Scroll 6: Blissful Oblivion
Neither Mai nor Sasuke woke from their Mangekyou Sharingan induced comas until Tsunade, the Fifth Hokage, was brought back to the village by Naruto, Sasuke's teammate that Mai hadn't yet had the fortune to meet. Seeing as Tsunade had been brought back by Naruto, it was only natural that Sasuke and Kakashi be attended to first.
Mai was attended to directly after, though, as Sasuke had, essentially, pitched a fit with such a fury that all civilian nurses designated to his care were pulled from his room for their safety. Shinobi medics were called in to calm the boy down and sedate him, if necessary.
"Where's Mai?"
A male medic gently pushed him down, glancing rather worriedly at a coworker.
"Uchiha-san, please calm down. Everything is alright. There is nothing-"
"Where's Mai?"
This time, Sasuke did not miss the significant glances the two men exchanged and in his wild rage, batted one of them away and kicked and struggled and made serious attempts to break his remaining captor's arm until he was freed.
"Get away from me!"
The images of his family, broken and bleeding at his feet, his entire clan, slaughtered like animals by his once beloved brother were still reeling in his mind. It was the same. It might as well have been that night still. Maybe everything had been a lie, maybe he wasn't older, maybe he had just been trapped in the illusion for so long that it felt like he was years older.
All he could think of was Mai, frighteningly still on the ground, empty eyes gazing off into some unknown place, her throat bound in a ribbon of blood.
Itachi's Nightmare Realm. It was the same as the first time.
"Mai!"
He struggled more fiercely against what he now realized were straps cuffing him to the hospital bed and a blur shot across the room, oddly familiar in it's chakra signature, and there was a prick at his neck and everything, for him, grew dim.
Mai was dreaming. She had been stuck in an endlessly repeating loop of memory, and it was…beautiful. And she had been trapped in it for so long that she forgot that it wasn't real.
"Mai!"
"Mai!"
She turned around abruptly, kunai in hand, poising it at her "attacker's" throat. Itachi grinned at her, grinned! and gently took her by the wrist and eased her out of her defensive stance. A little sheepishly, she stowed her weapon.
"I'm sorry. You startled me."
He shook his head rather softly.
"No, it was my fault. I know you like to come to this training ground because it's secluded. You weren't expecting anyone to come up so near you. I apologize."
She flushed at the sincerity in his expression-honestly, the man was too much-and brushed a few loosened strands of hair that had escaped her rather hastily done bun.
"It's fine." She said, looking at the ground.
Itachi looked about the grounds, placing his hands in his pockets.
"Walk with me?"
There wasn't any way in the world that Mai, even as a joke, might have said no.
"Of course."
They walked together, in the woods they had played in as children, trained in as adolescents, and frequented now as fully-fledged ninja. Beams of moonlight played through the leafy boughs of the trees, catching on the ornaments in Mai's hair, illuminating Itachi's kind, if solemn face. They walked in the silence they were used to. A companionable one, if one born out of the inability to speak of what they each were thinking.
Then-
"As of tomorrow, we will be engaged."
It startled her so that it was all that she could do in her power to not actually jump.
"Ah-yes."
The tension was rife in the air between them, and somewhere a bird crooned. The light was dimming in the onslaught of night, and something about the way the shadows of the trees grew longer and longer before her eyes made Mai's throat tighten, not in any sort of fear, but in some nameless anticipation.
She walked with him in silence, stopped when he stopped, and looked ahead as he did, toward the path that lead back to the village. Before she had a moment to even sigh rather shakily in response to her rather foolish confirmation of his statement, she felt something settle gently on her shoulders, a loving embrace of cloud-light silk.
"I don't know that I could forgive myself for letting you catch a cold on any night, let alone this one."
He said it so gently and sincerely that Mai actually turned blushed.
"I wouldn't hold you responsible."
He glanced away from her at the sky, quietly walking beside her.
"No, you wouldn't."
He turned back to her and smiled.
"But what kind of man would I be then?"
She smiled a little warmly, her cheeks pink, but she swallowed when he turned his attention back to the moon that so sweetly bathed them in pooling silver light. His face became grave then, drawn as the thought that had been troubling him assaulted him with guilt once more. And he glanced over at her, and was struck by her beauty in the light.
Silver played about her hair of which several strands had come loose, and her ornaments of precious stones glimmered like stars in the darkness. As if under some spell cast upon him by her pale, illuminated face, he reached for her and pulled out her pearl, gold, and ruby hairpins, sighing in some agonized contentment as her hair, dark as the shadows around them, tumbled over her shoulders like liquid night.
"Itachi-"
They were stopped not in a clearing, but in the shadow of a huge tree, unable to move because it was very clear to them both that a line previously untested had been crossed.
