyes.

"You need to heal yourself," he said. If my mouth hadn't been so dry, I might have screamed. I might have told him to fuck off. Instead I sat there, hollow. Nothing hurt. Everything was numb. My brain was dull, slow, moving from one thought to another with sticky resistance.

I realized he was right.

I had given up. Accidently, of course. Unconsciously. Healing was so hard, took so much concentration, and seemed so useless that somewhere in between trying to remember to breathe and slowly succumbing to the fog of fever, I had forgotten. Which sounds stupid. Which is stupid.

I'm dying, I thought. Iron hands squeezed my chest, and rebelliousness stirred my leaden limbs.

He left as I gathered my chakra.

There is a chance I would have been able to heal myself without the prompting. There is a chance I would have lived anyway, that I had already done enough to ensure everything would have been fine. There is a chance that water would have magically appeared and found its way into my mouth as I lay there, helpless as a newborn.

Listen: Uchiha Itachi saved my life.