A/N: I'm back! Special thanks to Gyuri97! Thank you so much for sticking with this story! 3 3
The mirror did not leave Itachi's sight.
He woke the next morning and groped blindly for its handle, feeling for it under the tangle of his sheets. It fit perfectly into the palm of his hand, the cold metal leaching the warmth and the anxiety from his body. The mirror never warmed in turn, regardless of how long he held it or how long he let it lay in bed beside him.
Maybe it was simply the nature of magic—it gave nothing without taking something in return, no matter how small.
Itachi disregarded his own unwashed reflection in favor of watching Sasuke slink out of bed, already combing his fingers through the tangle of his hair. Sasuke had always slept like a cat, even when they were kids—he'd stretched and pawed at blankets and curled up protectively beside him.
That was the past, buried in their childhood with wooden practice swords and storybooks. What they had now was difficult to even compare but—but maybe it was the best substitute Itachi would ever find.
Sasuke shuffled off to the bathroom and Itachi followed suit, gently balancing the mirror on the edge of the tub while he washed. Steam filled the bathroom but the mirror never fogged, never so much as blurred. It hadn't even warmed by a single degree when Itachi finally turned off the water and moved it from tub to countertop, wiping condensation from the hilt.
He returned to the library, and sat again at the table he'd been using. The books that remained he stacked on top of each other like toy blocks, propping the mirror up against their spines. The library itself was massive, the ceilings taller than the tallest trees in the village, but Itachi's world was as small as the silver that occasionally rested in his hands.
When he grew hungry, he cradled the mirror close to his chest like he once had with a much-younger version of Sasuke and walked to the kitchen. He set the mirror up against flipped pans or stacked plates and searched the kitchen cabinets for food. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner—Itachi would stand at the stove, his body angled so he could watch Sasuke and Naruto's silent banter, their long walks to and from training grounds.
Then he returned to the library.
If he hurried, he could share meals with his family. Or rather, he could position the mirror roughly where his empty chair sat at his parents' table, the clank of his silverware on the porcelain echoing as he ate.
A literature student would maybe call it communion—the four of them meeting, as best they were able, to break bread.
He slept soundly most nights, but even on the nights where he did not the mirror's smooth handle was always within reach, tucked beneath his pillow for him to grasp until his nerves calmed.
The strange hypocrisy of it all hadn't been lost on him. He'd wanted to escape it once, hadn't he? He'd set careful boundaries, put up high barriers between himself and the rest of the village.
Between himself and his family.
The village had always been close, tight-knit and overlapping in the way that chainmail often was. People grew together, grew into each other. They intertwined like climbing plants.
Everyone had their place, but no one had a place of their own—a place that was exclusively theirs.
No man, as Itachi had read once in a literature course, was an island. No villager survived on their own, apart from the others.
Shizune's apothecary could not survive without Yamato's herbs. Yamato's herbs could not survive without the irrigation wells the Inuzuka family maintained. The village itself could not survive without the ranger corps, who protected the village and its trade routes.
This was something Itachi understood well: the village was a careful patchwork of communal responsibilities but, as with any garment, a single tear or snag in a seam would not destroy it entirely.
No man was an island, but a continent could survive a crumbling of its shores, a loss of land.
Garments could be mended; territories could be expanded.
If Yamato were incapacitated, Itachi's mother or Shizune could take on his responsibilities while the village adjusted, while Yamato recovered. Rangers routinely retired and were replaced.
Itachi himself had been replaced, and the village had not suffered for it.
The bright glass of the mirror reflected much of that: the village continued on in his absence. Any gaps Itachi's disappearance might have left were inevitably so small that, in looking for them, Itachi could not be entirely confident he was not twisting what he saw to assuage his ego.
That did not mean, however, that he had stopped searching odd corners for his own remains.
His mother had always taken her tea alone, enjoying several moments of quiet sunlight. Her lone exception to this had been the afternoons when Itachi would leave the University to meet with her.
Now she opened the kitchen windows and leaned against the countertop, cradling her painted mug in her hands. Occasionally she'd stare as if lost in thought, eyes level with the dinner table and the empty chair where he once had sat.
After long enough her eyes would drop and her hands would tighten, ever so slightly, around the ornamental mugs she had once only ever brought down for visitors.
There were rare nights where Sasuke would have the house to himself, without either of their parents being home. His father would work late, his mother would run errands—Sasuke would be alone.
Sasuke would sometimes rise in his few hours of solitude and walk the hallways of their home, his tired footsteps silently shuffling along smooth floorboards. If Sasuke were up long enough for him to pass Itachi's former bedroom three or four times, eventually his shoulders would heave with an inaudible sigh, and he would walk into what remained of Itachi's former bedroom.
