AN: Hello! This is a longer chapter, but I really wanted to take the time to give some explanation for what happened in time leading up to present. Some of it isn't going to be filled in entirely, but we'll get there!

Enjoy!

The front door clicks shut behind her, and Karin's hands linger on the handle. It's a firm door, heavier than she would expect it to be just from looking at it, but she realizes there's no lock on it. Nothing to stop anyone else from trying to get in.

It couldn't have been hard to make one in the first place: maybe a few screws here, a bolt there—but how could someone just forget? The people in Konoha locked their own doors, didn't they?

The entrance to Konoha, their ANBU cells—those all had locks, had seals. Ways to keep people out—and to keep them in.

Karin absolutely does not freak out about it. She should, because freaking out is how she can get people to listen to her, and how she can get things done. It's also how she'll get herself marked as a nuisance, an annoyance, and so she buries those worries and leaves the door behind her.

"Everything okay?" Naruto asks, again rocking back and forth on his heels, hands tucked into his pockets. He's still trying to hurry her—Karin has no idea how he got stuck with escort duty, but there's almost definitely a limit to how much of his time she can waste.

"It's fine," she says, for what feels like the fifth or sixth time that day. "Don't worry about it."

Naruto's face scrunches. It's more confused than angry, though for someone as well-respected as Naruto seems to be, he looks confused far more often than not. "Is it about Itachi? Cause if you need someone to rough him up a bit—I'm your guy." His face breaks out into another grin, making an easy joke out of fighting one of his village's most infamous shinobi. Anything, to a shinobi like him, could be a joke, she supposes.

Naruto rolls up a sleeve, flexing a bit of muscle that doesn't seem nearly as impressive as he apparently thinks it is. Or, maybe he does know, and he's only trying to lighten the mood. "If he gives you any trouble at all, me and Sakura will have your back! He won't know what hit him!"

Still, as dense as he might act sometimes, Naruto is at least keen enough that he doesn't include Sasuke in his list of people willing to fight Itachi for her sake.

"Let's just go." She leaves the door shut behind her, and walks towards the planetary mass of chakra ahead of them—back to Konoha.

Naruto rolls his sleeve back down and stuffs his hands back into his pockets. "Are you sure?" He trails behind her at first, then jogs to catch up when she doesn't wait. "If there's actually a problem, I could probably talk to him about it for you."

"Even if there was, it wouldn't be your problem," she says, though not unkindly. "So you don't need to worry about it."

His smile is far too easy, far too casual. Far too kind, when he's offering it to someone he hardly knows. "Well, if you stay here, you're part of the village! And since I'm gonna be Hokage one day, it's my job to take care of you!"

There's golden honesty in his chakra, earnest enough that instead of snapping back she only ignores him. After a few moments of waiting he seems to give up and she feels his eyes turn away from her.

Naruto's friendliness is so brazen that it's uncomfortable, though it's a discomfort she's willing to endure—it's a test, she tells herself. A way of proving her worth.

Naruto shamelessly and whole-heartedly inserts himself into other people's business, but as taboo as that kind of prying might have been in her past life, Karin isn't particularly eager to scare away one of the only people who shows any sort of interest in her.

Ingratiating herself to him was self-preservation foremost, though she couldn't deny that the appeal goes much deeper than that.

Karin tugs down her shirt sleeves over her knuckles; even the air in Konoha makes her skin itch, as if her otherness were literally skin deep. There's too much chakra around the village, too much density, and the dust-like presence of it makes her want another shower. Maybe even another nap.

"That reminds me," Naruto starts, head whipping back to glance at her. He stops walking, and waits several seconds for her to catch up to him before he turns around and continues. "Sasuke and Sakura and I were gonna go get dinner after Tsunade gets everything settled. You and Itachi are both welcome to come!"

Naruto isn't lying—he rarely is. She doesn't even feel an aftertaste of a lie, not one thing to suggest he doesn't absolutely mean she's welcome. That Itachi is, somehow, welcome as well.

"I—" He seems so genuine about it that inexplicably she does want to accept. How hard could it be, she wonders, to suffer through a single meal? To sit quietly while Sasuke and his friends fool around and trade small talk over her head?

She isn't a part of their team - is about as far from it as possible - but she knows she has to start somewhere. When it's the three of them together, though—she's learned there's just no way for her to sneak through, under, or between their interlocked hands.

