A/N: im just gonna toss this chapter out and hide.

But really, thank you to all who are still reading at this point-during the week, I only get a few hours a day of free time, which I split between reading, my other WIPs, and other stuff, and by the time I sit down to write it's often 10pm or later. If I could write these chapters fast, I promise I would, but alas.

I've mentioned this before, but I have my Trello account at trello b/cZnDLJn3/fics-wc. It isn't much, but I use it to keep track of my wips. You can see when I've last worked on something, the word count, and I've tried a system to mark what I think is close to being finished, but no promises there! Hopefully, though, being able to see what's going on behind the scenes will at least make the wait tolerable.

For too long, Itachi had taken for granted that Karin's mirror could allow him to see whatever he wanted without limitation, that there was no location so remote or secret that he could not follow.

Finding that the inverse was true - that he was also being watched - was more of a surprise than it ought to have been.

Itachi stood still for another moment, for the length of one slow, silent breath, but the library remained silent—there were no jeers from cloaked spellcasters, no groaning hallways. The mirror remained where he had thrown it.

It should have been reassuring, though he did not feel particularly at ease. The Ranger within him was scouring his knowledge of spellcasters like a harried student searching through a tome. The spellcaster hadn't seemed to have any sort of interest in him before, but would they consider it now?

Magical creatures were all bothersome, but none so much as a spellcaster. Spellcasters were far more intelligent and humanlike, though given enough time and enough use of magic, both of those qualities would gradually erode, and often all that remained was cruelty.

They were above all else territorial creatures, and he'd just unintentionally spied on one's lair. He was also fairly certain that he'd used their own magic to do it.

Inexplicably, though, the spellcaster had seemed more amused than angered with him. Certainly very little was implausible where spellcasters were concerned, but that left Itachi unable to say where that left him.

With a careful hand, he turned the mirror back onto its face, not quite certain of what he was looking for. The glass was grey and static, and even his straining eyes were unable to find anything lurking within it—not even a hint of his own reflection.

It had, for lack of better words, gone back to normal.

Whatever sufficed for normal anymore.

Karin had certainly hinted around the spellcaster's existence before, and Itachi had always been aware that a spellcaster existed, at least in some capacity, but up until that point, they had been incredibly easy to ignore, especially when Karin had always been a much more immediate concern of his.

That, he supposed, was his own error. Still, while he would have preferred their first encounter to be on his own terms, he could not say that—

Before he could finish the thought, the library doors crashed open. He flinched at the sudden noise, and the mirror fell from his hands.

Karin cried out, "Good morning, Itachi!"

She stood at the entrance to the library, her arms thrown out as if she were celebrating something, though her appearance suggested something significantly more worrisome than that. Her hair was loosely tied back into a ponytail, though chunks of it were coming loose, and there were faint smudges on her chin and cheek—something dark, like graphite.

Karin's broad smile drooped, and Itachi realized it was because of him—that she was reacting to him.

Or, rather, whatever it was she saw when she looked at him.

Lamely, he settled on a mumbled, "It is the afternoon now, Karin."

Karin's nose wrinkled. She looked away from him and down to the mirror, then frowned. "Am I interrupting something?"

He shifted awkwardly and pretended not to understand. "Hm?"

"You just…" Karin made a vague gesture with her hands as she struggled to come up with an explanation. "You looked at me funny," she finished.

"Oh. I see."

"I mean, don't get me wrong—you always give me weird looks, but you looked a little spooked for a second there."

"I see."

Karin gave him another odd look. "So…? Is there a reason for that, or…?

For a moment, Itachi considered whether it was worth it to recount what had just happened—though he had certainly been startled by the spellcaster, nothing seemed to have come of it. The spellcaster hadn't retaliated against him and, if Karin's own entrance was anything to go by, the spellcaster hadn't bothered her either.

Deciding that there was no point in mentioning it, Itachi waved away her concern. "I did not sleep well last night. I wanted to ensure Sasuke was safe before I retired, and I woke up early this morning to watch the progress of his investigation."

