im still alive! thank you to everyone who is still following this story - it is thankless work on your behalf, but know that i love and appreciate you for it!

Karin didn't bother wasting their time following the same convoluted path back to the kitchen. With a final angry scuff of her shoe, she cursed loudly once more before waddling off roughly in the direction they'd come from.

Itachi followed silently behind her, unsure of what to say.

The hallways ground loudly as they went, churning and creaking to keep up with Karin's quick pace. After rounding two corners, they were back in the same, simple hallway that had become familiar to him over the last few months.

No stairways, no echoing corridors.

Just him, and just Karin.

She shuffled miserably ahead of him all the way to the kitchen with her head bowed, wrapped tightly in her own arms and thoughts.

She was uncharacteristically quiet, and Itachi wisely kept his own thoughts to himself. He was still not entirely sure what his own thoughts necessarily were, as he was still piecing together exactly what had happened, but her foul mood was enough to guarantee his silence.

Whatever project Karin had been working on had apparently come to a sudden, unexpected end. That much was clear. It seemed as though she had gone through a good deal of maneuvering to keep it private, and she'd seemed certain that their excursion that day would be covert.

And whatever efforts Karin had made, they had failed, and the spellcaster had retaliated.

It was a simplistic sketch of events, but it seemed to make sense. He had little enough to go on as far as the purpose of her project, but her anguish had been real, and her disappointment palpable. If her silence and the downward slope of her shoulders was anything to go by, though, it had meant something to her. And likely something to the spellcaster as well, if discovering it had provoked such a response from him.

Or perhaps that was only a measure of his dislike towards Karin. That seemed fairly plausible - as best as Itachi could tell, there was no lost love between Karin and the spellcaster, and the added cruelty was more than fitting.

"Go ahead and sit down," he told Karin when they reached the kitchen. "I'll make you something to eat.

For once, Karin nodded along without argument. She shuffled over to the table and plopped down into a chair, pulling her knees up and tucking them against her chest until she was curled up into a tight ball.

Instinctively, Itachi pulled out a pan and set it on the stove, not yet sure what he would make but—but very much wanting to be in some sort of motion, to have some sort of excuse to be silent and preoccupied.

After glancing around the kitchen, Itachi lit the stove and began gathering cheese, meat, and bread. It would by no means be an elegant meal, but it was one he had long associated with exhaustion and comfort, with returning home late at night after weeks away from the village and shuffling around his parents' kitchen in the dark to avoid waking them or Sasuke.

It also helped that it was something he could assemble using only the ingredients he had available, without having to request anything from the spellcaster.

The pan warmed slowly under his hand. He tossed in a small chunk of butter and began slicing thick pieces from a dark, grainy loaf of bread. When the butter melted, he layered bread, cheese, and slices of beef onto the pan and let the bread cook.

Throughout this entire process, Karin still had not said anything. He glanced over at her out of the side of his eye and saw that she had hardly budged.

Itachi opened his mouth to speak but found himself at a loss for words. Talking to Karin—well, talking on such matters with anybody had never been as easy for him as simply speaking the words. It being Karin only added an additional, frustrating layer to it.

And yet, there was no one but him who could speak to her, and no one but him who Karin could turn to. "I am sorry for what happened."

She didn't even bother to look up, but he could hear an indignant snort from behind him. "What are you apologizing for?" she muttered, her words muffled into the long sleeves of her shirt. "You didn't even do anything."

Karin leaned back in her chair and set her knees against the table. She tested her balance for a few seconds, wobbling back and forth. For a moment, he wondered if she had found his apology odd, but she only shrugged. "Thanks, though."

"Of course." The room fell silent again, save for the crackle of fire over the stove and the creak of Karin's precariously balanced chair.

Itachi wracked his brain for something further to say, something kind or consoling or, at the very least, lighthearted enough that it might put Karin in better spirits. In all truth, he had never contemplated a scenario where he would ever need to provide emotional comfort to Karin.

Or anyone else, for that matter.

"Is it something you would want to discuss?" he eventually tried, having nothing else to offer. "What happened?"

