as a man with a reason
.
Itachi is five years old when his father pushes his baby brother into his arms, eyes wild with grief and fear, and tells him to run.
He obeys.
Behind him their home burns to the ground and their mother burns on the ceiling. Behind him their father cries out and swears revenge on the thing that killed her. Behind him a demon with red-black eyes smirks and vanishes into black smoke.
Itachi keeps running, clutching his precious bundle so tightly his arms ache.
"It's alright, Sasuke," he whispers when he stops to breathe. "I've got you. I'll keep you safe."
Then he straightens up and starts running again.
They've been running—in one form or another—ever since.
.
Itachi isn't sure what he's expecting when the barn begins to shake and the lights shatter one by one. He and Inabi have covered the interior of the place with every trapping symbol and sigil known to man, but even so he can't help but be grateful Sasuke is elsewhere.
Whatever it was that pulled him out of Hell, he doubts it did so with good intentions.
The wind picks up out of nowhere, howling like a wounded animal. The barn doors fly open and smack into wooden walls with a terrific bang.
"The hell is going on?" Inabi mutters, grip on his shotgun tightening. Itachi can't even venture a guess.
Of course, if he had guessed, he would have been wrong.
A young man who is clearly not a man at all strides into the barn dressed in black, hands stuffed casually into its pockets. Its skin is pale but not abnormally so, hair a mess of black curls but lacking snakes or anything else deadly. Its wide black eyes fix on Itachi's with interest, and Itachi feels a sudden twinge of impossible familiarity.
(Those eyes, he thinks, are what give the thing away. It could pass for a person if not for whatever unnatural spark is buried in that blackness, like the grin of a distant star.)
It speaks: "Well aren't you something."
Itachi shoots it in the chest.
The creature doesn't even stumble. It does, however, look down at its black jacket—leather, and newly riddled with holes—and sighs.
"Really?" it says, in a tone so flatly human that Itachi is taken aback. "Was that necessary? Did I or did I not yank your ass out of Hell, and you repay me by wrecking my wardrobe? Really—"
"Itachi."
Inabi's terse voice saying his name is the only warning Itachi needs; he drops to the floor an instant before Inabi fires, twice, four times, filling the creature with holes. When the sound of gunfire stops Itachi fully expects to find it bleeding and on its knees. He stands.
The thing hasn't moved. There is no blood. It glances down at its shredded clothing with a look of fresh annoyance.
"How," Itachi blurts, but the being holds up a finger.
"Hold that thought," it mutters. It's in front of them so quickly that neither Itachi nor Inabi can follow the movement, and then it presses two fingers to the center of Inabi's forehead.
His uncle drops like a stone.
Itachi tightens his jaw and immediately makes to check his pulse, but the creature beats him to that as well.
"He's fine. I just knocked him out so we could have a talk without both of you turning me into Swiss cheese." The look it gives Itachi is pained. "Did it have to be this jacket? I can only do so many minor miracles, you know."
"Minor miracles?" Itachi repeats, tightening his grip on the shotgun. "What are you, exactly?"
The being blinks.
"I'm an angel," he says, simply.
Itachi cocks the shotgun again. The not-angel puts his hands up in a gesture of surrender.
"Hey now. Like I said, I'm also the one who pulled you out of the fire—you're welcome for that, by the way."
"Angels don't exist," Itachi says, pointedly ignoring the rest of the statement. The not-angel tilts his head to the side.
"Don't they?" He sounds bizarrely relaxed. "I'll have to tell Dad the next time I see him. Seems like the kind of thing he ought to know."
This is getting nowhere. Itachi grits his teeth.
"Even if I accept the premise that angels exist, and that by extension a god exists—"
"That's God," the not-angel supplies helpfully. "Capital G. He's pretty touchy about that."
"If I agree to accept all that," Itachi cuts in, "it still leaves the question of why an angel of the Lord would pull me from Hell."
The creature's face flickers through several unreadable changes of expression before settling on something serious.
"We have work for you," he says. "That's all there is to it."
"Really," Itachi says. There's a sour taste in his mouth. "In that case, why me? It could have been anyone."
The not-angel sighs. "Why are you so determined to look a gift horse in the mouth? Good things do happen, you know."
"No," Itachi hears himself say, remembering a ceiling engulfed in fire and his little brother on his deathbed and all the horrors that followed. Meat hooks and howls and the smell of roasting flesh. "They do not."
For the first time since he entered the barn, the not-angel looks just as wrong-footed as Itachi feels. He takes a step closer to Itachi, then another, never breaking his gaze. His eyes are inhuman and too intense, but Itachi refuses to look away.
They're almost nose-to-nose when those eyes widen a fraction, like the not-angel has just learned the secret to opening a puzzle box.
"Oh," he says. There's something painfully gentle in the word. "That's it, isn't it? You don't think you deserved to be saved."
Itachi doesn't know what to say to that, but all at once it feels like whatever threat the not-angel might pose is gone.
He's slowly lowering the shotgun when there's a flash of lightning outside. Bright white light suddenly floods the inside of the barn—and for a fraction of a second, behind the creature, Itachi can the shadows of two great feathered wings.
Their eyes lock again.
"Who are you?" Itachi asks.
The angel's dark eyes crinkle up just a little when he grins.
"You can call me Shisui," he says. "I'm looking forward to working with you."