Chapter 22 – Boundaries

His breath misted and the air nipped at his face as he hurriedly made his way along the street. He shivered under the white robe, rubbing his shoulders as he strode, in an attempt to get his blood running again, because at the moment it felt like it had congealed in his veins.

The sun was close to rising, or so it was supposed to, because he could see no light at the horizon to announce its advent. The sky above was overcast, likely to make today's dawn break a prolonged and dull affair. There was only streetlight to guide his steps. Luckily for him, it was not a long way from the Uchiha district to the gates.

Shisui was thinking he would be the first one to arrive, when his eyes fell upon a familiar figure sitting on a bench. Itachi was seemingly engrossed in a scroll he was reading, and a messenger crow was perking on his shoulder, almost looking like it was reading the message itself.

"You're here early," Shisui said after they exchanged greetings.

"I thought the cold would help me think," Itachi said, rolling up the scroll and attaching it to the crow's leg.

"Did it?"

Itachi checked both of the black bird's legs to ensure the messages were secured before sending it off. It flew away, quickly swallowed by the darkness. "Not really."

He stood up and brushed off the hoarfrost from the back of his cloak, although most of it had melted and soaked in by now. He was not wearing his ANBU mask, so the marks of sleeplessness were plain to see, even to Shisui, once he got within an arm's length. The lines on Itachi's face were deeper, the circles under his eyes darker. From under the lashes lowered as a guard, his gaze seemed like today's dawn, with its light unable to penetrate through the clouds.

Shisui's brows furrowed in concern at the sight. "Did you sleep at all?" he asked.

"I'll sleep when I'm dead," Itachi replied, in a tone more beaten than the last time Shisui had seen him in this state.

His heart gave a painful twinge at the sound of those words. Throughout the past week, since Sasuke had been discharged from the hospital, Itachi had spent as much time at home as their schedule allowed, trying to pick up the broken pieces of his relationship with his family. With Sasuke, especially.

Shisui had seen his friend fleeting to and from the training grounds day after day, hardly a moment wasted on small talk with anyone. Itachi could only invest himself emotionally in so much at a given point, so he did not begrudge him that, yet it was becoming all too clear that his efforts were taking a toll on him. That his affections had been rejected once more, if not become entirely one-sided. Shisui found himself wondering if Sasuke could truly be so cruel. Somehow, he could not relate the past image of his younger cousin to the version of him which he had seen at the hospital that morning.

The curse of the Uchiha, Shisui thought mournfully. Love drives us, love consumes us… and when there's nothing left for us to love, it all turns into hatred. The Mangekyou was a testament to that. Pain turned into power, red like the blood spilled to awaken it. Shisui prayed Itachi would never know that kind of pain.

"We don't have to go, you know," he said, placing a hand on Itachi's shoulder. He could feel his warmth through the cloak, seeping into his frozen hand. "You can still cancel the mission."

"No," Itachi said, a strange urgency in his voice. "I need this."

He was distancing himself, Shisui realized, retreating into the shadows as Itachi the ANBU captain, instead of Itachi Uchiha, the brother. "Need and want are two very different things, Itachi."

"I know."

Shisui gazed mournfully at his younger cousin, wanting nothing more than to take his pain upon himself. Some of it, at the very least. He had been fighting for a long time now. He needed to know it was alright to lay down his weapons every once in a while, that there were still people around him who would not judge him for it. His fingers dug into Itachi's shoulder and his heart skipped a beat as he pulled him in his arms.

"I'm here for you," Shisui said. "I always will be."

Itachi tensed at the sudden closeness, only to ease into it once the momentary surprise passed. Shisui's warm chakra enveloped them both, rising against the cold seeping through their cloaks. Unfamiliar, but not uncomfortable. Itachi felt so exhausted, body and soul, that all he wanted was to give in to this moment, to suspend it in time. To hold on to it, for as long as he could. "Thank you, Shisui," he whispered.

