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Chapter Six
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Shisui's fully anticipating the next morning being awkward as all hell, but as luck would have it Hana needs him on an early patrol, so he's dressed and out of the stable before Itachi even twitches. Which is saying something, because Itachi likes to wake up at times offensive to both God and man.
Awkwardness aside, the day is still a long one. It's been looking like the beginnings of a rainstorm for days, which the whole town needs pretty bad, but nothing's happened yet and it's putting everyone on edge. Shisui puts a stop to no less than six street brawls during his patrol, and only half of those people were drunk.
(He knows for sure because he stops by Anko's saloon halfway through the day, and only self-restraint worthy of the saints themselves stops him from downing a whole bottle of whiskey all by his damn self.
"The fuck have you been giving these people lately?" he grumbles, nursing his glass to make it last as long as possible.
"Nothing but the usual," Anko says with a shrug, leaning on the bartop like she's tired too. "I'll grant they've been staying longer these last few days, but that's what happens when we don't see the sun for too long. Everybody's getting restless. Either something needs to happen or it needs to stop pretending like it's gonna."
"Amen to that," Shisui sighs, raising his glass and finishing it off. He thinks of something else then. "You seen Dosu or Zaku today?"
"No, and thank Christ," Anko says with feeling. She even crosses herself for effect. "If I never see those fucking faces again it'll be too soon.")
The paperwork for that takes forever, by the way. Shisui's starting to understand why Itachi never seemed to do anything else; he and Hana have been stuck in her office for ages working on it, Hana with her pile and Shisui with his, as they both squint in the flickering lamplight and try to ignore the drunken grumblings of the only people Shisui actually jailed today.
It's pitch black outside by the time Hana finally tells him to leave. Shisui takes a deep breath of the night air, expecting to feel relived after the stuffiness of the office, but all he gets is a lungful of solid humidity. Fuck. Anko's right; if the rain ain't coming then those clouds need to go, because they're not doing wonders for anybody's mood.
He didn't bother riding Flicker out today—figured there was no point being so high off the ground when lately he keeps having to get down and knock people's heads together. So it's a pretty long walk back to the stables. Long enough for Shisui to think until his head aches with it.
He keeps coming back to the same question: what if he is burying Itachi? Ain't Itachi exactly right when he says Shisui wants to pull the same shit Fugaku did?
I'm just trying to keep him alive, he argues with himself.
But there's also more to life than having it; Shisui knows that much, otherwise he wouldn't've come home in the first place. He could've stayed at that bar with Mizuki yelling at him and drunks picking fights all night long. That would've been the safe thing to do.
Taking things into his own hands had been the best option he could see. Shisui still isn't sure things would've ended any differently if he'd asked Itachi nicely before knocking him over the head, but he's starting to think maybe it's the asking that's the problem.
Because he didn't ask, and this is where it's gotten them: things could be worse, yeah, but they could also be a helluva lot better.
He's coming up to the stable before he realizes it, seeing the glow of lights before the place itself. Which should strike him as odd right off, because the lighting situation in the stable has never been all that great, and Shisui's lucky if he can keep one lamp lit when the wind starts coming through. But he's still buried in his own thoughts so it's not until he actually gets closer that he realizes it ain't lamplight he's seeing.
It's fire.
He stops dead in his tracks for a second, taking in the red-orange flames licking their way out of the windows, eating slowly up the walls toward the roof, and his first thought is, Maybe he's still at the store.
But then there's the rumbling of hooves and the screaming of distressed horses as all of them come galloping out of the gates, eyes rolling in their heads, Flicker bringing up the rear and whinnying like he's trying to warn Shisui about something.
Shisui knows. Somebody had to free those horses, which means—
"Itachi!"
He's already running into the inferno instead of waiting for a response because he knows there won't be one, just like he knows Itachi is incapable of letting something go wrong if he thinks there's even the smallest chance he could put it right.
Going into the stable is like walking into a wall of smoke. Shisui's eyes start watering immediately; he yanks the bandanna from around his neck and ties it around his mouth and nose to keep from coughing his lungs out, squinting through streaming eyes to look for Itachi.
It doesn't take long: the former sheriff is throwing the last bucket of drinking water over the worst of the blaze. It hisses a little but keeps on burning. Shisui calls for him again over the noise of crackling wood and hay, and this time Itachi turns. His face is smudged with soot.
"That's not gonna be enough!" Shisui yells over the noise.
"We need more water," Itachi shouts back, and Shisui almost wants to laugh because of course they do, somebody always needs water in a desert. He grabs Itachi's shoulders to keep his attention.
"Go back to town," he says, still fighting to be heard. "Find Anko or Hana, they'll help us out!"
He can see in Itachi's eyes that he wants to argue, wants to be the one to stay behind while Shisui goes for help, but Itachi is also smart enough to know that they don't have time for that right now. He nods once before turning tail and bolting out of the stable.
Satisfied that at least the cavalry should be on their way soon enough (Itachi is a fast little fucker when he tries), Shisui turns to the chaos around him and is trying to work out what needs to be saved first when he hears a loud crack.
Too loud to be the sound of flames eating through wood.
Shisui's gut twists as he turns on his heel, races out the door Itachi left by, and gets outside just in time to see Zaku lowering his smoking pistol.
Itachi's on the ground in front of him, facedown and unmoving.
Shisui's brain goes blank. He can't think, can't move, can't even really hear the fire crackling on behind him. Can't see anything besides Itachi lying still at Zaku's feet.
Zaku whistles, the sound snapping Shisui back to himself.
"Shit! He went down easier'n I thought!" He looks up and meets Shisui's eye as a grin spreads across his face. "See, we didn't bring a knife to a gunfight this time."
