Chapter Text
Though he doesn’t have the control for more than surface healing, Itachi is capable of a basic diagnostic jutsu. Casimir is slowly but steadily returning to a healthy core temperature. Breathing and pulse are still depressed, but not dangerously so. Blood oxygen on the low end of normal. No nerve activation or inflammation that would signal an unseen injury.
The Kivi clan head watches him work. Only after the faint green glow leaves his hands does she speak. “Was it you or your goddess that cured him? To whom do we owe that debt?”
Itachi looks up from where he’s kneeling, letting his confusion show. “Cured him? Was he ill?”
She brushes a few extra cushions onto the floor so she can sit by her son’s pillow and rest her hand on his brow. There’s a slowness to the motion that isn’t quite hesitance. Her reserve is almost familiar to Itachi, almost what he’s accustomed to, but there’s a shade of difference to it… stop. Now is not the time to think about his parents. If she feels cautious showing parental affection in front of an outsider, that’s perfectly understandable.
“He was given a threefold death, as the ritual requires,” she says at last. “Historically, the methods are wounding, hanging, and drowning. But none of us could bear to do violence to him. Not even at his request.”
Itachi’s stomach does a swoop as his mind leaps ahead of her narrative: “Drowning, cold, and — what poison?”
“A complex potion that would let him hold his focus even as his body died, very similar to one he’s used before in dreamwalking but in a much higher dose. The only ingredient that does lasting harm if you survive it is hemlock.”
Hemlock. Sage wept. No wonder they’re all acting like the kid could still die any moment. Itachi pulls up an eyelid to check pupil dilation — somewhat constricted, but not a pinprick — and it makes Casimir’s pointy little nose twitch, which is encouraging. Then Itachi tries the diagnostic jutsu on his abdomen, looking for kidney and liver damage. As far as he can tell, everything’s gurgling along happily.
Shame twists in him. If the kid were a shinobi, Itachi would’ve checked him for poison right away. He’s fine, but no thanks to me, he doesn’t say. Undermining his new employers’ (?) respect for him would be an idiot move. “It was either Great Lady Amaterasu or your own gods. I only warmed him. I would’ve cleared his lungs if it had been necessary, but it wasn’t. The cold and poison depressed his respiratory function enough that he didn’t inhale water.” He’s watching her shoulders; they still haven’t relaxed. “You owe me no debt, Lady Kivi. What my goddess chose to do, She did for her own reasons, and I am paid in full.”
Kivi Elena’s pale brows arch. “Oh? And what coin can hire a magic warrior from the godhome, to live among mortals and fight our battles?”
Every lesson of his life so far tells him not to answer, but those are lessons for a world he left behind. Nothing done here can touch anyone there, and he can never return. Amaterasu placed that certainty directly into his soul.
“My brother,” he says. His voice comes out hoarse, as if his own throat is fighting him. He swallows to make it obey. “My younger brother is the only one left of our clan. I couldn’t… be with him. Because of the circumstances. To protect him from those who would use him, and use me through him, I had to leave him alone. Now the eye of Amaterasu will be on him, and She is far stronger than I. She can make him stronger than I can, than I am, but — he doesn’t have to be, now.”
Having listened with fierce focus, Elena now puts a firm hand on his shoulder and squeezes slightly. Her hand is smaller than his already are, much smaller than — but the gesture is the same. He can’t help but bow his head.
“I remind you of someone,” she observes as she sits back. “You called me ‘captain’ earlier. Which is appropriate, and you may if you wish — but I don’t think you were referring to my command of the fleet. You were thinking of someone in your own world.”
“Yes. Captain Hound. You move like him. He has gray eyes like yours.”
Chakra loops between them as he names the memory, though it’s less invasive than when Viktor did it. “Hound? And your name means Weasel. Is this customary?”
Maybe it’s just the release of long-held tension, but this is unexpectedly funny enough that he huffs an audible laugh. “No, no. That’s unrelated. In Anbu —“ oh, how odd, it comes through as a sound instead of translating itself — “we wore animal masks, and were identified by them. I was Mountain Cat. Hound’s real name is Scarecrow.”
Her eyebrows go up again. “Is your brother’s name Mouse? Or Pumpkin? Honestly!”
“It’s Sasuke.” He braces for the invasion — but instead her chakra deliberately pulls back to avoid touching him. “It… it means helpful, ironically,” he supplies, but the moment of humor is gone.
“I’m sure you miss him. You can show him to me when you’re ready.”
What else can he answer but, “Yes, Captain.”
The child messenger from before returns then, a scrambling little shower of snow clumps and proud babble, followed at a comfortable lope by a man who looks rather like a cheap imitation of Viktor. His tightly braided hair is just as red, but his eyes don’t have that eerie brightness, his beard is scraggly stubble, and his ears stick out. Still, the way he moves and the steady roll of his chakra makes Itachi mentally classify him as chuunin, maybe tokujo on a trap specialty. After all, Ivanko Trapper is even what they call him.
He’s dressed in a buff shearling coat and gray fur leggings, a red wool cap on his head. Across his shoulder, a bulging canvas satchel with plenty of pockets. An intricately patterned mitten on his left hand, and where his right would be, a copper hook. He studies Itachi with the same fearless curiosity Leila had earlier. When Elena explains the mission, he swipes off his red hat and digs an oatmeal-colored scarf out of his satchel to cover his hair with. He uses the hook fairly comfortably, but with a few small hesitations that suggest he’s still getting used to it.
