A/N: This is the prequel to my OC fic Ever Tense. I felt i needed to do more with the story, but I couldn't continue, so i went back. Enjoy.
Ever Numb~ AngelFire Rei
Prologue:
She had to be numb to it all, right front the start that's what he'd told her. And so, because she couldn't be numb to it all, she put up an act and she played her role well, until, it wasn't just an act anymore, until the numbness was all that was left, until, she was numb.
If you'd told Rei, that at the end of this mission, her life would shatter and she wouldn't be able to put it back together, she wouldn't have listened, she wouldn't have believed. If someone told her that when she was finished with this assignment she wouldn't feel anything but numbness she would have run then. If Itachi had warned her, she would have left before the heart break.
No one told her.
Rei packed the sack on her bed, three days worth of clothes, plus the outfit she was donning now. A romance novel by an author not widely known, but none-the-less her favorite, was sticking out on the top. Rei had instantly fallen in love with the main characters of the novel, Natuski, a young maiden and Kyouya, her love. She'd read the book half a dozen times, and for being only a few months old, it looked like it was fairly well worn, with all the dog-eared pages and creases of favorite paragraphs and scenes.
She tossed in a few other necessities, hair brush and ties, guards and extra kunai along with shuriken and explosive tags.
A loud hard rap on the heavy door came resounding back to her ears, "Come on, Kid." Kisame's husky laugh boomed on the other side.
She did a quick once over of her room, checking to see if she'd left anything lying around that she needed or wanted. Seeing nothing she glanced through her bag with the same quickness, seeing everything to be accounted for. "Coming," she called out and swung the bag over one shoulder.
The heavy door of the complex clanged shut behind her and she stepped up beside Itachi and his partner, waiting for orders, trying to switch into the cold exterior he expected of her.
Her heart beat fast in her chest and she couldn't seem to find her usual calm. Something felt off, though as to what she couldn't guess, her instinct just told her.
"Kisame, go on ahead about a mile, we'll meet you there. Check the area. We don't need any disruptions." Itachi had caught her unease.
"Sure," His gravely tone cut through the tension once, before the shark man departed, taking to the tree branches to reach his goal faster.
The tall Uchiha glanced back at Rei as she stared on after Kisame, still fighting to find the façade' of numbness she was getting used to wearing.
"Numb. Rei, be numb to it." Itachi's little chant never ceased to send chills up and down her, and then solemnly bring the feigning indifference onto her features.
"I'm set, Itachi," She looked at him with slightly dulled crimson eyes, and his sharingan flashed back at her once before they took off together, following the Hoshigaki into the woods.
Itachi wouldn't fully disclose the assignment to her, which was irritating in the least, and at most infuriating. She tried to stay indifferent but when she got to lying down with her thoughts in the nights, her emotions would catch her unprepared and off guard.
She felt the gentle and cool breeze as Itachi let himself inside her small tent. "You're not getting any sleep." He stated.
"You're not telling me something," She accused with a knowing hint in her voice.
"It's better that you do not know." His crimson pinwheel eyes faded into a coal black shade that perplexed and captivated her soul, she lost herself in them for a moment.
She caught herself after a minute of soul searching in soulless eyes. "Is that your idea or Pein-sama's?"
"The leader would rather you be…uninformed, at the moment."
"Am I subject to the suspicions of mutiny?" Rei asked, being a bit cocky, showing off her vocabulary a bit more than was entirely called for.
Itachi avoided her eyes, which struck her as odd, if she hadn't been so tired, she'd have questioned it further. Instead she just asked the next thing to dance across her thoughts. "What would you rather? Do you want me to know?"
"Rei," He settled down next to her slipping off his Akatsuki cloak before turning to face her, and leaning over, bracing himself with a hand on either side of her body. "You ask too many questions." He smiled his devilish grin, the one that only she ever saw, only at night, when they were alone, like this.
Had she been really awake, and not half dosed, as it were, she might have caught that he avoided her question again, and not only did he avoid it, he was going out of his way to hush her.
She felt him grab for the zipper on her sleeping bag, and listened as he yanked it down, and slipped a cool hand into the now open heated sanctuary.
Rei shivered lightly when his fingers grazed the bare skin of her stomach, where he'd hiked up her shirt, revealing nearly the whole of her abdomen. He left kisses along her neck as he continued to run his fingers across her warm body.
"Itachi!" She squealed when he nipped at her neck a little more roughly than she was used to.
He smirked that Uchiha smirk into her skin, and mouthed what she guessed to be "mine" onto her shoulder.
He kept up a steady pattern of kisses and touches, causing, each time, a new swarm of butterflies in her stomach.
Regrettably, her eyes fell heavy, and sleep threatened menacingly to take her away from his touches and that angered her, because she didn't want to miss a second. In the end the blissful feeling sent her off to the dreamland with a sweet caress.
Itachi watched her as her eyes finally fluttered shut and did not open again. Her breathing was even, and she looked peaceful, he watched her slightly rosy cheeks and let his eyes wander down to watch her creamy colored stomach rise and fall.
Knowing she'd soon be cold if he left her like that, Itachi pulled her shirt back down and re-zipped the sleeping bag, first pulling up the blanket she had stuffed in with her up around her bare shoulders. Tank-tops were probably not the greatest idea of sleeping garments at this time of year, but she insisted.
The Akatsuki kissed her forehead, before straightening back to his knees.
"Nnn…tachi…" She mumbled in her sleep voice, which he'd grown quiet accustomed to hearing.
It made him smirk secretly.
He stepped out of her tent into the bitter night air, fully clad in his cloak again. Kisame sat drinking by a medium sized blaze. The fire licked at some meat, which was stuck through with a sharpened stick. Itachi fleetingly guessed his partner had thrown a kunai at some helpless creature or other for his dinner.