"Ohayo," said a third voice, and it was only at the sound of it that the two of them became aware of another presence in their vicinity.

Shisui pulled back, fighting the heat he could feel rising to his cheeks. He looked over his shoulder to see Akane standing behind them, eyeing them impassively. Itachi turned away to grab his backpack from the bench, where he had left it, avoiding her gaze. Strangely enough, Akane seemed equally bent on keeping her eyes averted from him.

Itachi summoned the rest of team Yon to the ANBU training grounds that afternoon, to discuss the coming mission in the aftermath of his brief meeting with the Hokage. Tsume and Kuromaru were the last to make their appearance, and by then the others could already feel the cold biting into their flesh. The icy wind sweeping across the clearing had not helped. Shisui thought almost longingly of the past summer's heat.

The information contained within the scroll Itachi had received from the Hokage was meager, at best. All they would have to go on were details pertaining to the initial, missing patrol team, to the recently missing squad which had gone after them, and the border patrol route. Itachi let them in on as much as he knew himself, careful to make note of what the Hokage had said.

"There's no way of knowing if the Akatsuki is involved, so we'd best be careful," he said. "I suggest we begin our search along the border patrol route. Tsume and Kuromaru, we'll be counting on you in this, especially."

"Yes, captain," the Inuzuka and her ninken both said at the same time.

"There's no telling how long this search will take, and we'll be headed for the mountains, so make sure you pack accordingly. It's bound to be cold at this time of year and there's likely to be snow. Any questions?" His gaze shifted between the four of them, but no one said a word. "Then I'll see you tomorrow, at dawn."

Three of them nodded and vanished. Itachi's eyes fell upon the last remaining figure, and Akane raised her gaze to meet his. "A word, captain?" she said.

Itachi had an inkling he knew what this was about, but he could not refuse her. He nodded cautiously, grateful for the cover of his mask.

"I haven't cleared you for field work," Akane said. "It's only been two weeks. The treatment is working, but you still need your rest."

"I feel fine," he argued. "And in any case, this assignment seems like a good way to ease myself back into action."

"Both your points are moot," she insisted. "You feel fine because you've been sticking to your treatment plan. You still need regular healing sessions and, I repeat, rest. Besides, the parameters of this mission are uncertain, at best, you made that very clear. There's no telling what we'll find out there. For all intents and purposes, this was my call to make, Itachi, not yours."

Itachi felt the need to rub the bridge of his nose to ease the tension threatening to spread out towards his temples, but the ANBU mask prevented that. He could feel his patience ebbing away, growing thinner by the day. With Sasuke gone, training with Kakashi, there was nothing left to distract him from his mother's misery and his father's attempts to bring him to heel. Truth be told, he had been entirely selfish in accepting the mission, if only to get away from all that. To get a breath of fresh air. To put some distance between him and the mess his life had become.

"Don't take this from me," he said in a quiet tone.

Akane's eyes widened in surprise. The sharingan glowed red through the slits in the ANBU mask, fixing her. He was throwing her own words back in her face, the ghosts of a near past which for all her struggles, had never left her. She crossed her arms, starting to feel the cold creeping under her skin.

"This is different," she said.

"Is it?" Itachi asked, his voice gaining a cutting edge. "You know many things, Akane, but do not presume to know me."

A flash of hurt crossed her face before it resettled into its usual composure. "You're making a mistake."

"Thank you for your input," he said, when it became clear she would not continue to argue. "I'll see you tomorrow."

They had run all day to take full advantage of the precious few hours of daylight. By the time night fell upon them, Itachi's chest felt wound up in a tight knot and the icy air hitched in his throat with every breath. The lack of exercise over the past couple of weeks was evident in the way his muscles responded to the effort now, as compared to before the accursed illness which had ravaged his lungs.

He stifled a cough as they came to a halt in the middle of a small clearing. His eyes found Tenzo, and Itachi did not need to ask for him to gather his meaning. Tenzo's hands worked through the seals before slamming into the frost-covered ground, sending his chakra into it.

