Author's Note: I stopped writing fanfictions a LONG time ago under a lot of different account names like… "Karasu Kaguya", "Black Karasu" and I think something a lot of X's… Whatever, but well, I don't have much time to constantly keep up with all the chapters because I get frustrated with writer's block, but mostly because I don't have so much time to satisfy the needs of my normally hungry reviewers. So I'll probably just be updating and showing that I'm alive with reviews and writing one-shots since I need to get back into the habit if typing down my ideas on the spot.

Word Count: 2,889

Pairing: None

Summary: A small, sweet, basic story of what Itachi does in his free time in Kisame's point of view. The weasel's fishy friend finally understands that everyone, even villains are still human. Give it a chance!

Only Human

The sun shone brightly down on the grass' morning dew, birds chirped quiet around the Akatsuki base and it was certainly too early for the Akatsuki's fishy friend to wake up just yet. Kisame was never a morning person and never would be. There were rumors that he hated mornings because his family would dump buckets of cold water on him just to get him up, thus him having blue skin; but the false story never explained why his pupils were like pinpoints and why he bore gills below his eyes.

The holidays drew near and it was probably one of the happier moments in the base where lights were hung along the halls of the large base, a Christmas tree was set up in the main living room, presents were put underneath the tree, eggnog practically filled the refrigerator and even the members felt the merriness lingering in the air. Even their leader, Pein felt the merriment and always held off missions during the holidays and waited until the festive season was over to wreak havoc over the shinobi world again. The most festive of all, would probably have to be Konan, the only female in the organization. This made sense to the members though, because secretly, Pein admitted people highly influenced him and since Konan was his life-long partner and friend, her love for the holidays greatly affected him.

The grey-blue skinned man grumbled and stumbled towards his bathroom like a drunken elephant, drowsiness still taking over his thought-process as he fumbled for his toothbrush and minty toothpaste. After all, a fish has got to look his best.

Today Kisame had nothing to do. Most of the members normally had nothing to do around this time of year because of the fact that they had severed all ties with their former home, village, family and friends so they practically had no one to celebrate the holidays with. There was also no way that they would get together and celebrate; many of the members didn't get along like Tobi and Deidara, and Hidan and Kakuzu. They all worked great when it came to missions, because it was given fact that anyone would be willing to work with the people they hated most if they were reaching towards the same goal. It was just the way of human kind.

Having nothing better to do for today, he decided to tag along with Itachi, his silent and intelligent Uchiha partner. Over the times they both have grown accustomed to each other, but not to the extent where they would randomly talk to each other. Hell, the only reason why they were on good terms was because each mission they completed was flawlessly done and always done earlier than scheduled. The last time Kisame could remember Itachi speaking to him was him saying, "Leave him" when he was going to kill a witness of the crime they both had committed.

He never understood one thing about the silent killer, and that one thing was why he avoided as many fights as possible, and when they were forced to fight, Itachi would always try his best to avoid killing the victim unless specifically to do so. He would normally knock the opponent unconscious, or beat them till they couldn't stand anymore, but would rarely ever take away a life.

Finished with his morning routine of brushing his teeth, showering and messily towel-dried his deep blue hair, he quickly walked downstairs towards the kitchen area to grab a bite. Considering that it was early in the morning, he would easily find the weasel sitting off in his own corner of the low table, cross-legged on a seat pillow drinking his daily green tea.

As he walked down the long hallways, he glanced at the colored Christmas lights hanging up along the walls that was never lit, and saw the undecorated pine tree sitting in the living room with the gift of emptiness surrounding the tree. 'Talk about festivity,' he thought to himself sarcastically.

He quickly stormed down towards the refrigerator. His loud stomps slightly shook the low table and caused Itachi to twitch slightly underneath his long dark bangs. The over-sized fish opened the large white door to the fridge and as soon as he saw all the filled cartons of eggnog, his stomach groaned in hunger as he sighed. "Ne, Itachi-san," he asked out of respect, "I'm not doing anything today and was just wondering if I could just follow you around, see what you do, since you're actually the only member leaving the base to do something in our free time."

There was long silence, as if Itachi were debating whether or not to accept company or no, but Kisame sweat dropped, noticing that the silence was there because he was finishing up his green tea. A sigh escaped the elder Uchiha's lips before he gave his answer, "No." With that said, he automatically disappeared, leaving his empty tea cup sitting on the mahogany table in the corner.

Kisame sighed, grumbling, "Yeah, well, I'm still going to follow you. You're doing something Uchiha, and I want to find out what and why you've been leaving the base during our free time." Quickly slamming the fridge door shut and washing the tea cup, he grabbed his Akatsuki cloak and left the base to follow his partner in crime.

Masking his chakra, he quickly caught up to the Uchiha, staying a good distance away from him but close enough to be able to see the Uchiha's low ponytail trying to free itself from under the high collar of the red clouded black cloak.

