He's not ashamed to admit Itachi still haunts him.
The prodigy is everywhere he shouldn't be now... Kisame sees him in the small, but effective gestures of wealthy women talking to their friends.. the polite tilt of the head that Kisame just knows means they don't like each other was classic Itachi, along with they coy glances at handsome, wealthy, or influential men (victims), who not long after would fall over themselves in an attempt to catch her (his) eyes again.
The man is everywhere he wants to be now… Kisame feels him in that strange, separate world between sleeping and waking… in beautiful encounters in the dark when the living can just barely hear Itachi's whispers and the dead can smile at Kisame's. At times like this, Kisame could suffocate under the grief and love he feels- but then he will wake, and wonder what on earth he had been dreaming of…(on the odd occasion, he knows, and even though it's no more than a faint idea, a whisper of a higher knowledge, when that happens, he is smiling all day).
The elder Uchiha is everything he never wanted to be now…Kisame hears him in the curt tones of Sasuke's voice, those brief orders and comments. Kisame can't pay attention to anything else when Sasuke speaks, it's the closest he gets to being content without falling asleep (just to hear that voice again, this time in a vague echo he forgets by the time he's eating breakfast).
Sasuke and Itachi… though Sasuke tried his utmost to differ from his brother, they're disturbingly alike. Alike in the way they speak and look, alike in the way they eat and sleep, alike in the way that they move…
He comes to realise that he is wildly infatuated with the prodigy. The younger one, of course… he has to keep reminding himself who's who these days… It's unfortunate, but it's a fact. Just like the sad truth that Kisame's finding himself increasingly prone to flirting with delusions… ghosts he occasionally kids himself exist.
"You're not falling in love with me, are you?" Sasuke chided one day and Kisame daringly allowed himself a flash of a memory; in which Itachi asked him the very same question in a very different tone of voice. Itachi had sounded frightened (of Kisame or of his own feelings- nobody will ever know), Sasuke was just amused. Wary, at most.
If Kisame were to be frank, he would have to admit that when it comes to himself and Sasuke, two lesser men would have snapped by now. They are one another's last vestiges of Itachi, clinging to the earth. He exists in their gestures, their humour, their memories (distant, bittersweet and passionate memories that would reduce any real human to tears- but they are shinobi).
For one who strived not to exist in any conventional fashion, Kisame thinks, Itachi certainly made his mark.
Meh. Utterly pointless... meant to touch on the KisaSasu (because, yeah, I'm a freak like that)... I've just always wanted to try my hand at KisaIta. I failed miserably... but I love my reviews/flames/drooling/explosions in your pants? So talk to me?