Karin had been far enough away when she arrived that, even if she had tried, she wouldn't have been able to see that he'd been doing nothing of the sort when she arrived.

Still, Karin didn't seem convinced.

If anything, her thin lips and unchanging expression made it seem as though she had already anticipated that he would tell her some half-truth.

"Your brother was already at that village when I left last night," Karin remarked, her tone unnervingly flat. "Did something else happen after that?"

"Nothing," he replied, though he was almost certainly too quick in saying it. One of Karin's eyebrows perked up, and he quickly realized the futility of trying to lie to her when she was somehow already aware of it. "You've been absent all day. Where have you been?"

Karin's eyebrow only climbed higher. "What, is all this fuss just because you missed me?" Her mouth split into a mischievous smile. "Maybe I should've stayed here with you last night, huh? Pushed the couches together, shared some body heat…"

"What? No, Karin—"

"You know, if that's what you wanted, all you had to do was ask."

Itachi withheld a sigh, then glanced back to the table where the mirror was still resting.

At the very least, if the spellcaster was still watching them, Itachi could take some comfort in knowing there was almost nothing of value to be gained from eavesdropping on him and Karin.

Karin snickered. "Listen, don't take me for an idiot. There's obviously something weirder than usual going on here, but let's put it on hold until later, okay? We've got some work to do."

"Work?" It was only for a split second, but he could not help himself from sneaking another look at the mirror. He couldn't decide if it would be better for him to stay behind to watch it, just in case the spellcaster reappeared. "Somewhere else in the building, I'm assuming."

"Yeah, so don't be too quick to head back to that," Karin warned him. "We gotta talk first." She shot him another suspicious smile when he looked back up to her. "And I'm starting to think you've spent too much time cooped up in here by yourself today anyway."

"What exactly did you have in mind?" he asked her. He recalled that she'd been absent all morning—it hadn't been the first time Karin had disappeared, but she had never bothered to explain what she had been up to. "What are you planning, Karin?"

Karin only grinned. "Well, let's just say it's about time I did something nice for you." As if reconsidering it, she cocked her head to the side, tapping her chin thoughtfully with a finger. "And it's about time I did something nice for me too, so we've both got a lot to look forward to today."

He could only grimace. "And what exactly does that entail?"

"Well, they're surprises, so obviously I can't tell you. The faster we hurry, though, the faster you'll find out!"

She'd clearly plotted it all out already—whatever it was that had her so excited. With another sigh, he abandoned his mirror at the table. The spellcaster seemed to have lost interest in him for the time being, and Itachi had no interest in waiting for them to change their mind.

Karin bristled when he passed her. "Hey! Don't just walk away like that! One of your surprises is right here!" She hurried after him. "Geez! Can you just wait?"

"You can catch up to me easily."

"That's not the—" Karin reached for his arm but stopped at the last minute, her hand shooting back as if she'd just narrowly avoided being burned. "You don't even know where you're going, you know," she grumbled. "The least you could do is stop trying to look so confident about it!"

He gave her a flat look and gestured down the hall. There were only two paths before them: his everyday route that led to an obvious dead end, and a new path that stretched out further than he could see.

"I think I can guess which it is."

She stuck her tongue out at him. "It's not all gonna be as easy as that, smartass, so don't get too far ahead of yourself."

"Ah." Oddly, there was something comfortable in her whiplash mood change, in the way all patterns eventually grew comfortable, he supposed.

Confident that she was now following behind him, Itachi continued down the hall.

Karin muttered something under her breath and fell into step alongside him.

"You've been at this for a while, it seems," he started. "Whatever it is you are working on."

"But time sure flies, doesn't it?"

With that unhelpful response, Karin skipped ahead of him. She only made it a few feet down the hall before she glanced back, checking over her shoulder like she was afraid he'd wander off.