Sasuke did little more than that. He did not sit at Itachi's desk or sort through his drawers. Only once did he walk to the window and pull back the curtains, gazing up at the shifting moon.
Very little of Itachi's room had changed: the few books and notebooks he had left behind were still meticulously arranged, a tiny stump of a candle remained on his nightstand.
His bed, which had been made with combat precision when he'd left, was the only change he'd noticed. Making his bed had been one of the first tasks he'd complete in the morning; if anything, ranger life had at least instilled in him a deep respect for a well-made bed.
It was not something he worried about any longer; he slept primarily on the couches he'd arranged in the library, covered with sheets he'd taken from the bedroom Karin had left open for him. It was—well, he simply did not have the time or attention to spare to make a bed now. No one other than Karin would see it, and he couldn't find it within himself to be bothered by tangled bedsheets.
It'd simply lost its appeal.
His bed at home, though—it wasn't made. It didn't have the appearance of being slept in, but there were wrinkles and dents along the sides, spots where someone had either lain across it or sat on top of it.
Sasuke never stopped or stayed long enough to sit there, but someone had.
Itachi briefly entertained the possibility that it'd been his father. Their last meeting had been, as best as Itachi could recall, somewhat chilly. Still tense, still tempered by his father's quiet disapproval.
Itachi respected that—he allowed his father as much privacy as he could afford, and resisted the urge to pry into his quiet, intimate moments.
Still, however, his imagination could not help but probe those negative spaces, to piece together his father's thoughts from what little he did see. Some nights after dinner his father would retire to the living room, followed closely by Sasuke, pleading with his hands for some gift or permission beyond Itachi's hearing.
It was rarely more than that but on some nights, on nights where his father was especially quiet, especially contemplative, his eyes would be drawn away from Sasuke, lingering far too long on their ancestor's sword hanging on their mantle.
Itachi did not find any remnants of himself greater than pregnant pauses and empty, faraway glances. What remained of him in the village, if anything, was only present in the gaps between Sasuke's late night thoughts and his mother's lonely lunches, his father's occasional, inexplicable stares.
If there were more to be found, he was certain he would have already found it.
There were, after all, very few other things in the library to distract him from searching. It was nothing like the village—there were no bonds, no metaphorical threads to pull him away.
It was only a library, empty except for himself and for Karin.
No man was an island, but perhaps a man and a woman, sharing the same ocean of silence, might inhabit their own continents.
Though she lingered on the fringes of his awareness, Karin was surprisingly easy to ignore. She made no attempts to start conversations with him or interfere in his scrying. She occupied herself in the back of the library, and made no great spectacle of it; every morning she walked in, determined and straight-faced, bypassing him entirely.
He recalled her ink-stained hands from previous days, comments she'd made about her business in the library, and assumed she had found herself some sort of project to keep her busy.
At least, that seemed to be the case in the initial days they shared the library.
Perhaps it was not in her nature to seek solitude, he thought, regardless of how much of her life she'd spent alone. Perhaps it was not Karin alone, but something of human nature—that a person would seek contact with others, no matter how remote.
No matter how tenuous their relationships might be.
He assumed she had been keeping tabs on him, that she'd been tracking his comings and going to have some rough idea of what his schedule might be. She must have found some regularity in it, because one day she left the library shortly before he had intended to take his lunch, and returned just as Sasuke and Naruto were picking out a spot to share their packed lunches.
He hardly noted her leaving, but couldn't help but notice when she returned carrying a tray of food—two bowls of rich, dark broth and several slices of bread, and two glasses and a tall, clear pitcher of juice. His mother had owned a similar looking tray, he recalled—something she'd use to bring him and Sasuke meals when they were sick.
She set it down expectantly on the edge of his table, her eyes flickering to him quickly before she removed one of the bowls and glasses and set aside several slices of bread on a napkin.
Karin took a step back, her tray still on the table, and looked to him expectantly, her hands folded neatly in front of her.
"Do you want something from me, then?"
Karin pursed her lips but carefully bit back whatever initial comment she had in mind.
Still, it would be unlike Karin to hold everything back. "I mean, it'd be nice of you to thank me for it."
He didn't disagree, but thought the better threshold question was whether Karin deserved anything nice from him at all. "Right."
He'd meant it to be dismissive but Karin didn't budge. She glanced over at her own plate and glass, both still on the tray. Her tray, still on his table.
It was an open-ended question she hadn't even asked, an attempt to swim across the ocean between them. To him, it seemed like an isolation she'd earned—she'd dug the trenches herself and continued to dig despite the futility of it.
There was nothing inherently complicated about eating a meal, and yet between them anything seemed capable of becoming far, far more intricate than necessary.
