[fic] The Colder Water (Shisui/Itachi, Part V)
Recap: So last we saw these rock stars, Itachi ran away, Fugaku wanted Shisui on his team, but he was like, hell naw, I'm not that kind of girl, and Sasuke was failsauce. Onward and forward!
Title: The Colder Water (5/6)
Fandom: Naruto
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Shisui/Itachi
Summary: The devil is in the details. Shisui. Itachi. A sorta love story. (Novella)
Disclaimer: Naruto is the property of Kishimoto Masashi.
The Colder Water
Part V
*
Shape your mouth
To fit these words of war
I see the arrows falling backwards
Burning for a cause
I’ll swim with you
Until my lungs give out
Oh I can raise you from the deep
Or drown with you in doubt
*
The summons came for him on Monday.
Despite his bold words in the Hokage’s office, Shisui hadn’t actually expected anything to come of his request, so it came as a considerable surprise to him when he heard that Danzou had decided to grant him an audience that very afternoon.
He got over it.
The Root Headquarters was an old abandoned industrial complex at the edge of the village, a vast, echoing building with sprawling walkways and an exterior veined with rusty, clanking pipes. As he followed a masked shinobi through the main entrance, Shisui found himself plunged into near-total darkness. The small oil lamps lining the long corridor barely shed enough illumination to enable navigation. It made Shisui wonder how the whole organization managed not to collectively develop bone diseases, since there was just no way their bodies could generate enough vitamin D for optimum health under these working conditions.
“In here,” the Root shinobi said, opening what appeared to be a random door. Shisui blinked, grateful for the mask that hid his bewilderment. The moment he stepped across the threshold, the door behind him slammed shut. He’d be concerned about walking into a trap if, you know, he was the kind of person that worried about such things.
Inside the doorway, there was another narrow hallway, leading to yet another door. Shisui raised his hand to knock, and stopped himself halfway, feeling like a total moron, bristling with the tension of a creature that was hunted-or hunting something. He grabbed the handle instead, and let himself in.
“You took your time,” Danzou said. He was sitting at a small table, under a spill of insubstantial light, doing something that looked suspiciously like drinking tea, even though the thought of Danzou the Freakazoid consuming earthly substances was still too strange to countenance.
“I apologize, sir,” Shisui replied, mumbling a little at the last syllable. “I wanted to-have the time to prepare myself for the occasion, and all that.”
“It’s impolite to address your superior from behind a mask,” Danzou said. “There is no need for concealment here.”
Seriously? This coming from the man who trained his subordinates to be incapable of emoting?
Nevertheless, Shisui knew he couldn’t afford his usual flippancy here, so he reached up and dutifully removed his mask. He lifted his eyes, met Danzou’s gaze from across the room, long and hard. He was acutely aware that they were both waiting for the other to speak first, and counted it as a minor victory when Danzou laid down his cup and said, “Sandaime told me that you wished to speak to me in person about some important matters.”
The raspy scrape of his voice was so dry it could have sandpapered wood. Shisui drew his shoulders back, and said, “Yes, sir. I wanted to ask you about the whereabouts of my cousin-that is, Uchiha Itachi, the ANBU captain who was recently embedded with one of your squads for a mission.”
“I’m perfectly aware of who Itachi is,” Danzou said. “I will be happy to answer your questions, if you would oblige to answer some of mine first.”
Shisui deliberated, and then figured declining wasn’t an option. “That’s fine with me. Fire away.”
“In your opinion,” Danzou began without delay, “what is the best way to carry out a mission?”
Shisui raised an eyebrow. “What way, sir?” His mouth had never taken a vacation before, now was clearly no time to start. “Whatever way doesn’t get you and everyone else on your team killed, I guess.”
“So you prioritize the safety of your comrades over the objective of the mission?”
“Depending on the situation, I have this weird tendency to think that those are essentially the same thing.”
In the dimness of the room, he could see Danzou squinting at him. “You would think that,” he said. “Your father was Uchiha Tadahiro, am I correct?”
What was with everyone’s sudden obsession with bringing up his dad?
“Yeah,” Shisui said slowly, wondering where the hell this was going. “That was him.”
“I’ve heard a lot about him,” Danzou mused. “He was quite famous during the war. Did you know that back in those days, your father was known as the Three-Day Flag?”
“No, I didn’t,” Shisui said, stunned. It was inconceivable that Danzou, of all people, was telling him something he hadn’t known about his own father. “Why was he called that?”
Danzou didn’t immediately respond. Calmly, he poured himself another cup of tea, and took a sip. “Has anyone ever told you about the Battle of Himeji Fort?”
That, he had heard of. “My father earned a Bronze star in that battle.” Said star had been one of the first things his dad had burned after his mom’s passing.
“Do you know what it was for?” asked Danzou.
Shisui shrugged. “Courage. Outstanding service. Could be any number of things.” If there was one thing he and his dad had ever agreed on, it was that war honors were nothing to make a big deal about.
“Himeji was one of our vital strongholds,” Danzou said, and continued before Shisui had a chance to remind him that he hadn’t come here for a storytelling session. “It stood over the Kikyo Pass, which is one of the major passages into the Fire Country, as you probably know. During the time that your father and his company were stationed there, the fort came under an unexpected siege. Their supply line was cut off, and the nearest allies were over twenty miles away.”
Shisui blinked, and couldn’t help but care a little more.
Danzou cleared his throat quietly. “In order to keep Himeji from falling, they had to hold the fort for at least two weeks before reinforcement would arrive. Outnumbered four to one, and with no supplies-after the first week, you can probably imagine what morale was like among the troops.”
He gave Shisui a probing look. “Some went mad,” Danzou said chillingly. “Some ran away. But the great majority stayed faithful until physical death, and Himeji did not fall. Do you know why?”
“No, sir.”
“The only thing that kept the Konoha shinobi from breaking rank entirely,” said Danzou, “was your father’s action. With two shattered femurs, he could no longer fight, but as commander, he had to keep his men from losing hope. So, in the middle of the siege, he had his subordinates hoist him up and tie his body to the flagpole, where he continued to issue commands and direct the battle. It’s said that whenever our shinobi faltered, they would look to the top of the wall, and regain courage to fight.”
“I’ve never heard about any of this,” Shisui muttered, awed. People had sort of stopped mentioning his dad’s shinobi days after his supposed fall from grace.
Danzou regarded him coldly, with no pretense at sympathy. “For three days, Uchiha Tadahiro remained tied to that pole, in the direct line of fire, with nothing but water passing his lips. On the fourth morning, reinforcement finally came, and Himeji Fort was not lost. That kind of self-sacrifice can’t be taught.”
He paused, and added in a low voice, “Which is probably why it is so rare. Especially among the people of your clan.”
“Excuse me?”
Danzou seemed not to hear him. “You were probably an Academy student at the time. Do you happen to recall the two precepts issued to all non-civilians during the war?”
“We burn the enemies in their beds to make room to advance,” Shisui said, in that quick way he hoped would prevent him from slipping up and saying something overtly revealing.
Danzou gave him a slow nod. “And clear a wide swath of bodies to have room to withdraw,” he finished. “Good soldier.” Utterly matter-of-fact, like Shisui should be flattered by this, should take it as some kind of compliment. It made his skin crawl.
“In some ways, we’re all defined by the war,” Danzou went on, lifting himself out of his seat. He was not a physically imposing man, and Shisui, with his father’s rakish build, stood almost at an equal height.
Your war, Shisui thought furiously. Out loud, he said, “The war is over.” From time to time, his naivety still got the better of him. Not often, but from time to time, a fragment would cut through to the surface.
“The war has never ended,” Danzou said flatly. “Wars never end. Haven’t you noticed that we, as a profession, are in the business of war?”
Shisui wasn’t much of a philosopher, and even if he were, he couldn’t refute that. That truth was the basic tenet, the cornerstone of their existence. When they weren’t fighting their own wars, they were out there risking their necks fighting other people’s wars. In war, you were told to fight for a cause, but it was no cause but his own hands that had brought death to close to a hundred people, no cause but his own eyes that had gazed upon so many faces in their last moments, some settled and ready to die, and some not.
“Men will never give up waging war,” Danzou said. Shisui had been told that Danzou and the Hokage were the same age, but whereas Sarutobi looked wizened, sinewy and age-speckled, Danzo was roughhewn and battle-scarred, something almost leonine in his bearings. “War is a drug. The rush of battle is an addiction, potent and lethal. All you can do is cull the impulse before it even manifests.”
“With all due respect, sir,” Shisui said through gritted teeth. “I think I’ve answered enough questions for today.” Not that any of them had made a lick of sense anyway. “Can we start discussing what I came to see you about?”
“I will answer all of your questions about Itachi,” Danzou said. “But before that, I have one last request. I’ve heard much about that unique jutsu you’ve recently developed. From what I’ve been given to understand, it’s a very impressive technique.”
“It’s nothing special,” Shisui lied. “Functionally speaking, it’s not much different from the Yamanaka clan’s Shinranshin technique. Anyone in the Uchiha clan could do the same if they-”
“Nevertheless,” Danzou cut him off, “I wonder if you would mind giving me a practical demonstration.”
“A what?”
“A practical demonstration. I’d like you to use your jutsu on me.”
Shisui could feel his mouth gaping open, and slammed it shut with haste. “Aren’t you afraid I might get into your head and find out all your secrets?” he asked, eyes narrowed in challenge.
“What makes you think I have anything to hide?” Danzou asked dryly. “In any case, if your technique truly possessed that capability, a demonstration would be even more greatly appreciated. You would be a strong asset to the village-the Interrogation Squad, for one, would highly value your assistance.”
He gave Shisui a hard stare, daring him to contradict. Wily old fox. He knew how to play this game alright-knew it inside out, had probably made up all the rules. With inhuman effort, Shisui forced himself to uncurl his fists. “You say I can do anything?”
Danzou nodded. “Anything.”
So Shisui said, “As you wish,” and kindled the Sharingan before Danzou even found a moment to blink.
*
The first thing Shisui became aware of was that something was very different.
The moment he redirected the flow of chakra within his body and groped for that thread of consciousness, it was as if a doorway was flung open in his mind, and he found himself submerged-suspended in what felt like deep water, cool and dark, like floating through eternity. There was no discomfort at all, and…
No pain.
Nothing. That needling pain at his temples-gone. The strain on his Sharingan-gone.
He could sense-all around him-the traces of thoughts that made up the minds of others, and realized with mild shock that he could map, with pinpoint precision, the positions of every other person on the premises, just by tracking their mental presence. He had been working all this time to increase the range of his control but this-this was unthinkable. A whole other level.
Yes, that must be it. This was evolution, natural progression, the breakthrough he had been hoping to reach. Up till now, his technique had always been something of a balancing act, results vs. handicaps. At the start, it had been little more than a crude form of hypnosis, piggybacking on another’s thoughts and riding along like a sleeper agent, adding a nudge here, a little compulsion there before having to withdraw. Later on, he had reached the point where it had been possible to box up those thoughts, working around the core rooted deep in the victim’s psyche, or, with weaker minds, plowing right in and shattering the insubstantial scrim of their shielding through brute force.
Yes. Victim. Prey.
But now… But this…
This was not bad at all.
