ii.
Chapter Thirty-Three: Unconditional
"We fold, and we had made a wish. That we would be missed. If one another just did not exist." -Little Motel, Modest Mouse
"A child of dust, to mother now return; for every seed must die before it grows. And though above the world my toil and turn; no crying spade will find you here below. Now safe beneath their wisdom and their feet, here I will teach you truly how to sleep." -Child of Dust, Thrice
Nanami woke to the sound of Itachi's wet, ragged breathing. It was still dark, her internal clock told her it was nowhere near time to wake up yet.
But Itachi's chakra flickered in distress and pain, and it called out to her and yanked her from sleep like an explosion had gone off. She sat up, bed sheets sliding off her little shoulders. Raven Eyes was already sitting, and her dark-adjusted eyes could see the way he held one hand flat on his chest and another curled into a fist in front of his mouth.
She could tell he was putting all his concentration and control into not coughing like his body demanded he do. His shoulders heaved a few times with silent effort.
Oceans chakra was flickering from the other side of the room, awake but quiet. Nanami resisted the urge to flutter around Raven Eyes uselessly. She didn't want to crowd him. She brought chakra to her hand instead, and the appendage lit up with a dim glowing blue light as she curled it through his ambient chakra before finally stroking it down the length of his loose hair and gently across his back.
Calm she told him. Comfort. She said.
His shoulders eased, and he dropped the hand from his mouth, but kept the other firmly pressed to his chest.
He made measured, controlled breaths with eyes closed.
Itachi said nothing for a long time, and Nanami just continued to comb chakra laden fingers through his hair and though his senses.
It seemed to help a little.
"Ask not the sun why she sets, why she shrouds her light away," Nanami sang the words quietly, and they came to her like she had always known them, even though she didn't really remember where from.
Another time, a different life.
"or why she hides her glowing gaze. When night turns crimson gold to grey."
Itachi's head tilted slightly towards her, and his breathing seemed to match the flow of her lullaby after a moment, giving something to help his breathing rhythm that wasn't just his own mind and the silence of the room.
"For silent falls the guilty sun, as day to dark does turn."
It was a soft, easy cadence, even if he couldn't understand the words. Some of them even she had forgotten the meaning to, but Nanami remembered the way they felt on her tongue, the sound they made when they escaped her lips.
It was almost like she'd sung this song a million times.
"One simple truth she dare not speak; her light can only blind and burn."
Itachi's hand came away from his chest, and Nanami relaxed as he gently plucked her wrist away from the soft petting of his hair.
"Better?" She asked softly, very softly into the dark.
She saw him nod, and then "What language is that Nanami?" His voice sounded raw, and it lacked the liquid smooth quality it normally had. He sounded like he'd screamed himself hoarse for hours.
"English." She told him the truth. She would always tell Raven Eyes the truth. Kisame rolled to face them on his bed, giving up all pretense of sleeping. Itachi had probably known he was up anyways, but Nanami figured Oceans was trying to offer some modicum of privacy in the small confines of their room.
Red Clouds never pried.
Well, unless it came to her. They needled her all the time. Maybe it was because they knew she wouldn't kill them for it?
Maybe it was because she didn't hold the dark kind of secrets they did. (As far as they were aware.)
"I… see." He said, taking a ragged halting breath between words. Nanami slid sideways off the mattress, touching her bare feet to the wood paneled floor.
"I'll make tea." She said quietly, because she really felt like he needed some right now. She hoped it would help him get some rest, Raven Eyes always looked so exhausted. She pulled the pillow up to lean against the wall, so he could lay in a somewhat upright position. She figured it would help with all the fluid in his lungs.
He watched her movements with an amused sort of glint to his dark eyes.
"I'll be back," She whispered, and he nodded leaning into the pillow she'd fixed for him. Nanami crept out the door, only opening it enough to squeeze between the frame incase the hinges were squeaky. Soft silent feet made sure steps down the hall and she noticed there was a light still on down stairs. She skipped the second to last step having noted it made a groaning noise when she'd come up earlier.
Pein and Konan were in the living room, with the lights on looking for all the world like it was the middle of the day and not the middle of the night. Maybe this was the only time they got any privacy?
That thought made her feel guilty for intruding. She chewed her bottom lip, and then let it go a second later when Loud Blood's voice berated her for it in her head.
Konan looked up from painting her nails at the table, and Pein put his book down across from her. Nanami noticed Konan wasn't wearing her makeup, and it made her half-lidded orange eyes seem more tired and less piecing somehow.
Maybe that's why she wore it, the makeup did seem to add an intimidation factor to her eyes they didn't have naturally.
She was very pretty either way though, Nanami liked the stud below her lower lip, and it drew her eyes over to Pein's excessive amount of piercings on reflex. She kind of liked his too.
"Hummingbird." She greeted the purple haired woman quietly with a nod, which was returned politely before the older woman turned back to her nails.
"Echo-sama." She murmured on her way past with a slight bend at the waist. He rose an eyebrow at her.
She felt her cheeks turn pink. Names were sort of a compulsive thing for her at this point.
"Everyone gets a name." Surprisingly it was Konan who spoke. There was a lot of humor in the sentence. Pein's rippled gaze turned to his long time friend, and then back to her.
"Why Echo?" and he sounded genuinely curious. Nanami moved towards the kitchen door, which was adjacent to the table and behind where she had first arrived in the room. She still needed to make tea for Raven Eyes after all.
"Your chakra feels like many shadows, like an echo of itself." Nanami supplied, and that made his left brow rise to join right. He still managed to make it look like a regal gesture.
