[log] I will remember you, will you remember me?

[seeingeyeshark]

Who: Kisame Hoshigaki, Uchiha Itachi
Status: Closed
Style: Past tense, third person
Where/When: Wave Country, about a half hour after Itachi's first dream in Kannagara.
Warnings: Confusion and leaping to conclusions? I don't know.

Comments

[seeing_only_red]

Leaping through the trees had been strange yet calming, as if Itachi had missed something without ever realizing that it was gone. He could feel the thick branches beneath his feet as he landed and pushed off of the wood towards the next, sailing through the air with the wind causing enough friction that his eyes watered slightly and his hair fluttered around him wildly. It was such a familiar sensation, moving through the trees as if he were merely another one of the creatures of the forest. Knowing them--the trees, the leaves, the glittering sunlight breaking through the thick boughs--as well as he knew the lines of the palm of his hand.

And before he knew it, it was over. Itachi blinked and the forest ended, opening itself until he could clearly see the border, which had never been so near before. It was disconcerting, to be able to move such great distances so quickly--as if with a delayed teleportation jutsu, he mused--and yet it was something that Itachi accepted as another oddity of this strange world, something more to

[seeingeyeshark]

It was a nice place, Kisame thought, even deserted like this; he'd rarely had any occasion to visit Wave Country before. Before, it had just been one more stop between Water Country and the mainland, a convenient place to get supplies and take a breather between legs of a sea trip. A few years ago, it had been a poor enough place to lurk relatively unnoticed and buy some things cheaply; lately, it was well on its way to regaining its prosperity again. Now....

Now, it was the place he had to go if he ever wanted to visit Zabuza or Haku again. If he didn't have so much respect for the dead, he would have unearthed the pair straight away and brought them back to Water Country for a proper re-burial, missing-nin status be damned--it was almost insulting that they should be interred so far from home. But then, it had been civilians and Leaf-nins who had done it.... One just couldn't expect them to understand the pride of the Mist

[seeing_only_red]

How have you been faring?

Such a simple-seeming, yet intricate question. To divulge everything that would be needed to answer it fully would put Itachi in a precarious position that he was not sure would turn out in his favor. He did not want to believe that Kisame was unable to be trusted, but that doubt--the instinctual need to be on guard and prepared for any kind of threat--left him unable to put his complete faith in his partner. Even if Kisame had never done anything in regards to him to earn such distrustful behavior.

Instead, Itachi thought it best to give as little information as possible and then to see what he could gain from his partner. Perhaps it would not be as hard to gauge Kisame's loyalty to him as he originally assumed. He was a rather blunt, if sarcastically polite, sort of person, which had always made their companionship much more comfortable than some of the other partnerships that had been formed within Akatsuki over the years.

Unless, it's all been an act, his ever-wary mind countered, but he stifled the

[seeingeyeshark]

Kisame rarely put on an act--there was seldom ever any need to, in his opinion. He didn't have much to hide, and so he felt very little need to hide it, when it came right down to the core of who he was. But the ocean was a fickle thing, they said, and still waters ran deep; even the most turbulent of stormy oceans could hide unsounded calm depths, and even a seemingly-unruffled river could conceal currents powerful enough to rip the limbs straight off of your body.... He preferred to let people have the surface, and take that as they would. And if, if they chose to try and probe deeper, then he would decide how far they went. Few dove so deep and caused such strong ripples as Itachi, but even he had yet to map the ocean floor, by any standards one cared to use

[seeing_only_red]

Kisame's honest confusion was unsettling to Itachi, as it did not make sense for him to seem so unfamiliar with the Hitomi when it was so similar to the devices used in the previous world they had been sent to.

But what gained the most attention from Itachi were the two names that Kisame mentioned--or perhaps just one name in particular. While Deidara could in deed be more than a nuisance at times--with his not-so-subtle obsession with defeating Itachi's Sharingan--it was the more-than-potential danger of the first name that sent the alarms in his mind sounding loudly.

Tobi was here. Madara was here.

Despite the fact that he had yet to meet him or be contacted by him, Itachi knew that it was not out of Madara's ignorance to his own presence in this world. Especially after...that dream, which Itachi knew would have been available to anyone with a Hitomi to see. No, Madara was purposefully choosing to remain unknown to him, and it set him on edge because he knew how unpredictable the former leader of the Uchiha Clan could be when he