"The Devil and Uchiha Itachi"
Author: Shelby
Pairings: ShisuixItachi
Rating: T (15+)
Summary: The masked man grins. "I go by Madara. I work for Old Scratch. Or maybe you could call him the Devil." Itachi makes a deal with the devil, but cannot understand the price to pay until he stands over Shisui's lifeless body in the water. Shisui/Itachi; yaoi.
::A/N:: based on the great short story "The Devil and Tom Walker". I got inspired to write a faust-like fic with a different twist. This also reminds me of the film The Craft, where one of the witches casts a love spell on a boy who hates her and makes him love her obsessively. Hope you enjoy. Review? (Revue? French!)
Spindly, towering trees shadow Itachi's path.
The light peeks through the forest, dappled against his skin. Itachi looks at his wrist as he walks, sees his pale flesh and bruised blue tendons, a tiny freckle, a scar. Crows caw out in the distance, the discordant, cries piercing the twilight air.
The short cut is not unused by the children who live as Uchiha. They travel back from the Academy in giggling groups, clutching their bags across and winding their way through the deep woods towards the solitary compound, following old shuriken and kunai embedded in trees as their guide.
Itachi lingers. Why did he choose this path? He does not want to return home. He stands in a clearing, a small area where the trees loom above him. It is almost July, only two weeks left until....
Something stirs.
Itachi grips his kunai, turns...
...and is met face-to-face with a very odd man. He is tall in stature, his shoulders broad, wiry muscle visible beneath black clothes. His hair hangs long and unkempt, cascading down his shoulders as dark as soot; he wears no shoes upon his feet, his gloves are ragged - but it is the mask that is so unsettling. Rusty orange with curling black flames.
"This forest is of the Uchiha. What right do you have to enter?" Itachi is unafraid. He has nothing to fear of a ridiculous intruder, a stranger. The man stands still, somber and elegant. A rouge shinobi, perhaps?
"Your name...is Uchiha Itachi?" His voice rumbles within his chest, rough yet smooth like honey. Itachi gazes onward.
"What business do you have with me?" Itachi asks solemnly. A light breeze makes the trees sway pleasantly, a thousand tiny leaves chorusing together in hushed whispers.
The man is smiling beneath the mask. "You are a very, very unhappy boy." A heavy silence fills the air, and Itachi frowns. "...Aren't you?" The masked man chuckles and leans against the trunk of an old oak tree. His capricious attitude, his bizarre manner - it's unnerving.
"You see - do you know who I am?" He asks, taking out a knife with a handcrafted handle, rusted with blood. Itachi says nothing.
"I can sense that you are in need of my services. I go by Madara. I work for...Old Scratch. Or maybe you can call him the Devil."
Itachi stills. He does not understand. The words reach him but they glide over his skin, unable to sink in. He can sense a strange power, a chakra tainted - but he cannot listen to lies, and has no time for foolishness. "I must be on my way. My parents will worry," Itachi says offhandedly, turning to walk deeper into forest towards "home."
"But what about Shisui?" Madara asks innocently. Itachi pauses.
"Yes. Of course I know about Shisui. How could I not? You're captivated by him." Itachi's heart beats in his throat, for this secret, protected and guarded from everyone else, is unable to be seen through his actions or words -
"I know. I understand." Suddenly the man stands before him, stares down upon his face with that single chilling eye. Another grin. "Try to remember." Madara places a hand on Itachi's shoulder.
And suddenly there is Shisui with that girl.
Itachi can see them giggling and blushing as they met in the back streets in secret. A memory splayed out before him, vivid and clear. Itachi can only use his eyes, undeniably and always cognizant, to drink in Shisui smoothing her hair, a blush splashed across her cheeks, their lips meeting in a kiss.
"It hurts, doesn't it?" The demon says. A chagrin fueled by the anguish bubbles in Itachi's chest, because it is all this man's fault that he saw it, lived it twice.
Madara turns his head slightly, taps his chin. "I'm sure I can think of something to make this work. But I suppose I'll need your confidentiality first." Itachi stares, crimson burning holes through the copper.
"As if I would tell anyone about a delusion. I'm obviously seeing things," Itachi murmurs sensibly. "Now let me go home."
The demon sighs. "Well, I suppose that's good enough. Itachi - you're infatuated with him, aren't you? So make a deal with me." Madara murmurs, a voice hushed with darkness. "I can make him like you - no, love you." It's said softly as if it was a secret.
Itachi is confused by love. He has never witnessed it before in his own circumstances, or his parents' for that matter...and Shisui cannot love that girl....
"But he can," Madara says gravely, and Itachi feels his stomach fall to his feet and hurtle back to place.
"How did you...."
"The details, boy, aren't important. I just need your trust. So what do you say?" Madara says, his voice sweet and jovial.
Itachi wonders. Wonders what it would be like if Shisui talked to him, smiled at him, was with him differently...changed. Wonderful. "All right. I'll do it. I want to see what happens," Itachi says slowly and dubiously, sure that this is a charlatan's game - but the idea still thrills him.
"I should mention that there's always an eye for an eye...." Madara chuckles from his play on words as the boy with the sharigan stares warily. But it is no matter. Itachi feels avarice ooze from his pores. He wants a feeling, an incomprehensible feeling but a real one all the same, between Shisui and him - like love. Nothing else matters - should it?