She plays it safe, and plans an easy escape route. "I should see what Itachi plans to do."

"Oh, yeah. Sure, that makes sense."

She can't decide if it's jealousy or selfishness that makes her want to refuse. She doesn't doubt for a second that absolutely anyone would be welcome at Naruto's table, any friend, enemy, ally, or acquaintance—Naruto would invite all of them, would squeeze them all into the same corner booth or ramen stand, and that's the exact problem. Why would she want something he'd offer to anyone?

If she were Sasuke, if she were Sakura, there'd be no offer at all; Naruto would only announce their dinner plans, take her by the hand, and then it'd happen.

Whatever that is, whatever it means—it's the real thing, and Karin wants it.

"So… You and Sasuke," Karin tries, opting for slightly more familiar ground. "You two are—"

Naruto perks up again and turns to her, his grin so bright it's almost blinding, the change in his chakra so quick she's almost startled by it. "It's going to be great! I ordered a new futon last week so it should be here soon, and I had some time a few days ago so I gave the place a new paint job since, you know, we spent so much time out of the village and it was starting to look kinda sad. Um."

Even mentioning Sasuke seems to pull more light into his chakra—it's practically iridescent. For months all she'd had were dim signatures, her own aura and what lingered of Itachi's.

Naruto's, in contrast, is bright—occasionally blinding to senses well-adapted to the dark, but bright nonetheless, bright and warm and inviting.

He snickers, but his grin quickly solidifies into something a little more serious. Contemplative. "I waited… Well, three whole years to see Sasuke again after he left the village. It's taken four just to get him to come back to stay! I just wish I would've spent more time imagining it, because now that he's here, all I can think about are all the things we still have to do!"

"It's pretty clear he means a lot to you." She doesn't know what else to say to that—in a way, she almost thinks she ought to be jealous of Sasuke, jealous of the way Naruto feels about Sasuke. Or maybe the way Sasuke feels about Naruto, or the way Sakura feels about Sasuke. Or how Sasuke feels about Sakura.

Jealousy is never an entirely logical thing, but Karin thinks she should draw the line at being jealous at all three of them for their relationships with each other.

"Sasuke—it's good to finally have him home." Naruto pauses and, after a moment to think on it, turns back to her. "So you and his brother… You're pretty close then, right? I mean, you gotta be since you're living together and all."

"Ah…" Karin cringes, because she and Itachi might be a lot of things, but close almost certainly isn't one of them. At best, they'll probably be able to act indifferent towards each other. "What do you mean by that?"

"You and Itachi. He, uh," Naruto pauses again, his face scrunching like he's fishing for a word or a thought. "He doesn't say a whole lot, does he? I can't really figure him out now. I didn't really expect things to be, well, normal but…" He squints while he thinks on it, the whisker-marks on his face twitching. "I at least expected more than… than what it's been like."

Karin finds it hard to disagree with that.

What it's been like has meant very little for everyone other than Sasuke.

Both Naruto and Sakura visited Sasuke while they waited for the Hokage to drudge through the clusterfuck between the last two members of the Uchiha Clan. Naruto was there daily—arriving early in the morning armed with a hot water bottle and plastic bag of ramen cups, cheap sleeves of wooden chopsticks wrapped in tissue paper. More often than not, they'd been forced to eat field rations the guards brought for them—silvery packets of food she could only think to describe as edible.

The first time Naruto attempted to feed them the ANBU guarding them had finally looked up from the magazine he'd been skimming to point at Sasuke's brother. Wooden chopsticks are weapons. He can't have them.

Of course he can! Naruto replied, already pouring steaming water into the partly-opened cups. Itachi isn't gonna bother anyone!

Naruto seemed to have an uncanny ability to change the minds of those around him, but apparently the forces of bureaucracy were somehow beyond his reach. It's a policy. Either he doesn't get ramen, or someone else is gonna have to feed him.

Naturally, everyone except Itachi had immediately turned to look at her.

You can go to hell if you think I'm gonna sit here and feed him, she'd snapped at the guard, pointedly addressing him instead of Naruto or Sasuke. Or Itachi. I'm not his damned nurse and he's a grown-ass man.

Itachi said nothing, but even with suppressing seals slapped across his wrists and forehead she could smell frustration in his chakra, the bitter burnt-hair smell of it rising every time the guard's eyes flickered over to him.