In fact…
In fact, it was fucking fantastic. He could really get used to this. This white-hot certainty in his mind. This mercurial flow of power. This slow song of victory.
And people thought he shouldn’t be using this jutsu why?
And there was his next victim now, a paltry, insignificance skein, a ball of chalky light floating before him in the cold dark of the water. It would take no effort at all on his part to reach out and overpower Danzou’s petrified mind, like scooping a goldfish out of the barrel at a summer festival.
His knuckles… itched.
He closed his fingers around the ball of light, and squeezed.
And in the world of reality, Danzou wrapped his own large hands around his veined necks, right over the windpipe, and squeezed. Shisui increased the pressure, and Danzou did too, easily, without any resistance.
His face was purpling, eyes bulged. His brain losing oxygen. Before Shisui’s eyes, the man sank to his knees. Soon, he’d have to stop. If he went any further, exert even a fraction more force…
So what?
He hated this man.
Yes, he hated this man. It was clear to him now that Danzou-Danzou was the source of all that had gone wrong in his life as of late. He hated this man who had taken away his favorite person, and with his fist crushing Danzou’s very consciousness, it all felt so…
Inevitable.
The urge choked him like a large pill. It crawled down his back like an itch, nestled into the center of his spine and lodged itself into the space between two vertebrae like a splinter, dissolved into the marrow. A hot rush, like vomit, surging up his throat. Just a little harder. One little nudge, one extra step. Just one.
Shisui had killed his first man at the age of eight. In retrospect, it had probably been awful-everything from the act itself to the moment his team leader had dragged Shisui back to camp and poured cold water over his head and bloody hands. It had probably been awful, but he hadn’t had the frame of reference at the time to contextualize that awfulness, and by the time he had, repeated exposure had rendered it useless.
Shisui had killed his first man at the age of eight, and it had probably been awful, though it hadn’t seemed that way to him. Later, though, he would learn that not everyone would have reacted the way he had. In fact, a lot of other kids-adults, even-would have broken down, would have given in to the awfulness of the experience. Some of them would never have recovered. It had occurred to him then that-maybe-it wasn’t normal to deal with it the way he had. That, maybe, he wasn’t normal.
He’d gotten over it.
He hadn’t regretted any of his kills, and if he killed Danzou now, he would get over that too. Danzou wouldn’t be his last, and he wouldn’t regret his death either, even though it wasn’t duty. Even though such a death would have come from nothing but his own desire for it.
But…
Stop it.
Don’t be an idiot. You need him to talk.
He blinked-and it was over. His Sharingan flickered out.
He let go.
Immediately, Danzou’s fingers unclamped from his neck, leaving a ring of red, and he slumped forward onto his hands and knees, coughing and retching violently. For a moment, Shisui was shot through with the vague fear that he had already gone too far and would momentarily find himself behind bars-but then, Danzou had said ‘anything’.
“Good,” Danzou choked, wiping his mouth with his sleeve. “That’s… that was very good.”
He pulled himself gingerly to his feet, and said, “You’ve acquitted yourself well today,” like he was merely dispensing platitudes to an obedient underling. You had to envy the alacrity with which he had regained his composure. That narrow gaze was on Shisui again, steady, calculating.
Shisui jerked his head impatiently. “I’ve done everything you asked. Now you have to hold up your end of the bargain and tell me where Itachi is.”
But the moment he brought his eyes to Danzou’s, he knew that he had been outsmarted. “I will give you all the information I have at my disposal,” Danzou said, voice low and dark. “And that is no information at all. The squad he was embedded with lost track of Itachi on the way back to the village. I have no more knowledge of his whereabouts than you do.”
“You-” Shisui snarled. Suddenly, it became clear to him what all the circuitous questions and carrot-and-stick theatrics had been about. “You lied to me. You lied just to get me to show you my technique. You old bastard, I’ll-”
He took a step forward, still half-drunk on the rush of absolute control, and found himself with four glittering blades pressed flush to his throat. Careless, so fucking careless to let those damn Root cockroaches sneak up on him like that. The inside of his skull felt like a city under siege. The space beneath his scalp filled up with hot air; the room spun.
Just go ahead and try something, Shisui thought savagely. I can take you all. Already he was backing himself up, dipping into his chakra reservoir, molding it into a coiling thread, and all he had to do was reactivate the Sharingan and that deep dark water would envelop them…
No.
That shit was treason. Was he insane? Had he gone out of his mind?
“Alright,” he managed to get out. “I’m standing down. Get your goddamn swords away from my neck before I put them through your guts.”
“As I thought,” Danzou said, in that same mealy voice that raked bony fingers through Shisui’s mind. “I think it’s time that you were leaving, Uchiha. I will have my subordinates escort you out.”
“There’s no need for that,” Shisui said sharply.
Danzou’s expression hardened. “I insist.”
The streets outside were empty and red-stained when the four-man squad ushered him out of the complex. The sun was setting fast, the sky to the west a wall of ruby clouds. The moment they had deposited Shisui on the sidewalk, the Root men took no time in melting back into the shadows of their headquarters, and then it was just him and that dreadful, syrupy light, the vacuous hush of the encroaching night.
He looked down at his hands. They were shaking.
Some went mad, some ran away, but the great majority stayed faithful until physical death.
Danzou clearly didn’t know his ass from his elbow, he decided bitterly. Shisui was fighting that war right now, every minute of every hour of the day. Out there beyond the palisade, it was all madmen and defectors, but no matter where Shisui looked, he couldn’t see a single person standing on his side.
He’d never felt so alone.
*
Nearly a week went by, and still no words about Itachi.
Shisui didn’t remember much about that week. It seemed to ebb away in a smear of days. He breathed, ate, and presumably slept. Sometimes he opened his mouth and noise came out, but mostly he just let the huge awing silence wash over him like a soundless wave, drowning him in oxygen.
His leave was up, but ironically, he now had a reason to stay in Konoha. It mattered not at all, because on the occasions he had bothered showing up at the office, Mamiya had leveled him with various expressions of concern barely discernible from homicidal irritation. “Even if you wanted to work, I wouldn’t give you any assignment,” she had said flatly. “As much as I would enjoy the peace and quiet of the office without you around, I don’t actually wish to see you get yourself killed.”
In addition, she had also informed him, in no uncertain terms, that if he tried to break into the Hokage’s office one more time, he would not only be forcibly removed from the premises, but would also be wise to start polishing his résumé.
“Just go home, Shisui,” Mamiya had told him in the end. “Things will work out for the best.”
Except the stupid old bag didn’t actually know that, and in any case, going home was not a viable option. Shisui knew being in the house would just equate to a whole lot of brooding and a million hysterical trips into the kitchen, so instead he scoped out one of the more remote archives rooms and hid there under the blatantly false pretext of trying to catch up on his backlogged paperwork.
This worked for about five minutes before Kagura sussed him out, cornering him in the jungle of filing cabinets to confess her feelings for him.
Shisui’s mind went completely blank. “Wow,” he said, genuinely stunned. “I mean, Kagura-san, that’s just… wow.”
Kagura winced slightly at the honorific, but continued to smile hopefully. With her cheeks dimpled and brown eyes softly downcast, a stray lock of hair brushing the side of her face, she was unbearably pretty.
Even that was seriously underselling it. She was beautiful, all legs that wouldn’t quit, brilliant and sweet, knew how to dispatch an enemy in sixty different ways-and was very obviously suffering from some kind of severe psychotic break, because Shisui had no idea what someone like her would see in him otherwise. And in a moment, it became apparent that Shisui was having a psychotic break himself, because the words that came out of his mouth were, “I’m sorry, Kagura-san. I’m really, really sorry.”
Kagura looked like she’d been slapped in the face. “I understand,” she said, uncharacteristically bashful. “You probably think it’s weird, since I’m older than you.”
“No!” Shisui protested immediately. “That’s not it at all!” There was a kind of bleak irony to it that he hoped she would never pick up on-given his track record with older women who had long dark hair and were way out of his league, Kagura should be exactly his type.
He opened his mouth to give a lengthy explanation, which would probably go something like, “I’m related to relentlessly coldblooded lunatics one of whom I accidentally went to first base with and also the people in my immediate family have a tendency to go all stupid and suicidal when it comes to emotions so in short I am so not good enough and you can do way better.”
But in the end, he just ended up repeating himself: “I’m really sorry, Kagura-san.”
It was either the best or worst possible response to give, because it made Kagura sigh softly, and send him a smile, wobbly but gracious. She might as well have kicked him in the nuts.
“I always kind of knew I didn’t have much of a shot anyway,” she said kindly. “After all, it would be very hard for someone like me to compete.”
“Compete?” Shisui echoed in confusion. “No, I’m not seeing anyone, it’s just-”
Kagura shook her head. “If it was just that, I would actually feel a bit better about my chances.”
“But you just said-”
“If you could see yourself right now, you would understand,” Kagura said. “You may be sitting here talking to me, but your mind might as well be a thousand miles away.”
And when Shisui continued to stare at her without any comprehension, Kagura gave another sigh, a concerned frown splitting her brows neatly. “You should get some rest, Shisui-kun,” she said. “You don’t look good. Have you been sleeping well?”
She sounded like she might want this inquiry to segue into some kind of extensive discussion about feelings, which Shisui decided he could not handle today. Or any day.
“I’m doing just fine,” he lied, and jumped to his feet, giving in to cowardice. “Anyway, doesn’t look like I’ll be getting anything done here today, so I’ll just… get going. I’ll see you later, alright?”
As he ran from Kagura’s imploring gaze, Shisui found himself thinking, strangely, about the year he’d been eleven-the Year of the Dog-when the sky had taken revenge on the land and rained for seven days and seven nights without reprieve. The Nakano had bloated with water, overflowed in a torrential spill, and for days it’d seemed like the entire village had lived on that groaning bank, heaving sandbags against the collapsing dam and trying to keep their minds from being crushed under the thrashing flood. On a scale from one to ten, ten being Tailed Demon Attack, that year’s flood didn’t rank very high in terms of catastrophic disasters, but for this, it seemed more apt as a metaphor.
It was his own fault. It was his fault for being willfully blind and deaf, for not having the foresight to seek higher ground while the water had slowly been seeping in, lapping docilely at his feet. Now the floodgates were broken, and he was in over his head.
*
The worst part, Shisui realized, was that if something were to happen, nobody would tell him.
He had lived for so long within this abnormal bubble-like existence wherein all the shipwrecks and rocky shoals revolved around a single person that somehow he had managed to forget that, to the rest of the world, he was no one. To the rest of the world, Shisui was just Itachi’s former partner and somewhat distant relative, and if something were to happen, nobody would tell him. Not the clan, certainly not Root-at best, he would receive some kind of notice from the Hokage’s office after all the dust had settled, and then Fugaku would probably inform him that he wouldn’t be allowed at the funeral, and Shisui would go into rage blackout and accidentally mind-control the man to death and be tossed in prison to rot for the rest of his mortal days, which would probably be a positive at that point.
