"If you were to do that, I wouldn't say 'That's a bird.' I would say 'That's a sad, sad man.'"
- The usual guy. Someone else was making bird calls. Yeah. It was that kind of day.

"I can just walk by [ninth grade history teacher] and literally see her day get ruined. Seriously, she's walking along, smiling, sees me, instant frown."
- The usual guy.

o.o.o.o.o

A/N: Before you do anything, go look up DemonLantern on DeviantArt. That guy's got an enormous gallery stuffed to the brim with HidaDei, so if you enjoy GC… well. You probably already know what to do. I've spoken with him several times, and he'll probably be pretty happy to talk to any other fans of our star couple, so go say hi and take a look around, m'kay?

Also, I'm taking a huge step with this chapter. I just… it didn't have the same impact with the asterisks, so I had to write out the curses. Don't expect this to become a common occurrence. As soon as this scene is over, I'll go right back to what I've always done. (I'm cringing on the inside, really.)

o.o.o.o.o

Last time: And for the first time in many years, Uchiha Itachi and Uchiha Sasuke looked each other in the eyes with no lies and no hatred between them.

o.o.o.o.o

Deidara looked around the room and tried to make sure that everyone was backing away from the impending explosion, metaphorical or otherwise (and as much as Deidara loved explosions, this was one that she was not prepared for), that was about to occur in the center of the room.

A lack of lies and hatred did not mean a lack of anger. It did not mean a lack of resentment. It did not mean a lack of… of anything and everything that could cause the inevitable outcome.

"Well, we'll just leave you two alone for now, un…" Deidara practically chirruped, trying to herd people out of the room before things got too intense. She'd planned on having the confrontation in another room, planned on making sure that people didn't get in the way, get in the crossfire. She may not have liked them all, but… okay, so you don't spend that many months with people without either hating them or at least liking them a little, at times, and Deidara had unfortunately ended up with the latter. Lima Syndrome, she supposed. It was like Stockholm Syndrome, but reversed.

"You complete and utter bastard!"

Deidara winced as Sasuke's voice rang through the base. It was raw. It was sad and angry and broken and just yearning to feel a loved one's touch, just this one last time.

Deidara knew. She'd been there.

A quick look to the other present Akatsuki members ensured that the hostages and minions were quickly shuffled out of the hallways and into the guest bedrooms that had never had much use before. Sasori stayed behind as a guard, and Hidan and Konan just nodded and urged her back to the supposed battlegrounds. Kisame came along, but that made sense, and Deidara wasn't about to stop him. Kisame probably should have been the only one there, from a point of view focused on privacy. However, even Kisame wouldn't be able to stop both of the Uchiha brothers in a fight, as he'd often admitted to barely being able to hold his own in sparring matches against the elder of the two.

Kakuzu and Pein were nowhere to be seen.

"Sasuke, I understand that you—"

"You understand nothing!"

Deidara glanced at Kisame in worry, and pointed at the wall, making a circular motion. It wasn't an actual hand sign, but it got the message across well enough, and Kisame quickly put up several silencing seals. They edged into the room quietly, neither one willing to watch, but knowing they had to.

Kisame for Itachi's sake.

Deidara… for reasons known only to her.

"All these years, Itachi! All these years, I've tried to hate you! I've tried to hate you for what you did, tried to make myself push everything I know out and just kill you! Do you know how much it hurts, to lie to yourself until you're convinced that you hate the person you care most about?" Sasuke reached out and grabbed the front of Itachi's robes, yanking him closer and those were tears streaking their way down his face, weren't they? "Do you have any idea how fucking painful that is?"

"Sasuke, I—"

"You could have done something! Maybe you couldn't have stopped the massacre! Maybe you couldn't have kept yourself from being labeled as a nukenin! Maybe you couldn't change any part of the big picture, but you could have at least fucking taken me with you!"

"You were a chi—"

"Where the hell do you get off painting yourself up as a martyr, huh?" Sasuke let go of Itachi shoving him away and moving to start pacing around the room. "Where do you get off playing the tragic hero? Where do you get off trying to manipulate me into hating you for whatever mad plans you've had in store? I am not your puppet to kill you for your atrocities, aniki."

"I was never a hero, Sasuke." Itachi spoke quietly, a strong contrast to Sasuke's loud, roiling anger.

"No, you weren't." Sasuke's voice was cold, but the clashing emotions, buffeting one another around inside of him, were still very, very present. "You never were."

They stared at one another. Sasuke's eyes were spinning madly, the tomoe completely blurred. His face was emotionless, but his eyes showed that his face hid the truth, hid the pain and anger and love under a stone mask.

Itachi's face was worse. While Sasuke at least had his eyes to convey emotion, to show that he was human, Itachi had nothing. His eyes were almost dead, the only emotion being one of a strange sort of hopeless agony and despair, an acceptance of whatever punishment was necessary to atone for his sins.

Pain, death, humiliation… Itachi would take any of it.

Sasuke seemed to realize this, mid-tirade.

"What would you have me do, Sasuke?" Itachi looked up, the Mangekyo on and turning, spinning so very slowly, hypnotic in its dreary circles. "Go back in time and undo the massacre? It would only happen again, only by the ANBU's hands instead of my own this time. Spit on their graves and pretend I enjoyed it? You know it would be a lie. Crawl back to Konoha and beg forgiveness? The advisors know, and they would not stop the rest from sending me to the lowest depths of the Torture and Interrogation building. Die for what I did? I'm already on my way there, and have been for years."

