Beta'ed by the wonderful enemyanemone.
Something doesn't feel quite right.
There's an aching sensation in his left pinky as if there's a rubber band wrapped tightly around the digit. Uchiha Itachi, mass murderer and Akatsuki member, looks down at his hand and he…
He swears he sees a flicker of red on his ring finger. But then he blinks again, and his finger is bare save for the odd scar and callus from throwing kunai.
Probably nothing, he decides. He's been seeing floaters in his eyes recently, probably from overusing his Sharingan.
Still, he sleeps fitfully that night.
He feels a stronger tug on his hand a few days later when he's out shopping for groceries in Ame. Aside from him and Kisame, there's no one else at the base, and since Kisame stands out like a frostbitten thumb, it's Itachi's lot to grab supplies from town.
Itachi looks down at his left arm, and there's a trail of red thread spooling down his leg and through the village.
He jerks his hand reflexively back from the peach he's about to buy and the old woman manning the fruit stand quirks her brow.
Ever the gentleman, Itachi drops a few formal apologies before making a hasty retreat from the marketplace to the grove of trees a little ways away from the village gates. It won't do to blow his cover, not when he's sacrificed so much to get to where he is now.
When he's sure that no one is around, he casts the requisite concealment jutsus before slumping down at the base of a tree.
He eyes the red string around his finger in horrified fascination.
No.
This-this couldn't be possible. This couldn't be happening. Not now. Not after everything that's happened to him over the past few months.
The gods were surely laughing at him, because Uchiha Itachi shouldn't have a soulmate, not when he hasn't been able to protect anyone near him. Not his parents. Not Shisui. Not Sasuke. Itachi has the touch of death, after all.
The thread tightens around his finger again almost mockingly.
He somehow finds himself wandering to the small creek at the edge of the woods. It's thankfully empty save for the few squirrels that chitter at him angrily before flirting their tails and scampering away.
He hunches down and stares into the water. Shisui had taken his own life in the Naka River, which meanders through Uchiha territory and thus is far, far away from his current location. Nevertheless, all waters come together at some point, and Itachi consoles himself with the thought that a part of Shisui is presently in this creek.
I don't deserve a soulmate, he tells his cousin. I don't want to ruin another person's life. What do I do?
As always, Shisui doesn't say a word and simply regards him quietly through the hollows of his eye sockets.
Itachi lingers there until the waters darken with the reflection of the star-filled sky.
I won't listen to you, he later tells the cord that encircles his finger.
It doesn't respond.
By this time, he's accepted the fact that the string won't come off; it tenaciously clings to his skin and refuses to let go, even after he's scrubbed hard enough to draw blood. He could probably just ignore his soulmate. After all, there are babies born without the red strings and people whose soulmates pass long before they themselves do. Anbu is full of broken halves whose soul strings dangle limply from their fingers, and there they are reforged into lethal weapons, shards of soul honed into sharpness.
Still, he hates this.
Why him? Why now, of all times? He's been functioning perfectly well without the damned string for fifteen years. How is he supposed to accept that there's another person with the other half of his soul, an innocent who now shares the blood and the sins that still stain his hands? At least for him, there is salvation in the form of a vengeful brother seeking retribution for the murders of his loved ones. For this child (it must be a child; why else would the string appear so late in his own life?), there is none. After all, how would they find salvation when they have no sins to repent, when the darkness that stains their soul is not due to their own actions?
Itachi just hopes desperately with his whole heart that the distance between his soulmate and himself is sufficient enough that the soul connection isn't active. His past memories are what deepen the shadows under his eyes and startle him awake at odd hours during the night: eyes wide, heartbeat erratic, breaths shallow. He doesn't wish the same fate on his soulmate, whoever they may be.
Still, it's odd that no one other than Itachi himself can see his soul string.
Sometimes, when he's off-duty and he's sitting cross-legged on top of the Akatsuki base at night, the lurid red of the string turns a vibrant shade of pink under the moonlight. When he tries to ascertain if Kisame can see it too, his partner just stares at him.
"Hmm?" Kisame says, blinking beady black eyes at his partner. "What string? Is this an Uchiha joke? You're pulling my leg, right?"
Itachi counts it as a blessing. Such blessings are few and far in between, and his soulmate will need every one of them to survive in this wretched world.