Shisui wasn’t some distraught war bride, and so was not found throwing himself prostrate over his father’s grave weepily bemoaning his various woes into the cold, unyielding stone. That didn’t stop him from hovering around the general area of the memorial cenotaph anyway, doing increasingly unforgivable things like tracing his father’s engraved name with his fingers and sitting with his back pressed to the cool black marble staring unseeingly at the sky. His mind turning like a wheel, every scrap of thought dredging up like sea wrack out of the tide, scuttling in and out of rat-holes. He thought about flashfloods. He thought about destiny. Mostly, he thought about whether there would be anything left to hold him to Konoha should the nightmare scenarios of his inner-mind theater come to life.
The clan?
He’d already made it clear the other day that he wanted nothing to do with them anymore.
His friends?
No good. Their faces swam indistinctly before his eyes. They had shared comradeship, many hours of laughter and conversation and camaraderie, but when it came down to it, no one would ever compare.
His duties to the village?
Now there was a real possibility. This was his home, the place where he had been born and raised, and he was an all-Konoha boy through and through, all fire and spunk and mile-wide protective streak at heart. It seemed natural, almost unquestionable that one of his highest priorities would be to serve the village to the best of his ability until the day he died.
But.
But.
A village really wasn’t just a place. It was people, and when it came down to it, there was ‘people’ and then there was ‘your people’. Shisui calculated the difference, and then tried not to think about the fact that over the years, the number of his so-called “Precious People” had dwindled from three to two, then one, and was currently running the very real risk of hitting rock bottom.
Somehow, in all his sixteen years, Shisui had never known love could feel like this. Like you were just constantly and completely broken, and then put back together again, only the one piece that was yours was now beating in the other person’s chest. Someone should have told him this, but the only person who could have had been too busy running away from a broken heart himself.
Although he’d come close to it, his father had not left the village-but then again, he had had Shisui to think about. Sometimes Shisui liked to pretend that he had been nothing more to his dad than an afterthought, a postscript after the curtains had already fallen on his personal tragedy, but that was just him being an entitlement jerk. He had been the one thing keeping his dad tethered to Konoha, and if Shisui had been the one to die instead of the other way around, he knew that his dad would have thrown it all away. He would have thrown it all away, gone rogue and killed whomever they dared to send after him in cold blood, all natural non-violent way of life or not. He would have done all that and more, and he wouldn’t have cared, because there wouldn’t have been anything left to care about.
Shisui knew this with bone-deep certainty, because at this moment, that was exactly how he felt. He’d taken a lot for granted, stupidly believing that time would never run out, but now it had and there was nothing he could do but lay the story straight-and this was what it was about:
It was about nine years, four months, three weeks, and half a day. It was about split knuckles and cut lips, a skewed but consistent sense of justice, and later, about cinder and smoke and shakily-held weapons, a world where the ground cleaved open underfoot and the sky was full of flying death. And yet later still, it was about parallel paths and warring convictions, not-so-shakily-held weapons and mingling blood, sultry autumns on a riverbank and one memorably frigid winter when silence took the rein. It was about a night in July on the way up north, hiding in the warm, mossy hollow of a fallen tree from the rolling thunder and the furious rain that fell from the sky in sheets upon back-breaking sheets, a cramped space that seemed not so cramped because all the edges had been worn down to fit in the course of a shared history.
It was about permeation, about something that needed nothing, because it had sprung to life fully formed, already perfectly synched like one flow of oxygen that fed two separate hearts, and to change even a single component part would be suicide, no question about it.
It was a story. A story written on his skin, scarred into his heart by the prickling of tattoo needles. A story about what happened when people met when they were barely children, and then immediately stopped being children. A story about skies and roads and bridges and rivers, but mostly, it was a story about love-love unspoken, love in exile, love under siege.
Yes, it was a story about love, and no, it wasn’t the greatest story in the history of the world but it was his. It was his goddamn story, and when it came down to it, no one would ever compare.
So really, what else was there?
“You can come out,” Shisui said to the air. “I know you’re there.”
“I’ve never seen you out here this early in the day,” Kakashi remarked, stepping into the clearing with the customary absence of sound. “I had the impression you weren’t a morning person.”
Shisui did not turn to look at him. “I know what favor the Hokage asked you to do.” He scratched absently at the tattoo on his arm, as if Kakashi’s appearance had just reminded him that it was, in fact, still there. “He wanted you to watch me, didn’t he?”
“Not anymore, Shisui-kun,” Kakashi said lightly. “As I said before, you passed.”
“Funny, I don’t remember asking to be put through some kind of test,” Shisui said crossly.
“That was the point.”
He sounded sympathetic-and all things considered, he likely was. Once again, Kakashi would be the one to understand where Shisui was coming from, even if this considerate silence was all that he could afford to offer. It made Shisui wish he lived in a world where the question ‘Are you okay?’ was a perfectly acceptable conversation opener, and not just invitation to vast, horrible personal trauma. It was like a cruel inheritance, curse and blessing rolled into one, and it just kept going on and on in a feedback loop.
“Maybe you were too hasty,” Shisui found himself biting out, halfway to insanity. “Maybe you shouldn’t have passed me so easily. You don’t know what I might decide to do next.”
“That’s true,” Kakashi replied. “But neither do you.”
Shisui glared at the air in front of him. “I’m not going to talk about it,” he groused. “If you’re going to stay, you should know that I’m not going to talk about it, so don’t bother asking.”
“I don’t intend to,” Kakashi said. “You don’t have to talk about anything you don’t want to, Shisui-kun.”
“Fine,” Shisui said, folding his arms over his knees. “I won’t.”
So they stayed there, and didn’t talk about it.
*
By the following day, he had reached a decision.
It was already late in the afternoon when Shisui rose. He dressed wearily, pulling clothes from his closet that seemed relatively neutral, which was hard because apparently Shisui didn’t own anything that wasn’t an Uchiha shirt or some part of his ANBU uniform. It was an empty gesture, he knew, but somehow, it felt important. Lastly, he went into the kitchen. He took down the note from his fridge, and ripped it to shreds, letting the torn pieces flutter to the floor as he walked out the door.
Mamiya glanced up from her desk when Shisui walked through the door, and immediately opened her mouth to speak. He raised his hand in a pacifying gesture.
“Relax. I didn’t come to badger the Hokage. I just want to put in a transfer request.”
She stared at him incredulously. “You’re resigning?”
“No, no, you misunderstand,” Shisui said. “An internal transfer. I’d like to be removed from Field Unit and placed into Intelligence as soon as I’m cleared for deployment again.”
There was a pause. Mamiya narrowed her eyes, and said, “Why?”
“Like you said, it’d probably be good for me to keep a lighter ops tempo from now on,” Shisui said. Casual as casual. “If I work for Intel, I’ll get to be home a lot more often, too.”
“Something tells me it’s not the village you’re interested in sticking around for,” Mamiya observed.
Shisui shrugged. “There’s that too. But same difference-it all works out to both of our advantage, doesn’t it? Win, win. This way, you won’t have to enforce furloughs just to keep me from running amok.”
For a long moment, Mamiya just looked at him. Then she diverted her gaze to the tottering pile of paper on her desk, and said, “I’ll have to speak with Hokage-sama.”
Her voice was cold-impersonal and without a trace of irritation. The way it had never been before.
“You do that,” Shisui said, and left the office.
Five minutes later, he was standing at the top step of the Military Police Headquarters, courtesy of three Shunshin leaps. A record, even for him.
Shisui had lost his mother at the age of four, when the war clinic she’d been stationed in had burned down around her and the clan had failed to send assistance when she’d radioed for help. He had watched his father slowly disintegrate like a crumbling mountain, the tenuous hope of recovery dashed on the day of Yondaime’s death, and had practically raised himself from the age of seven and done a damn good job. Shisui was the one who’d led his classmates on the run the day a platoon of Cloud shinobi had broken through the village’s defenses and decapitated their Chuunin instructor right in the middle of the Academy’s courtyard. He had performed more S-rank missions than he could remember off the top of his head, had broken every bone in his body at one point or another and lived to tell about it, and somehow, this still felt like the hardest thing he’d ever have to do.
There was no help for it. This wasn’t a fight he could win alone. He needed allies. When all the options you were presented with seemed equally terrible, you had to go with the devil you knew.
All Shisui knew was: there were things he needed to know. He would never be left out in the cold again.
No one stopped him as he walked down the bland, yellowing hallway, though he could feel himself being watched. Just before he reached the end of the corridor, a door to his left clicked open and someone stepped out into the hall. It was Yasuo, who blinked at Shisui in surprise.
“Shisui,” Yasuo said, frowning, “what are you doing here?”
“I wanted to see Fugaku-sama,” Shisui said in a rush. “He-the other day.” There was an odd, sort of ashy taste in his mouth. He took a small breath, and said, “I’m ready to accept your offer.”
Yasuo just stared at him, eyes searching and dark. Then he smiled, firm and somewhat relieved. “I’m glad to hear that,” he said simply, and clapped Shisui on the shoulder. The weight almost staggered him.
Nevertheless, he pushed himself forward, taking the last few steps toward the large door that stood at the end of the hallway. Yasuo followed him. He knocked on the door, and then held it open for Shisui, nodding at him with the same warm smile that Shisui couldn’t bring himself to return. He was almost glad to have an excuse to get away, until he stepped inside the spacious office and found himself face to face with the man he had so often wished would do the world a favor and remove himself from the gene pool.
Fugaku regarded him silently over the top of his desk, and it was possible Shisui had lost his mind because he found something oddly familiar about that look-a look that reminded you of the shortening days of winter, chilling air.
“What is it that you want with me?” Fugaku said.
Shisui wondered stupidly if he should get down on his knees, but then remembered that the very fact of his being here was enough of a supplicating gesture in itself. Even dogs had pride, but in this moment, Shisui didn’t feel at all regretful about lopping off all of his in one big, useless chunk. Pride hadn’t gotten him very far, anyway. Pride couldn’t help you swim.
Better get right to it, then. “I have just now lodged a transfer request with the Hokage’s office,” Shisui said haltingly, trying to keep his voice neutral. “If it goes through, I’m going to be working in the ANBU’s Intelligence division from now on. The same division as Itachi.”
“And?” Fugaku asked.
Shisui swallowed hard. “And I have thought a lot about what you said to me the other day. I’ve decided that you were-” He had to take a moment. “-that you were right, and that the clan’s best interest is my best interest as well. So. I’m here to accept the assignment that you spoke of the other day-the other day at the meeting.”
Every stilted word that stumbled out of his mouth made him feel like a traitor of the greatest magnitude, but he had anticipated that and made a point to sandbag those thoughts. This was necessary, he rationalized. Omelets and eggs, you had to be willing to break a few.
Or perhaps that wasn’t it at all. Perhaps this necessary evil was also an act of self-preservation, a reserve lifeline. Itachi, he reasoned to himself, had always seemed to Shisui like a vast ice floe, muted and frozen over, but hiding all the cold sea under its surface. For years, Shisui had been wandering blindly across that icy veneer, heedless of the insidious cracks growing like vines under his feet. As precarious and deceptive as that surface was, it was all that made up his standing ground, and if he should allow it to shatter, he would plunge right through the broken ice into the dark water below, colder and more obliterating than even the corpse-skinned winter sky.
And if Shisui kept feeding himself horseshit like that, perhaps the words would get beat into his head, so that even if he didn’t start believing them, he’d be too concussed at that point to notice.
