Phases (Naruto AU)

Compromising

In the next instant, the stray pair of chopsticks that Sakura had picked up on the way over clattered to the table. She had warmed up a while ago, but she suddenly found that she had lost all feeling in her fingers. As a matter of fact, she was fairly sure that she had just gone completely petrified, from head to toe.

Itachi was still staring at her, with absolutely no emotion visible in his charcoal-gray eyes – the exact same color and shape as Sasuke's, which she refused to allow herself to think about – and despite her best efforts to be brave, Sakura finally became aware that she was subconsciously pressing herself back against the booth, shrinking as far away from him as possible. Had she been completely insane, wanting to come over here?

"What?" the pink-haired kunoichi finally managed, picking up her chopsticks again and squeezing them in a white-knuckled grip. Her voice was too hoarse and strangled for her liking, but Sakura could feel the blood pounding in her ears, too dizzyingly loud to be healthy: her weakened body couldn't handle this kind of stress as well as she could otherwise.

Itachi lifted an eyebrow dispassionately, obviously unaffected by the show of emotion, as he toyed with a stray piece of salted salmon remaining on his plate. "Sasuke is my younger brother," he said, at length. "I am sure you understand my desire to keep tabs on him."

His voice was so damn noncommittal, so even and unemotional, so robotic, that suddenly Sakura felt her breathing becoming more than a little ragged, her fingers clenching around the edge of the table. Belatedly, she realized that she was a hairsbreadth away from throwing herself at him and locking her hands around his throat and squeezing every last cubic inch of air out...until her body had met with the obstacle of the table. Her ribs ached from where she had just slammed against it.

Something unreadable flickered in Itachi's eyes, telling her that he was very well aware of the emotions that were probably written all over her face right now. That wouldn't do. The plan would never work if he thought she was an unstable wild card who was just waiting for the moment that he let his guard down.

It took a few painfully deep breaths and a concentrated effort for Sakura to relax, delicately removing her fingers from their death grip around the table and folding them demurely in front of her. "Yes, very understandable," she murmured, forcing the words to come out coherently.

For a few long moments, they both sized each other up, and at last, for the briefest of moments, Itachi couldn't help how his lips thinned into a shadow of a smirk. It was gone in the next second, replaced by the customary emotionless façade, but...really, he could count the amount of fortunate happenings in his life with one hand, if that. It seemed as if this chance encounter could certainly serve to his advantage in a way that was nearly incomprehensible in its magnitude. He could already foresee the angle that Sakura was going to play, and he owed it to her to make it as easy as possible.

...Besides, Itachi knew that the barely restrained look of desperate longing that was currently lingering in Sakura's eyes as she watched him nudge his remaining onigiri around his plate was impossible to fake. It was almost pitiful; he supposed that she was a pretty girl, but right now, she was looking startlingly reminiscent of a starved dog.

Every single one of his instincts were screaming at him to slide the plate over to her, or better yet, to walk up to the bar and order Sakura a large plate of everything on the menu, but that would hardly be the proper course of action. Itachi made himself set the chopsticks aside, returning to observing his unlikely dining partner, who was staring at him apprehensively. This was truly strange – he suspected that Sasuke was using Sakura to lure him into some sort of trap (a viable idea, but he found it somewhat disturbing to believe that Sasuke would have actually starved Sakura into this pathetic state in order to make her appear more pitiable and vulnerable), but he could not sense even a fragment of Sasuke's chakra signature – not in the bar, or even in the entire town. Itachi had a decent amount of respect for his younger brother's abilities, but even he had to admit that that kind of advanced chakra-concealment technique was still far beyond Sasuke's capabilities.