Jul 29
nothing says “your fic is getting attention” like your first unhinged hate comment. we thriving 😝😝😝
CHAPTER 9 COMING TOMORROOOW 🗣️🗣️🗣️
seen from Malaysia
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Türkiye
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Taiwan
seen from Russia
seen from Romania
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Germany
nothing says “your fic is getting attention” like your first unhinged hate comment. we thriving 😝😝😝
CHAPTER 9 COMING TOMORROOOW 🗣️🗣️🗣️
SILENT CROWS MOODBOARD 🖤
itachi uchiha x oc
warnings: violence · grief · emotional angst · mature themes
tags: slow burn · angst · oc x canon · friends to lovers
One survived a massacre. The other committed one. They find each other in the ruins of their pasts and are drawn back into each other’s orbit, despite everything.
Sora Chishio has spent her life enduring the aftermath of her clan’s destruction. Itachi Uchiha has lived with the weight of his own actions. By all logic, they shouldn’t be each other’s refuge. Yet somehow, that’s exactly what they become.
CHAPTER MASTERLIST | AO3 LINK
chapter one
chapter two
chapter three
chapter four
chapter five
chapter six
chapter seven
chapter eight
chapter nine
images not mine, credits to the respective artists
Silent Crows 🖤
an Itachi Uchiha x oc fic
One survived a massacre. The other committed one. They find each other in the ruins of their pasts and are drawn back into each other’s orbit, despite everything.
Sora Chishio has spent her life enduring the aftermath of her clan’s destruction. Itachi Uchiha has lived with the weight of his own actions. By all logic, they shouldn’t be each other’s refuge. Yet somehow, that’s exactly what they become.
──────────────────────
chapter nine - deal
──────────────────────
warnings: violence · grief · emotional angst · mature themes
tags: slow burn · angst · oc x canon · friends to lovers
──────────────────────
CHAPTER MASTERLIST | AO3 LINK
──────────────────────
Obsidian eyes traced the lines of her face, trying to absorb any signs of emotion that the question might have triggered. Sora just stared at him blankly. Itachi gave her time. He stood in the dark with her, hand still gently wrapped around her wrist like she would disappear if he didn’t. He let his hand slide down to hold hers, his fingers passing over the raised scars of her palm, thick and ragged from years of using her own blood as a weapon.
"Sora." He said after some time, almost a whisper. "What is this all about?"
"What do you think it's about?" Her response came almost immediately, eyes snapping up to stare into his. Something dark moved behind them when she said it. The quiet fury that she had held closely for the past ten years, buried deep and spreading roots into her whole being; the hatred she had no subject for. She didn't try to hide it. She wasn't sure she could, even if she wanted to.
Itachi went very still. The realization hit him almost instantly; the look in her eyes was practically identical to the one he had seen on his own little brother after that night six years ago. He took a deep breath before he spoke again, recognizing that he had no right to lecture her about her hatred when he stood on the receiving end of someone else’s.
"Your clan," he said plainly. It was not a question, though he left the smallest space for her to correct him if he was wrong.
She nodded once, looking down at her hand that was still in his grasp, gentle and warm against her skin. His hand slipped from hers, both falling limply at their sides. Sora frowned at the loss of warmth.
"What's your end goal?" His voice pulled her out of her thoughts.
"To bring them to justice." She recited as if she had practiced this particular sentence for years — Kakashi's words, really, from that apartment ten years ago, though she doubted Itachi would ever know that. She'd made them hers a long time ago.
"And how do you plan on doing that?"
She hesitated — longer this time. The thought had consumed her for the better part of the last ten years and had become the bane of her existence in the past few months as her investigation progressed. She wasn’t sure which path she was going to take once she made it to the end. Some days she woke with the clarity of a saint, certain that the right path meant justice — letting the system work, imprisonment for the guilty, believing in the possibility of redemption. Other days a murderous rage would overcome her, and she would fantasize about how it would feel to slaughter the perpetrators in the dark of the night, the same way they had done to her family.
"I'm not sure I want to think about that part yet." Itachi locked eyes with her as she said it. He didn't push further, but she felt him absorb it anyway.
"Why are you doing this alone?" The question came almost hesitantly, ironic, coming from him.
"Who says I'm alone?" The response was meant to be flippant, but it came out more defensive than she intended.
Itachi scoffed, the question lighting something in him that he wasn’t prepared for. "Are you trying to convince me that a Chunin from Amegakure is supposed to be helping you?" He said out loud, not realizing what he was actually revealing. "I don't see him anywhere tonight."
Sora went very still. Her eyes narrowed as she traced back through their conversations to find the moment where she had mentioned or even hinted at Ryo’s existence. She came back empty-handed.
"How do you know about him?" She asked, feeling a smirk slowly spread across her face. The realization that she had never disclosed this information hit her, along with the pleasure of knowing that the composed and calculated Itachi Uchiha had just fumbled with his words.
"That’s not important." Itachi deflected immediately, holding her gaze as if he had not just exposed himself.
"It's a little important." She folded her arms, something sharpening in her expression. "I’m certain I’ve never mentioned him to you, and yet you know he exists, know enough to bring him up in a conversation that has nothing to do with him." She tilted her head, watching him not quite meet her eyes. And then, without really trying to hide the amusement in her voice, she asked: "Itachi. Are you stalking me?"
"No."
"Liar." She said, fighting a smile and losing.
"It was a coincidence," Itachi said, finally locking eyes with her. “The day you got attacked by the Sound Ninja. We happened to be in the area when you were leaving his apartment.”
“Mhm, a coincidence.” She said smugly. “We’ve been having a lot of those lately.”
Itachi shot her a glare, clearly not entertained by the teasing. Then, before she could press any further, he said: "You don't have to do this alone, Sora. I can help."
The offer caught her off guard. She turned it over, again and again, surprised by how much she wanted to say yes but uncertain if she could actually rely on him.
"I didn't know that was an option," she said finally, quieter now, some of the teasing drained out of her voice. "You disappeared off the face of the earth after that night on the roof. I thought I’d never see you again." She felt it land heavily — the statement clearly hitting pressure points she didn't know it would.
When he didn’t respond right away, she allowed her mind to wander. The late hour of the night finally caught up to her as a wave of lethargy overwhelmed her body. She was staring off into the distance, looking at something and nothing at the same time, when she heard it. The sound snapped her to reality with the speed of lightning, and she involuntarily moved her eyes to the source of the sound — his chest.
