This is a (kinda) rewrite of another fic I've been writing: same premise, but it's going in a completely different direction, which has been extra fun to write! Basically, I wanted to know: what would happen if, instead of meeting Sasuke during the chunin exams and falling in love with him, Karin meets Itachi instead?

Even though she and Itachi are the same age here, my characterization is based off of how we see her in episode 431, and as we move forward in time she'll become more like the Karin we all know (and love dearly!).

Title taken from WCW's "The Ivy Crown"

Itachi meets his informant at least once a month, discreetly excusing himself from Kisame's company in order to sneak off towards sleepy villages and lonely civilian towns.

It's a large continent, a broad and messy patchwork of nations, and there are enough dilapidated inns and hole-in-the-wall restaurants where a man might go to hold a discrete conversation, where any person might head to be quickly overlooked.

To meet too often would invite undue risk, and the information his informant supplies is rarely so time-sensitive that it cannot wait until their next meeting, and so when Itachi feels it is time to meet again he will send a handwritten note to her through one of his crows who have since committed her face to memory. He gives her a vague idea of where he'll be and roughly how long he will remain, and the rest he leaves to fate; she will either sense his chakra and come to him, or another of his crows will come upon her and show her the way to where he is staying.

Somehow, in the course of his missions and her errands, his path and her path will bear close enough that they will overlap for a few short hours before they diverge again and she leaves to watch over her prison, and he returns to Kisame.

Though he trusts her enough to continue to meet with her, Itachi has never been the sort to reveal too much of himself, and he is not such a fool that he would let any person other than Kisame know of his missions too far in advance.

("Don't you trust me, Itachi?" she asks him once, grinning so fiercely that he does not bother to dignify her with an answer.)

He cannot eliminate the risk entirely, but Itachi does not intend to live long enough for Karin to betray him in a way that will matter.

.

He would just like to know that Sasuke is safe.

The Third Hokage dies, and an era of Konoha politics begins a slow but long overdue trudge into history.

Itachi is not particularly sad to see it go.

It leaves the village in an uncertain state, but more importantly it leaves Sasuke's fate in an uncertain state, and within minutes of hearing the news he is on the road moving towards Konoha, reentering the orbit of his destiny.

There is a blood-bond between him and Sasuke, a connection no amount of distance or time will ever be able to sever, but when Sasuke stands at the end of a hallway with death in his eyes, lightning sparking in his palm, Itachi cannot help but notice how much he has missed in five years' time, how much his brother has grown in his absence.

He tests Sasuke's abilities and finds Sasuke has not yet grown enough.

Itachi is ever mindful of Kisame's eyes and the confusion of their loyalties, and he finds he has no choice but to walk away from Sasuke again, to leave him slumped and unconscious against the wall of the inn.

He can do little more than pray he has left Sasuke with enough motivation to push him further in his training, and enough hatred to allow Sasuke to eventually cross whatever final threshold remains between him and Itachi's death.

(Five years apart, and yet Sasuke still does not hesitate to name him: Brother!)

Itachi believes he has foreseen all possible interferences, and yet he does not anticipate Orochimaru's involvement in this. He does not appreciateOrochimaru's involvement and yet he has no choice but to allow it, knowing there is a careful balance to be maintained between his desire to interfere and the danger such interference might pose to Sasuke. The questions it might prompt Sasuke to ask.

Itachi will not, however, allow it freely.

To tolerate Sasuke's acquaintance with someone so dangerous without a check in place would be irreparably careless of him. He trusted the Third Hokage out of necessity, and he trusts Danzo even less. Orochimaru is worse still, is capricious and cruel and, until Karin comes along, Itachi has only half-clues of what happens in Otogakure.

His imagination becomes unusually creative in the absence of more concrete information.

.

He and she first cross paths in a bar in the Land of Waves, a seedy, unpleasant place where he and Kisame are sent to spy on the unfaithful husband of a noblewoman.

It has been three weeks since Sasori remarked offhandedly that Orochimaru had found himself a new apprentice, and Itachi cannot help but be the slightest bit distracted.