"Mokuton: Shichuuka no Jutsu!"

The dormant roots underneath the ground responded to Tenzo's chakra and did his bidding, pushing through towards the surface and reshaping themselves to recreate his projected mental image. The Rakuyouan took shape, a wooden house that would serve as their shelter for the night. It was too cold by far to consider camping outside, and they were all relieved that Itachi had allowed Tenzo to expend his chakra on this jutsu.

"I'll place the tags to make it undetectable," Tenzo said as they entered the house. "You go on and get the fire going."

Shisui followed Tsume and Kuromaru, who seemed familiar with the interior of the place, into a large room. There was a firepit in the middle, along with all the necessary firewood to keep a blaze going through the night, courtesy of Tenzo. Shisui was relieved they would not have to wander outside, in the cold and dark, to look for dry wood. He formed the hand seals almost like an afterthought, and a blaze came to life, engulfing the stack of wood.

The room lit up and Shisui slumped down beside the firepit, grateful for the warmth which radiated against his face, which had been numb from the cold for hours now. He was content to simply sit there, while the rest of his team busied themselves laying out their bedrolls and digging out their food supplies.

"We're barely halfway there, and it's already cold as shit," Tsume mumbled as she plopped down on the floor moments later, next to Shisui, her mouth half full with a ration bar. "I hate winter."

"It beats a summer heatwave," Kuromaru commented nonchalantly, lying down by the fire himself, nevertheless.

"Only because you have fur."

Shisui smiled softly at the banter, even as his eyes were trained on Itachi. He had been quiet all day, and while that was not unusual in itself, Shisui knew there was more behind Itachi's silence this time. While he could only guess at the events that had brought this about, their effects were plain to see. They worried him.

Itachi finished laying out his bedroll in one corner of the room and pulled out a bento from his backpack before joining the others by the fire to bring some warmth into his limbs. The run had left him spent, and once the heat from the effort had dispersed, he had started shivering. The ample room would take a while to heat up from the fire, so he kept his cloak on.

"This is the same missing team I mentioned to you a while back, you know," Tsume murmured as she stared into the fire. She was sitting with her knees brought up under her chin, more serious than Shisui had ever seen her before. "At the mahjong game, remember?" she added, like an afterthought. "What do you think happened to them?"

"It's been over a week," Tenzo said, the last one to take his place by the fire now that he had finished putting up the concealment barrier of the Rakuyouan. "The odds aren't in their favor, at this point."

"They could have been captured," Tsume said.

No one contradicted her, but even she had not sounded very certain of her words. Deep down, they all knew the chances of finding the border patrolmen alive after all this time were slim to none, whether they had been captured or not.

"We'll reach the border outpost tomorrow," Itachi said. "The jounin in charge there may shed some light on the situation. Even if he can't, it will be a place to start tracking the missing patrolmen, at least, so I need you both well rested," he told Tsume and Kuromaru, who both nodded in acknowledgement.

"You don't have to tell me twice, captain," Tsume said. "I'm weary to the bones from the cold." As if to mark her words, she finished eating and stood up, ambling towards her bedroll.

For all their diligent training since the last mission, the lack of exercise was showing in all of them. Or perhaps it was the same cold Tsume kept blaming. Missions in winter time always seemed longer and more difficult than they were. That was a given, Shisui thought. He himself much preferred running about in summertime, but there was nothing to be done about it, one way or another. Missions were missions. Someone had to do them.

One by one, his teammates filed off to sleep. The room grew quiet as the fire kept on crackling, and after a time, he felt comfortable enough to shrug off his cloak, though not nearly spent enough to go lie down himself. At the very least, today's journey had seemingly pushed Itachi over the edge, enough for him to fall into a restless sleep.

