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Who: Ashiko and Itachi
Where: An inconspicuous little village in the Land of Rice
When: April 15
Notes: A friendly encounter. Sort of. Mostly, he's just happy she's alive.

'Perhaps you should take it easy, Ashiko-sama,' a few of the lower-ranked servants had suggested, meek and worried. 'It was such a stressful situation. You deserve a rest.'

Honestly. It was as though they didn't know her at all.

Ashiko could never be happy cooling her heels, even if the alternative was being away from her master's side. Since the caravan debacle he had elected to keep a low profile, which meant that Ashiko's little errands resumed, with more frequency than ever before. Otogakure had no shortage of skilled medical ninja, not the least of which was her esteemed Danna-sama, so it wasn't as though she was even on the mend; she had been patched up as good as new by the day after their return, and had only her own bruised pride to pain her.

She didn't care that Orochimaru had stabbed a person through her, really; she was upset that she had hindered her master to the point that he had even had to do such a thing in the first place. It was a similar sentiment that had kept her from using her scroll to make contact with any Konoha shinobi. How exactly did one broach such a strained social situation? 'My master and I are in good health, I hope that none of you were fatally poisoned after we defended ourselves from your highly unwarranted attack,' seemed ill-put.

But even Ashiko could nurse a grudge, if one on behalf of her master.

The woman sighed softly and ducked into the inn and tavern that would be her lodgings for the night, sliding into the last available booth and leaning back against the old, lacquered wood tiredly. She was in the pink of health, but the weather and the long hours she had chosen to undertake had worn her out for the day.

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"Oh, no, I assure you this has been an enlightening experience and one I could not have had in better company, Ashiko-san, but I am sorry that your last memory of me will be when I was drunk." If he could get her alone, then he could kill her. He had to kill her, right? Otherwise it was to the interrogation chambers for Ashiko, and it would take a while to break her. She was too loyal. Had she been trained to with stand torture?

"There was a rain bucket outside. I suppose I could go stick my head in it..." Itachi suggested, trying to slur his words a little.

"...you did promise me swimming lessons," Ashiko remembered, because she was just drunk enough to find it an appealing idea. "And all the geese are probably asleep by now." At night, the water would be chilly enough to count as a cold bath, wouldn't it? So really, they would be hitting two birds with one stone, and it would leave them coherent enough for proper, final farewells. She warmed to the idea more and more as she turned it over in her mind.

And she had not been trained for torture, because she was a Kuzuryu. She had been taught dozens of ways to kill herself in order to protect her master before the age of ten. It had never been an issue she had overly considered, to tell the truth.

"As long as it's not too deep, we shouldn't drown." Itachi got clumsily to his feet. They'd better do this now before she changed her mind. Drowning a tipsy civilian girl would be easy, right? Itachi had never drowned someone before, but the principle was simple enough. You held someone underwater until they stopped fighting. Easy, right? Even civilian drowned each other, so he shouldn't have a problem.

"When you are drunk, do your thoughts go in obsessive circles?" Itachi asked as he stood unsteadily on his feet.

"My natural state of thought is obsessively circular," Ashiko carefully stood up, then blinked and blushed when she realized what she had just said. Usually, it made people uncomfortable to hear that she was aware that her fixation was considered unhealthy by most standards and maintained it anyways. She sidestepped the issue by making her way to the door as quickly and steadily as she could managed, slipping out into the cool evening air.

There was a suitable pond not terribly far away, a decoration for some establishment near the inn that had since been abandoned and left to itself. She trusted that her friend would follow, and moved forward.

Itachi followed Ashiko quickly. "Oddly, that doesn't surprise me." There wasn't enough sarcasm in the words to make then an un-Iori like comment, was there? Itachi followed Ashiko down to the water. The pond probably wouldn't be that deep, but standing water tended to be...dirty. Itachi looked at the pond and wondered if he really wanted to get in the water. He'd have to put his hair up.

Itachi glanced at Ashiko. "Oh...well...you'll drown if we try in that."

"Oh, hush," Ashiko grumbled good naturedly, before beginning to untie her obi without so much as a by-your-leave. She folded the richly embroidered belt neatly on a nearby stone bench and shrugged out of the layers of her normal wardrobe, treating each with gentle care until she was left in a simple set of pale purple, lace-overlayed undergarments. Her entire wardrobe followed strict, elegant standards, and she finished by plucking loose a gilded hair comb, laid gently ontop of her clothes.