Karin huffed. "Meh. I did say I'd get to it eventually, didn't I? Guess now's as good a time as any." She tipped forward in her chair, settling all four legs on the ground. "It's—Suigetsu and I have a system. Had. Whatever. Every time he—when he goes to meet with someone in particular, he sends word back to me beforehand so I'll know."

"Ah… Should you…" Itachi glanced behind him. Karin had said before that they were likely being watched, but it seemed to him that whatever entertainment value the spellcaster had gotten from spying on them had to have diminished greatly since their return.

Still, he could not say so for certain. "Is it safe for you to say that?"

"Yeah. It's nothing he doesn't already know by now, I'm assuming." She shook her head. "And even if he didn't, it's fine. Demons require a lot of magic to summon and bind, so someone who can finally get their hands on one—unless they've got lots of time and magic to spare… It's not worth it to let any of that go to waste"

It was a sprawling tangent, one he couldn't entirely follow. "And that's a good thing?"

Karin looked away from him, tapping her fingers on the table, her mind drifting elsewhere. "For the most part, yeah. Even if—even if something did go bad, demons can't just be killed. Not permanently. They just… go somewhere else until they regain their strength and come back. Suigetsu will be fine."

Karin didn't seem entirely certain about that, but he didn't press her.

"Alright."

"He'll be fine," she repeated. "He always is." Karin shifted in her chair. "They - Suigetsu and… you know - they were supposed to be meeting today. That means—that meant, I guess, that he wasn't supposed to be paying attention, and I could work without worrying about being caught. That's what I've been doing for a while now; I'd wait for Suigetsu to give me a heads up, and then I'd cram as much work as I could."

"So you were hiding something from—from the spellcaster. You were working on something." There was a pregnant pause. "Something that was important to you?"

She grimaced. "I guess you could call it that. It was a shot in the dark anyway, but… I'm kind of beyond working in the realm of what's ideal. It was better than nothing, at least."

The bottom of the bread was beginning to brown—Itachi quickly flipped the sandwich over and turned down the heat. "What were you planning?" he asked, turning back to Karin.

She flushed, adjusting her glasses in a nervous itch. It was a gesture that was strangely comforting in its familiarity, like a partial return to normalcy between them. Or at least, the normalcy they'd cultivated over the last few weeks.

"Karin?" he prompted.

"Yeah. Uh. Remember—ah, remember when you first got here? When you, you know, didn't really know me at all, thought I was, uh, a spellcaster… and then…" She let her words trail off, rocking to one side in her chair.

"And then?"

Karin waved her hand before making a rough stabbing motion. "You know. You, uh. Yeah."

"I attempted to kill you." Not wanting to leave it like that, he added, "My sword broke before I could strike you, though."

"Yep. Shattered into hundreds of little pieces." She smiled wistfully, as if it were a fond memory. "After you holed up in that room, I went back and got it. The sword, and as many pieces of it that I could find." She paused for a moment, then ran her fingers through her messy hair. "And I, ah, tried to put it back together, but swords… need a bunch of stuff to be put back together. Like a whole bunch of stuff."

Itachi raised an eyebrow at that, and she shrugged lightly with her shoulders. "I mean, I tried my best. There were some books that were helpful, but the struggle was—anything I want can, ah, only come from one place. Smaller things—they go unnoticed, but if I asked for a weapon or something… I just wouldn't get it. And he'd know about it even if he let me have it, so I'd lose all hope of it being a surprise."

"So you tried to salvage a weapon for yourself."

Karin nodded affirmatively. "And you brought me everything I needed to make one. The rest of it—I've asked for odds and ends before, chemicals and crafting supplies, things that can serve more than one purpose. It wouldn't have - I mean, it wasn't exactly a work of perfect craftsmanship, but it held together. It was functional enough."

A trace of cockiness crept into her tone. "It was pretty clever. I don't have the strength to use a sword myself but—well, since you were… uh, you have experience with that kind of thing. It felt like the type of scenario where we could both work alongside each other. All I had to do was put it back together and have it ready for you."

"I see."

Karin seemed to deflate. "But I fucked up somewhere along the line. He—maybe he got suspicious, or maybe Suigetsu tattled on me. Maybe I got too bold. It's hard to say; I've been working on this long enough and haven't been caught. I think."

