And Then There Were None
Disclaimer: I don't own anyone.
A/N: grammar - or lack thereof - is deliberate. also, this story is so full of fail it's ridiculous. I can't stand the second half of it and I wrote it. :| why am I even posting it?
Summary: the fairy-tale that never was. Once upon a time, they numbered two lost little boys with branded faces and back. •ℵ• mild AU •ℵ• implied slash
०౦ംഠ०҆'˚'҅०ം ◦∙ × ∙◦ം०҆'˚'҅०౦ംഠ०
The hand pressing his head into the water is so gentle it hurts. The stars are tiny little pinpricks of light that waver as his chest burns with the effort of trying to live without solid ground to cling to and air to greedily devour. The face above him swims in and out of focus and the white of the moon is edged with black when the first bubble escapes and floats up to the surface.
He knows the weight of failure, is intimately aware of how it presses down on him. He can taste it in the water that seeps into his mouth slowly. A star flickers in the sky and winks out of existence.
(Once upon a time -
Uchiha Itachi is pale and solid and real above him, eyes still hypnotic red-and-black, past the stream of bubbles floating upward as his lungs fail and he breathes in nothing to replace everything.
Uchiha Shisui almost wishes his Sharingan never existed. His eyes whisper Itachi and his lips form the name underwater and it fills his mind and reverberates and echoes back and forth but he does not want to see Itachi above him, implacable and immoveable. He used to be a very good liar; that skill is long gone now, somewhere far away with the rest of his life, carried by the river for some other boy to scoop up.
- there were two little boys.)
०౦ംഠ०҆'˚'҅०ം ◦∙ × ∙◦ം०҆'˚'҅०౦ംഠ०
He almost laughs when his father tells him - “it is your duty, you must be proud of your place” - to practice with the boy standing in the doorway, diminutive next to the solid frame of his escort. He knows the name, every Uchiha knows the name, but it is hard to reconcile the stoic little boy with the quiet still baby his mother brought him to see once.
Not even Uchihas, the best of the village, are supposed to mature so quickly. Then, he looks, actually looks, and realizes that there was nothing of a child in Uchiha Itachi from the very beginning (“that quiet is not normal, you know that, how can that be a child?"). He thinks it doesn’t matter either way, because it is still the body of a two year old boy either way and he has always wanted to talk to the boy everyone knows of.
He comes home with a smile and a promise and once, just once, everything is where it should be, where it must be (whispers at the door, little boy, they’re coming to get you, don’t be afraid) - the whispering of his parents, those relatives he knew without knowing, is very quiet now.
Hey, let’s play again tomorrow, okay?
(This is where it begins, where it starts to end.
whatever you do, don’t scream.)
०౦ംഠ०҆'˚'҅०ം ◦∙ × ∙◦ം०҆'˚'҅०౦ംഠ०
“War is a shinobi’s dearest friend -” (watch out for the knife in your back) and Shisui stops listening there and his eyes burn and he wants to run and scream because it is war and war is death and blood and all those things little boys and girls keep in the corners of their nightmares until better days come. He can feel the filth of it, the insidious whispers in little boys’ heads about fame and glory and going out in a blaze of honor for the village. It makes him sick.
I’m sorry, Shisui, but your father is dead.
The river runs fast, swollen with rain. He sends fire down the length of it and watches the steam twist and curl but it disappears before he is ever sure of what he sees (but he will not waste the Sharingan on something so trivial and instead sends more and more fire until he is very empty and the water before him very full).
It rains. The Sharingan flashes red and he copies seals inadvertently and curls under a tree and tosses kunai and shuriken at the falling leaves until his weapons are all spent. He hears footsteps on the ground and the rain beats down around him and he is halfway through the seals for a new jutsu before his brain re-wires itself and he sees a face he knows in place of the formless shapeless mass of black. Funny, how the ground weaves back and forth so; he always thought it was solid.
What are you doing here; don’t you know it’s raining?
He wakes up indoors, awkwardly curled on the edge of a bed, and wonders when society reversed and his baby cousin (who is not so much younger than him as he is a man trapped in the body of a child - and Shisui does not want to think of the mechanics of that, because it is not possible though it makes his much-abused ego feel that much better) began to look out of him. His head aches and he rolls over and buries his face in the pillow and falls asleep again to the smell of Itachi.
Shisui wakes up again, when the sun is beginning to fade away. Itachi is slumped at his desk and his hair is a tangled mess and Shisui closes his eyes until he is out the door because Itachi and cute do not belong anywhere near each other. (He blames the rain for half-drowning him and his father for dying and breaking a tiny part of his brain and the world for starting a war in the first place, instead, because those are very intangible things now and they take the blame silently.)
His brain breaks all over again when he sees a new set of kunai and shuriken sitting neatly on his bed and his mind goes straight to Itachi sleeping at his desk and he thinks ‘how nice.’ His genius little cousin is supposed to be all sharp hard edges, not soft and pliable and kind.
Soft and pliable and kind is always the first to break and die.
