Karumi groaned as her eyes opened slowly, the sound of the rain outside waking her from her deep sleep. Her back ached and her hips were stiff, yet, despite the pain, she couldn't feel more elated. After all, she'd promised herself she wouldn't have any regrets by the time Itachi would have to leave again, and she didn't.

Reaching beside her, Karumi expected to feel Itachi's warm body asleep next to her, though her eyes widened in confusion when all her hand touched was the fabric of the bed covers.

She sat up quickly, her long hair falling around her shoulders and tickling her waist as she slid her hands across the sheets, hoping to find that Itachi had just rolled a little to far and was still with her, but, aside from a pile of neatly folded fresh clothes, she found nothing. The mattress beside her was cold, meaning that, at the very least, Itachi had been gone for hours.

For a moment, Karumi wondered if last night had even happened or if it was all some elaborate genjutsu, but Itachi wouldn't have gone to all the trouble of simulating her blindness for something like that - would he?

As if on cue, a sudden pain shot up Karumi's spine, reminding her that everything was, in fact, real; and she heaved a sigh of relief, drawing her bare legs to her chest and resting her chin on her knees, frowning.

Why would he leave without saying something? He hadn't told her he had a new mission to start as soon as he'd returned from the Leaf Village. Then again, with how well-rested he'd seemed when he'd visited her, he'd probably been back in the Rain Village long before he'd come to see her.

Before Karumi could properly collect her thoughts, a soft knock sounded at her bedroom door. "Lady Hanakawa?" a worried voice called out. "Sorry for intruding, but you weren't in the workroom, so I came up here - we have an emergency downstairs."

"Tetsuya?" Karumi murmured, still tired and groggy, though quickly snapped out of it when she realised what he'd said. "I'll be right down."

Reaching for the pile of clothes Itachi had left behind for her, Karumi hurried to get dressed, listening as Tetsuya left her house before following after him, rushing down the steps to her surgery, readying herself for what waited there.

Tetsuya was never the kind of person to use the word 'emergency' lightly, and it was rare enough that there would be an unannounced patient in the work room. After all, Karumi's building was restricted to Akatsuki members and her personal staff.

"What do we have?" she asked as the stormed into her workroom, moving toward the examination table.

"Male, mid-thirties," Tetsuya's voice sounded along with the rustling of paper. "He was already here when I arrived."

The man on the table grunted loudly, making Karumi jump a little as she grabbed his arm, concentrating. "Has he told you what happened?" she asked, frowning at the large amount of iron and other foreign compounds visible in his blood.

"No," Tetsuya murmured, trying to seem less flustered and failing. "I don't think he can talk."

Karumi nodded as she moved her hand to press against the man's abdomen, eliciting another pained cry. "It's poison," she muttered. "There's excessive iron along with some sort of plant substance in his blood."

"Not this again," Tetsuya sighed, and Karumi listened as he flipped through his notes. "This is the sixth time this year! And it's only August!"

"We can complain later," Karumi snapped. "For now, this can be a test. What do we use to retrieve poison?"

Tetsuya stiffened. "I - um - warm salinated water," he stammered, and Karumi nodded.

"While you're making that, there's a jar of viscous liquid on the second shelf of the mineral's cupboard in the apothecary - third in from the left," she explained, adjusting her hands' positions on the man's torso to observe his internal organs. "The bacteria in it clings to iron, so add a spoonful before you heat everything up."

"Yes, m'lady!" Tetsuya piped, confidence returning to his voice, before running out of the room.

Karumi turned back to her work, finding the cause of the man's illness in an infected wound on his side, confirming her suspicions. Upon realising that Karumi was a talented medic, one of the Akatsuki's other members, a master of poisons from the Sand Village, had insisted on leaving her 'gifts' every time he'd managed to come up with a new toxin in order to challenge her. Karumi would never forget the first time she'd arrived in her workroom to find a dying man on her surgery table; two months after joining the Akatsuki with no assistants of any kind.

After all, that was the first time she'd ever lost a patient.

She wasn't going to let this man die, though. Tagging him with her chakra, Karumi took a step back, gaining a bigger picture of his condition as her mind began to piece together the flashes of information that passed through her mind's eye.

Moving to wash her hands, she mentally studied the man's wound. One single slice with a sharp blade covered in poison had been enough to get the man to this state, and the cut itself couldn't be more than a day old.

So this was a fast-acting poison, meaning they didn't have very much time. As Karumi listened to Tetsuya rush into the room with several buckets she moved back towards their patient, rolling her sleeves up.

Extracting poison from the blood was a difficult technique at the best of times, requiring so much chakra control and mental focus that even professionals often had trouble. Karumi, however, was different. Not only had she performed this technique countless times, but she could cheat. Normal people wouldn't be able to tell how much poison was still left in the patient's system until they'd swept the body several times, but Karumi could tell when her job was done by 'seeing'.

