You can't run, and you sure as fuck can't hide (but it's cute you think you can try)
“Gods, it stinks in here-” Karlach groans, covering her mouth and nose in a vain attempt to keep the stench out.
“We just have to put up with it for a bit.” Orochimaru sighs, though the wrinkle of his own nose makes it obvious he dislikes it just as much. “Let’s just try to make this quick.”
Yet another icy laugh from Ethel rings out in their ears.
“What have we here? Hiruzen’s little fallen star. How many lives have you eaten up just to drag yours out a little longer?”
Ignore it, Orochimaru tells himself. She’s trying to chase them off- all it’s doing is winding him up more, making a small voice in his head whisper for payback.
“What a pathetic show- what would the other two think if they saw you now?”
He can’t lose his head over this. He has to keep calm- if it gets to his head, he’ll get reckless and start making mistakes.
Taking a deep breath, he wills himself to get a grip.
Keep your wits about you. That's how we're going to survive.
“Be wary,” Lae’zel warns, putting an arm out to stop the others. “This place is trapped.”
Through the noxious fog, they can see that indeed, she’s right. Small glowing fake flowers line the path forward- they don’t know exactly what they’ll do, but they figure they can’t do anything good.
“Allow me,” Astarion says with a cheeky grin, kneeling down to start on disarming the field of traps laying before them.
“You seem in an oddly chipper mood,” Shadowheart remarks.
“It’s not every day one has the prospect of killing a hag- it’s quite exciting, honestly- I didn’t get much excitement with Cazador.”
“Be careful- whatever this gas is, it’s not something we want to be breathing in.”
Everyone covers their mouths with their clothes or whatever they have on hand to try to get fresh pockets of air. Even with that, they quickly become lightheaded and unsteady on their feet.
Maybe it’s callous to be so cavalier about the whole thing, but nobody calls Astarion out on his snarky remarks as they slink past a group of people stumbling around, wearing strange masks and muttering frantically to themselves.
Aside from the muttering, they think they hear someone pleading.
Itachi perks up, coming to a halt.
“Wait- do you hear that?”
Still, they think they can hear the woman Mayrina shouting somewhere up ahead.
Using tangled vines and rocky outcroppings to climb downward, they follow the noises deeper into the hag’s lair.
“There-” Shadowheart calls out, pointing ahead. “In the cage!”
Sure enough, trapped in what looks like a bird cage made out of forest debris, is the unfortunate woman in the hag’s care.
“Be cautious- hags aren’t to be trifled with,” Gale warns.
His warning goes unheeded as Wyll hops down a steep ledge to confront Ethel straightaway.
“Let her go!” he demands.
Ethel looks at him like he’s the stupidest person she’s ever seen.
“You just can’t keep from sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong!” she snarls.
She points a gnarled hand at him and the others as they catch up with him.
“I’ll rip your spine out your arsehole!” Ethel screams. “I’ll boil your bones to make soup! And when I’m done, I’ll bring ya back so I can do it all over again!”
“Go right ahead and try it, you stupid bitch!” Hidan snaps right back, charging recklessly at her. “Give it a fuckin’ try, your tricks can’t beat my lord Jashin!”
He takes a swing at her, which barely nicks her as she rolls out of the way.
“You want the girl so bad?” Ethel hisses. “Fine!”
With a snap of her fingers, the cage of branches and brambles encasing the woman ignites.
“Have her roasted!”
Mayrina screeches in fear, huddling over and trying to protect her middle.
“Oh gods, help me!”
“There’s got to be a switch or something to get her down,” Wyll growls, pulling his rapier free with a flourish. “Come on, we have to be fast.”
“Well things just got pretty interesting-” Astarion mutters under his breath, dagger in each hand, eager to fight.
A half-dozen Auntie Ethels spawn out of the ether, obscuring the true one within the fakes.
"What-"
Itachi scowls, black eyes turning scarlet as he steps forward.
"If you're trying to hide, you're doing a pretty poor job at it."
Crimson eyes dart around, tracking each fake Ethel at once, until he spots the one that doesn’t match the others.
With a few quick hand movements, he sends a stream of fire toward the real copy, causing her to howl and thrash around in agony as she ignites.
“You cock-sucking bastard-”
“-My parents were married when they had me, thank you.”
Itachi’s voice is so flat and humorless that it takes a bit for anyone to register that he’s joking.