"Hm." He made a small sound of understanding, neither agreeing nor disagreeing and looked back down to his book to turn a page.
"I'm making some tea, if either of you would like some." Nanami offered to be polite as she pulled the door open to reveal a small kitchen with very little counter space. She winced when the hinges squeaked loudly and her gaze travel upstairs to check for flickering chakra.
All of them did. Her Red Clouds didn't earn their S-class titles at a party afterall. (Well, it was probably a party if you asked Hidan.)
Then again, they had probably known she was up from the moment her feet had touched the floor.
The somber duo at the table looked back up for a moment. Hummingbird's lips twitched in what she thought might have been a suppressed smile.
"Sure." Her voice was very flat though. Echo turned another page without looking up. "I would not object." He monotoned.
Nanami felt a flutter in her chest at their acceptance, and she had no qualms about smiling brightly as she searched through cupboards to look for tea leaves. She found them on the topmost shelf above the sink and she was forced to climb the counter to reach it.
Or, try to anyways.
Her smile turned a little sad as she uncoiled a chakra string to reach the remaining distance and pull the desired box down.
She had watched Sasori do this exact thing more than once.
Nanami flicked the stove on after filling the pot that lived atop it with water. The tea pot was never put away; it saw too much use.
She turned her mind away from thoughts of her lost Suna-nin after allowing herself another silent moment to mourn. She knew she'd probably have to do that a lot for a while. At least until time dulled the pain, but that felt like a long ways away. Nanami would just have to cope though, breaking wasn't an option right now.
(She would do that later, when everything was said and done.)
She worried for Itachi then, and wondered if on her next time out if she might be able to find some medicine that could ease his breathing and help him sleep.
She promised herself she'd look into it as she flicked the stove off before the pot could shrill it's ready cry, and poured the boiling water into three separate cups.
She gave two to the pair at the table and received a feminine "Thank you." and a slight tilt of the head in acknowledgement from Echo-sama.
Chakra signatures flickered again as she passed doors upstairs before squeezing back through the opening she'd left to Itachi and Kisame's room.
Itachi cracked an eye open tiredly, and took her offered cup with a grateful smile. Raven Eyes could be a warm person when he wanted, when they were alone and away from prying eyes.
Each of her Red Clouds could in their own ways; they were only human after all, and it's hard not to love someone in return when they love you so unconditionally.
Nanami lay draped over the armrest of the couch, thoroughly enjoying the late afternoon sunlight that filtered through the window to warm her skin and make her brown hair glow red.
She counted the dust motes that slid serenely between the shadows and the rays of light. She sighed contentedly as Raven Eyes walked by towards the kitchen. He gave her a passing glance with a slight quirk to the corner of his lips.
"Are you a cat or a human?" Kisame asked her from a squishy armchair tucked into the side of the end table that had protested his weight a few days ago when she had arrived.
Nanami turned her head to grin at him, a slow lazy thing and he barked a laugh at the look on her face.
"It's up for interpretation." Itachi remarked with his dry sense of humor as he sat himself down at the low table across from Hummingbird who was folding paper in complex origami patterns.
Nanami was beginning to wonder if she or Echo-sama even slept at all, they were always around somewhere, doing one thing or another be it day or night. Nanami saw them often enough during her own sleepless nights.
"Hm." Nanami hummed absently, feeling a little lethargic in her ray of sunlight.
Kisame snorted and turned back to his cup of tea he had been idly sloshing around the rim. Nanami watched him for a minute, tracing his familiar shape as he hunched forward to rest his forearms on his thighs.
"Oceans?" He looked back up at her with the flashes of silver eyes.
"What is it?" and even though he sounded exasperated, Nanami knew he wasn't really.
"How come your forehead protector comes down like-" She made a gesture over her own ears, tracing the lines that curved down over his with her eyes.
His head tilted. "Keeps the water out." He said with a grin.
"Can you breath underwater?" and she blushed after the words came out, because she hadn't actually meant to ask that. He sat back in his armchair, his grin getting wider, showing off all those teeth she liked to see.
"Not normally, I can with Samehada." He said, and she was surprised he answered, it was a very un-shinobi like thing to do to answer questions about one's abilities and techniques.
She supposed it spoke to his trust in her that he did.
"Oh, when you fuse?" She murmured aloud, remembering distant images of his form changing shape, taking on a more animalistic quality.
His grin turned feral. "Pretty bad ass, isn't it?" She flashed him her own set of sharp little teeth.
"Of course," Because Oceans was bad ass. "I'd like to see it in real life some time." and he took her strange words in stride because she was Nanami, and she knew all sorts of shit she wasn't supposed to.
"I could arrange that." He laughed, it had a blood-lusty tinge to it. Nanami loved it. She loved everything about Oceans. "You can come along with me and Itachi next, we're making a trip to Oto soon.
Nanani shuddered at the thought of going to Sound, but her desire to tag along with the powerhouse duo overruled her fear of coming across a Sannin, which was a pretty unlikely thing to happen anyways. It's not like the guy made a habit of wandering around where people could see him.
"I believe Hidan had dibs." Itachi chimed into the conversation from the table and Nanami looked over at him to see Konan was staring right at her with a very strange look in her eyes.
Oh, oops. Nanami had forgotten she was sitting there; her chakra was so quiet, just like the rest of her.
"Tch, that guy." Kisame grumbled, and that seemed like all the had to say on the subject.
AN: The part of the song Nanami sings is called 'Daylight's End' from the video game League of Legends. I don't own. What did you guys think of this chapter? Sorry for the wait! I'll have more soon, I'm writing 36 right now, promise :)