Miyu dreams of bodies. Melting flesh, charred bones, mouths frozen open, eternally screaming.

  She wakes with a jerk, and spends a few long seconds trying to orient herself.

  Konoha. Right.

  Faint traces of light seep around the edges of her curtains so she gets up and opens them. It’s still early, just past dawn by the looks of it.

  She brushes her teeth and washes her face, and then lets herself look in the mirror. Her eyes are still red rimmed, and her hair is a mess, but despite the threat of the board lingering in the corner of her eye, she commits today to remembering her home.

  The Okiya will be immortalised in her mind the way her childhood room will forever be.

  A place where Masa is rustling around in the kitchen. Kikyo, stopping by the office with tea. Nanami and her stupid harp that Miyu would give almost anything to hear again. Mother and her uncompromising trust in Miyu. Popo-chan and his hat, and everything he had meant to her. A reminder of her past, a promise to a friend lost too soon, a commitment to her future.

  Ashes, now.

  But they’ll live in Miyu’s mind, calm and peaceful as they can be with Masa terrifying Kikyo with her superstitions, the scent of Mother’s tobacco in the halls – Nanami, ruthless and graceful, and so, so talented, reciting poetry, practicing her laugh, singing and dancing and playing her harp to continue being the best she can be.

  It hurts, but Miyu thinks it’s the least she deserves.

  She should be hurting. But she’s not going to focus on how this is undeniably her fault. Instead she’s going to devote herself to them, an atonement that will never be enough.

  Brushing her hair, she thinks about Masa and Mother twisting Nanami’s hair into elaborate styles. Kikyo, watching, lip worried between her teeth in concentration. Miyu in the doorway, smirking at Nanami’s pinched expression because Mother’s not one to be called gentle.

  Kikyo, pouting over dinner because she hates grilled mackerel but Masa forgets and continues to make it every Sunday.

  Helping Masa in the kitchen because she really had been getting too old to be a housekeeper. Watching Kikyo help with the washing, and Nanami escort her up and down the stairs.

  Mother, her pipe between her lips as she scans through the books briefly before nodding and declaring Miyu’s numbers correct.

  All the facets of her life in that building, anything she can recall, she forces into the same place of her brain as her little childhood room.

  She makes her bed, opens the window wider to let more airflow in, and heads to the laundry. Someone has already moved the load into the dryer, and her clothes and Sakura’s are still warm. She picks up the basket and moves into the main living area.

  Then she almost drops it, because Itachi is sitting on her couch, book in hand and a mug of tea on the coffee table.

  “Itachi,” she stops in her tracks, unsure how to deal with the sudden surge of fondness. Because she had asked him to stay, and by the looks of it he never left – or even went to sleep.

  “Miyu,” he says, still peering at the pages before him. He’s holding the book unusually close to his face, and she wonders if he’s forgotten a pair of glasses at home.

  She dumps the basket in the armchair and surges towards him. He barely has time to move the book out of the way before she’s in his lap, arms encircling his neck to hold him close.

  “I’m so glad to see you,” she hates that she sounds teary and that this is the closest they’ve ever been – her knees to either side of his hips as her torso leans against his front.

  “And I you,” his voice is low and calm, and he must have set the book down because his hands are stroking gently at her back now.

  “Did Sasuke tell you what happened?” she asks quietly.

  “Yes,” he murmurs, lips brushing the side of her temple.

  They sit for a moment in silence.

  “I should have left when you told me,” she sags against him, boneless. His hands continue their gentle paths at either side of her spine.

  “You did what you thought was right,” of course he’s comforting her.

  “It wasn’t right though,” she pulls back to look him in his eyes. “It wasn’t, Itachi. And they’re all dead because I-”

  “Shh,” he tugs her gently closer until their foreheads come to rest against one another. “Don’t do this to yourself.”

  She closes her eyes and listens to the sound of his breathing – tries to match her own to it.

  “I’ve been training since I was three,” his deep tone sends a warm shiver down her spine, but he makes no comment on it.

  “Hm,” she lets her own hands weave into his silky hair.

  “Every day I was drilled on crisis situations, decision making, weapons handling – all the things that are important to know – before I graduated.”

  Her heartbeat is slowing to a calmer pace as his words wash over her.

  “Since then I’ve gone on countless missions. As a team member, as a captain. Countless missions, training that has spanned twenty years of my life – and yet, when the time comes to make a decision that could mean life or death?”

  She opens her eyes to meet his.

  “I don’t always make a decision with a favourable outcome. Sometimes people die. Sometimes I almost die.”

