Notes: Shisui POV. Reincarnation FTW. A relatively happy ending. ItaShi, but minimal. Because ItaShi needs to get out of my system – it corrupts the macho-Itachi image in my head. After this, I'm writing ten uninhibited chapters of manly-pirate Itachi to set things (pardon the pun) straight.
Warnings: In my limited experience (I admit, I read six? seven?), all ItaShi are made of epic. This is not.
For: coincident, without whom I'd never even notice this pairing.
In their own time
this is how you live and live again
(This is how you live.)
He jogs
because that is what little boys do when they can't flash.
He jogs because he is late. The caravan for Konoha is passing by on its usual route some twenty minutes down and he'd never thought goodbyes could take so long.
He smiles, because the sky is a peerless blue and the world is fresh and
today, you will find him.
(This is where it begins, again.)
He skips
and it looks like he's dancing.
He skips down the dirt roads, rushing past two old ladies who whirled about and would have tried to give him an earful about respect if he hadn't already dashed away, skidding down the grassy incline to the riverbend.
He jumps on mossy rocks above bubbling water – easy, confident – like a seasoned pro. His reflection in the blue green waters laughs with him, raucous hair and high cheekbones and a face split wide into a smile.
It was an unfamiliar face, a standout face – his mother claims the exotic slant of the eyes comes from her distant Suna origins – fit for the boy who always refused to enter the mold. The twelve-year old boy who can hit birds in midflight, run over high fences, balance on a wheel, climb trees in a storm, who'd always been different, better, stronger, smarter, faster, more handsome, more real than the rest.
It's not being arrogant if it's true. He's special, and they all want him, even those two ladies whom he knows would take this opportunity to pay a home visit to drink him in, revel in the one spark of brilliance their sleepy town has, nevermind his oddness, his ubiquitous impulse to puppetplay people to his will, his tendency to brood, and to answer to a name other than his own.
(Shisui)
They didn't know about the memories, flashes of ghost-sound and ghost-light which shape him more than solid reality: memories of greatness, of precision, skill, razor-sharp blades, midnight blue and rushing water.
Two days later, while fishing down the river, another one burst into his brain and this times it is a king coming home to his stronghold, a glorious welcoming, where all others move to give him his natural place, where he can rule.
It's of a boy.
Itachi.
(This is how things get complicated.)
He paces
and tries to piece together two shards of one life.
Shisui paces, looking over every now and then to the thin sheets of paper where he had written down memories even when he knows there's no need to.
He does not know when the remembering began.
He does not know if he welcomes them. Ever since Itachi, they came faster and faster, detailed and horribly personal, bleeding into his personality,cluttering up his clean, bright life, tainting it with bright-red nightmares and ash-gray memories of war and duty.
He remembers this also –
cousins racing down a river, a warm hearth, a stunning pride, citrusy smells of summer, dango, low burning fires, clan meetings, kunais moving back and forth like a pendulum, rosettes of blood, kisses and kills.
A month before he is running late to a home-bound journey, he remembers everything.
(This is how you come home.)
Shisui finds Konoha essentially unchanged, except that all of it might have been totally rebuilt from the ground. He expects a bit of bitterness to seep through, because he knows the cost of this prosperity, this bright, busy metropolis – magnificent enough to makes stars pause – except it doesn't come.
He just doesn't care anymore.
He carefully crawls over the mossy, tumbled stone that once bordered the old Uchiha compound and listens to the wind, waits. Nothing.
The place he called home so many years ago, once so alive, brimming with power and light, where the sun glinted off rooftops and trees grew to fullness, was a graveyard of wrecked walls and empty houses overgrown with weeds.
He walks around for a while, dazed, long enough to have ANBU on his back if he wasn't careful, until he literally stumbles upon the marker of a mass grave bearing one date and meaningless dedication.
There can be no more doubt: the coup failed.
Shisui hangs his head.
The hurt comes like an old ache, like a heart being wrung in the distance, not quite having the ability to sting. Shisui gags on the petrified sorrow. After a moment, he buries yesterday's bones and puts the ghost to rest.