Naruto had scoffed. By that logic, Sasuke shouldn't be allowed to have chopsticks either! He's easily as strong as Itachi is and he doesn't even have his chakra sealed!

Hey moron, maybe don't give him the idea.

But that's the point! If either of you really wanted to leave there'd be nothing to stop you—

The guard eventually folded under Naruto's pleas, maybe less persuaded by goodwill than overcome with annoyance. Itachi did not, thankfully, kill anybody with his chopsticks, and made no great show of handing them back over to the guard when they were done.

Simple enough.

Sasuke's other teammate, Sakura, would turn up every other day at various times—sometimes arriving in the strange hours between midnight and sunrise, faint traces of ink or blood smeared over an eyebrow, a cheekbone, still half-dressed in her scrubs. She looked exhausted, something Karin understood very, very well.

There was something more to her, though—a contentment that Karin couldn't quite relate to, feelings of pride and satisfaction she'd never once associated with healing.

At the very least, it made Sakura more than a little interesting.

Sasuke would always wake to speak to her, and Karin made it a point to at least wave to the only other woman she regularly saw before rolling back over on her futon.

Itachi, however, would continue what he'd already been doing—pretending to sleep.

There are still so many people hurt, Sakura said once, pushing back dirty bangs from her forehead with her palm. There were frustrated wrinkles cracking in the corners of her eyes, but she was still unavoidably beautiful—her bright green eyes were tilted up at the ceiling, soft pink hair falling just past her shoulders. I feel like we're never going to get our emergency room back.

We did our part. I don't see why you're still so busy, Sasuke had answered, but Sakura only snorted, shaking her head. Karin couldn't help but sympathize with that—it wasn't the first time she'd seen Sasuke overestimate how much healing jutsu could do while simultaneously underestimating just how taxing it was.

You did your part; my job isn't done until the shinobi go home.

Working together, both Sakura and Naruto were able to visit Sasuke around the clock, smothering him with their excitement, their affection, and the warm glow of Sasuke's chakra told Karin that he was barely annoyed by it, that he only pretended to be indifferent when Naruto told (and did not ask) Sasuke about clearing out his apartment to make room for the both of them.

And Itachi said nothing.

Karin had initially tried to join them but quickly learned there was no place for her—her contributions were, at best, a few snide, bitter comments, poorly concealed attempts to vent her multitude of frustrations. At first it was cathartic to lay out them all out, to bear her wounds to anyone who'd listen to her, but it only took one sympathetic, pitying glance from Sakura to shut her up entirely.

Karin wanted to be heard. She wanted to be acknowledged, but—but not like that.

Naruto and Sakura were only there for Sasuke and it showed: she'd waited in that cell for several days before Sakura actually looked directly at her, squinted her eyes, and finally asked what her name was, why she was waiting there.

It was an fairly innocuous question, but one Karin struggled to answer. Sasuke owed her, maybe. If not a thanks for all she'd done, then an apology. An acknowledgement of some kind. Suigetsu and Juugo were both long gone by that point, two other drifters who somehow had managed to catch ahold of each other and stay afloat that way, but Karin was still stranded. With no Orochimaru and no Team Hebi, she'd effectively lost everything she'd had in a span of six or seven months with nothing to show for it.

Thinking over Naruto's question, thinking over whatever her relationship to Itachi might be, Karin sighs. She wants to say there's just too much to explain, but there's also very little to tell. "He just doesn't talk. At all." She hasn't had much to say lately either, but it's wholly separate issue, not something Naruto would want to hear about. "All those months we spent together and I could barely get anything out of him."

"Yeah. I get that." Naruto turns around, but continues walking toward Konoha backwards, stepping over rocks and branches and gnarled tree roots as if he was still able to see them. "I mean, I don't get that but, ah, I think I get how he is, you know, and—"

Karin waves him off. "I get it."

Another silence falls between them before Naruto pipes up again, asking, "So how long do you have to stay with him?" He cocks his head, and just over his shoulder Karin can see the village gates rising through the trees, tall enough they dwarf even the oldest, sturdiest trees. Even then she estimates they've only come about halfway, at least ten or fifteen minutes or longer until they reach the entrance.