“You were quite adamant in your refusal the last time we spoke,” Fugaku said, breaking the silence. He seemed to be sizing Shisui up, weighing his words. “What made you change your mind?”
Shisui deliberated for a moment, and then said, “Family is an obligation, not a choice. And anyway, it-it might not even matter anymore.”
“We don’t know that for certain,” Fugaku said tightly. “You should have hope.”
That made Shisui startle, and look up into Fugaku’s steady gaze. He had never liked Fugaku, but even he had to admit that the man had an imposing, almost compelling air about him. It wasn’t really that weird. He was, after all, Itachi’s father. A father, Shisui thought, staggered with dissonance. This man standing before him was a father. He had a son-two, even-and for a moment Shisui wondered if Fugaku had ever been the kind of father who put family before duty and honor, who bought his children presents above their age, always in a hurry for them to grow up as all fathers tended to be.
If so, he had gotten exactly what he’d wished for: a son who had never known how to walk like a boy, loose-limbed and free, but had from the first adopted the gait of a soldier, treading hard upon the heel, weighed down under the yoke of duty. Shisui almost wanted to ask Fugaku if he thought it was worth it.
“I know we’ve had our differences, Shisui,” Fugaku said. “But if you are willing to lend your cooperation, I’m certain that we will be able to put the past behind us, and work together for the good of the clan.”
He paused, and gave a short little sigh, almost weary. “And for Itachi, of course.”
“Of course,” Shisui echoed. “Now will you tell me about Itachi’s mission?”
“Until you’ve proven yourself trustworthy,” Fugaku said in a measured tone, “information will only be given to you on a need to know basis.”
“Well, I think this counts as needing to know,” Shisui snapped, shoulder jagging with frustration. “How am I supposed to proceed with my assignment if I don’t know anything about it? And personally, sir? I would think that the very fact that I came to you today should be proof enough of my ‘trustworthiness’.”
Fugaku’s response was to shift slightly sideway in his chair. The expression of faint scorn receded from his face, replaced by a distant kind of concentration, stark in profile. Momentarily, he snapped his gaze back to Shisui, and said, “You are right.” There was no trace in his voice of the empty politeness from a moment ago; it was now cold, flat.
“Take a seat. What I’m about to tell you must not be allowed to leave this room.”
*
“Fuck,” Shisui muttered, raking one hand through his hair. “Fuck.”
Fugaku said nothing, just sat in silence with his hands folded over his desk, which Shisui felt was rather considerate of him given that Shisui was freaking the fuck out. His face, skin, eyes, every bit of his body felt hot, burning up. And only a week ago he’d worried about committing treason by killing Danzou. This revelation made those delicate concerns look monumentally stupid.
“There’s got to be some kind of mistake,” Shisui said. He could feel the tremor in his throat shaking every syllable loose. “The clan-we have too much influence , we’ve always been here.” Strange, how those we’s slipped so easily from his mouth. “They can’t just shut us out like that.”
“They can, and they have,” Fugaku said. Not derisive, just matter-of-fact. “The recent dismissal of our clansmen from their official posts is just one example. This has begun long before that.”
“What about the MP?” Shisui asked. “The Uchiha still have control over the police force, right?”
Fugaku made a dismissive noise. “That’s a polite fiction the village’s leaders keep up in an attempt to placate us and keep things on an even keel. In reality, our jurisdiction grows more limited by the day.” His eyes hardened. “If you had ever bothered to take an interest in the clan before now, you would have known that.”
“Well, I’m here now,” Shisui snapped. Family grudge aside, you’d think someone would have thought to inform him of their clan’s imminent demise. “Tell me-” Everything. “-tell me what I need to know.”
“While you were away on the field,” Fugaku said, “our agent within the Hokage’s office was able to alert us to the existence of-how should I put this-certain plans that the Council have in store for the Uchiha clan. If we don’t make our moves now, it’ll be too late once they are implemented.”
Shisui narrowed his eyes. “And by agent, you mean…”
“Yes,” Fugaku said. “Our inside man in the Hokage’s office-in the ANBU-is Itachi. Or at least he was, until very recently.” He tilted his head in Shisui’s direction. “But you’re already aware of that.”
“Have you tried,” Shisui began, feeling terribly stupid, young and gauche and helpless, “negotiation-I don’t know, just talking it out?”
Out of what was probably pity, Fugaku chose not to point out the glaring flaw in his argument. “Even if Sarutobi Hiruzen could be reasoned with, we have no hope of negotiating with the Council-much less certain other parties.” He paused, and gave Shisui a meaningful look. “I’m speaking, of course, of Danzou Shimura, leader of the organization known as Root. As far as we know, they’re the ones responsible for Itachi’s disappearance.”
Shisui looked at the ground at his feet, and felt incredibly heavy. Fugaku’s words were weighing him down, his body a rock in this chair, mountainous. Slowly, he brought his eyes up to lock gaze with the man sitting opposite him.
“I know that you admire the Hokage,” Fugaku said. “I would go even as far as to say that you are close to him. But when it comes down to it, do you think that he would stand against the Council for our sake?”
And Shisui thought of that morning, seemingly a geologic era ago, when Sandaime had sent Itachi off with the squad from Root, out into the world beyond his control.
“You take pride in your ability as a shinobi. How would feel when the children of our clan are stripped of that right and barred from attending the Academy? Will you wait until then to act?”
Invasive questions, those-and no wonder. This wasn’t just about deserting the village, about running away when there was nothing left to stay for. No, this was bigger than that, bigger than him, bigger than anything he’d ever experienced. How did you make a decision like this? How did you stack the weight of a village up against that of one person?
Hadn’t he already done that?
And there, there it was, the nick in the edge of that axe. In war, you were told to fight for a cause, and Shisui knew that his had been chosen for him long before he could have been aware of it. His banner held the face of a person, his war cry the shape of a name. Itachi’s presence under his skin was a vaccine against the plague of reason. Shisui heard his voice even in his absence, urging him to rise to the occasion, and felt himself rinsed of doubt, his vision scrubbed by sudden clarity.
“What must I do?”
“Initially, I only intended to have you keep an eye on Itachi,” Fugaku said, “but now that you’ve been made aware of where we stand, there is a much more important mission that you might be able to undertake, should you be willing to accept it.”
“And what mission is that?” asked Shisui.
Fugaku laced his fingers under his chin. “In the event that-” He halted, seemingly finding it difficult to complete his sentence. “In the event that Itachi does not return, I want you to take up the task he had been assigned-to replace him as our eye and ear within the Hokage’s office. You will be in a perfect position to do so, once you’ve settled into your Intelligence duties. Do you have any objections?”
Shisui opened his mouth to speak, but Fugaku held up one hand to stall him. “Think about it carefully first. It’s a highly difficult task-and dangerous, considering the instability of the current situation. You shouldn’t make any rash decision.”
The quelling hand formed a fist on top of the desk. “At the same time, do consider this: we have not entirely given up hope on reaching… a peaceable solution. Persuasion may have to come in the form of manipulation.” Words encrusted with portent. “That is a unique capability that no one but you possesses.”
Shisui nodded, to show that he understood.
“Because of your father’s decisions,” Fugaku went on, voice going a bit gravelly, “I have admittedly never been quite certain as to where you would choose to stand. But if you accept this mission, your loyalty will be unquestioned. It will be the ultimate proof of your devotion to the clan.”
When has that ever mattered to me, Shisui thought, but said, “I’ll do it-I accept the mission,” anyway, because this was what Itachi had wanted and that was why it mattered.
Silence descended, heavy, seal on paper. A struck deal.
“As a token of trust,” Fugaku said. “I will disclose to you some highly classified information regarding the circumstances of your father’s death.”
Shisui jerked in his seat. He’d entirely forgotten about that. His heart rate jacked to hammering-speed. He remembered to blink when his eyes started to burn.
“I’ve heard that you were recently called to a private meeting with Danzou.”
It was like there were no secrets in this damn town. Some hidden village.
“While you were there, did he make of you any special request?”
“Just one,” Shisui said cautiously. “He asked me to demonstrate my mind-control technique.”
Fugaku nodded, as though Shisui’s answer had only confirmed what he’d already known. “There’s no point in beating around the bush,” he said. “The investigation we conducted led us to believe that Root was behind your father’s death. However, we suspect that Tadahiro was not their true target. It is our belief that Danzou is going after you.”
Shisui clenched his fists over the top of his knees, digging the nails into his palms. “And in your investigation, did you happen to uncover why they might be after me?”
“Your ability is not just an asset to the clan,” Fugaku said quietly. “You shouldn’t be surprised that there are those who covet it for much less honorable purposes.”
Shisui wasn’t aware that mind-controlling your way through a coup d’état constituted an honorable purpose, but he kept his mouth shut and let Fugaku’s solemn voice roll over him.
“If it is indeed your Sharingan that Danzou seeks to obtain, it stands to reason that he would have wanted to conduct preliminary testing using materials collected from your closest living relative.”
Those words, they hit him like a blow to the throat. “You mean he conducted trial runs using my father’s stolen Sharingan?” His voice shook, seized by a savage combination of anger and disgust that Fugaku somehow interpreted as fear, because he said, “You need not worry. The clan is prepared to take every action necessary to protect its own. You’re one of us.”
The unspoken ‘Don’t ever forget that.’ lingered in the air between them.
“Very well, then,” Fugaku went on, businesslike and brusque. “Everything from here should be straightforward enough. From now, you are an undeclared member of the Military Police. I will arrange for you to work under our Head of Internal Affairs. In the future, you will report directly to him.”
“Yes, sir,” Shisui said. He had to take a moment to steady his breathing, before saying, “If there’s nothing else, I’ll be on my way.”
His mind swelled and wallowed with the ebb and flow of this new information, struck broadside by rough waters. A strain of reasoning cracking along slowly in hairline fractures. Danzou might have had a hand in his father’s murder. Danzou could be after him. Itachi had gotten tangled up with Root somehow. What was the connection here that he was not seeing?
“Shisui,” Fugaku said abruptly. “Before you leave, may I ask just one thing?”
Shisui stopped in his track. It didn’t occur to him to say yes or no-to say anything at all.
“What is it that you like about my son?”
Shisui blinked. He shifted his gaze to the floor, bit his lip. What, indeed.
“It’s hard to say,” he said finally, looking up. “We met when I’d just sort of lost all my family. In one way or another, I guess being friends with him made me feel like I’d gained something back.”
For the first time, a look of surprise flitted across Fugaku’s features, a frail instant in which the hardness of his jaw line faltered and he became almost see-through. Shisui toyed with the idea of calling him on it, and refrained, out of deference to Fugaku’s earlier consideration of his own weakness.
“That is all,” Fugaku said, after a moment. “You may go. I wish you the best of luck with the task you’ve been entrusted with.”
Shisui smiled back thinly. “I doubt it’s luck I’ll be needing, sir. But thanks for the thought.”
Fugaku nodded back at him. They had, somehow, come to a kind of understanding.
The door closed with a solemn finality behind him.
It had begun.
*
End of Part V
____________________________________________
Since writing the last chapter, I came to the realization that I’ve up till now been unduly mean to Fugaku. Coup instigator and surly clan head he may be, but in the manga he was shown to actually care about Itachi. Uh, he tried to shield him from the Police, at any rate? I always knew there was a reason I was so nice to him in Deep River.