(This is where the bridge becomes a cliff and crumbles.
silly boy, you should have run.)
०౦ംഠ०҆'˚'҅०ം ◦∙ × ∙◦ം०҆'˚'҅०౦ംഠ०
He stands with a morbid fascination as the ground trembles faintly and he feels it long before he sees it. The river shifts beneath his feet and he hears the alarms and he runs. By now, the clan compound is very empty; his eyes bleed to red and he goes from room to room (get out, get out now it’s coming closer runrunrun) until everyone left is gathered in the street (this is their duty, to ensure the future of their clan).
Shisui swaps with one of the older genin and takes his baby cousin into his group and pretends that he does not hear his heart beating in his ears as they run through the streets (it’s a game, last one there has to explain to Mikoto-sama why the vase in the hallway is broken okay?) and dodge the rubble, the buildings collapsing in on themselves. He can see, faintly, in the distance, massive tails waving through the air.
Someone screams. He sees the dust as the gate collapses and knows they are too close to the battlefield even as the group before his doubles back suddenly and Shisui sends his group ahead and tells the girl he will be back very soon (he always did dote on his baby cousin so) because baby Sasuke is awake now and upset and he knows that Itachi loves his baby brother very much but does not know how to take care of a baby.
When he runs back to the group, shoving chakra into his legs until it begins to hurt, the genin in charge gives him a frantic look and he stays long enough to hear the words “Itachi” and “missing” before he drops the cloth bag in his hand and disappears toward the battlefield. Itachi.
Itachi’s missing, we can’t find him or Sasuke anywhere!
Shisui finds his cousin with red eyes, kneeling next to a body that he recognizes as an Uchiha, the man who lived down the street who always stopped by on Saturday to drink sake and play shogi with his father (but that was before his father died and everything was different now, wasn’t it?). He swallows the sudden relief and opens his mouth to call out to Itachi but the name dies in his throat when he sees the building to the side waver and the stone crack and all he can think of is Itachi and danger and he runs for his cousin (but he knows he is only so fast against time).
Thump-thump-thump-thumpthumpthump-
He opens his eyes when he doesn’t hear the sound of rock breaking on rock, the expected pain of stone crushing his limbs. He sees red eyes set in a pale face and someone says something about Shunshin but it filters through his brain, shoved into a small box in back for later. He grins instead and reaches for the bag he dropped and shoves it over to Itachi and for a few moments, he pretends everything is alright and he forgets the dead bodies, the blood in the air and the children screaming.
(This is where the map ends.
are you frightened yet?)
०౦ംഠ०҆'˚'҅०ം ◦∙ × ∙◦ം०҆'˚'҅०౦ംഠ०
Someone is crying. Dead bodies burn in a hole in the ground and over there is a teammate with a hole in place of a lung and entrails spilling out over bloody hands to pool messily on the ground lies very still. Their jounin-sensei is missing. He does not know where they are anymore.
Shisui thinks there is something very unfair about life (the war is over, has been over, this is a new team already christened in battle and baptized by blood and they are all going to die if he does not do something).
He picks up the salvaged weapons and augments his own collection by stealing from the dead and drags the girl away from the dead body. No time. He runs.
Are you scared? I don't want to die!
The forest burns.
We’re not going to die. I won’t. I refuse. (That would be too easy.)
He wakes one day and looks up and around and realizes that he no longer knows how long it has been (the minutes blur together and an hour becomes a week becomes a day). His reflection in the river is haggard and there are dark smudges under his eyes (but he is alive and vanity was always a shallow petty thing) and he fancies he can see the beating of his heart somewhere behind his eyes, the steady thump-thump that will keep him alive if his eyes fail.
Their makeshift camp is a fluid one, hidden somewhere in the maze of dead decaying trees (they double back at night and the stench of burnt flesh and blood and decay is a familiar one). A crow caws and he smiles a very thin smile. Shisui thinks that if they ever make their way back to Konoha, he will have a story of his own to tell now.
Duck. Run. Jutsu. Attack. Run. There is a certain finality to their actions now. (She says they are going to die. He thinks he is too young - but when has that ever made a difference?) Adrenaline runs through his veins - but there is little else - and he is very tired.
Hey. (Breathe.) Make sure you get rid of my eyes, yeah?
Run. Run. Run. Swallow another soldier pill dry and form the seals. Shunshin no Jutsu. Rinse and repeat.
Shisui stumbles into another genin team from Konoha and dried blood crusts in his hair and his shirt is stained with blood but he is alive and none of that matters anymore (or so he pretends; he has left pits and pieces of himself behind somewhere in that forest and his life is not so much his own as it is borrowed now).
He sneaks out of the hospital the night they arrive with the intention of rummaging through his room to find a tiny package wrapped in plain red-and-black (but all plans go awry, as life decrees) but stumbles at the window and re-opens the gash in his stomach because it is Itachi and that is his bed and everything he has ever thought about his not-so-baby cousin is being ripped apart and twisted and taped back together.