What was a meal, after all, if not communion? Community?
He didn't owe Karin a drop of anything.
Karin seemed to understand his answer without needing him to say it out loud. Her hands were fidgeting again—twisted up in themselves as they often were when she became nervous. "Right."
She took a deep breath, then quickly poured her own glass, set the half-full pitcher on the table next to his plate, and nodded briskly back to him.
"I'll, uh, leave you to it, then," she said, before scurrying off with her lunch.
Hours later she returned with dinner, but that time did not linger. Still, there was that determined air to her, something solid and determined hiding in her dark red eyes. He didn't like that—didn't like the sturdy confidence she had in whatever it was she was planning.
It wasn't the dreamy, girlish Karin he'd seen before; she seemed sharper, heavier.
He didn't like that one bit.
The next day and the day after were very much the same—breakfast, lunch, and dinner, all brought in on her tray. She said very little or nothing at all to him, never asked anything of him, but continued to hold her head high. Confident.
Itachi was not a fool. He understood very well that Karin had no shortage of reasons to craft such a complementary role for herself, and he knew from a wealth of experience that she could be both patient and cunning.
And yet—days and then weeks passed and she did not press his boundaries any further. She kept her comments light, her footsteps quick, and her smiles close-lipped.
Weeks passed and Karin was nothing more than a single, lone woman on a neighboring continent, occasionally waving him down from the shoreline.
Weeks passed, and Itachi did nothing more than accept the food she brought, and thank her brusquely for it.
"You did say once that you would never bring me food again," he noted one night, unable to resist flinging her own words back at her. Sasuke had moments ago excused himself from the dinner table and gone to his room to work on a report at his desk.
Sasuke seemed rather engrossed in his writing—Itachi was unlikely to miss much in looking away for a few seconds. "I suppose you've changed your mind about that."
"Well—" Karin paused, then sighed irritably. "Is it really that big of a deal?" she asked. "It's just food; it doesn't—it doesn't mean anything. I have to go to the kitchen anyway, so I might as well—why are you making that face? It's not a big deal!"
"It isn't."
"So then you don't need to make a big deal about it then, huh?"
He wasn't. He didn't.
Karin frowned. "You think I'm doing something sneaky, don't you?"
"Why wouldn't you be?"
"Well—" Karin pressed her lips together. "I haven't done anything. I'm minding my own business, aren't I?" She was digging in—standing her ground.
Prolonging their conversation.
She was hungry, he imagined: starved for attention, starved for conflict. Willing to sink her teeth into any scraps he threw to her.
Itachi shook his head and returned to Sasuke; his silence could be enough of an answer for her. Sasuke was still reading over his paper—nothing at all engaging, but it gave his eyes a place to rest while Karin was there.
"What?" She shifted again, uncomfortably. "Right."
Several more long, drawn out seconds passed and she turned around with her tray and shuffled away with her dinner—a much more appealing meal, he assumed.
Itachi waited several moments to glance up, only to make sure she had truly left.
Over the next few days Karin went about her business with a noticeable urgency, dropping off his food and taking off with short, quick steps, never lingering for too long. Never trying to initiate another conversation with him.
If he didn't know any better, he'd say she was trying to avoid him.
He couldn't help but think there was a bizarre irony to it all—that Karin would somehow be more defensive about doing something helpful than any of the other things she'd done. That she'd be so eager to prove him wrong.
More days passed. Karin's space slowed. Nothing more was said between them. Itachi ate his meals alone, his plates and bowls arranged in a neat circle around him with the mirror standing just beyond.
.
.
.
Itachi had always known things could shift incredibly fast between Naruto and Sasuke. Fights could break out without warning, punches were thrown without any apparent provocation. The same had been true when Itachi was still in the village; they would fight whenever, wherever, and for any audience.
He had been an audience to it before, quite frequently—it wasn't quite the same now, through the mirror, but it wasn't fundamentally different, either.
The two of them were sitting under one of the great oaks just outside of the village one afternoon, having lunch between spars. That'd been all—Naruto was resting against a tree, his jacket unzipped and hanging loose. Sasuke was sitting cross-legged next to him, twining strands of grass around his fingers.
They hadn't even been talking.
It—it happened so suddenly that Itachi didn't fully process it at first, that he didn't realize what was happening until it already happened.
Sasuke leaned over to Naruto, cupped him gently by the chin, tilted his head back, and kissed him.
And then kissed him again, and again, and again—
Itachi practically flung the mirror away. When it landed face-up he flipped it over, held his head in his hands, and let out a very, very long breath.
Itachi ran a hand through his hair. He couldn't—if he picked the mirror back up, he would have to see them again.
He stood from the table and walked out of the library. For the first time since he'd taken it from Karin, Itachi left the mirror behind.