I apologize for the delay in... everything. Everything I promised to get done will get done tonight.
Title: The Colder Water (5/6)
Fandom: Naruto
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Shisui/Itachi
Summary: The devil is in the details. Shisui. Itachi. A sorta love story. (Novella)
Disclaimer: Naruto is the property of Kishimoto Masashi.
The Colder Water
Part V
*
Shape your mouth
To fit these words of war
I see the arrows falling backwards
Burning for a cause
I’ll swim with you
Until my lungs give out
Oh I can raise you from the deep
Or drown with you in doubt
*
The summons came for him on Monday.
Despite his bold words in the Hokage’s office, Shisui hadn’t actually expected anything to come of his request, so it came as a considerable surprise to him when he heard that Danzou had decided to grant him an audience that very afternoon.
He got over it.
The Root Headquarters was an old abandoned industrial complex at the edge of the village, a vast, echoing building with sprawling walkways and an exterior veined with rusty, clanking pipes. As he followed a masked shinobi through the main entrance, Shisui found himself plunged into near-total darkness. The small oil lamps lining the long corridor barely shed enough illumination to enable navigation. It made Shisui wonder how the whole organization managed not to collectively develop bone diseases, since there was just no way their bodies could generate enough vitamin D for optimum health under these working conditions.
“In here,” the Root shinobi said, opening what appeared to be a random door. Shisui blinked, grateful for the mask that hid his bewilderment. The moment he stepped across the threshold, the door behind him slammed shut. He’d be concerned about walking into a trap if, you know, he was the kind of person that worried about such things.
Inside the doorway, there was another narrow hallway, leading to yet another door. Shisui raised his hand to knock, and stopped himself halfway, feeling like a total moron, bristling with the tension of a creature that was hunted-or hunting something. He grabbed the handle instead, and let himself in.
“You took your time,” Danzou said. He was sitting at a small table, under a spill of insubstantial light, doing something that looked suspiciously like drinking tea, even though the thought of Danzou the Freakazoid consuming earthly substances was still too strange to countenance.
“I apologize, sir,” Shisui replied, mumbling a little at the last syllable. “I wanted to-have the time to prepare myself for the occasion, and all that.”
“It’s impolite to address your superior from behind a mask,” Danzou said. “There is no need for concealment here.”
Seriously? This coming from the man who trained his subordinates to be incapable of emoting?
Nevertheless, Shisui knew he couldn’t afford his usual flippancy here, so he reached up and dutifully removed his mask. He lifted his eyes, met Danzou’s gaze from across the room, long and hard. He was acutely aware that they were both waiting for the other to speak first, and counted it as a minor victory when Danzou laid down his cup and said, “Sandaime told me that you wished to speak to me in person about some important matters.”
The raspy scrape of his voice was so dry it could have sandpapered wood. Shisui drew his shoulders back, and said, “Yes, sir. I wanted to ask you about the whereabouts of my cousin-that is, Uchiha Itachi, the ANBU captain who was recently embedded with one of your squads for a mission.”
“I’m perfectly aware of who Itachi is,” Danzou said. “I will be happy to answer your questions, if you would oblige to answer some of mine first.”
Shisui deliberated, and then figured declining wasn’t an option. “That’s fine with me. Fire away.”
“In your opinion,” Danzou began without delay, “what is the best way to carry out a mission?”
Shisui raised an eyebrow. “What way, sir?” His mouth had never taken a vacation before, now was clearly no time to start. “Whatever way doesn’t get you and everyone else on your team killed, I guess.”
“So you prioritize the safety of your comrades over the objective of the mission?”
“Depending on the situation, I have this weird tendency to think that those are essentially the same thing.”
In the dimness of the room, he could see Danzou squinting at him. “You would think that,” he said. “Your father was Uchiha Tadahiro, am I correct?”
What was with everyone’s sudden obsession with bringing up his dad?
“Yeah,” Shisui said slowly, wondering where the hell this was going. “That was him.”
“I’ve heard a lot about him,” Danzou mused. “He was quite famous during the war. Did you know that back in those days, your father was known as the Three-Day Flag?”
“No, I didn’t,” Shisui said, stunned. It was inconceivable that Danzou, of all people, was telling him something he hadn’t known about his own father. “Why was he called that?”
Danzou didn’t immediately respond. Calmly, he poured himself another cup of tea, and took a sip. “Has anyone ever told you about the Battle of Himeji Fort?”
That, he had heard of. “My father earned a Bronze star in that battle.” Said star had been one of the first things his dad had burned after his mom’s passing.
“Do you know what it was for?” asked Danzou.
Shisui shrugged. “Courage. Outstanding service. Could be any number of things.” If there was one thing he and his dad had ever agreed on, it was that war honors were nothing to make a big deal about.
“Himeji was one of our vital strongholds,” Danzou said, and continued before Shisui had a chance to remind him that he hadn’t come here for a storytelling session. “It stood over the Kikyo Pass, which is one of the major passages into the Fire Country, as you probably know. During the time that your father and his company were stationed there, the fort came under an unexpected siege. Their supply line was cut off, and the nearest allies were over twenty miles away.”
Shisui blinked, and couldn’t help but care a little more.
Danzou cleared his throat quietly. “In order to keep Himeji from falling, they had to hold the fort for at least two weeks before reinforcement would arrive. Outnumbered four to one, and with no supplies-after the first week, you can probably imagine what morale was like among the troops.”
He gave Shisui a probing look. “Some went mad,” Danzou said chillingly. “Some ran away. But the great majority stayed faithful until physical death, and Himeji did not fall. Do you know why?”
“No, sir.”
“The only thing that kept the Konoha shinobi from breaking rank entirely,” said Danzou, “was your father’s action. With two shattered femurs, he could no longer fight, but as commander, he had to keep his men from losing hope. So, in the middle of the siege, he had his subordinates hoist him up and tie his body to the flagpole, where he continued to issue commands and direct the battle. It’s said that whenever our shinobi faltered, they would look to the top of the wall, and regain courage to fight.”
“I’ve never heard about any of this,” Shisui muttered, awed. People had sort of stopped mentioning his dad’s shinobi days after his supposed fall from grace.
Danzou regarded him coldly, with no pretense at sympathy. “For three days, Uchiha Tadahiro remained tied to that pole, in the direct line of fire, with nothing but water passing his lips. On the fourth morning, reinforcement finally came, and Himeji Fort was not lost. That kind of self-sacrifice can’t be taught.”
He paused, and added in a low voice, “Which is probably why it is so rare. Especially among the people of your clan.”
“Excuse me?”
Danzou seemed not to hear him. “You were probably an Academy student at the time. Do you happen to recall the two precepts issued to all non-civilians during the war?”
“We burn the enemies in their beds to make room to advance,” Shisui said, in that quick way he hoped would prevent him from slipping up and saying something overtly revealing.
Danzou gave him a slow nod. “And clear a wide swath of bodies to have room to withdraw,” he finished. “Good soldier.” Utterly matter-of-fact, like Shisui should be flattered by this, should take it as some kind of compliment. It made his skin crawl.
“In some ways, we’re all defined by the war,” Danzou went on, lifting himself out of his seat. He was not a physically imposing man, and Shisui, with his father’s rakish build, stood almost at an equal height.
Your war, Shisui thought furiously. Out loud, he said, “The war is over.” From time to time, his naivety still got the better of him. Not often, but from time to time, a fragment would cut through to the surface.
“The war has never ended,” Danzou said flatly. “Wars never end. Haven’t you noticed that we, as a profession, are in the business of war?”
Shisui wasn’t much of a philosopher, and even if he were, he couldn’t refute that. That truth was the basic tenet, the cornerstone of their existence. When they weren’t fighting their own wars, they were out there risking their necks fighting other people’s wars. In war, you were told to fight for a cause, but it was no cause but his own hands that had brought death to close to a hundred people, no cause but his own eyes that had gazed upon so many faces in their last moments, some settled and ready to die, and some not.
“Men will never give up waging war,” Danzou said. Shisui had been told that Danzou and the Hokage were the same age, but whereas Sarutobi looked wizened, sinewy and age-speckled, Danzo was roughhewn and battle-scarred, something almost leonine in his bearings. “War is a drug. The rush of battle is an addiction, potent and lethal. All you can do is cull the impulse before it even manifests.”
“With all due respect, sir,” Shisui said through gritted teeth. “I think I’ve answered enough questions for today.” Not that any of them had made a lick of sense anyway. “Can we start discussing what I came to see you about?”
“I will answer all of your questions about Itachi,” Danzou said. “But before that, I have one last request. I’ve heard much about that unique jutsu you’ve recently developed. From what I’ve been given to understand, it’s a very impressive technique.”
“It’s nothing special,” Shisui lied. “Functionally speaking, it’s not much different from the Yamanaka clan’s Shinranshin technique. Anyone in the Uchiha clan could do the same if they-”
“Nevertheless,” Danzou cut him off, “I wonder if you would mind giving me a practical demonstration.”
“A what?”
“A practical demonstration. I’d like you to use your jutsu on me.”
Shisui could feel his mouth gaping open, and slammed it shut with haste. “Aren’t you afraid I might get into your head and find out all your secrets?” he asked, eyes narrowed in challenge.
“What makes you think I have anything to hide?” Danzou asked dryly. “In any case, if your technique truly possessed that capability, a demonstration would be even more greatly appreciated. You would be a strong asset to the village-the Interrogation Squad, for one, would highly value your assistance.”
He gave Shisui a hard stare, daring him to contradict. Wily old fox. He knew how to play this game alright-knew it inside out, had probably made up all the rules. With inhuman effort, Shisui forced himself to uncurl his fists. “You say I can do anything?”
Danzou nodded. “Anything.”
So Shisui said, “As you wish,” and kindled the Sharingan before Danzou even found a moment to blink.
*
The first thing Shisui became aware of was that something was very different.
The moment he redirected the flow of chakra within his body and groped for that thread of consciousness, it was as if a doorway was flung open in his mind, and he found himself submerged-suspended in what felt like deep water, cool and dark, like floating through eternity. There was no discomfort at all, and…
No pain.
Nothing. That needling pain at his temples-gone. The strain on his Sharingan-gone.
He could sense-all around him-the traces of thoughts that made up the minds of others, and realized with mild shock that he could map, with pinpoint precision, the positions of every other person on the premises, just by tracking their mental presence. He had been working all this time to increase the range of his control but this-this was unthinkable. A whole other level.
Yes, that must be it. This was evolution, natural progression, the breakthrough he had been hoping to reach. Up till now, his technique had always been something of a balancing act, results vs. handicaps. At the start, it had been little more than a crude form of hypnosis, piggybacking on another’s thoughts and riding along like a sleeper agent, adding a nudge here, a little compulsion there before having to withdraw. Later on, he had reached the point where it had been possible to box up those thoughts, working around the core rooted deep in the victim’s psyche, or, with weaker minds, plowing right in and shattering the insubstantial scrim of their shielding through brute force.
Yes. Victim. Prey.
But now… But this…
This was not bad at all.
In fact…
In fact, it was fucking fantastic. He could really get used to this. This white-hot certainty in his mind. This mercurial flow of power. This slow song of victory.
