"Strip"
Enigmatic as always, Katsue clung to me desperately. Angry accusations dampened my cloak as tears fell. Ridiculous as it was, she was claiming that she could have helped in some way. That she could have miraculously cured the cancer that wrought havoc on my body had I informed her sooner. It was a fantasy, one that could never realistically materialize. There were things one could control in life, this was not one of them. Obsessively working toward something unchanging was hopeless.
Several things caused me trouble in this particular aspect of life, nearly driving me mad at times. These were things that I always tried to control but failed much of the time since they were nearly impossible to bend. Unbendable constituents that constantly challenged my constant drive for mastery included: the weather, lung cancer and Katsue. Cancer was more manageable than Katsue.
Had I told the porcelain girl in my arms about the pain in my lungs while we were still children she would have become depressed, or worse, sympathized with my harrowing mission. That sympathy, and empathy in Katsue's case, would have compelled her speak out against the public's dark view of my actions. She would have grown up during our five years of separation believing that I should not be condemned due to the extraneous circumstances of my ailment.
Were I an honest man, I would admit that the decision not to tell her was for personal gain. Personal in that she would not find someone to fill the void of my absence. In a cruel, unforgiving world she would have forgotten me and the small impact I made on her life. Imagining me as dead somewhere due to an illness, she would have found someone else. Knowing her personality, she would perhaps be married with a child at this point. The architect of my ever-weakening sanity would be lost to another life, one without me and the dangerous responsibility I commanded of her.
Since I am not an honest man, I convinced not only Katsue, but also myself, that I had concealed the information for her own good.
In reality, I needed to have someone who would know me. Who would know the most realistic version of Itachi Uchiha that I could conjure. I needed someone who could still love me until I died by Sasuke's hands, and if I was lucky, someone who could love me after death.
Katsue was my personal saint. Redemption incarnate. No living person could comprehend the sense of calm that her presence radiated. A calm that sunk into your skin, into your heart, cleansing the black tar that resided there leaving a cool, refreshing calm. Cold water on a searing burn. But similar to water on a burn, the effect was temporary. Small moments of serenity were more than enough to save my clarity of mind, by ways saving me from my own blade each time Sasuke's once innocently adoring eyes flickered through my mind. Remembering how damaged I left the ones I loved took a toll on my stability, which I covered with a well maintained visage of stoic disinterest. Hiding my reactions always frustrated Katsue until she exploded, somehow increasing the calm she emitted. Her expressive face brought me back to the first time we met, when I realized that the mission to kill Hiruko was not going to be as simple as it seemed in theory.
If only I had turned down that mission. Not only would Katsue be leading a normal life, but the other complications would have faded into obscurity leaving me with no regrets from this life. My little brother had to visually witness the carnage. He had to fear and hate me for this all to be successful. It was the awful truth that weighted my every action, pushing me to be thorough in my despicable actions. Though leaving my young brother to grow into a hateful avenger left me with feelings of suffering, I did not regret my decision to save his life. Regrets were few and far between from the time I was born. Almost all of my regrets were accredited to Katsue. One was my inability to find her brother to complete that mission. I was unsure why Hiruzen wanted him dead so badly, but it was my mission to kill him and I had been unable to find the man regardless of the underworld dealings I'd become involved in. No one seemed to know anything about him. Not even his adored sister. That was the only thing anyone knew, that Hiruko loved his little sister and wanted to keep her from joining the TI Corps. An emotion that I could sympathize with.
Other regrets were the way I treated her on several occasions. The first being the night I crushed her hands.
The full moon lit up her window, a chipped white beacon that called to me as it had hundreds of times in the past eight months. She was curled up with a deadened sadness in her blue eyes as she glared at the television in an attempt to sleep. Seconds later I stood before the cracked and chipping white door of her apartment. I told myself to leave, to just leave forever without an explanation. It would have been easy for her to move on from my memory once she realized what I'd done if I had gone without seeing her first. Heart scored and raw, I lifted my mask to rub my sore eyes. Tears still chilled my face though I tried hard to conceal them behind my collar. I didn't wipe them away. Once I turned the door handle, loud warnings bellowed from deep within my ears, screaming for me to turn around. Let her live the easy, simple life she yearned for. A life where I'd been removed. A life where she would leave the shinobi world and replace me with unworthy loser who would never solve the riddle she was. I gripped the handle hard, still shaking, not quite believing what I'd just done. I knew it was the wrong decision, but I needed my dose; I needed my white demon one more time. The door flew harder than I'd expected causing it to slam hard. She jumped out of bed and ducked away with kunai between each of her knuckles. She recognized me immediately though my face was obscured. Donning a light blue three-quarter sleeved shirt and leggings, she looked strangely beautiful. She took tentative steps closer. I blinked the tears from my eyes, failing heartily once Katsue was within range.
