The letter had been sent. They continued their training, and Kurama kept filling her new seal with much less chakra than he had initially planned so as not to distract her. Naruto managed to re-establish communication with his Yang-Kurama and began to partially transform like her, though with much more difficulty. Sasuke sent another letter to Itachi. Jiraiya counted the days left before he had to go meet his informant, and she continued training in fuinjutsu. Time passed slowly, but inexorably.
"I can't believe it's already July," said Naruto. "In just a few months, it'll have been a year."
"It's felt pretty short, honestly."
Seina nodded at Sasuke's confession. She was focused on the sixth adamantine chain she was training with. She could feel the terrible July heat on her pale face, now beginning to take on a slightly tanned tone, so she used her magic to dry her sweat and regulate her temperature. She barely even cast spells consciously anymore; she had gotten used to simply imagining the result she wanted, and her magic, which she was still learning, responded to her wishes. That, however, carried a danger: she didn't actually know how it worked in theory. It just worked, period. Hermione would be pulling her hair out if she were alive.
"Well, my young apprentices," Jiraiya said the next day with a clap, "I'm heading to the meeting point. Behave yourselves."
Naruto waved absentmindedly, continuing his chakra training. He was close to mastering the Rasenshuriken without hurting himself. Sasuke, who had spent weeks practicing with his Chidori spear, had started modifying it again to combine fire nature with lightning. He wasn't very successful yet, but he wasn't giving up.
She, on the other hand, had stopped creating genjutsu to speed up her ninjutsu learning. With the help of clones, she was learning about one or two techniques a day, although it left her exhausted. Sasuke, in the afternoons, would copy her progress with his sharingan, advancing rapidly and much to Naruto's irritation.
"I'm starving," she sighed, her stomach growling from the depths.
"Let's have dinner. It's late."
They packed up everything and entered the tent. They ate in silence, too tired to talk after their 10 hours of daily training, and then went to shower. Just as she closed her eyes in the bath—a moment she sometimes used for pleasuring herself in solitude—she felt something. It took her a few seconds to realize it wasn't the magical barriers but the locator in Itachi's pendant. She straightened up without thinking. It was moving towards them. She closed her eyes to focus on the bird she had stationed at the coordinates Sasuke had given him, but there was no one there.
"Do you think he's heading to the coordinates, or is it just a coincidence?"
"Who knows. If I were you, I'd keep one of your summons at the meeting point."
She slept only a few hours, in a fitful half-sleep to be able to check if he had arrived or not. Every time she woke up, Itachi was closer, and she started feeling the strong premonition that it was happening. She woke up at dawn, unable to hold back her excitement any longer. She dressed quickly and rushed to knock on Sasuke's door. He opened it exactly three seconds later.
"Seina?" he asked, blinking sleepily but looking surprisingly awake. "What's wrong?"
"I think it's happening."
"Happening wh-...? You're not talking about...?" Sasuke jolted fully awake, his eyes wide as she nodded.
"I've got one of my creatures there. He's still moving this way. I don't feel him too close yet, but I'd like to go set up some barriers, just in case."
Sasuke couldn't speak. He just nodded, swallowing hard. He looked like he was in shock. She wasn't surprised. They had spent months trying to contact Itachi without success. Almost a year of sending letters weekly without a response, and finally, it seemed something had changed. She didn't know for sure, but something inside her told her Itachi was heading toward the meeting point. She just hoped she wasn't wrong. She didn't want to give Sasuke false hope, but she couldn't hide that Itachi was moving, even if it turned out he wasn't coming to meet them.
"Do you want me to go alone at first? To see if he comes alone or not."
"In case you need to run away quickly?"
"Yeah."
"...Okay, but Naruto isn't going to like it."
"Let's talk to him."
It took exactly five minutes to convince him because she could feel Sasuke's emotions through their bond and knew how much he prayed it was true and that Itachi was finally giving in.
"Fine! But at the slightest hint of danger, you get out of there!" he made her swear.
"I don't plan on dying or getting hurt, Naru. Trust me."
"Okay."
Seina waited a while—at least until the sun rose. She left the tent to head alone toward the coordinates they had been given. It was about a 20-minute run, so she flew there. She didn't see anyone along the way or nearby, but she didn't let that discourage her. She set up several barriers and sat on a log to wait. An hour passed. Then another. She felt the pendant growing closer until, almost at noon, it happened...
"You're here," she said, sensing his presence before seeing him. She was even a bit nervous for the meeting. "Thank you for coming."
She turned and saw him standing high up on a branch, observing her with his sharingan active. He was alone; there wasn't another aura within dozens of meters. He made no move to attack or speak. He watched her silently for several minutes, while her heart pounded wildly because they were actually succeeding. She wasn't going to mess it up now that he was so close.
"..."