From the moment of Sasuke's birth their fates had been bound as one: for the first time Itachi and Kisame are able to directly walk into the Land of Waves and he does not fail to notice they pass over the Great Naruto Bridge. It is still somewhat of a work in progress, workers in civilian clothes on both ends applying fresh coats of paint to blocked-off areas, but the concrete is firm under Itachi's sandals and something about that is a minor comfort.

Sasuke is an entire continent away, and yet reminders of him are inescapable.

Kisame leaves to track the man, and Itachi slips into the first bar he finds to watch for the man's mistress, disregarding the low likelihood of her appearance.

He is on his third hour of waiting when he sees a red-headed woman enter and approach the bar. She holds her cloak tight in spite of the heat and avoids his and every other man's eyes, scrunching her nose at the humid smell of the sea that leaks into the bar through its open windows.

She is not the woman he has been waiting for, and yet something about her is still instantly recognizable to him: the suspicious, jerky way her eyes dart around the room, the too-quick grab she makes for the kunai hidden up her sleeve when another patron accidentally bumps into her.

(A shade of red he swears he has seen some place before—)

The woman is horribly out of place in a bar mostly patronized by weather-beaten fishermen, scarred and tattooed sell-swords, and yet Itachi supposes he does not fit in much better.

Her voice trembles when she orders a glass of plum wine and a glass of water, and the bartender (without asking for identification, Itachi notes) turns to pour the drinks with an amused snort. She fumbles a few notes out of her pocket and scurries to an isolated corner booth to drink alone, frequently looking up as if she were expecting someone.

Itachi makes several quick assumptions about her, and all of them prove to be true over time.

There is a hungry look in her eyes that only ever seems to manifest in followers of Orochimaru, either because Orochimaru intentionally exploits weak, desperate children, or because he intentionally pits them against each other.

Like many of Orochimaru's schemes it is brutish and implausibly cruel but ultimately lacking in imagination. The loyalty he cultivates is rooted in loneliness, in displacement. He breeds in his followers an easily exploitable vulnerability, a hunger for validation, encouragement.

It is not even loyalty exactly but aimlessness coupled with a willingness to grasp whatever hand is extended.

(And now Sasuke is one of them, and whose hands will he grasp?)

Itachi slips into the chair opposite the girl, and he isn't quite as surprised as he should be when she appears to recognize him too. Her back goes ramrod straight when her eyes meet Sharingan and she reflexively scoots her chair back from him as if she means to run.

He holds up one hand to stop her.

"Stay," he commands, and she's familiar enough with taking orders that she does.

The ongoing feud between him and Orochimaru had been painfully one-sided before Sasuke became involved; he cares very little about what Orochimaru does or who he associates with, though he hears enough from other Akatsuki to know Orochimaru still smarts from the loss of his hand years ago.

Orochimaru's near-legendary dislike of him gives Itachi a very believable excuse to seek out an informant among his followers, an excuse that places little if any scrutiny upon his relationship to Sasuke.

He says very little about his goals but tells the girl there is no one else who could help him in the way she might and her eyes go impossibly wide behind her glasses, any misgivings she might have had replaced by starry idealism, fairy tale imaginings he knows carry greater strength than almost any of his genjutsu.

(Had he not been told that once as well? That he was exceptional, wise beyond his years? That there were none of his clansmen who could fight as he did, none so capable of bringing peace to the village?)

It is cruel but the world itself is cruel, and whatever lies he tells to a lonely woman in glasses are not capable of damning him more than he has already damned himself.

"Are you interested?" he asks, and she startles as if she hadn't expected the conversation to turn back to her.

She opens her mouth to speak but is unable to say anything, seems to be reaching for words that are beyond her grasp. Her face flushes and she babbles something incomprehensible, one hand coming up to adjust her glasses, tucking a strand of dark-red hair behind her ear.

"I—I mean, can I, uh, do you mind if I—" Her other hand taps the rim of her glass of water before falling flat on the table. "Just for a moment I want to—" and she reaches her hands towards his and—

Her grip is crushing, enormously unpleasant, and yet he understands it is necessary that he offer something Orochimaru cannot, that her assessment of his offer will include whatever bond, imagined or otherwise, Karin can construe between them.