Almost spectral, blue sapphire eyes ignited against the monochromatic night. Contrasting with the white of her skin, I felt like I'd been tricked into some beautifully crafted genjutsu. Her esoteric blue eyes met my black, real eyes with an aching plea. They were bewitching, instilling that perfect redemption she commanded in my rapidly decaying soul. I pushed her further inside with a tearful kiss and kicked the door closed forcefully. No one could witness this if the new plan formulating in my mind was to come to fruition.
Through my broken mind, it didn't occur to me that she was far more delicate than myself. I crushed her small hands in mine, removing her ability to use that pressure point technique. Walking in I didn't want it to end up this way. But it had to. She needed to fear me in some way so she would not turn to Hiruko in search of answers. Desperately, I clutched the only one who would love me until the day I died. Bones snapped and crackled beneath my strained fingertips as she crumpled; suffering. It was like breaking an egg in your hand, the blood was much like whites and yolk as they dripped from the gaping wounds. Warm blood pressed between our fingers as she dropped to her knees into the mess I made. I'd intended to hurt her, but not so badly. Fractured sapphire eyes screamed heartbreak when she finally gained the courage to looked up to her ruiner.
Disgusted by my own lack of self control, I shoved away from her, stumbling back a step before I could regain my mask of uncaring, leaving macabre blood smears across her lost expression. Once again, I was foundering at the sight of her perfect eyes. Lost, eating my own shoe, trying to decide how to fix the broken look in her eyes. I needed to give her an excuse. A reason for her to fall back on, a reason to become cautious. She was reticent to tell anyone about that night. Nothing could fix the pain I caused. I couldn't believe myself. I'd never wanted to become the type of person who was capable of damaging someone so innocent.
This was the first time I felt regret in such a way. It was nearly crippling in its intensity.
I'd always suspected that Katsue was my life's test. That she had been created as my antithesis to simply scramble my every intention, leaving me with haphazard plans that she could ruin with one facial expression or sleight of hand. I was right about one thing. The moment she looked into my eyes that one cataclysmically banal day in the cafe beneath her apartment her fate was sealed with mine.
Exceeding all expectations, she was trained extensively and was accepted into TI to undertake more unsavory missions under Ibiki and Ayumi. Due to her training under the master kunoichi, I'd expected some improvement, but not nearly the amount of growth I found five years later. Breaking her heart had hardened her sweet view of the world, she had become dedicated to this secretive world in Konoha's underground.
During the time spent away from Konoha I had been unable to keep up with her life and quickly ascending rank as a coveted assassin under Ayumi's training. Once during an interlude between missions, I found myself listening to the drunken ramblings of the Akatsuki's youngest member as he recited the facts of his night to Kisame. Deidara went out to a strip club with my partner during our time off. He stumbled into the Akatsuki hideout's library, loudly claiming that he saw a ghost. A girl with white skin and hair. The young blond man slurred each syllable as he glared over at me from his position against the wall. Kisame was not as heavily intoxicated; he recollected a similar sight, glancing over to me suggestively. I ignored the pair and continued reading with my ears perked to listen for something more specific to Katsue's description. Deidara was weary of me, a bubble of energy seemed to keep him fifteen feet away from me at all times. I couldn't say I minded. My partner left to go to bed while the artist stayed to continue his ramblings to the wall. The boy liked to hear his own voice. Knowing that he couldn't have seen Katsue at a strip club, I relaxed and tried pushing the suggestion from my mind.
"I'da fucked'r good'n hard." A broad smile spread his face then dropped into a childish pout. "Nah, she left with some rich guy." he slurred tilting his head back against the wall, speaking to the ceiling. "They always do don't they... mmyeah."
My blood curdled, leaving a sour taste in my mouth. I found myself growing protective over this white skinned girl when Deidara's infamously expressive face smiled dangerously as he explained explicitly what he would do to one of those women. He found strippers 'artless', feeling that their innards would be more beautiful after he blew the place sky high. Realizing that I would not be the person to feed his artistic view, Deidara stumbled away, sliding against the walls as the alcohol seemed to cause gravity to shift on him.
