WANTED: Itachi Uchiha

Ichi

When Reina saw the jounin at her classroom door with a sombre expression written on their face, her heart dropped into the depths of her stomach. The classroom, once filled with a gentle hum as her students chattered amongst themselves was suddenly silent. She was sure they could hear her heart gallop. 

"Reina-san, can you come with us, please?" 

Reina swallowed and nodded, the action futile as her mouth was as dry as Suna in the summer months. "Hai, just let me inform Iruka-sensei and arrange a substitute for my class." She turned from the jounin and instructed one of her students to find Iruka in one of the neighbouring classrooms. "If you continue to read the manuscript and make notes, there will be a test at the end of the week."

Reina would never administer the test herself. 

Instead she instructed her clone to do so in her absence. She, however, would be living in the hospital for the following weeks, curled up on a nearby chair whilst her grandmother slept in the cot. Tomo had suffered a heart attack. At first the doctors had said it wasn't major, yet the proceeding weeks attached to monitors and numerous scans said otherwise. Reina knew what was happening. She knew the day had to come at some point. 

Tomo was dying. 

"You really don't have to stay here, Reina-chan, I'm fine, really." Tomo scolded from her bed, her dressing gown draped around her shoulders. Reina stared at her from her makeshift desk beside the bed, piles of unmarked essays stacked around her. 

"You know I'm not leaving you. Anyway, I have a clone looking after my class and another one looking after clan affairs. Everything is under control." Reina smiled and returned to her marking, all too aware of her grandmother's gaze. 

Control was something Reina had mastered at a young age. Whether it was her kekkai genkai or the order of the books in her bookcase - Reina liked control. What Reina didn't tell her grandmother was the impact conjuring and controlling two clones all day, every day, was having on her. 

She was running on empty. There was nothing left in the tank and she was on the last dregs of her chakra reserves. When she caught sight of herself in the reflection of the coffee machine, she instantly cringed. Her hair was a tangled mess on top of her head and the bags beneath her eyes were as though someone had suckerpunched her - multiple times. 

"Kami almighty…" Reina muttered, rubbing her face and sighing. 

"Reina-chan?" A voice called behind her. She turned, a steaming cup of tea in hand. 

"Sasuke-kun? What are you doing here?" The younger Uchiha was no longer the little boy she would see fawning about after his brother. He was a young man now. Taller than her and thriving in every way. 

"Okaa-san said you might be hungry so she asked me to drop some food off. Plus, Naruto-baka managed to injure himself in a training exercise so I brought some ramen for him too." 

Reina managed a smile as he handed over the bento box, the bag embroidered with the Uchiha fan. "How thoughtful, will you tell your mother thank you, for me? And send my apologies to your father, I'm afraid our Go match will have to wait a while."

Sasuke nodded before excusing himself. He didn't let on how much weight Reina had lost, or that he could barely sense her chakra signature despite their close proximity. She was wasting away before their very eyes alongside her grandmother. 

Reina didn't eat the bento box that Sasuke 
had given her; instead she made sure her grandmother ate every last morsel. The hospital food wasn't exactly appetising and Tomo needed the strength more than her. With every bite that Tomo took, a part of Reina knew it was futile; no amount of nutritional food was going to fix the irreparable damage that her heart had already endured. 

But she continued to brew green tea and pray for a miracle in the hope that the kami heard her. 

°°°

Itachi couldn't ignore the screams. He tried to block them out but to no avail. They were harrowing, almost unearthly. Their mission had seemed simple enough. Extract the hostage and return home. But things didn't go to plan; someone had been expecting them. The extraction site had been ladened with trip wires and an  assortment of volatile explosives. They had managed to dodge the majority unscathed. They were ANBU afterall, stealth was their middle name. 

They had jumped through the trees silently, avoiding all the tripwires that resembled spider threads in the rising moonlight. The tripwires had been a decoy. Someone had used chakra threads to detonate the bombs, shrapnel had barraged them, the metal slicing through sinew and bone alike. 

It was carnage. 

The hospital was equally as wild. Blood coated the walls and floor, gathering in congealed puddles on the tiles and seeping to the grout. He could barely see, even his face was covered, the residue of his teammate's innards having managed to seep beneath his mask. It was a literal bloodbath. 

He wiped his eyes on the back of his hand, his glove already saturated; the action did nothing more than smear crimson across his face, trailing lines over his usually pale skin. His teammate continued to scream, their adrenaline had long worn off and the morphine had yet to travel around his system. 

Some of his team hadn't made it back to Konoha, their caskets would remain empty as there were nothing of their bodied tangible enough to bury. 

Death had come to town and was waiting in the halls of the hospital. 

Silent. Patient. Insatiable. 

They were nothing more than names on a wanted list.