He didn't go anywhere in particular—there were still only a handful of rooms lining the hallway before it abruptly ended. It was barely longer than one hundred feet between ends. Sill—he didn't need to go anywhere in particular, he just…
He just needed to be somewhere else.
It took two, maybe three, minutes for him to reach the other side of the hall. Two, maybe three, minutes to get back. Nothing but his footsteps, echoing on the marble.
It—what he saw had not been meant for him. That was exceptionally clear. Sasuke couldn't have known Itachi had been watching. That—all of that was fine. It was not the worst thing he'd ever caught Sasuke doing; it likely would not be the last thing, either. He could—he could bury that memory just fine.
Perhaps he would need to borrow some of the liquor Karin kept in the kitchen cabinets, but eventually the memory would fade.
He was back at the library door. Itachi's hand hesitated at the handle before he withdrew it and turned back around. He—he hadn't walked enough, not yet.
Sasuke was getting older. It made sense, didn't it? That Sasuke would—that Sasuke would grow up. That Sasuke's relationships would evolve. It wasn't new, it wasn't… in retrospect, it shouldn't have even been as surprising as it was.
He'd chosen this. He'd asked for this—Itachi had cut himself off from it long before Karin had come into the equation. How long had he watched Sasuke through the lens of his mother, peering into their lives once every few days before taking his leave?
This wasn't any different. It didn't have to be.
Karin was waiting for him when he finally returned, snooping over his desk. She'd flipped the mirror back over and was watching, eyebrows knit closely together. Always—always interfering in his business, sneaking and pushing and inserting herself wherever she could find an opening.
He cleared his throat and she flinched, taking an instinctive step back. "Hey, is everything—"
"Everything is fine," he responded. Maybe—it was too brief. Too sharp. Too quick. "I only needed a short walk to rest my eyes." He eyed the mirror. If she'd seen anything else of Sasuke and Naruto—almost certainly she would have said something.
Karin glanced past him, red eyes flickering to the hallway. There was something in her eyes—something dissatisfied, maybe. "You—you probably didn't make it very far."
"I only needed to rest my eyes."
Her lip quirked. "Well… it's good to take a break every now and then. Nothing wrong with that."
"Karin." It was a warning—he wasn't sure he needed much more than that.
"You—" She paused, and then quickly thought better of pushing further. "Right. Gotcha. Okay." She looked over her shoulder, not at anything in particular. "Well, ah, if that's the case I'll just—I'll just be running along then."
There was a long moment where she did not, in fact, run along. Karin's mouth opened but she said nothing, her hand skimming along the table where his empty dishes from lunch were still sitting.
She was just as human as he was, he supposed—human down to her long purple sweater and her pale, knobby knees. Human and curious, human and lonely.
The moment passed. Karin shook her head and turned around, making her way back through the shelves, weaving through them and out of his field of vision.
Itachi did not stop her.
.
.
.
One day Karin brought a pot of hot water and several miniature jars of loose leaf tea arranged on her tray. It was shortly after lunch, too soon for dinner but—well, it was also the perfect time to have a cup of tea.
She said nothing, only sat the tray down on the table and waited for him to look up at her. She didn't even bother to take her hands off the tray, ready to leave in an instant if need be.
Without her asking and without her saying it, he understood what she wanted.
Itachi nodded to her, and said nothing more. Karin had bowed her head but he could see the smile prickling at the corners of her lips. Silently, she pulled her hands away and took the seat opposite his.
(That chair had been sitting there for as long as he'd been there, he realized—it'd never occurred to him to remove it.)
Her timing had been convenient, and nothing more—Sasuke and Naruto were finishing a run around the village but still hadn't had their lunch. It—it was nothing Itachi would watch too closely.
Just in case.
There was a constant risk in watching them now, waiting for the split-second it'd take for—well, for anything at all to happen.
He drew his finger across the mirror and felt his nerves ease. Shisui was still traveling—he would likely be getting back on the road soon, but at that moment he was distracted, haggling with an innkeeper over the price of his lunch, pointing emphatically towards the handwritten menu on the wall.
Karin, spooning honey into her tea from across the table, was not so great a distraction that he would ask her to leave.
What did he stand to gain from it? They were trapped together. Stranded on the same lonely continent. If they happened to drink tea from the same kettle, if they shared the same table—that was only a natural consequence of being confined to the same space, regardless of how large that space might be.
More days passed. Shisui began to head south and exchanged his worn vest for a short-sleeved shirt and wide-brimmed hat. Itachi's father spent several nights in a row working late, and missed dinner each time.
On the fifth night, Itachi's mother was waiting for him at the dinner table, her arms and legs both crossed. Itachi was not an expert in body language, but he knew a poor omen when he saw one.
