Disclaimer: To my eternal dismay, I don't own Naruto or any of its characters.
Note: A ninja-to is a type of Japanese sword with a straight blade; kenjutsu is swordfighting. Nakama is a word meaning a close comrade or friend.
Nakama
"What is a friend? One soul in two bodies."--Aristotle
Moonlight reflected off Itachi's sword as he stood at one end of the bridge over the Nakano River. On the other side, a pair of sakura trees flanked the stone walkway leading to the Nakano Temple, dedicated to the kami that supposedly watched over the river. A boy stood in the shadows cast by the trees, petals drifting down around him like flurries of pink snow. Unlike Itachi, he had not drawn his weapon. Slowly, he stepped forward into the moonlight, revealing a face that looked remarkably like Itachi's own. Jet-black hair ruffled in the breeze, and delicate cheekbones belied the fearsome strength of the second Uchiha prodigy.
"Why did you want to meet with me?" Shisui asked.
"What our clan is planning cannot be allowed to go forward," Itachi replied simply. "I have been ordered by the Elders to stop it. By any means necessary."
Shisui raised an eyebrow. "You've raised objections before, at the clan meetings. You were overruled. The clan is united in this, Itachi; do you really think you can convince everyone to abandon the decision they've made?"
Itachi lowered his gaze. "No. I am not so naive as to think that I can convince them."
"Then what will you do?"
Itachi's grip on the hilt of his ninja-to tightened. "As things stand now, our clan poses a threat to Konoha's peace. All threats to the village's peace...must be eliminated."
Shisui drew in a sharp hiss of breath. "You would attack the Clan Elders?"
Itachi's gaze drifted to the river. It flowed peacefully under the bridge, its burbling a sound that he would normally find calming. He kept his eyes on it, finding that he could not look at Shisui while he said this. "Not only the Elders. Our entire family is complicit in this. Therefore, our entire family..."
Shisui's eyes had been black as coal up to this point, but now they turned red. "You can't mean...you can't possibly intend to destroy our clan!"
"I do not wish to," Itachi said, his voice breaking slightly. "But I have no other choice."
"Why are you telling me this?" Shisui demanded harshly. "Do you expect me to help you?"
"No. You were a staunch supporter of the coup from the beginning. I don't think that I can change your mind so easily."
"Then why? I mean, I have no choice but to fight you now, and you'll have no choice but to fight back. If you try to kill me and fail, I could warn our clan. And declaring your intentions openly makes it more likely that you will fail. Damn, Itachi, didn't you learn anything about stealth and tricking your enemy in the Academy?" This last question was accompanied by a bitter smile.
"Because you are my best friend, and I will not dishonor that friendship by denying you a chance to defend yourself."
"And if you do lose this fight?"
"Then my last mission will have failed. You will be free to warn our clan, and the planned rebellion will go forward."
"You'd risk that just to fight me honorably?"
"You are my best friend," Itachi replied simply, as if nothing else needed to be said.
And nothing else did.
Now Shisui unsheathed his own ninja-to, forming seals as he reached over his shoulder to draw it. He sprinted across the bridge, feet pounding over the wooden boards. Itachi raised his blade, expecting that Shisui would engage him in kenjutsu. Instead, Shisui stopped at the near end of the bridge and slammed a palm down on the earth. The seals he'd formed earlier--behind his back, so that Itachi couldn't analyze them with his Sharingan--released, and Itachi felt the ground beneath his feet begin to liquefy.
"Earth-element ninjutsu. Well-executed, but not particularly effective in this case." As he spoke, small arcs of brilliant blue electricity flashed out from his feet, traveling through the molten stone and back to Shisui's hand.
"Ah!" Shisui drew his hand back just in time to avoid being shocked. Seeing an opening, Itachi darted forward, swinging his ninja-to downward. Shisui brought his arm up and blocked the blow with one of his bracers.
Itachi's brow furrowed. His strike had been powerful enough to cut through ordinary armor. Then his Sharingan assessed Shisui's chakra flow, and his confusion ended. He's fortified the armor with chakra to make it more durable.
Shisui retreated back across the bridge, with Itachi in pursuit. When he reached the stone wall that surrounded the temple grounds, Shisui formed another set of seals and placed his hand against it. Itachi saw Shisui's chakra traveling along the wall to a point that was right next to him, from which razor-sharp spikes erupted. Itachi ducked underneath them and rushed towards his cousin, aiming at his face with a powerful kick. "Leaf Spinning Wind!"
The blow knocked Shisui to the ground and drove the breath from his lungs. Above him, Itachi prepared to drive his katana through Shisui's heart, only to see his body merge into the ground and disappear. His eyes tracked Shisui's chakra as he slid under Itachi's feet, clearly trying to get behind him. Whirling around and dropping to one knee, Itachi drove a powerful current of lightning chakra into the ground. A few feet away, brilliant bolts of electricity broke through the ground, thrusting Shisui into the air. As he fell back to earth, he cried out in pain, and Itachi knew that the electricity blast had hit its target. Before Shisui could recover, he aimed a fireball at his fellow prodigy. Like the lightning, it struck true--but something was amiss. Instead of a body, what fell heavily to earth in the wake of the jutsu was only a log. Itachi scanned his surroundings, relying on his Sharingan to pinpoint Shisui's chakra wherever the other boy had tried to hide. He quickly found him concealed inside a nearby wall. Instead of spikes, this time he made the stone bulge outwards in tendrils that tried to wrap themselves around Itachi's limbs. I don't have time for this. Dodging the stone tendrils, Itachi performed a flurry of seals himself, and saw Shisui's chakra flare in alarm. Reaching into the wall at the place where his Sharingan told him Shisui's chakra was hidden, he grabbed the front of his cousin's shirt and hauled him out into the open. Tendrils of earth ripped themselves from the ground and wound around Shisui's arms and legs, holding him firmly in place.
