Disguised Curses

Ok. So a double- chapter update (I held this one until the next one was ready because, again, they go together. And it's the last before a little bit of a time- skip). This should take place roughly a few days after the last few, and next chapter right after this one. I have some rough ideas about the next few chapters but there will likely be sometime jumps (starting at probably a week and flexing from there, as the muse hits.)

I'm still waiting on finalized paperwork so we can move, so I'm writing when/ where I can. I'll be soaking in some Avengers fic for a while, check my LJ page for potential non- anime stories. Otherwise, just hang loose and wait for notifiers.

Djargo, If you ever, ever want to fill an email with questions, comments, and critique, so you're not rambling in review, I'll always be willing to get one! Your reviews and input are always worth it. (check my author page, data's there)





Warnings: some potentially mildly disturbing imagery. I tried to be 'safe' about it, but. It's there.

Chapter 49

 

 

 

He bared his teeth at the scent assaulting his nose, wiping his face back to blank a second later. He didn’t recognize the scent, not really, but he knew it none-the-less. Every fiber in him screeched against betraying himself, prompting him to fall still and silent under the cloak. His mind knew being recognized was very slim, but instinct demanded he hide. Stay unseen. Be aware, and wary. Even with an layered genjutsu and henge that made him look completely unlike himself, there was risk. He could not be found out yet.

The group of people that passed, a few he promptly recognized as clan heads and long- standing elders within the advising council, were clearly headed toward the cluster of rooms dedicated for use by an assembled council. Among them was a old man wrapped nearly haphazardly with bandages. Danzou. Miserable, manipulative, conceited bastard. This time he refrained from breaking his blank stare, eyes barely tracking the group as it passed.

A pale waif of a ninja appeared in his blurry peripheral, who watched the disappearing backs of the departing council members before turning the full weight of a truly empty smile on him. “Shi-kun? Follow me.”

Itachi peeled away from the wall and looked down at the ninja he’d been waiting for, his still- fuzzy vision not helping the kid look any better. All dark hair and pale skin, somehow worse than Sasuke’s had ever been. He was supposed to meet someone here, on this hall, and stand by for further orders. “Sai?”

“Come.” He walked away, and Itachi followed, descending toward the bowels and under-city pathways of the Tower.  Itachi had seen a lot of them when he’d been ANBU, and the turns were increasingly familiar. Eventually they stopped at a dead- end, or what Itachi remembered to have been a dead- end. It now had a door. Sai knocked, and after a long moment the door cracked open to reveal a slightly bloody Ibiki Morino. Ibiki shoved a small box into Sai’s hands. “She’s in operating room five, restricted ward.” The door clicked shut, and an instant later wasn’t even there.

Itachi found the box in his hands, light and so unassuming, before Sai grabbed his sleeve and used a complex ’porting jutsu. The silent halls of moments before were replaced with a far less than silent halls of the hospital, but Sai led him firmly away from the hustle of the main rooms and toward the usually calmer restricted ward.

Sai knocked on a closed door and pressed a smaller, softer package into Itachi’s hands alongside the box from Ibiki. “I wasn’t here. You never saw me,” he hissed, and disappeared. Tsunade opened the door a moment later and glared. “Takeshi?”

He nodded and entered when she motioned him in, handing her the packages when she pointedly opened her hands. “This one’s from Ibiki, and the other’s from my guide.” Itachi watched as she settled the box on a nearby medical cart, careful not to shake it around, and then delicately opened the tissue- wrapped item from Sai.

He wasn’t expecting to see the pale perfection of a Hyuga eyeball staring out of all that soft material.  “What is going on?” It looked.. fresh, not bloody or damaged, but it had that look like it had been delicately removed just minutes before. He’d seen the eyes of the long- dead- shriveled, exploded, broken in so many ways. This… this was unnerving.

“Do you still want to see properly again?” Tsunade closed the paper around the eye, so carefully, and placed it in a hard- sided jewelry- sized box. “They won’t be Uchiha eyes, or anything from a duo-jutsu bloodline. But you will be able to see clearly.”

The Hyuga eye was not for him, then. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that. Small mercies? He doubted that he could handle looking in the mirror at such eyes in his face. But to see properly again, even without the Sharingan… “Yes.”

“Sit.” She picked up the box from Ibika and revealed a pair of very dark brown eyes, not quite the onyx of his but... it was reasonable. He listened while she ran through the procedure she’d planned, and when her hands framed his face he just gave his soft- voiced consent once last time and felt his world go dark and numb.

 

 

His world comes back in tingles and pinpoints of pain, and he’s lifting his hands without thinking about it. Firm hands grab his wrists before he could move far.

“Keep your hands away from your face or I will strap them down. I’m not done.” Tsunade’s sharp tone cuts through the buzz of distracting pain. Itachi makes a conscious effort to grip the armrests instead of letting his hands move further toward his face.

Her touch is gentler on his face than his wrists, and he can feel the probing touch of healing chakra as she works around his face and eyes. “I’ve dimmed the lights, so you shouldn’t have too many glare problems as your sight returns. The transplant is taking, no signs of rejection.” Her thumbs press on either side of the bridge of his nose and he forcefully resists blinking. He can’t see anything yet. He fixates on her voice, the soothing business quality of her words as she describes what she’s doing one step at a time, her touch never a shock as long as he can follow along. It’s an alien feeling to put himself in anyone’s control this way, his vision and life literally in her hands. Minutes pass before grey speckles displace the black nothingness, and he blinks against the soft edges of her hands. The grey takes a while to congeal, longer for the black to fade away. Soon soft patches cover his eyes and everything promptly converts to a soft mottled grey.