It's over, he breathes out, saying it like a prayer. It's over. Rest.
He runs a suddenly weary hand through his hair, and runs over to the Nakano.
(This is how wars and loves begin.)
He runs
Like he's chasing after life and can't quite keep up.
One.
Shisui runs after the man with deceptive ease, marvels at the shinobi flying over a sea of rooftops, not quite touching each one, the Uchiha emblem displayed proudly on his back. Behind him, Itachi follows, his cheeks hollow with anxiety. In front, more Uchiha children being herded to safety.
When Itachi slips out of his grasp, the three children who will grow up to accuse the prodigy of murder fall back, one of them grasp the small, grubby hand, and Shisui is grateful enough to be speechless.
The Uchiha look out for each other. His mind says.
In the distance, the Kyuubi lays siege to Konoha.
When the beast is sealed, the hatred against the Uchiha begins.
Two.
"How can individuals be so singularly stupid, Shisui?" Itachi, lounging on his bed, bringing in the early morning cols, still in the oversized ANBU breastplate that inadequately covers his thin chest, exuding a barrel load of contempt.
It is not a picture to fall in love with, but Shisui had always been exceptional.
He falls, hard, head over heels, not when Itachi's cools hands are playing over his red, raw chest, pouring green chakra over a punctured lung; not when they're sitting out at sunset, illuminated by shafts of golden orange light, sharpening weapons, exchanging what he would say was sparkling wit; not when they're both up to their ears in Kirigakure's sick-green gunk, gambling their lives, huddled together until darkness comes with her cloak.
He falls when Itachi was condescending and impatient and downright petty.
Three.
It starts the night Itachi does not attend a clan meeting, citing ANBU duties.
Fugaku tells Shisui to watch him.
As if he hasn't been doing it his entire life.
Four.
This sunset is the last one they'll ever see together, and where they should have memorized the way the light made ripples in the water lapping gently at the pier, the ducks and dragonflies, the hum of cicadas, the warm breeze, the darkening twilight, should have talked, should have hugged, there was nothing.
"I remember being very happy here," Itachi finally says, his voice soulless, before he slips the ANBU mask on his face.
This is the closest Shisui gets to a declaration of affection.
Five.
Itachi is a traitor. The words hurt him more than any sword, any illusion, any war could imagine.
(This is how the world takes.)
He walks
because he knows he can't outrun a hurricane.
He walks slow, slower than he's walked in a long time, not really caring about the noise he's making as he treads the leaf-strewn path to the Nakano.
There will be no one else by the river tonight. Itachi will have made sure of it, he thinks, almost fondly, almost removed from the volcano of hate bubbling inside him at the absurd simplicity of Itachi's impending plans, something along the lines of,
kill the clan (some? all?), end the coup, take the fall.
The river seems to rise, drowning out the moon, catching him in its umbra, waiting to give judgment.
Shisui thinks Itachi might be on the opposite bank, a negligible distance, offering no justifications and he hates.
( hates Itachi for so clearly choosing a side and sticking to it even if it breaks him, hates the clan and hates the village for not yielding, and hates himself for not choosing a side, for floundering around when its obviously the most important battle of his life, for existing in this crisscross of love and battlelines and madness)
A shadow slips. Shisui activates his Sharingan and the world blurs into red –
(damn)
– Itachi fights so dirty that, for a moment, his focus breaks and he sinks, ankle deep in the cold murky waters of the Nakano –
(flash)
– he slugs Itachi hard enough to break jaw, to hell with the kunai –
(flash)
– Itachi's eyes flash murder at him, but –
(flash)
– Itachi's genjutsu cannot keep up –
(flash)
– "You," his voice is choked with white-hot rage –
(flashflashflash)
Shisui rains blows fast, angry, merciless (and very imprecise, when he thinks back on it).
There are fists and heels and chin and forehead and elbows and teeth.