She grinned again, her mood carried by a type of excitement that was unusual for her.

"Sorry that I wasn't around today. You must have really missed me, huh?" Karin turned around, walking backwards with long, confident strides. "Maybe you should turn in early tonight and catch up on your sleep." Her voice pitched lower, as sweet and sticky as the honey she would bring for his tea. "We can spend the whole day together tomorrow and talk."

"And I'm sure you'll be as helpful tomorrow as you are today," he responded, growing somewhat exasperated. Her secrecy lacked the impatience and animosity that had colored their interactions before, but it was clear that Karin was intentionally withholding something from him, and that she was reveling in it.

"You really must have missed me if you're that mad about it."

"Karin…" he warned. "I'm not interested in these games."

She shrugged. "Well, since you asked so nicely… I've got a little pet project that I started after you ended up here. I pitch in an hour or two here and there on it, you know, but it's not the kind of thing I do with too many eyes around. You'll understand when we get there."

They rounded a corner and entered a long hall filled with doors on both sides. He assumed they were similar to the other rooms he'd seen when he first arrived—largely empty, or filled with Karin's accumulated junk.

Karin's house had always been a strange simultaneous mix of much-too-large and much-too-small, but now - more so than before - he was especially aware of it, and the numerous exposures and blindspots created by her winding hallways and empty rooms. It had been easy to take their apparent solitude for granted, but now, with his growing awareness of the spellcaster's presence…

Well, there was a reason why he had always brought at least three other men with him when he'd been dispatched to eliminate spellcasters before.

The thought made Itachi's hands itch, and he instinctively felt for the empty spot at his hip where his sword had once rested. For all the years he had neglected it while he studied, it might as well have rusted away, but he'd never been sorrier to be without it than he was in that moment.

Karin noticed him staring. "Sometimes I just get pissed and make the house bigger for the hell of it," she said, gesturing toward the wall of doors. "It's useful in it's own way, but it's also kinda nice to know I can ruin someone else's day whenever I feel like it."

"Right." He could only assume the someone she was talking about was the spellcaster, though the thought of intentionally provoking them made Itachi uneasy. While he had gathered that she certainly was not fond of the spellcaster, he could only assume the feeling was mutual.

More importantly, while Karin appeared to have some immunity from the spellcaster's wrath, he could not be sure that he could say the same for himself.

Another thought occurred to him as they walked. "You are always aware of other people in your home, correct?"

"Yep! I mean, to a certain extent, I can—it's more of me having a general idea of where people are, what they're doing." Karin shrugged casually, though the movement seemed somewhat forced. "So if you're worried about me invading your privacy or whatever, don't get too worked up over it. It's not that specific."

Itachi grimaced. It certainly hadn't been what he'd had in mind, and it was a good deal less important than what he had had in mind, but he wasn't exactly fond of the implication.

"I said I couldn't tell, so stop making that face!"

"So—if that were the case, though, you would instantly know if there were anyone in here beside us?"

Karin frowned. "In here? Who the hell would be unlucky enough to end up here besides you and me?"

Before he could answer, Karin continued. "I mean, when your brother and his friend were here, I could tell where they both were. I had an idea of who they were, too, since everyone's… Everyone's just got their own feel to them, you know? Everyone is different." She gave him a pointed look. "I know you're fishing for something, so why don't you just go ahead and ask me directly?"

When he didn't respond to that, Karin grinned and held out her hands. "See? Look how helpful I can be. So be straight up with me, and I'll do the same for you."

"It's nothing," he muttered. Hers wasn't a perfect reassurance, but it was enough of one to satisfy him. At the very least, they'd have some warning before an ambush. "I was only curious about its other potential applications." If only to obfuscate the point, he added, "Especially outside of here."

Karin's lips pressed together. "Outside of here?" she asked. "How?"

"It was only a curiosity," he started, though he could see immediately that she was not satisfied by it. While he supposed it would only be fair to withhold as much from her as she had from him, he felt it wiser to find another topic to occupy her. "It would be useful for tracking magical creatures. Especially dangerous ones."

