Shiori thought that after over a year with the Akatsuki, nothing surprised her anymore. She held on to her sanity by bracing herself for the unexpected. Unfortunately for her this was easier said than done. That day her cover was blown, something she saw coming the moment one of the Grass daimyo's brother's guards noted that the bar owner didn't mention anything about hiring a new employee, much less someone who was an outsider. Next came the pain. It was inevitable. She messed up and having the time to actually get hurt was a good price to pay compared to the alternative: a barrage of shurikens lodged in her brain. The shinobi rode a horse as he dragged her by the fringe of her hair for nearly three miles. His companions kept quiet and alert while the daimyo's brother threw every verbal insult he could from the box-like cocoon that carried him.
They called it No Man's Land, a barren, severely sun-baked patch of earth sitting on the border of Grass and Earth Country. Geographically speaking, Grass Country ended on the ravine at the edge of the parched land. Beyond it was a two-hundred-foot drop which terminated to a raging river down below.
She knew all this because the Grass Country royalty told her so right before he released the hounds. Five canines tall enough to reach her waist bared their teeth at her. He warned her not to let the beasts sink their fangs into her too soon for that would mean certain death.
"We didn't come all the way here to watch a thirty-second show."
Gray eyes looked at the ravine at the far end and then at the group of men blocking her way out. Defeat flooded her veins when she looked back at the dogs. She had to admit she couldn't help but be surprised at the turn of events. She had known for a long time that death always lingered around the corner, waiting for the perfect opportunity to strike. What she didn't expect was for it to be delivered to her by a pack of mutts. She has had nightmares of Orochimaru's giant snake, the one she saw in Itachi's memories, gobble her up alive but dogs?
"You have got to be kidding me."
One dog jumped forward, triggering a domino effect. She had no choice but to run. She didn't dare look back, didn't have to for she could feel their hot breaths against her heels. Adrenaline made her run faster than the beasts. It also brought her towards the ravine faster than she would have liked.
"No one has survived a fall from that cliff," the daimyo's brother had said.
'Well if I don't jump I'm dead anyway,' she argued inwardly. She felt a set of fangs graze her ankle before she fought against every instinct she had and jumped.
Fear lodged her scream in her chest rendering her mute. She braved a glimpse at the rocky demise waiting for her at the bottom, refusing to meet death with her eyes squeezed shut.
Instead she saw Itachi. He met her halfway, caught her while they were both airborne before planting his feet on the vertical cliff.
"Shit! Shit! SHIT!" she exclaimed, squirming in his arms and clinging on his neck for dear life. "I'm gonna fall-"
"Don't panic," he interrupted calmly. "If I wanted you to fall you would have done so already."
His words effectively shut her up. Defying all that she was taught in school about the law of gravity, he pushed off the cliff's surface and catapulted the both of them upwards, landing on the horizontal grounds above.
Kisame was already waiting for them there. And from the blood that seeped into the dry ground, Shiori could tell that he had taken care of the dogs.
"What a surprise!" the daimyo's brother greeted from afar. "She's with you? I thought you guys have a good business relationship with my aniki. I doubt he'd be pleased once he finds out about this."
"We can have a good business relationship with anybody for the right price. It's nothing personal," Kisame replied. Then quietly so that only Itachi and Shiori could hear him, he added, "Shio-chan, your screw up may work on our favor. We can send him off without any witnesses."
She raised an eyebrow at his statement. "Are your sharky-eyes going blind? He has thirty-two men with him." She knew because she had counted them the same way she had monitored the distance from the bar to the border.
"For now," Itachi replied, backing up his partner's words.
"What do you say Itachi-san?" The swordsman grinned, gripping on to the Samehada's handle with his right hand. "We split them half and half. Any formation you prefer?"
"Whatever gets the job done."
"Well you're the leftie so you take left."
Itachi nodded in agreement before turning to the girl standing behind him.
"Keep your eyes open and protect the intel."
Protect the intel. It sounded so objective, almost mechanical, never betraying the true message behind it.
Keep safe and stay alive.
The last thing she saw were the tomoe of his Sharingan spinning faster around his pupils before he disappeared with barely a flicker. Not too long after that, blood began spilling from the men flanking the left side of their main target. Kisame followed shortly, turning the skirmish into a bloodbath.
The open area induced agoraphobia. It was so plain and flat that finding a hiding place proved impossible unless one jumped over the ravine. The best she could do was crouch low on the ground, praying to a god she no longer believed in that she could outlast the fight without a random kunai flying towards her direction.