You promised you’d be back for my birthday. I waited.
(This is where the abyss begins, with a slow descent and a sudden fall.
there is a nightmare at the end of this dream.)
०౦ംഠ०҆'˚'҅०ം ◦∙ × ∙◦ം०҆'˚'҅०౦ംഠ०
He grins and tugs his cousin down to sit beneath the ancient trees at the banks of the river and slings an arm over his shoulder (chuunin to match his jounin and Shisui is snatching at ephemeral wisps that seep through his fingers, trying to catch all these little moments to itemize and collect and keep stored away somewhere safe and peaceful). There are mission reports to be written still and his mastery over his Sharingan still needs to be perfected before the next mission (it fascinates him, that he can slip into someone’s head and weave a web and lay it down and turn an enemy into a puppet just like that, but it disgusts him even more - he is not god and he never will be) but it is quiet here, no-one watching from the corner (to gossip and stare and scurry away with stolen secrets to throw from the rooftop), and the air is that much lighter when no-one tells him “this is what you must do, how you must do it, when you must do it.” The water swirls and eddies lazily and he thinks that if he claws his way to that tiny ledge of shinobi who die of old age and only old age, this is where he would like to die.
The river belongs to no-one but this place is his, only his, and only Itachi ever seeks him out in the sanctity of it.
Closeyoureyesandsleep.
The mist around Kirigakure clings to him. He runs, chases after the man in grey before him, but the world is very white and his feet stick to the ground and sink into the mud. Shisui feels as though he is swimming, lost and floundering somewhere underwater.
He ducks a sword and his eyes melt to red and the mist becomes steam when he meets water with fire. He sees the dull flash of metal and meets it with blackened steel and he smiles (this is where we are meant to be) and the world blurs. (one-)
His fingers are red. He sees the patterns the thin lines of blood make on a length of bright metal and his shoulder burns when he ducks and rushes close to score a long shallow cut that cuts across an eye before- (-two-)
-water rushes beneath his feet and spirals upwards. His reflection is a fractured thing, red against sickly pallor against black. He breathes and water rushes into his mouth and the bright red of Sharingan eyes stares at him in the water and (too soon, it cannot end like this) his lungs burn when he sees solid in tiny little increments until his legs are free. (-three-)
The ground beneath his feet is more water than dirt and he coughs up blood so red it seems black but he smiles and his teeth are very red as he sinks a kunai into soft yielding flesh and blood drips down his fingers but- (-four-)
-his eyes ache and the taste of blood is thick in his mouth and his hand comes away coated in red when he touches his chest. He thinks of the mission and the clan and lets his training as one of a pair of prodigal Uchiha shinobi take over and the last of his chakra goes into Shunshin after Shunshin until a sword sinks to the bottom of a makeshift lake and a body crushes him to the ground. (-five.)
Hey … guess you’re taking over a bit earlier than we thought, Itachi.
Shisui vaguely remembers red eyes set in a sickly white face and the glow of chakra when his body begins to knit itself back together, bloody muck sucking them both down as fog clings to them. He thinks that Itachi has never looked so young before.
(If neither leaves the other alone for the rest of the duration of the mission, neither comments on it; Shisui’s injury is little more than a footnote at the bottom of two neatly-written reports.
He wonders, sometimes, if he would have survived if his partner had not been his baby cousin. Shisui can not help the tiny thrill of dread that runs through him when he hears rumours of “Itachi” and “ANBU” in the same sentence.)
Do you think this is how it will end?
(This is where the abyss splits, where the hollow men begin.
the old lie sings in each breath you take.)
०౦ംഠ०҆'˚'҅०ം ◦∙ × ∙◦ം०҆'˚'҅०౦ംഠ०
Shisui does not remember when his baby cousin dissolved by the banks of the Nakano and a stranger, wearing the mask of a familiar face peeled from white bone, took his place. The face remains the same, the eyes remains the same; the entirety of the body is the same but the person is a stranger, someone so distant he cannot bring himself to say “cousin” at times.
He sees it best when they are alone, when the rest of the world sleeps and the river somewhere beside them is little more than a dull hum in the background. The funny thing about prodigies - Uchiha prodigies - is that they are painfully opaque and transparent (there is nothing he does not know about Itachi and nothing his cousin does not know about him, born from the same mold). The frightening thing about this new Itachi is, he’s not sure what Itachi is anymore (there is something very cold and cruel buried in his cousin and he dreads the day when it burrows out and consumes him whole).
Shisui. Have you noticed it?
He wants to deny it. Tries to deny it. Tries so hard to deny it that for a day, a week, a month, he is no longer Shisui but a pale imitation of the Itachi he no longer knows trying to carve through a mountain with bare fingers until it hurts, because he cannot see why. He does not want to believe it. He refuses (it cannot be possible, will not be possible, because Itachi is Itachi, perfect for all his flaws and no more an unknown that his own reflection in the water lapping against the banks of the river) to believe it until he wakes up one morning and sees nothing in mirror-image eyes but vague recognition and suspicion, nothing of the faint warmth and familiarity that was theirs.