Itachi breathes, and allows it to happen.

He does not like it, and yet he is so unused to being touched casually that he is unable to turn his mind away from it, unable to ignore the comparative softness of her hands, the lack of calluses or scars or a single chip or crack in her nails.

They are not shinobi's hands; whatever use Orochimaru has for her, she is most certainly not a combatant. Her unusual paleness marks her as a lab assistant, someone who sees very little time outside.

She has not yet asked anything of him or Sasuke or the Akatsuki, and he is certain she could not be a spy, either.

Karin hazards a quick glance at him before skittishly dropping her gaze again and squeezing her eyes shut, taking in a deep breath.

In another context, he might have believed she was attempting to pray.

He waits a moment and she finally exhales, her shoulders drooping with released tension. Her iron-tight grip on his hand loosens, and it's somehow more intimate, even more unpleasant than it was originally.

She looks up and attempts a lopsided smile, a close-lipped twist of her lips that refuses to commit entirely to any kind of happiness. "I like how you feel," she confesses, and Itachi jerks his hands out of her grip.

He absolutely does not like that and he tells her so, warns her not to say such things. (Why would she say such a thing?)

Karin flinches and pulls her own hands back but, thankfully, does not leave. She hangs her head instead and answers with a muted okay.

He sighs.

At the very least, she is obedient, and were it not for that he would not bother dealing with her, would not risk negotiating terms with someone whose will he could not easily bend under his own.

All he needs is information, and he does not exactly need someone of any real importance to gather it for him.

He assumes that by leaving her under Orochimaru's thumb she will simply remain this way, that any confidence she manages to build will almost immediately be torn down by the other denizens of Otogakure.

He is wrong.

.

Sasuke is not happy, but he is flourishing, Karin tells him. He is training, rarely associates with anyone else under Orochimaru's command, rarely speaks except to issue commands.

Curiosity, a former comrade of his once said, is a wasting disease.

Karin mentions offhandedly that Sasuke and someone named Suigetsu had gotten into a fight and Itachi is infected by the desire to know more: who this Suigetsu is, what his loyalties are, how great of a danger he might pose to Sasuke.

There is only so much he can ask without raising suspicions, however, and so to ease his suffering he invites Karin to stay longer, encourages her to rant and vent with the hope that she will unintentionally answer more of his questions. She gleefully accepts, is rather easily misled, and for a few months Itachi finds their arrangement working rather well.

He is not entirely sure what to expect but he is pleasantly surprised by Karin; she lacks impartiality or organization but she supplies him with a wealth of information, recounts every detail she can recall, regardless of its importance. He learns a good deal about the layout of Otogakure, suffers through her explaining the various disadvantages to living underground.

For all of her anxious silence before Karin talks a good deal when she is asked to: she'll drop down onto the hotel bed before stumbling over several stories, adding any missing thoughts as they come to her, then tracing back through them again just to add insignificant points she missed the first or second time, recalling a person she had forgotten, connecting some incident to another.

He does not particularly care, and so he later recalls her descriptions of people and places in shades of grey, only able to pull from a small scattering of details that manage to make it past his indifference.

Karin adds a few words about the experiments she helps with, seems to purposely gloss over her exact role in them, and Itachi does not care enough to press her on these matters.

Soon after, however, he arranges a meeting with her as he's moving through the Land of Fire and their proximity to Konoha prompts him to immediately steer them both towards an inn, somewhere secluded they can stay for a few hours where he won't have to worry about being seen.

Karin is unusually skittish, pressing close to him when they walk, one hand locked around his sleeve and weighing him down as if she were a child and not a woman his own age.

He is unused to walking with someone so close to him but not, he recalls, entirely unfamiliar with it either—

(Brother, and an incessant, needy tugging at his elbow, are you going to help me train today…?)

It sets him off balance, and he shrugs off her grip.

"Do not cling to me," he warns. She obeys, but still stands closer to him than is acceptable, continues to cast baleful looks at him until he shoots her a warning glance.

