Your bare feet are drenched in blood, and most of it is not your own.
You keep going, despite the gravel digging into your skin, despite the afternoon sun burning down on you.
Heavy gold chains hang around your neck, hips, and wrists, making noise with every step. This is what alerts them.
The taller one stops you first, his sword dug into the ground in front of you.
“And what is it you’re planning?” He asks, sharp teeth glistening in the evening sun.
You stop, wipe your sweaty hands on the delicate silk skirt. “I need to speak to your partner.”
“Sure,” he laughs, the sound more like a bark. “You can leave your gold with me and turn back around.”
“No!” You stomp your foot. “I will talk to him! He is…” You hesitate. Today is not your day. “By the rules of this country, he is my betrothed.”
-
Itachi Uchiha eyes you over a cup of tea. He’s well aware of Kisame on his right, pretending that all he’s focusing on is making them dinner.
You are pretty. Even windswept and tired and dirty. But you’ve also lost your mind.
“We are not married,” Itachi repeats once more, voice low and calm. He’s never had to talk to an insane person before, but he figures staying calm should work best.
“But we are,” you disagree just the same. “I’m not saying it’s a great law, it’s shit, really, but if you kill someone’s spouse, you automatically become responsible for their partner.”
“Easy divorce,” Kisame quips, and you throw him a look.
“Has nobody ever tried to change that?” Itachi asks, a little exasperated.
“Sure,” you take a sip of your tea. “But since our village leader regularly “marries” that way, change has been a little slow lately.”
Kisame gurgles with amusement. Your lips pull into something like a smile. Itachi bites back a sigh.
“I am not interested in marrying you.”
“I understand.” You nod. “But we are already married. See, I’m not wearing this stuff for shits and giggles. The guy you killed-”
“The Jinchuriki,” Kisame throws in, turning away when Itachi sends him a glare.
“The Jinchuriki,” you start anew, “has been terrorizing our country. He’s more powerful than even our best men. He’s made himself… well, a God. I was supposed to be this month's sacrifice.”
Itachi grimaces. “Are you telling me I have more than one wife now?”
“No.” Your grip around the teacup tightens. “He got tired of them easily. Killing seems to be more fun than… romancing.”
“But you’re free now,” Itachi points out. “The guy isn’t going to come back for you.”
You stare at him, your eyes haunted by an emotion he cannot name.
“Would you go back to a family that sold you to a guy like him?”
-
After Dinner, you grab their few utensils and make for the nearby stream.
This is where Itachi finds you, submerged in the cold water, your clothes and jewelry resting on a stone nearby, only the moonlight casting its ethereal glow.
“There are a few villages,” he starts, “on the other side of the border. If we sell some of your jewelry, we can find you a good place there. Our marriage would be null and void, and you’re pretty, you’d have no problem finding someone you like.”
You watch him closely. Dark hair, dark eyes. You have seen him fight, his quiet, subdued deadliness. But this is something else. Not carelessness, but the opposite.
You lean in. His eyes do not stray from yours. But they grow warmer as you talk.
“There are often fights at the border,” you point out. “I don’t think it will be safe there. Especially not for a foreigner.”
“Maybe a village further from the border, then?”
“Maybe.” You hesitate, look up at him through your lashes. “And if I knew how to defend myself…”
Itachi gets up, grabs your silk skirt from its resting place.
“It’s getting cold,” he points out, lowering it again. “We’ll talk about it in the morning. I’ll get you something warmer to wear.”
-
Itachi, for all his detached demeanor, cares a lot.
He prepares balanced meals, sews a warm skirt out of spare fabric, buys you a pair of shoes at a nearby village.
You have no reason to think he couldn’t kill you - and easily, too - if he wanted an easy way out of this responsibility. Still, you are holding onto what he gives with all the strength you have.
Kisame is easier to read and harder to deal with.
You had asked once about him training you and have regretted it since.
Your thighs are sore, your arms bruised. So far, you haven’t gotten any praise.
-
You reach the border in disguise. Alone, too.