There was a strange pause. Karin's hands - which she'd been using to gesture as she talked - fell to her sides, and she paused in the middle of the hallway as she waited for him to catch up to her.

After a moment, Karin let out a huff and rolled her eyes. "I thought you said that you were done with the whole hero business? Are you having second thoughts now?"

"It was only a thought," he said. "I assumed you'd have an interest in it, given your prior interest in my own work as a Ranger."

Karin hummed a little too loudly. "You sure are interested in me today," she remarked. "Sure is a funny coincidence, huh?" A bit of levity had crept back into her tone, and he could tell she'd found an angle that pleased her.

Still, it left him a little wary. "A—what precisely do you mean by a coincidence, Karin?"

"Oh, I don't know, maybe after a heartfelt candlelit conservation and some almost-cuddling, you're starting to have some conflicted feelings, hm? Is that it?" Karin's voice gained in pitch as she continued. "And then you wake up this morning all alone, with all of that extra space on your makeshift bed—"

"Karin," he warned, "there's nothing to stop me from turning back around right now."

To both their ears, he could only imagine it'd had a distinct lack of bite.

"I mean, maybe, but we've already come all this way, so why bother with that?" Thankfully, though, Karin let the conversation die with that.

(In a way, he could not help but think that had been her intent all along.)

Karin led him around another corner, and the architecture underwent another dramatic shift, as if one home had simply been grafted onto another. The muted reds and browns that he had grown used to became a bright, childish pink, a sunny shade that was almost as dramatic as Karin's own hair.

"Here we go!" Karin announced. She counted down the doors until she apparently found the correct one, which she opened to reveal—well, Itachi was not entirely sure what they had walked into.

The ceiling had all but disappeared, rising at least several stories tall, and the tight hallways opened up into a large auditorium that was nearly as large as the dining hall at the University. Unlike the dining hall, however, it was largely empty, save for a tall spiral staircase at the other end of the auditorium, and several other hallways branching off in different directions.

The geography of it was dizzying, even though Itachi had long since stopped questioning the impossible construction of Karin's home.

"Is this it, then?" he asked. "Is this—is this what you have been talking about?"

"No, but we're getting close!" Karin called from several paces ahead of him.

He didn't think it was intentional, but her steps had picked up a certain anxious tick to them that had her walking slightly faster than him now.

"I had to plan all of this carefully," Karin offered. "It wasn't something I could just jump into, and I couldn't just announce it to you without… without there being risks involved."

"And what changed?"

"Nothing. Well, not nothing, but—it wasn't my first or favorite plan." Karin cleared her throat, though her voice noticeably wavered when she spoke again. "And things, uh, need to be timed a certain way, and there are only so many opportunities that I get to work in secret, which is why we kinda have to hurry a little bit to get through this in time. Suigetsu gave me a heads up, though! Today was a good day, so we should be fine."

"Your friend Suigetsu," Itachi repeated, as if he hadn't been spying on him that very morning. "The one with the sword?"

"Yeah, that bastard. But he was actually useful this time around, so you better be careful about what you say about him next!"

"Right."

Karin's eyes drifted away toward the end of the auditorium. "So then…" Her voice trailed off. Apparently unable to resist the urge any longer, she took a deep breath and sprinted off towards the stairway in the distance, her leather-soled shoes smacking against the marble. "So then try to keep up, okay!"

Having no other choice, Itachi followed.

Karin reached the staircase first, and began to race up it with a nimbleness that was, admittedly, unexpected of her.

"I can't help but feel as though you could have made this a significantly shorter journey, Karin," Itachi called to her once he reached the base of the stairs.

Karin's laughter echoed above him, spiraling around the narrow staircase as she climbed even higher.

Once, he might have assumed that Karin's alleged 'surprise' was some sort of trick, but now—now he was almost certain there was some kind of trick involved, but he could not help but feel as though it lacked the maliciousness of her earlier ones.