"I—" Sasuke stumbled over his words, but then his face hardened. "You don't get it, do you? Everything you do, you end up as some twisted mockery of a pinnacle of righteousness, even if you're the only one who knows. Even if you're in denial about it, you have this urge to twist the world around you until you've nearly destroyed yourself and those closest to you making it better. You're a self-destructive creature, Aniki, and it's only spread from there."

"Then what, Sasuke?" Itachi's voice was still lower, but there was a steel edge to it. "What do you want? What is there that I could possibly do to make up for what I've done to you and the rest of the world? If you can think of anything, I'll gladly try."

"Be my brother." Sasuke hissed, eyes slowing. "Be the brother that I need and want, not the brother that you think I need to survive. I'm strong enough to survive what I have until now, and it is pointless to continue your insane, suicidal sacrifices."

Itachi looked Sasuke in the eyes, and there was an emotion on his face, only the barest hint of one. Out of everyone on the planet, only one person had spent the past few years with enough time around Itachi to be able to actually read him. Deidara and Sasuke couldn't see it, but he could. Kisame could.

Kisame saw hope.

Kisame wasn't sure what he felt about Itachi. It certainly wasn't a romantic feeling, and it wasn't quite familial either. Not parental enough for father and son, not informal enough for an uncle and nephew, and only the gods knew what Itachi considered brotherhood if this twisted and broken mockery of a once beautiful relationship was all he had left.

They were comrades, officially. Unofficially, they were… friends, he supposed. Close friends.

Best friends.

They had no one else, really. Sure, the rest of Akatsuki could flit around, but they were casual friends. They were acquaintances at worst, or somehow worming their way into the strange duo's lives the way Deidara had, but there was still something different about the link between Itachi and Kisame. Something strong, something that couldn't quite be named, but it was there.

There weren't any romantic or sexual feelings between the two, but Kisame felt that if he had to spend his life with one other person, and he was told to choose right now, it would be Itachi. (1)

Whatever the case may have been, Kisame could honestly say that he'd seen a wider range of emotions, post-massacre, anyway, on Itachi's face than anyone else. He could also honestly say that he'd never seen this one before.

Hope.

Not a mild, childish, detached hope, such as hoping that they'd find a nice dango shop in the next town. Not an uncaring hope, such as while gambling, though Itachi rarely did that anyway. Not any kind of simplistic hope, but a raw, needy desire for acceptance and forgiveness that was just now being given its first glancing ray of sunshine after a long, cold, dark winter.

And while it wasn't exactly a good feeling for Kisame to know that he had never seen this on his partner's face before, he felt something warm and caring that he'd thought he'd killed back in Kiri bubble up and strike true at knowing that Itachi would finally stop hating himself now.

"I can forgive you, Itachi. I do forgive you, just… just stop this tired act. Stop killing yourself for something that will never work. Stop living like the world is on your shoulders. Stop being such a goddamn fool and just listen to me for once." Sasuke reached up to rub at his eyes, an action that no one commented on. When he looked back up, the Sharingan was gone. "You're supposed to be the smart one, Aniki. I'm the little brother that's supposed to look up to you."

No one was quite sure who made the first move. No one was quite sure whether Itachi stepped and tripped, or if they were already standing quite so close, or if Sasuke just reached out and pulled on Itachi's clothes again, but it happened.

For the first time in nearly a decade, the Uchiha brothers were hugging, and for the first time in far longer, their tears were those of happiness.

o.o.o.o.o

A/N: Wow, so, um… heavy chapter. Not as much Deidara, but I think we can let that slide this once, because… wow. I wrote that far too quickly once I got into it. It's still short, but… wow. And for those of you who are hoping or worrying, I don't ship anything incestuous, so stop squealing.

And Kisame focus, yay! Which reminds me:

That (1) was there for me to explain something:

I had no idea where I was going when I first started writing that little spiel into Kisame's consciousness. I just started and then kept going, rambling on until I realized where I'd gotten: heterosexual life partners. Basically, two people of the same sex/gender (we'll leave that part open to interpretation), who aren't interested in one another sexually or romantically, but are still as close or closer to each other than most married couples. A bromance on steroids, if you really want to take it that way.

Right, so, announcements! There is a poll on my profile, and I urge you to go vote, since you'll get to choose which story I work on after this. Here's a hint, though: you can vote for three of them, but you'll get a better deal out of things if I get more normal votes than "upgrade" ones.

There's still a contest going on for my stories over at dA, so go check that out if you want to win a nifty prize or two.

And I've recently started coming up across stories with strange similarities to my own. Not GC, but others. In one of the cases (there was someone who was 'inspired' by RaH, but was too young to understand a few common courtesies they should have followed), the matter was addressed and resolved easily, but the rest are a bit harder to pin down as to whether they are actual copycats or just unfortunate comparisons. Like the story I found that had all nine Jinchuuriki travel back in time. This plot point was, for them, introduced in April of this year. Guess who wrote a story based on that exact idea back in October?

I'll leave well enough alone for now, but if you guys see someone writing something that seems way too much like one of my stories for me to feel completely comfortable with it, please tell me so I can investigate for myself.

Ja ne,

Phoenix