Itachi eventually gave up on trying to sleep at about 3am.
Insomnia wasn't a new thing for him. It never happened on missions, because on missions every second of sleep was essential, crucial, and other words that all amounted to 'an unrested shinobi is a sloppy shinobi, and a sloppy shinobi is a dead shinobi'.
After missions though?
After mission insomnia was a rather different story.
At the near-silent dinner the night before, the near-silent dinner that had been full of his mother not asking what had happened, Sasuke occasionally opening his mouth, getting out half a syllable but then thinking better of it, and Itachi not bothering to open his mouth at all, Itachi had taken care to note where his mother kept the tea.
It was a minor detail, but it had felt like an important one, especially since the place hadn't changed since he was a child.
More evidence that this was real, especially since the tea had been in a canister that Itachi didn't recognise. Why have one detail the same, and the other different? Especially since the canister looked a few years old at least, and obviously well-loved by his mother since it had a small chip on one corner, though it was in a colour Itachi knew his father favoured more- a dull crimson not far removed from blood or the Sharingan.
He had yet to see his father. Itachi was honestly more than a little guiltily relieved about that. The relationship between his father and himself had always been… complicated.
But paying attention to details like that, and the way his mother still very slightly hesitated when rising from the seiza kneel due to the leg injury that had ended her jonin career (Itachi had never asked for the exact details of it, because whenever it came up his mother's practiced unexpression tended to start appearing as though it had been carved from marble), and the fact that the drapes had all changed colour, but the little figurines were mostly the same, barring a few new ones and...
Itachi was getting more and more indication that this really was real, what he was seeing.
Genjutsu just weren't this…
Detailed.
Fifteen minutes later, Itachi was sitting on the roof, letting his teacup keep his hands warm as steam rose up into the night sky.
Since he hadn't really bothered to hide his outline on the roof, he was unsurprised when he was joined a few minutes later.
"Can't sleep?" Shisui's voice was sympathetic, and oh so nostalgic.
Itachi shrugged.
Shisui sat next to him, and they sat together silently for a while.
"I've missed you," Itachi admitted after about forty-five minutes of looking up at the stars and sipping his tea.
"Can you talk about it?" Shisui asked him, meaning, 'is it classified?'
"No," said Itachi, meaning, 'If I told you about it, you'd think I was completely stark raving mad.'
Shisui, being Shisui, caught his second meaning from Itachi's tone. Itachi could tell by the way he stiffened, ever so slightly.
Itachi sighed inwardly. He had almost forgotten how perceptive Shisui had been of his moods.
"I don't want to talk about it just now," he said firmly, still gazing out over the dark roof-tops.
"Alright Itachi. I'll let it go," Shisui replied. The unspoken 'for now' sat loudly unacknowledged between the both of them. "If you try and get some sleep."
Itachi nodded, but didn't immediately move.
Shisui sighed. "Now, Itachi. Aunt Mikoto is worried."
Itachi scanned for chakra signatures, and found that his mother was, indeed, awake, judging by how he could feel her pacing in the room below.
Itachi felt an odd wash of guilt. His mother had attempted to make conversation after dinner, but he had brushed her off. He wasn't sure how one made small talk with someone who you had beheaded when you last saw them.
Especially when it was his mother.
"I'm not a child," he retorted, to distract himself from that line of thought.
Shisui almost smirked. "You're whining like one."
"Am not," Itachi replied with a ghost of a smile and an exaggerated whiny tone that would have probably made some of Itachi's acquaintance do a double-take. It was an old game of theirs that they had played sometimes. Since his father had been so strict with Itachi's emotional training, Shisui had taken it upon himself to make sure that Itachi a) knew what normal children sounded like so that he could properly mimic one when undercover on missions, and b) to give Itachi a chance to vent every once in a while.
Shisui's smile was a little more genuine this time- Itachi could see a measure of relief in his cousin's eyes.
"Go to sleep Itachi," he repeated. "We can talk tomorrow, if you like. I for one need some rest after my latest mission."
This time, Itachi just nodded, and shunshinned down to his room.
He lay on his futon, and went to sleep, hoping futilely, as he often did, that he would not dream.
Though if this were a dream, and then he experienced a dream within a dream… Itachi scoffed at the circular pattern of his thoughts.
He settled himself with a breathing exercise he had perfected on missions, and this time, thankfully, he dropped off to sleep.
Back on the roof, Shisui blinked. As an expert on the shunshin, he tended to half-consciously pay attention to peoples' techniques when doing the jutsu.
Since when had Itachi been able to focus enough on the shunshin to do that without handseals?
Still, no one had ever accused his cousin of being anything but clever. Shisui had always known that if pushed, Itachi could have been a far more skilled shinobi than he already was.
But something had always held his cousin back.
Putting these thoughts aside for later, Shisui went in search of his own bed. Mission: Pry Foolish Younger Cousin Off Roof Before Aunt Mikoto Starts Fretting Properly (and that last bit was important, because when Aunt Mikoto started Fretting Properly, then so did everyone else with a sense of self-preservation,) was an unqualified success. So Shisui could afford to get some rest before attacking his next, more long term mission.
Figuring out what the hell had been done to Itachi so he could start planning out how exactly he was going to rip the perpetrators limb from limb.
With input from Aunt Mikoto, of course. She might not be an active field jonin anymore, but if he left her out, then she would make him Regret it.
With Prejudice.