We want you to watch him.
It storms. He sits beneath a tree and watches the river explode, swollen with rainwater. The curls of his hair stick to his face and his uniform clings to cool skin and sometime between midnight and dawn the river overflows and water laps at bare toes. There is a clan somewhere behind him, the fan locked behind tall walls searching for a flame to fan; there is a village somewhere off to the side, leaves dragged beneath the water and torn by pebbles as the plants beneath the canopy wither and die.
Somewhere between the lightening and the thunder whimsy strikes and he laughs and burns through his chakra until his legs ache and burn and the world is a dim narrow place, the drumbeat of desperation echoing dimly in the droplets of rain as they batter his body. He stumbles and falls to his knees and sinks into the water before he drags up enough chakra to balance and his eyes flicker between black and red and the stop-go of the rain as it speeds up and slows down threatens to drag out hysteria.
Will you do it for us?
There is a clan somewhere before him, the red-and-white fan a curse that burns and burrows deep into them. He can feel in on his back, the uchiwa carved neatly into his back beneath the skin (this is who we are, who I am, who you are meant to be; you are us and we are you and there is nothing we cannot do). He stares down at his fractured reflection in the roiling water and sees the clan in his eyes, his father incorporeal at his back and his fathers before him somewhere behind; they blur together in the rain and coalesce until there is another pair of eyes somewhere above his shoulder and a hand pulling him up, under the dubious cover of the trees.
“What are you doing here?”
Itachi is a solid presence before him, the lightning and the rain casting an odd glow about him, and Shisui fancies he can see bits and pieces of his Itachi - their Itachi - in the way the lines of tension at the corner of his eyes relax, in the hand that slips into his as they walk back to the gate of the compound. He tugs them both inside and turns to say something trivial (“and here I thought you didn’t care, Itachi-kun”) but the words die somewhere in his throat when he sees the porcelain mask in one hand, the black ink of the brand on a pale arm more obvious than ever in a flash of lightning.
There is a village somewhere behind him, grasping roots that make their implacable way through the ground beneath him and crack the earth. He sees the spiraling leaf carved into metal and thinks of the swirls and eddies of the river, distorting his reflection and cracking the Sharingan and the uchiwa, a thousand little fragments in each ripple of water. He thinks of the dying leaf sucked to the riverbed, crushed somewhere into the mud and rock of the riverbed.
“Hey, you’d better come back safe, alright? You owe me a spar.”
Shisui watches his cousin leave and pretends, for a moment, that they are only children and this is only another minor disagreement (they will both be back tomorrow and the ground between them will crack and bury their regrets) - but they are full-fledged shinobi now and he is born of the clan for the clan and his baby cousin is gone, blinded by poison and stolen away to be a puppet.
When his cousin returns, he greets Itachi with a smile and a laugh and they both go down to the river at night; if his words are sharper and his eyes bleed red more often than not, neither of them comment (they have always been good at keeping secrets, those special moments that belong to them and them alone). His smile is the same - will always be the same, he has seen it so many times with red eyes - and he bites his tongue and tries to squash the rising guilt that twists his stomach and threatens to choke him when Itachi - Itachi, always the stoic prodigy hidden away in the corner and doing the dirty work - gives him a tiny tentative smile in response. He forces out an excuse and his tongue seems swollen, unnaturally thick as he tries to form the words. Shisui leaves his cousin by the banks of the river, red eyes spinning, and listens to the whispers of long-dead ancestors, the men who tell him it is for the best, because the clan must survive and they are being strangled, choked by the twisted gnarled roots of a tree grown too large and proud.
The uchiwa on the back of his shirt has never been more of a brand, a symbol heavier than a mountain that burns into his back.
“Yes.”
(This is where it all ends, with the ending of the beginning at the end of all paths.
don’t cry little boy; you knew this day would come.)
०౦ംഠ०҆'˚'҅०ം ◦∙ × ∙◦ം०҆'˚'҅०౦ംഠ०
The last of his breath escapes in tiny bubbles that float away toward a face so pale and cold that wavers before his eyes, still bloody red as water floods his mouth, trickles down into his lungs and slowly, inexorably, kills him.
It is quiet beneath the water, no specters whispering of treachery older than the clan itself. Shisui thinks, dimly, that he should have known his baby cousin was bound for fame beyond the confines of this life, chained to an earth-bound clan with wings crafted from empty bodies and blood (no happily-ever-after for cursed killers, one hand killing the mother and the other holding the brand). He forces a tiny smile and wonders if Itachi will even remember his name, his face, as anything other than the face and name of a traitor.
The stars wheel overhead and the moon is bright behind Itachi’s head and he thinks he sees, faintly, with his fading eyesight (and where is his Sharingan now, the vaunted bloody-red mirror-wheel eyes that grant such good memory and sight?) the familiar shape of red-on-black eyes morph into something that spins and blurs.