Itachi leaned back against the counter. He tried to fit together the timeline in his head, but he'd spent so much empty time trapped there that it was sometimes difficult to order things properly—still, he could at least recall several instances where Karin could have conceivably disappeared into her lab. He'd certainly noted it before but hadn't thought much of it.

If Karin was telling the truth, she had been working on it almost since the day he'd arrived. Months by now - maybe half a year or more. Even while she'd been taunting him over marriage, working through her endless bargains, she'd already anticipated that he'd refuse.

Reasonably so, of course.

"Could your friend Suigetsu have perhaps mentioned it to the spellcaster? The two of you do not seem to have the friendliest of relationships."

Karin snorted. "I doubt it. At least, not intentionally. He likes to fuck around, but on the whole he's not really out to get me, and it's not like we wouldn't have both benefitted from it. It wasn't a perfect plan by any means, but I accounted for as much as I could." She hung her head back. "Maybe it was just never a secret."

That was a distinct possibility, given the apparent lack of privacy they both had.

The spellcaster may very well have taken notice of her project before - given that the entire compound was at least tangentially under his control, it seemed unlikely that anything would escape his notice for long, regardless of how well Karin believed she had hidden it. He could have elected to wait for an opportune moment to interfere with it, after Karin had wasted sufficient time and energy on it.

But that was only one possibility. Itachi had seen himself just how long the hallways and passageways went on - while certainly not impossible, it seemed impractical and unnecessary that the spellcaster would spend the time necessary to investigate all of that space.

It was also apparent that Karin had spent a good deal of time on her project, whatever it had been - almost as long as he'd been there. To the extent that she believed herself capable of evading the spellcaster, it seemed she had at least had some success at it, or at least assumed that she had.

Perhaps their timing had been off, or Karin had malingered too long taking him through the winding halls of her home.

Suigetsu was supposed to distract him, Karin had said before. And it seemed Suigetsu had successfully done so - right up until the moment Itachi had decided to spy on him and had instead altered the spellcaster to his - and Karin's - preoccupations.

Certainly, he had not gotten the impression that the spellcaster was expecting him.

Had it been his fault, then, that Karin had been discovered?

Itachi cleared his throat. "It seems to me that your plan would not have succeeded regardless."

Karin frowned. "You would have helped me, wouldn't you?" She ducked her head, her face flushing a little. "I know you like to get down on yourself about what you used to do and all, but…"

"That's not—that spell—the one that keeps you safe. Surely he's able to use something similar for himself?"

"Eh… I mean… He's not immortal. Probably. He's—well, you would be the expert on the finer points, but… he's just as vulnerable to a sword as any other creature, I guess." She tapped her fingers on the table, the quick gears of her mind churning. "If he was forced to come here - we could have worked something out."

"Perhaps." He shifted uncomfortably, uncertain whether or not he was relieved to have found an apparent flaw in her plan. "In that case, if he were to appear here—" He was not entirely sure how to frame his question, as what Karin had said spawned dozens more. Would the spellcaster suddenly be motivated to come to see them now? After having disarmed them both, but been made aware of his presence?

"Would you have helped me, though?" she asked, looking back up at him. "If—if I'd shown you all of that and asked?"

He frowned. "Of course I would have."

"Well—" Karin squinted and pointed behind him. "Is it supposed to do that?"

"Is what—" He followed Karin's line of sight. The pan behind him was smoking, the sandwich he'd been cooking in it blackened on the bottom.

Itachi cursed and carried the pan over to the trash and quickly discarded it.

He quickly went through the same steps as before—butter, bread, cheese, meat, setting each sequential piece in the pan and watching closely as the bottom slice of bread began to brown.

"I was distracted," he offered by way of explanation.

"I'll say." Karin snorted, just short of a genuine laugh. "I'll take it as a compliment, though. I'm just that compelling, huh?"

"If you prefer to imagine yourself that way."

His mind was still working through the last few months, thumbing over each memory like a file in a ledger.

