A Glass Of Crimson Souls

16) sane alone

She truthfully didn't know what had gotten into her that night. Retrospect always gave valuable insight, and when Miho had woken up the next morning, she'd very nearly cringed as she'd thought back to her behavior. Truth be told, her reaction had been understandable to some degree—it had been so long since she'd had physical contact with someone that wasn't painful or malicious, so she'd been caught off guard, she'd been vulnerable, she'd been…she'd been longing for the comfort, the kindness, and though she wanted nothing more than to be lightly caressed and consoled, Itachi's neutrality had been enough for her to want to take advantage of.

But it was not acceptable—the fact remained that she had been holding hands with her father's murderer—and Miho could not think of a fully appropriate way to atone for the blasphemy than to swear that it would never happen again.

They both seemed to know that they had crossed some taboo boundaries—Itachi, who had always ignored her and avoided her if he could, now positively disappeared from the confines of her room. The times she did see him, he was hostile and scathing—atypical to the indifference that his partner seemed to be accustomed to, but it was not the first time that Miho had seen Itachi's less-than-ideal side. She bit back responses when others were in the room, simply because intuition told her that other than Kisame, they knew nothing of Itachi and her history…but when it was just her and Itachi, sometimes even with his shark of a partner in the room, sparks flared and the snide comments grew to the point of her virtually lunging for his throat. That, of course, never happened—she was too physically incapacitated to swat at a fly let alone rip apart an S-class criminal with her bare hands—not to mention that Kisame's sword had the uncanny ability to rob her of any chakra she'd managed to build up if she got out of hand.

And so Miho sullenly controlled herself, still frightened innately of anything that Akatsuki was planning for her, but as the days wore on, she forgot that she was in the company of S-Class criminals and instead enjoyed the solidarity that they primarily left her in. Slowly, her face was returning to one consistent hue of sickly white, but at least it was monochromatic—she was not a fan of her purple-green splotchy countenance before. First was the face, then were the wounds she'd accumulated on her chest. She tried to address the ones that were relatively newer and managed to make some of the scars fade, but such a positive result wasn't common; it was with sheer reluctance and near repulsion that Miho looked at her reflection in the mirror for healing.

But as she healed, Miho began to think. Began to re-evaluate what she was going to do with herself now that she was invariably alive—and in the company of the one man who represented her everything. Akatsuki surprisingly was not discreet around her—Miho picked up information about the members surrounding her quickly: there was Itachi, and then Kisame with chakra levels that rivaled a Jinchuuriki's, and then Sasori, whom Miho had derived to be a puppet master and healer to some degree, and then last and youngest, Deidara, explosive terrorist. Charming.

Yet despite the information, Miho was unsure of what to do. There was no possible way that she could kill Itachi in the company of another three S-Class criminals—in fact, she was hardly kidding herself—she couldn't kill Itachi if he were blind, deaf, and dumb. He was on a level entirely different, one that she could not hope to attain—and yet if she knew this, Miho could not even reason with herself—why was she still trying?

The weeks quickly slid by with Miho's deplorable condition. She recovered, her body began to normalize, and she was pleased to see her sunken hollow cheeks fill out, for the barest bit of meat to slowly show up on her wrists…or perhaps she was deluding herself, and no such change was actually apparent, because whenever Deidara walked into the room to check up on her, he always recoiled in that peculiar manner as if he'd seen something particularly disgusting. Miho could not help but frown at such reactions—she was not that abhorrent. It did not help but after getting over this initial revulsion, he would then launch into a huge tirade about his utter boredom and unwillingness to play warden—that if he had a choice, he would blow her up as artistically as he could and then go and blow up Orochimaru too—