They Hold the World
Chapter 284 - Blue
Shisui
"Do you hear that?"
Out of the white paint of the hospital walls came Itachi Uchiha in all his glory, and Shisui did not even flinch. He came often when he had done something wrong.
They all did.
"He's screaming out there."
Hitomi lifted out of his white sheets, smiling like she had the day she died.
Probably because he couldn't remember an expression on her beyond that day.
"Are you really going to leave him like that?"
Akito floated out of the white tile, head tilted like a father watching his son throw a tantrum - because, well, he was, in a way.
And Shisui smiled at them all as he lay in his bed and glanced out the hospital window, which overlooked the twilight sky.
"He'll be okay," he told them, "because he has her."
Hitomi still smiled, but her eyes blazed. "My daughter is strong," she said, "but unable to take the place of two dead brothers."
"Aren't you assuming a little too much?" Akito mused, white eyes narrowing. "What an Uchiha thing to do."
"He needs you, Shisui." Itachi stood in front of the window to get his full attention. "More than we do."
His eyes closed and relaxed. "I'm tired."
Because, somehow, talking to the dead was so much more exhausting than talking to the living.
Childishly, he wanted that car. That damn Mustang that Itachi used to flaunt as much as he flourished - and for him, that was nearly constantly. He wanted it badly; so, so badly. Not because he was always jealous of it. Not because he needed another thing that reminded him of his dead brother. But because it was the one thing that he's always strived for (aside from saving his brothers from the wrath of the world - and, well, look how well that went); and if he got it, that car, maybe (just maybe) he'd be coaxed to live.
But then, when the keys fell into his hands . . . he felt nothing.
"What's wrong?" Itachi asked as his fingers of ice trailed the edge of the key. "Don't you want it?"
Didn't he?
But then . . . what about Sasuke?
Because he wasn't the only one who loved that car. Sasuke adored it, perhaps more than him.
"No," he told the ghost that wafted silently next to him. "I've already taken enough from him."
And so he left for Fugaku's office to give away the last of his hope.
...
That day, when he had visited the Hyuuga to warn Hinata's about Sasuke, he had been invited to see Hitomi's portrait.
He didn't go, because the second he got into his car, she was there, smiling as she always did.
"You've been dropping a lot of hints, Shisui," she mused, brushing a hand along his forehead, causing him to shiver. "They'll figure things out if you keep doing it."
The car moved in reverse, and he blasted the heat. "I know," he told her, pulling out and watching the mansion he used to visit every day of his young life vanish in the rear view mirror. He tried to get a good look at it, knowing it may be the last memory he would ever have of the place. "I want them to know before I leave, damn whatever the Uchiha think."
And that smile of hers never left as she grasped his hand, freezing his joints.
...
Sangiovese in the passenger seat, Shisui tried to focus on the road home and not at the phantom of his father messing with the case of wine.
"You're taking this too far," Akito murmured with a frown, turning his head to stare at his son and those bloody, fake eyes of his. "I know what's going to happen with this, and so do you. If you want to tell him, Shisui, then stop playing around with wine and tell him directly, soberly."
He ignored him. Ghosts wouldn't understand how terrifying it was to admit something you were sworn to keep a secret. It was to the point that his hands were burned with promises, hiding the coolness that would come to his fingers due to his low blood circulation. "I can't."
Akito's frowned morphed into a scowl. "He'll hate you for this."
"I know." He got to the Uchiha house, stepped out with the wine, and walked up the porch. His father didn't follow him - Hyuugas who tainted the image of the higher-ups of the Uchihas were only allowed a nameless spot in their cemetery, and that was all they got. But still, as Shisui got to the door, he paused for a moment to be himself and smile at the burn marks on his palms. "I want him to."
Because he told Sasuke that Uchihas relied too much on angels, and that he should much rather focus on what was right there before him. No more Itachi, no more Hitomi, and absolutely no more Shisui.
"Shisui."
"Shisui . . ."
"Shisui!"
He woke up two hours later to three phantoms hovering over him. His heart monitor beeped in alarm, then calmed. He usually didn't see them so often in a day. "What?" he asked.
They all nodded to the window.
It was snowing.
No wonder he was seeing them all.
"Let me sleep."
"Let me die, he says," Itachi muttered, ears so full of ice that he couldn't hear even a single sentence correctly. "My little brother is going to lose two brothers and you don't even care."
Shisui sat up and frowned. "Of course I care."
"Then why are you smiling?" Hitomi asked, eyes so full of snow that she couldn't see properly anymore. "People don't smile when they are dying and don't want to die."
"But I do want to die," he said, looking at them all. "I want to be with you."
"Selfish, for a Hyuuga," Akito mumbled, last name so far lost that he couldn't even recognize that Shisui was, indeed, a selfish Uchiha. "Think about Sasuke."
He has. All his life, he has - even before Sasuke was born, he thought about him, about the Uchiha, and how they would destroy him. That's why he came back from Spain. That's why he let him do the ceremony. That's why he gave him Itachi's car. He thought about Sasuke all the time. But now, for once, he wanted to think about Shisui and what he really wanted.
And he wanted this. Them.
But longer.
Because they always left when he was alive.
"Please," he whispered, "just let me have this."
The phantoms frowned and wafted, but did not disappear.
Itachi hovered over his bed. "I'd kill to be alive and see my brother again."
Hitomi looked out the window, smiling. "I'd kill to be alive and hug my daughters again."
Akito was by his side, invisible hand stroking Shisui's hair. "I'd kill to be alive and love my son again."
Be alive.
Be alive.
Be alive.
They wanted to be alive but they were dead.
He wanted to be dead but he was alive.
That was wrong. So wrong.
He pushed his skull into his pillow and stared at the ceiling, water leaking out of his eyes and blood leaking out of his nose. "Be alive," he whispered, then sobbed, then howled. "I want to be alive!"
They were gone, and he was alone and alive.
Like always.
Chapter 284 - End