the guided, a naruto fanfic

the guided
miraa.

once itachi said very softly to obito, "save my life...save my life..."

the last time he ever saw uchiha obito was when he was just six years old, wrapped in obito's warm arms, and the older boy's raspy voice seemed to loft through the air from the heavens into his lowly ears - "do you like chrysanthemum blossoms, itachi-kun?"

the breath tickled his ear, and itachi let out a rare smile that snaked around his lips. "what do they look like?"

"you've never seen one?" obito sounded incredulous, but of course itachi's never seen one - itachi's never seen much past the walls of the dojo, or ninja academy, or the steely blades of kunai and sharingan eyes. the black sheep, on the other hand, was labeled a failure and outcast, and was free to lead a relatively normal childhood, devoid of regular uchiha retraints. so itachi loved, and envied, and loved this kid, so much that he almost cried from being with him, touching his face.

"the chrysanthemum looks like a godsend," obito explains, "like the angels have actually blessed the earth, or something, or maybe just tricked your eyes, but yet here they are, they exist. so i guess what i'm trying to say is that they look like clouds. no, more than that - the best clouds you ever saw, the kind that brings all your dreams on a silver platter, white cascading down on each other, for what seems like eternity."

"really..."

"if you want, i can take you to see one when i get back from my mission." he untangles itachi from his limbs, stands up, brushes himself off. "but i better stop spending so much time with you. shisui'll get jealous." he winks and gives him a smile.

"i don't care what he thinks."

"alright. see you later." back turned, he gives a one-fingered salute before disappearing through the door.

two weeks later, itachi is screaming, screaming, screaming, hysterically, but only in his shattered psyche, the one that waited for eros to come back and kiss her face and say it's okay, but never did. as his eyes followed the chisel making way in the granite for one very familiar name - "u...chi...ha...o...bi....to...." - shisui's hand on his shoulder, the only thing that knew how itachi was really tearing the world apart - he realized - he never wanted to see a chrysanthemum, ever, as long as he lived a second more of his worthless life.

at thirteen years old and the most distrusted person in the ANBU corps, itachi's got himself a pretty nice racked-up pile of accomplishments. it doesn't really help, either, that kakashi is his partner in those typical ANBU two-men cells, because ANBU missions are lonely and minimalist, just like many of the operatives' hearts tend to be, so be it.

sitting on a rock, side-by-side, looking at the night-sky, it was almost a repetitious farce of that time, isn't it weirdly ironic that he'd be sitting here with an uchiha?

itachi corked open a canteen of water. "are you thirsty, senpai?"

the thing about itachi is, is that he's always so formal, like he's so careful around himself that he's practically tip-toeing around a cobwebbed house.

kakashi shook his head. "no."

the uchiha took a swig for himself. at this time his eyes were not constant-mangekyou yet, so as his black eyes flitted from the moon to his silver-haired companion, he had a tendency to ask, "what was obito-nii-san like?"

"huh?"

"you were a teammate of obito-nii-san's, weren't you?"

"yes, i was."

"he died when i was six." his eyes were fixed on kakashi's, as if it was a significant statement.

"i'm sorry."

i watched him die before my eyes. guilt washed over him. what was he really apologizing for, anyway?

"he was lively," he said, answering the question.

"oh."

"we always got into arguments. too many, perhaps. in retrospect, i liked having him in my life. it enlivened me." his guarded shoulder dropped. "actually, i changed my mind. can i have a drink? thanks." he lowered the mask to his jawline and took several big gulps, water escaping from his lips in lieu of his tears.

"you removed your mask in front of me," itachi stated matter-of-factly, as kakashi replaced the said piece of cloth and returned the canteen.

"guess i did."

"i didn't know you could be so disarmed in front of someone you distrust so much."

they held a gaze, so long that kakashi almost wished he could turn his one functional eye away. but it wasn't anything like a stand-off, no – more like a quiet moment of truths?

"what about you?" kakashi asked. "what was obito like around you?"

finally itachi broke and turned away. "the brother i always wanted. the brother i never had."

"i thought you had a little brother."

"perhaps i phrased that incorrectly. i meant, i wanted to be part of his family, and not mine."

"well. i guess even the uchiha have internal troubles, no?"

"yes." he pressed his lips together, then parted them again. "more than most."

"i was wrong about you then."

"i don't know what you mean."

"well, i just mean that you seem like the perfect uchiha, upholding the family honor and all that great holy jazz. but i guess you hate it just as much as the rest of us."

"the rest of you can hate the militaristically-inclined as well?"

"everybody does."

itachi slowly lifted his hand, and without looking, his elongated white fingers began moving towards kakashi's face like some sort of albino snake. kakashi's eyes widened, but he couldn't move a single muscle, sitting there. he was mesmerized. the pads of the fingertips hit his nose.