"Sit down, please. I'm alone, just in case," she continued, indicating a log on the ground. "We were right, weren't we? You're innocent."
"Why did you send me those letters?" Itachi finally spoke.
"Because your brother—and you—deserve better. Sasuke is a member of my team, and the team is family. Sasuke is my brother. You are Sasuke's brother, his blood family, so... you're my family too," she answered, staring directly and fearlessly into Itachi's red eyes. "I would do anything for my loved ones, and he's suffering because we were almost certain of your innocence. We informed Tsunade-sama about it a long time ago, and she's investigating. Maybe you can't return to the village openly right now, but once the investigation is complete, you could. We want you to come home with us."
"I have no home, Seina," he said, deactivating his dojutsu, still from his branch.
"Of course you do. Your home is your family," she smiled, "and your family is Sasuke. And Naruto and me, if you'll accept us. He's not going to kill you, Itachi. He just wants you to come back. What's holding you back?"
"...Even if they accepted me back in Konoha, which I highly doubt, I've done horrible things since I left the village," he confessed, his face expressionless. "Also... I'm dying."
"What?" she asked, her voice barely a whisper. "Are you serious? Why haven't you seen a doctor?"
"Do you know many doctors willing to treat a criminal like me?"
"Then let me heal you," she pleaded, looking him in the eye. "Please, don't do this to Sasuke—or to yourself. I'm not arrogant enough to say I know how you feel, but I can imagine. Don't let guilt consume you. Sasuke needs you alive, not dead. He needs his brother. The village, even if it doesn't seem like it, needs you alive. Don't punish yourself for what others made you do, because that would only punish Sasuke too, and I can't allow that. Please."
Itachi looked up at the sky, as if contemplating the answer to his request. His expression was less cold, but just as serious. There was a sudden glint of sadness and guilt in his eyes. Seina stood up and jumped onto the same branch, though a little farther away. She sat down slowly beside him, like he was a wild animal ready to strike, and offered him her hand. She let Itachi look at her hand, then at her, before he slowly, almost wearily, raised his hand. The moment he took her hand, she knew he was accepting surrender. Seina held back tears of joy and relief, realizing she wouldn't have to tell Sasuke they had failed.
"Thank you," she whispered with a smile.
"…"
They stayed there in silence for a while, making sure neither of them was going anywhere. She felt Sasuke's worried and nervous presence in her mind, who didn't know what words were being exchanged but was aware she was with Itachi.
"Can I tell him to come?" she asked softly.
Itachi thought about it for a few minutes, as if battling himself, then gave a barely perceptible nod. Seina called Sasuke and Naruto to come over. She didn't even have to ask twice; Sasuke immediately ran toward her. Itachi squeezed her hand, maybe unconsciously, when Sasuke appeared. She smiled, watching along with Naruto the reunion of the brothers after so many years.
"Nii-san," Sasuke called, almost pleading, approaching with hesitant steps.
"Sasuke," Itachi greeted, staring intently at his brother. He released her hand and stepped onto the ground.
Seina and Naruto stayed silent, smiling proudly as they watched them hug. Sasuke couldn't help but cry in his brother's arms like a small child. She saw how Itachi looked at his brother in amazement, as if unable to believe Sasuke had forgiven him. Their eyes met over Sasuke's shoulder and she smiled, nodding. Under Naruto's arm draped over her shoulders, she watched Itachi slowly raise his arms and embrace Sasuke.
"We did it," she said mentally to Naruto.
"I know."
Naruto rested his head on her hair, hugging her sentimentally as he watched the reunion. Seina could only return the embrace. Finally, finally, Sasuke had his brother back. They stayed on the other side of the clearing, giving them privacy, watching the clouds.
"Seina," Sasuke spoke an hour later, his eyes red but his face filled with joy. "Can you heal my brother?"
"Of course," she smiled. "Let's go."
The four of them walked back to the tent. She accepted Itachi through the magic barriers and led him into her infirmary, ignoring his raised eyebrows at the tent's enormous interior. Sasuke stayed by his side while she made him remove his heavy cloak, weapons, and ninja band. She used a diagnostic spell to figure out what was wrong and had to read the scroll a couple of times to understand the gravity of the situation.
"Is there anything that can be done?" Itachi asked.
"Clearly, you don't know Seina," Sasuke said, not even questioning whether she could heal him or not.
"I can heal you, but you have a long road to full recovery… The most serious thing is a type of tuberculosis that isn't contagious through aerosols. Luckily, it seems you're not in the terminal phase yet, despite suffering from it for years," she informed clinically. "If you had waited another year or year and a half… You also have a clear 50% vision deterioration and are suffering from mild chronic poisoning."
Sasuke and Naruto stared at Itachi, as if they couldn't believe he was standing upright. Meanwhile, Seina pulled out one of her antidote potions and handed it to him. That was the easiest thing to fix. With one or two doses, the poison would be completely gone. Itachi drank it after a glance. Even he couldn't help but grimace at the horrible taste.