"Itachi." She whispered his name and raised her hand slowly, already reaching for his chest the way she'd reached for dozens of her patients in the past. She had spent enough nights listening to the small, involuntary signs of a person's body when it was under stress. His heartbeat — too fast for how still he was standing and uneven in a way that had nothing to do with the cold or the adrenaline of the night.
His hand closed around her wrist before she made contact.
"Stop." His command was quiet, yet stern. Sora observed his features as confusion took over hers. Itachi evaded her gaze again, differently this time, like he was evading the very thing that was happening inside his body.
“You know.” Her voice was low and drenched in disbelief as she realized what was happening. Itachi didn’t deny it; instead, he let the silence answer for him.
"It'll get worse if not treated." She said with a tone she rarely used unless she was trying to make her point land. When she saw his expression didn’t change, she added: “But you already knew that too…”
Itachi's mouth opened for the first time since he told her to stop, but instead of his voice, Kisame’s filled the silence as he returned from his patrol.
"Well," he said, glancing between the two of them, "you're both still here. I'll take that as a good sign."
Itachi ignored the comment entirely. "Is the coast clear?" He said, turning to his partner and releasing his grip from Sora’s wrist.
"Clear enough. Oyu's men gave up about ten minutes ago." Kisame stretched, rolling the shoulder on which Samehada lay, clearly stiff from the weight of carrying it for an extended time. "I think we’re safe to walk the rest of the way."
Itachi nodded once, then reached up and unclasped the collar of his cloak, sliding it off his shoulders in a single, smooth motion. Before Sora could ask what he was doing, he draped it over her, settling it around her shoulders with the same gentleness he did most things that involved her.
"Cover the yukata," he explained before she could ask. "Until we're out of town. In case anyone recognizes the fabric."
Sora thought of arguing against taking it, that she could manage her own disguise, but once the warmth of the cloak settled in, she hushed the protests. The cloak was heavier than she expected, and it smelled faintly of rain, warm musk, and something specifically Itachi that she could not quite describe using words. She pulled it a little tighter around herself instead.
They walked out from under the stairwell and made their way out through the narrow alley and onto the main road, where the town had settled back into its ordinary late-night rhythm. Sora walked between them in silence, the weight of the night feeling heavier now that the adrenaline had worn off. She couldn’t stop thinking about that heartbeat. The unevenness of it. The way he'd said stop, as if something would shatter if she made contact with his chest. As if something important depended on her not fixing him.
“You're somewhere else," Kisame nudged her, glancing over at her profile with open curiosity. "That's new. You’re usually observant, even when quiet."
Sora blinked, her consciousness being pulled back to reality, and she looked over at Kisame, who had now turned his head to look ahead but kept his ears perked, keen to hear what was on her mind.
"It's nothing." She said plainly, not knowing the extent of information Kisame had on Itachi’s health, and not feeling up to finding out tonight. “Thinking about what that bookkeeper said is all.”
"Mm, his intel was vague. I bet you’re more confused now than before you got into this whole mess.” Kisame responded with an understanding nod.
“That’s one way to put it.”
They reached the edge of the town within thirty minutes. The road narrowed into a forest path, and it didn’t take long before Kisame stopped beneath a wide, gnarled tree whose roots had pushed up through the earth in thick, twisting ridges.
"Here's as good as it’ll get," he said, already dropping his sword and leaning it against the tree trunk. "We'll shelter for the night, and resume our journey at dawn."
Sora inspected the area with careful attention. She felt the soil beneath her feet through her damp socks. The leaves of the trees above them still dripped with the residue of rainfall, and the humidity coated her lungs as she breathed in the moist air. She hesitated for a moment, glancing between the two men who were already beginning to gather wood, which Sora knew would be too damp to light into a fire.
"My clan's compound isn't far from here," she finally said, deciding this was no place for shelter. "Maybe an hour's walk east. We could head there if you'd rather not sleep in the forest."
The two men turned to look at her, not sure what to make of her offer. It wasn’t purely generosity, and she didn’t necessarily try to make it sound like it was either. If she was honest with herself, she wasn’t too keen on being exposed to the cold when her home was only a short distance away. Not to mention, the newfound knowledge of Itachi’s illness that loomed over her like a persistent, relentless shadow. Part of her didn’t want him to be cold either.
Kisame raised an eyebrow, clearly delighted by the offer. "An hour's walk to a warm bed instead of wet soil? I like the sound of that. Guess I really am special." He glanced at his partner with a wolfish grin. Itachi pondered the offer for a bit, until he ultimately gave a small nod of agreement.
“Very well then,” Sora said and then slid the large cloak off her shoulders and handed it back to Itachi. “We’re outside the town limits. You can have this back.” She said before turning east to lead the way.
──────────────────────
The Chishio grounds greeted them with the ghostly quiet that had become its defining characteristic. The smell of old wood engulfed their noses as they walked through the narrow paths and overgrown gardens, until they reached the small traditional-style house that belonged to Sora’s family. The compound’s size contrasted with the lack of people who lived in it, and its condition was a tell-tale sign of neglect.
Sora led them through the house’s small side gate and onto the outdoor wooden corridors that connected the rooms to the personal garden. This garden, unlike the others which they had walked through, was kept and blooming. The colorful azalea blossoms framed the porch and path into the garden, which led to a tall Yuzu tree right next to a round Koi pond. The moonlight illuminated the large fish as they lazily swam through the pond, their vibrant colors mesmerizing in the twinkling starlights.
Sora entered one of the rooms, leaving Itachi and Kisame on the porch admiring the spring bloom of her garden. She returned a few moments later, holding two sets of folded clothing she pulled from a storage chest that had sat mostly untouched for years. She cleared her throat, grabbing their attention, and held out the fresh clothes.
"Hot springs are through the east corridor, past the garden," she said. "Make yourselves at home. I'll show you to your rooms once you're settled."
Kisame turned the folded clothing over in his hands, looking between the fabric and Sora with a bewildered expression. "If you’re trying to kill us, I would invite you to be direct about it," Kisame said with a distrustful tone. Sora chuckled under her breath.
“If that were my goal, you would be dead already.” Her smile was deceptively pleasant. "Calm down, Kisame. I’m simply showing my gratitude. You've come to my aid twice now," Sora added, already turning to lead them down the corridor. "This is the least I can do."
"Careful," Kisame said, trailing after her. "Keep being this hospitable, and I might start showing up uninvited."
"You already do that."
Kisame’s laugh, loud and delighted, echoed through the garden as they made their way to the hot springs, the sound contagious enough to make Itachi crack a smile in the darkness.
