Chapter 3
You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone forever.
Her heart is beating so fast she feels faint. The person she has been waiting for for five years has just appeared before her, and Naruto can scarcely wrap her head around it.
"Hello Naruto." Itachi's voice is deeper, smoother and resonant.
It's not familiar at all.
She glances wide-eyed back and forth between him and the companion she recognizes from the bingo book: S-rank Hoshigaki Kisame.
"You're the people Jiraiya warned me of." She states, her voice sounding to her ears as if she is underwater. Naruto hadn't known Itachi was in the organization. "Akatsuki."
"We need you to come with us, Naruto."
She stares up at Itachi's sharingan, looking right into them no matter how much damage he could do to her. Naruto searches their depths for something familiar, for a hint of the boy she knew but can't find him. Itachi has never looked at her with these eyes before; these emotionless, uncaring red eyes. The memories of her childhood are of gentle black filled with kindness.
She traces the long stress marks on his face and the dark bags that precede them with her gaze. The paleness of his visible skin.
"Are you… alright? Have you been eating and sleeping?"
The genuine concern in her voice takes both S-rank missing-nin by surprise.
"Umm, what." Hoshigaki deadpans.
The kunoichi barely registers him as she swallows the lump in her throat, unable to stop staring at Itachi. He's been in a criminal gang these past years, for who knows how long, doing god knows what. Itachi looks… so blank that Naruto wants to cry for him.
A hand appears in her line of vision and Naruto startles as she realises it's her own. She pulls it back instead of reaching for Itachi like she so desperately wants to.
"Do you… do you need the ninetails? I'll give it to you, if you ask." The Uzumaki peers up at Itachi from beneath red lashes, and the Uchiha flinches like she has just slapped him.
The Kiri-nin looks between the two of them – his partner with his subtly furrowed brows and clenched jaw, and the jinchuuriki's unwavering stare and intense focus – with dawning realisation.
Neither spare him a glance. Naruto holds Itachi's gaze fearlessly, for that is an emotion he has never inspired in her. No matter how foolish it is to meet an Uchiha's eyes, no matter what he has done; she trusts him.
"Itachi." More breath than sound, his name is traced out with a longing so intense it makes even her embarrassed to hear it spoken aloud. Held within her tone are a thousand things she wants to say.
Said man unclenches and clenches his jaw behind his tall collar, as if trying and failing to form the correct words for this situation.
"Right." Kisame's beady eyes darts back and forth. "I'll leave this… whatever it is to you, Itachi-san. I think I'll go fight the toad stage or something."
When his footsteps can no longer be heard in the long hotel corridor, Naruto speaks again.
"How… how are you?" The pleasantry – no less sincere in its mundanity – comes out uncharacteristically shy.
"Naruto –" He swallows down whatever words were on his tongue. "You do understand your situation, don't you?"
She nods slowly.
"Then you know why I have come for you."
"Yes." She feels a pang of hurt, because he is here not for her but for the passenger she carries.
"You know what I have done." His words are still spoken in that emotionless voice, and Naruto suddenly hates it.
"I don't care."
Her bold statement rings in the air, condemning her with its monstrous callousness. How cruel she is, to brush aside such immense tragedy for her own selfishness.
"If you killed them, you must have had a good reason."
Already within grabbing distance, she takes a step closer.
"I know you, Itachi." Naruto is almost pleading, begging him to stop lying to her with his indifference. She knows he cares.
He must care, or else what would be the point of her existence?
"If giving you the kyuubi will help you, I'll do it."
With his sharingan reading all the twitches of her body, the pulse at her neck, the earnestness in her eyes; Naruto knows Itachi will be able to see her truth.
"The extraction will kill you."
"I know."
He is silent in the wake of her declaration and Naruto takes a shuddering breath, suddenly aware of how much of her heart she is baring. How vulnerable she is making herself to him in this moment.
"Itachi." Naruto swallows, her throat suddenly tight even as her eyes blink back moisture. "For me, the only good thing in Konoha – was you."
All those endless days that she was forced to live, dreary and dull, as if the sun had been snatched from the sky and the earth had been plunged into never-ending nightfall. Like all the colours had bled from the world.
Naruto had once believed that nothing could be more unbearable than the loneliness of her early childhood; but the days after Itachi had left her - they were excruciating.
It is better to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all.
People who say this have not experienced what Naruto has. The only reason she has persevered for so long, the only hope she has left in her life – is him.
