Joining a rogue criminal organisation after loyally serving your village for your entire life and being ordered to betray said village for the sake of peace would always be strange, however, knowing the man who slaughtered pretty much your entire clan under the same orders is in the same organisation and being forced to act as his teammate is surreal. Terrifying to be more accurate. Hiruzen has informed you of your mission, join Itachi in the Akatsuki and become a spy for the Hidden Leaf. Maybe the old man just had a grudge against young teenage Uchiha, you couldn’t be sure.

It's been a week, and after the integration ritual, you're still yet to actually interact with Itachi face to face. You wonder if it's because of what you represent - a failure to complete his mission, a weakness he couldn't dispatch of, a nightmare that haunts him every time he shuts his eyes. But you decided to bring it upon yourself to force a conversation, a few words, even just an acknowledgement. So you stand outside the door to his room, trying to figure out what to say when you knock.