"That antidote dose should cure the poisoning. As for your vision, I'm going to use iryo ninjutsu to repair the damage."
"It's a consequence of the mangekyo sharingan," Itachi explained. "It'll return."
"We'll deal with that later," she cut him off. "Now that we know the origin of your blindness, it's best not to use your dojutsu for a few days."
She proceeded to heal his eyes, reducing the inflammation in his optic nerves and tissues, renewing dead cells, and repairing the semi-functional ones. Then she used her magic to reinforce the work and finally applied eye drops to relieve the ocular stress he was clearly suffering from. She pulled out a potion similar to the spells she had used and handed it to him.
"You'll have to put one drop of this in each eye every night," she handed him the vial. "Keep it and use it up, especially if you're going to use the sharingan. It'll counteract the strain until we can find a definitive treatment. Now comes the hard part."
"My tuberculosis."
"Do you know where or how you might have gotten infected? Being a strain that isn't contagious by normal means, it makes sense you got infected by stabbing yourself with something."
"Mmm… It could've been Orochimaru," Itachi sighed thoughtfully, "or maybe Tobi."
"Tobi?"
"A member of Akatsuki. Most likely the poisoning was Orochimaru's doing. He tried to take my body years ago, but I fought him off," he explained. "He probably poisoned me to make it easier to capture me."
"Wouldn't be the first time that bastard drugged someone to steal their body," Naruto reminded from the doorway, arms crossed, looking at Sasuke.
Itachi's face darkened at the thought. Seina was sure he knew everything that had happened to his brother. If Orochimaru had tried to take him first, and then Sasuke, Itachi must have been close to tearing his head off with rage.
"Anyway, back to the important part. It can be cured, but you're going to feel like absolute crap for several days," she told him bluntly so he would know the seriousness. "I hope you don't need to go anywhere."
"Kisame will be waiting for me."
Sasuke, Naruto, and Seina exchanged looks.
"Kisame… do you trust him?"
"He's my partner, and my friend," Itachi said simply. "I can send him a crow with a message."
"You know what?" Seina sighed at the recklessness of what she was about to say. "Let him come."
"What!?" Naruto shouted in disbelief.
"Itachi trusts him and we'll need help to get him out of Akatsuki without trouble. As strong as Itachi is, he's still just one person."
Naruto shrank at that while, curiously, Sasuke didn't seem willing to argue. At this point, Sasuke seemed fine with anything that helped his brother. Itachi, however, stared at her intently at her words. Maybe he had never imagined that she, clearly the most responsible one in the team, would be the first to agree to allowing another criminal.
"Where is he now?"
"I'll give you a crow to guide you to him. That way he'll listen."
Itachi handed her a letter and summoned a crow to guide her. Naruto seemed ready to follow, but she shook her head. If things didn't go as expected, she could easily teleport back to the tent using the hiraishin. She didn't need backup because she wasn't planning on fighting. She left the tent and ran after the crow toward the west. She heard her target after half an hour, hidden in an abandoned cabin covered by one of Itachi's genjutsus.
"Kisame?" she called out loudly from a few meters away. "I want to talk to you on behalf of Itachi."
She heard Kisame freeze inside the cabin before grabbing what she sensed was his weapon and bursting through the door. He was wearing just pants and a shirt, and in his hand, the Samehada sword.
"What the hell…? You're ballsy, girl," he said with a sharp grin. Still, his gaze landed on the crow perched on her shoulder as if he couldn't believe it. "…So it's true."
"Itachi agreed to come back," she answered, not sure if it was the best opening. "I'm healing him, but he needs a few days of rest. He told me you were waiting for him… and that you were his friend."
There was a silence as they stared at each other. Curiously, he didn't seem eager to attack her, despite gripping his sword tightly. After thinking over her words, however, he seemed to deflate like a balloon.
"…Damn Konoha ninjas and their damn friendship," Kisame muttered under his breath. "…Is he alright?"
"Poisoned, half blind, and suffering tuberculosis. What do you think?" she rolled her eyes. "Here. Read this note from Itachi."
She threw the letter like a shuriken and Kisame caught it mid-air, frowning at her words. He read it right there, not worrying about her. Maybe because he was underestimating her, maybe because he knew she wasn't going to attack. A sigh pulled her out of her thoughts, and she stopped petting the crow.
"Alright. I'll go with you. It's not like I have much else to do."
She waited while he gathered his things. He came out of the cabin fully dressed, with the sword on his back. Seina let the crow go and held out her hand to Kisame. He looked at it, puzzled, until she motioned for him to take it.
"Let's go. I'm not running back with you wearing that dumb cloak."
Kisame grabbed her hand with a strange expression. Seina used the hiraishin she had marked just outside the range of the tent.