Part of you wonders if this is Itachi’s idea. To lose you here “by accident”.
But you swallow your fears and doubts, sell one bracelet, and buy yourself decent clothes, a bed for the night, a weapon to defend yourself with.
Your village might be nothing but a distant thought, but it casts long shadows. You’ve heard of this place. People you know have been here, come here still.
You don’t dare to stay, but you don’t dare to leave either. Not yet, anyway.
-
Itachi appears in the night, slips out of the shadows as if he’s one of them.
You reach for him before you’re fully awake, exhale with relief without meaning to.
“You stayed,” he points out, his tone void of emotion.
“I was hoping you’d come,” you admit, ashamed of your own clinginess. You used to be shrewd; at least, you thought yourself so. “Two more days and I’d have to leave on my own.”
“Where would you go?” He asks, not quite stepping closer, but not stepping away either. “What direction?”
“Sit with me?” You ask instead of answering, hoping that the sight, the scent, the touch of you could be enough to keep him from leaving you again.
“We are not married here,” he reminds you, though he inches closer, if only a little bit.
“But you still feel responsible,” you point out the obvious.
Itachi takes a seat without another word.
-
He calls you “Izumi” once, his breath ghosting over your neck as you huddle close for warmth in the night, his heart beating hummingbird fast under your palm.
You never ask about her, or if you look like her, but sometimes, when the sun sits low in the sky, and Kisame’s attention is occupied, Itachi reaches out to twirl a lock of your hair around his finger, looking at you and through you all the same.
When you kiss him, then, he does not pull away.
Itachi never tells you that he loves you, but you can taste it on his tongue, at night. You can feel it slipping from his lips when he kisses the palms of your hands before he leaves, and smell it in his hair when he returns, clinging to him like the scent of blood and ash.
-
Kisame’s the one who finds the old farmhouse hiding behind a hillside, who cuts down trees, and teaches you how to use a hammer properly.
Kisame’s the one who rips out the old furniture and builds two beds out of it, one large enough to fit him, and one large enough to fit the two of you.
Kisame’s the one who stays at the village the first few nights after they return from a mission once more, claiming that he’s missed the girls and the taste of good sake.
But it’s Itachi who lifts you over the doorstep in a sentimental moment, kisses you against the kitchen sink, dries your tears during moonless nights.
“I don’t want to die,” he admits once, sharing a window to watch the full moon rise, your breath freezing into puffs of white. “But I know I have to.”
He’s more ghost-like than a person in that moment, barely there for you to touch, but you try so anyway, fingertip after fingertip, until his hand is yours and his mind follows.
You learn about Konoha that night, the full moon watching over you, his light pale-white and cool.
You learn about Sasuke, imagine his chubby cheeks and easy affection, and the terror he lives with now.
“Isn’t it too much?” You ask, your heart torn neatly apart by the truth, one half fitting neatly into Itachi’s hands, the other going out to this lost boy, who’s lost so much already and is losing still. “What if he… what if he can’t do it? What if he won’t do it?”
“He has to,” Itachi mutters. “And fast. I’m-” He coughs, blood speckling his palm. He winces in pain as he swallows, sighs as he sinks into you. “I don’t want to die,” he whispers against the bareness of your skin, the open wounds of your soul.
-
“Did you love Izumi like me?” You ask him one morning when he can’t seem to find his shoes, stubbing his toes, his ankles and his knees as he searches. It hurts to see him like this, dwindling so fast.
Itachi halts, head just an inch from the corner of the bench. “I’ve loved no one like I love you.”
You put your hand over the corner just short of him knocking against it, and he smiles as his temple hits your knuckles. “Have you seen my glasses?”
“Here,” you hand them over, right them on his nose. “Do you wear them in battle, too? They look cute on you.”
“No, I don’t need glasses to fight. Just to… uh, live a normal life.”
The hearth fire warms the room as you pull him in. Kisame’s outside, running, maybe, or cutting wood for the coming winter. They will be gone soon, and you can barely remember a time in your life that did not have them in it.
“Itachi?”
“Yes, love?”