For too long, his focus had been so singularly narrowed to Karin that it hadn't occurred to him that there might be others he ought to be concerned about. They'd been so isolated that - with Karin's own immunity to weapons - it simply hadn't occurred to him that he was virtually defenseless in the face of any future attackers.

Begrudgingly, such could only be the result of his own inattention.

The sword he had brought hadn't been his only weapon, though. He'd carried a dagger with him—he knew better than to mention it outloud to Karin, though a single dagger on its own would be of very little use against a spellcaster. When he'd been dispatched before to eliminate spellcasters, Itachi had been loath to engage them at all without a sword and at least three other people to support him.

Still, it was a weapon, and maybe it could be of use, if it were still retrievable.

They sat in comfortable silence until the second sandwich finished cooking. In all of Itachi's years of traveling and living alone, it'd never taken him so long to make a simple meal.

He slid the sandwich onto a plate, set it down on the table in front of Karin, and immediately began making a second one. Or third, he supposed.

Karin tucked her legs underneath her and leaned forward on her elbows, looking over the meal appreciatively. When she saw him staring, she offered him a smile. "No one's ever cooked for me before, you know." Her expression slipped. "I mean, that I can remember at least; someone had to at some point, I guess, cause otherwise I would've just kinda starved…"

Instead of finishing her thought, Karin lifted the sandwich and began to eat.

"I meant what I said last night," she said, talking over a bite of food just as Naruto had a habit of doing. She wiped her mouth on the back of her hand. "This wasn't what I really expected, but I never go into something thinking that everything is gonna work out perfectly. I—I'm gonna keep my word."

"What do you mean?" So much had happened in the last hour or so that whatever Karin was referencing seemed insignificant in comparison. "You said a lot of things last night."

"Sure did." If he had to guess, he'd say she almost sounded proud of it.

Itachi shifted, his eyes flickering to the door to the kitchen. "You mentioned something else you had wanted to show me. Is it safe to talk about that?"

"Oh! Right." Karin hesitated. "I mean—no, you don't have to worry about that. It's—not really the same thing. I just wanted to get it out of the way since… well, it was supposed to kinda help me persuade you. You know! Just in case you thought I was up to something, or whatever… It isn't going to catch, uh, his interest, if you know what I mean. Not in the same way." She paused. "Unless he really wants to be a jackass, which I guess is possible. But I think he's gotten enough of his kicks for the day."

"I see." Karin was babbling again, though he had trouble deciphering why.

"So… just let me finish up here, and maybe I can salvage something out of this shitshow of an evening." Karin took another large bite of her sandwich, as if she were trying to prove her word was good.

.

.

.

After she finished eating, Karin led him back down the hall to the library, babbling again as they went.

"So I'm just saying, it's not a big deal, it's just—it's something little that I thought would—you know! It's just something that I thought you might appreciate is all, so don't get all worked up about it!"

If anyone was getting worked up, it was Karin, but he wisely kept that to himself. "I understand."

In all reality, he had no idea why Karin was still fussing so much over whatever her surprise was, but he couldn't fault her for it. Not when her anxious excitement seemed - to him, at least - a marked improvement from her somber mood earlier.

It was difficult to tell whether she had recovered as smoothly as it appeared, or whether she'd suppressed the feeling entirely. Neither were responses that were entirely foreign to him, but they seemed strange enough for Karin that he couldn't be sure. Karin was bright and fiery - loud, snarling, and tenacious.

Her reaction now, however, was decidedly better than the alternative - sullenness - and so he followed her back to the library without protest, enduring her anxious chatter for the short walk there.

His mirror was exactly on the table where he'd left it, face up and blank. His eyes must have lingered on it too long, because Karin turned back to him. "Anything you need to check on first?" she asked, pausing several shelves ahead of him.

He might've used it to check up on his brother or Shisui. All it would take was a few seconds, a single brush of his finger - Karin would certainly wait. With the spellcaster's presence still lingering, though, the prospect of exposing either of them to its attention was enough to deter him.

A voice inside of him whispered that the spellcaster had likely already seen as much of his brother and cousin as he had, and that the time for secrecy had long passed.

Still, it felt reckless to use the mirror as he had before, and if there was anything Itachi was not, it was reckless.