“By the time I’m done with you, you’ll wish you never fell out of your mother’s rotten vag!”
Itachi doesn’t blink, firmly set on his goal.
“You wanna act like such a noble soul? Does trying to save a future mommy help you forget the time you stabbed your own in the back?”
Itachi’s entire body freezes, the words cutting right down to his core. Ethel takes advantage of that to dig her jagged, broken nails into his flesh, tearing a sizable chunk away and sending him reeling backward.
“I’ll send you back to meet her~” Ethel coos, mockingly. “And all the rest, too-”
Kisame catches him before he can fall into the void underneath the burning cage; with his free hand he grabs the switch that he truly hopes will open the cage, and pulls it.
It gives a good bit of resistance, but caves all the same.
Fortunately for them and for the girl, the burning cage starts to lower, and the door swings open.
The unfortunate woman scrambles to safety, covering her head with her hands.
“Gods, please stop-” she whimpers.
“Horrible wretch-” Wyll snarls, shooting a beam of pitch black energy out of the palm of his hand. It catches Ethel square in the chest, and she starts swearing once more.
“You think you’re so great? The Fraud of Frontiers, pretending to be anything more than the spoiled brat you are?”
Wyll evidently pretends he doesn’t hear that.
"You hero types are always so pitiful- tryin' to hide from the rotten parts of ye and wonderin' why you can't shake the stink!"
Wyll lashes out with his rapier, but barely manages to clip her.
Shadowheart takes advantage of the distraction to rush to Itachi’s side and heal the nasty wounds inflicted on him.
“Surprised you can see his injuries with how far up Shar’s cake you’ve shoved that pretty face of yours.” Ethel sneers.
“Oh will you shut up?!”
Shadowheart shouts a well-practiced incantation, and a circle of birds made of a soft white light surrounds her.
When the tiny guardians touch Ethel, they inflict wicked burns all over her wart-addled flesh everywhere they touch.
Shadowheart moves in, ready to strike again, but then something peculiar happens.
All of a sudden, the hag stops moving, bowing her head as if begging them.
“H-hey now, let’s not be unreasonable here-” Ethel pleads, holding gnarled hands up in a pacifying gesture.
“Unreasonable?”
“Even if you kill me here, I’ll just come back- always have, always will. But it’s…unpleasant. So let’s just talk things through. Just let me go with the girl and the baby. I’ve got a lot of power- I’ll share some of it with you if you do. Everybody can walk away happy.”
Wyll scoffs at the thought. He speaks before anyone else gets the chance to.
“It’s foolish to even ask to leave with your life- let alone the woman. Get out of here now, and don’t look back.”
Ethel snarls at him.
“Little brat. Fine.”
“But what about-” Mayrina tries to choke out.
“-Deal’s off you dumb cow! And you’ve got this lot to thank for it! Bye now!”
And just like that, Ethel is gone, leaving nothing but a bad smell behind.
Wyll steps toward Mayrina, taking his coat off and preparing to offer it to her.
“Are you al-”
“-You bastards!” Mayrina wails, before he can even finish his question. “You ruined everything !”
“What? What are you talking about?”
“She was going to bring my husband back! She was going to bring him back to life!”
Wrapping her arms around her middle, she continues to scream.
“Just a little longer and this child would've been born, and Connor would've been back!”
“...You were going to trade your child for your husband?” Itachi asks, in a voice so small it's nearly lost in the rank air.
“She was going to give this baby a good life!” Mayrina wails. “Teach them magic, even!”
She trails off, chewing on her lower lip.
“More than I could've done…”
Itachi keeps a stone-faced silence; Wyll takes the opportunity to approach her.
“You must have loved him a great deal.”
“I do. The baby, too.”
She allows him to put a comforting hand on her shoulder.
“...I always wanted to be a mother,” she whimpers. “I just didn’t think I would do it alone…”
Bowing her head, she wipes her tears as best she can with her unkempt curly hair.
“I’ve got to drag him all the way back now… it's the only way this child will ever meet its father- I hope you're happy.”
Mayrina pulls herself away from Wyll with a look of disgust, and storms away.
Her footsteps echo all around them as she storms off.
The others stand around in painful silence, until Astarion clears his throat.
“So,” he says, in a conspiratorial tone, “what’s that the hag said about your mother?”
Itachi shakes his head, keeping stubbornly quiet.
“Oh come on now, you can’t keep that to yourself now-”
“I can, and I absolutely will.”