She turned to him, arms akimbo and bereft of the shame she might have shown years before. "Well? Better?" They might be a little dirty, but perhaps they could steal a few rain buckets to rinse off, afterwards.

Itachi blinked. He opened his mouth, closed it, and felt his cheeks go red. Before he'd thought to turn around, Ashiko had removed all her clothes. Well, not all of them. Not the purple lacy layer. Itachi almost covered his eyes, thought it would be too childish, and then realized that would be an appropriate reaction for Iori.

"Uhm." Itachi blinked and nodded jerkly. She wouldn't drown in that. "That works."

Not drunk enough to stop being Iori, or not experienced enough with women to not react, the tiny, analytical section of Ashiko's brain that remained alert, noted. It was better than a leering, drooling pervert, either way, so she was kind enough not to comment on it. She did, however, give him a pointed once over.

"What about you? Will you be able to swim like that?" Wet clothes only added more weight, if she remembered correctly.

Iatchi looked down at his clothes. They weren't as formal as Ashiko's, but they were just as old fashioned. "Well, I could. My cousin made sure I could swim fully clothed..." Itachi realized Iori wouldn't have any cousins, but managed to go on smoothly and hope Ashiko didn't mark the slip too heavily. He slowly shrugged out of his clothes.

It wasn't modesty that made him hesitate. Most of Itachi's injuries had been healed by Konoha's medics and had left little or no scarring, but he had a few that had happened too far from Konoha to get expert healing, or, more recently, minor things that had got infected while he was out on assignment and had thus scarred. Some were obviously battle wounds, though none were very large.

Itachi took a little less care for his clothes, but he did fold them up before setting them on the dew damp ground. Last of all Itachi carefully coiled up his braided hair and grabbed a few pins from his pack to secure it. His skin would wash off easily, and he had extra clothes, but he wasn't dipping his hair in that water if he could help it.

Edited 2014-04-29 14:12 (UTC)

Ashiko passed no comment over the mention of a cousin or the reveal of the scars. There wasn't any point to it, in her opinion; she knew he was more than a simple scribe and had for years, and as of tonight he knew she knew that. Why waste her breath needling him over a subject that had necessitated their final farewells to one another?

Her body, in contrast to his, was meticulously, miraculously pristine. Not only was her chest bereft of any scar from when her master skwered her; no, she didn't even have faded, minor marks from cuts or scratched scabs. She was an extension of her masters vanity, after all, and had been meticulously repaired after every bout of bodily harm that befell her, like the world's most important doll. But that wasn't what they were here for.

"So...where do we start?"

"We," Itachi said with a little bit of sarcasm. "Get in the water." he took the first step into the cold water, hissing a little as he waded out knee deep and then turned around to look at Ashiko.

Now he noticed her lack of scarring. It didn't mean, unfortunately, that her master really cared for her. It only meant he wanted her in pristine condition, but he hadn't discarded her when she was injured.

"I don't think I believe you," Ashiko said, with mock suspicion as she flinchingly entered the water as well. She made no sound or other real reaction, however, too used to maintaining her composure to forgo it for something as simple as a sudden chill.

She followed him until she was thigh deep, careful to keep as steady a footing as she could manage. Slipping and tripping in a pool in the dark was probably the exact opposite of a successful swimming lesson, after all.

Itachi started to reach out to steady Ashiko, but decided against it as he slowly lowered his hands and took a few steps deeper into the water. "First we're going to teach you how to float. It's the easiest thing, and it ought to be fairly easy for you." Women, generally, had a higher percentage of fat on their bodies, and Ashiko wasn't ninja fit, so she should have an easier time learning to float than a skinny little ninja boy.

"Right, and...does it matter if I'm on my back or stomach?" She was just drunk enough to need to stifle an immature little giggle at her own question, before shaking it off and attempting to take this seriously once more. He was doing her a favor, after all, and she should be respectful of that.

And he was very, very lucky that he hadn't commented on her fat percentage or fitness, clinical statistics or not. she was a lady, after all.

"That depends on if you'd like to breathe, Ashiko-san," Itachi replied dryly, more Uchiha than Iori. It hardly seemed to matter. They were drunk and continuing with this farce seemed ridiculous on some levels.

"I'll keep your head from going under," Itachi added. "So you won't drown." Not unless he could work up the nerve to hold her head under water.