"kakashi-senpai," itachi enunciated softly, "may i see the eye?"

and the fingernail glowing albescent under the moon's light made contact with the cloth of the hitai-ite.

"may i?" almost pleadingly, this time.

we are only two men who both loved obito until it was too late to turn back. "stand here. in front of me."

itachi stood up and turned on the heel on his foot, too smoothly to be done on finely crushed pebbles, but then again, everything this boy did was insanely inhuman. just like now. his index finger lifted kakashi's chin delicately, with the preciseness of an engineer, and with the other hand he ripped off the metal-cloth forehead protector without so much as a second regret. it fell away, clanked to the side.

and now, again, instrumental mechanics, he traces that scarred skin between which lies the heirloom of his youth, passed down from the bloody hands of one sin to another. oh the horror, the horror!...

kakashi watched as tears began to pool in either side of itachi's eyes, and spill liberally over his stiff cheeks.

later, when itachi joins akatsuki, he can't seem to erase just how absurd this scene is from his mind.

madara's called him from the darkness again, just when he thought he could rid of it or at least ignore the recesses of it. two ill-descript minions, namely pain and konan, flank his sides as they proceed down the dark halls like a death march.

"did he say anything about why he wanted to see me, leader-sama?" always so formal. always so polite to be cut up into little boxes and cubes.

"no."

as far as pain is concerned, itachi is the only other member of akatsuki that knows of madara's shadow existence, and, clansmen or not, completely unworthy of it. he's always treated itachi with a little less than kind and a cold civility at best.

madara beckons with one flickering finger.

"come here, itachi-kun."

he complies.

"always so polite, always so forward..." his lips form an obscene smile. "i always knew you were the perfect knight."

madara is not a shogi fan, not in the least bit. "yes, madara-sama."

"i heard that on your last visit to konoha, you ran into some old friends of yours, didn't you?"

"if you could call them friends, then yes, i did."

madara laughed, throatiness rolling out from the back of his tongue. a very deep laugh, if you will. "the front you put on is superb." he sobers. "your old ANBU mate, kakashi the copy ninja, and that horrible maito gai. and...dear sasuke-kun."

"yes, madara-sama."

"what is this? i very kindly ask you to bring back the nine-tails and yet all you bring back is news of your brother?"

itachi said nothing.

"so tell me, itachi-kun, how is our dearest sasuke, whom we have brought up to be the greatest avenger this side of the world has ever seen?"

"still weak."

"still weak. still weak...huh." madara let out another one of his laughs. "is that all you brought back to me, two words? that doesn't even amount to a common two cents."

"i apologize, madara-sama."

"no matter." madara waved it off with one hand. "you may leave now. you were always as easy to read as a book, what with that rhetorical education of yours."

itachi scraped the silence off the floor with his boots and exited the scene.

"but you see," madara mused to himself, "knights always have a bad habit of sacrificing themselves for a pawn."

like apples they fell easily from his dreams. once realized they went away and never disturbed him again.

after itachi had cupped his hands around kakashi's face, after he had cried tears straight into kakashi's own eyes, after all that, it was silent for a while. neither could move. petrification of a good deal.

it was in that moment, a crazy thought or delusion, that kakashi mistook the younger uchiha for the older uchiha, brought itachi's head down slowly, and kissed him in a desperate fit, so passionately that the gods of love thought him one of their own, this night's all about mistaken identity, and itachi, perhaps also in a state of confusion, kissed him back. and fingers ran gently through parched hair, moving down to an electrification of dry skin. oh passion, thou misguided soul. oh glory. (the night went on forever...)

kakashi bent down and laid some peonies on the black slab of stone, regaling himself back to present day. it's the day they embark on a journey to bring back the cat that strayed from the path – uchiha sasuke – and though he convinces himself with every atom of his being, he still needs to hang on. every year he continues to return in spite of everything, maybe to uselessly update the ghosts of his past, maybe to redeem and repent, who knows. the only he knows is the motion of his legs every day and somehow, this is where he is led.

"ara, things have changed..." his eye fixated on the three familiar names. he's grown a bit sentimental in his old days, he admits, what with secret longing and all the looking back he's doing. kakashi still remembers those days like yesterday, when he and rin and obito were sitting on hills of rolling grass, rin is talking about cotton-candy clouds, and obito just turns to him and says, "you see that one? i think it looks like a godsend" and maybe, just maybe that was the first time kakashi fell in love with a look (or maybe this whole business of loving obito was born from the loneliness of his heart; after five years of screaming down the road three names that he can't remember anymore, his voice has grown weary and hoarse).

and then there's that one. naruto reminds him so much of obito it's not even funny. just looking at the ninja academy pictures, naruto donning those goggles...kakashi wishes he could close his eyes, reach out his hand, and whisper, "obito, is that really you? have you really come back to haunt me?" and naruto's blue eyes, wide as the sky, stare back at him, taking him in one wave at a time, and he feels like he's been sent back thirteen black cat years to the past...

later that day he goes out for a cup of tea, pulls out the photo he keeps in his front pocket, and well, things haven't changed as much as he would've liked.

the mangekyou was eating him from the inside out.

gasping for breath, uchiha itachi staggered against the wall in an unusually open display of weakness. his hand shot up to his throbbing head as he blinked several times, as though the action would clear the darkness from his vision.