At the time I forced their conversation out of mind for the sake of my sanity, and to avoid killing the young artist who vividly threatened to obliterate Katsue's vulgar doppelganger. When Katsue affirmed the mad bomber's reports so offhandedly I thought for a moment that I would kill her, or Ayumi, or even Deidara for seeing my sweet apparition so compromised.
When she told me about the assassinations I hoped that she was lying. I did not want to believe that my modest Katsue would become one of those kinds of kunoichi. I always had high expectations for the ones I left behind. Higher still for Katsue since her brothers were so protective. The news mostly disturbed me because I'd always felt confident that she was incapable of taking a life. Senseless murder and a disjointed moral compass did explain the loss of innocence in her eyes. To my great displeasure, her pure sapphire eyes seemed almost dull and flat. This disappointment festered as an untreated infection, sickening me more with each new piece of information I uncovered. Compounded when I saw her with the Aburame during her nights on protection detail.
Then I discovered that she was almost completely unchanged aside from a few fearful flinches from my touch. Fear would race across her formerly trusting blue eyes when I kissed her or tried to show any form of affection. Her reactions worried me; I wanted to fix them but knew that they were warranted. Regret pressed into my chest once more when we were together for the first time. The shy and shaking motions of her body told me that she had never been in a situation remotely similar before. The vile accusations I'd charged her with that night in the woods in Rice Country couldn't have been further from the truth. She was truly mine and only mine.
According to her slight of tongue, Katsue wanted to watch my brother's fight against Shukaku's human vessel. Since I had prior knowledge of what was to occur at the arena this afternoon, I decided to keep her away. This was a multipurpose restriction. Others under Orochimaru's command knew her face. She was the daughter of a retired commander, better recognized as Hiruko's adored younger sister. Plenty of immoral creatures would love to use her against her brother. If they, or Orochimaru himself, saw her there they may do some⦠unkind things.
Thus, I was seducing the one I love to prevent her from leaving. Manipulation and lies were all I understood anymore. It was unusually easy for me to turn a phrase or make something into something it's not. To save her from the violence that was to take place over the coming hours, I'd lay her down and give her my soul once more.
Leaning her onto that bed, I ran my hands along her bandaged sides. Her body was hard, a physique developed from years of training in my absence. Her face was still sweet and soft like I remembered. Scars blended into her white skin, leaving them nearly camouflaged as white spider webs that stretched over the surface of her unbound abdomen. Running my fingers along that skin, I could feel the small tears and lines from missions gone wrong and damage I'd done myself. Reacting to my touch, she bent and squirmed, encouraging my exploration as she mirrored my actions. Her movements were more natural than they had been the last time. Kissing and touching without words we learned each other's movements. Which hand placements would conjure the most passionate reactions and the amount of pressure to use to illicit louder gasps of pleasure. The way she moved against my lips when I kissed her scarred stomach sent lightning up my spine, hardening me before my mind could catch up. I helped her with that task, she was still too nervous to undo buttons and zippers.
Taking my lip between her teeth she pulled me foreword until I was braced on my forearms over her unclothed form. Confident hands gripped my ever hardening length between our legs and brushed the sensitive tip across her inner thigh, the implication clear. Looking to her eyes, I saw it. If only for the most fleeting moment I watched a devious little thought shift her features. It took effort not to react with narrowed eyes. She knew I was manipulating her and planned to use it against me. Instead I smiled a little.
Pressing my lips to hers was like kissing clovers. I couldn't let her leave, she would be in danger if I let her go. Aligning the head to the wet heat of her opening, I shifted foreword, entering her, stretching her slowly. She tensed, expecting the same pain as before. After a moment of uncomfortable shifting, I felt her press her hips up to meet mine. Still a tight fit, but not nearly as painful as the first time.
More than two months ago, her winces of pain were enough to make me want to stop midway. Time and time again I gave her openings for escape, stopping to search her expression for any sign of reluctance. After forcing myself into her slowly, I felt that thin resistance that signified an unbreakable bond. Forever, no matter where we went from this point on, I would be part of her life. It was unnerving to be permanently significant in such a way. I watched her face to measure her reaction to the situation. Though I'd never taken someone's virginity, I'd been with other women. The very afternoon that I nearly killed that Aburame jounin I found one of the endless willing women to spite the version of Katsue I'd created in my own mind.
It was spiteful, yes. But did I regret it? Not at all. I felt it was practice. If I had not known what to expect, I may have hurt Katsue beyond the general expectation that every woman possessed.