Still, she can sense more shinobi trickling in from the woods around them in groups of three or more, the air filling with more than just a vague presence of chakra. "Just until he's better, or…?"

"Well…" Another group of shinobi joins them, popping out of the woods several yards down the path. They're younger—a group of genin, she thinks, and their jounin sensei. One is riding on another's back, arms hanging loosely around his teammate's shoulders, bandages tied loosely around his knee. The third is forming hand signs, slow enough that even Karin can follow them, but when she's done there's no jutsu—she only looks to her sensei, who shakes her head but smiles, giving her student a well-meaning pat on the shoulder.

Is that what it's like, she wonders, when you grow up in Konoha? You have teammates to tie up your injuries, a sensei to correct your jutsu? Friends and neighbors and acquaintances, an entire community to support you.

You have somewhere to go, even after your mission is done.

She squeezes her hands together and her thumb throbs. It'd bled that morning, aggravated after she'd torn a hangnail away. That was several hours ago, though, and it's still not healed completely, the skin a soft, pearly pink. She's never paid close attention to it before, but she thinks it ought to heal faster than that, that there shouldn't even be a scar of it remaining.

If only she'd stop messing with it—maybe then it'd stop bothering her. "I haven't really decided how long I wanna stay."

Karin isn't entirely sure what more there is to say because, really, she doesn't have to stay there.

At the same time, though, what else is there for her to do?

Where else would she go?

She'd waited nearly half a year for Sasuke to return. She'd waited without once receiving a single visitor or message, without knowing if Sasuke was still alive or still free or, coming onto month five, if he was still planning to come back at all. She continued to wait long after her instincts told her to run—Karin's trade was information, and being stuck with Itachi, removed from any village or network, meant she was completely divorced from anything beyond her sensing.

Orochimaru was dead, Sasuke was gone, and every good impulse that'd kept her alive over the years was telling her to abandon Itachi and let Sasuke get his own revenge, to find the nearest hidden village and throw herself on their mercy, beg and grovel and scheme until they let her in.

If it had been anyone else, after all, she would've done exactly that. It'd been Sasuke, though, and so she'd stayed, and she'd waited.

She stayed and she waited and she'd done everything Sasuke had asked her to do, and yet what did she have to show for it? At the end of it all, she was stuck with him—what else could she do but continue to follow Sasuke? Even if it meant following him all the way to Konoha, into the ANBU cells—what choice did she have?

The night Sakura asked her why she was there, Sasuke had waited for Sakura to leave before he turned around and stared at her, black eye watching her for a long moment before he shrugged. Quick and casual, the type of haughty gesture she'd been long used to seeing from him.

She'd kicked her covers off and rested on her elbows. Ready to talk, if they were finally going to talk. You want something?

Naruto will take you anywhere you'd want to go, he'd said, and of course it'd been Naruto who'd have to escort her because, hero or not, Sasuke wasn't going to be leaving the village for a long, long time. You don't have to stay here anymore. He'd inclined his head towards Itachi, who was still off in the corner, still pretending to sleep. The med-nin here know what they're doing.

She didn't respond and Sasuke had, maybe, taken her silence for agreement; he'd never really been the type to assume otherwise. You said there was somewhere you were going, right? At the Southern Hideout—you said you had an errand to run before we left. People you had to see.

Yeah, I did. She did say that. She hadn't really meant it, though.

Well, Naruto will have some spare time while we get things worked out here. He won't mind a short mission to distract him.

That's just stupid, she'd snapped back. Obviously they're not going to be waiting anymore. You think anyone is still going to be waiting for me after almost a year?

She wasn't like him, and maybe she never would be—there wasn't a soul on earth who'd wait for her like Konoha had waited for Sasuke. Not for seven months, and not for three years—not at all.

Well. Whatever. With that, he turned his back on her and shuffled back onto his cot. As long as you're not starting trouble here.

She watched him pull back his blankets and climb into bed, and felt strangely bothered by it. In Otogakure, he'd been a god. Returning to Konoha hadn't exactly changed that about him, but something about it just didn't feel the same anymore.

Gimme a few days to figure it out. I'll let you know.

Sasuke and Itachi might have been traitors to Konoha, each with their own unique flavor of disloyalty, but she was an outsider. She wasn't going to get anything out of Konoha—not punishment, not gratitude, and definitely not the welcome that had been waiting for Sasuke.