  Miyu inhales sharply at that. Death and Itachi in the same thought makes her head and her heart hurt.

  “Lingering on what could have been is of no use when something has been done. There’s no going back, Miyu. We learn to live with our choices every day, and that’s not something exclusive to ninja.”

  She closes her eyes again, lets his even breathing calm her again.

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  “It’s a matter of human nature, and not even you can outmanoeuvre that.”

  The laugh bubbles out of her and she tilts her head back to enjoy it because it’s never felt so good before. Her chest still hurts and her mind is scrambling to maintain the frantic pace at which she is forcing herself through memories she needs to keep, but Itachi has taken her worst fears and made them seem small.

  “You keep doing this to me,” she can’t stop her small smile as their eyes meet.

  “Doing what?” he cocks his head to the side and she tries to understand how someone can be so beautiful.

  “Making me feel like no problem is unconquerable. That no fears can truly hurt me.”

  He offers just a tiny quirk of his lip then.

  “I credit years of therapy and a rather decent sense of self awareness.”

  Miyu raises a brow and shakes her head.

  “Self awareness? Tell me why you don’t seem to have a prescription for glasses when you so obviously need them, then.”

  She notices the change immediately. Nothing in his body language is different, but the air is suddenly… heavy.

  “What.” His tone is flat.

  “You were squinting at the book,” she explains, nodding to where he’s set it face-down beside them. “And after the festival, at that shogi tile. Not too hard to puzzle out.”

  Itachi’s eyes don’t leave her face.

  “I’m just tired.” His expression doesn’t flinch. Not even the slightest.

  Miyu offers an unimpressed stare. “I know the kind of hours you can operate on. Don’t think you can get out of this.”

  Silence, for just a moment.

  And then he huffs out a short laugh.

  “What?” she lets a hand trail out of his hair and across his neck until she’s cradling his jaw lightly.

  “One day.” The smile in his tone makes her want to smile in turn but she represses it.

  “You’ve been here one day, and you’ve figured out a secret I’ve been keeping for almost a year.”

  Miyu starts to smile, and then stops.

  Because – a year?

  “Itachi,” her voice sounds very calm, but she notices the sudden tension at the corner of his eyes. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but does your line of work not involve frequent fights, many of them to the death?”

  His silence is enough answer.

  “Hm. Interesting,” she keeps her eyes trained on his. “And do those fights not often contain projectiles, many of which may be small and hard to see on a good day?”

  More silence.

  “Aha. One more thing.” She leans in until their noses are almost touching. “Who else knows?”

  “No one,” he answers after a beat. “Well, you, now. But no one else.”

  “Okay.” She sits back and lets herself frown at him. “Self aware is not a title you get to assume. Why have you kept this secret?”

  He averts his eyes and unease stirs in Miyu’s chest. He’s hiding something, and it might be more than steadily deteriorating eyesight.

  “I-”

  Miyu startles as a knock sounds from the front door. Slightly delayed, she realises it’s her front door, and hurries up off Itachi’s lap to answer it.

  The door opens to Shisui’s smiling face.

  “Good morning, Miyu-chan!”

  She mouths ‘chan’ in confusion as he breezes past her into the apartment to set the bags he’d been holding onto the island bench.

  “I brought breakfast.”

  Miyu shuts the door and turns to face him. Itachi is on the lounge, organising her laundry. She flushes pink as he picks up a pair of panties and neatly folds them.

  “I’ll do that,” her voice only gives away her lack of composure a little.

  “Do what?” Itachi asks innocently, and suddenly the entire contents of the basket have been folded and stacked on her low coffee table.

  She blushes further because there had definitely been a few questionable pieces of underwear in there. Mostly lace and other skimpy numbers that she hadn’t expected him to fold.

  “I brought a housewarming gift, too,” Shisui says, and then unseals – a painting?

  She’s sure he intended it as a gag gift, because it’s a painting of a crow standing amongst tiny cacti.

  But the cacti remind her of Popo-chan, and the crow could be Chikako. Crows and Itachi – they will always be irrevocably linked to her.

  “You don’t like it?” Shisui asks, and Miyu has to forcibly strip the blank expression from her face.

  “It’s not that,” she steps forward to inspect it a little closer. It’s well crafted, and she notices a signature in the bottom left corner. It’s not one she recognises, but signed art is handmade art.

  “Thank you, Shisui-san,” she gives him a polite smile and takes the large frame from him. “I’ll just put this-”

  The painting disappears from her hands and Itachi walks with it to the large empty space on the wall to the right of the door.