And people thought he shouldn’t be using this jutsu why?
And there was his next victim now, a paltry, insignificance skein, a ball of chalky light floating before him in the cold dark of the water. It would take no effort at all on his part to reach out and overpower Danzou’s petrified mind, like scooping a goldfish out of the barrel at a summer festival.
His knuckles… itched.
He closed his fingers around the ball of light, and squeezed.
And in the world of reality, Danzou wrapped his own large hands around his veined necks, right over the windpipe, and squeezed. Shisui increased the pressure, and Danzou did too, easily, without any resistance.
His face was purpling, eyes bulged. His brain losing oxygen. Before Shisui’s eyes, the man sank to his knees. Soon, he’d have to stop. If he went any further, exert even a fraction more force…
So what?
He hated this man.
Yes, he hated this man. It was clear to him now that Danzou-Danzou was the source of all that had gone wrong in his life as of late. He hated this man who had taken away his favorite person, and with his fist crushing Danzou’s very consciousness, it all felt so…
Inevitable.
The urge choked him like a large pill. It crawled down his back like an itch, nestled into the center of his spine and lodged itself into the space between two vertebrae like a splinter, dissolved into the marrow. A hot rush, like vomit, surging up his throat. Just a little harder. One little nudge, one extra step. Just one.
Shisui had killed his first man at the age of eight. In retrospect, it had probably been awful-everything from the act itself to the moment his team leader had dragged Shisui back to camp and poured cold water over his head and bloody hands. It had probably been awful, but he hadn’t had the frame of reference at the time to contextualize that awfulness, and by the time he had, repeated exposure had rendered it useless.
Shisui had killed his first man at the age of eight, and it had probably been awful, though it hadn’t seemed that way to him. Later, though, he would learn that not everyone would have reacted the way he had. In fact, a lot of other kids-adults, even-would have broken down, would have given in to the awfulness of the experience. Some of them would never have recovered. It had occurred to him then that-maybe-it wasn’t normal to deal with it the way he had. That, maybe, he wasn’t normal.
He’d gotten over it.
He hadn’t regretted any of his kills, and if he killed Danzou now, he would get over that too. Danzou wouldn’t be his last, and he wouldn’t regret his death either, even though it wasn’t duty. Even though such a death would have come from nothing but his own desire for it.
But…
Stop it.
Don’t be an idiot. You need him to talk.
He blinked-and it was over. His Sharingan flickered out.
He let go.
Immediately, Danzou’s fingers unclamped from his neck, leaving a ring of red, and he slumped forward onto his hands and knees, coughing and retching violently. For a moment, Shisui was shot through with the vague fear that he had already gone too far and would momentarily find himself behind bars-but then, Danzou had said ‘anything’.
“Good,” Danzou choked, wiping his mouth with his sleeve. “That’s… that was very good.”
He pulled himself gingerly to his feet, and said, “You’ve acquitted yourself well today,” like he was merely dispensing platitudes to an obedient underling. You had to envy the alacrity with which he had regained his composure. That narrow gaze was on Shisui again, steady, calculating.
Shisui jerked his head impatiently. “I’ve done everything you asked. Now you have to hold up your end of the bargain and tell me where Itachi is.”
But the moment he brought his eyes to Danzou’s, he knew that he had been outsmarted. “I will give you all the information I have at my disposal,” Danzou said, voice low and dark. “And that is no information at all. The squad he was embedded with lost track of Itachi on the way back to the village. I have no more knowledge of his whereabouts than you do.”
“You-” Shisui snarled. Suddenly, it became clear to him what all the circuitous questions and carrot-and-stick theatrics had been about. “You lied to me. You lied just to get me to show you my technique. You old bastard, I’ll-”
He took a step forward, still half-drunk on the rush of absolute control, and found himself with four glittering blades pressed flush to his throat. Careless, so fucking careless to let those damn Root cockroaches sneak up on him like that. The inside of his skull felt like a city under siege. The space beneath his scalp filled up with hot air; the room spun.
Just go ahead and try something, Shisui thought savagely. I can take you all. Already he was backing himself up, dipping into his chakra reservoir, molding it into a coiling thread, and all he had to do was reactivate the Sharingan and that deep dark water would envelop them…
No.
That shit was treason. Was he insane? Had he gone out of his mind?
“Alright,” he managed to get out. “I’m standing down. Get your goddamn swords away from my neck before I put them through your guts.”
“As I thought,” Danzou said, in that same mealy voice that raked bony fingers through Shisui’s mind. “I think it’s time that you were leaving, Uchiha. I will have my subordinates escort you out.”
“There’s no need for that,” Shisui said sharply.
Danzou’s expression hardened. “I insist.”
The streets outside were empty and red-stained when the four-man squad ushered him out of the complex. The sun was setting fast, the sky to the west a wall of ruby clouds. The moment they had deposited Shisui on the sidewalk, the Root men took no time in melting back into the shadows of their headquarters, and then it was just him and that dreadful, syrupy light, the vacuous hush of the encroaching night.
He looked down at his hands. They were shaking.
Some went mad, some ran away, but the great majority stayed faithful until physical death.
Danzou clearly didn’t know his ass from his elbow, he decided bitterly. Shisui was fighting that war right now, every minute of every hour of the day. Out there beyond the palisade, it was all madmen and defectors, but no matter where Shisui looked, he couldn’t see a single person standing on his side.
He’d never felt so alone.
*
Nearly a week went by, and still no words about Itachi.
Shisui didn’t remember much about that week. It seemed to ebb away in a smear of days. He breathed, ate, and presumably slept. Sometimes he opened his mouth and noise came out, but mostly he just let the huge awing silence wash over him like a soundless wave, drowning him in oxygen.
His leave was up, but ironically, he now had a reason to stay in Konoha. It mattered not at all, because on the occasions he had bothered showing up at the office, Mamiya had leveled him with various expressions of concern barely discernible from homicidal irritation. “Even if you wanted to work, I wouldn’t give you any assignment,” she had said flatly. “As much as I would enjoy the peace and quiet of the office without you around, I don’t actually wish to see you get yourself killed.”
In addition, she had also informed him, in no uncertain terms, that if he tried to break into the Hokage’s office one more time, he would not only be forcibly removed from the premises, but would also be wise to start polishing his résumé.
“Just go home, Shisui,” Mamiya had told him in the end. “Things will work out for the best.”
Except the stupid old bag didn’t actually know that, and in any case, going home was not a viable option. Shisui knew being in the house would just equate to a whole lot of brooding and a million hysterical trips into the kitchen, so instead he scoped out one of the more remote archives rooms and hid there under the blatantly false pretext of trying to catch up on his backlogged paperwork.
This worked for about five minutes before Kagura sussed him out, cornering him in the jungle of filing cabinets to confess her feelings for him.
Shisui’s mind went completely blank. “Wow,” he said, genuinely stunned. “I mean, Kagura-san, that’s just… wow.”
Kagura winced slightly at the honorific, but continued to smile hopefully. With her cheeks dimpled and brown eyes softly downcast, a stray lock of hair brushing the side of her face, she was unbearably pretty.
Even that was seriously underselling it. She was beautiful, all legs that wouldn’t quit, brilliant and sweet, knew how to dispatch an enemy in sixty different ways-and was very obviously suffering from some kind of severe psychotic break, because Shisui had no idea what someone like her would see in him otherwise. And in a moment, it became apparent that Shisui was having a psychotic break himself, because the words that came out of his mouth were, “I’m sorry, Kagura-san. I’m really, really sorry.”
Kagura looked like she’d been slapped in the face. “I understand,” she said, uncharacteristically bashful. “You probably think it’s weird, since I’m older than you.”
“No!” Shisui protested immediately. “That’s not it at all!” There was a kind of bleak irony to it that he hoped she would never pick up on-given his track record with older women who had long dark hair and were way out of his league, Kagura should be exactly his type.
He opened his mouth to give a lengthy explanation, which would probably go something like, “I’m related to relentlessly coldblooded lunatics one of whom I accidentally went to first base with and also the people in my immediate family have a tendency to go all stupid and suicidal when it comes to emotions so in short I am so not good enough and you can do way better.”
But in the end, he just ended up repeating himself: “I’m really sorry, Kagura-san.”
It was either the best or worst possible response to give, because it made Kagura sigh softly, and send him a smile, wobbly but gracious. She might as well have kicked him in the nuts.
“I always kind of knew I didn’t have much of a shot anyway,” she said kindly. “After all, it would be very hard for someone like me to compete.”
“Compete?” Shisui echoed in confusion. “No, I’m not seeing anyone, it’s just-”
Kagura shook her head. “If it was just that, I would actually feel a bit better about my chances.”
“But you just said-”
“If you could see yourself right now, you would understand,” Kagura said. “You may be sitting here talking to me, but your mind might as well be a thousand miles away.”
And when Shisui continued to stare at her without any comprehension, Kagura gave another sigh, a concerned frown splitting her brows neatly. “You should get some rest, Shisui-kun,” she said. “You don’t look good. Have you been sleeping well?”
She sounded like she might want this inquiry to segue into some kind of extensive discussion about feelings, which Shisui decided he could not handle today. Or any day.
“I’m doing just fine,” he lied, and jumped to his feet, giving in to cowardice. “Anyway, doesn’t look like I’ll be getting anything done here today, so I’ll just… get going. I’ll see you later, alright?”
As he ran from Kagura’s imploring gaze, Shisui found himself thinking, strangely, about the year he’d been eleven-the Year of the Dog-when the sky had taken revenge on the land and rained for seven days and seven nights without reprieve. The Nakano had bloated with water, overflowed in a torrential spill, and for days it’d seemed like the entire village had lived on that groaning bank, heaving sandbags against the collapsing dam and trying to keep their minds from being crushed under the thrashing flood. On a scale from one to ten, ten being Tailed Demon Attack, that year’s flood didn’t rank very high in terms of catastrophic disasters, but for this, it seemed more apt as a metaphor.
It was his own fault. It was his fault for being willfully blind and deaf, for not having the foresight to seek higher ground while the water had slowly been seeping in, lapping docilely at his feet. Now the floodgates were broken, and he was in over his head.
*
The worst part, Shisui realized, was that if something were to happen, nobody would tell him.
He had lived for so long within this abnormal bubble-like existence wherein all the shipwrecks and rocky shoals revolved around a single person that somehow he had managed to forget that, to the rest of the world, he was no one. To the rest of the world, Shisui was just Itachi’s former partner and somewhat distant relative, and if something were to happen, nobody would tell him. Not the clan, certainly not Root-at best, he would receive some kind of notice from the Hokage’s office after all the dust had settled, and then Fugaku would probably inform him that he wouldn’t be allowed at the funeral, and Shisui would go into rage blackout and accidentally mind-control the man to death and be tossed in prison to rot for the rest of his mortal days, which would probably be a positive at that point.
Shisui wasn’t some distraught war bride, and so was not found throwing himself prostrate over his father’s grave weepily bemoaning his various woes into the cold, unyielding stone. That didn’t stop him from hovering around the general area of the memorial cenotaph anyway, doing increasingly unforgivable things like tracing his father’s engraved name with his fingers and sitting with his back pressed to the cool black marble staring unseeingly at the sky. His mind turning like a wheel, every scrap of thought dredging up like sea wrack out of the tide, scuttling in and out of rat-holes. He thought about flashfloods. He thought about destiny. Mostly, he thought about whether there would be anything left to hold him to Konoha should the nightmare scenarios of his inner-mind theater come to life.