(flashflashflash)
Itachi blocks and dodges and falters, his face ashen like a boy just out of war, biting his lip so hard it bleeds. The tomoe spins madly.
(flash)
Shisui stops – he's kicked Itachi into a tree and Itachi's damn head had fucking cracked like lightning –
(flash)
He crushes Itachi's bleeding head face-first into the water, wants to drown him, so angry he's crying, and yells the things he mustn't say:
would you kill
the only person who
ever really
gave a damn
about you?
Itachi whispers yes and Shisui thinks he could feel the hurt all the way to his bones. His hands shake, curl around Itachi's windpipe, choking him blue.
Itachi hacks, shudders, and swipes a desperate claw at him, scratching skin.
But it feels like dismemberment because this, this is Itachi,
(the boy he's loved for forever)
and Shisui can't be hurting him.
Shisui's grip slackens.
Shisui knows he's not wise, and he knows he can't always be counted on to make the right decisions. He can't know what the state of the world would be tomorrow, if it burns or sinks or gets razed under.
But he knows he couldn't kill Itachi.
Itachi takes advantage of a momentary lull in Shisui's strength – too many Shunshins, the body cannot keep up – and pulls away. Itachi glares at him, looking every inch the immoveable ANBU captain even sopping wet and bloody and killing his best friend –
"I need the Mangekyou, Shisui."
(This is how eyes get stolen.)
He slows,
he can't do it anymore.
He slows, because Itachi is pushing down with savage strength, because the water is wringing life from him as surely as the stars above them existed, a thousand or million or thousand million years ago, giving light to this moment.
His chest burns as it clings to oxygen.
He sees Itachi – Itachi at two weeks so quiet they all fear he might be sick, Itachi at two years adept at walking, gurgling and staring somberly at random objects, Itachi at five war-scarred and seemingly held up only by his own bravery, at ten impossibly brilliant at his Chuunin finals, at twelve so achingly young and beautiful, at thirteen looking like the living dead and desperately needing a haircut, at twenty and alive –
(oh he wants so badly to see that)
– at sixty and still kicking, at a hundred and fifty–
Shisui releases his last breath
and he sees, by redmoonlight, the stream bubbles float heavenward –
(This is how new life starts.)
He swims
where his mortal remains once sank.
He swims the current like a fish who knows all this river's moods, all its secrets, its every sandgrain and strip of moss.
Shisui remembers dying here.
It was still crystalline in his mind: the way sound receded into a great distance, the turquoise waters, Itachi's distorted face and his own wretchedness.
He drowned. His life was still so damn unlived.
He touches a hand to his throat, his stomach, and needs to remind himself he is alive.
He dives under, adding a little more salt to the river.
Many people misunderstand: Itachi did not hate his family.
They did not understand him, they forced his hand, they near-turned him insane, they didn't quite love him in most people's given definition of love. But Itachi had appreciated them, for all their faults, and loved them regardless.
It's not remarkable – hell, not even rare – to kill kin if one didn't care, easier if one hated.
Itachi loved his family, and he still killed them, and made it look like he didn't give a damn.
Only Shisui knows the depth of his sacrifice.
The sky is cloudy and he swims until there's only fireflies to light his way out the sad place.
(This is how the world gives back).
Shisui would have wanted to live, to love, to have been loved. He would have wanted to see his cousins grow up, his clan live free, his village prosper. But he knows this was impossible as surely as he knows who he was, is.
There is a reason why the world turns your way, why dreams exist, why heavens cry, why gods sometimes turns spurning into blessing and blessing into curse. There is a reason why he lost. There is a reason why he remembers.
The world has a tempo of its own, which men cannot pull back, slow down, rush past, or change.
Things will happen in their own time.
Today you will find him, Shisui thinks, and goes on his way.
End.
Ohmygod. I'm spamming pointless fic.
I shouldn't ask, but review? I characterized them a bit more human (and more awful) than most, and that's the thing I'm most iffy about (AFTER the nice Uchiha clan). Feedback, even flames, would be great.