"damned if you do and damned if you don't."

he didn't bother turning around. "deidara-san."

"looks like you're having trouble, un."

"hardly."

"don't lie." one slim hand grabbed itachi's shoulder, and the other rested on the arm held up for support. "you look like absolute shit, un. and whaddaya know, it's because of those goddamn eyes."

what he wouldn't give for one more breath about chrysanthemums against his ear. "deidara-san, get off of me."

"harsh words, senpai." he drawled the last word with all his might. "just trying to help."

itachi felt his legs crumble beneath him. the hand perched so supportively against the concrete wall slipped, and deidara caught him easily in a messy heap.

"see, see? what did i say?" he carried him almost princess-style down the hall, which itachi gritted his teeth at. "you're lucky that bastard tobi ain't here, un. otherwise, who knows, that kid'd be going all kinds of nuts over this."

ungraciously, he dumped the uchiha onto his bed. the room is almost completely dark, the only light is from the moon peeking in behind heavy curtains.

"geez, who know the day would come when i'd be taking care of uchiha itachi, un..."

this is a bitter reunion between two shadows. deidara is still extremely bitter. but itachi maintains that he couldn't rebel against madara's orders. orders were absolute. itachi beat deidara to a bloody pulp and dragged him home to the akatsuki. madara had simply smiled at the blond, said, "welcome," and left, deidara glaring daggers and imaginary wounds into itachi's chest decorated shamefully with the same colors of his eyes.

"you know, the only thing i'd say is artful about you are those eyes, un..."

"i take it you know about them."

deidara blinked. "well hell yeah, everyone sees you going blind, un. it's just a matter of time before they'd start taking you down too."

"where is tobi?"

"eh? ah, who knows really. he's not in this room half the time, i swear, un."

"do you get lonely?"

"what?"

itachi was not ready to retract his statement. "do you get lonely in this empty room?"

"i guess." he nodded at the other bed in the room. "but i use his space to store all my c4 anyway."

"even assassins aren't exempt."

"huh?"

"even people like us, who kill with our eyes closed, can feel the vastness of the world."

you can see the stars in the dark, if you squint your eyes close enough. deidara smirked. "hey, looks like your eyes aren't the only thing artful about you."

itachi rested a hand over his head. for this type of casual encounter between akatsuki members, it was unheard of. spit upon, probably. the only good explanation is only ever loneliness. loneliness is the only reason why itachi could even imagine sitting in obito's arms, testing shisui's patience, or why he could break down in front of a man named hatake kakashi handling the scars like a beloved baby, or why in the same night stayed in deidara's room and hollowly told him he was sorry for dragging him down one sandy night into regrettable reaches of hell.

"it's fine, un."

"what makes it fine isn't the company, i'd imagine."

"i got along fine with danna."

for a while all they could hear was each other's breathing.

"hey senpai."

"what?"

"just making sure you didn't fall asleep, un. just making sure you would hear what i wanted to say next, un."

"okay."

"because, you know, i think i'd like to match your eloquency, 'cept i'm no orator like you, un. just i think it's very hard to be human, and what coincidence that with the last shreds of humanity we can muster, we are having this kind of decent conversation, un."

three weeks later deidara blew himself up in favor of seeing kid uchiha brother being blown up beside him - art is a bang! needless to say, it was not successful.

hey, hey, i'm not some trodden-down, upside down horseshoe, am i? throw some salt over your shoulder and i'll be okay?

itachi just wanted to say, hey, i thought you were all kinds of insanity yourself, but now was not the time for it. now was just not the time for it.

this is it, he says to himself. he packs his kunai, tucks them into little folds and pockets of his clothes, this is it and i don't need anything else other than my own shaking hands and my goddamn blind eyes. he makes sure his hitai-ite is securely fastened around his forehead (because did he ever tell anyone that the one he is wearing is actually kakashi's, and that they had swapped before that fateful day?).

kisame is waiting for him, his blue skin illuminated by the moonlight. his usually-confident smile is a smudge, a little more than a faded memory in the back of his mind.