(This is their story.
the end.)
A/N: grammar - or lack thereof - is deliberate. also, this story is so full of fail it's ridiculous. I can't stand the second half of it and I wrote it. :| why am I even posting it?
Summary: the fairy-tale that never was. Once upon a time, they numbered two lost little boys with branded faces and back. •ℵ• mild AU •ℵ• implied slash
०౦ംഠ०҆'˚'҅०ം ◦∙ × ∙◦ം०҆'˚'҅०౦ംഠ०
The hand pressing his head into the water is so gentle it hurts. The stars are tiny little pinpricks of light that waver as his chest burns with the effort of trying to live without solid ground to cling to and air to greedily devour. The face above him swims in and out of focus and the white of the moon is edged with black when the first bubble escapes and floats up to the surface.
He knows the weight of failure, is intimately aware of how it presses down on him. He can taste it in the water that seeps into his mouth slowly. A star flickers in the sky and winks out of existence.
(Once upon a time -
Uchiha Itachi is pale and solid and real above him, eyes still hypnotic red-and-black, past the stream of bubbles floating upward as his lungs fail and he breathes in nothing to replace everything.
Uchiha Shisui almost wishes his Sharingan never existed. His eyes whisper Itachi and his lips form the name underwater and it fills his mind and reverberates and echoes back and forth but he does not want to see Itachi above him, implacable and immoveable. He used to be a very good liar; that skill is long gone now, somewhere far away with the rest of his life, carried by the river for some other boy to scoop up.
- there were two little boys.)
०౦ംഠ०҆'˚'҅०ം ◦∙ × ∙◦ം०҆'˚'҅०౦ംഠ०
He almost laughs when his father tells him - “it is your duty, you must be proud of your place” - to practice with the boy standing in the doorway, diminutive next to the solid frame of his escort. He knows the name, every Uchiha knows the name, but it is hard to reconcile the stoic little boy with the quiet still baby his mother brought him to see once.
Not even Uchihas, the best of the village, are supposed to mature so quickly. Then, he looks, actually looks, and realizes that there was nothing of a child in Uchiha Itachi from the very beginning (“that quiet is not normal, you know that, how can that be a child?"). He thinks it doesn’t matter either way, because it is still the body of a two year old boy either way and he has always wanted to talk to the boy everyone knows of.
He comes home with a smile and a promise and once, just once, everything is where it should be, where it must be (whispers at the door, little boy, they’re coming to get you, don’t be afraid) - the whispering of his parents, those relatives he knew without knowing, is very quiet now.
Hey, let’s play again tomorrow, okay?
(This is where it begins, where it starts to end.
whatever you do, don’t scream.)
०౦ംഠ०҆'˚'҅०ം ◦∙ × ∙◦ം०҆'˚'҅०౦ംഠ०
“War is a shinobi’s dearest friend -” (watch out for the knife in your back) and Shisui stops listening there and his eyes burn and he wants to run and scream because it is war and war is death and blood and all those things little boys and girls keep in the corners of their nightmares until better days come. He can feel the filth of it, the insidious whispers in little boys’ heads about fame and glory and going out in a blaze of honor for the village. It makes him sick.
I’m sorry, Shisui, but your father is dead.
The river runs fast, swollen with rain. He sends fire down the length of it and watches the steam twist and curl but it disappears before he is ever sure of what he sees (but he will not waste the Sharingan on something so trivial and instead sends more and more fire until he is very empty and the water before him very full).
It rains. The Sharingan flashes red and he copies seals inadvertently and curls under a tree and tosses kunai and shuriken at the falling leaves until his weapons are all spent. He hears footsteps on the ground and the rain beats down around him and he is halfway through the seals for a new jutsu before his brain re-wires itself and he sees a face he knows in place of the formless shapeless mass of black. Funny, how the ground weaves back and forth so; he always thought it was solid.
What are you doing here; don’t you know it’s raining?
He wakes up indoors, awkwardly curled on the edge of a bed, and wonders when society reversed and his baby cousin (who is not so much younger than him as he is a man trapped in the body of a child - and Shisui does not want to think of the mechanics of that, because it is not possible though it makes his much-abused ego feel that much better) began to look out of him. His head aches and he rolls over and buries his face in the pillow and falls asleep again to the smell of Itachi.
Shisui wakes up again, when the sun is beginning to fade away. Itachi is slumped at his desk and his hair is a tangled mess and Shisui closes his eyes until he is out the door because Itachi and cute do not belong anywhere near each other. (He blames the rain for half-drowning him and his father for dying and breaking a tiny part of his brain and the world for starting a war in the first place, instead, because those are very intangible things now and they take the blame silently.)
His brain breaks all over again when he sees a new set of kunai and shuriken sitting neatly on his bed and his mind goes straight to Itachi sleeping at his desk and he thinks ‘how nice.’ His genius little cousin is supposed to be all sharp hard edges, not soft and pliable and kind.
Soft and pliable and kind is always the first to break and die.