Naruto reaches out a hand, slowly, telegraphing her movements aiming for Itachi's own. She wraps smooth fingers around the shinobi's rough and worn ones, laden with small scars and callouses from handling weapons that the ninetails prevents her from gaining. Lifting it, she tilts back the heavy cloth that cloaks him to reveal his wrist – the wrist that she had once tied their friendship bracelet around.
The one Itachi is still wearing, identical in every way to her own apart from the wear and tear that has frayed the leather.
She can't hold back the sob that wrenches itself from her throat upon seeing the bracelet, the crimson red band intertwined with the black. The Uzumaki spiral and Uchiha fan sit side by side, the paint faded and wood worn.
Here is physical proof – Itachi is still wearing it, he cares.
He always had and still does.
Naruto steps closer, right before the older teen who is still standing unmoving and allowing her to manhandle him. The Uzumaki glances up, looking into Itachi's intense red gaze before wrapping her arms around him, burying her face into his chest. He is much taller now, still heads above her and he smells different – no longer of kunai polish and forests, but of herbal tea and metal.
The Uchiha shakes slightly in her hold, and Naruto realises that he is the same as her. He's been in an organisation of S-ranked criminals and has probably had even less friendly physical contact than she, these years since he'd left. She presses herself closer.
"I missed you, Itachi." Naruto whispers into his cloak, the cloak Jiraiya had told her to fear and flee from, the one she is so glad turned up.
For an indeterminably long moment, he stands still, and Naruto fears he will push her away; fears it like she has never feared anything in her life.
And then lean arms are wrapping around her as well, and Itachi's chin comes to rest atop her head.
"I missed you too." He whispers back.
Happiness blooms something fierce inside of her, a burning within so strong that the sensation makes her tremble. And for the first time in years, Naruto cries, and it is because she is so, so happy.
The day that Uchiha Itachi comes to her looking for the ninetails is the day Naruto forgives the Fourth Hokage for sealing the demon within her.
He gave her a lifetime of fear and unbearable loneliness.
But he also gave her back Itachi; the only person who truly matters in this entire wretched world.
Cradled in his arms, Naruto never wants to leave. She's not sure how long they stay like that, but eventually Itachi pulls back and she lifts her head to look into dark eyes. Her heart leaps with joy at the return of familiar black, but the look on his face fills her with foreboding.
"I… am very glad to see you Naruto, but we don't have much time before Kisame returns."
The kunoichi instantly knows his intentions and her hands cling to his cloak as he tries to pull away.
"You're going to stay with them." She says, quietly devastated and hope deflating even as she knew Itachi must have some plan he's carrying out.
"I cannot leave the Akatsuki. I have things to do there."
Her heart pangs in her chest.
"Why?" She asks plaintively. "No one is forcing you to remain, are they? And I know you don't want to collect the bijuu, or you would have knocked me out without me even knowing you were here. Why must you stay?"
But Itachi is shaking his head, looking regretful but resolved. "There is far more at play than you know. This is how it must be."
If being stabbed or screamed at, Naruto doesn't cry. But when it comes to matters of the heart, whether it be happiness, loneliness or pain; she can fill oceans with her tears.
"Itachi." Naruto cries. She tries with all her might, but she cries.
She hates this pathetic, weeping person she has become. The girls in her academy class would giggle together over their crushes, swooning over their cold dispositions and proclaiming how 'love would change them'.
If this is the change love brings, then Naruto does not want it. Not when it renders her incomplete, like a shell of a person who clings to the memory of the one who left her behind.
Hands comes up to wipe the tears that have started to drip down her face, and his gentleness only causes her to cry harder. Why must he treat her so kindly if he is just going to leave?
"Naruto…" Itachi looks helpless in the face of her tears, and she tries to stem them.
"I'm sorry." He breathes.
She does not want his apologies. She just wants her friend back.
Naruto's resolve firms and she opens her mouth to argue further when the door is suddenly slammed open.
She jolts – not having realized when they'd migrated into the bedroom or when the door had closed – and Itachi takes a step back, snatching his hands away like he's been burned.
Standing in the doorway is Kisame and Jiraiya, and Naruto suddenly, surreally, feels like teenagers caught in the bedroom by their parents.
For a long moment, everyone simply stares – the two intruders stopping mid-scuffle (had she even missed them fighting!?) – due to sheer incomprehension at what they just saw, and her and Itachi to collect their emotions.
"Kisame." That awful blankness is back, his voice flat and toneless. "We're leaving."
Naruto's heart constricts, her eyes darting to Itachi's own in sheer panic.
Crimson eyes stare into hers, the dark tomoe in them swirl, and her vision goes black.