──────────────────────
Sora made herself comfortable on the wooden porch next to the low side table where she spent most of her mornings and evenings. She folded the fabric of her robe tighter to her body when she felt a cool breeze rustle through the air, sending a small shiver down her spine. She reached for her cup and took a sip of the steaming herbal liquid while she leaned over the table flipping through the pages of the old medical textbook she had found in her clan’s archives.
She was a few pages into her read when she heard the hushed chatter of Kisame’s voice as he mumbled something to Itachi across the corridor. She looked up to find them dressed in her father’s old yukatas, the tension from the night stripped off of them and replaced with a certain relaxing peace that only a long soak in the onsen could accomplish.
She held back a snicker at the sight of Kisame’s yukata stretched comically short, exposing his wrists and ankles. Sora’s amusement faded as her eyes drifted to Itachi, whose own yukata looked as though it had been tailored for him. The dark navy fabric draped perfectly over his frame, the obi cinched neatly at his waist and his hair, still damp from the bath, was left loose for once, silky strands trailing over his shoulders and collarbones.
Sora caught herself lingering on him longer than she should have, awareness prickling at how easily her eyes kept drifting back to him every time she tried to look away. Heat crept to her cheeks before she forced herself to focus on the teapot beside her. "There's tea, if either of you would like some," she said, keeping her gaze on the cup as she poured. "Or the room's yours, if you'd rather sleep. It’s the one directly to your left; I already laid out two fresh futons for you."
Kisame stretched with an exaggerated groan. "Tempting, but I'm beat. I think I will call it a night.” He placed his hands on his hips and smiled at Sora, which she, for once, labeled as genuine. "Thank you for the bath, Sora-chan. You are very kind.” He said, then turned to the left before disappearing through the shoji into the bedroom.
Itachi lingered a moment longer, and then, without a word, settled on the porch next to the low table across from her, his back pressed against the wall. There was something unbearably familiar about it, sitting there with him in the dark, the tea steam curling up into the cold night air.
Sora watched the moonlight trace the sharp line of his jaw, the loose strands of his hair falling against his cheek, the dark, unreadable depth of his eyes. She let herself follow the curl of his fingers around the cup, the brief press of his mouth to its rim, and felt something low and familiar tighten in her chest — the ache of wanting something she'd already decided she couldn't have.
"I've known for some time," Itachi’s voice interrupted her thoughts. "About my illness. It isn't new."
Sora subconsciously straightened at the mention of the subject.
"I'm managing it," he continued before she could speak. "There are treatments. Medication, when I need it." He turned his head to look at her and held her gaze. "I don't need you to worry about it."
"That's not really something you get to decide for me." She hated the way she sounded when she said it — the protest coming across defensive rather than assertive. "Why didn't you come to me?" she then asked, stripped of all the guards she had carefully implanted in her demeanor now that the hurt had settled in. "I could do more for you than whatever medication you're managing this with."
"I know."
"Then why?"
He didn't answer right away, and for a moment she thought he wasn't going to answer at all, until finally, he took a deep breath and quietly said, "I didn’t know it was an option."
“You’re so full of shit.” Sora scoffed, hurt curdling fast into anger as she heard her own words repeated back to her. “Which part of us reconnecting on this roof made you think you’d made an enemy out of me? That I wouldn’t help you if you came to me?”
“You didn't necessarily seek me out either, Sora." Itachi's voice stayed even, unbothered by the edge in hers. "It's true I didn't come back after that night. But you didn't try to find me either." A pause. "I know exactly who I am, and what I've done. Even if you understand it, even if you'd forgive it — that's not something I ever expected of you. To abandon your own values to make room for a criminal.”
Sora felt her throat tighten. “Is that all you are? A criminal?” She managed to choke out.
“To most, yes,” Itachi responded plainly, and the cadence with which he said it prickled her chest more than she cared to admit.
"I'm not most people."
"No," Itachi said, a soft chuckle escaping his lips, "you're not."
The words sat between them for a moment, neither of them quite reaching to fill the silence that followed.
"Will you at least let me examine you?" Sora asked, finally breaking the silence. "I could pinpoint what the issue actually is and give you better direction on how to treat it."
Itachi locked eyes with her, and Sora couldn’t help but notice how tired he looked. He smiled lazily before he said, "Alright," clearly too drained to argue with her after she had proved to be so persistent.
Sora rose to her feet and quietly walked around the table that separated them. She lowered to her knees beside him, close enough that she could feel the warmth radiating off of him. He watched her with unwavering attention, a certain curiosity overcoming him, waiting to see what she would do with the permission he had just granted her. She pressed her palm flat against his chest, right over his sternum, and let her chakra follow the warmth of his body.
Itachi watched as the indigo veins blossomed from her hand, her presence intertwining with his very being in a complex sensation that caused goosebumps to erupt all over his body. He inhaled sharply, his eyes not leaving hers as she seized control of his body and his hand rose to lay on top of hers — not for any particular reason other than to anchor himself as her chakra traveled through his veins.
Sora’s breath hitched when she felt his hand on hers. She was painfully aware of the short distance between them, which was now irrelevant that she had entered his bloodstream. It shouldn’t have had an impact; this was no different from any other examination she had ever done. She made herself focus, closed her eyes, and rerouted her attention to what actually mattered.
After some time, she withdrew her chakra, though her hand remained, wedged between Itachi’s chest and warm hand.
"It's your lungs," she said, eyes locked on their interlaced hands. "The damaged tissue isn't regenerating the way it should." She looked up and held his gaze. "I can treat it. But it won't be one session. It'll take time and persistence." She paused, and let herself show him exactly how much this mattered to her — not because she couldn't help it, but because she'd run out of better arguments, and some part of her suspected this one might actually work. "Please. Promise me you'll think about it."
Something unreadable passed behind his eyes — the shock of the unexpected rawness of her face, which he had never seen before. He hesitated longer than she preferred.
"Itachi." The plea was small and quiet, yet she held his gaze without blinking, without giving him anywhere else to look.
"I promise," he said, finally, though it clearly cost him something to say it. “Only if you accept my help in return. With your investigation.”
A small, wry smile crept up her lips. He returned it with a gentle squeeze of her hand that still lay flat against his chest, his heartbeat pulsating underneath her fingertips in a calming rhythm. “Well played,” she said. “We have a deal.”
Silent Crows | Chapter 8: Loose Lips
His other hand snaked around her and landed on her waist, slowly tracing its way down. "Pretty thing like you," he said into her ear, breath reeking of alcohol, "ought to be serving us a bit more than sake, don't you think?"
