Miyu spends the rest of the night cleaning her apartment. It’s the only remedy for her restlessness and she thinks if she were ninja she might be out training. First she pulls an ungodly amount of clothes from her closet, and dumps them in the washing machine before making for the open living area.

  She stares at the fallen painting for way too long. In the end, she doesn’t touch it.

  Her kitchen unfortunately doesn’t take long to clean, but she busies herself with the rest of the apartment. Sweeping and mopping and scrubbing at non-existent marks to keep her hands busy.

  When the washing machine beeps she empties it into the dryer, and then goes and strips her bed before throwing it into the machine too, along with the sheets from her unused guest bedroom.

  She sweeps and mops those two rooms, and then gets to work on the rarely used main bathroom. There’s a little more work in that, and she scrubs and scrubs until her hands sting and the room shines with a brand-new feel.

  Miyu transfers the clothes from the dryer into a basket and shifts the bedding into the dryer. Then she irons the dry clothes and meticulously folds them. When the dryer chimes, she makes both her bed and the guest bed, and packs all her clean washing.

  The balcony is next. Even in the cold, she mops the space, scrubs at the railings, and then focuses on cleaning her large glass sliding doors. The glass only makes her think of her windows, and she tackles them next, wiping down every single one in her apartment.

  Last, she gets to work on her ensuite. She cleans and she cleans until the shower is the only thing left.

  Miyu turns on the water, steps into it, and lets the spray mask the water that spills from her eyes. Fully clothed, soaking, she cleans the shower until the hot water turns cold and she’s left shivering. Still, she fights the urge to sink to the ground, to sink past the silence of her apartment into a place where nothing can hurt her.

  Miyu strips her heavy, wet clothes and forces herself through the motions until she’s clean.

  Gets out of the shower, dries herself, and gathers her soaking clothes to take them to the laundry.

  Stands naked in the hallway, watching as light filters into the apartment as the sun breaches the horizon.

  Miyu dresses, brushes her hair, and then her teeth.

  And then she lies on her bed, and stares up at her ceiling, and watches countless tiles flicker before her eyes.

  She wonders if, by tonight, shogi will be all she has again.

  .

  “Miyu.”

  She jolts from the trance she’d fallen into, blinking rapidly as her eyes try to adjust to the darkness of the apartment. Finally, a familiar face comes into focus.

  “Shisui?” she sits up from where she’d been lying on her couch.

  “He’s at the hospital,” Shisui’s voice is absent of any humour or cheer. In the stark shadows his face is serious and terrifyingly still.

  “Gods,” Miyu runs a hand through her hair, feeling the panic she’d spent her entire day trying to keep at bay rising. “Is he-”

  Her throat closes and she can’t bring herself to ask it, to confirm that –

  “Come,” Shisui says it only as a warning, because between one half second and the next she’s in his arms and they’re moving. It’s not like anything she’s ever experienced.

  Shisui moves so fast that the air seems to rush past before she can inhale. But within seconds they’re inside the hospital, and Shisui only takes one extra second to survey the main lobby before they’re standing somewhere else.

  As Miyu blinks the tears from her eyes she thinks it would have been wise to close them. The blobs around her start to take shape as they adjust.

  They are in a hallway. Seats line the walls and most of them are occupied. Kakashi is leaning against the far wall, talking quietly with two masked figures. A stern, middle aged man with dark hair and eyes is seated against the row of seats that line the wall. He's frowning down at his hands. Beside him sits a beautiful woman, a crease between her brows as she looks to – Sasuke.

  Miyu takes him in – he doesn’t seem to be geared up, dressed only in his casual pants and high-collared shirt. In fact, he looks rather like Miyu must – summoned in the middle of the night to bad news.

  His face is pale and drawn and his expression is pinched. But his eyes find her and Shisui and he stands.

  “They’re operating now,” he says, and his voice is hoarse. Shisui sets Miyu on her feet but keeps a hold on her arm. She’s grateful, because her legs don’t feel all that steady right now.

  “What – Is he-” Miyu stops herself. Tucks her shaking hands into the long sleeves of her yukata, and forces down the anxiety threatening to shake her to pieces.

  “Itachi?” She meets Sasuke’s eyes, and knows he sees the desperate need for an answer.

  “They’re operating now. I don’t know how much I can tell you-”

  “She has the clearance,” Shisui’s voice is low and his grip on her arm tightens incrementally.

  She watches them share a heavy look.