A few months of being confined to the village, and then Sasuke would move on with his life, could pick right back up from where he'd left off. Unlike her, Sasuke had a home, had always had a home, and even aside from Naruto and Sakura there'd been a new person stopping by every day to welcome him back: a blonde girl with long bangs who made herself comfortable on the cement floor outside the cell before not-so-politely asking Sasuke just what the hell he thought he was doing when he left the village, and Sakura, behind.

A shy, quiet girl accompanied Naruto several times but did little more than smile at them, leaving gifts of boxes of sweets near the edge of the cell. They went untouched until Karin finally got up and snatched them, dropping back down onto her cot to pick out her favorites.

(I remember you used to have a sweet tooth, Sasuke had said to his brother, almost whimsically, though he'd gotten no answer.)

There'd been a man with a scar across his nose who'd pointedly ignored the guard's warnings and reached into the cell to touch Sasuke on the shoulder and welcome him home, finally, home, and Karin was almost too numbed by all the ridiculous shit she'd seen at that point to be shocked when Sasuke stood there and let the man pull him into a hug.

From the sad, brief spark of curiosity in Itachi's chakra, she wasn't the only one surprised.

All of their visitors had all come to see Sasuke, and Karin couldn't help but feel twice and three-times as forgotten when she inevitably spent these meetings kicking up dust at the back of the cell or watching Itachi watch Sasuke.

He'd become a hero—did she have any right to hate a hero? To be angry at someone who supposedly saved the world, just because he left her behind to do it?

She waited years for him to finally make good on his threat to kill Orochimaru, kept her head down and her ear to the ground as Sasuke maneuvered around Otogakure, biding his time. She waited months for him to return for Itachi, months of enduring Itachi's stony silence and murky, washed out chakra. Months of keeping Itachi alive on the odd chance Sasuke didn't feel like killing him when he returned.

And, well, Sasuke didn't end up killing him, but that was almost beside the point.

Karin had every reason to take up Sasuke's offer and fuck off to some distant village, find a country where she could start over from scratch, scrounge up a new name and a new purpose and try to make something out of herself.

Sasuke seemed wary enough of her continued presence that she was certain she could bargain for more—letters of recommendation from his friends in high places, a small lump sum to go towards a house, an apartment.

He was, after all, somebody when Karin was (and is) still nobody.

She could have pressured him and, with a little tact, weaseled some kind of repayment from Sasuke. Gotten something else out of him if he wouldn't thank her. If he didn't want her anymore.

Still, Sasuke was all she had left.

Maybe it wasn't that tie specifically that Karin wanted. Maybe she was hungry for any kind of tie, any sort of bond to cling to in the absence of everything else. She'd never been able to tie herself down to any single place: not to Kusa, which she willingly, gleefully, left. And not Otogakure, where Orochimaru's death came to her as more of an uneasy relief than anything else.

She didn't think it was too much to want to be tied down somewhere she wanted to stay.

.

.

.

Itachi gave her the option to live with him, but offered her no benefit beyond having a place to stay. He mentioned it one day while Sasuke and Naruto were relitigating some old dispute between the two of them, both of them gripping the cell bars tight enough to turn their knuckles white, close enough to headbutt each other, though Karin felt enough strangeness in their chakra to wonder if they were just as likely to kiss.

It was uncanny, in some ways, how his chakra and Sasuke's chakra were drawn to one another, how they attracted each other like magnets or planets or the rush of static electricity that occasionally crackled in the center of Sasuke's palm when he got bored.

It was a side of Sasuke she struggled to harmonize with the Sasuke she remembered: he and Naruto were arguing about some old mission of theirs, both accusing the other of having been the bigger chicken, both claiming they had been the one who came up with whatever harebrained strategy that ended up saving them. Karin sat and listened to them long enough to realize that, in addition to being nearly incomprehensible, it almost didn't seem to matter.

They were arguing over completely petty shit, and yet Karin had never seen Sasuke so animated: Naruto gave Sasuke a shit-eating grin and Sasuke turned around with a huff, shoving his hands into his pockets.

"That's definitely not how it happened, moron. I didn't need anyone to save me."

"Now come on, guys, I was there too and I remember—" Sakura was clearly used to mediating between them, elbowed her way into their conversation without waiting to be invited, without waiting for an opening.