(This is where the bridge becomes a cliff and crumbles.
silly boy, you should have run.)
०౦ംഠ०҆'˚'҅०ം ◦∙ × ∙◦ം०҆'˚'҅०౦ംഠ०
He stands with a morbid fascination as the ground trembles faintly and he feels it long before he sees it. The river shifts beneath his feet and he hears the alarms and he runs. By now, the clan compound is very empty; his eyes bleed to red and he goes from room to room (get out, get out now it’s coming closer runrunrun) until everyone left is gathered in the street (this is their duty, to ensure the future of their clan).
Shisui swaps with one of the older genin and takes his baby cousin into his group and pretends that he does not hear his heart beating in his ears as they run through the streets (it’s a game, last one there has to explain to Mikoto-sama why the vase in the hallway is broken okay?) and dodge the rubble, the buildings collapsing in on themselves. He can see, faintly, in the distance, massive tails waving through the air.
Someone screams. He sees the dust as the gate collapses and knows they are too close to the battlefield even as the group before his doubles back suddenly and Shisui sends his group ahead and tells the girl he will be back very soon (he always did dote on his baby cousin so) because baby Sasuke is awake now and upset and he knows that Itachi loves his baby brother very much but does not know how to take care of a baby.
When he runs back to the group, shoving chakra into his legs until it begins to hurt, the genin in charge gives him a frantic look and he stays long enough to hear the words “Itachi” and “missing” before he drops the cloth bag in his hand and disappears toward the battlefield. Itachi.
Itachi’s missing, we can’t find him or Sasuke anywhere!
Shisui finds his cousin with red eyes, kneeling next to a body that he recognizes as an Uchiha, the man who lived down the street who always stopped by on Saturday to drink sake and play shogi with his father (but that was before his father died and everything was different now, wasn’t it?). He swallows the sudden relief and opens his mouth to call out to Itachi but the name dies in his throat when he sees the building to the side waver and the stone crack and all he can think of is Itachi and danger and he runs for his cousin (but he knows he is only so fast against time).
Thump-thump-thump-thumpthumpthump-
He opens his eyes when he doesn’t hear the sound of rock breaking on rock, the expected pain of stone crushing his limbs. He sees red eyes set in a pale face and someone says something about Shunshin but it filters through his brain, shoved into a small box in back for later. He grins instead and reaches for the bag he dropped and shoves it over to Itachi and for a few moments, he pretends everything is alright and he forgets the dead bodies, the blood in the air and the children screaming.
(This is where the map ends.
are you frightened yet?)
०౦ംഠ०҆'˚'҅०ം ◦∙ × ∙◦ം०҆'˚'҅०౦ംഠ०
Someone is crying. Dead bodies burn in a hole in the ground and over there is a teammate with a hole in place of a lung and entrails spilling out over bloody hands to pool messily on the ground lies very still. Their jounin-sensei is missing. He does not know where they are anymore.
Shisui thinks there is something very unfair about life (the war is over, has been over, this is a new team already christened in battle and baptized by blood and they are all going to die if he does not do something).
He picks up the salvaged weapons and augments his own collection by stealing from the dead and drags the girl away from the dead body. No time. He runs.
Are you scared? I don't want to die!
The forest burns.
We’re not going to die. I won’t. I refuse. (That would be too easy.)
He wakes one day and looks up and around and realizes that he no longer knows how long it has been (the minutes blur together and an hour becomes a week becomes a day). His reflection in the river is haggard and there are dark smudges under his eyes (but he is alive and vanity was always a shallow petty thing) and he fancies he can see the beating of his heart somewhere behind his eyes, the steady thump-thump that will keep him alive if his eyes fail.
Their makeshift camp is a fluid one, hidden somewhere in the maze of dead decaying trees (they double back at night and the stench of burnt flesh and blood and decay is a familiar one). A crow caws and he smiles a very thin smile. Shisui thinks that if they ever make their way back to Konoha, he will have a story of his own to tell now.
Duck. Run. Jutsu. Attack. Run. There is a certain finality to their actions now. (She says they are going to die. He thinks he is too young - but when has that ever made a difference?) Adrenaline runs through his veins - but there is little else - and he is very tired.
Hey. (Breathe.) Make sure you get rid of my eyes, yeah?
Run. Run. Run. Swallow another soldier pill dry and form the seals. Shunshin no Jutsu. Rinse and repeat.
Shisui stumbles into another genin team from Konoha and dried blood crusts in his hair and his shirt is stained with blood but he is alive and none of that matters anymore (or so he pretends; he has left pits and pieces of himself behind somewhere in that forest and his life is not so much his own as it is borrowed now).
He sneaks out of the hospital the night they arrive with the intention of rummaging through his room to find a tiny package wrapped in plain red-and-black (but all plans go awry, as life decrees) but stumbles at the window and re-opens the gash in his stomach because it is Itachi and that is his bed and everything he has ever thought about his not-so-baby cousin is being ripped apart and twisted and taped back together.