The clan?
He’d already made it clear the other day that he wanted nothing to do with them anymore.
His friends?
No good. Their faces swam indistinctly before his eyes. They had shared comradeship, many hours of laughter and conversation and camaraderie, but when it came down to it, no one would ever compare.
His duties to the village?
Now there was a real possibility. This was his home, the place where he had been born and raised, and he was an all-Konoha boy through and through, all fire and spunk and mile-wide protective streak at heart. It seemed natural, almost unquestionable that one of his highest priorities would be to serve the village to the best of his ability until the day he died.
But.
But.
A village really wasn’t just a place. It was people, and when it came down to it, there was ‘people’ and then there was ‘your people’. Shisui calculated the difference, and then tried not to think about the fact that over the years, the number of his so-called “Precious People” had dwindled from three to two, then one, and was currently running the very real risk of hitting rock bottom.
Somehow, in all his sixteen years, Shisui had never known love could feel like this. Like you were just constantly and completely broken, and then put back together again, only the one piece that was yours was now beating in the other person’s chest. Someone should have told him this, but the only person who could have had been too busy running away from a broken heart himself.
Although he’d come close to it, his father had not left the village-but then again, he had had Shisui to think about. Sometimes Shisui liked to pretend that he had been nothing more to his dad than an afterthought, a postscript after the curtains had already fallen on his personal tragedy, but that was just him being an entitlement jerk. He had been the one thing keeping his dad tethered to Konoha, and if Shisui had been the one to die instead of the other way around, he knew that his dad would have thrown it all away. He would have thrown it all away, gone rogue and killed whomever they dared to send after him in cold blood, all natural non-violent way of life or not. He would have done all that and more, and he wouldn’t have cared, because there wouldn’t have been anything left to care about.
Shisui knew this with bone-deep certainty, because at this moment, that was exactly how he felt. He’d taken a lot for granted, stupidly believing that time would never run out, but now it had and there was nothing he could do but lay the story straight-and this was what it was about:
It was about nine years, four months, three weeks, and half a day. It was about split knuckles and cut lips, a skewed but consistent sense of justice, and later, about cinder and smoke and shakily-held weapons, a world where the ground cleaved open underfoot and the sky was full of flying death. And yet later still, it was about parallel paths and warring convictions, not-so-shakily-held weapons and mingling blood, sultry autumns on a riverbank and one memorably frigid winter when silence took the rein. It was about a night in July on the way up north, hiding in the warm, mossy hollow of a fallen tree from the rolling thunder and the furious rain that fell from the sky in sheets upon back-breaking sheets, a cramped space that seemed not so cramped because all the edges had been worn down to fit in the course of a shared history.
It was about permeation, about something that needed nothing, because it had sprung to life fully formed, already perfectly synched like one flow of oxygen that fed two separate hearts, and to change even a single component part would be suicide, no question about it.
It was a story. A story written on his skin, scarred into his heart by the prickling of tattoo needles. A story about what happened when people met when they were barely children, and then immediately stopped being children. A story about skies and roads and bridges and rivers, but mostly, it was a story about love-love unspoken, love in exile, love under siege.
Yes, it was a story about love, and no, it wasn’t the greatest story in the history of the world but it was his. It was his goddamn story, and when it came down to it, no one would ever compare.
So really, what else was there?
“You can come out,” Shisui said to the air. “I know you’re there.”
“I’ve never seen you out here this early in the day,” Kakashi remarked, stepping into the clearing with the customary absence of sound. “I had the impression you weren’t a morning person.”
Shisui did not turn to look at him. “I know what favor the Hokage asked you to do.” He scratched absently at the tattoo on his arm, as if Kakashi’s appearance had just reminded him that it was, in fact, still there. “He wanted you to watch me, didn’t he?”
“Not anymore, Shisui-kun,” Kakashi said lightly. “As I said before, you passed.”
“Funny, I don’t remember asking to be put through some kind of test,” Shisui said crossly.
“That was the point.”
He sounded sympathetic-and all things considered, he likely was. Once again, Kakashi would be the one to understand where Shisui was coming from, even if this considerate silence was all that he could afford to offer. It made Shisui wish he lived in a world where the question ‘Are you okay?’ was a perfectly acceptable conversation opener, and not just invitation to vast, horrible personal trauma. It was like a cruel inheritance, curse and blessing rolled into one, and it just kept going on and on in a feedback loop.
“Maybe you were too hasty,” Shisui found himself biting out, halfway to insanity. “Maybe you shouldn’t have passed me so easily. You don’t know what I might decide to do next.”
“That’s true,” Kakashi replied. “But neither do you.”
Shisui glared at the air in front of him. “I’m not going to talk about it,” he groused. “If you’re going to stay, you should know that I’m not going to talk about it, so don’t bother asking.”
“I don’t intend to,” Kakashi said. “You don’t have to talk about anything you don’t want to, Shisui-kun.”
“Fine,” Shisui said, folding his arms over his knees. “I won’t.”
So they stayed there, and didn’t talk about it.
*
By the following day, he had reached a decision.
It was already late in the afternoon when Shisui rose. He dressed wearily, pulling clothes from his closet that seemed relatively neutral, which was hard because apparently Shisui didn’t own anything that wasn’t an Uchiha shirt or some part of his ANBU uniform. It was an empty gesture, he knew, but somehow, it felt important. Lastly, he went into the kitchen. He took down the note from his fridge, and ripped it to shreds, letting the torn pieces flutter to the floor as he walked out the door.
Mamiya glanced up from her desk when Shisui walked through the door, and immediately opened her mouth to speak. He raised his hand in a pacifying gesture.
“Relax. I didn’t come to badger the Hokage. I just want to put in a transfer request.”
She stared at him incredulously. “You’re resigning?”
“No, no, you misunderstand,” Shisui said. “An internal transfer. I’d like to be removed from Field Unit and placed into Intelligence as soon as I’m cleared for deployment again.”
There was a pause. Mamiya narrowed her eyes, and said, “Why?”
“Like you said, it’d probably be good for me to keep a lighter ops tempo from now on,” Shisui said. Casual as casual. “If I work for Intel, I’ll get to be home a lot more often, too.”
“Something tells me it’s not the village you’re interested in sticking around for,” Mamiya observed.
Shisui shrugged. “There’s that too. But same difference-it all works out to both of our advantage, doesn’t it? Win, win. This way, you won’t have to enforce furloughs just to keep me from running amok.”
For a long moment, Mamiya just looked at him. Then she diverted her gaze to the tottering pile of paper on her desk, and said, “I’ll have to speak with Hokage-sama.”
Her voice was cold-impersonal and without a trace of irritation. The way it had never been before.
“You do that,” Shisui said, and left the office.
Five minutes later, he was standing at the top step of the Military Police Headquarters, courtesy of three Shunshin leaps. A record, even for him.
Shisui had lost his mother at the age of four, when the war clinic she’d been stationed in had burned down around her and the clan had failed to send assistance when she’d radioed for help. He had watched his father slowly disintegrate like a crumbling mountain, the tenuous hope of recovery dashed on the day of Yondaime’s death, and had practically raised himself from the age of seven and done a damn good job. Shisui was the one who’d led his classmates on the run the day a platoon of Cloud shinobi had broken through the village’s defenses and decapitated their Chuunin instructor right in the middle of the Academy’s courtyard. He had performed more S-rank missions than he could remember off the top of his head, had broken every bone in his body at one point or another and lived to tell about it, and somehow, this still felt like the hardest thing he’d ever have to do.
There was no help for it. This wasn’t a fight he could win alone. He needed allies. When all the options you were presented with seemed equally terrible, you had to go with the devil you knew.
All Shisui knew was: there were things he needed to know. He would never be left out in the cold again.
No one stopped him as he walked down the bland, yellowing hallway, though he could feel himself being watched. Just before he reached the end of the corridor, a door to his left clicked open and someone stepped out into the hall. It was Yasuo, who blinked at Shisui in surprise.
“Shisui,” Yasuo said, frowning, “what are you doing here?”
“I wanted to see Fugaku-sama,” Shisui said in a rush. “He-the other day.” There was an odd, sort of ashy taste in his mouth. He took a small breath, and said, “I’m ready to accept your offer.”
Yasuo just stared at him, eyes searching and dark. Then he smiled, firm and somewhat relieved. “I’m glad to hear that,” he said simply, and clapped Shisui on the shoulder. The weight almost staggered him.
Nevertheless, he pushed himself forward, taking the last few steps toward the large door that stood at the end of the hallway. Yasuo followed him. He knocked on the door, and then held it open for Shisui, nodding at him with the same warm smile that Shisui couldn’t bring himself to return. He was almost glad to have an excuse to get away, until he stepped inside the spacious office and found himself face to face with the man he had so often wished would do the world a favor and remove himself from the gene pool.
Fugaku regarded him silently over the top of his desk, and it was possible Shisui had lost his mind because he found something oddly familiar about that look-a look that reminded you of the shortening days of winter, chilling air.
“What is it that you want with me?” Fugaku said.
Shisui wondered stupidly if he should get down on his knees, but then remembered that the very fact of his being here was enough of a supplicating gesture in itself. Even dogs had pride, but in this moment, Shisui didn’t feel at all regretful about lopping off all of his in one big, useless chunk. Pride hadn’t gotten him very far, anyway. Pride couldn’t help you swim.
Better get right to it, then. “I have just now lodged a transfer request with the Hokage’s office,” Shisui said haltingly, trying to keep his voice neutral. “If it goes through, I’m going to be working in the ANBU’s Intelligence division from now on. The same division as Itachi.”
“And?” Fugaku asked.
Shisui swallowed hard. “And I have thought a lot about what you said to me the other day. I’ve decided that you were-” He had to take a moment. “-that you were right, and that the clan’s best interest is my best interest as well. So. I’m here to accept the assignment that you spoke of the other day-the other day at the meeting.”
Every stilted word that stumbled out of his mouth made him feel like a traitor of the greatest magnitude, but he had anticipated that and made a point to sandbag those thoughts. This was necessary, he rationalized. Omelets and eggs, you had to be willing to break a few.
Or perhaps that wasn’t it at all. Perhaps this necessary evil was also an act of self-preservation, a reserve lifeline. Itachi, he reasoned to himself, had always seemed to Shisui like a vast ice floe, muted and frozen over, but hiding all the cold sea under its surface. For years, Shisui had been wandering blindly across that icy veneer, heedless of the insidious cracks growing like vines under his feet. As precarious and deceptive as that surface was, it was all that made up his standing ground, and if he should allow it to shatter, he would plunge right through the broken ice into the dark water below, colder and more obliterating than even the corpse-skinned winter sky.
And if Shisui kept feeding himself horseshit like that, perhaps the words would get beat into his head, so that even if he didn’t start believing them, he’d be too concussed at that point to notice.
“You were quite adamant in your refusal the last time we spoke,” Fugaku said, breaking the silence. He seemed to be sizing Shisui up, weighing his words. “What made you change your mind?”