Itachi hisses the words out between clenched teeth, with a glare that could freeze water solid in mid-summer.
Despite him desperately wanting to keep his secrets to himself, however, he doesn’t get the chance to do so, courtesy of the godforsaken parasites making themselves at home in their gray matter.
Neither of them was the first to pry- perhaps it was just his distress causing the memory to spill out.
The air reeks of blood. A man and a woman lie dead on the floor, blank, dead eyes staring blankly up at the ceiling.
Blood still warm on his face and hands. Dripping from the blade held in a slack grip.
Heart racing. Breath painful.
A terrified child screams in shock and horror, looking up with wide, dark eyes welled up with tears.
“Big brother- what have you done?!”
Just beyond the scared child lay a trail of bodies lining the street, falling out of windows, sticking out of waste bins-
“What have you done?!” he shrieks, when Itachi doesn’t answer.
As quickly as the memory started, Itachi shuts them back out of his mind.
Face still blank as ever, nevertheless he starts shaking.
“...what the hells was that?”
All Itachi can manage is to shake his head, taking a few sidesteps away to distance himself from the others.
When Gale tries to approach him, he turns and runs, too quickly for anyone to catch or try to stop him.
“Oh dear…”
Kisame runs a hand through his crop of hair, allowing himself a nervous laugh.
“He does that sometimes- he’ll come back around in a bit after he spent some time sulking.”
“Are you sure he's going to be alright?” Gale asks, peering over Kisame's shoulder in worry.
Shrugging his broad shoulders, Kisame tries to act unbothered.
“Yeah, he gets like that sometimes.”
“I don't know why he's so upset,” Astarion huffs. “I think he's more interesting this way- I thought he was just another bleeding heart.”
“Interesting really isn't the word I would use,” Shadowheart retorts.
Lae’zel rolls her eyes at the others’ fussing.
“All this means is that he is not as weak as I thought he was. Culling one’s kin who cannot hold their own is a mercy to them.”
Gale frowns.
“I’m going to go after him anyway,” he says. “Just to be safe.”
“Suit yourself. But I gotta warn ya- be careful not to sneak up on him, that’s a good way to get stabbed.”
Gale isn’t fazed by that, and takes off in the same direction Itachi had vanished.
“We should see if this hag has anything worth taking,” Astarion says, fiddling with a half-obscured door.
“Hags usually have some interesting trinkets,” Shadowheart agrees. “With her out of the way I suppose it doesn’t even count as a robbery.”
“That’s the spirit! Now give me a hand getting this open.”
Putting Itachi out of their minds for a moment, the others get to work breaking into anything that might hide something valuable.
There’s all sorts of potions and mysterious brews laying about, with strange labels such as a mother’s loathing that give little indication as to what they mean.
“Do we risk it…?”
“I wouldn’t. For all we know these will make your organs fall out or something,” Shadowheart warns.
Hidan scratches his chin, mulling things over.
“...Yeah probably better not to fuck around with it.”
He spies a knotted, mossy branch fashioned into a wand of sorts.
“Hey, what’s this say?” he asks, waving it in front of Wyll’s face.
Wyll squints at it.
“Bitter divorce. Why?”
“Dunno. Just seemed interesting.”
Hidan tucks the wand away, figuring it might be useful later.
(Why does he feel like he’s more right than he thinks? And why does he get the sinking feeling it’ll be sooner rather than later?)
Gale slips past the stumbling, confused masked people once again, knowing he will just get caught up with those poor, unfortunate souls if they notice him.
“Where the devil did he go-” he mutters to himself, squinting in the darkness to find any trace of where his new companion had run off to.
He wonders if he should call out his name, or if it would just set him running again if he hears.
After awhile though, he spots a hint of that shiny black hair that lets him know he's at least headed in the right direction.
(Gods, his knees ache terribly...)
"Hey, what are you doing?" he calls out.
In response, he receives a strange, strangled sound that sounds halfway between a sob and a groan.
"Itachi, stay put for a second-"
The younger man seems to listen to him, going still and covering his face with his hands.
Gale has no idea what he should say- or if there is anything he could say in this situation.
Instead of saying anything, he approaches Itachi, intending to put a hand on his shoulder. To try to make sense of what's going on.
Itachi flinches away from his touch, whipping around to look at him with the wild-eyed panic of a trapped animal.
The palms of his hands are stained crimson from the blood pouring from his eyes like tears.