Across the table, Itachi's cup stopped halfway to his mouth.
chapter 8 is up!! go show it some love!
AO3 link | Tumblr
warnings: violence · grief · emotional angst · mature themes
tags: slow burn · angst · oc x canon · friends to lovers
Silent Crows - Chapter 7: Rain
AO3 | Tumblr
SILENT CROWS
Itachi Uchiha x OC
One survived a massacre. The other committed one. They find each other in the ruins of their pasts and are drawn back into each other’s orbit, despite everything.
Sora Chishio has spent her life enduring the aftermath of her clan’s destruction. Itachi Uchiha has lived with the weight of his own actions. By all logic, they shouldn’t be each other’s refuge. Yet somehow, that’s exactly what they become.
──────────────────────
chapter three — the rooftop
──────────────────────
warnings: violence · grief · emotional angst · mature themes
tags: slow burn · angst · oc x canon · friends to lovers
──────────────────────
The sound of wings fluttering to a stop on her windowsill echoed outside. Sora’s ears perked. She was lying on her stomach across her futon in her childhood bedroom, a recovered clan textbook spread open in front of her. She looked to her right, and her eyes landed on the crow patiently waiting for her attention. Its black feathers were shining in the dusk light of the sunset as it rested on the windowsill, perfectly still and poised.
The bright red eyes pierced Sora’s pale ones, and the world went fuzzy around the edges. Sora cussed under her breath, the realization hitting her instantly as the bird’s Sharingan eyes pierced her, pulling her into a Genjutsu that stilled time with an ominous quality. She looked down at the document still spread under her and noticed the letters shift and mold into meaningless shapes in this fake reality.
“What are you reading?”
His voice came from her left, close enough that his breath tickled her ear when he spoke. She hadn’t heard him approach and yet there he was, settled next to her on the floor as though he’d always been there, scanning the pages of the textbook. She looked at him for a moment. At the profile of a face she had not seen in years, and her heart skipped a beat. An involuntary reaction she hated and couldn’t control.
She didn’t take too long to think it through. She rolled to the left, letting the momentum of her whole body bring her right elbow around toward him. An instinctual response of someone who had spent too many years looking over her shoulder, attacking first and asking questions later. His hand caught her at the elbow before it connected, absorbing the rotation rather than stopping it. His hand slid from her elbow to her wrist, pinning it above her head as the roll finished with her on her back and him already adjusted above her.
She looked up at him. He hadn’t changed much, but there was a slight edge to him that she couldn’t quite pinpoint. Something rough and dark that settled deep in his rather gentle eyes, boring into hers while he restrained her.
Neither of them moved for a long while.
“Clan records,” she eventually said, as if the last few seconds had not happened. “Chakra theory. Pre-Konoha.”
Something close to amusement flickered in his eyes, and he glanced up at the papers that now lay under Sora’s head.
She saw the opportunity and hooked her leg around his and drove her hip into the turn, using his braced position against him to force the flip. He landed on his back, and she was above him, both knees planted firmly against the floor on his sides. She felt the crystallization begin beneath her skin, the familiar pressure of something hardening inside her palm, pushing outward until her skin parted and made way for it. Once fully ejected, she brought the dagger to rest at the side of his throat.
“Interesting reading material.” He said, voice unwavering. “I didn’t think any of it survived.”
She lowered the dagger slowly and sat back on her heels.
“You’re a coward, Itachi,” she said. “Stop hiding and come face me properly.”
A low laugh rumbled in his chest.
“Come outside.” His voice came from everywhere and nowhere at once, and with that, the illusion dissolved.
Sora was on her stomach again. The document was open in front of her, exactly as her consciousness had left it, the lines of text patient and unchanged. She looked back at the window where the crow sat unmoving, its black eye meeting hers before it opened its wings and flew away.
She found him on the roof. He was sitting near the broken chimney, one knee drawn up, looking out over the ruins of the compound as if admiring a view rather than sitting on the bones of a massacre. His Akatsuki cloak draped over his shoulders, dark against the last of the fading light. His Sharingan was active and tracking her as she climbed up to join him. He stayed perfectly still, his eyes the only moving part of his body as he studied her.
“You could have knocked,” Sora said, standing over him on the roof.
“I know.” His voice was quiet and soft, the way he always spoke so politely, even when the situation didn’t require it. “You made quite the entrance the other day.”
“That’s what I intended to do.”
She sat down next to him, close enough to the edge that her feet hung over open air, the way she used to sit on the walls of Konoha when they were both younger and the world was marginally less complicated.
“Orochimaru hasn’t stopped talking about you since.” There was something in his tone, perhaps concern or a warning. “I think your appearance has only motivated him.”
“Is that why you’re here? To warn me?” She looked out at the ruins.
“Among other reasons.”
“What other reasons?” Sora glanced at him out of the corner of her eye.
He was silent for a while, and when she decided he was not going to answer, she added: “You could have sent a hawk.”
“I could have,” he agreed almost instantly.
Silence settled between them for longer this time. It was a comforting kind of quiet, the kind they were both fluent in after years of practicing it when they were younger. Below them, the wind moved through what was left of the compound; empty windows, collapsed roofs, the slow erosion of a place that used to be full of people.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he said finally.
“It’s my home.” She tilted her head toward him slightly, the faintest edge in her voice. “I think I get to decide that.”
“It’s a ruin.”
“So it is.” She didn’t look at him.
“How long have you been back?” he asked.
“Long enough.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“No,” she agreed, pleasantly. “It isn’t.”
He exhaled through his nose — barely audible, something that on anyone else might have been amusement. On him it was more ambiguous. “You haven’t changed.”
“You have.” She said it without inflection, casually even, as if she was pointing out the weather. Itachi didn’t argue; he instead absorbed it and allowed the quiet to answer in his stead.
They conversed as if years had not created the undeniable distance between them. He asked her about her research, the purpose of her being in these ruins and not at the village where he had left her. She gave cryptic answers, often answering questions with other questions, as if she was evading the topic of her desertion entirely. She asked about Akatsuki in the careful, oblique way that meant, "Are you safe?" without ever using those words. And he answered in the careful, oblique way that meant "No, but it doesn’t matter" without using those words either.
“Your partner,” she said eventually. “Is he… manageable?” She recalled seeing him in the chamber, standing closer to Itachi than the rest of the Akatsuki. He was big and intimidating, and the oversized steel sword he had hanging on his back didn’t help him appear friendlier.