"Nothing else matters," Itachi echoes his thoughts. He stares stonily at the ground.
Madara smiles. "Good boy. Let's shake on it, shall we?" Another cheshire grin. Their hands intertwine, and Itachi feels a shadow creeping under his skin, embedding there, slipping through that palm into his, infecting him. Making him good enough.
Itachi releases the hand, stares at his own and shivers. Madara bows. "Must be on my way now. I'm quite the busy man....Well go on home, now. Go on."
Itachi feels an utterly immense darkness; the wind howls. Itachi turns away. He walks between the trees, forcing himself to stare ahead. For what if he looks back, and the man is there, and that was all real?
He walks home for supper. The trees seem taller, their scraggly branches hidden beneath leaves curled as if they will reach out and grab him. Itachi walks faster. A breeze cools his heated skin. At his sides his hands shake with strange feelings of dismay.
The shoji door slowly slides open for him. Sasuke sits at the table; Mother washes dishes in the sink, granules of sugar and grapefruit pulp sliding down the disposal; Father summarizes a mission for his platoon. Itachi examines his cauliflower. He doesn't touch anything on his plate. No one remembers he is late.
"Itachi! Wait up, a second."
Itachi turns and sees Shisui. His charcoal eyes and hair, his black shirt marked with their crest, his bandaged ankles. Itachi is unable to meet his gaze. They stand inside the head quarters of the Police Force. Shinobi busily confer with one another, giving reports and receiving some.
The Uchiha is going to walk home. His muscle ache from a day of training; tomorrow he is expected to attend one of the first meetings for ANBU. When Itachi ponders over conversing with his squad, something odd settles deeply within his chest. Indifference.
"I was wondering if we could, you know, hang out later." Shisui smiles pleasantly. Itachi's heart turns. This is not the familiar request to train or help with shuriken jutsu. Other Uchiha push past them and walk out of the head quarters, the wooden doors squeaking and groaning.
Itachi can remember when he was eight and Shisui was nine, and there was a strange innocence that was unresolved between them. A fleeting feeling to carry them through bloodshed and war. And now they encounter one another again with that similar feeling of demureness, but...it's lighter somehow, and the air crackles with an invisible current of electricity.
"Of course. I-If I have the time." Itachi manages, clutching the mission reports in his hand.
Shisui smiles, trails his fingers over the Uchiha's hand. He whispers in his ear, warm breath ghosting Itachi's cheek, "I hope so."
///
When Itachi goes home that night, he can still feel Shisui's touch on his palm. He doesn't sleep. The breeze rushes in through his open window; the sheets are balled up on the floor. Sleeping - trying to sleep - is pointless. He doesn't want to see that masked face in his dreams. It haunts him enough while awake.
Shisui swims in the pond, rocks slick from moss underfoot. Water skirters glide; the surface is disturbed by a flock of sandpipers. Itachi sits on the dock, the air muggy, tiny mosquitos buzzing near the shore. Itachi makes a cross with his nail on an itchy bump near his thigh. He is back from his squad meeting. They always swim together in the summertime. They are the closest of friends. Friends.
Shisui dives beneath the surface and remerges grinning and breathless. Something is changed.
"Get in!" Shisui calls. His shirt, a wet bundle, lies on a rock on the sandy banks.
"That's fine." Itachi doesn't like water. It's smothering. And he's thinking too much. He's sure if he goes under he will forget the need to breathe.
'I go by Madara. I work for...Old Scratch. Or maybe you can call him the Devil.'
Shisui swims to the waterfront. He walks on the dock, wet feet leaving prints on the dry wood, and sits beside his friend. Shisui swings his feet listlessly and says, "You should get in. It's about a thousand degrees out. And look - you're wearing black. Aren't you dying?"
It suddenly feels uncomfortably warm. Itachi feels like he is suffocating from the heat and something else. The shirt clings to his back.
Itachi lifts bony arms and the shirt glides over skin unseen to the sun. It pools around his wrists. Itachi stares at their distorted reflections and hesitantly puts an ankle in the cool water. He wants to slowly sink beneath and never return.
"Better, right?" Shisui smiles. Itachi notices the water making rivulets down his pale cheek; his dark hair messy against his forehead; his arms hanging at his sides in an almost gangly way that came with the awkwardness of adolescence, of being 14. Itachi shivers.
The older boy traces goosebumps on the younger boy's skin. A voice rings in his head. 'You're rather... infatuated with him, aren't you? So make a deal with me.'
Itachi wants the water to swallow him. His ankle sinks deeper. Why can't he accept what he was given? Could the water truly take him to a bottomless place where he wouldn't be found, away from this wish?
I can't disappear. Shisui's bony fingers glide over his cheek. Maybe I can, Itachi realizes as Shisui's chapped lips press against his own, if the water is deep enough.
But, it isn't.
End note: how was chapter 1? I was thinking maybe one or two more chapters. If you haven't ever read the Devil and Tom Walker, the story is basically that Tom Walker makes a deal with the devil to be rich, get treasure, etc. but his soul is taken later when he's old. So anyway...I hope for fans of the story, or for people who have read it, you liked my take.
Review? I appreciate them. They're the best. :)
-Shelby