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He struggled, though he knew it was useless. The three ROOT Ninja holding him would not let him breathe deeply, much less given him an inch to escapee. His arms were spread, hands crushed in and iron grip to prevent him from moving his fingers. Someone, he didn't know who with the masks, had his head yanked back, fingers tangled painfully in his
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Something in Shisui's voice had taken an unfamiliar twist -- frightening, if only for the fact that it was entirely unlike anything Itachi had ever heard there before. For a moment he was shocked to stillness, breath stilling in his lungs as something approaching dread slithered, cold and heavy, down his spine.
It was certainly a night for it. There was something tense, febrile in the air, as if Konoha itself held its vast breath in expectation. His visit with the Sandaime had been one of ... finality. (With Madara, even more so, though there was an amused malice there that the Hokage, blessedly, lacked.)
"Shisui..?" Itachi flinched at the faint quiver in his voice, that flicker of uncertainty. At any other time, Shisui wouldn't let that pass --
-- but despite the gloom of night he can see now, aided by the Sharingan, the defeated, trembling slope of the older nin's shoulders, the awkward way he's half curled in on himself, injured, somehow ... somehow less. Something has happened. Itachi's ( ... )
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One name, more than enough to sweep away the confusion, more than Itachi needed to piece together the gist of this. A danger existed between them, now, a sudden gulf that burned like fire. (But it didn't matter. It didn't. Whatever of trust and faith Itachi possessed, whatever might have lingered on in the wake of what it meant to grow up as an shinobi of the Uchiha clan, it rested on the trembling shoulders beneath his hands. His mission, at least, had done nothing to change that.)
There was so much blood. More than he'd ever seen from Shisui, and he could recall more than his fair share of those memories. The sight of that blood-stained hand pressed to the right side of his face is just one more layer to the horror this night has become ( ... )
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It was the only choked off word that had managed to escape the entire time, an utter refusal to scream keeping his mouth shut around the agony of the moment. The pain a distant, fiery thing.
He knew pain, he was a ninja, after all. He knew how to fight pain, to push it aside and still fight.
But betrayal?
Why.
But Itachi was asking him, and Shisui couldn't refuse. Could still never refuse because it was Itachi and giving Itachi what he asked for was the same as breathing.
"M-my eye." He swallowed the blood and bile, tried not to vomit as he tipped his head up, leaning into Itachi's hands.
Why?
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Aren't you taking enough from me?
"Shisui..." Barely a breath, thick with quiet misery, and Itachi's fingers find the edge of Shisui's covering hand, ignoring the slick sensation of cool blood against fevered skin. Uchiha blood, Uchiha eyes; for all Danzo's imperious demand for the former, this desire for the latter is, Itachi thinks, far more terrible.
"Can you move?" He glances away, just long enough to confirm the emptiness of the walled lane, before turning his attention back to Shisui and the pain-filled eye that remains. "I need to--" He swallows, hard, takes a shaky breath. "I need to get you somewhere safe."
But where is safe? Maybe Danzo's vultures are watching them, even now. Maybe they'll be looking to finish their master's job.
Not as long as there's breath in Itachi's body.
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