"Death is in the eye of the beholder"
By: Clever A
Pairing: Mild Kisame/Itachi, eventually.
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Angst, weirdness, violence.
Chapters: 1/3
AN: A strange story that I wrote as a present for a friend last year. Also posted in the akatsukilove livejournal group. /Text like this is thoughts./
1
The day was dying.
They were walking down an old road. The surrounding land was barren, dry and covered with huge, broken rocks and the withered white trunks of long-dead trees. The air was slightly chill, and the occasional gust of wind whistled through the rocks, flapping the black-and-red cloaks around them.
The sky overhead was not blue. Though only late afternoon, the sky was dull, strangely colorless, and stained with red only to the west on the other side of the mountains where the sun was beginning to set.
Blood-red eyes lifted briefly to the color-drained sky, dropped to the scattering of live trees ahead, and then glanced briefly sideways.
Kisame glanced back, silently acknowledging the warning. The trees, dark conifers mostly, were getting thicker…and there were enemies waiting.
The first kunai came just as they passed into the first living trees. It sliced down the middle of them, forcing the missing-nin to push off to opposite sides of the road. As soon as their feet touched down again, men swarmed out of the woods, shinobi by their movements, but dressed all in black. Not ANBU, then, and they wore no hitai-ate to be identified by. They filled the gap between the two men quickly, cutting them off from each other. With one of the many strings of kunai hidden under his coat already out and flying into the first row of attackers, Itachi risked a quick glance to his partner. Reassured by the easy strokes of the white-wrapped blade, he focused on the next wave of dark figures rushing toward him.
He did find the attack odd, though. Out in the middle of nowhere…and they weren't even on their way back from a mission. Unusual…but not impossible, so he pushed the issue out of his mind and focused fully on the battle.
He meant to stand his ground, meant to put his back to one tree and drop these inferior shinobi like the canon fodder they were. He managed this strategy for a little while, but they kept coming, wave after wave, and at last he was forced back. Kisame had already disappeared into the darkening trees on the other side of the road. Itachi, not pleased but hoping to find better ground, let himself be moved west through the sparse forest, heading closer to the mountains.
And still they came. Such a focused attack ruled out the possibility that they were a bandit group – they had been waiting for Kisame and him specifically. But why? No one should even have known they were here.
Finally finding a better place to turn and face his pursuers, Itachi slowed out of his run, red eyes spinning.
He would deal with the rest of these insects, and then he would find his partner.
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Kisame knew he was in trouble.
He swung the Samehada quickly left, ducking under another cut from the right, and then barely avoiding two stabs from the man in front of him. He felt the pinprick of a sword tip on his back, and spun left again, sweeping his sword around to knock that blade away as well.
He was confused. It was all backwards…after that initial rush of shinobi, they should have sent the majority of the weaker fighters after him, to keep him busy, while they sent the best ones after Itachi.
He spun to avoid simultaneous strokes from the left and right. One from behind cut a shallow slice on his upper arm, though it wasn't bad enough to make him drop the Samehada. He skipped ahead a couple of steps to avoid the stabs he sensed coming from behind.
But they hadn't done that. They'd pushed him far enough back from the road to be out of sight range and earshot of his partner before sending their five best fighters after him, not after the Uchiha.
/This is a bad sign,/ the shark-like man thought grimly. He managed to fend off yet another well coordinated attack from his circle of enemies, but this time he got a long slice on his left leg, and could feel blood trickling down his back from a shallow stab to his left shoulder. /What is their purpose? This will finish me, but not Itachi-san…if they're trying to kill us they're going about it all wrong./
All his wounds were bleeding more heavily now, and his limbs were beginning to feel sluggish, mostly the arm that had been cut. Poison on that blade? Not unlikely…
/Poison…to poison me…what if to kill us isn't the point…. Not to kill…. Itachi-san…./ His vision was beginning to blur. He ducked under another attack, and tried to get the Samehada around to block the man to his left, but his arms wouldn't move fast enough. He was almost there when he dully felt a foot connect with his forearm. The Samehada fell to the ground. /Itachi-san…it's wrong, careful…it's not right…. Itachi…./
Then pain exploded on the side of his head, and he knew no more.
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Itachi closed his eyes. In the fragments of a second it took for pale lids to cover violent crimson, he assessed his situation.
Three strings of kunai, a few shuriken. Plenty of chakra.
Still too many opponents.
Crimson eyes opened, black commas spinning.
Not so many opponents now…only smokeless black fire.