"Is that hiraishin? Who the hell are you? I thought that technique had died with the Fourth Hokage."
"Well, clearly it didn't," she rolled her eyes. "I need a drop of blood."
The ninja looked at her with distrustful eyes but eventually gave her the blood. Then he followed her inside, as if unwilling to show her his back, even though she clearly wasn't going to attack him.
"What the fuck!?" he exclaimed upon seeing that the interior was a huge entrance hall with staircases on either side. "This is impossible."
"Yeah, yeah... We'll talk about it later," she rolled her eyes for the umpteenth time. She started walking toward the infirmary. "Come on. They're waiting for us."
Seina saw Naruto waiting for her at the door with his arms crossed. She noticed his sigh of relief when she appeared. He stared intently at the criminal behind her but said nothing. Kisame entered the infirmary and went straight to Itachi, who was sitting on one of the beds.
"So it's actually true. Huh. Who would've thought?"
"My brother and his team convinced me."
"And your village is just going to accept you, just like that?" Kisame asked incredulously. "You're even dumber than I thought."
Seina let out a short laugh along with Naruto at hearing that and seeing Itachi's exasperated face.
"Maybe it'll help that Tsunade-sama knows Itachi is innocent," she said, preparing the things to treat the tuberculosis.
"...Innocent?" Kisame asked, now seriously, turning to Itachi. "What's the blonde talking about?"
"I killed them under orders from one of the counsellors," Itachi confessed, letting out a sigh. "I didn't do it willingly. It was in exchange for Sasuke's life."
Kisame sat on a stool beside him, staring at his companion in shock.
"Well, you guys can talk later," she cut them off firmly. "This takes priority. Do you want them here or should I kick them out?"
Itachi shrugged, so Seina made Sasuke, Naruto, and Kisame sit on another bed, farther away. She started by giving him specific antibiotics for tuberculosis, then used iryo ninjutsu to repair the destroyed tissue, reduce inflammation, clear the fluids in his lungs, and boost his immune system. She dissipated Itachi's vomit several times from the bucket she had provided, having anticipated it would happen, and gave him a glass of water before healing the strain in his throat.
"Are we done?" Naruto asked a couple of hours later when she left Itachi resting in his bed.
"No. I'm afraid he's been sick with tuberculosis for a long time," she said, placing a fresh compress on his forehead and letting him sleep under her spell. "The antibiotic may or may not work considering it's not a common strain. We'll see how that develops. His lungs, on the other hand, have been almost fully healed. I'll examine him daily to check for relapses while the infection persists. For now, there's nothing more we can do. Meanwhile, I'll try to figure out what to do about his eyes and the problem the mangekyo represents after what we found out last time."
A silence fell over them as they all looked at Itachi, unconscious in bed and unaware of his condition. Then, they heard someone entering the tent — Jiraiya, probably having spent all his money on women and booze in the nearest village while he visited his informant.
"HEEEEY GUYS! I'M BACK!" he shouted like a lunatic, clearly drunk.
In unison, the whole team groaned in embarrassment while Kisame started smiling from ear to ear. He didn't even get up from his chair when Jiraiya entered, confused that nobody greeted him. Kisame had to bite his tongue to keep from laughing when he saw Jiraiya's eyes nearly pop out of their sockets as he stared at Itachi sleeping and then at Kisame grinning from a stool beside him.
"WHAT THE HELL! WHAT ARE THEY DOING HERE!?" he shouted again, immediately going on the defensive and sobering up on the spot. "I was gone for one day!"
"Yeah, ero-sennin," Naruto rolled his eyes at Jiraiya's shock. "They've joined us."
"WHAT DO YOU MEAN THEY'VE JOINED US!?" the sannin spluttered. "DO YOU EVEN KNOW WHO THEY ARE!?"
"Itachi is innocent, you already know that," she said, ignoring his 'You don't know that for sure!' with total calm. "I'm treating him. Kisame's here because he's Itachi's partner and he trusts him."
"Ugh. Why do you kids always give me a headache? Why can't you act like a normal team!?" Jiraiya asked the air, and everyone ignored him, as usual.
"We should give Kisame a room and another one for Itachi," Naruto said, as if Jiraiya weren't even speaking.
"Someone should start preparing dinner," Sasuke nodded.
"YES! IGNORE ME AS ALWAYS! WHY DO I EVEN TRY!?"
Kisame was clearly trying to hold in his laughter, shaking in his seat due to his large size. Seina let him be. She knew the magical barriers would throw him out if he tried anything weird, so she wasn't worried.
"I like you kids," Kisame said. "I think I'll stay with you."
They ignored Jiraiya, who clearly wasn't thrilled to hear that, and let Itachi rest. She placed a spell on him to monitor any relapses and then they all left the infirmary.