  He places it on the wall without any hangings and it just stays.

  “Chakra,” explains Shisui from where he’s standing on the other side of her island, unpacking the bag.

  “Ah,” she doesn’t understand much about the ninja arts, but chakra seems to be one of its fundamentals.

  She busies herself making tea and it makes her miss Kikyo so vividly that she ends up blinking through her tears at the scent of jasmine.

  Itachi and Shisui talk quietly behind her, discussing the status of one of their friends who seems to be in hospital after a mission gone south.

  She knows they can communicate with more than words and wonders if they’re talking about her. It’s self-centred and short sighted, so she pushes down the thought and turns to them with a tray of tea at the ready.

  As she pours it’s Nanami’s practiced hands she thinks of, the plain white cups blur with the hand-painted, intricately patterned ones she had favoured.

  “Miyu?”

  She looks up to Itachi, aware that her face has fallen into her schooled calm.

  “The tea.”

  A quick glance down confirms that she’s still pouring into a tiny cup that’s overflowing on to the tray.

  “Oh.”

  She stops, pours the other two cups as though the tray isn’t full of tea. Neither Itachi or Shisui comment as she uses a tea towel to wipe the bottoms of the cups before she hands them over.

  Neither of them draw her into conversation as they eat. She’s not hungry, hasn’t been for a while, but she forces down a small portion and finishes her tea, burning her tongue in the process.

  It’s nothing like Masa’s cooking, nothing like quiet laughter around their low dinner table, sharing looks with Nanami over their bowls of steamed rice as Mother crunches at her pickles in a way that riles them both up.

  She wishes she had a talent for drawing. Part of her doesn’t trust her ability to remember every detail of their faces, the expressions they made, and the clothes they wore.

  It wouldn’t be able to capture everything – their scents, the sound of their laughter, the way the Okiya felt when they were all home.

  But she thinks it would be better than relying on herself.

  “Miyu,” Itachi’s voice is pitched low in an obvious attempt not to startle her. “Shisui’s leaving.”

  She stands from the bar stool and gives him a practiced smile. “Thank you for visiting, and for your gift. I appreciate it more than you know.”

  The curly haired Uchiha gives her a winning smile, and steps forward into her space.

  His hug is quick and firm, and he pulls away without giving her the chance to reciprocate it. He leaves, and she stares at the door as Itachi shuts it behind him.

  When it’s just the two of them, she meets his eyes and feels her own grow warm, stinging.

  “Sasuke said no one else survived,” she says thickly, throat tight, “I was going to try and climb up to Kikyo’s room, but I hit my head and-”

  Her breath hitches and she swipes a hand under her eye in frustration as hot, fat tears spill down her cheeks.

  “They’re all gone.”

  Itachi steps towards her, slowly. His face is unguarded, brows pulling together as he watches her with dark eyes.

  “Even Nanami,” a hiccup, and she can’t help the tremble to her shoulders, “gone.”

  Hands on her face, and she looks up through blurry eyes as Itachi uses his thumbs to gently wipe at her tears.

  “I can go back,” he says softly, “see if there’s anything left-”

  “No,” she clings to his arms desperately, “I don’t – whatever’s there isn’t them anymore. I’m just-”

  She takes in a shuddering breath.

  “I’m trying so hard to remember every little bit of them before I forget.” Her voice shakes with every word and she’s definitely squeezing at his wrists too hard.

  “I don’t want to forget.”

  .

  Itachi takes a shower in her main bathroom after a morning spent together on her couch, and Miyu busies herself in the kitchen. She preps a simple lunch of miso soup, rice, and a beef stir-fry.

  Itachi goes over her citizenship and the terms of her apartment lease while she writes down all of Masa’s recipes that she can remember.

  They eat lunch and spend the rest of the day on her couch. They don’t talk much, but Miyu doesn’t feel like talking. It’s enough to lean against Itachi’s side as he squints at his book, tracing patterns along the back of his scarred hands.

  As night falls, he slants a look down at her.

  “I have a mission tomorrow.”

  Miyu presses her lips together and lets her head fall against his shoulder.

  “Okay.”

  He leaves after they finish the leftovers from lunch for dinner, and Miyu stands in the middle of her plain apartment and feels lost.

  It’s still relatively early, but she has a shower and goes to bed. Once she’s there, she stares up at her ceiling and tries to think around the sinking pit in her gut and the sound of clinking tiles that will swallow her up if she lets it.

  She doesn’t sleep well.