Before I continue with the story, I need to explain something.
I did not faint. Children spooked by something they saw in the shadows when older kids dared them to enter the local graveyard after midnight faint. Girly girls who've just received news that the love of their lives has died faint. Old folks who've been out in summertime heat too long faint. But highly trained, S-rank criminals do not faint.
What really happened was this. As we were returning to the base, Itachi insisted on sticking to me like glue. As such, the knife he was carrying in his hands kept poking me. It wasn't painful, since I had both my cloak and several layers of bandages between the weapon and my skin, but what do you normally do when something's poking you? Right, you move away from it.
Of course the paranoid side of the weasel took this the wrong way, and demanded that I quit moving before he was forced to "sever one of your legs so you can't move away." I was about to explain the problem to Itachi, but then looked at the knife and decided to keep my yap shut. What was I supposed to say?! "Itachi, I'm grateful for your protection and all, but you keep stabbing me, so could you kindly back off a bit or put up the knife?"? I happened to want to live long enough to see the next morning, thank you very much.
Once again, he took this the wrong way, and inquired as to whether or not I thought he was going to hurt me. My first thought was something along the lines of, "Oh crap," but with a lot more expletives. My second thought was to keep my mouth shut, because there was no right answer to that.
And then, he shocks me and says he has no intention of hurting me. Huh? And again I say, huh?
Itachi hurts things. Itachi likes to hurt things. Yet I, the person who's done more than most people to merit a painful demise by his hands, is someone he doesn't want to harm. HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE?! It makes no sense. That's like an evil cat that chases down helpless mice, yet refuses to hurt the big, fat mouse with no legs that's right in front of him! Except I'm not fat. And I have my legs. And Itachi's more of a weasel...I really should leave the metaphors to him.
Obviously, my mind needed peace and quiet to comprehend this message, like deep meditation. As such, my brain quickly shut down my body to cut off all unnecessary uses of my mind (such as maintaining consciousness) and reduced my body to a near comatose state similar to that of a possum playing dead in the middle of the road.
As you can see, this was CLEARLY different from fainting.
Well, I woke up from my...meditation spell a while later, back in the base. Not surprisingly, I was in the hospital wing. I looked around at my surroundings, trying to see if Kakuzu or anyone was around. Nothing to my left, nothing up ahead- and then I saw him.
Itachi Uchiha was sitting in a chair beside my bed, reading a book with a bored expression on his face. "You're up," he murmured, eyes never even leaving the page.
I gave him a small hum in reply, still not really sure why he was in here. "Have you been here long?" I asked.
He nodded slightly. "Ever since you fainted, which was roughly 18 hours ago."
I was about to correct him on the whole fainting thing, when he mentioned how long I'd been out. "You've just been sitting there reading the whole time?!"
"Hn."
"...That was thoughtful." He nodded, and calmly turned the page in his book. "Seriously though, Itachi...thanks."
He finally turned his head to look at me, and gave me a surprised look, like I should have expected him to wait for me here instead of in our room like he normally did after I'd been hurt. "You're welcome."
Of course Kakuzu walked in right then and told us to "Cut the sweet talk, lovebirds." Itachi calmly informed him that we were not love birds, added a death threat should Kakuzu ever refer to us as that again, and then went back to reading.
But then, when our resident banker started to redo my bandages, Itachi kept looking up at him, and I could swear he was glaring at Kakuzu. For what, touching me? That couldn't have been it. Then again, given Itachi's odd behavior lately, anything was possible.
While Kakuzu was redoing the gauze on my side, Itachi came closer to see the banker at work. And by closer, I mean he climbed onto the bed and got on his hands and knees to peer over my lap and look at the banker's handiwork. I was starting to think that my partner, although demanding plenty of personal space around himself, had no problem invading the space of others.
After Kakuzu finished up and left, I expected Itachi to either go to our room, or return to his seat. Ever the one to surprise me, he did neither, and instead stretched out beside me to nuzzle his face into my pillow. Knowing that telling him to move was suicide, I just scooted over. "Tired?" I asked as I looked down at my new bandages.
He never answered, and when I looked to him again, the weasel was sound asleep. I smirked and decided that this was his way of telling me that it was my turn to keep watch. Accepting this, I took my post, letting my eyes wander about for any intruders, but occasionally looking back to Itachi. For a murdering, sadistic psychopath, he's cute when he sleeps.