“Give that another ten minutes. Don’t take the bandages off, don’t rub, and don’t dare move out of that chair.”

It isn’t difficult to follow those orders; the tingles are still there but more like a fading itch, and the burning pinpoints have reduced to something like a dull ache. He faced far worse in the past.

“How are Sasuke and the others?” He hasn’t seen them since he turned himself in a few days ago. He’s debriefed with Tsunade and Ibiki, been worn ragged and relived things he’d long wished he could forget. The last eighteen hours have been his to pull himself back together, and he’s apprehensive about what he’s missed. Even if he goes back as ‘Takeshi’, Neji’s pet ermine, he wants to be ready. Naruto is a defined force of nature- things can stay just fine for a while, but if something changes, it happens quickly and often forcefully.

“They’re adapting. Naruto seems to be the driving force to getting your brother to turn his life around.” There’s something of humour in Tsunade’s voice. “Thankfully no outbreaks or disasters from either of them. At least not lately.”

“Do they fight often?” He had heard at one point that they were quite violent rivals. He doesn’t have data bridging how they changed from that to.. this new friendship they share. He doesn’t like not having the pieces; Sasuke is his brother, and Itachi has been away far too long. 

“That depends on what you mean by ‘fight’ and ‘often’.”

Itachi blinks behind the soft gauze and tries not to recall how many times he’s seen Naruto look at his little brother with that hunger in his eyes. Yes, they probably ‘fight’ just for fun, and he so doesn’t want to have to think about that. “They were rivals, once. I heard when that Sasuke left for Sound, they fought. And my intel says Sasuke was lucky to have walked away alive. Do they still fight like that?”

“No.” There’s an immense amount of relief in that one word, and Itachi can hear all of it. “Not with each other. They save that for missions.” He thinks she adds a near silent ‘Thank Kami’ at the end of it, but doesn’t comment. He can imagine quite well what kind of chaos they would bring to Konoha if they ever battled each other here. “Stay still. I need to check the healing.”

Her fingers settle on his face, this time on his cheekbones, and lets him adjust to the contact before brushing them closer to his eyes. It’s different, a med-nin that understands the frailty and instincts of a long- time ninja, than dealing with civilian medics. Tsunade has made every effort to not spook him during this process. He keeps his hands on the armrests and lets her guide his head when she presses the side of her hand against the curve of his cheek.

“I’m going to remove one cover at a time, see how well the pupil response is. Stay calm and don’t. Move.”

He doesn’t. He’s dead- still for her as the cloth peels away and she gently lifts his left eyelid. She’s a darker blot of grey in a halo of muted light, and it reminds him of his early healing with the man who’d saved his life. It gives him a measure of hope that maybe his natural healing will bridge the gap between ‘fuzz’ and real sight. A pinpoint of white outshines everything for a moment, and Tsunade makes a vague pleased sound. “Responsive, if slightly slow. How much detail can you see?”

“You’re a grey blob.” He doesn’t get any further before the cover is back over his eye, and her fingers are touching around the right side. This time he can make out the outline of her, head from shoulders and the rough lines of her arms. He tells her about that, and sits through another test of the bright light.

“Good news, it looks like you’re going to make a full recovery, with proper care and attention. We’ll make sure that left side continues healing smoothly, but the damage in the chakra pathways around the eye is slowing the healing process. You’ll have to let it heal on its own.” The right cover is taped back up and he relaxes back into the chair when she moves away. “Of course, leave your eyes alone, give them a chance to get accustomed to your body. And no shifting for at least a couple more days; I don’t want to know what may happen if you change forms before your human body has fully accepted the transplant as yours.”

“Yes ma’am.” He agrees, not letting the shivers he feel at his core race along his skin. “Tsunade- sama?” Her grunt of acknowledgement was off to one side, where she’d left the solitary eye earlier. He really doesn’t want to know her plans for it, even though it is dangerous for her to have a duo-jutsu eye in her possession. Especially in that prime condition. “You said you didn’t care if I went civilian or kept working as a ninja. Would it be permissible to take a few months ‘off-duty’ to decide?”

“More than acceptable. You are authorized the time you need to adjust back to living here, and decide what you want to do with your future. You may have to assume a new name for a while. A long while.” She shuffles through what sounds like paperwork, and walks back. He can feel the heat of her by his arm. “Kakashi mentioned that he has a spare room and is willing to cover for you until I can work out how to put you back among the population without you getting killed at first sight.”

Itachi stares into the darkness and nods. He runs through his options and cannot find a more suitable choice for the immediate future. At least with Kakashi he does not have to worry about his real face being seen, or his ermine body. And the man is reliable and trustworthy, despite his personal faults. “I accept.” He pauses when her hand touches his shoulder, and lets her trace fingers across his face. He thinks about asking about Neji, wondering if the boy is looking for ‘Takeshi’, if Kimi had told him anything. Maybe she’d lied and claimed the ermine was dead, or run away.

But he won’t ask. Neji is safer thinking he lost the ermine, man-behind-the-fur and all, than know who the face underneath it truly is. And yet he owes Neji a debt, a debt he has no clue how to repay. He has few choices, right now, and he will do what is best for the moment.

That means he needs to heal, keep hidden, and help Tsunade secure the village.

____  End chapter ____