It was one way to stake a claim, to force them to acknowledge her.

(Karin couldn't help but think of it—the myriad ways she could have inserted herself too. That she could yell at them, call them idiots. Morons. Jerks, fools, children—that she could be angry, if only just to be acknowledged.

She remembered how Sakura had looked at her before, as if Karin needed sympathy, needed pity, and decided to keep her words to herself.)

She waited in the back of the cell with Itachi, neither of them having much of a place in the Naruto and Sasuke and sometimes Sakura Show.

Unlike Sasuke, Itachi never received any visitors, chose not to interact with any of Sasuke's even when, occasionally, she could feel his chakra flicker with a tinge of recognition. She could see plainly that Itachi's place at the table had been set long ago; he just refused to take it. As someone left begging for crumbs, Karin couldn't help but resent him a little more for it.

After all, she didn't think it was an accident that more often than not she would find herself sitting between Sasuke and Itachi, acting as a barrier between the brothers.

"I intend to stay in the village," Itachi finally said, voice flat. It'd been the first thing he'd said to her since they arrived—one of the very few things he'd ever said to her. "The Hokage decided to make me an offer—absolution, so long as I do not leave."

He didn't even bother to speak directly to her, only stared straight ahead at Sasuke, who was so absorbed in trying to correct Naruto that Itachi didn't seem to be worried about being overheard. "As it is, I will live alone. On the outskirts of the village."

Karin glanced sidelong at him, trying to get even the tiniest clue as to what he was thinking. He still didn't bother to return her looks; not in the least because he was half blind.

He'd been on edge since they arrived in the village but he hid it incredibly well—aside from her sensing, the only hints she had were the too-straight way he sat, minute twitches in his fingers whenever the door at the end of the hall opened or shut. "What, you aren't gonna move in with Sasuke and Naruto?"

"You would be welcome to stay as my guest. Indefinitely, if you would prefer."

She was openly gawking then, because if there was anything less likely than her wanting to stay with him, it was him wanting her to stay. Assuming he understood that well enough without needing it explained back to him, she shook her head. "Thanks for the offer, but Sasuke said Naruto would take me wherever I wanted to go. Anywhere on the continent. Seems like a pretty good deal if you ask me."

Itachi nodded, but the movement was stilted, awkward. Karin hadn't known him to be an expressive person but he'd at least put forth a slight effort then, which suggested he was, even if only a little, invested. "It could be." He paused and looked down at his hands, one wrapped around the other with the thumb pressed against the chakra seal across his wrist as if he were taking his own pulse, making sure he was still alive. Always so fucking dramatic. "But where could you go that would welcome you?"

"What's that supposed to mean?" she'd hissed.

"I don't believe you have anyone else." He finally spared her the quickest glance before his attention was inevitably drawn back to Sasuke. "At least here, you would still have Sasuke. Sasuke's friends."

Sasuke's friends—people who gave her those damn pitying looks. People who only saw her as some kind of extension of Itachi, of Sasuke. It wasn't as if she expected things from Itachi, but she at least assumed he'd understand how shitty of an offer that was.

"Sasuke wouldn't care if he never saw me again."

"Well. Perhaps he wouldn't."

Karin shot him a glare; if he actually wanted to change her mind, he could at least put forth some effort.

Unless he just didn't think she was worth it.

"What about you?" she hedged. "What do you get out of this?"

"Convenience, mostly." He paused again, watching Sakura tug Naruto back from the bars by his collar, Sasuke smirking back at them both. She could hear a certain emptiness in his voice when he spoke to her—even in the middle of a conversation, he didn't even bother to offer her his full attention. "I would ask that you make certain contributions to the household."

She scoffed. "So that's it, huh? You think I'm gonna keep taking care of you? You want a live-in nurse?"

"I don't believe you have the qualifications to be a nurse."

Would it be too much, she wondered, to ask that he be even half as blunt as Sasuke?

Karin muffled a groan into her hands, but it was apparently loud enough that Sasuke could hear. He turned around, eyes darting back and forth between her and Itachi suspiciously. Sakura followed, another concerned crease between her eyebrows. Karin waited for them both to turn back to Naruto before she asked, "Is that a yes or a no? You could just answer the damn question, you know."