And Itachi allowed himself a second, little sin and pulled her into his arms.
"Tomorrow, we are to be engaged. And I must be forthright with you now, Mai, and tell you that I can't bear the thought of it."
What kind of man would he be then, after all, if he ensnared the woman he loved in the politics of the clan for his own selfish fulfillment.
"If you feel nothing for me other than what you would feel for a comrade or brother, tell me now, before I let this weakness overcome me again so that I can end this."
Mai had grown up with the knowledge that Uchiha Itachi, the son of Uchiha Fugaku and his wife, Mikoto, would one day be her husband. She had been raised to be his bride, and in all the time she had spent with him, she had fallen in love with him. And she had thanked the gods for pairing her with him and thus making her duty to the clan earnestly fulfilled.
And now he didn't want her. Or rather, he loved her so much he couldn't bear to want her, not at the cost of her freedom.
"Itachi…"
She buried her face in his chest, not wanting him to see the tears that were threatening to spill onto her cheeks in pure, unadulterated felicity.
"I love you."
Mai was lost. Lost in a kaleidoscope of memory, ever-changing, ever-lovely. Like the soft colors of spring falling about her enraptured conscious in a whirlwind of intoxicating scent.
"Can I help you with that?"
Mai jumped at hearing the voice.
"Itachi! You-how did you get in here?"
He chuckled under his breath at the rather modest outrage in her voice and devoted himself to helping her with her outer kimono, pulling it shut gently against the soft whiteness of her inner robe with a dexterity born of practice.
"I'm an ANBU Captain, Mai. It's not exactly beyond me."
She sighed huffily but decided there wasn't much use to booting him out now.
"It's bad luck for the groom to see his bride before the ceremony. It supposedly foreshadows inevitable tragedy. And you waltz right in here like it's nothing!"
He smiled into her slender neck.
"Luck? Luck is unnecessary. I have you, what else could possibly matter?"
She swatted him away with a sigh.
"You are incorrigible. It should be a sin, putting on that sort of suavity and charming your way out of everything. Is this what I have the rest of a lifetime to look forward to?"
He deftly put something in her hair, ignoring her attempts at chastisement, knowing she was secretly smiling and no more firm in her disapproval than a puddle of water he might use for his jutsu. The black opal hairpin was a myriad of colors in her hair, like some sort of damascene fire burning fiercely in the light.
"What's that?"
He stopped her hand, a barely noticeable look of amusement on his face.
"You're not allowed to see it until tonight. It's my gift to you."
She looked at him then, her eyes meeting his in the mirror, and sighed, not in a melancholy way, but in an almost frightened way, so overcome was she with her joy.
"I love you, Itachi."
He brought her hand to his mouth and kissed it, causing her to shiver as he kept hold of it and knelt at her side. He laid his head in her lap.
"We'll be married today."
She nodded, closing her eyes and simply feeling him there.
"We will."
And as she sat, he looked up at her and wondered if she would ever know how much, precisely, he loved her, how fiercely that love struck him at times, and how devoted he was, always, to her being. How much it meant to him, to have spent time in her presence, to have kissed her, held her, loved her, and now, at last, to tie her life to his.
It was a quiet, ardent love that they shared, and perhaps they would have been surprised to find that in that moment, they were having the very selfsame thought.
And they sat there, hardly breathing, basking in each other's nearness until the time came for Itachi to disappear, and Mai turned bravely to meet the women of the Uchiha clan as they came to attend her and bring her, at last, to her wedding day.
She didn't want it to ever stop. Because if it did, now, she would surely die.
Itachi walked with an aura of icy cool about him, of indifference as he stood near the proctors, waiting to be assigned a new squad member from the most recently passed group of ninja. Inside, though, he was on fire. He had once been tested, just as these rookies had, and he knew what the examination was like.
Never before had he had any sort of investment in these exams. It was all the same to him, pass or fail, live or die. But this time…this time was different.
"The lieutenant captain of squad six has been promoted to captaincy."
Itachi watched Takewa Ryuu walk over to the space in the line of captains reserved for squad fourteen with little a care. He had lost his lieutenant. A replacement was sure to come quickly. With little other thought, he turned back to the group.
The Head Proctor spoke for a bit yet, assigned a few rookies to squads one through five respectively, and then it was time for squad six. Itachi was disquieted, now, having yet to see any sign of Mai in the groups, and against his will he began to grow concerned.
"We promote Yushiki Hotaru to the rank of ANBU and assign him to squad six to fill in the vacancy of left-wing."
A fair-haired man with a mask shaped rather like a fish's stalked up to the proctor and allowed his bare arm to be tattooed with the swirling blank ink of the ANBU sign. Itachi looked away, feigning disinterest. Mai. Where was she?