He couldn't help but see that the Uchiha was headed towards the direction of Konoha, the leaf village that the Uchiha had severed all ties from years ago when he was just a teen prodigy. Remembering the very first day he met his partner, he had noticed Itachi's distraught expressed on his face, but always remained impassive and silent. Over the years of being in the Akatsuki, Kisame had grown from just a young adult into a strong fish-like man, just like Itachi had grown from a young teenager into a young man and that distraught expression soon left his emotionless face.

Itachi abruptly stopped short on a tall tree branch and Kisame noticed he had masked his chakra seeing as now they were inside Konoha territory, specifically, on one of the training grounds. He halted and crouched on a thick tree branch a few ways away from the weasel and watched Itachi for a good few minutes to notice that he was just looking down and wouldn't be going anywhere anytime soon. "What are you up to Itachi…?" he muttered to himself. Looking down to see what he was staring at, shocked him the most. It was Konoha's infamous Team 7. He raised an eyebrow, wondering why Itachi would be staring at a bunch of now young chuunins.

Kisame noticed the jinchuuriki had grown much taller, his yellow blonde hair still spiked up but had a more natural flow to it and his outfit still composed of a bright flashy orange, but black was also incorporated. 'Maybe Itachi's just spying on the Kyuubi…' Kisame thought, rolling his eyes, 'Lame.' Taking a closer look, he turned again to notice Itachi not staring at Naruto at all. Instead, he was looking at his younger brother.

The older Uchiha stiffened when he finally noticed Kisame's presence, hoping that he would just leave and be stupid enough to believe that he was just spying on the jinchuuriki when in fact, he was keeping a close look out for his brother. In actuality, he didn't regret killing off his clan members, but he did regret putting Sasuke in misery. It was his fault that he couldn't find the courage to just kill off the only thing that still kept him connected to his family and the village. He couldn't kill Sasuke, no matter how many times the village elders specifically told him to kill everyone in his family, he had to keep his brother alive.

Over the years he had always kept watch of his brother, watching his small form grow into a healthy young teenager as he was now. There was no way that he would stop looking after his brother, probably the only person he cared so deeply about. He had heard once, what had happened during the chuunins exams and was forever grateful for the kunoichi, Haruno Sakura, for convincing his little brother into staying in Konoha. He had witnessed the event himself. If it weren't for the young sprite, he would have had to step in and torment his brother more, to get him to stay in Konoha where it was safer.

The once weak female of Team 7 was still growing, but was known fairly well in the Konoha-Suna region as Tsunade's prized apprentice. It was miraculous to him, how someone once so frail and fragile could be a potential danger and threat to the Akatsuki in the future. She did, after all, kill off one of their strong members in the organization, Sasori. Over the years, people had gained to respect her for her giant steps towards getting stronger, even Sasuke began to respect her.

He turned his eyes back towards his younger brother to see him throwing kunais and shurikens at targets with great precision. He scowled slightly at his brother's bad form, 'You need to bend those knees. It's better for your spine,' he mentally corrected him, but his onyx eyes soon softened. Sasuke had grown so much… He had grown so much without him. Soon, Itachi began to forget about Kisame's presence.

The large fish blinked and stopped staring at the young chuunins, now looking at Itachi and noticed something that shocked him. His Sharingan was deactivated to reveal dark onyx eyes and not only that, a soft smile was presented on his face. It was miniscule, but it was still noticeable. At that moment, the normally dense man realized something, and that was that the young murderer still cared for his little brother. For once, he felt his heart tug in his chest a bit, in a bit of pang as he came across another realization. Everyone, even the heartless killers in Akatsuki were still human. He felt his throat tighten as he disappeared in a silent poof back towards the base, leaving Itachi behind.

They all had a reason why they strayed into a path every shinobi feared and it was the path of a criminal. As he returned back into his room, passing the undecorated tree and the unlit lights, his throat still tightened. He shook his head, 'I need to sleep this off. This might be a dream,' and with that, he slammed into his large mattress and automatically fell asleep for the rest of that entire day.

It was only a matter of minutes before he woke up, to realize that it was another day. Incredulous that he actually slept the entire day, he continued to stumble into the bathroom, continuing with his daily morning routine to remember the events of yesterday. That melancholy smile of Itachi's reappeared in his thoughts again as he stepped out of the shower, a large thick towel wrapped around his grey-blue body. From there, he realized that that was no dream. It was harsh, reality. He clenched his jaws together tightly as he dried himself off and changed to his normal attire.

