A/N: Good lord, this piece is old. And hideously fluffy.

Little Good Samaritans

0O0

The first time Hana meets Itachi, she is five years old, at the market with her mother and trying to extract her left hand from a particularly large crab pincer.

Tsume hasn't noticed, more preoccupied with comparing the squirming, fussy ball of flesh that is Hana's brother with the bundle in Mikoto's arms. Hana briefly considers screaming to get her mother's attention, then decides the claw's pinch doesn't hurt enough to do so and besides, she'll be a kunoichi one day and she highly doubts that kunoichi scream for their mothers.

Enemy shinobi might, though, one day, when she gets them.

"What'd you do?" Hana looks up to find Itachi staring at her captive hand with something akin to interest. They haven't ever really talked before, though she knows him on sight.

"Poked it." She says easily, not shy like some girls.

"Is it letting go?" He tilts his head to one side, the better to study the subject.

"No. Can you help?" Kunoichi may not scream for their mothers, but a little help is better than none.

Itachi simply nods, and walks across the street. Hana watches as he bends over to pick up a short, stout twig and returns with it, determination written all over his young face.

"You have to hit it hard," he explains, smacking the crab with a loud clack. "That's what my Tou-san did when it grabbed Kaa-san's hair and wouldn't let go."

The crab jolts with the force of the blow and immediately, the pressure on her hand eases, and Hana's fingers slip easily out of the claw's clutch. Despite being a little red, her hand is fine. She fists her hand a couple of times; wiggles her fingers to make sure.

She grins at Itachi

"Thanks." She kisses him, too. Right on the cheek.

Itachi stares at her, suddenly looking very uncomfortable.

"Why'd you do that?" he asks.

"Mama does it all the time to thank Papa when he does something nice," says Hana, shrugging. "I guess it's what you do to thank someone."

"Oh."

Tsume and Mikoto finish their conversation and bid one another good-bye. Hana waves at Itachi as he takes his mother's hand and walks away.

She fancies that she sees his hand give a tiny wave of its own back at her.

This is actually based on something I saw at a supermarket when I was little. This little boy was strapped in a stroller next to a barrel full of live crabs at the Asian market. He kept poking them until one of them caught his fingers and he started crying. His mother had to smack it a few times before it let go. I was seven and was terrified of crabs for a long time afterwards. :P

I forgot how much I used to like this crack pairing.