  “Sakura said you might already know something,” Sasuke’s gaze drops to her again as a slight frown pulls at his brow, “she sent a summons to – to tell me to remind you of confidentiality.”

  Miyu’s stomach keeps on sinking. She’s sure the blood has drained from her face by now, and she’s grateful for her practiced, blank expression.

  “What we know,” Shisui cuts in, “is that Itachi came up against a combatant that uses airborne poison,” oh, shit, “and he a particularly bad reaction to it.”

  Miyu’s mind needs only half a second to catch up. Airborne. He’d – Itachi had – oh shit. He’d breathed it in, and his lungs, gods, his lungs that had been months away from terminal shutdown and were just beginning to recover-

  Her knees go out from under her and it’s only Shisui’s hold on her arm that keeps her upright. Sasuke’s hand darts out to steady her by the other arm, and suddenly Kakashi is standing in the space to her right, reaching for her.

  “Miyu, are you-”

  “Fine,” her throat feels too tight and her hands are starting to tremble with the effort it’s taking to keep calm. “Sorry.”

  She doesn’t offer any other explanation and Kakashi withdraws his arm, lone eye focused on her face. All she can think about is Itachi, fighting an opponent without the ability to breathe properly. Itachi, in pain and without help. Itachi –

  “Who’s this?”

  The voice breaks Miyu out of her internal spiral, and she looks left, to see the dark-haired woman standing just behind Sasuke. Closer to her now, Miyu takes in the fine dark blue kimono, and her striking, traditional beauty.

  Her long hair is loose but impeccably kept despite the late hour, and she holds herself with an air of importance. Miyu knows who this must be.

  Taking just a moment to compose herself, she makes sure her legs are steady before she gently straightens the line of her shoulders. Lightly shaking off the hold of both Shisui and Sasuke, Miyu offers a deep bow to the woman, and upon rising says, “Sugawara Miyu.” In a calm, steady tone.

  The woman takes her in and Miyu forces down her embarrassment. She’s in her home yukata – it’s a pretty pale orange, with a mint-green sash, flowers embroidered in white along the hem.

  She knows her wavy hair is loose and probably windswept thanks to Shisui, and she’s sure there are bags beneath her eyes from lack of rest. She’s not even wearing shoes, gods, and her feet are clad only in fuzzy yellow winter socks.

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  Still, she holds herself evenly and lets the woman finish her obvious assessment.

  “And you know Itachi?” she sounds uncertain, and Miyu’s sure there’s an insult in her tone somewhere but she doesn’t have the energy to think about it right now.

  “Miyu raised the initial alarm,” Shisui speaks up and Miyu is suddenly aware that Sasuke has shifted to face his mother, and that Kakashi has stepped in tighter beside them. Like they’re – flanking her?

  “In that case,” says the stern man as he rises from his seat, “as the head of the Uchiha, and the father of Itachi, I thank you.”

  He bows to her then.

  Miyu steps forward, out of the barrier Sasuke has put between her and these people who must be his parents, and bows back.

  His mother opens her mouth to speak, but the door they’re waiting outside opens and through it steps –

  “Sakura,” Sasuke’s murmur is ignored as his pink-haired teammate looks to the clan head and his wife.

  “We managed to get him stable. You two can come through, but the others will have to wait.”

  The clan head and matriarch follow Sakura through the door, and it swings shut behind them soundlessly. For a few moments she stares at it, wondering at the fact that she feels no relief.

  She wants to see him, needs to see him. The lump in her throat refuses to budge and her shoulders hold their tension because – because –

  “Yo,” Kakashi’s voice is accompanied by his hand, landing lightly atop her head. “I can hear you overthinking from here. Come, sit.”

  Miyu should be insulted that he steers her by the head to the row of seats, but as he pushes her to take one, she realises she doesn’t have the energy.

  “Tch,” he takes the seat beside her and seizes her chin between his forefinger, tilting her face this way and that. “Did you get any sleep?”

  Miyu tries to keep the pout off her face as Sasuke moves to take the seat on her other side.

  “Some,” she mumbles, trying to ignore how good his fingers feel against her face. Gods, is she really so touch starved and exhausted that anything sets her off? She meets his eye and hopes he can’t read the uncertainty on her face.

  “He’ll be alright. Sakura is one of the best,” Kakashi assures her in his deep, calm tone.