She has not yet said anything and her silence is concerning, an almost certain sign that something is wrong, and his immediate thought is that Sasuke may be in danger, that she has uncovered some danger and is too afraid to share it. He ushers her into a room and Karin does not let out so much as a peep until he closes and locks the door behind them.

He waits a moment, gives her time to collect her thoughts because if there is something she's afraid to tell him it is likely something important, and the longer she delays the less time he will have to fix it.

She shifts from one leg to the other, holding one forearm protectively over her chest. Still says nothing, does not even look directly at him, and instead stares down at the wooden floors, at her own shoes. Takes a deep, shuddering breath, but says nothing.

A moment passes; a door down the hall slams, Karin's arm tighten around her.

Eventually he snaps and tells her to spit it out, to speak already, because he has no time for her dramatics if Sasuke is in need of help.

Karin visibly flinches and shrinks further into herself, her hair hiding her face when she bows her head.

"Karin—," but he doesn't get a chance to finish. Karin takes a deep breath and steps towards him, reaches out to him, tugging at the front of his shirt again, trying to pull him closer to her.

He does not have time for this.

He pushes her away.

Karin isn't the least rebuffed, stumbles back and, inexplicably, begins to frantically undress. Her hands tremble when she unzips her jacket, shaking so bad it takes several tugs before the zipper comes undone, and then she throws it off, her mesh undergarment following shortly after.

"Karin, you are—"

She removes her glasses and gives him a wild-eyed look, practically hyperventilating when she says, "Please."

(Please? Who is she that she believes please, of all things, would move him? Who is she to believe he, of all people, might be swayed by please?)

"Please," she says again, and his eyesight is not yet so deteriorated that he does not notice the bright-pink sets of teeth-marks that trail up her forearms, the air of desperation that clings to her stronger than the perfume she wears. How she can somehow be both flushed and sickly pale, full of both passion and terror, need and fear.

It is, admittedly, something he does not understand in the slightest and he is not entirely sure how to respond.

"I just… Just this once…" she stammers, hugging her arms to herself defensively. She's so unlike the Karin she will become that, thinking back on it, Itachi struggles to think of them as the same person.

The Karin she will become would not beg, would not watch him with wide, terrified eyes and of course his first instinct is to say no, to refuse her, to immediately leave.

He does not.

This is the first time he's seen her disrobe and he notices there are marks on her that are not nearly as fresh, that there are pearly impressions of teeth around her shoulders and her collar bones, ones that trail below the arms that cover her breasts and Itachi stops himself from peering any lower. He does not, in that moment, have the curiosity to spare on her.

(There is a question he never poses, and one that is never answered.)

"You… You don't need to do anything. I can… I can do it myself."

He is not entirely certain what she means to do until Karin approaches him and sets her hands against his chest. Her touch is light enough that she barely touches him, barely presses hard enough for him to feel her hands through the material of his shirt.

He immediately does not like it.

"Please," she begs, and she grows bolder, placing her hands flat against his chest, sucking in a breath as if such a small act of physical contact was truly that remarkable to her.

The Karin she will become would never be so easily impressed, would not be caught staring awestruck at him without leveling some strange insult at him.

She has not yet become that Karin, however, and he is just as much a different version of himself.

"This is a waste of my time," he tells her, looking down at her hands disdainfully. "I do not appreciate you wasting my time."

She hiccups and he braces himself for the headache, the inconvenience of dealing with her sloppy emotions. She will cry, exhaust herself, and then he'll finally get to hear what she's learned about Sasuke, if anything.

This is not what happens.

Karin flushes, has the sense to be embarrassed by his reprimand but instead of apologizing and allowing them both to move on from it she pushes him away. "Fine then!" she snaps. There's a minor slip in her anger, a moment where she looks down at her outstretched hands and seems surprised by her own emotions.

"You know what?" Karin asks, and whatever she means, he most certainly does not know.

She sniffs, stubbornly wipes at the corner of her eye. "I don't even like you that much. I mean, why would I? You're…" She stops, seems to be grasping for a word, then hisses, "You're an idiot. This is a waste of my time."

Karin finally turns away, bends down and begins to collect her clothes, and Itachi finds her sudden temper both alarming and confounding enough that he does not interrupt her tirade.