“I’m pregnant.”
- - -
It’s a conscious decision to leave, to lock the door and hide the key.
“What are you going to name it?” Kisame asks after the first mile, the worry stretching the silence thin. “The pup, I mean?”
“Sarada, if it’s a girl,” you propose, shaking your head when Itachi offers you a branch to use as a walking stick. “I’m pregnant, not disabled.”
“What’s that mean?” Kisame interrupts your one-sided quarrel, already two steps ahead. “The name?”
“It’s from our native language,” you explain, your hand slipping into Itachi’s as you mean to pass him, his grip warm enough to keep you at his pace. “It’s no longer spoken, but if you excuse my rough translation, it would mean ‘saviour’.”
“I like that,” Kisame agrees. “And if it’s a boy?”
“Eh?” You hesitate, your eyes flickering to Itachi. “What do you think?”
“Shisui?”
“What’s that mean?”
“Still water.”
“Not as pretty,” Kisame decides. “Better have a girl, then.”
-
Sarada is born on a frosty winter morning, her warm breath fogging up around her as she screams her feelings out into the world.
You’re alone for the day, left behind at a monastery in the care of a handful of nuns, their hands rough from hard work, but their eyes warm as they gaze upon your daughter.
Sarada’s eyes are as dark as the night sky, drawing you in.
She squirms and she screams, hates to fall asleep, and hates waking up even more.
It’s only when she meets her father that she settles, as if she’d been worried about him the same as you.
Itachi holds her for hours, half-asleep or barely conscious, dips his nose into her hair, and drags a thumb over the plumpness of her cheeks.
“She looks like you,” you tell him quietly, but he disagrees quietly. “She looks like Sasuke.”
You laugh. “Are you sure? She’s yours.”
“Maybe,” he agrees quietly, though you don’t think he believes it. “Maybe I’m reaching. I haven’t seen him in a while.”
“And your brothers, after all.”
“Right.”
-
These are beautiful moments, the two of them together, Sarada’s whole hand curled around one of Itachi’s fingers, his voice in her ear as he takes her to bed.
But you know it’s not going to last long, just like you know that the ice-flowers on the windows aren’t going to survive the sunny day.
Itachi’s health has worsened, and so has his sight.
His kisses taste like blood now, and some days his hand misses yours as he reaches for you.
He’s dying, in more ways than one.
-
“I want to tell you about Izumi,” Itachi says one morning, half-dressed, his mouth pressed against your spine.
“I’m not sure I want to hear it.”
“It’s sweet,” he disagrees. “You’ll like it.”
“Okay?” You pull your shirt closer, though resisting the urge to dress. Moments like this are rare, and you want to make the most of them, no matter how broken the heating is.
“I loved her,” Itachi admits, his voice barely louder than the gurgling snores of Sarada. “And I killed her.”
You keep quiet. His voice is heavy with grief.
“Back then, I thought I knew what love was. That nothing was ever going to trump the feelings I had. For Izumi. For Sasuke.” He falls quiet, his lips moving soundlessly against your skin. “You’ve taught me wrong.”
“What does that mean?”
Itachi’s breath comes heavy, and you realize with sudden clarity that you don’t want to hear his answer.
But when you kiss him instead, he tastes like copper and salt, blood and tears, and the eventual end of something great.
-
You don’t know it’s the last time you kiss him when you do.
He tastes like congee and toothpaste, his movements a little sluggish in the early morning.
Kisame hugs you goodbye, patting your ass by accident, smiling when you threaten to chase him off grounds without his packed lunch.
It’s a day like any other, back at the farmhouse you left when Sarada had barely been more than a thought.
She’s not awake when Itachi leaves, clinging to sleep with all the strength a six-month-old can muster.
The image of them is burned into your minds, their coats billowing in the wind as they move. Itachi turns one last time at the corner, smiling, waving, and catching the kiss you send him.
You wonder if he thought of you as he died.
-
Sasuke comes with the morning fog, knocking so softly you almost miss it.
There’s a kunai by the door that you grab, hidden behind your back as you open.