They argued for almost half an hour—quiet enough that Sasuke, asleep upstairs, was not disturbed. It was vicious enough that they did not speak for several days afterwards, his mother instead throwing frosty looks over her shoulder when Sasuke was not watching.
His parents had that kind of luxury. His father could return to his work and plead his case to his colleagues. His mother could drop down onto Shizune's front counter and vent, pinching the bridge of her nose in frustration as she talked.
They each had a village full of alternatives ready to listen and nod sympathetically, to shake their heads and give firm advice.
His father was the one to give in, bringing flowers back home with him after work. He'd come home early, his lesson learned. He stood behind his wife for several minutes, not speaking until she turned away from the stove.
She wasn't expecting him—she startled, and then let out a stuttering laugh, one hand coming to rest on her chest. He thought he could read her lips: Oh, Fugaku.
Itachi's father smiled, and then he spoke, mouthing gentle words Itachi could not hear. He lifted up the flowers he'd brought, almost self-consciously. Itachi's mother met him halfway, her hands wrapping around his, cupping them gently.
Just like that, his parents were reconciled—their wounds were healed, leaving behind no scars. Their fight was quickly forgotten, swallowed by time.
His father returned to work. His mother went back to her afternoon tea with her ornamental cups, until one day she didn't.
Until one day her hands fell short of the blue-painted porcelain, and reached instead for her plain, earthenware mugs and she drank her tea, alone.
Itachi continued to drink his tea alone. With Karin.
He could hardly say they were doing anything together—very little passed between them. Karin would bring her novels and he would watch over Sasuke. He'd follow after Shisui.
Karin had a new novel every few days, but she never read while they had tea. Sometimes she would watch him. Some days she'd rest her chin in her hand, her face flat and miserable. Other days she'd be balanced on the edge of her seat, eager like a student waiting to be called on.
On rare days she'd only take occasional glances towards him, her eyes and mind drawn elsewhere, small secretive smiles playing on her lips.
She did little else, and seemed to grow bored easily. She would fuss with her tea, bouncing her leg anxiously. She'd spin her cup in her hands, run her fingers over the pages in her books, the pages shuffling like rain.
They were more of the same ridiculous, sentimental titles he was used to seeing from her—Finding Pride and Temptation's Darling. He could mark the passing of time by the movement of her bookmarks, a few increments each day.
That was the whole of it. Karin would sit and fidget and stare for the entirety of their tea break, but she would never read.
There was a strange hopefulness to it, and he couldn't find it within himself to fault her for it.
It was politeness, he told himself, that ultimately led him to turn the mirror over onto its face while Karin poured their tea. Weren't those manners his mother had taught him? How many times had the backs of his hands been smacked with wooden spoons for books hidden under the tabletop?
He knew his family's routines; he knew his mother would drink alone with her earthenware cups, that whatever might pass between Sasuke and Naruto during their lunch hour was—well, most likely better off unseen. Shisui—Shisui was always unpredictable, but he'd always been one person Itachi could always trust.
It was that, and nothing more, that stayed his hands as he and Karin drank their tea.
He would benefit from occasionally taking a break from the mirror to rest. After setting his mirror aside one day Itachi rubbed at his eyes, surprised by how sore they were, and how easy it'd been to ignore. He was no stranger to eye strain, he supposed—he'd spent more than his fair share of nights studying by dim candlelight.
Pacing himself would be good. He was going to be there forever, wasn't he? He let his fingertips rest on his eyelids, finding the slight pressure strangely comforting.
Across the table, he could hear Karin shift. She'd been slumped across the table on her elbows like she was about to fall asleep, her red hair spilling onto the table.
If his mother were there—well, she'd certainly have something to say about that.
When he opened his eyes, Karin had picked herself up, suddenly more alert. "Everything okay?"
"I'm fine."
"You su—"
"My eyes are adjusting. It's no great matter."
Karin nodded slowly, running her finger along the rim of her glass. It'd gone cold long ago—he could tell by the way she had grimaced when she'd taken sips earlier. "Mhm. But even if something were wrong you still wouldn't say anything, right?"
"Maybe."
He supposed it was one consequence of living alone as often as she had—anything he did had the potential to be more interesting than her solitude. Still, if he were her entertainment, she was a well-behaved audience: Itachi folded his hands in his lap, and Karin sighed, sinking back down onto her hands.
Karin's cup drained a little slower each afternoon, her sips growing shorter and longer between. Their afternoon tea stretched further and further towards dinner.
It seemed pointless to protest—Karin's cup would eventually empty, and she would leave. Itachi would return to his mirror. They would share spare words on occasion, Karin thinking over their dinner or wondering out loud about what she should read next.