Well, Itachi did ask for someone with some skill at stealth, and Viktor said they’d ‘lost’ all the adult combatants; his options could be a lot worse than a man with a recent but fully healed amputation and a girl his own age who can at least reinforce her movements with chakra. As long as Leila doesn’t show up in something colorful, he’ll accept this team with (guarded) confidence.
Speaking of which, Itachi’s certainly not going to do recon in the snow wearing this coat. He thumbs through his pouch of supply scrolls until he feels the 服 kanji scratched into the end of one’s center dowel.
He’s tempted to throw the scroll up in the air to unroll it, and make the swap in midair, but being flashy could backfire on him… anyway, the items he wants are so far back on it, he’s not sure it would unroll far enough. So he does it on the floor like a sensible person. Folds his Akatsuki coat, puts it in the outermost slot right next to the old-fashioned sun hat with the streamer veil — honestly, who did design that silly uniform? — then scrolls along, back and back, to the portions he inked before he. Left. The village.
His Anbu armor appears in his hands, and Elena and Ivanko stop talking and stare.
He blinks at them. What’s the problem?
Elena bends to frown at the scroll, leaning on her stick. (Balance issues? A dodgy knee?) “Did you summon that?”
“It was… sealed… in the scroll… do you not have storage seals?”
“We do not.” The wonder and avarice dawning over her face is a bit alarming, but then she puts it away, as if reminding herself now is not the time. “Later, we would be grateful if you could teach us. I won’t delay your getting ready now. Leila is on her way back.”
It’s fortunate that the Anbu uniform’s black compression undershirt is stretchy, and that his chest hasn’t grown as much as his shoulders in the past year. He doesn’t bother changing his trousers or sandals. There’s no way those would fit. He has closed-toed boots elsewhere in the scroll, but he’s very likely outgrown those too. The armor, of course, is adjustable. A minute of fiddling with the webbing straps and it fits just as comfortably as it ever did.
The mask… he considers, for a moment, not even taking it out. But no. He may or may not be about to slaughter fifteen civilians for the crime of being hungry too close to people who have nothing to spare. He needs the mask. He hangs it on his belt.
While he’s retying his hair, Leila returns. She strides through the emptying room (the curious elders have been leaving or finding seats one by one all this time, as Viktor soothes and explains) with a fair imitation of her mother’s authority, though she’s too small yet for it to be anything but an imitation. There’s a hint of defiance in the lift of her chin that subsides when Elena nods to her. She wants to prove herself, clearly, but it seems that’s a thing she’s being given an honest chance to do.
(No bitterness, he reminds himself. The past is gone. Amaterasu chose you.)
Leila looks like a miniature version of some barbarian warrior queen from a fantasy manga. Over slate-blue leather with gray fur trim, she’s wearing oiled bronze greaves and arm guards, a gray fur hood with bronze plates riveted to it, and the most remarkable scale cuirass — every rectangular mahjong-tile-sized scale engraved with protective fuinjutsu so strong that when he turns on his sharingan to memorize the design, he can’t see her chakra through it.
“Jealous?” she grins.
“Bitterly,” he says, only half joking. “I propose an exchange of skills, later: those seals for this one.” He takes the last item out to show her what his scroll does, and hooks the chokuto scabbard to the back of his armor.
“Done,” she says hungrily. “That’s clever!”
“Your armor is truly remarkable.”
Elena says, “My husband made it.” Somehow, while sounding both polite and proud, she manages to also sound like she thinks they’re being a little unprofessional and need to pull themselves together. That, too, is a skill he’d like to learn.
Leila shuts her teeth on whatever she was about to ask, and nods. “Right. Vanya, did Mom fill you in?”
He nods. When they wait for more, he clarifies, “Scout and report back,” in a rusty baritone. “Not to engage unless you say so.” His blue eyes flicker over Itachi and away. “This. Person. Is strong but new.”
“Uchiha Itachi,” he introduces himself, and no one tries to read him from it this time. “I’m a stealth and illusion specialist. I’ll be relying on the two of you to teach me the terrain. Please take care of me.” He bows politely.
“Kivi Ivanko, the trapper,” the man says, uncertainly copying his bow.
Leila grabs Ivanko’s sleeve and beckons Itachi impatiently. “Come on, Kolonok, sooner we go the sooner we come back and get warm. Bye mom!”
She leads them out a different door than the one they came in by, which leads to a wide hallway that seems to double as an armory. She plucks a spear from a rack as she passes it. A bit under two meters with a shaft narrow enough that it’s probably a bit flexible, with a bamboo-leaf-shaped blade that looks balanced between slashing and piercing. Unlike her armor, the spear blade is gleaming steel.
Damn. Soujutsu is like the one art he’s never trained.
At the end of the armory hall is a heavily barred door that’s rattling with the force of the wind. Leila looks back at them for a final ready check. Ivanko tucks the end of his scarf more firmly inside his coat collar and nods. Itachi puts his mask on, and feels Yamaneko settle into his bones, competent and emotionless. Leila flips the bar up and shoulders out into the storm.