It was apparently neither, because he only shrugged. She could see the barest flash of his collarbone when he did, peering out under the too-wide collar of his shirt. "I would not ask you to pay any sort of rent, though when you go into the village I may have several errands for you to run—including any shopping or clerical tasks."

"You could have anyone else do that."

"Could I?"

"I'm pretty sure you don't even like me," she said instead, ignoring what was probably a rhetorical question to begin with. "Actually, the odds are pretty good that you hate me."

"I don't know whether it matters if I do." He shifted on the floor next to her, pulling one knee up. Getting comfortable, she thought. "Still," he added, absentmindedly toying with the seal on his wrist again. "I believe you and I might both benefit if you choose to stay here."

"I'm not gonna let you bite me anymore if that's what you think, so you—"

"I have no interest in that," he snapped back, much quicker. She could feel firm truth in it, could taste it like iron.

Except no, not like iron—iron was cold and impersonal, biting and sharp. What Karin could feel was hotter than that: a fuller, simmering indignation.

"What, does that bother you?" she goaded, loving the sudden heat in his chakra—all fire, no pity. Undeniable proof that he and she were both alive, that she was alive and she mattered. "You grossed out by it? It's not like you can even see the marks, can you? You can't even—"

"You may accept my offer or leave it. I have no further interest in talking to you." The heat in his chakra went to smoke, leaving a cold emptiness between them. Itachi closed his eyes and leaned back against the cement wall, his left arm tucked just under his ribs.

For all intents and purposes, he looked dead.

She stared after him but at no point did he so much as crack an eye in her direction. Ending a conversation on a weak footing wasn't in her nature, but there was no way to escalate a conversation like that without bringing everyone's attention back to them.

For once, she really didn't think she wanted that. She let out her frustration with a hot sigh and pulled back her legs, resting her chin on her knees. "Whatever."

At some point, Sasuke and Naruto had stopped fighting—the three of them were sitting in a rough circle by the cell door, Sasuke resting back on his elbows with his shoes pressed against the bars, Naruto flat on his back on the other side, arms crossed behind his head. Sakura was fussing with the soft ends of her hair, chatting absentmindedly about needing more free time, having to cut out portions of her skin care routine in balancing her work and her visits there.

It didn't matter that it was small talk, idle chit-chat—Naruto ran a hand through his hair and added a few spare comments about needing to get it cut and Sasuke, who rarely ever said more than bare minimum to Karin, was nodding along, offering short comments every few minutes to show he was still paying attention.

It didn't matter what was said or how they said it. The Sasuke she knew could give two shits about where she'd be spending the rest of her life, let alone face masks or haircuts. When they were Sakura's face masks or Naruto's haircuts, though, that somehow changed things.

Karin didn't know how those things happened, how those kinds of bonds formed, but she knew that - somehow - Konoha was a place where they could happen, and that was more than she could say about any other place she'd lived.

"Hey." She nodded to Itachi. "I'll stay."

"You and I will not speak any further on the past. Any part of it. Do you understand?"

"Yeah."

"Then you and I have an agreement."

In the end, she realized, Itachi was right: there was no one else, not a single soul on the continent, who was waiting for her.

In Konoha, she at least had Sasuke. Sasuke's friends. People she wouldn't call her own friends just yet but—but maybe that could change.

"To be honest," she tells Naruto now, looking up at the wall that surrounds Konoha like a cracked-open eggshell, cradling the village within it. The sunshine in Konoha is bright—almost bright enough to make her eyes hurt. "I don't know how long I plan to stay."

There are guards on both sides of the entrance but they're almost embarrassingly casual. One is turned around talking to someone, and the other is leaning against the side of the gate, stifling yawns with the back of his hand. She can sense the seals pasted on both sides of the wall, though, protection seals and tracking seals and seals whose purpose she can only guess.

Karin has no passport or shinobi license or identification of any kind, but she sticks close to Naruto, and together they're waved through the narrow gate leading into Konoha.

A/N: this was pretty flashback heavy, but i did want a little bit of something to have as a basis before moving further; there'll still be more filled in as i go along, but it's gonna move a lot faster from here on out.

I'm also considering adjusting the side-ship tags-sasuke and naruto are still gonna be paired together, but i'm tempted to ship all of team 7 together after writing sasuke and sakura together this chapter. still not sure, though, so stay tuned on that. the sakukarin thirst jumped out, im not gonna lie

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