She looked up at me with those eyes, those innocently tentative eyes. Lips parted slightly with the slightest rush of red to her cheeks, she looked like a porcelain doll painted to my exact preference. White skin and hair contrasted with her eyes, causing them to stand out in that haunting way they always did. It was as if she was a drawing brought to life. Those blue eyes filled with determination when I didn't move any further. I was temporarily stunned. I couldn't believe that she had actually waited for me, that she hadn't moved on and found someone else. My heart warmed with pride as her body shook from fear and adrenaline. Then her stubbornness kicked in as her hips adjusted to force me further inside, nearly piercing the sensitive skin. The motion stopped with an immeasurable wince that she tried to hide by smiling. In a slow, even motion, I thrusted into her fully for the first time. Bleeding crescents carved into my back where her nails cut into my skin, clutching me close, trying to escape the pain I'd caused. I kissed and held her, reminding her that I loved her, apologizing for the pain. All of it. She couldn't hear through the ringing in her ears, but was relieving to say anyway.
This time it would not be as painful. She would not clench and close her eyes to avoid showing the pain she felt.
A small noise grunted from her throat as she wrapped a smooth leg around my hip driving me further, deeper. One hand held her porcelain thigh in place as the other gripped around her back, hoisting her closer into our unbroken kiss. Thrusting in slow, even strokes a low throaty sigh mumbled into my shoulder as she wrapped the other leg around to meet the other behind my back. The small shift in position widened her hips, I could press into her more smoothly. Small noises emitted from her chest, sounds of pleasure and impatience that begged me to lose all control. She held me around the neck, her face pressed to the side of mine to hide the shameless expressions of pleasure. She could not hide this time. I wanted to watch her beautifully expressive reactions. I wanted to see what I was doing to her. How her eyes would roll back when I would touch her nub of nerves in unhurried circles, how her abdomen would shudder when I angled a certain way. I unfurled her fingers from my neck and pressed her to the bed with one hand to the middle of her chest, kissing her delicate head into the soft blankets.
My eyes wandered her wide-eyed mortification with a hidden smile. She was afraid that I didn't find her attractive. Slender white arms moved to wrap around her slowly bouncing chest. My hand met them to make it clear. It was an absurd claim. She was not classically beautiful, but she was everything I could possibly want. To alleviate this illogical fear, I pressed a kiss to her forehead and shifted in just the right way to make her hand shoot up to cover her mouth. To cover the rapturous moan that tried to escape.
Her hips moved against mine, easily meeting, then exceeding, my pace. Her hips opened naturally to accept me. Our bodies grew slick and hot as I felt her beginning to tighten. Tightening and clenching around my length as I pushed through. Pearls of sweat beaded her hairline, as her flushed face tilted to kiss me again to hide the erotic eye rolls she tried so hard to conceal. Buzzing lips moaned into mine. Her motions fell out of sync with mine as her toes curled against my back, hands braced helpessly against my chest in an attempt to push me away. The intensity was too much, I could see it. But I wanted to see more. Holding her closer than before, I drove into her hard. Her stomach clenched tightly, showing each muscle in her abdomen. Twitching and tossing her head back in ecstasy, her tightened walls would cause my own in mere moments.
Sweat and sunlight gave her body a heavenly effect; her eyes were still closed as her hips jerked wildly and sporadically, still in the throws of an orgasm. I thrusted hard and fast to elongate her climax and teeter over the edge of my own release. Tense energy flowed through me with each uncontrolled thrust leaving me more relaxed and soft with each. Her muscles were still clenched around me, draining every bit of energy remaining in my body.
Collapsing gently over her, into the crook of her glistening neck, I kissed her cheek and soft jaw gently before beginning to pull out. Before I could leave her body, she wrapped her legs around my middle, demanding my attention with sharp blue eyes. Her lips started to move, but before I could hear her words I was struck. Beads of glistening sweat along her brow gave her the appearance of a deity in this white light. Everything about her appearance drew attention to the centerpiece of her face. Those electrically charged blue eyes. They were bluer than endless oceans and more dangerous than lightning. I found myself wondering if I'd fallen into the trap of some demon intending to kill me before my life's work could be completed. For a moment I lost myself in her glowing appearance. Delicate fingers combed my hair back, resting gently on the back of my neck.
Enchanted words chimed in my ears paired with an adoring smile that turned the corner of her pale lips. I fell so easily into the trap she set.
Brushing my dampened hair from my eyes with soft fingertips, she whispered as if I was the only thing she could see.
"I love you."