Akane woke up with a jolt, clamping her mouth shut before the scream could tear out of her throat. Her heart was hammering in her chest, slamming against her ribcage like a frantic bird. She ran a hand through her hair, breathing in and out deeply a few times to settle herself before sitting up. The bedroll suddenly seemed too constricting and her throat felt like sandpaper.

The fire was down to embers, suffusing the room in darkness more than light now, but she thought she could discern a figure sitting beside it. She slipped out of the bedroll and quietly padded towards it.

"We don't have to keep watch, you know," she whispered as she sat down by the dying fire. "Tenzo's Rakuyouan is as safe a camp as we can get."

Shisui looked at her with a tired smile. "I couldn't sleep."

"I don't have anything for that, I'm afraid."

Akane reached out for the water container and soothed her parched throat with a few mouthfuls. Shisui's eyes went back down to the glowing embers. "Bad dreams?" he asked after a while.

"Occasionally," she replied, crossing her legs.

"About… back then?"

Akane's eyes darted to him, impossible to read. "I'd rather talk about your heart condition," she said, matter-of-factly.

"Eeh?" Shisui inquired, alarmed by her words.

"Every once in a while, in certain circumstances, your heart rate spikes, and may remain elevated for a few minutes. Your pupils dilate, your palms sweat, your chest feels tight, you may become lightheaded, and you might even experience a sort of… fluttering sensation in your stomach."

Shisui's lips parted, but no sound came out. He stared at her in poorly concealed bafflement, finding it more difficult to recompose himself than when Tsume had confronted him with the same truth. At long last, he found his words again and scoffed. "Honestly, I don't know what shocks me more: the fact that everyone seems to know except for him, or that you actually possess a sense of humor."

Akane poked the embers with a stick, watching the sparks fly up. "I'm pretty certain Tenzo doesn't know, either."

"Not the point," Shisui said, pinching the bridge of his nose. "So, is this how you deflect uncomfortable questions, by throwing equally uncomfortable truths in the asker's face? And here I thought you to be above manipulation."

"It's a weapon, like any other," she said with a shrug.

He peered at her from the corner of his eyes. "I'm afraid I can't help but wonder how sharp yours is, now that the cat's out of the bag."

"That would be beneath me, Shisui-san."

While it came as a relief to know she would not use the information against him in any way, it still bothered him that she knew. It bothered him that in joining team Yon, his best-guarded secret had been exposed to no fewer than two of its members already.

"At least you don't seem inclined to pellet me with questions, like Tsume-san did for a while after she sniffed me out," Shisui said, growing increasingly more uncomfortable in the silence.

"Would it ease your mind if I did?" she asked, a shrewd glint in her eyes.

"Not for the reasons you might think."

Akane cast him a sideways glance. "Well, it's obvious you care about Itachi, and I don't believe such affections fall into the categories of 'why' or 'why not'. We are shinobi, we deal with our feelings however we must to protect ourselves."

"Is that how you see it?" he mused.

The shadows danced across her face as she gazed into the dying fire. "Tell me, then," she said, "what frightens you more: the possibility that others might judge you or the fact that by allowing yourself to love, you would become vulnerable?"

Shisui's lips formed a thin, pale line. He ran a hand through his unruly hair once, twice. "You don't know what it means to be an Uchiha," he said, though his voice wavered over his own family name.

Clearly, Akane thought, her mind fleeting back to her recent argument with Itachi. He had not spoken to her since, and she had decided to give him his space for the time being.

"I won't say I don't care what people think, because I do," Shisui continued. "Everyone does, deep down. And whereas I myself could endure, Itachi is the heir to our clan. I will do nothing to endanger his future."

"The first option, then."

Shisui scoffed softly. "Nope." He took a few chugs of water, wishing it were something else. "I wasn't finished. You see, an Uchiha's love runs deep, it burns bright and hot. A veritable bonfire in the dead of winter," he said with a snicker. "We take our strength from it for as long as we fight to protect those we love. Shinobi from across the nations still tremble at the sight of us on the battlefield; no wonder we've become so arrogant."