You promised you’d be back for my birthday. I waited.
(This is where the abyss begins, with a slow descent and a sudden fall.
there is a nightmare at the end of this dream.)
०౦ംഠ०҆'˚'҅०ം ◦∙ × ∙◦ം०҆'˚'҅०౦ംഠ०
He grins and tugs his cousin down to sit beneath the ancient trees at the banks of the river and slings an arm over his shoulder (chuunin to match his jounin and Shisui is snatching at ephemeral wisps that seep through his fingers, trying to catch all these little moments to itemize and collect and keep stored away somewhere safe and peaceful). There are mission reports to be written still and his mastery over his Sharingan still needs to be perfected before the next mission (it fascinates him, that he can slip into someone’s head and weave a web and lay it down and turn an enemy into a puppet just like that, but it disgusts him even more - he is not god and he never will be) but it is quiet here, no-one watching from the corner (to gossip and stare and scurry away with stolen secrets to throw from the rooftop), and the air is that much lighter when no-one tells him “this is what you must do, how you must do it, when you must do it.” The water swirls and eddies lazily and he thinks that if he claws his way to that tiny ledge of shinobi who die of old age and only old age, this is where he would like to die.
The river belongs to no-one but this place is his, only his, and only Itachi ever seeks him out in the sanctity of it.
Closeyoureyesandsleep.
The mist around Kirigakure clings to him. He runs, chases after the man in grey before him, but the world is very white and his feet stick to the ground and sink into the mud. Shisui feels as though he is swimming, lost and floundering somewhere underwater.
He ducks a sword and his eyes melt to red and the mist becomes steam when he meets water with fire. He sees the dull flash of metal and meets it with blackened steel and he smiles (this is where we are meant to be) and the world blurs. (one-)
His fingers are red. He sees the patterns the thin lines of blood make on a length of bright metal and his shoulder burns when he ducks and rushes close to score a long shallow cut that cuts across an eye before- (-two-)
-water rushes beneath his feet and spirals upwards. His reflection is a fractured thing, red against sickly pallor against black. He breathes and water rushes into his mouth and the bright red of Sharingan eyes stares at him in the water and (too soon, it cannot end like this) his lungs burn when he sees solid in tiny little increments until his legs are free. (-three-)
The ground beneath his feet is more water than dirt and he coughs up blood so red it seems black but he smiles and his teeth are very red as he sinks a kunai into soft yielding flesh and blood drips down his fingers but- (-four-)
-his eyes ache and the taste of blood is thick in his mouth and his hand comes away coated in red when he touches his chest. He thinks of the mission and the clan and lets his training as one of a pair of prodigal Uchiha shinobi take over and the last of his chakra goes into Shunshin after Shunshin until a sword sinks to the bottom of a makeshift lake and a body crushes him to the ground. (-five.)
Hey … guess you’re taking over a bit earlier than we thought, Itachi.
Shisui vaguely remembers red eyes set in a sickly white face and the glow of chakra when his body begins to knit itself back together, bloody muck sucking them both down as fog clings to them. He thinks that Itachi has never looked so young before.
(If neither leaves the other alone for the rest of the duration of the mission, neither comments on it; Shisui’s injury is little more than a footnote at the bottom of two neatly-written reports.
He wonders, sometimes, if he would have survived if his partner had not been his baby cousin. Shisui can not help the tiny thrill of dread that runs through him when he hears rumours of “Itachi” and “ANBU” in the same sentence.)
Do you think this is how it will end?
(This is where the abyss splits, where the hollow men begin.
the old lie sings in each breath you take.)
०౦ംഠ०҆'˚'҅०ം ◦∙ × ∙◦ം०҆'˚'҅०౦ംഠ०
Shisui does not remember when his baby cousin dissolved by the banks of the Nakano and a stranger, wearing the mask of a familiar face peeled from white bone, took his place. The face remains the same, the eyes remains the same; the entirety of the body is the same but the person is a stranger, someone so distant he cannot bring himself to say “cousin” at times.
He sees it best when they are alone, when the rest of the world sleeps and the river somewhere beside them is little more than a dull hum in the background. The funny thing about prodigies - Uchiha prodigies - is that they are painfully opaque and transparent (there is nothing he does not know about Itachi and nothing his cousin does not know about him, born from the same mold). The frightening thing about this new Itachi is, he’s not sure what Itachi is anymore (there is something very cold and cruel buried in his cousin and he dreads the day when it burrows out and consumes him whole).
Shisui. Have you noticed it?
He wants to deny it. Tries to deny it. Tries so hard to deny it that for a day, a week, a month, he is no longer Shisui but a pale imitation of the Itachi he no longer knows trying to carve through a mountain with bare fingers until it hurts, because he cannot see why. He does not want to believe it. He refuses (it cannot be possible, will not be possible, because Itachi is Itachi, perfect for all his flaws and no more an unknown that his own reflection in the water lapping against the banks of the river) to believe it until he wakes up one morning and sees nothing in mirror-image eyes but vague recognition and suspicion, nothing of the faint warmth and familiarity that was theirs.
