II. Instinctual Drift

Hokori woke up, laying on her back, to the sound of the radiator. The ceiling was a mosaic of water damage and grime. The movement to look right, see Itachi sitting at the table, shot a dry heave like a piston through her diaphragm. Her eyes watered.

A white hot agony slipped over her injuries like soft cloth. She convulsed with another heave, and another, and another. Nothing ejected itself from her throat except a guttural sob. Her body eventually caught up to the pain. The demihigh of endorphins was like fog scattering sunlight at best. She managed to stifle the heaving, but her body still curled into itself a little more with each one. Better than nothing.

Itachi's shadow slipped into her vision as he knelt. He was silent as he turned her face upward, wearing a flat expression that denied any attempt to parse it. His palm slid to the base of her skull. The heaving slowed, then stopped. Her face was hot, her arms and legs cold. Sweat crept along the lines of her neck. Without the tensile strength of reflex, her limbs collapsed. Itachi's hand prevented her head from lolling. Blue veins ran the length of his forearm.

There was no preamble, no way to anticipate the movement: he braced a hand against the back of her neck and hooked the other around her thighs. Her cheek rested against his sternum. His heartbeat was elevated. Odd, even accounting for the fact that she was apparently wanted alive. A mass murderer, nervous. Or excited. Neither option would have good implications.

"I can't look at your injuries until you're cleaned up." No inflection whatsoever.

It only could have been four, five steps maybe. Each one jolted her wrist. Each one jerked her head back. Then he stopped moving. He muttered something to himself, low enough she couldn't catch it.

She was laid out on the bathroom floor, propped against the wall in a sitting position. Oh. It made sense. Her injuries were worse than she had previously estimated, if it took her so long to connect what he had said to what was currently happening. It was the most basic of first aid.

His fingers tugged away the remnants of her shirt. His touch was clinical, only staying as long as needed for each action. She followed his hands with her eyes. He pulled out a kunai. Its cold edge ran along the seams in her shorts, and then the fabric was peeled away. Her sandals were pulled off.

"I apologize," he said, tonelessly, as he pulled off her undergarments.

Itachi could do anything he wanted right now. But he was sitting there, like before, on his knees, dropping her underwear onto the small pile of her clothes. Logically, there would be no other way. Whatever was left of her clothes would have to be burned anyway. Probably. Even the shoes.

Her arms and legs would not stay where she put them. Her knees fell against each other when she lifted them to block his view, hands sliding from her thighs to the floor. Worthless. Worthless. This couldn't be real.

"You said you weren't going to use genjutsu," she hissed.

He raked her hair up from the bad eye with his left hand. The forefinger and thumb of his right were tensed up, poised for something, and the remaining three fingers were curled up. By the time she realized what he was about to do, his fingertips were hovering just above her skin. It didn't quite register when he pushed her eyelids apart.

He activated Sharingan. "Casting genjutsu on you now has a high chance of making you go into shock. My client would not be pleased if it resulted in your death."

Was that a joke? Her eye felt like it was being rubbed with sandpaper. It wept. There was a high-pitched whimpering. It was coming from her throat. She jerked her head back, squeezing the eye shut, and only achieved whacking the back of her skull into the wall. Her head sagged to one side as he let go.

She lifted her cheek from the top of her shoulder and attempted something like a glare. He didn't need to pry her eye open like a clamshell to make that observation.

Her arm was wrenched up with great suddenness, and then Itachi's other hand caught her by the waist, and then her legs were under her. Her feet flattened themselves against the tile floor. She slid one foot forward, trying to put her weight fully on that leg. It shook, but didn't crumple. At some point he let go.

Three more steps to the lip of the tub. She could do three steps. Each one was a little bit shakier than the previous. Each one threatened to collapse. But she even managed to turn and sit on it without falling. She sidled her way down into the tub and collapsed there with a sound somewhere between a smack and a thud.

He turned the faucet on. It thundered like a waterfall. He squeezed a washcloth out over her back.. She inhaled sharply. He wet and squeezed the cloth like that again, and again. She didn't exhale again until it stopped. He tugged her right arm up, wiped it down, and draped it over the edge of the tub. The bone-deep ache rising from under the splint made her head spin. She snatched her left arm back as soon as she could, and dropped it into her lap.

If someone had told her that, after being subject to a black ops interrogation, she would be receiving first aid from one of the most dangerous missing-nin alive, she would have dragged them to the nearest psych ward. What on earth would someone want with her? She had already given away the only intel she had of note - and look what that got her. Even then, it wasn't Intel of consequence.

Itachi pushed her head forward and down. He drew the cloth along the back of her neck and then across her shoulder blades. It felt like he was pushing gravel into every single wound. He was working fast, systematically, and not gently. He made three passes, wrung the cloth out. He folded it and hung it on the edge of the tub.

"Here. Don't touch your eye." He did not wait for acknowledgement. He also did not close the door as he stepped out.

The washcloth was stained with blood. She hefted it, flipped around to face the faucet. The water was streaked with pink. There was a bar of soap and a small bottle of shampoo on a little shelf. As she worked a lather into the cloth, it occurred to her how long it had been since she was anything approaching clean. The water carried streaks of brown to the drain

Her hair was the real challenge. It was cut to her jaw, at least. Had it been longer, she would have made Itachi slice it all off. She turned the water hot as it would go, and dunked her head under the stream, dragging her fingers through it over, and over, and over, until the biggest tangles were gone. The shampoo was barely enough. It would have to do.

Itachi found her in the tub shortly after the water was turned off, head dangling over the edge; her eyes were shut. He was unsure of how to proceed. She was in no condition to attempt to escape, barely any chakra, broken limb, open wounds. Her body would have given out eventually regardless. If their client truly needed his charge unharmed, it wouldn't be out of the question to allow it. Except for the eye. And her willing cooperation relied on it.

She bolted up with a whisper of a touch to the shoulder, glass-eyed. She fitted him with a sullen, toothless glare.

After he had finished bandaging her back, and she had thrown on the dark shirt and pants he gave her, and she had sat on the table did he begin. He wiped around the entire eye socket with rubbing alcohol. He put a pen flashlight between his teeth. Her eye was held open with his hand.

The pupil shrank in response to the lightbeam. There was a visible hair-thin line running down the eyeball that matched the cut beginning at her eyebrow, however. No blood pooling; tears welling up constantly; some pinkish discharge; redness.

He dropped the flashlight into his lap. Her left eye was squeezed shut. "Can you see me?"

Her shoulders dropped. "No."

AN: My life is a dumpster fire, sorry for taking like 10 years on the update. The 3rd chapter is 2/3 drafted I wager. Hope u like mood whiplash

Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed!

-Val