(Dreamt up in the shower.)
"Do you love her?"
Shisui's hands stilled on the weapon he was oiling. The smell of chain grease hung heavy in the air, coating the words that slipped from Itachi's lips in a thick, black residue.
"She's my fiance, Itachi," Shisui said quietly, his back turned away. It was not the answer Itachi sought. Nor was it the answer he deserved. Itachi held his emotions in check, but Shisui already knew without looking the fine tremor that laced his cousin's closed fists.
If love was equal parts duty and respect, then Shisui loved his fiance. He had loved her from the day the priest tethered her thin wrist to his with a red cord and Shisui recited to her from memory the betrothal vows in the presence of their two clans, fanning out through the great hall, a sea of formal kimono and benevolent stares. She was the symbol of his commitment to the clan.
But that was not love. Love was searching a pair of dark eyes under long lashes and finding a piece of himself he never knew was missing. It was stolen kisses during a spar on a hot summer afternoon and the white line of collarbones by firelight. It was footprints in the snow, a path towards old hunting grounds, the sacredness that settled deep in his bones and slipped between the beats of his heart. The unbearable memory of an emaciated little boy in a war bunker a lifetime ago.
Shisui exhaled and closed his eyes. "No," he amended. "No, I don't love her."