To "protect the intel", Shiori had no choice but to keep her eyes glued on the death match. Even from afar, the sound of metal against flesh was unmistakable. She steeled herself against the dying's war cry. Later on she would think back in horror about that moment she had smiled when Kisame broke the arms of the shinobi who had dragged her earlier. The pain immobilized the Grass-nin, making him unable to dodge the Samehada as it swung his way. After taking a direct hit, his face and most of his chest were erased. All she could see was raw flesh and a flash of white where his teeth ought to be.
She quickly scanned the chaos and saw Itachi being singled out by about ten enemy shinobi. At first they ran in circles around him, perhaps to cause confusion. All of a sudden the men behind him jumped over his head, landing behind the men directly facing the dark-haired nin.
Shiori watched horrified as two of the Grass nins performed a jutsu she had never seen before. Jets of scalding white steam steadily crawled from their mouths towards the spot where they had trapped him. Itachi stilled, his whole body relaxing as though in surrender. From afar she began to panic. She didn't know how to help him. Was he really giving up?
All ten men shrieked in agony as black fire emerged from thin air and engulfed them. The sight was ghastly. Grown men whimpered like babies as flesh melted off of them in pungent heaps. And when there was no flesh left to burn, the black fire incinerated their bones.
Shiori had to shield her nose to stop herself from gagging at the smell. Despite the distance, the stench of death reached her and she just knew she could never look at fire the same way ever again.
With all men on the left side dead, Itachi stumbled away from the scene. He dragged his feet towards the ravine pausing only to look at Shiori and changing his direction, this time towards her.
Even as she saw his right eye bleeding, the selfish part of her, the part that was the most reluctant to die barked at her to stay put. Meeting him halfway didn't seem worth it, not with kunais, shurikens, and jutsus flying in every direction.
But then a few yards away from her Itachi did something she had never seen him done before. He faltered. He dropped to his knees and cried out in pain. His left hand clawed at his cloak, like it was made of the black fire and it was burning him too.
"Itachi!" Shiori sprinted towards him, all thoughts of caution and survival thrown out the window. She dropped in front of him and helped him out of the heavy cloak, all the while being mindful to not touch him for she couldn't be bothered to do anything about her chakra amidst the chaos.
"What's wrong? What's the matter?" she asked, pausing when she noticed that his right eye was still bleeding. Thick blood streamed down his cheeks like red tears yet it didn't seem to bother him as much as whatever it was that was happening on his chest. She managed to wrestle him out of the cloak and so Shiori tugged his mesh shirt down to see if his chest was wounded.
"I...I don't get it. You're fine-"
She was cut off by Itachi's pained scream. She couldn't unhear the way his voice broke in agony as his left hand clutched on pale, uninjured skin. He doubled over until his forehead touched her knee and then he began coughing violently.
Panic bubbled at the pit of her stomach. She turned towards Kisame, hoping she could ask him for help. He was stuck in a taijutsu match against three armed Grass-nins and it looked as if it was going to be awhile before he fended them off. Feeling absolutely terrified and utterly useless, she did the only thing she could do. She clutched on to him as she burst in tears.
"We need to get out of here," she stammered, urging him to stand up. She propped him up on one knee and look around her one more time for any hiding place the barren land offered. She couldn't see one. What she did see were two Grass-nins speeding towards them.
"Get up!" she shrieked, tugging at him to stand or duck or whatever it was they had to do to stay alive. But with Itachi down and her terrified out of her wits, they were too slow.
Shiori couldn't think straight and this time went fully with her instincts. She crouched down and hugged him from behind, acting as a human shield between him and the enemies. In the time it took for her to cover him, Itachi managed to weave the seals to form a shadow clone. It stepped between Shiori and the attackers, fingers positioned at the ready for the one jutsu he could perform at a moment's notice.
"Fire style. Great Fireball Jutsu!"
Shiori gasped as intense heat radiated on her back. She turned around just in time to see the shadow clone disappear and for the two attacking shinobi to disintegrate inside the giant ball of fire. By the time it vanished, nothing was left of the men and a massive crater had appeared on the ground. All she could do was stare slack-jawed at the burnt earth. She was shaken out of shock when she felt a pair of hands roughly shoving on her chest.