“Yes?” You ask the stranger who looks oddly familiar. “Can I help you?”
“Itachi sent me,” he says, “I-” You close the door with a snap, arm braised against it.
“Itachi is dead,” you tell him, loud enough that he must hear it even through the thick wood. “Please leave.”
“How do you know?”
You think of the letter that resides in your bedside table, Kisame’s crude writing, and his haunting well-wishes.
“Are you denying it?”
“No,” a pause. “I killed him.” Another pause. “Itachi said that would make me responsible for you.”
“If you’re here to get revenge-”
“No!” Something knocks heavily against the door. “Can we please talk? I- I want to know about my brother.”
-
Sasuke looks nothing like you’d imagined him, and yet so eerily familiar.
There’s a sadness in the dark depths of his eyes that you’re familiar with, and his ink-black hair looks as stubbornly messy as Sarada’s.
He does not sit, preferring to walk in circles around the perimeter of your small garden as you talk.
“I wouldn’t have killed him,” he tells you again and again, swears it like an oath. “I wouldn’t have killed him if I had known.”
“You needed to,” you disagree, tired of this life and this love and everything between. “I’m so sorry.”
-
Sasuke stays. First for one night, then another, sleeping in Kisame’s old room.
He brings with him the part of your heart you’d sent out to him ages ago, or maybe he just carries some of your grief as you go on.
There’s not much to talk about besides Sarada or Itachi, but thinking of Itachi brings you both to tears, so you keep quiet about him.
“Sasuke, watch!” Sarada calls out, running down the hill on chubby legs, laughing as the wind carries her skirt and her hair.
It’s the first smile you see on his face.
-
After a month or so, the days draw out longer, the sun staying up until late at night.
Sarada sleeps curled up between the mint and the rosemary, and Sasuke sits close enough that you can feel the absence of his arm and the presence of his grief, all mingled together.
“So,” you nod toward the missing limb. “How did it happen?”
“So?” He counters, eyebrows raised, nodding toward Sarada. “How did that happen?”
“Didn’t Itachi tell you?”
“We didn’t exactly have much time,” Sasuke mumbles. “I’m thankful I even got those few moments after what happened. Never thought I’d see him again, least of all in that way.”
You suck in a breath, expecting the thought of it to shatter you, but it doesn’t. “Tell me about it,” you beg instead.
-
“I should get going,” Sasuke points out after three months, the summer heat slowly dying down again. “I’m sure people are waiting for me in Konoha.”
You nod along to his words, but can’t help yourself later on, hiding one of his shirts behind the washing machine. And then another.
His left shoe goes missing too, though you suspect that’s not your doing.
Summer turns into autumn. Sarada dances in the moonlight, both of her hands holding Sasuke’s as he twirls her around.
Autumn turns into winter. Kisame’s room has no proper heating. Your room isn’t big enough for two beds. It makes sense for him to slip in next to you, your bodies resting on opposite ends, the ghost of Itachi connecting and separating you.
The year draws to a close, and a letter arrives, god knows how it found him.
“I’ll be gone for a month, probably,” Sasuke explains, head bowed, wringing his hands. “I promise.”
And you want to say that you don’t care, that you’re fine on your own, had to be for a while.
But you can’t.
You pull him into your arms instead, like you should have done with Itachi all those years ago. You hold him tight and swallow your tears and will the missing part of your heart to stop hurting, even as Sasuke hugs you back tenderly.
-
“I’ve loved no one like I love you,” Itachi whispers in your dreams, and the other half of your bed feels just as hollow as the hole in your heart, as empty as your home without-
“Sasuke!” Sarada spots him from the window, waving her arms wide. “You’re back!”
“I am!” He lifts her high with one arm alone, laughs along to her singing, steps a little too close in the crowded kitchen, his breath ghosting over your neck as he announces his return.
“Welcome back,” you tell him quietly, your mouth filled with guilt and longing alike.
That night, you sleep on your left side, the distance between your bodies dwindling.