  “Hm,” Miyu’s pitch is a little too high and she wrestles with herself to stop thinking about how this night could have ended. Because she had only brought up Itachi’s illness by chance.

  Sakura coming by while Itachi was still around, chance. Miyu being on her lounge at three-something in the morning on a Friday night, chance.

  The few preliminary healing sessions he’d gone through had almost been not enough. The courses of antibiotics he’d been on, from what little Miyu had heard Sakura going on about, had been extreme. Had they interfered with the poison? Made it worse?

  What if Miyu had never said anything in the first place, and he had gone there with his terrible lungs and he had died in a terrible way and –

  The possibilities blur endlessly, tiles on a limitless board, and –

  “Thank you, Miyu,” Sasuke’s low murmur halts her spiralling thoughts. “If it weren’t for you-”

  “I should’ve done more,” if the puzzled look he slants her is any indication, he has no idea what she’s talking about. But she should have pushed for more sessions with Sakura, for him to take leave, for anything –

  “You raised the alarm,” Shisui chimes in from where he’s leaning against the wall opposite her. “We were already on our way to him by the time he sent out a distress signal.”

  Miyu meets his serious gaze, still desperate to reassure herself that Itachi really is okay.

  “By the time we got there-” Shisui cuts himself off and looks away, frowning. “If we had been a minute later, he wouldn’t have made it back.”

  Miyu’s pulse jumps, and she exerts considerable effort to stop herself from flinching in response to those words.

  “He’s alive right now because of you.”

  She drops her gaze to her hands, limp in her lap, and tries not to think about how close she’d come to losing everything again.

  “I’m going to see if they’ll let me in,” Sasuke says after a moment’s pause. He stands, but before he walks away, he sets a hand on Miyu’s shoulder.

  She looks up into his handsome face, takes note of his soft eyes and the genuine half-smile he flashes her.

  “He’ll be alright.”

  Her eyes sting and she tries to fight back the tremble of her lip as she blinks up at him, and nods.

  He leaves, and she gingerly sits back in her seat. Kakashi is sitting beside her, his head leant back against the wall and his lone eye shut. Shisui seems lost in thought, gaze locked on the floor before him.

  So they sit, and they wait.

  At some point she shuts her heavy eyes for just a second –

  “Miyu,” Sasuke’s voice rouses her from dreams of dirty blonde hair and pale green eyes.

  “Hm?” she opens her eyes and tries to blink away the spray of blood and the echo of bone deep terror and the sharp ache of loss.

  Sasuke is crouching before her, one of his calloused hands sitting lightly atop her own. Miyu’s cheek is resting on – oh. She sits up slowly, noting with embarrassment that Kakashi is very awake, and just moments ago she had been very asleep. On him.

  “Sorry,” she says to the grey-haired man. He only gives her the slight crinkle of his eye indicating a smile, so she doesn’t follow up with further apologies.

  “You can see him now,” Sasuke says, standing.

  Miyu stands too quickly and has to blink away the black spots that dance before her eyes, but falls into step behind him anyway. They step through the door, go down another corridor, and turn left. And then they’re standing before an open door. Sasuke nods to it shortly, and Miyu suddenly feels ill with anxiety. Still, she steels herself and enters.

  Itachi is lying unconscious on the lone bed, pale and still.

  Miyu stops short of him, and takes in his form, relishing in the constant beep of his heart monitor. Slowly, she makes for his bedside, reaching her hand out to touch his face and make sure he’s really there.

  The tear troughs under his eyes are deep and dark, and his jaw and throat look bruised. She can see bandages that peek over the edge of his hospital gown, but the rest of him is under the blanket. His hair is loose, set neatly on his pillow.

  Her fingers skim lightly over his dark locks, and she so greedily wishes he would open his eyes for her. Sasuke is gone, and as far as she can tell it's just the two of them.

  Miyu leans down until her lips brush against his forehead in a feather-light touch. And then she lowers herself into the chair at his bedside without taking her eyes from his face.

  Tentatively, she reaches out and sets her hand over his. Hers looks small and fragile in comparison. No scars mar her flesh, and no callouses indicate hard ninja training. For a moment she is ashamed of her softness. She starts to lift her hand, and then freezes when Itachi’s fingers twitch ever so slightly.

  Miyu holds her breath, arm muscles engaged to move – but finds that she can’t. The thought of being away from him right now hurts. So she slips her hand under his until they’re palm-to-palm, rests her forehead against the back of his hand, and keeps breathing.