Her hands shake, but no longer with fear. "You are wasting my time, you know!" she repeats. She begins to redress and continues, "You're just going to have to find someone else's time to waste, because I've got much better things to do than hang around some… some crummy inn and talk about nothing but work for two hours before you… before you run out of here like you don't even like me!"

—and that alarms him.

His meetings with Karin have been an indulgence, a temptation to spy on Sasuke's wellbeing he had resisted for five years, but a temptation he has no desire to resist again.

If something were to happen to Sasuke, Itachi will have no means of knowing.

("Sasuke?" She'd shrugged. "He and Orochimaru are always together, doing who knows what.")

Karin huffs and turns to go and—

He stops her.

If she leaves, she may never come back and so he stops her, grabs her hand and spins her around and pulls her flush to him, one hand placed firmly against her back to keep her in place.

And he kisses her.

Her body is warm and her lips are warm and his nose bumps into hers when he leans in and he can't remember ever being so close to another person, not in years, and maybe if he had more than a second to think it over perhaps he'd have come up with a better solution but he doesn't, can't—

And so he kisses her.

Karin stiffens in his arms but does not struggle and he prays this is what she wants, that it's at least close enough to what she wants that it'll stop her from walking away and taking Sasuke with her.

Itachi has never kissed anyone before and so he cannot be sure if he's done it right, doesn't know if it lasts too long or if it's too short, if he's pressed too close to her or if he isn't holding her tight enough but it works. Karin relaxes, her hands once again reaching for his shirt, gripping it tightly in her hands, holding fast to him.

He kisses her, and Karin does not leave.

Itachi has no reference for kissing and so he counts down from ten before pulling away, his hand still pressed against her back.

Karin's eyes open slowly, flicker from his hand to his mouth to his eyes and she smiles. "You kissed me," she says, drawing the words out slowly, testing the feel of them. She takes in a deep breath then laughs in disbelief. She brings one hand to her mouth and seems almost unconscious of her grin, of the silly, absolutely foolish expression on her face.

"I… you liked that," she says, her voice small but somehow full of wonder, relief. "I could feel it…"

He doesn't understand what, if anything, Karin was able to feel but it seems to make her happy, and he won't contest that.

(He has lived so long divorced from his own pleasure that he does not bother to consider whether he did, in fact, enjoy it.)

.

"I'd leave for you," Karin whispers to him that night, her voice unusually neutral, exhausted. She lies on her back next to him in bed, staring at the cracks in the inn ceiling. There is at least half a foot of distance between them but Itachi still refuses to lie under the covers with her, to get any closer than necessary. He is fully clothed but Karin is only in her shorts and mesh shirt, a smattering of pink and faded pearl-colored marks fully on display.

(Later he will find the marks do go lower, farther, and Itachi will accept that Orochimaru's cruelty has never been known to make exceptions.)

They lie close enough that he can feel the heat from her body, can feel how the bed shifts under her when she pulls her knees back.

He does not consider if there was another, easier way to appease her—Itachi acts, and accepts the consequences of his actions. There is only the future for him now, and matters of regret and hindsight are ones he does not pay much mind.

"Just say the word and I'll do it—I'll help you kill him; I'll get whatever information you need. Just ask me. Anything you want me to do. I just—I hate it there. I can't stay there," and the tiniest sliver of emotion creeps back into her voice, a desperate whine.

Karin does not specify exactly who she means by him, but it seems a rather dangerous thought for her to explore.

Itachi says nothing, and she does not offer again.

A/N: HAPPY BIRTHDAY KARIN, LOVE YOU QUEEN.

i have SO many thoughts about this pairing? I mean, just from a construction standpoint, it makes WAY more sense that Karin, super-healing, lie-sensing, desperate-for-love Karin would be more compelling as someone in Itachi's orbit as opposed to Sasuke's and i am CONVINCED that is exactly why Karin never got to meet him in canon.

ANYWAY

pt. 2 is uhhh gonna be significantly less dark. sorry karin still love you

thanks to everyone who reads, leaves kudos, and comments! i love you!