"Come on, Itachi," Shisui hissed. "You've seen the way the village treats us. Can you really support the oppression of your own people? How can Konoha call us traitors when they've already betrayed us?" Shisui's Sharingan began to spin, and Itachi could feel his words worming their way into his mind. Shisui had a point, really. Loyalty was something that had to be earned--by its mistreatment of the Uchiha, Konoha had forefeited its right to expect fidelity from them. Why should they fight and shed their blood for a village that refused to treat them fairly? And why on earth was he defending them? What was he thinking? Shisui's unwavering, red-tinged gaze made it all so obvious...
Wait.
Shisui's unwavering, red-tinged gaze.
Itachi's own Sharingan began to spin, and the threads of influence that Shisui had woven around Itachi's mind snapped. Shisui flinched at the chakra backlash, then blinked in puzzlement as Itachi drew a senbon needle from a carefully wrapped package in his weapons pouch. One end of the needle glistened with poison. Itachi stepped close to Shisui and slipped the tip of the needle under his skin as gently as a trained acupuncturist. From the site of the injection, numbness began to spread through Shisui's body, and he felt his muscles going limp.
The bonds of earth holding him in place loosened, and he fell ungracefully into Itachi's waiting arms. His cousin carried him down to the river, set him carefully on the bank, and began to...heal his wounds?
"What...you doing...?" His lips and tongue had a hard time moving delicately enough to form consonants, and his voice was slurred.
"It cannot appear that your death was the result of an attack." Itachi felt like a hypocrite for using the word "attack" instead of "murder," but couldn't quite bring himself to name his actions for what they were.
"How...kill...then?" Itachi was able to interpret what Shisui was trying to say: How will you kill me, then? He removed a piece of waterproof parchment and a pen from his pocket, and carefully wrote the note he had spent most of the afternoon composing. He then tucked the note into Shisui's jacket.
Shisui's eyes scanned the note as Itachi wrote it. "Make...look like...suicide?"
Itachi nodded.
"River?"
The lump in his throat made Itachi's voice harsher than he had intended. "Yes."
Itachi lifted Shisui in his arms again and waded into the river. Although the surrounding area was deserted of humans, there was still plenty of activity. Crickets chirped, owls hooted, and fish darted around Itachi's legs. Itachi found it ironic that he was about to kill someone in a place that was so full of life. He waded deeper, until he was up to his waist in water. A lilypad floated past, and a dragonfly buzzed around his head.
Slowly, Itachi knelt, lowering Shisui beneath the cool water. Shisui's body jerked, but he didn't have enough muscular coordination left to raise his head above the surface. Itachi remained kneeling until Shisui stopped struggling, and then let his cousin drift to the bottom of the river.
Suddenly, a jolt of pain rushed through Itachi's eyes. He cried out in pain, and floundered towards the riverbank. He hauled himself up onto the grass and lay there gasping. His body shivered violently, although he didn't feel cold. On the contrary, he felt as though he was in the grip of a terrible fever. Another spike of pain hit his eyes, and he closed them as tightly as he could, even though the only light present was the dim glow of the moon.
This is it. This is the Mangekyou. The tool I will use to destroy my clan.
His heart was beating far too rapidly, and his breathing was uneven. His fingers twitched, clawing at the dirt.
And then it stopped.
Itachi gazed up at the sky, and everything was so much clearer. He could see tiny, faint stars that he never would have been able to distinguish before. He knew, of course, that this was only temporary. The Mangekyou might initially augment his sight, but each time he used it, his vision would deteriorate.
He turned his head to the side and stared at the river. The surface was calm and placid, and another water lily drifted lazily with the current. There was no indication that the river was playing host to a human corpse. Itachi half expected the legendary kami to rise from the water and place Shisui's drowned body at his feet, but nothing happened.
Shisui...oh Shisui...
Shisui had always been by his side. On the battlefield, they had protected each other from many dangers. At home, they had studied together, trained together, and gotten into trouble together. At the Academy, they had succeeded in nearly provoking a heart attack from Iruka on at least five separate occasions. As ninja, they had competed with each other, and both had become stronger for it.
All of that was over now. Itachi would never see Shisui again.
Tears streamed down Itachi's face. He lifted a hand to wipe them away--a shinobi must have a heart that never shows tears--and his fingers came away red.
My life has already begun to end.
A/N: This is an expansion of the "A true friend stabs you in the front" drabble from "A Ceremony of Innocence Drowned." I've been wanting to write this since I finished that story, but only got around to it now.
I gave Shisui earth-element jutsu because it seems like we don't see them as often as some of the other elements. Regarding Itachi having lightning jutsus, I figure that as a proficient Sharingan user, he might have jutsus we never got to see in canon. Kakashi, who wasn't even an Uchiha, copied 1000 techniques with his Sharingan, so how many might Itachi have?
It's been forever since I've written a real fight scene, so I hope it came out alright.
Reviews would be welcome!