Dreamcatcher

By Airyo

An Unexpected Reaction - 7

Usually, young women were very friendly to Itachi. He was quite aware that it was more due to his appearance than his status - he wouldn't be a very good ninja if he were still oblivious to that much.

Generally, young women were very eager to show gratitude to someone who went to the trouble of carrying their unconscious bodies home. Granted, he was also the likely perpetrator of her recent nightmares, but Itachi had tried to make up for that.

Which led to another point.

Most of the time, people didn't act as if a sincere apology was some sort of curse. The first time, he'd actually tried to do so formally, except Hinata had blanched, muttered something about getting Hiashi, to whom he'd just talked to, and fled. The second time, she'd practically told him to, in a phrase that Naruto liked to use so eloquently, "fuck off".

And, most people don't give Itachi whiplash from their personality shifts. (There had been that period when Team 7 hit puberty, but even that wasn't nearly so frustrating because he at least knew why his students had lost their minds.)

That was the problem, though. If he couldn't gauge her personality, he couldn't gain foothold in any of their conversations. She had seemed meek and timid, even fearful, and he had thought that direct eye contact triggered some sort of flashback. Yet then she had looked in him right in the eye as she faced him with a cool disdain that left even him shivering.

Itachi wasn't remotely affected by killer intent anymore, yet there something to her steely gaze in that one moment that bent him like a young boy before his mother. That was not the normal sequence of things.

Nothing about Hinata, Itachi realized with exasperation, could ever be considered normal.

While his intentions weren't completely altruistic, Itachi did hope that working with her could generate some answers for Hinata as well. He was one of the best illusionists in the village, and he knew to tread carefully.

If he could ever get her permission to "tread", that is.

Itachi briefly contemplated just demanding forgiveness after he did as he pleased. His student was already slated to be Hokage, and Naruto was extremely forgiving of people who had the right intentions. If that didn't work out, he could just become a double agent and infiltrate any growing missing-nin organizations for the good of Konoha.

With a shake of his head at his own foolish line of thought, Itachi reminded himself that he wasn't playing games with a sly kunoichi who was knowledgeable in mind games. This was a very scared young woman, plagued by nightmares for most of her life and caught in the tides and falls of Hyuuga expectations. A trapped doe will kick, an injured cat will lash out...it was not easy for her, as she didn't have missions to take her away from suffocating atmosphere of clan politics.

Itachi would have gone mad if he was forced to remain inside the Uchiha complex for so long. Yet she still seemed relatively sane.

Then he realized that he was approaching this challenge from the wrong angle.

Hinata may not be physically strong, but she wasn't some broken doll to be saved and pieced back together. This was a Hyuuga, a daughter of the clan head, a failure of a ninja who managed to survive years inside the home of a clan that rested their every worth on being a ninja. A tendril of respect bloomed inside him like a weed, unwanted yet unrestrainable.

Itachi blinked.

Strange.

His heart rate was also faster than normal.

AN: I'm having a surprising amount of fun torturing Itachi. Mwhaha.

Also, what are your thoughts on other couples?