A confused expression crossed his face when he heard the question. “He’s loyal to the mission.” He answered plainly.
“That’s a very diplomatic way of not answering the question.”
“It’s the only answer I have.”
She looked at him directly then, for the first time since she’d sat down, and her eyes met his instantly. She held his gaze for a moment before turning away.
“I’m not asking about Akatsuki’s mission,” she said. “I’m asking about you. Are you being careful?”
The pause that followed was a half-second too long. Itachi weighed his response carefully before he provided it to her. “As careful as the situation permits,” he said.
“That’s not very careful.” Sora snapped.
“No,” he agreed quietly. “It isn’t.”
The conversation entered into a lull, and because she had been carrying it for years and there was apparently never going to be a better moment, she asked the question that had sat in the back of her mind since the night she left Konoha.
“Did you know?” Her voice didn’t change. “When we were in ANBU. Did you already know what they were planning to do to your Clan?”
The wind kept moving. The ruins stayed quiet. And for the first time since she’d climbed onto that roof, for the first time, perhaps, in longer than that, Itachi Uchiha’s composure visibly fractured. His head whipped to the side so fast, and he looked at her profile with wide doe eyes. His breath hitched for a moment, and he didn’t answer the question directly.
“How did you find out?” he asked instead, and his voice was quieter than she’d ever heard it.
“I asked you fir—” She turned to look at him.
“Sora.” Almost stern, though his eyes remained gentle. His Sharingan now gone, just his obsidian eyes holding her gaze — asking, in the only way he knew how to ask for anything, without armor.
She sighed. “When you left, there were rumors of an accomplice. Naturally, everyone began to suspect that your ANBU partner was involved.” The sarcasm was dry and thin as she continued. “After all, I was accused of butchering my own clan at the ripe age of nine. So why wouldn’t I do it again?”
“They questioned you.”
“They summoned me,” she corrected. “About a week after you disappeared. It was late. I’d just returned from a mission. I don’t think they expected me to arrive until the morning.” A pause. “The door was still open when I got there. Danzo was inside.”
She felt him go still beside her. She kept going.
“They didn’t say much. They didn’t need to. I’d already pieced most of it together from that night, when you visited me. The way you looked.” She stopped, swallowing the lump in her throat as she recalled. “Like something was tearing you up from the inside.”
Itachi just kept his gaze focused on her, silent, waiting for her to finish.
“So I walked in, and I confirmed it,” she said. “And then I left. And I never said a word to anyone.”
He absorbed the information in silence, without any dramatic reactions, because the truth would not change, no matter how upsetting it was to him.
“Why,” he said, genuinely curious.
Sora laughed in a way that did not hide the irony. She had often pondered why she hadn’t exposed Konoha for the vile, genocidal village that it was, and some days, she really considered doing it. Her silence did not come from a place of devotion or loyalty to the village — she owed them nothing at the end of the day. Her silence came from a different kind of devotion and loyalty; one that belonged to him.
“Because when I was nine years old, and everyone in Konoha wanted me locked up or dead, you were the only person who vouched for me.” She paused, letting the words settle before she added: “I wasn’t going to pay that back by destroying you.”
“Sora—”
“Don’t.” Her voice was still even. “You don’t need to say anything. I’m just telling you why.”
The silence that followed was a different kind. Softer, somehow, yet more intense for it.
“Whatever choice you made,” she said, quieter now, “it wasn’t mine to expose. And I knew what it must have cost you. I couldn’t let that be for nothing.”
For a long moment, Itachi didn’t say anything at all. His expression — the careful, composed blankness that had been a fixture of his face for as long as she’d known him, the mask that had survived ANBU and Akatsuki and the slow, deliberate unmaking of everything he used to be — came apart.
Not into anything dramatic. Just into something open, briefly, the way a door left unlatched will drift ajar in a draft. Something that looked, for just a moment, like the boy who had crouched down to a traumatized nine-year-old’s level in the wreckage of her family and asked her, gently, what had happened.
Then it was gone, smoothed back into place, and he looked back out at the ruins beside her.
“Thank you,” he uttered finally. Very quietly.
“You shouldn’t have carried that alone,” she responded.
He didn’t have an answer for that, and she hadn’t expected him to.
Silent Crows 🖤
an Itachi Uchiha x oc fic
One survived a massacre. The other committed one. They find each other in the ruins of their pasts and are drawn back into each other’s orbit, despite everything.
Sora Chishio has spent her life enduring the aftermath of her clan’s destruction. Itachi Uchiha has lived with the weight of his own actions. By all logic, they shouldn’t be each other’s refuge. Yet somehow, that’s exactly what they become.
──────────────────────
chapter four - blood remembers
──────────────────────
warnings: violence · grief · emotional angst · mature themes
tags: slow burn · angst · oc x canon · friends to lovers
──────────────────────
The night settled into the compound just like any other night before it. The sun sank into the mountains as the moon arose, the sky reflecting different shades of orange, pink, yellow and blue. The weather was perfectly temperate, common for the spring season in the north east area of the Land of Fire.
The moon was full and bright and filled the sky with her light as soon as the last rays of sunshine disappeared. This was the perfect place to star gaze, deep in the rural part of the country, completely isolated from the loud and bright cities. On a clear night like this, the stars looked like bright fireflies, twinkling in the dark skies.
Sora sat cross-legged on the floor of her room with the door cracked open slightly, wide enough to hear the house, but narrow enough that no one would notice it wasn't shut. She was practicing what her father had shown her that afternoon. Feeling for heartbeats through the floorboards. She felt her mother in the kitchen finishing up the last of the dishes from that night’s dinner, humming a soft melodic lullaby as she worked. Her father two rooms over, in his study, his heart rate soft and calm and steady, the way Sora always remembered it. Her cousins across the courtyard, their pulses small and quick the way children's pulses always were.
She almost missed it.
The first sound was small. A thud from somewhere outside that her mind registered as ordinary, as something falling. But the heartbeats changed. Her mother's rhythm stuttered. Her humming came to a halt. Her father's spiked, sharp and sudden, as if he knew something terrible was approaching. Then she heard him moving fast, faster than he ever moved inside the house. She rushed to the door and met him just as he was bursting in.
"Sora." He lowered to her level and grabbed her by the shoulders with shaking hands. His hands never shook. "Listen to me. The floor board by the window, the loose one. Right now, we don't have time—"
"Papa, what's happening—"
“Now." The word came out urgently yet hushed, as if he worried someone would hear. He was already pulling up the board, the small hidden space beneath it rising out of the dark. From outside, she could hear voices that weren't her family's, sounds that she couldn’t fully understand. Thuds, slashes, the wet sounds of bodies dropping limply. The cries of women, the begging for mercy. "Get in. Get in and do not make a sound and do not come out no matter what. Do you hear me?"