He could, he estimated, use the Mangekyou Amaterasu three times more. Given the men that continued to stream into the empty space in front of him, he'd probably need all of those times.
Tossing off a few more shuriken, he took a deep breath and fought on.
---------
Kisame could feel only pain. Pain and, gradually, an awareness of movement, of speed.
He was attempting to force rock-heavy eyelids open when a strange smell filled his nostrils, and blackness overtook him again.
---------
Someone must be very desperate to see him dead.
He had used the Amaterasu again, and again after that, and even that had not deterred them long. Usually the sheer horror of its destructiveness was enough to keep enemies at bay for a few minutes. Canon fodder these shinobi might be…but they were well-trained canon fodder.
He had enough chakra left for using the Mangekyou once more. After that, he would have to resort to the rest of his weapons and lesser jutsu to fight the higher level opponents that would certainly come after his reserves had been drained.
An odd sensation, as of being watched too intently, drew his eyes up to the trees on his left, where the forest thickened and darkness had already come.
A still moment, then he found himself forced to blink eyes gone suddenly dry, and turned back to the fight. It was nothing after all – there was no one there that he could tell.
Moments later, he took a deep breath and pulled out the Amaterasu one last time. This one took out nearly thirty of the enemy shinobi, and it seemed to the Uchiha as though those remaining filled the empty space with growing reluctance, taking more time to ease around the onyx fires still burning on the ashes of the comrades.
So he pulled out his remaining kunai, and tensed for the attack of higher level opponents…
…that never came.
A few minutes more of fighting, and then the remaining shinobi withdrew, disappearing into the darkness between the trees.
Itachi tensed further, extending his senses, still expecting another attack. But it didn't come, and didn't come.
The instinct in him shifted to become a blatant whisper in his mind, Something's wrong.
He reached out with his remaining chakra, but there were no other chakra signatures to be found.
None at all, came the whisper again. Something's wrong.
Slowly, carefully, still watchful, Itachi began to move, heading back the way he had come. The forest was silent, the darkness growing minute by minute. Still no other presences.
/Kisame,/ Itachi thought.
Something's wrong, whispered the voice in his mind.
/I can't feel Kisame's chakra signature. I haven't been feeling it./He reached the road where the ambush had begun, feet moving faster. /Why haven't I been able to feel it?/
Death, whispered the voice. In battle, only death steals it away completely.
Itachi was racing through the trees now, following the path of corpses his partner had left.
/Death,/ he scoffed. /Kisame doesn't…wouldn't…./
No chakra, whispered the doubt. None at all.
Itachi clenched his hands and flew on-
-only to stop abruptly on at the edge of a clearing. He'd been moving in a curve, through the trees back the way he and his partner had originally come, nearly parallel to the road. Thicker trees behind him gave out onto a clearing ringed only by the dead, sparse skeleton trees of the barren land. The sky overhead was dark, and red.
Something's wrong, whispered the voice. Death has come here.
The trail ended here. There had been a great fight, his crimson eyes could see that at a glance. A difficult fight.
Itachi was barely aware of his feet walking toward the center of the clearing.
Dull glinting on dark earth. He knelt, hands closing automatically around metal and cloth.
Blue cloth, sliced neatly down the side, near the temple. A powerful, efficient sword stroke. Dull metal, the slash mark through Kirigakure's sigil clear even through the blood.
Blood. Blood on the cloth, blood on the metal. Blood staining the dark earth beneath his knees.
So much blood, the voice whispered. Too much blood.
The area of dark-stained earth was large, extending well out away from where the hitai-ate had lain. Itachi put his hand down, lifted it to stare numbly at the nearly-black stain on his long, pale fingers.
/Death,/ Itachi thought, mind blank.
Death, agreed the whisper, almost enticingly.
/Dead. Kisame is dead./
Some distant part of him protested, but he couldn't hear it. Everything fit, what was there left to question or deny?
Kisame was dead.
Incomprehensible as it was, he had never been able to shirk away from facts. Never allowed himself any illusions.
Itachi rose, once-bright scarlet eyes gone dull and barely seeing. In his left hand, he clenched the metal of the blood-stained hitai-ate tightly.
It was odd, he thought, that he couldn't seem to feel his body as he turned and walked toward the monolithic mountains.
That distant part of him protested again, about a mission and things left undone…but it was too far away to make out.
What does it matter? The whisper came one last time. What does anything matter?
Kisame was dead.
Itachi walked blankly toward the mountains. Overhead, the red sky deepened finally into black.
The day had died, and night had fallen.
AN: Next chapter...sometime. :)