He looked up at Akane, who was still listening. "But this world we live in is a cruel one. War, peace, it doesn't matter… it never ends. People drift apart, people die. An Uchiha's love is a terrible thing, because it can so quickly turn to hatred when corrupted by loss. The fire becomes all-consuming." It had almost burned him, once. His Mangekyou had been paid for in blood and pain.

Akane followed Shisui's gaze, which had inadvertently shifted to Itachi's sleeping form, in the far corner of the room. "Why do I get the feeling this is as much an explanation as it is a warning?" she asked.

"Itachi has always been exceptional. It's what set him apart, what isolated him from his peers. I've been his friend for many years, yet sometimes it's difficult even for me to get through to him. I was relieved shortly after I joined team Yon, because I realized I was not his only friend anymore," he said with a chuckle.

"I suppose we did grow on him… eventually."

"You, especially."

Akane averted her gaze. "I find myself out of uncomfortable truths to throw at you, Shisui-san."

"Consider it payback, if you will, although you'll notice I didn't ask a question," he said with an innocent smile.

She sighed. "I'm afraid Itachi is still quite a puzzle to me."

"But then again, you Naras love your puzzles."

Akane's eyes flashed to him, wide open and luminous, in spite of the wan light from the firepit. Shisui met her look of surprise openly, not a trace of malice on his face. If anything, there was a certain warmth softening his features.

"So," Shisui said, "what frightens you the most, Akane-san?"

"I…"

A sudden fit of coughing interrupted her, the sound of it filling the quiet room. Their heads snapped towards Itachi, who was sitting up, doubled over with the racking coughs. Akane was on her feet the next moment, striding towards him, already sending chakra into her hands. She knelt beside Itachi and placed her hands on his back, even as he shook violently.

The moment healing chakra entered his system, the fit began to subside. Itachi drew in a deep, shaky breath, willing himself to relax and his body to respond to her ministration. The tightness in his chest uncoiled gradually. He looked at Akane through the bangs falling over his face as he tried to catch his breath.

"I'm sorry," he said in a raspy voice.

Akane glanced at him and nodded in silent acceptance. When she had looked at him, Itachi's face had almost seemed childlike it its contrition. For some reason, it brought back the memory of when she had first seen him.

Akane was sitting on the window sill, a heavy textbook balanced on her knees. Yui was leaning against the frame, eyeing the younger students running along the corridor while twirling a curly, blonde lock around her finger.

"So noisy," she murmured distastefully. "Skittering about like mice."

"We used to be like that," Akane said, turning a page. "Although I seem to recall being likened to roaches by our senpai. Mice are actually cute."

"Ew, Akane. Just… ew."

It was a friendship of habit between her and Yui, forged between them since early childhood, given that their parents were close friends. It had its ups and downs, but convenience kept it stable. Akane was not much of a socializer and Yui was too haughty to mingle, or so she wanted everyone to believe.

"Although look at this mouse," Yui said, causing Akane to raise her eyes from the textbook.

A boy passed by, noticeable only by the wide berth the other children were giving him, and the fact that he was shorter than everyone else. If his black hair was not exactly telltale on its own, the symbol on the back of t-shirt was. He was an Uchiha. Yui arrived at the same conclusion quickly enough.

"So that's the Uchiha they keep yapping about," Yui said as her eyes followed him down the hall. "He's supposedly this… genius. He doesn't look like much, though. Pitiful, really."

At those words, the small boy turned his head, and Akane thought he had looked straight them, as if he had heard. She felt a twinge of guilt in her stomach and lowered her eyes back to the book without a word. To her, he had seemed neither gifted nor pitiful. All she had seen in his eyes was loneliness.

Yui has appeared in this story before: a virtual cookie to everyone who remembers when.

Other than that, this is likely the last chapter for the year, so I wish you all the best for 2020!