Or, at least, that any malice she had was aimed at someone other than himself.

Despite Karin's head start - and the several years it'd been since Itachi had been actively training - he quickly caught up to her, and Karin's pace began to slow until she was shuffling up the stairs, huffing as she went.

"A big house does come in handy, you know," Karin snapped when he approached. "The bigger the maze, the harder it is to track a rat."

"Perhaps next time you might still consider a more direct route," he commented. "You aren't a particularly hardy rat."

"I don't wanna hear it," Karin breathed. She forced a grimace. Her shoes slapped against the stairs, her steps growing louder as her movements became clumsier. "I could make your walk back to the library a mile longer and still be within the boundaries of our deal, you know."

Wisely, Itachi chose not to press the issue further.

"I'm surprised you weren't out of breath when you reached the library," he said instead. He looked down the side of the stairs. "Then again, considering how high we've climbed, I can only imagine this journey was a lot easier on the way back down."

Karin let out a huff that might've been a laugh. "It's worth it, I promise," she said, before taking in a deep breath and hopping up several more stairs. "But you sure took off after me. I haven't seen you move that fast since the time you tried to kill me."

"Well, I certainly haven't had a reason to."

There was, by his own estimate, at least three or four more floors' worth of stairs left until they'd reach the top, but instead of continuing further, Karin rounded onto the next landing.

The staircase spit them out at another long hallway, but Karin only traveled a few doors down before she stopped outside of one. There was nothing special to distinguish it from the others, but

Karin righted herself, suddenly turning serious. At least, however serious Karin could look when she was still breathing heavily, and her cheeks were flushed almost as dark as her hair.

She placed one careful hand on the handle and gave him a business-like nod. "We have to be quick, but I can explain everything later, okay? We—anything we might say or do might be overheard later, so I'll do my best to fill you in quickly, and we can work from there."

Her expression softened. "I just want to say that, ah, I think this'll be something we both can be excited about… And maybe you and I could talk a little about it later. Okay?" She nodded curtly without waiting for a response. "Okay."

Karin let out a long breath and threw open the door.

It was—well, he could not say precisely what sort of room it was meant to be.

Almost certainly, it was not what Karin was expecting to find.

"Wha—" Karin sucked in a breath. She took several quick steps into the room, broken glass crunching under her shoes. "This isn't—" The breath caught in her throat, and her hand gripped the front of her shirt. "How…"

Despite its current state, the room itself was fairly bland. It was largely empty save for a row of wooden cabinets along the wall and a cracked slab-like table in its center. The two halves of the table teetered over its base, as if they might collapse to the floor at any moment. The surface was littered with scorch marks, as if whatever had been there had been obliterated on the spot.

A heavy smell lingered in the air. Something like lightning, like ashes.

Like magic.

"What happened?" After a moment's consideration, Itachi followed Karin as she wandered around the room, trying his best to step around the debris. "This—I'm assuming this isn't what you intended to show me."

It was nothing like what Itachi had seen in the library before, when he'd previously tried to destroy Karin's books. The broken floor tiles and shards of glass remained stagnant, untouched by whatever spells had previously worked to repair the books he had torn into pieces.

"I fucked up." Karin's words were clipped, sparse. She had stopped in the corner of the room and was staring down at some contorted mess of metal. It looked like a ball of yarn, like it'd been stretched and wound into a giant knot.

Karin kicked it and it went skidding across the floor. Her shoulders slumped. "I wasted too much time screwing around, and Suigetsu—he was supposed to distract him, but…" Her hands clenched into fists. "Dammit."

She didn't specify who she meant by him, but her tone had enough fear and resentment in it that Itachi could guess who she'd meant.

Itachi skimmed his hand over the table top—the stone was slightly warmer than his hands, which seemed to indicate that whatever had happened couldn't have happened too long ago. Magic was seldom clean; there were always remnants of it left behind, scraps of heat or light where they shouldn't be.