"I don't want to—"
"Sora." He said her name like it was the only word he had left. He crouched down to her level again and his face was indescribable. It was the face of a man trying to be calm for his child. Trying to protect her, not knowing for certain if he actually could. “I love you. I need you to be brave right now. Can you do that for me?"
She couldn't speak. The words were stuck to her throat like a bundle of thorns. Her eyes burned and filled with tears that she refused to let loose. She nodded her small head as she stared at her father’s blurring face, trying to memorize every crease and crevice and detail. At the door frame, her mother appeared, looking panicked and terrified. Sora tried to get near her, but her father’s grip was too strong.
“Sora, please-“ her mother pleaded as tears streamed down her cheeks. She complied.
He put her in the dark and put the wooden board back over her.
She heard it all. She heard every piece of it. The sounds were coming through the wood like they were coming from inside her own chest. Her uncle's voice, and then another voice she didn't know, shouting, pleading, fighting. Then a sound she felt more than heard, a percussion in her teeth. The clash of weapons. Running feet that vibrated through the floorboards. Her mother's voice, high and sharp and then suddenly not.
She tracked the heartbeats. She couldn't help it. It was the only thing she could do as she lay there helplessly and she couldn't turn it off, couldn't stop feeling them the way she couldn't stop her own heart from beating. And one by one, like candles in the wind, they went out.
She still felt her father's. Faint. Moving. She held onto it the way she held the ground beneath her, clinging to the hope that he would come back and pull the floor board open and pull her into his arms. Into safety.
She counted. She didn't know to what. She just counted, in the dark, listening to her family disappear one heartbeat at a time, until the compound went silent.
She lay in that silence for a long time. Long enough that the dark stopped feeling like darkness and started feeling like the only real thing there was. The anxiety paralyzing her from even lifting a finger, like if she was still enough, everything would go back to the way it was and she would realize this was just a bad dream.
Her father's heartbeat was still there. Faint as a candle through a wall.
She moved quickly. She pushed the board up and the smell that hit her nose was wrong, everything was so wrong. She didn't allow herself to imagine the outcome of what had just occurred because if she did, she would stop moving and she couldn't stop moving.
She moved through the house on her hands and knees. Some primal part of her knew not to stand up yet, not until she understood what was out there, so she crawled through her home which didn’t feel like her home anymore and kept her eyes on the floor, following the only heartbeat she had left.
It led her to the courtyard.
She stood up when she came through the door and she was finally able to see everything she wasn't ready to see. The courtyard that had once been full of the people she loved, was now littered with their lifeless bodies arranged in shapes and positions that her young mind could not process. She felt like screaming, the images before her tearing through her insides like a jagged sword, but she maintained her composure. She had to find her father whose heartbeat kept getting fainter and fainter. She made her way through the compound, stepping over severed limbs and pools of blood, trying to keep her eyes off the ground, off the reality that was sprawled all around her, as if that would make it all go away. She found her father near the old tree. The one her grandfather had planted when he was a young man almost 50 years ago.
"Papa." Her voice came out tiny. She ran to him.
He was barely breathing. His chest moving in shallow increments, each one a question. She dropped to her knees beside him and her hands found him before her eyes had fully processed what she was looking at. She pressed her hands flat against his chest the way he'd taught her, reaching for his heartbeat through her palms the way they'd practiced just that afternoon.
It was there. Thread-thin and fading.
"No." Her voice cracked. "No, no, no." She repeated frantically as her mind raced through all the options she had left. She had to do something, she could fix it. She’d seen her parents do the same for so many people in their village. Sick elderly people, injured young men, women in the brink of death after childbirth. She knew it was possible. She just didn’t know how.
She poured her chakra into him. Not the same way her parents had performed blood control to their patients, gently and carefully. She didn't know what she was doing. She knew only that his heartbeat was fading and she could feel it fading. So she pushed everything she had into her hands and into him and screamed at her own ability with everything she had: Fix it. Fix it. Fix it.
His chest shuddered.
"Yes—" She pushed harder. "Come on, please—“
The heartbeat stuttered. Surged. And then stuttered again. The blood circulation commenced and halted with each time she tried to pump it through his body manually.
Something tore open inside her. She kept pushing and pumping and becoming more desperate with every failed attempt, her chakra control completely unrefined and spotty. She was focused and frantic at the same time, the emotional turmoil that was a recipe for disaster when her ability was so volatile. Her father had taught her that during her training, to never attempt blood release unless he was there to monitor her.
She felt it come up through her like a tide.
Her arms went dark first. The lines spreading from her fingertips up past her wrists, past her elbows, fast and uneven, nothing like the gentle controlled bloom she had seen on her father. Her blood rose to meet the air without her permission, at the main veins of her wrists and elbows, forming sharp spikes underneath her skin, ripping through her veins and protruding out as if pulled by a magnet. She felt it pushing outward, answering the call she didn’t mean to make but was making with every desperate cell in her body.
"Papa." She cried, her voice raspy and gone from all the screaming and crying, which she hadn’t even realized she was doing all along. "Please, I'm trying, I need you, please-“
The blood around her wasn't hers anymore. It rose from the courtyard, from the ground, from everything the night had left behind, drawn by a pull she didn't know she was exerting. It moved in slow dark arcs through the air. It crystallised and broke apart and crystallised again in jagged shapes she wasn't making, wasn't choosing, wasn't controlling at all.
She didn't see the fragments flying. She didn’t feel the sharp sting of her wounds as blood poured out of her own veins. She only saw her father's face. She only felt his heartbeat getting quieter.
"Please—"
It stopped.
The silence it left was total. She felt the specific, impossible absence where the most familiar heartbeat in her entire world had been, and her mind simply broke. A scream rippled through the now quiet compound. She wailed as she kept pushing, refusing to accept that her father, her teacher, her protector, was gone.
She brought him back over the threshold and lost him. Brought him back and lost him again and again and each time the loss hurt the same and each time she refused to accept it, refused to accept she had no chakra left to use, no blood left to give, no tears left to cry. Her small hands stayed pressed flat against his chest while the courtyard filled with the cries of a child too young to understand the finality of death.
──────────────────────
Nothing about the Chishio compound mission briefing had prepared Kakashi for what was on the other side of the gate.