He did not believe anything had fundamentally changed. Strategically, he had left her no openings. Logically, there was very little she could do with small talk.
All Karin had to use against him were words; what sort of University student was unable to defend himself against words?
One day, Sasuke and Naruto were assigned a mission out of the village. He couldn't read the assignment fast enough to figure out what exactly they were doing—Sasuke only skimmed the notice briefly before folding it and stuffing it into his pocket.
While Naruto and Sasuke each hurried home to pack their backpacks, Itachi stacked books next to the couch he'd been using as a bed. They made a neat makeshift table—tall enough to prop up the mirror as he watched, capable of being adjusted as the night drew on.
If they would travel through the night, he would travel alongside them as best as he was able. It had to be a rather urgent mission, because otherwise they would have waited until morning before leaving. It'd be wise of him to stay vigilant.
Karin stood by on her way to leave for the night, watching him move furniture and arrange books.
"Big plans for the evening?"
It was a rather dry comment for Karin, but it did occur to Itachi that perhaps he might have looked just the slightest bit ridiculous, a grown man building towers of books. "My brother," he explained. "He's traveling tonight."
"And so you're…"
"Going to watch him."
Karin's brow furrowed. "Well, okay. Take care, then?"
It wasn't exactly a question, but he nodded all the same. "I will."
Sasuke's mission started as a rather uneventful journey, though it was significantly more so from Itachi's perspective. He had advantages Sasuke did not—he could use the mirror to survey territory far beyond Sasuke's point of view and watch for potential threats or obstacles.
It left very little for him to do in the meantime. Sasuke and Naruto walked and bantered, Sasuke occasionally consulted his map, Naruto would take haphazard practice swipes with his sword.
In several hours, there was barely more than this.
Briefly, he contemplated pulling a book from the shelves—something light enough that he could look up every page or so. Maybe one of Karin's novels, if only to give him the chance to figure out their appeal. The library was growing darker as the night drew on, however, and he had no interest in hunting for candles and books while Sasuke was traveling.
Around midnight, Sasuke and Naruto were still en route and the library lights had dimmed more, no brighter than coals. His eyes were beginning to burn, but Sasuke and Naruto were getting close to the city—only an hour or so away.
He was adjusting the pillow he'd propped behind his back when he heard the door of the library click open, and the sound of Karin's bare feet shuffling over the carpet.
She was wearing a light nightgown, her face lit by the campfire glow of a candle. Her hair was tied in a thick braid that hung over her shoulder, the bright red of it softer in the dark. Several long strands had already fallen out and were tucked behind her ears—likely, she'd been in bed.
She cocked her head and smiled when she saw him, covered in blankets with his hair loose around his shoulders. "Thought you might still be up."
For the first time, Itachi considered that, perhaps, neither of them were continents or islands, neighboring or otherwise.
Perhaps neither of them were working on solid land anymore.
He straightened his slumped shoulders and gestured towards the mirror. "They're still traveling."
"That's good."
"Rather uneventful so far."
"Better than the alternative, I guess." Before either of them could think about what the alternative might be, she cleared her throat. "But, ah, I figured you might want one of these," she said, holding the candle towards him. "Ah…"
Karin pursed her lips, looking over his stacks of books and repurposed couches for a moment before setting the candle holder down on a book next to the mirror. "Any better?"
"Yes." Better near him, at least—the mirror ate the remaining light, swallowing the candle's glare. The damned thing was always so strange; he'd given up questioning it.
Karin took a step back, smoothing down nonexistent creases in her nightgown. It was a poor feint of nonchalance but—but he'd benefit very little from calling it out. "You'd just strain your eyes otherwise, I figured. You said they were bothering you the other day."
"That was thoughtful of you."
"Just a little something." Karin crossed her arms over the front of her nightgown, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ears as she glanced back towards the door.
If she'd only come to deliver the candle, her work was done.
"Were you planning to stay here?"
"Do—do you want company?" she asked. "If they're just walking around… I can sit with you until they get there." She looked over the library windows, the iron-grey of their night sky. "It's so quiet and dark in here. Ah, maybe I could help you stay awake, if you'd want that."
He shook his head. "It's fine."
"Oh." Karin hesitated. "That was a no, right?"
"I won't stop you."
"Oh!" Karin immediately perked up. "Well, thanks. Ah…" She looked over his makeshift bed. "Hm. Give me a moment."
She disappeared into the shelves and seconds later he heard the sound of something heavy sliding over carpet. He heard an unfortunate bump, a muffled curse, and then Karin scooted by with a comfortable lounge chair.