Yushiki Hotaru stood when it was done and went to stand with his new squad's right wing. A woman came up to the proctor and bowed and Itachi's breath caught in his throat.
"We promote Uchiha Mai to the rank of ANBU and assign her to squad six to fill in the vacancy of lieutenant captain."
She stood, unflinching, as she received her tattoo and walked silently to her place at his side. He closed his eyes for a moment, resisting the urge to take her hand in his own. She had made it. She was safe. And she had done her clan proud.
They stood without speaking, backs straight in resolute discipline as more names were called. Itachi didn't dare look at her. She made no move to look at him. And when the ceremony was over the crowd scattered, and Itachi and Mai were left, at last, alone.
They stood for a moment more, rigid, until Mai knelt in the shinobi way before him.
"Itachi," she said, looking at the ground. "I've followed you all my life, and now I have reached you. Please allow me, now, to fight by your side, as your lieutenant. Please accept me…Captain."
He reached gently for her and pulled her to her feet, the relief he felt overwhelming his bones as he stood there, burying the urge to pull her into his arms back into his innermost consciousness, where it had to belong.
"Always."
How she had felt then, when he raised her up, when he accepted her as a part of his squad. It had been her greatest dream, to stand beside him, and he had, at last, let her.
"Very good Sasuke. Hell, you'll probably be my squad captain in a few years."
The little boy sauntered off to ask his mother excitedly if she had heard that, if she had heard what Mai said about being her future squad captain, and Itachi quietly came up behind Mai and took a hold of her hand, leading her to his room before the boy returned.
"You didn't have to do that."
Mai shrugged with a fond smile on her face, trying to ignore the shivery feeling that was racing up her spine at the close contact between her and the man she loved, the warmth of his hand around her own.
"I didn't mind. And he was so excited…"
Itachi shook his head, dropping her hand and walking to the door to close it, his eyes shutting for just a moment as he regretted the loss of contact. Mai averted her eyes from his form to the window, her thoughts in a similar place as she closed her hand as if too keep the feel of his there now that it was gone.
Weary from the mission, Mai flopped back onto his bed so that she lay across it. Itachi smiled rather subtly at this and sat beside her, leaning against the wall in his own tiredness.
"The Hokage will likely pull you in for questioning as well, you know."
Mai turned over on to her side so that she could observe him pensively. He looked worn. It had been a hard mission, it was true, but he never let any form of tiredness show on his face. Mai's face flushed suddenly, as if she was seeing him for the first time.
He was letting his guard down. In front of her.
"Well, yes. I'm your lieutenant. It's only natural for me to share responsibility with-"
"Mai…" He started, closing his eyes and tilting his head upwards a little, resting it against the wall, "you didn't have to do that."
It was what he had said to her earlier, and that perplexed her.
"Do what, Itachi?"
He was quiet for a moment and then sighed, and in that sigh seemed to release some sort of inhibition and looked at her in his grave, earnest way.
"You didn't have to take them on alone. We could have done it together, and we could have gone after the target together. We could have switched places. The target's guards were hardly troublesome. You could have left the spies to me."
Mai blinked in sudden understanding and then swallowed. She wasn't hurt, no, but she was something close to it, and she understood that he was just worried for his friend. But maybe she was hurt. Maybe she was.
"I…I know that I haven't gotten my sharingan yet, Itachi, and I know that I'm not as powerful a ninja as you, but I'm capable and I earned my rank. I trained for situations such as that, and I handled it. It was my duty."
She couldn't see why it was wrong, he thought. Of course she couldn't. He knew her. With a long-suffering, quiet sigh, Itachi watched her.
"I understand that you are capable. I simply meant that the risk you took was unnecessary, though I appreciate it, and that you mustn't take so much as your own burden. You are my lieutenant. It is my duty to look after you."
She wasn't understanding what he was saying.
"It's my duty to facilitate the execution of the mission and assist you in any way I can. You do too much, Itachi, and I want to help you. Is that wrong?"
No, he could have said, no it wasn't, but he didn't. He simply murmured an assent to her point and watched her lay her head back down with sad eyes. She didn't understand. She was capable. He, of all people, who championed her prowess to anyone who would dare look down on her, knew that. But could he help it if he loved her, if he couldn't bear the thought of her being hurt on his account?
"Itachi?"
Stiffening, he drew back the hand that was stroking the remnants of her shorn hair.
"…Yes?"
With a secretive smile, Mai shook her head and snuggled into the spicy, woodsy scent of his pillow and closed her eyes. Maybe, just maybe, she understood him after all.
Blissful Oblivion/End.