"Okay."

And that was that. It was a simple, sincere declaration of trust that she herself didn't think twice about, murky origins and possibly loyalties aside. She turned her back on him—again, without a hint of apprehension—and leaned back until her back was fully submerged.

Her breath quickened reflexively, unused to being in the water without both feet firmly rooted to the ground.

"Relax." The gentle murmur came out automatically as he moved his hands through the water, sinking down into it until his shoulders were barely above the murky surface. Goosebumps crawled up his flesh and Itachi gently set his fingers under Ashiko's warm shoulders to balance her feather weight in the water. Her head rested easily between his arms.

"You're buoyant. You'll float," Itachi assured her.

"The lake I lived by as a child was frozen most of the time."

She hadn't actually meant to let that slip out, but nervous chatter seemed to help calm the worry knotting in her still-warm stomach, so she just focused on the fingers bracing her bare skin and let the words flow.

"So...so most of us there didn't know how to swim, because it was hard to practice safely. But sometimes people would fall through the ice. And then...then swimming didn't help much." She glanced up at him, dark eyes seeking dark eyes. "But it's...it's different in warm water, right? I really won't sink?"

Logically, she knew she wouldn't. But practically, a childish note of fear crept into her voice all the same.

"No, you won't sink," Itachi assured her, and his voice had slipped down into a gentle tone he'd never had cause for Iori to use. It was the tone for Sasuke's nightmares and tiny cousin's fears. "Cold water numbs you and disorients you, and once you go under the ice, it's hard to get back up." Itachi had gone swimming, involuntarily, in the water in winter. Even burning chakra, it hadn't been easy to stay afloat.

Somewhere cold--Itachi tucked that information away.

"If the water's rough or moving you're probably better off just swimming, but you'll float just fine in this little pond," Itachi promised.

"Oh." It was little more than an exhalation of relief, and followed on the heels of a great deal of tenseness lifting from her slight farm. "Good. That's...good." She averted her gaze, cheeks tinged with a pink he hopefully couldn't see in the evening light.

How embarrassing, to be soothed like a child at her age.

After that thought was crushed and buried, however, she noticed that she was, indeed, floating and a small, silly smile of relief stole across her lips.

"When you feel comfortable, we'll try actually swimming," Itachi added. "Have you ever watched a frog swim?" They had plenty of tadpoles, frogs, and the like in Konoha. Toads to.

Now...if he grabbed her hair and yanked back, he could get her head under water. He could ward of her attacks with his free hand--most of them, anyway, and by holding her by the back of her skull, he could avoid being bitten.

Now he just needed to make the movements to do so.

"Yes," Ashiko said, though it took her a moment to churn up the relevant memory. She frowned thoughtfully and looked back up at him. "I'll need to be on my stomach to do it like that, won't I?"

It might get a little difficult for him to act as insurance against her head going under, if she flipped over now. He did seem to know what he was talking about so far, though, so Ashiko had no reason not to trust him for this next step.

"Something like that, especially for the kick. It's a simple stroke and it should be the easiest for you to learn." Itachi spoke almost absently, trying to work up the nerve to grab her hair and yank. His movements seemed to slow and fuzzy, and he'd only have one chance to do this quietly...except having her flail around like a landed fish wouldn't be quiet, so he should think of a better plan. Maybe he could just slit her throat when they were back on dry land, after she'd gotten dressed, of course. Better make it look like a mugging gone bad.

Before he could move much at all, Ashiko took the vague slide of his hands to be a gentle implication that it was time for her to switch over. With that thought in mind, she carefully got her feet back on solid stone and turned to face him, water that had perviously seemed so scary swishing harmlessly around her hips.

She blushed a little at her own cowardice and prayed he either couldn't see it or chalked it up to belated modesty on her part.

"How, um...how do we make sure my face doesn't go under?"

Water certainly made clothes form fitting. After a quick glance which seemed seared into his pupils, Itachi kept his eyes on Ashiko's face. It wasn't as if he hadn't seen naked or half clothes women before, but this was Ashiko and it was somehow different.

"By teaching you to swim?" Itachi suggested rather lamely. "Look, get back in the water and I'll show you the arm motions, and then I'll hold you up while we get the kick worked out." Itachi, knowing how cold the balmy night would seem now that he was wet, was reluctant to stand.

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