Walking down into the kitchen, he opened the fridge again to see cartons of eggnog still sitting in place, unmoving. Sighing, he closed the door gently, turned around to see the same empty tea cup sitting on the table where Itachi should be. 'He must have gone to Konoha again…' he concluded. The fish-like man stared at the tea cup for a long before knowing what to do. He looked down at his finger to see his ring, the one that every member had with different kanji signs on them. Pein had made sure that everyone was to never take the rings off because it was connected to their chakra stream, giving him access into their thoughts and their whereabouts if they were ever lost. He hummed and absentmindedly took the ring off, seeing a small indent in his finger where it should be.

Almost automatically, all the members were completely aware and alert and rushed down to where they could sense Kisame's large chakra source. The orange haired leader narrowed his eyes, "Kisame, what is the meaning of this? You know the rules. We all thought you were dead."

Everyone nodded in agreement. Kisame shrugged, "Well… Now that I have all of your undivided attention…" he slowly walked towards the fridge, grabbed a carton full of eggnog and chugged it all down, much to Konan's surprise.

"What are you doing?" The blue haired female hissed, snatching the festive beverage from the over grown fish. "Pour yourself a glass instead of guzzling it down like that." She growled, reaching for three glasses: one for Kisame, for herself and of course, for Pein.

At this point, many of the members were confused, but Tobi shot up and grabbed another carton from the fridge, waving it around everywhere and squealed, "It's Christmas, Christmas, Christmas, Christmas!"

Deidara, the long blonde haired member glared his sapphire blue eyes at the swirly orange mask in disgust and snatched the carton from him, "Well if you're going to be screaming it then where's my present baka?" He smirked at the boy's silence.

Tobi grinned beneath his mask, quickly racing towards his room to grab random pieces of paper and quickly took crayons out of his pocket, scribbling nonsensical things on them before handing them to Deidara and everyone else. "Ta-dah!" he grabbed the eggnog again and began shaking it, hearing the noise of liquid hitting the cardboard container.

By then, all the Akatsuki members began lounging around living room area that was conveniently connected to the kitchen, going back and forth for more treats and just chatting away. Kisame, Hidan and Konan had snuck sake into their eggnog, Tobi began to randomly decorate the tree with paper ornaments while the drunk blue haired female began critiquing his poor craftsmanship, Deidara was fiddling with clay, making small explosions around the living room to make it appear like exploding snowflakes and enjoyed scaring Tobi, Kakuzu counting his money by the table, occasionally take a sip of eggnog and did his best to ignore the loud environment, Zetsu helped Tobi with the decorating, and even Pein was interacting with the others, though he made sure to keep an eye on the drunken female.

Almost immediately, the door opened to reveal Itachi walking into the scene and blinked, not believing what was happening. It was very rare to have everyone in the living room interact with each other, more rather goofing off. The sight stunned him.

Kisame snapped out of his drunken state as soon as he saw Itachi and left Hidan to drunkenly curse at a wall. "Itachi-san!" he gave him a toothy grin. "I've got a surprise for you." Almost immediately, the two left the loud room and walked towards the main hallway aligned with unlit Christmas lights.

"Kisame, what's going on." Itachi muttered under his breath, growing suspicious of his partner's odd behavior. It was more of a statement than a question.

"Just watch…" Kisame bent down towards the ground, "Just watch down the hall." And as soon as he said so, he turned on a switch and automatically the halls began to light up in colorful lights.

All the lights stunned the Uchiha and it took him a while to adjust his Sharingan eyes to the vivid brightness. He soon saw the colors blend together as they lit up and the sight was absolutely stunning. His composure began to falter as he asked, "What is this for?"

Kisame just gave him a toothy grin as he stood back up again, placing a big hand on Itachi's shoulder with ease, "Merry Christmas bro." He looked down at the emotionless Uchiha and saw a miniscule smile, the same one he saw when he was spying on him yesterday, but this one wasn't so much sad, it was more content. He felt Itachi's shoulders relax a bit. "Just because your brother is having a good Christmas doesn't mean you shouldn't too."

Itachi quickly turned around, slowly walking back towards the living room, but stopped and turned around to admire the lights again and for the first time, gave his fishy partner a small kind smile, "Thank you."

Kisame grinned back, finally understanding that this is what Itachi had needed in a long time ever since the Uchiha massacre. He needed support and friends. Even if everyone in the Akatsuki were deadly criminals, and if they had a lot of things that differentiated them, they all had one thing in common that everyone could relate to: they were only human.

Review! (: Continue? It would be a while before I update if I do continue this.

Poll: Do you know each of the Akatsuki members' background? If no, would you like me to write short oneshots about them?

A.) No I don't know their backgrounds and yes! Write about them!

B.) No I don't know their backgrounds and I'm not really interested in reading on about that!

C.) Yes! I do know their backgrounds but I'm still interested in what you have to write about it!

D.) Yes! I do know their backgrounds already so I'm not interested in reading about them again!

E.) Other (type in your answer~)