He'd known going in that it was bad. The tip they received came from the nearby village, and reported an attack in the north east mountains of the Land of Fire. The tip was low on detail and high on urgency, which was a classic indication that the situation was dire.
The courtyard stopped him.
Not because of the bodies, Kakashi was no stranger to corpses. He processed those the way he'd trained himself to, clinical and sequential, without absorbing, without getting emotions involved. It wasn’t the damage to the structures either, significant as it was, the cracked well, the broken windows, the deep score marks in the stone.
It was the blood.
It moved. Slowly, in arcs and drifts, thick dark currents suspended in the air, defying gravity, and it all circled the center of the courtyard where a child knelt over a body with her hands pressed against it.
Her arms were dark to her shoulders. The veins under her skin pulsed and branched in the sickening rhythm of chakra reserves being pushed past their limits. Half-formed crystalline shapes rose and collapsed around her in an unstable orbit, some of them close enough to the bodies of the other fallen clan members.
"What is that," Tenzo said, quietly. Not a question, exactly.
"Kekkei tōta." Kakashi responded. "Blood Release. Appears to be out of control."
"How long has she been—"
"Long enough." He responded. "She's almost empty. She'll drop soon."
Drop was one word for it. Kakashi ran the numbers fast and grim. Chakra depletion at that rate, that young, with no signs of slowing, could be fatal.
"We need to get close enough to stop her."
Neither of them moved immediately. That was telling, he thought. Their team of three standing at the courtyard entrance, all ANBU, all trained for things that most people couldn’t even begin to imagine, and all of them hesitated to walk into that radius. The floating blood. The jagged crystal shapes that appeared and vanished with an unpredictability that made threat assessment genuinely difficult. The little girl at the center of it.
"I'll go," Itachi, the youngest and newest team member, said.
"Itachi—" Tenzo started.
"She's almost out. We don't have time to figure out a better approach." He was already moving, slow and deliberate, no sudden movements, and Kakashi watched him pick his path through the debris with careful precision, very aware of exactly how wrong this could go.
Kakashi tracked every floating shard in the air. His hand stayed near his weapon. This was not a situation his training had given him clean protocols for, and he didn't like that.
She noticed them when Itachi was six feet away.
Her head came up fast, with the snapping animal attention of something cornered, and what Kakashi saw in her face wasn't the blank unfocused state he'd expected from someone at the edge of depletion. It was terror. Immediate, unequivocal terror, and underneath the terror something that was already reorganising itself into something more dangerous.
The blood in the air around her lurched.
"Stop.” Tenzo's hands moved, a single seal, and the ground between her and Itachi split and rose into a thick wooden barrier and the crystal shard that formed from the floating pools of blood around her shattered against it.
She scrambled backward. One hand finding the ground, the other still reaching toward the body, the two impulses fighting each other, and the blood in the air lurched again in the midst of the chaos. Sharp shards of crystalized blood shot out from every direction, hitting stone walls, tree trunks, anything that appeared before them.
"We're not here to hurt you." Itachi said, from around the edge of Tenzo's barrier. His voice genuinely calm, not the performed calm of someone managing a situation. "We’re here to help. Let’s talk.”
She was breathing in short, wrecked increments. Her hands were back on the man’s chest, whom Kakashi gathered was someone close and precious to her. Likely her father. She was still pushing chakra through, he could feel it, even from here, but he was not sure what exactly she was trying to do.
"He's gone." Itachi again, and there was something about his voice this time, not gentleness exactly, just honesty, plain and direct. "I'm sorry. He's already gone. You can stop now.”
A sound came out of her that Kakashi would never forget.
The blood dropped. All of it, all at once. Every suspended arc, every half-formed spear. She collapsed with it, falling sideways over the man’s body with the loose bonelessness of someone whose body had given out.
Itachi reached her in the same moment. He crouched down beside her looking at the body she was sobbing over, recording and analyzing every detail. He looked up and around at the rest of the corpses. Kakashi did the same. The massacre was undeniable. No forensic analysis was needed to realize that no other survivors were left. Kakashi’s heart tightened for a second and then he walked over.
She curled over her father's body and shook without making any sound at all, her body completely drained of everything that she couldn’t even cry out loud.
Tenzo appeared at Kakashi's shoulder. His voice was very low. "What do we do?"
"We take her back," he said. "And we figure out what happened here."
──────────────────────
Kakashi stayed up most of the night writing it.
Site assessment: Chishio clan compound, full structural and population loss. No evidence of external combatant presence. No weapon strikes, no tracks or entry points suggesting forced intrusion. Single survivor: female, approximate age 9, identified as Sora Chishio, found at the center of the affected area exhibiting active and uncontrolled Blood Release.
He stopped there for a long time.
He knew what that paragraph would read as to anyone reviewing it without having stood in that courtyard. The conclusion was right there, clean and simple and terrible: the survivor is the perpetrator. No visible external threat. A child manifesting a destructive ability at the scene.
He had stood in that courtyard. He had seen the damage, the distribution of it, the things about it that didn't cohere with a single child as the source. He had watched her face when they arrived, the terror of someone who did not know who they were, who thought they might be what had come for her family. That wasn't the face of a perpetrator.
He wrote the facts as observed anyway. Nothing excluded.
He added one more line at the end.
No remains of additional children were located at the site. Clan records show at minimum three children under the age of twelve and 5 infants and toddlers. This discrepancy is unresolved and warrants further investigation.
He looked at that line for a long time before he let himself sleep.
──────────────────────
She came back to consciousness slowly, in pieces, and the world assembled itself around her one sensation at a time. Ceiling first. White. Blurry. Then the smell, clean and medicinal the way hospitals always smelled. The soft linens of the bed she lay on engulfed her in a comforting warmth. The bright light coming from the big windows hit her eyes making her squint and groan in annoyance.
Then she remembered.
She sat up so fast the room started spinning.
“Easy.” A voice said, from her right. It was not a voice she recognized. She scrambled backward until her spine hit the headboard, her hands finding the sheets, looking for something, anything, that she could use to defend herself but finding nothing.
“You’re in Konoha.” The voice said again. Her vision finally cleared from the blurriness and head rush from sitting up too fast. A boy, sitting a few feet from her bed, not much older than her. He looked like he had been settled on the chair by her hospital bed for a while, waiting for her to wake up and was now being very careful not to startle her further. “The hospital. You’ve been here since yesterday.”
She stared at him. She knew those eyes. She had seen them in the courtyard, across the radius of her own unraveling, before everything went dark.