"What were you doing in here? Karin?" He turned back to see Karin crouched on the floor, her arms wrapped protectively around her knees. It was an oddly defensive pose, an unexpectedly vulnerable looking one.

She was still staring at the deformed chunk of metal she'd kicked across the floor.

Slowly, Karin ran her hand through her tied-back hair, tugging gently on at the roots. She took in a long breath, and released it in one stuttering exhale.

"I'm sorry," she murmured, her voice almost too low for him to hear.

"You're—why?"

Karin let out a long breath. "He could've just made the room disappear, you know. Just—left me to wonder what happened. Guess this was more fun to him, let me come back to see all this." She laughed drily. "He's probably watching right now getting his kicks."

Itachi shifted, casting an uneasy glance back toward the open door. "Right now?"

She shook her head. "It's okay; he can't do anything about it. Bargains—you know. Bargains and promises and—and a whole lotta planning that doesn't amount to anything in the end, I guess! He just comes in and does what he wants, and I just sit here and can't do shit about it, and that's just the way things work!"

She fussed with the sleeves of her shirt, tugging them over her knuckles and stretching them out, her movements becoming even more frustrated.

Itachi could only make vague assumptions about what had actually happened, but he understood that Karin was angry, that she was in pain, and that there was no one else in her entire home who could offer her sympathy.

He didn't know what the proper thing to say would be, but he didn't need his mother's telling to know he ought to say something to comfort her.

Or, at the very least, to prevent her from doing something she might later regret.

But before he could act on that impulse, Karin let out an angry huff and stood, glaring up at the ceiling. He spent a moment trying to follow her line of sight before he realized she was directing her glare somewhere else.

At someone else.

Karin raised her fist. "Real funny, huh? Bet you're having a really nice laugh over this, aren't you, you ugly bastard?"

Bargains or not, the spellcaster did not seem to be a good person to provoke while they were both weaponless. "Karin, perhaps—"

Karin aimed a kick at one of the wooden cabinets along the wall, and the wood split with a loud crack. Satisfied by that, she aimed another kick at it, and then another, and another, until all that remained of the cabinet was a hole in the frame and a pile of splinters.

"It was useless anyway," Karin wheezed. She swiped her arm across her face, upsetting her glasses. "It just—" Unable to complete her sentence, she swung her fist at the wall. "Fuck."

Her cheeks were flushed red, her knuckles chewed red, and her eyes—her eyes had always been red, but they were ringed with it now, grown puffy at the edges.

And yet, Itachi said nothing. He did nothing. He did worse than nothing—he stood and he waited until Karin had destroyed everything that the spellcaster had left intact, and then he spoke.

"Perhaps we ought to go," he said.

Karin heaved a long sigh. "Yeah, I know." She turned toward the door, avoiding eye contact with him as she trudged into the hallway. "I'm sick of looking at this. Let's go."

"Right."

"I—I gotta cool down from this."

"I understand." He didn't truly, but he didn't want to start parsing the details just yet. "Is there—is there somewhere in particular you would like to be?"

"I don't care. Just not here."

"Okay." He shifted in the doorway, not entirely sure where to take the conversation from there. "Have you eaten?"

Karin shook her head. "Not yet. I wanted to get this all done today and wasn't really paying attention to what happened. Sorry, I—this probably looks crazy right now. Ah…" She ran another hand through her hair, enough hair escaping from her ponytail that she finally scowled and tugged the elastic out. "Sorry."

"Ah—it's fine." Itachi took one more look around the room, then pulled the door shut behind him as he stepped out into the hallway. "Let's go."

A/N: So! I've learned better than to make promises, but this... actually was a lot longer and i cut it in half to make it more manageable. So... I TECHNICALLY have a head start on the next chapter. We'll see!

As always, I love you all, and appreciate anyone who takes the time to leave kudos and comment!