Shisui deliberated for a moment, and then said, “Family is an obligation, not a choice. And anyway, it-it might not even matter anymore.”
“We don’t know that for certain,” Fugaku said tightly. “You should have hope.”
That made Shisui startle, and look up into Fugaku’s steady gaze. He had never liked Fugaku, but even he had to admit that the man had an imposing, almost compelling air about him. It wasn’t really that weird. He was, after all, Itachi’s father. A father, Shisui thought, staggered with dissonance. This man standing before him was a father. He had a son-two, even-and for a moment Shisui wondered if Fugaku had ever been the kind of father who put family before duty and honor, who bought his children presents above their age, always in a hurry for them to grow up as all fathers tended to be.
If so, he had gotten exactly what he’d wished for: a son who had never known how to walk like a boy, loose-limbed and free, but had from the first adopted the gait of a soldier, treading hard upon the heel, weighed down under the yoke of duty. Shisui almost wanted to ask Fugaku if he thought it was worth it.
“I know we’ve had our differences, Shisui,” Fugaku said. “But if you are willing to lend your cooperation, I’m certain that we will be able to put the past behind us, and work together for the good of the clan.”
He paused, and gave a short little sigh, almost weary. “And for Itachi, of course.”
“Of course,” Shisui echoed. “Now will you tell me about Itachi’s mission?”
“Until you’ve proven yourself trustworthy,” Fugaku said in a measured tone, “information will only be given to you on a need to know basis.”
“Well, I think this counts as needing to know,” Shisui snapped, shoulder jagging with frustration. “How am I supposed to proceed with my assignment if I don’t know anything about it? And personally, sir? I would think that the very fact that I came to you today should be proof enough of my ‘trustworthiness’.”
Fugaku’s response was to shift slightly sideway in his chair. The expression of faint scorn receded from his face, replaced by a distant kind of concentration, stark in profile. Momentarily, he snapped his gaze back to Shisui, and said, “You are right.” There was no trace in his voice of the empty politeness from a moment ago; it was now cold, flat.
“Take a seat. What I’m about to tell you must not be allowed to leave this room.”
*
“Fuck,” Shisui muttered, raking one hand through his hair. “Fuck.”
Fugaku said nothing, just sat in silence with his hands folded over his desk, which Shisui felt was rather considerate of him given that Shisui was freaking the fuck out. His face, skin, eyes, every bit of his body felt hot, burning up. And only a week ago he’d worried about committing treason by killing Danzou. This revelation made those delicate concerns look monumentally stupid.
“There’s got to be some kind of mistake,” Shisui said. He could feel the tremor in his throat shaking every syllable loose. “The clan-we have too much influence , we’ve always been here.” Strange, how those we’s slipped so easily from his mouth. “They can’t just shut us out like that.”
“They can, and they have,” Fugaku said. Not derisive, just matter-of-fact. “The recent dismissal of our clansmen from their official posts is just one example. This has begun long before that.”
“What about the MP?” Shisui asked. “The Uchiha still have control over the police force, right?”
Fugaku made a dismissive noise. “That’s a polite fiction the village’s leaders keep up in an attempt to placate us and keep things on an even keel. In reality, our jurisdiction grows more limited by the day.” His eyes hardened. “If you had ever bothered to take an interest in the clan before now, you would have known that.”
“Well, I’m here now,” Shisui snapped. Family grudge aside, you’d think someone would have thought to inform him of their clan’s imminent demise. “Tell me-” Everything. “-tell me what I need to know.”
“While you were away on the field,” Fugaku said, “our agent within the Hokage’s office was able to alert us to the existence of-how should I put this-certain plans that the Council have in store for the Uchiha clan. If we don’t make our moves now, it’ll be too late once they are implemented.”
Shisui narrowed his eyes. “And by agent, you mean…”
“Yes,” Fugaku said. “Our inside man in the Hokage’s office-in the ANBU-is Itachi. Or at least he was, until very recently.” He tilted his head in Shisui’s direction. “But you’re already aware of that.”
“Have you tried,” Shisui began, feeling terribly stupid, young and gauche and helpless, “negotiation-I don’t know, just talking it out?”
Out of what was probably pity, Fugaku chose not to point out the glaring flaw in his argument. “Even if Sarutobi Hiruzen could be reasoned with, we have no hope of negotiating with the Council-much less certain other parties.” He paused, and gave Shisui a meaningful look. “I’m speaking, of course, of Danzou Shimura, leader of the organization known as Root. As far as we know, they’re the ones responsible for Itachi’s disappearance.”
Shisui looked at the ground at his feet, and felt incredibly heavy. Fugaku’s words were weighing him down, his body a rock in this chair, mountainous. Slowly, he brought his eyes up to lock gaze with the man sitting opposite him.
“I know that you admire the Hokage,” Fugaku said. “I would go even as far as to say that you are close to him. But when it comes down to it, do you think that he would stand against the Council for our sake?”
And Shisui thought of that morning, seemingly a geologic era ago, when Sandaime had sent Itachi off with the squad from Root, out into the world beyond his control.
“You take pride in your ability as a shinobi. How would feel when the children of our clan are stripped of that right and barred from attending the Academy? Will you wait until then to act?”
Invasive questions, those-and no wonder. This wasn’t just about deserting the village, about running away when there was nothing left to stay for. No, this was bigger than that, bigger than him, bigger than anything he’d ever experienced. How did you make a decision like this? How did you stack the weight of a village up against that of one person?
Hadn’t he already done that?
And there, there it was, the nick in the edge of that axe. In war, you were told to fight for a cause, and Shisui knew that his had been chosen for him long before he could have been aware of it. His banner held the face of a person, his war cry the shape of a name. Itachi’s presence under his skin was a vaccine against the plague of reason. Shisui heard his voice even in his absence, urging him to rise to the occasion, and felt himself rinsed of doubt, his vision scrubbed by sudden clarity.
“What must I do?”
“Initially, I only intended to have you keep an eye on Itachi,” Fugaku said, “but now that you’ve been made aware of where we stand, there is a much more important mission that you might be able to undertake, should you be willing to accept it.”
“And what mission is that?” asked Shisui.
Fugaku laced his fingers under his chin. “In the event that-” He halted, seemingly finding it difficult to complete his sentence. “In the event that Itachi does not return, I want you to take up the task he had been assigned-to replace him as our eye and ear within the Hokage’s office. You will be in a perfect position to do so, once you’ve settled into your Intelligence duties. Do you have any objections?”
Shisui opened his mouth to speak, but Fugaku held up one hand to stall him. “Think about it carefully first. It’s a highly difficult task-and dangerous, considering the instability of the current situation. You shouldn’t make any rash decision.”
The quelling hand formed a fist on top of the desk. “At the same time, do consider this: we have not entirely given up hope on reaching… a peaceable solution. Persuasion may have to come in the form of manipulation.” Words encrusted with portent. “That is a unique capability that no one but you possesses.”
Shisui nodded, to show that he understood.
“Because of your father’s decisions,” Fugaku went on, voice going a bit gravelly, “I have admittedly never been quite certain as to where you would choose to stand. But if you accept this mission, your loyalty will be unquestioned. It will be the ultimate proof of your devotion to the clan.”
When has that ever mattered to me, Shisui thought, but said, “I’ll do it-I accept the mission,” anyway, because this was what Itachi had wanted and that was why it mattered.
Silence descended, heavy, seal on paper. A struck deal.
“As a token of trust,” Fugaku said. “I will disclose to you some highly classified information regarding the circumstances of your father’s death.”
Shisui jerked in his seat. He’d entirely forgotten about that. His heart rate jacked to hammering-speed. He remembered to blink when his eyes started to burn.
“I’ve heard that you were recently called to a private meeting with Danzou.”
It was like there were no secrets in this damn town. Some hidden village.
“While you were there, did he make of you any special request?”
“Just one,” Shisui said cautiously. “He asked me to demonstrate my mind-control technique.”
Fugaku nodded, as though Shisui’s answer had only confirmed what he’d already known. “There’s no point in beating around the bush,” he said. “The investigation we conducted led us to believe that Root was behind your father’s death. However, we suspect that Tadahiro was not their true target. It is our belief that Danzou is going after you.”
Shisui clenched his fists over the top of his knees, digging the nails into his palms. “And in your investigation, did you happen to uncover why they might be after me?”
“Your ability is not just an asset to the clan,” Fugaku said quietly. “You shouldn’t be surprised that there are those who covet it for much less honorable purposes.”
Shisui wasn’t aware that mind-controlling your way through a coup d’état constituted an honorable purpose, but he kept his mouth shut and let Fugaku’s solemn voice roll over him.
“If it is indeed your Sharingan that Danzou seeks to obtain, it stands to reason that he would have wanted to conduct preliminary testing using materials collected from your closest living relative.”
Those words, they hit him like a blow to the throat. “You mean he conducted trial runs using my father’s stolen Sharingan?” His voice shook, seized by a savage combination of anger and disgust that Fugaku somehow interpreted as fear, because he said, “You need not worry. The clan is prepared to take every action necessary to protect its own. You’re one of us.”
The unspoken ‘Don’t ever forget that.’ lingered in the air between them.
“Very well, then,” Fugaku went on, businesslike and brusque. “Everything from here should be straightforward enough. From now, you are an undeclared member of the Military Police. I will arrange for you to work under our Head of Internal Affairs. In the future, you will report directly to him.”
“Yes, sir,” Shisui said. He had to take a moment to steady his breathing, before saying, “If there’s nothing else, I’ll be on my way.”
His mind swelled and wallowed with the ebb and flow of this new information, struck broadside by rough waters. A strain of reasoning cracking along slowly in hairline fractures. Danzou might have had a hand in his father’s murder. Danzou could be after him. Itachi had gotten tangled up with Root somehow. What was the connection here that he was not seeing?
“Shisui,” Fugaku said abruptly. “Before you leave, may I ask just one thing?”
Shisui stopped in his track. It didn’t occur to him to say yes or no-to say anything at all.
“What is it that you like about my son?”
Shisui blinked. He shifted his gaze to the floor, bit his lip. What, indeed.
“It’s hard to say,” he said finally, looking up. “We met when I’d just sort of lost all my family. In one way or another, I guess being friends with him made me feel like I’d gained something back.”
For the first time, a look of surprise flitted across Fugaku’s features, a frail instant in which the hardness of his jaw line faltered and he became almost see-through. Shisui toyed with the idea of calling him on it, and refrained, out of deference to Fugaku’s earlier consideration of his own weakness.
“That is all,” Fugaku said, after a moment. “You may go. I wish you the best of luck with the task you’ve been entrusted with.”
Shisui smiled back thinly. “I doubt it’s luck I’ll be needing, sir. But thanks for the thought.”
Fugaku nodded back at him. They had, somehow, come to a kind of understanding.
The door closed with a solemn finality behind him.
It had begun.
*
End of Part V
____________________________________________
Since writing the last chapter, I came to the realization that I’ve up till now been unduly mean to Fugaku. Coup instigator and surly clan head he may be, but in the manga he was shown to actually care about Itachi. Uh, he tried to shield him from the Police, at any rate? I always knew there was a reason I was so nice to him in Deep River.
I apologize for the delay in... everything. Everything I promised to get done will get done tonight.