"Hungry, Itachi?" Kisame garbled.
"No."
Itachi sat on one of the stumps not too far from the flame; he could still feel the heat it gave off. Shifting his legs so that one ankle crossed the other he leaned back, using the convenient tree behind the stump as a back rest. His coal black eyes shifted back to the crimson sharingan. He lost himself in thought, but acted as though he were still watching the surrounding area.
"What do you think, Itachi?" Kisame asked finally, when the silence became too uncomfortable.
"She is not a bargaining piece."
"That sure as hell is not true in Leader's mind." Kisame laughed half-heartedly as he grabbed up one of the skewers and bit off a hunk of the meat. "What—" Kisame stopped short when Itachi seemed to stop listening to him and seemingly switched to listening in the direction of Rei's tent.
"Hn," Itachi glanced back at Rei's tent, watching for a minute, listening.
"She awake?" Kisame inquired in a hushed tone, very much unlike him.
Itachi closed his eyes and listened. Both knew how well Rei could eavesdrop and had both gotten used to conversations ending abruptly when she got caught in the act. "It doesn't appear that she is." He concluded.
"Anyway…" Kisame reiterated, "What are you gonna do, she could die." The ex-mist nin didn't seem to care either way what the Uchiha did, but only was trying to see what his plans might be.
Itachi sat straight up. "Kisame." He didn't even bother to hide the flash of anger that entered his eyes.
"Sorry," The shark man caught himself for a second, "…didn't mean to be so blunt about it…but you know—"
"You should quit while you're ahead." Itachi hissed, reclining back once more.
Rei woke up to the sound of camp being packed away. She stretched out, finding that her legs were entangled in a web of thin purple blanket. The bag fell away from her body after she'd unzipped it, and she unwove the blanket from her slender legs.
The coldness somehow came naturally to her that morning, she felt bitter, so obviously she wasn't numb, but she was indifferent, for the most part. That would do.
The spots where Itachi and Kisame had pitched their tents were now empty. So she began to take hers down as well, a swift process which she was done with in about a minute.
It wasn't hard to notice when Kisame kept stealing uncertain glances at her, but she tried to write it off. Tried to tell herself she was imagining more into something than need be.
Leaving was silent, no one spoke, and they just fell into the normal pattern they took on when they walked long distances. Kisame ended up way in the front of them, and Rei hung back just behind Itachi, sometimes, she would sneak up next to him, and sometimes he allowed it.
She didn't now though. She felt drawn back, like she really was hanging back, so far back she might fall off, and plunge endlessly downward.
But she didn't fall eternally; she kept pace, placing one foot in front of the other mechanically.
The day continued, as did the long silence. If they stopped for a break, the eerie quiet would shift to small conversations that would end as soon as they took to the road again.
They were relatively unnoticed by people passing by them, on occasion, when they walked public roads such as the ones of this route, they would be met with ninja that knew who they were, and knew that the two men were in the Bingo Book. That didn't happen today, and Rei was grateful, for if there must be silence, she'd rather it be undisturbed.
At one or two different points she felt unjustifiable fear rise in her throat, and she wanted to ask Itachi about it, to see if there really was reason to feel this way, but she knew he'd only tell her the same old thing. Numb.
Finally, after taking a detour into the woods they stopped at a rusting old abbey, buried into the greenery about it. The east facing wall appeared to be completely moss coated, and for some reason Rei felt utterly sick at the idea of going in this place. And that fearful feeling from earlier crept back into her core.
The brute-ish man tossed her into the cell like a rag doll, like he was kicking a pebble out of the way, he drove his foot into her side, causing her to side—scraping–across the cold stone floor. Itachi stood out in the hall, watching—eyes blazing crimson.
"Why!?" She demanded, struggling to look up and ignore the aching in her side and glared into his eyes, hers blazing back. I thought you loved me!
They'd woken up that morning, like normal, they had packed up their camp just as the sun was peeking over the morning blue canvas of sky. Not much was said, but that was typical. She stayed a pace or two behind Itachi, when she walked with him. At one point, after they'd stopped for a rest, hiding from the mid day sun in the comfort of a small tea shop, everything seemed normal yet, if not a little tense. Pointless chatter passed about them as their own casual conversations joined the hum. Kisame laughed his gravely laugh when she'd once again refused to drink with him. Sake didn't usually sit well with her, and so she stuck to her green tea.
It seemed like all the normalcy from that morning dissipated when they left the tea house. Itachi cast an odd sidelong glance her way that made the hair on her neck stand and her skin crawl.
Something was wrong.
She knew it then, that something was up, that she was out of the loop and in a bad way, no less. Yet she couldn't pinpoint as to why.
She replayed the last few hours, looking for anything she may have missed, finding nothing. All the while her mind had raced, until they reached the old looking abbey. The fear rose, and peaked, then broke like a fresh wave on the shore, leaving her…numb.
Then there wasn't much feeling or thought left.
As soon as the three of them entered they had been flanked by three shinobi of undetermined country or status, for none wore a head band. She instinctively slunk closer to Itachi, slipping her hand in his, squeezing it slightly for reassurance that never came. He never returned the gesture, never made notice that she'd even placed her tiny hand in his.
The fear rose with a vengeance then. But it was too late; they'd entered the hall with the five cells, the one at the very end empty, and open.
Then came the fierce tug on her arm and the sickening whipping motion.
The door slammed shut now, and she flung herself at it, grasping her hands around the bars in the window, leering out at her captors and betrayers.
End Chapter One:
A/N: So...This is chapter one of Ever Numb. Tell me what you think, give it a chance, even though its an OC story~ R&R please!
AngelFire Rei~