(that's right. how it happened is that kakashi never put his hitai-ite back on after itachi had taken it off, opting for a white gauze wrapped like a temporary eye-patch. itachi never asked why, but somehow inside he knew. because it just didn't feel right anymore. because, maybe invoking love in obito's name was just a sick desecration and neither of them deserved love anyway, outrageous animals that they were. he couldn't even think about it anymore.

on the way back to konoha they stopped at a roadside stall selling takoyaki. the smell wafted through the air like something incredible, and inexplicably itachi had the urge to say something.

standing in the midst of steam rising off of little balls of battered octopus, itachi said, "kakashi-senpai, do you know what a chrysanthemum looks like?"

at first he regarded this conversation noncommittally. "what?" he asks.

"they look – or so i'm told – like a godsend."

and then kakashi's soul quite literally dropped to the ground.

"…what did you say?" he choked out. the question was stuck in his throat.

itachi looked to the side. "i've never seen one, but i've heard they look like clouds, billowing out on top of each other, so beautifully and infinitely that it seems like you've been blessed by the angels."

"your takoyaki is ready," the owner of the stall announced, but he went unheralded. kakashi merely slumped down to his knees, pried the gauze off his eye, and threw his hitai-ite out of his back pocket. it was scratched. he had put it with the kunai at an odd angle, the result of which was a jagged slash across the leaf insignia. itachi picked it up, then knelt down, untying and strapping his own hitai-ite around the lone sharingan.

"i'm sorry," he murmured in kakashi's ear.

what was he apologizing for?

he got his answer soon. two days later, itachi murdered the entired uchiha family, save for his one little brother, sasuke.)

kisame crossed his arms and shook his head warily.

"i don't like this. i don't like this one bit."

"what is it, kisame?"

"deidara's gone as well. it's quiet now."

"are you worried?"

kisame looked at itachi with steady eyes. "worried isn't the word. i'm more…unnerved than anything."

"i see." he folded his arms. "kisame."

"yeah?"

"i'm going tonight."

"to meet nine-tails and then to fight your brother? seems a bit early, i think."

"on the contrary, there couldn't be a more opportune time."

"well, suit yourself, i guess. is this supposed to be some last farewell?"

"take care."

"that's my line."

they stood on the edge of the doorway, but it seemed much bigger and took everything in, at least at the moment. something like regret almost washed at kisame's feet, but he was better than that, they both were.

"itachi-san, akatsuki is a sham, isn't it, in the scheme of things."

"i've always known that." he lowered his head. "good-bye, kisame."

"see ya."

always formal, short and sweet, down to the last line.

when they pulled away, lips chafing for more, kakashi apologized.

"you shouldn't be so quick to take fault," itachi said flatly.

"it was a trick of the light. i thought you looked like someone, that's all."

"did i look like him? in the light, that is…did i look like him?"

kakashi closed his eyes and his head pitched forward into itachi's chest, right into those waiting hands. somehow it had ended up like this, and his left eye throbbed in reminder that he had the perfect souvenir for all his troubles.

"goddamn uchihas..."

after the sandaime's death, before happening upon naruto and jiraiya, itachi stopped to see an old friend (if any such word could even be applicable) and tortured him with his new-fangled mangekyou with partial suicidal intentions in tow.

kakashi couldn't believe in him, this man who had strayed from all paths and instead embarked on a journey through the trees and brush, branches bruising and digging into his sides, but when he saw the pinwheel-pattern materializing in front of him, he realized something –this one hasn't changed. that thought in itself scared him out of anything else, because how was it that amidst a changing world of tricks and rules, uchiha itachi had managed to grab onto faith and remain stationary?

from everything from seventy-two hours of unwilling torture to meeting the nine-tails for a little reassurance in fate, it was the same. (perhaps kakashi was the only one who still hung onto believing in uchiha itachi, despite popular concurrence.)

seems like they're entwined forever, no, by one little boy with smoke-filled locks and sunbeams for goggles? and now they've both placed their bets on a boy with heaven in a golden bed of hair.

"naruto...you have saved me, you have saved this soul..." now go save sasuke, for all he's worth.

fin

a/n: Sorry for non-capitalization, I tend to write that way when I want to quickly jot down a scene, and then the whole story ends up being that way. And everyone one knows how lazy I am, so.. :D

Some notes:

- I set the Kakashi Gaiden arc at age sixteen for Team Yellow Flash. I don't know it's been ever mentioned how old they're supposed to be anyway, but I wanted Itachi to be old enough to remember Obito, so I'm sorry if I messed up the canon timeline.

- After watching the episode "Assemble" (or whatever it's called) I realized I probably royally screwed up Kisame's character, but OH WELLS, I figure since it's my fic, I can tweak him however I want. :D

- And sorry to TobiDei fans that I made Tobi absent D: Again, it's for the purposes of this fic, and since Madara's so busy working his evil schemes anyway... xD

Other than that, hope you enjoy my own strange, messed up version of the Naruto world :I