"Ow! What the-" She paused abruptly as she locked eyes with a pair of angry-looking Sharingan. It was the first time she had seen Itachi become openly mad. For sure she must have gotten on his nerves in the past but he never showed it until that moment.
"Don't move a muscle," he instructed in a low voice, his words shaking with pent up anger. He didn't wait for an answer before running to Kisame's aid. Needless to say Shiori did as she was told. Even with her back on the fight, she resisted the urge to look and sat frozen on the ground.
It didn't take long for the blue-skinned swordsman to deal the final death blow. The daimyo's brother remained silent as the Samehada ripped through his body. His corpse had not even hit the ground yet when Kisame ran a kunai through his neck. His head fell with a heavy thud before the missing-nin took it by the hair and shoved it inside a loin cloth bag.
"Orders are orders," Kisame explained when he saw the disapproving look Itachi threw at him. "I didn't go through all that trouble and risk not getting paid."
"..."
"What? If I didn't know any better I'd think someone managed to screw you over while I wasn't looking."
"Something like that," Itachi said flatly. He left his perplexed partner without another word and marched towards the third living person within the vicinity. By then she had crouched low to the dusty ground in an attempt to become unnoticeable. Her back was hunched over, stiff and tense, unguarded and open much like it was merely minutes ago when...
Itachi momentarily let his anger get the best of him and roughly grabbed her by the shoulders. Shiori screamed when he spun her around and cried out in pain when his fingers dug bruises on her upper arms. The more she fought against him the tighter his grip became.
"Fool!" he spat, the three-fold tomoe of spinning rapidly around each iris. If he willed it, he had enough anger to easily awaken the Mangekyo Sharingan. "What were you thinking?"
He gave her one big shake when she didn't reply. "What were you thinking?!"
"I wasn't!"
It was the truth. At that moment a lie, no matter how convenient it would have been, was a luxury she couldn't afford, not in front of the raging Uchiha.
"I didn't-couldn't think, I...I just did what I thought I had to do." Her confession turned her into an open book but by then she was too terrified to care. "Believe me-"
"Don't," he interrupted, shaking his his head. "Don't ever do that again." His voice was low and soft, so soft she could barely hear it amidst the blood pumping in her ears. "Not for anybody's sake and most especially not for mine-"
"-Yes-!"
"-Swear to me."
"I swear I won't Itachi," she replied shakily. "I swear I won't." She did not dare break eye contact even as she shook like a leaf. She needed him to know that she got his message loud and clear. After a long and tense pause, he loosened his vice grip on her before taking a step back. He shifted his angry glare at a spot of burnt earth behind her.
"...You're important too."
He couldn't look at her in the eye when the words tumbled out of his mouth. And before she could form a coherent reply, he turned his back on her and made his way towards Kisame.
Kisame knew all too well the importance of keeping a respectable distance from a fuming Itachi. And he had instructed the shaken Shiori to do the same with gestures using the same hand which held the final resting place of their target's head. The dark-haired shinobi had never appreciated being held at a distance more than he did at that moment. If one were to take a closer look at him, one would see that with his anger towards Shiori's recklessness was long gone. The rage that filled his eyes earlier were replaced by the unmistakable glint of fear.
Fear for his life and the disease that was slowly claiming it.
Fear for what nearly happened and the possibility of it happening again.
And most of all, fear that came with the realization of just how much the two of them were willing to risk for each other.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Just another run-of-mill attempt of Un-MarySuing. It's tricky, considering the circumstances but my goal had always been to create a character that acted the way any normal person would on a given situation. Itachi terrified me in this one. With stories involving a love interest for this guy writers are always tasked with making him walk a very VERY fine line between in-character and OOC. I mean...it's chapter god-knows-what and the thing between the two needs to start moving... I guess. I've been chilling on the past chapters because I know you can't rush it with Itachi. It would be too weird. Now...now it's time to work...I think.
His confession nearly stumped me. Honestly, how to make this guy verbalize his feelings...it's like asking yourself how to ride a unicycle. I'm blabbing now. Time to go. Please leave a review.
kale: thanks oh so much for the review. It's not everyday I get something as detailed as that so when I do I become a very happy camper. As for the "-chan" "-kun" thing with Kisame you're right about that. I heard it's a way of mocking someone when you call a grown man/woman '-chan' and that's what I thought of when I started the thing...it just stuck. =) And of course Itachi has done the deed. I wouldn't believe anyone who would tell me otherwise. XDD He's the definition of "precocious".