“Where is my father,” she said, her reflexes making her turn her head to the side, as if looking for another hospital bed in the giant room she had been placed. She saw nothing.
He didn’t look away from her. Didn’t reach for a kinder version of the answer. “He didn’t survive,” he said quietly. “I’m sorry.”
She had known. The knowing had been sitting in her chest since she woke up, heavy and permanent as stone. Hearing it out loud was different anyway. Her heart stung from the tightening of hearing those words out loud. It knocked the breath out of her, made her forget how to maintain the most basic functions. She held her breath for a few seconds, the news hitting her with an intensity that she had not expected, even though deep down she knew it was coming.
She didn’t cry. She had nothing left to cry with.
She looked down at her hands. Both of them bandaged to the elbows, white linen wrapped tight over the places where her own blood had torn its way out. She stared at them for a long time.
“My name is Itachi,” the boy said, after a while. “I was there. In the courtyard.”
“I know,” she said. Her voice came out quieter than she intended. “You were the one who told me to stop.”
“Yes.”
She turned the bandaged hands over in her lap. “Is everyone else—”
“Yes,” he said, before she could finish. Sparing her from having to say it.
She absorbed that. The full weight of it settling into her slowly, too large to arrive all at once. She stared at the window and said nothing for a while, and he let her.
“There are people,” he said carefully, after a moment, “who have questions about what happened. About what we found when we arrived.”
She looked at him then. She noticed the careful way he’d chosen those words, the implication underneath them that he was making sure she understood without saying it plainly.
“They think I did it,” she said.
He didn’t confirm it. He didn’t deny it either. “I think it would be good,” he said quietly, “if you were careful about what you say. And to whom.”
She held his gaze for a moment. Looked at the young boy in front of her whose dark gentle eyes were trying to hold back the empathy and compassion he was feeling inside. He had come. Had waited for her to wake up, just to warn her.
“Okay,” she said.
He nodded once. Settled back in his chair.
The grey morning light turned slowly to something warmer, and neither of them said anything else, and it was, in its strange and insufficient way, enough.
──────────────────────
The Hokage’s office felt smaller than it was when all three of them were standing in it.
Itachi had been in this room before reporting to the Third with the rigidness that his role required. He knew how these debriefs went. Factual. Sequential. The kind of conversation that reduced what had happened to a series of observations that the people in this room could do something with.
He gave his account the same way Kakashi gave his, and Tenzo after that. The courtyard. The blood. The girl at the center of it. He chose his words carefully and said what he had seen without involving his emotions, because that was what this room required of him and because he understood that his personal feelings would do very little to shift the weight of Lord Third’s decision.
The Third listened without interrupting. His eyes, behind the deceptive gentleness they always carried, were taking everything in and revealing nothing about where it was going to land.
“The clan records confirm it,” the Third said, when they had finished. “The Chishio were a closed community. No alliances, no active shinobi on record, no enemies we have documented intelligence on. They were a pacifist clan that refused to integrate into the shinobi nations, they detested war and death.” A pause. “The damage to the compound is consistent with a Blood Release event of significant scale.” His eyes moved across the three of them. “The girl is the only variable we cannot account for. Furthermore, the girl has offered no account of the events.”
Itachi kept his face still. Sora had chosen the path of complete silence after he had warned her to be careful with recounting the events of that night. Whether that aided or hurt her case was not certain yet.
“Our assessment,” the Third continued, “is that she presents too significant a risk for standard placement. The ability is volatile. We have no experience for containing it in a civilian or even a standard shinobi context.” He set his pipe down. “She will be held in the lower tunnels until a longer term plan can be established.”
The room was quiet for a moment.
“With respect,” Itachi said.
Kakashi glanced at him. Tenzo went very still.
The Third looked at him. The full weight of his superior’s gaze landed on him. “Uchiha.” The Third said, granting him permission to keep speaking.
“Detainment won’t contain the ability,” Itachi said. “It will give it nowhere to go. A kekkei tōta that volatile, in a child that age, under prolonged confinement with no outlet and no training,” He stopped. Chose the next words precisely. “The risk increases, not decreases.”
“And your alternative suggestion.”
“ANBU candidacy. Structured training, supervised development of the ability, a framework that gives her discipline instead of isolation.” He held the Third’s gaze. “A weapon that is trained is significantly less dangerous than one that is not.”
The silence that followed was tense and thick. Itachi held his breath as The Third eyed him, thinking of a response to the young boy’s suggestion.
“She is nine years old,” the Third said.
“Yes.”
“She has no formal shinobi training.”
“Correct.”
Something moved across the Third’s face that Itachi couldn’t fully read. “You are suggesting we invest considerable village resources into training a child who may have destroyed her entire clan.”
“I am suggesting,” Itachi said carefully, “that the alternative is holding a child with an uncontrolled kekkei tōta in a tunnel and waiting to see what happens when she runs out of reasons to cooperate.”
Another silence. Longer.
“She would need a supervisor,” the Third said finally. “Someone responsible for her progress and any incident that occurs during the training period.” His eyes moved to Kakashi. “You wrote the report.”
Kakashi straightened slightly. “I did.”
“Then you understand the variables better than most.” It was not quite a question. “You would take responsibility for her candidacy.”
Itachi watched Kakashi absorb the weight of what was being handed to him, which was not a request nor a suggestion.
“I’ll back the recommendation,” Kakashi said. “What he’s describing is sound. Containment without structure doesn’t solve the problem. It just moves it somewhere darker.”
The Third was quiet for a long moment. He looked at Itachi. Then at Kakashi.
“She will be monitored at all times during the initial period,” he said finally. “Any incident, any loss of control, any indication that the training is not producing the intended result and the arrangement ends immediately.” His eyes settled on Kakashi. “You will personally oversee her integration. That is not a suggestion.”
“Understood,” Kakashi said.
The Third picked up his pipe again, which Itachi had learned meant the conversation was over. “Dismissed.”
They walked out. The door closed behind them and the corridor outside was very quiet. Kakashi looked at Itachi. Itachi looked ahead.
“That was either very smart,” Kakashi said, “or very reckless.”
“It was both,” Itachi said.
Kakashi was quiet for a moment. Then: “She’d better be worth it.”
Itachi didn’t answer. He thought about the hospital room that morning. The way she had looked at her bandaged hands. The way she absorbed the news of her entire clan being wiped out. The exhausted look on her face. He couldn’t let her suffer through more by being punished for a crime she didn’t commit.
“She will be,” he said, and continued walking.
Silent Crows | Chapter 6 - The Hour Before Dawn
AO3 | Tumblr