-
Your head finds a place on his chest by the time spring arrives. There’s no more talk of him moving into the spare bedroom, not when it could house Sarada instead.
You train behind the house, on grass patches that still remember the weight of Kisame’s feet, the leaves on the trees familiar with your joined laughter, the comfortable quiet after an hour well-spent.
Here, where Sarada has taken her first steps and her first stumble, where she’s cried bitter tears after the death of a bumblebee and lost a tooth to an apple, you bury your grief in fruitful soil and watch the flowers bloom.
Here, where you’ve found home and lost it, you kiss Sasuke for the very first time.
And there’s still part of you missing, half a heart buried with a different man.
But it’s okay. Because Sasuke’s missing half of his heart as well, buried at the same place.
Helloo, so my friend loves itachi and her birthday is coming up so I was wondering if you could write a Itachi×reader one shot, where reader is also part of the Akatsuki. After some sort of mission reader comes back tired and something happens between the two of them.
IM ALWAYS LATE OH MY GOSH…. I HOPE YOUR FRIEND HAD AN AMAZING BIRTHDAY!!
Let Yourself Rest
[ Itachi x Reader ]
———
The base was quiet when you finally crossed the threshold. Another mission finished, another village left whispering in fear. You dropped your cloak from your shoulders as you stepped inside your room, feeling the weight of blood and dust still clinging to your skin. Your muscles ached and your thoughts were foggy, too full of what you had seen and what you had done.
You didn’t even realize Itachi had been watching you from the end of the hall until he stepped forward.
“You pushed yourself again.” His voice was low, controlled as always. Only someone who paid attention would notice the way his eyes scanned you, checking for wounds.
“You’re one to talk.” You tried to sound sharp, but it came out tired. You leaned against the door frame, breathing shallowly.
Itachi didn’t argue. He moved closer, closing the door behind him without asking permission. The room dimmed, leaving just the two of you and that tense silence he wore like armor.
He reached out, fingers brushing a streak of dried dirt from your cheek. “You should rest.”
You tilted your head away a little, stubborn. “I’m fine.”
He didn’t accept that answer. His hand wrapped gently around your wrist, guiding you toward the bed. “You are trembling.” He said it like a fact, not a judgment.
Only then did you notice your hands weren’t steady.
You sat down with a quiet exhale, staring at the floor. Itachi crouched in front of you, sharing your height, bringing his eyes level with yours. He reached again, cool fingertips slid under your jaw, lifting your face.
“You do not have to carry everything alone.”
It was almost ironic, coming from him. The man who carried entire worlds of guilt and duty in silence. You opened your mouth to make a sarcastic remark, but the look in his eyes stopped you. The Sharingan was gone, replaced with something softer. Human.
You swallowed. “If I let go of that, what’s left?”
“Peace, even if temporary.” He moved closer and you felt his breath, warm against your lips. “Let me help.”
Your heart thudded. You trusted him more than you would ever admit to the rest of the Akatsuki. You didn’t flinch when his forehead touched yours, his hands settling on your hips like he was checking if you would shove him away.
You didn’t.
Your lips met first in a soft press, almost hesitant. A test. Then it deepened, slow and desperate in the quiet. His thumb brushed your cheekbone and you leaned into him, fingers curling into his cloak to anchor yourself.
Itachi broke the kiss only to whisper against your mouth. “You did well today.”
Praise from him felt rare, almost sacred. Your chest tightened.
He stood then, guiding you back until you were lying against the pillows. He pulled the blanket up to your shoulders like he always knew how to take care of you. You caught his wrist before he could step away.
“Stay.”
He looked surprised for a heartbeat, then his expression softened more than you had ever seen. He slipped off his cloak and lay beside you, close enough that you could feel the steady rhythm of his breathing. Your head found its place on his chest without effort, as if it had always belonged there.
His fingers ran through your hair, slow and grounding.
“You are allowed to rest,” he murmured. “I will stay until you wake.”
Your eyes finally grew heavy, the tension melting from your body while his presence guarded your sleep. The world could be cruel tomorrow. The mission could break you again.