  “I’m so glad you’re alive,” she whispers, squeezing her eyes shut and thanking the odds of the universe for letting him live.

  “Sugawara-san, was it?”

  The voice startles Miyu upright again, and for a second all she can do is blink through the tears she hadn’t realised were gathered until her vision becomes less blurry.

  The Uchiha clan head is standing at the foot of his son’s bed, and she watches as his gaze flickers down to their hands for half a second. She can't read his stony face.

  Still, she can’t force herself away.

  “Yes, Uchiha-sama,” she bows her head as she says it, hoping no tears fall from her traitorous eyes.

  “I was briefed on the severity of the situation upon seeing my son,” the clan head’s voice is low and full of gravity, “and I want to take the opportunity to thank you again, truly.”

  Miyu looks up to witness him bow to her again, more deeply than he had in the waiting corridor, more deeply than she deserves.

  “Please,” she stands, still keeping her hand intertwined with Itachi’s, “there’s no need. I wish,” her throat closes for a moment and she has to take a shaky breath to compose herself. “I wish there was more I could have done, Uchiha-sama.”

  “You have done my son, our clan, and Konoha a great service.” He doesn’t let her escape his weighty gaze, “I look forward to repaying you.”

  He bows shortly and Miyu offers a deeper one in return.

  Then he leaves her alone with Itachi, and she just about falls back into the chair.

  “Way to meet your parents,” she sighs into silence broken only by the beep of his monitors.

  Itachi doesn’t wake that night. Not that Miyu knows of, at least. Her fatigue catches up to her not long into her vigil.

  .

  Miyu knows she’s dreaming. Can tell, because while she relives this moment in detail in unconsciousness, she can never manage it while awake. She sees his back, his arms splayed wide to protect her, the blade that swings forward and cuts him down like he’s nothing.

  Standing, paralysed, a scream caught in her throat because everything had been going so well and now – and now he’s –

  They drag her away by the hair, and the last glimpse she catches of him is his lax face as someone pulls him by his leg over the dirty ground to join the pile of dead bodies.

  She wonders if this is what having the sharingan is like. Reliving terrifying moments with perfect clarity. She can hear her own heartbeat, smell the blood and the piss and the sweat, feel herself shaking as someone roughly clamps a collar around her neck.

  Rage, then. She fights, kicking and screaming because – because he’s dead, and now it’s just Miyu again, just Miyu, gods –

  They beat her so badly that she ends up slumped on the floor of the wagon with the other girls and women, face bloodied and body aching and her chest so, so heavy. Her tears create tracks down her dirty, bloody face, and none of the women move forward to help or comfort her. Their husbands, fathers, brothers – dead, or being shipped away as slaves.

  One girl, though. One leans in close to Miyu on the third night and murmurs, “What was his name?”

  Miyu blinks through her stinging eyes, and opens her dry lips to rasp, “R-”

  .

  “…got here in time. No one was informed of your previous condition, but they were made aware of the situation’s severity.”

  Miyu realises she’s fallen asleep, head resting on her arms atop a firm hospital bed. Sakura’s voice is pitched low, but she’s talking, and not to Miyu.

  Opening her eyes, Miyu takes a moment to blink through the daylight streaming through the windows. Yawning into her hand, she sits up, wincing as her back protests, and stretches.

  “Morning, Miyu-san,” there’s that clever smile in Sakura’s tone again and as Miyu’s eyes adjust she offers one of her own in return.

  “Good morning Sakura-”

  The figure on the bed is sitting up. Itachi is sitting up. Her head snaps to the side so fast that her hair whips her in the face.

  “Itachi!” she’s on her feet, hands reaching for him, but too scared to pull him into a hug in case she hurts him, “Oh, gods, I must have slept through you waking up – I’m so sorry, I was just relieved to see you okay and I only closed my eyes for just a second-”

  “Thank you for being here,” Itachi’s smiling at her, still pale and tired. He extends his arm and she grasps his hand, unable to hide the smile on her face because he’s alive and he’s awake, and –

  “Happy Birthday, Miyu.”

  Miyu doesn’t particularly care that Sakura is watching them with her sharp green gaze. She doesn’t care that the door may well be unlocked, or that ninja passing by might glimpse through the window any moment.

  She steps forward and hugs him, pressing her nose into the crook of his neck. He smells like antiseptic and soap, and just a little like burnt caramel for reasons unknown, but his arms come up around her and for a moment all feels right.