She pushed it up against his own couch, setting both armrests next to each other. That was a comfortable amount of space, he thought. A wide enough boundary. "Figured you weren't gonna, ah, wanna move over," she said, dropping down onto the chair and tucking her legs beneath her.
Sasuke and Naruto were—well, they were still walking. There wasn't much to be said of them. Karin scooted over closer, leaning up against her chair's armrest. She threw a quick glance at him before settling in, sinking down further into the cushion.
"I guess I was wrong then," she eventually said, peeking over at him again. "About—well. You know."
"Pardon?"
"I thought this—that having the mirror would only be worse for you. You seem happier, though. You—" She paused, her mouth twisting. "You aren't bothered at all."
"You underestimated me."
"I did. But I'm glad I did." When he frowned, she held her hands up defensively. "Er—I mean, I don't want you to be unhappy. I'm glad that you proved me wrong. I, ah. I like happy endings." She shifted her weight, leaning closer on the armrest. "So I mean—you could probably imagine why I wanted one for myself so bad, right?"
He leveled a careful look at her, but let her comment stand. They were sharing a nice evening, weren't they? Relitigating old matters would only complicate it.
"I know that bridge Sasuke is crossing," Itachi said instead. "That river seems low now, but in the summers, when there's been lots of rain, it rises all the way to those rocks on the shoreline."
Despite the late hour, they both could see it clearly—Sasuke was walking firmly in the center of the bridge, but Naruto was balanced precariously along its stone ledges, his arms spread out to hold him steady.
The water below was slow, sluggish. Calm waters, best left undisturbed.
Karin was listening quietly—she seemed to understand that he was doing more than filling empty silence. "Alright."
Itachi continued. "The current is nearly impossible to fight in those moments. I have—I had a friend who is a very strong swimmer. He wanted to try it once, to see if he could fight the current and swim across the river. It'd been a challenge for him. A way to show that he'd become a better swimmer. I talked him out of it, of course. Walking over it was far less satisfying, but as strong as the current was—if he lost his focus or control for even a moment it would have pulled him under, or dashed him against the rocks. He would have drowned."
Karin nodded along slowly, waiting for him to reach some kind of conclusion.
"It is sometimes wiser to admit a challenge is beyond you and walk away from it, especially when the risk of it overtaking you is so great."
"I see." She gave him a crooked smile. "Well, I never learned how to swim anyway. No water here for me to ever try it. Maybe, ah, you could teach me some time."
"Maybe."
"There's nowhere to swim here but—well, there's plenty of places to cook, too. I don't know how to cook either, you know." Karin paused, choosing her next words carefully. "You asked a while back—ah, about the kitchen. Why it looked different."
"… I did."
"Well. It was one of the first rooms I asked for when I, uh, came here. It's supposed to look like my mom's kitchen, the one she used to have in her house. I wanted to remember what her kitchen looked like so I—I had one made here. One that looked just like hers. I don't remember it anymore—what the original kitchen looked like. It was all so long ago…"
Karin gestured as she talked, waving her hands like she was swatting thoughts away. "I—I changed a few things when I got a little older. It'd been stupid of me, but I wanted it to look, well, nicer. Fancier, since I could make it that way. Now I don't know how to put it back." She laughed, a little nervous. "Sometimes it's like that, you know? You do something and—you wanna go back and undo it, but it's too late. You know?"
Her busy hands threw long, dramatic shadows over him—they blended together at the fringes of the candlelight, mixing in the darkness.
"It's a clear night tonight," Itachi said. He reached forward, running his finger down the center of the mirror, widening its perspective. There was something comforting in the biting cold—something lively. Something sharp to keep him awake and focused. "Not a single cloud."
"I—" Karin dropped her head, muffling her laugh into the arm of her chair. It was an odd laugh, a strange mix of amusement and relief, a hint of exasperation. "Subtlety isn't your strong suit, is it?"
"It's been a while since I've had decent company."
"Yeah, yeah." Karin readjusted her glasses. She turned on her knees, putting her full weight on the arm rest between them and leaning over the boundary, almost spilling onto his bed. "And you don't want me to open my mouth and ruin that illusion; I get it." Before he could refute it, she shook her head. "Let me say this and I'll behave, okay? Please?"
"Okay."
"Okay." Karin shifted. "I—I wasn't like you. I didn't have people who missed me when I, ah, came here. I initially had used the mirror to—to look back at where I used to live, like you've been. I thought… Well, I thought they'd miss me, you know? That people would be looking for me, trying to save me." She shook her head. "But no one ever did. None of them even tried."
"Continue."
"It—I mean, I understand why you'd want to not talk about all this. I just figure, I might as well get this out, you know? Since we're here together and—and because things have been good. It was… After I came here, it was like I'd never even existed. I just disappeared and as far as they were concerned everything was fine. Nothing changed."