"I—" Itachi shook his head. He still hadn't told her about his own misadventure that morning, and the more he learned about the situation, the more reluctant he felt in doing so. "No, it's fine. Nothing that can't wait."

"Sounds good!" With no further prompting, Karin led him back to the corner of the library she'd commandeered for herself, where a stack of paper was waiting on one of the back tables.

She set her hands on her hips triumphantly. "Go on—check it out," Karin said. She looked at him expectantly but didn't follow when he began to walk toward the table.

It was a rather large amount of paper, bound somewhat along the edges with thick, metal clips. He'd certainly seen better bindings when he was at the University, but he could only assume that Karin had done it herself.

The cover page was blank. Itachi flipped it open to a random page, his eyes scanning quickly over the text.

… and in the north half of the continent, it is more common that the families will spend several months in negotiations with a mediator, typically from a smaller, southern clan, before establishing a contract between them.

Itachi thumbed through the stack quickly but slowed as he began to realize just what he was looking at. It was his thesis - exactly as he'd written it—some of the pages still bore crease marks where he'd crumpled them, and others had obviously been pieced back together with some sort of adhesive. Others were familiar in content only—the handwriting was not his, though he quickly recognized the words as his own.

He frowned and turned back to Karin, who was watching him intently. "What is this, Karin?"

"Well—" She immediately looked away, her arms crossed behind her back in a facsimile of modesty. "It's not a big deal or anything," she started, despite bragging just that morning about how impressive her surprise was meant to be. "I—okay, I joked about wanting to bribe you to get you to help me, but I really mean it! I've tried to give you… things before, but you've never really been interested in them."

Karin bit her lip and rocked back on her heels. "So this time I wanted to give you something that you wouldn't totally hate."

"I see." There were at least a hundred pages in the stack, if not more—pages Karin had carefully unraveled and organized, rewritten and replaced.

Karin tugged at her sleeve. "I, uh, well… some of the pages were just too damaged or got smeared, so I just rewrote them myself. I didn't change anything, I promise! I just—it's exactly what you wrote, word for word."

Itachi continued flipping through the pages. Despite all of the time and effort he'd poured into it, he hadn't thought much of it after the fact. It'd all seemed so pointless, when there was no one aside from himself or Karin who would ever get to see it.

So realistically, seeing it again should have had no effect on him.

Apparently discomfited by the silence, Karin continued. "I read it, too. I know you probably don't like the thought of me going through your stuff but—" She hesitated. "You know, for someone who made such a big deal about getting married, there's an awful lot in there about marriages!"

"Marriages are political," he noted, feeling strangely divorced from the topic. "There's nothing inherently romantic about them."

"Er. Right." The topic seemed to have cowed her - she didn't say anything further, and several minutes passed filled with nothing but the sound of pages turning.

It didn't make much of a difference - he already knew what it said, down to the last period and flourish of his pen. Having seen enough, Itachi glanced over at Karin, who was staring back at him with such a stupid, hopeless look in her eyes that he wanted to gut himself right then and there.

Now that they were closer, he noticed a lingering chemical smell to her, like oil or polish. Something from the lab, he thought, though it only compounded his feeling of guilt.

How much time had she spent on this, when she could have been working on her sword instead? Time spent sorting through and copying down the work he himself had destroyed, all for the sake of making her proposal palatable to him.

Strategically, he could understand why she'd split her priorities - it had, as she'd admitted, been necessary to get back in his good graces, even if their interests were nonetheless aligned. He did not want to see himself as so childish, needing to be enticed into acting in his own self interest by small favors, and yet—

He understood why she'd split her priorities.

And her dedication to it, the time she had spent preparing it, had certainly been a sacrifice. One that perhaps had not appeared to be great in the moment, but one that had certainly cost her in the end.

And for what?

Outside, it was growing dark. The day had gone by quickly, and he assumed that Karin would be heading to sleep soon, as she had over the last couple of weeks.

"It's been a long day." Itachi closed the volume and turned towards Karin just as the candles in the library flared to life, casting them both in warm light. "You will have to show me the way," he continued, "but if you'd like, I could walk you to your bedroom."