Still, even for her, the procedure would, at the very least, take a couple of hours. Activating her chakra, Karumi took a handful of the mixture Tetsuya had prepared, concentrating as she pushed it through the man's system, drawing out the poisonous compounds and dumping the soiled mixture into an empty bucket before taking a new scoop and starting the process all over again.

The poison had already made its way to some of the man's internal organs, but Karumi didn't let it faze her. It just meant the extraction would take longer. She could cure him - she would cure him - even if it took several days. After all, most of the missions the others went on lasted months. A few days was nothing compared to that.

Karumi took a deep breath to clear her head as she dumped another clump of the solution into the waste bucket. Now wasn't the time to be thinking about the other Akatsuki members. Karumi needed to focus.

XXXXXXX

Itachi glanced up as the rain overhead began to clear, indicating how far out of the Rain Village he and Kisame were. He felt bad for leaving Karumi while she was still asleep, but he'd already stayed with her far longer than he'd originally intended to. It wasn't that he regretted staying the night, but Itachi could picture Karumi's confusion when she would inevitably wake up alone, and he felt bad for leaving her - especially considering what they'd just done.

Even though it had been hours since Itachi had left, he could still feel Karumi's warm body pressed against him; tiny bruises still littered his neck and shoulders; and his scalp still tingled from where she'd tugged at his hair. As distracting as the sensation was, Itachi didn't want to forget it.

"Stop looking so happy," Kisame's voice sounded from beside him. "It's creeping me out."

Itachi hadn't noticed the small smile tugging at the corners of his mouth until he forced himself to drop it, scowling as he mentally kicked himself for not properly focusing on his mission.

"It's the witch, isn't it?" Kisame asked, glancing down at the Uchiha, who met his look with a warning glare. "You only came back to the inn right before we had to leave, so I figured you'd stayed the night with her."

The larger man's features stretched into a grin, flashing his pointed teeth.

"Did you have fun?"

Deciding it was best not to answer the Mist ninja's question, Itachi turned his attention back to the path in front of them. Regardless of whether or not they were partners, the less Kisame knew about his private life, the better. After all, it wasn't any of his business.

Kisame laughed. "I'll take that as a 'yes'," he sneered, returning his gaze to the road ahead, his smile slowly disappearing. "It's probably too late to say this, but getting close to her doesn't seem like a good idea. As nice as she is to you, she's got a sadistic streak."

He tapped his pocket for emphasis, gesturing to the bag of food pills Karumi had made for him.

"Advice from a friend:" he concluded. "Don't do anything to make her upset."

Itachi resisted the urge to snort. He knew Karumi's wrath all too well. Even though she'd healed him immediately, and even though he'd been concussed, Itachi wouldn't easily forget the sensation of his rib cracking against her fist and his entire body slamming against the concrete wall. Itachi still believed he'd deserved it, but he would be careful not to illicit that kind of response accidentally.

Still, regardless of the fact that Kisame's advice had come a little too late, Itachi wasn't about to masochistically put himself in that sort of situation again. Not only would getting hit like that eventually damage his body permanently, but getting that angry would obviously upset Karumi as well, and Itachi didn't want that.

He preferred to see her happy.

XXXXXXX

"Sorry we don't have any beds for you," Karumi murmured, carefully pouring boiling water into the mixture she'd been working on for the past twenty minutes. "But, technically, this isn't a hospital."

"Don't apologise," the gruff voice of her patient sounded from the examination table. "If it weren't for you, I'd be dead."

Karumi smiled gratefully as she handed him the tea she'd made, using the expression to hide her guilt. If it weren't for her, he probably wouldn't have been poisoned in the first place.

The man paused to sniff the mixture. "What's in this?" he asked.

"Blue licorice for nausea, ginger for abdominal pain, and wild celery root and cinnamon bark to stimulate your liver," Karumi stated. "I removed all the traces of poison, but your body still needs to recover."

"So it's not an antidote?" the man mumbled, taking a sip of tea.

"You don't need an antidote for a poison that isn't in your system," Karumi said, folding her arms in front of her chest. "Besides, I won't know how to make an antidote until Tetsuya's done synthesising the poison we pulled out of you."

As if on cue, the door to the surgery creaked open, and Karumi listened as Tetsuya slowly approached her, seemingly distracted by his notes. "Main ingredient is oleander," he murmured absently. "It also contains monkshood root and added iron - which makes the poison easier to bind to blood."

Karumi sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose in an attempt to drive away the headache at was beginning to pound against her skull. "Of course," she muttered to herself. "The iron is easy enough to deal with, but the cures for oleander and monkshood toxicity are also fast-acting poisons if you screw up the dosage."

"Foxglove and jimsonweed, right?" Tetsuya asked, and Karumi nodded, impressed.

She took a deep breath, stretching her arms behind herself until her back cracked satisfyingly before relaxing once again.

As proficient as she'd become in creating antidotes for the poisons she'd been tested with, it was a task that never became any easier. If she'd worked without rest, she could probably have it done within a couple of days, but it often took a toll on her both physically and mentally - and this one would be especially difficult.

"Now," Karumi breathed, heading for the door. "I'd better get to work."