She swallowed, staring down at the hands clasped in front of her. "But it's not like that for you, huh? They—your family, your brother, they miss you. They think about you."
"Where are you going with this, Karin?"
"Well. I mean, I want to apologize. So, ah, here it goes." She laughed, high and nervous, before clearing her throat.
"I'm sorry you're stuck here with me. I really am. I'm—I don't regret what I did. I'd do it all again in a heartbeat. Still, I'm sorry that, ah, I took you away from your family, and your friends." She glanced up at him but immediately looked back down again. Shame, maybe. Nerves. "I—you know I have my reasons, and that there's stuff I can't talk about. But—I promise now that I'm gonna do whatever I can to—to put you in the best position I can."
It always seems to come to that—Karin's unspoken rules, all of the things she cannot say to him. He could only ever take them at face value, and yet… If he had her reasons, her unknown dilemmas, would he have acted as she had? To escape solitude? To return to Sasuke?
"What you've done is selfish." But hadn't he done the same? Hadn't he taken lives before, in defense of himself, of his village?
To return to Sasuke?
"I can't forgive you, Karin. Not as long as I'm here."
"I didn't expect that you would, honestly." She let out a great, relieved sigh, and her body sagged against the arm rest. "But that wasn't so bad after all, huh?" Karin pulled her arms back and tugged down the skirt of her dress, once again lying back against her chair. Her entire body seemed looser, light.
She hummed. "They're at some kind of gate—is that their final stop?"
Itachi's eyes jumped back to the mirror. Sasuke and Naruto were at the entrance to the city, impatiently knocking while some guard or other was roused from their sleep. "Ah—it seems to be."
"Oh. Well ah, you probably wanna get some sleep, then, huh?" She didn't wait for his response.. "I'll, ah, head back to my room and let you do that…"
She smiled back at him before climbing out of her chair and straightening her nightgown. "I think things are gonna be okay, you know?"
"Have a good night, Karin."
Her smile widened. "I think I will."
.
.
.
It was not okay.
At least, it did not appear to be entirely okay.
Karin did not come the next morning. Itachi barely slept—Sasuke and Naruto were immediately escorted to a small inn where they both simultaneously collapsed onto the same bed. They slept soundly, but Itachi's own sleep was restless.
He let Karin's candle burn and watched as its shadows grew smaller and softer, just as the lights that lined the walls of the library were beginning to grow anew. At some juncture between twilight and dawn, Itachi finally fell asleep, stepping into waters so shallow he did not dream, and woke several hours later after sunrise.
He saw no use in going back to bed, and so he went about his routine as normal, showering and dressing before returning to the library. There was little going on in the village, and Shisui was hardly any busier—he'd stayed the night at an older woman's house, and was preoccupied that morning with repairing her fence.
Itachi wondered how much longer Shisui could keep at it—how much longer he'd search for him before he realized he'd never be able to find him.
Sasuke slept late, but even by the time he and Naruto stumbled down the stairs of their inn, bleary eyed and sore, Karin still had not come back. Breakfast passed and then lunch; Itachi walked alone to the kitchen and ate his lunch alone, waiting at the kitchen table with the mirror.
There was no afternoon tea.
He decided against trying to find her—he didn't know where she'd gone or why. If she'd gone somewhere in the house he could follow.
He focused instead on what was within his power: she would have to return eventually. When she did, he might have something to offer her. Not an apology, because here was nothing for him to apologize for, but perhaps something kind—a return of her own kindness. A sign of good will.
It was, truly, as innocent as that.
The glass blurred under his fingers and, for a moment, he saw Karin's friend Suigetsu, head bowed, hands in his pockets. It appeared cold, though Itachi could see very little of his background beyond tall, stone walls—Suigetsu was wearing multiple layers, excess fabric bunched together under the straps holding his enormous sword still.
He wasn't alone, either. Before him, situated on some sort of throne, was another man, wrapped in a long cloak, its hood pulled low. The man jerked his head up suddenly, his eyes narrowing.
His slitted eyes were poison-purple and leathery scales trailed along his jaw.
A spellcaster. No… The spellcaster. It had to be—spellcasters were solitary among their own kind. If Suigetsu was involved with any spellcaster… There would only be one.
The spellcaster turned to Itachi—not facing him or towards him, but directly at him. As if—as if they were making eye contact.
The spellcaster smiled, a close-lipped, self-assured smirk. "No, I don't think there needs to be any of that." His words were perfectly clear—somehow audible through the mirror, though the mirror had never once seemed capable of transmitting sound.
The spellcaster raised his hand and waved, almost as if he were saying goodbye, and the mirror went blank.
Itachi's horrified reflection was all that remained.
AN: :)
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