We want you to watch him.
It storms. He sits beneath a tree and watches the river explode, swollen with rainwater. The curls of his hair stick to his face and his uniform clings to cool skin and sometime between midnight and dawn the river overflows and water laps at bare toes. There is a clan somewhere behind him, the fan locked behind tall walls searching for a flame to fan; there is a village somewhere off to the side, leaves dragged beneath the water and torn by pebbles as the plants beneath the canopy wither and die.
Somewhere between the lightening and the thunder whimsy strikes and he laughs and burns through his chakra until his legs ache and burn and the world is a dim narrow place, the drumbeat of desperation echoing dimly in the droplets of rain as they batter his body. He stumbles and falls to his knees and sinks into the water before he drags up enough chakra to balance and his eyes flicker between black and red and the stop-go of the rain as it speeds up and slows down threatens to drag out hysteria.
Will you do it for us?
There is a clan somewhere before him, the red-and-white fan a curse that burns and burrows deep into them. He can feel in on his back, the uchiwa carved neatly into his back beneath the skin (this is who we are, who I am, who you are meant to be; you are us and we are you and there is nothing we cannot do). He stares down at his fractured reflection in the roiling water and sees the clan in his eyes, his father incorporeal at his back and his fathers before him somewhere behind; they blur together in the rain and coalesce until there is another pair of eyes somewhere above his shoulder and a hand pulling him up, under the dubious cover of the trees.
“What are you doing here?”
Itachi is a solid presence before him, the lightning and the rain casting an odd glow about him, and Shisui fancies he can see bits and pieces of his Itachi - their Itachi - in the way the lines of tension at the corner of his eyes relax, in the hand that slips into his as they walk back to the gate of the compound. He tugs them both inside and turns to say something trivial (“and here I thought you didn’t care, Itachi-kun”) but the words die somewhere in his throat when he sees the porcelain mask in one hand, the black ink of the brand on a pale arm more obvious than ever in a flash of lightning.
There is a village somewhere behind him, grasping roots that make their implacable way through the ground beneath him and crack the earth. He sees the spiraling leaf carved into metal and thinks of the swirls and eddies of the river, distorting his reflection and cracking the Sharingan and the uchiwa, a thousand little fragments in each ripple of water. He thinks of the dying leaf sucked to the riverbed, crushed somewhere into the mud and rock of the riverbed.
“Hey, you’d better come back safe, alright? You owe me a spar.”
Shisui watches his cousin leave and pretends, for a moment, that they are only children and this is only another minor disagreement (they will both be back tomorrow and the ground between them will crack and bury their regrets) - but they are full-fledged shinobi now and he is born of the clan for the clan and his baby cousin is gone, blinded by poison and stolen away to be a puppet.
When his cousin returns, he greets Itachi with a smile and a laugh and they both go down to the river at night; if his words are sharper and his eyes bleed red more often than not, neither of them comment (they have always been good at keeping secrets, those special moments that belong to them and them alone). His smile is the same - will always be the same, he has seen it so many times with red eyes - and he bites his tongue and tries to squash the rising guilt that twists his stomach and threatens to choke him when Itachi - Itachi, always the stoic prodigy hidden away in the corner and doing the dirty work - gives him a tiny tentative smile in response. He forces out an excuse and his tongue seems swollen, unnaturally thick as he tries to form the words. Shisui leaves his cousin by the banks of the river, red eyes spinning, and listens to the whispers of long-dead ancestors, the men who tell him it is for the best, because the clan must survive and they are being strangled, choked by the twisted gnarled roots of a tree grown too large and proud.
The uchiwa on the back of his shirt has never been more of a brand, a symbol heavier than a mountain that burns into his back.
“Yes.”
(This is where it all ends, with the ending of the beginning at the end of all paths.
don’t cry little boy; you knew this day would come.)
०౦ംഠ०҆'˚'҅०ം ◦∙ × ∙◦ം०҆'˚'҅०౦ംഠ०
The last of his breath escapes in tiny bubbles that float away toward a face so pale and cold that wavers before his eyes, still bloody red as water floods his mouth, trickles down into his lungs and slowly, inexorably, kills him.
It is quiet beneath the water, no specters whispering of treachery older than the clan itself. Shisui thinks, dimly, that he should have known his baby cousin was bound for fame beyond the confines of this life, chained to an earth-bound clan with wings crafted from empty bodies and blood (no happily-ever-after for cursed killers, one hand killing the mother and the other holding the brand). He forces a tiny smile and wonders if Itachi will even remember his name, his face, as anything other than the face and name of a traitor.
The stars wheel overhead and the moon is bright behind Itachi’s head and he thinks he sees, faintly, with his fading eyesight (and where is his Sharingan now, the vaunted bloody-red mirror-wheel eyes that grant such good memory and sight?) the familiar shape of red-on-black eyes morph into something that spins and blurs.
(This is their story.
the end.)