"Don't play with your food, Zaku," Dosu says from a ways behind his cousin. "Finish him too."
Zaku glances over his shoulder with a flicker of irritation. "Don't much like being told what to do, Dosu, you know that. You got a gun too, why don't you finish 'im?"
Dosu's visible eye narrows. "Who was it who started the fire? I've done my share of the work for tonight."
"Work?" Zaku lets out a high, crazed laugh as he raises his pistol again, pointing it square between Shisui's eyes. "Who said nothin' about work? This is fun!"
He's probably gonna die here, Shisui figures. His own gun is still in its holster; even if he draws it faster than Zaku can pull the trigger there's still Dosu to worry about. So, yeah, this is probably lights out for him.
Somehow that doesn't scare him as bad as it did, though. He's got nothing to lose now—again.
"What'd I ever do to you?" he asks, and it comes out sounding almost conversational. "How'd I piss you off so bad you try to kill me and burn down my stable?"
Zaku shrugs. "Wasn't so much you," he says. "We were more pissed about the little sheriff here." He kicks Itachi's body in the ribs. Shisui grits his teeth but doesn't move. "You know this little shit went to Sheriff Inuzuka and ratted us out yesterday? She came an' gave us a talking-to like a good schoolteacher."
Itachi wouldn't've been stupid enough to draw attention to himself like that, Shisui knows. His throat tightens. Unless he was worried about them going off drunk and hurting somebody else.
"So he turns up and tries to do his job and you hate him for it?" Shisui says. "The fuck kinda sense does that make?"
Zaku scowls. "He ain't even the sheriff anymore. Pull the wool off your eyes, he's one of them and you know it. Those rich city folk don't give two shits about us; they just come here to lord over us and throw us in cells because they can. Fugaku was the same fucking way."
Shisui's fists clench. "Itachi ain't his dad."
"The hell he ain't!" Zaku screams, his patience snapping in half. "They're all the goddamned same, wanna drive us out so that their rich friends can come scoop up the land we settled on. Well, we built this boomtown an' we're not having it anymore. When the fuck did you take their side over ours?"
Shisui's eyes flicker to Itachi on instinct. Zaku's mouth twists into an ugly sneer.
"Y'know, I always wondered what kinda stick this kid had shoved up his ass," he says. "Guess now I know."
"Get off your fucking high horse," Shisui snaps. "You don't give a damn about this town or the people in it, you just wanna be on top of the shit heap. Fugaku might've been an ass but at least he kept people safe from you and your fucking mummy of a cousin, and now you wanna spit on Itachi for doing the same thing!"
"That's enough," Dosu's cool voice cuts in. "Zaku, shoot him. We're done here."
"Fine with me," Zaku snarls. He cocks his gun just as Shisui reaches for his, knowing he's not gonna be fast enough but fuck if he's not gonna try anyway—
Then three things happen real fast: the gun goes off, Shisui gets his hand on his pistol, and Itachi jumps up off the ground.
Shisui has no idea what order these things happen in; all he knows is he doesn't get shot.
Itachi's knocked Zaku's hands upward but the idiot reacts fast, gets in a punch to Itachi's face that knocks him back to the ground. Shisui manages to shake off his shock and trains his gun on Zaku, opening his mouth to shout a warning, but even as he does it he sees the glint of metal out of the corner of his eye, realizes too late he's forgotten what he always told himself to remember: someone's silence doesn't mean they're not a threat.
Dosu is aiming his own pistol straight for Shisui, and there's nothing he can do but close his eyes.
I was always gonna end up dead here one way or another.
A fourth shot goes off.
Somewhere in the sickening silence that follows, Shisui realizes—for the second time in as many minutes—that he hasn't been shot. He opens his eyes.
Zaku is on the ground, somehow, his gun no longer in his hands. His eyes are fixed on his cousin, but Dosu's one eye is fixed on the hole in his own chest.
As Shisui watches, stunned silent, the eye travels back up until it reaches Itachi. Itachi and his shaking hands and his smoking gun.
"I wouldn't have guessed," Dosu murmurs, but the rest of the sentence fades as he tips sideways and hits the ground.
"Dosu!" Zaku screams, halfway to his feet, but Shisui takes advantage of his distraction to step forward and hit him hard with the butt of his gun. Zaku drops back to the sand, unconscious.
Shisui's really not proud of how good he's getting at that.
Wordlessly he turns to Itachi. The former sheriff's eyes are fixed on Dosu's body; Shisui doubts he even noticed Zaku moved.
"Hey," Shisui murmurs, trying to snap him out of it. "You can put the gun down. It's over."
Belatedly he realizes Itachi's shoulder is a mass of blood, but Itachi doesn't seem to have noticed yet either. His eyes are still fixed in place. His hands are still shaking. Suddenly he opens his mouth.
"I haven't," he starts, then falters. "I didn't—"
"I know," Shisui says quietly.
Itachi nods, blinking hard, and slowly lowers the gun. Shisui smothers the instinct to pull him close because as much as he hates it, there's no time for it just now.
"Your shoulder?" he asks instead.
Itachi takes a breath and eyes his wound critically.
"That should have been my chest. Zaku's aim was poor," he says. "But it was dark, and there were two of them, so I thought it would be prudent to pretend otherwise." A shaky exhale. "I have had practical experience being unconscious. It was simple enough to fake."
"Guess you have some self-preservation instincts after all," Shisui says. "Faking everyone out like that ain't very honorable of you."
He meant it as a joke, but it comes out more unsteady than he'd like. Itachi almost looks apologetic.
"This isn't a very honorable town," he points out. "But I would like it to remain standing nonetheless. Which means learning to adapt."
Shisui sighs. "Now you really sound like one of us."
Itachi opens his mouth to say something else, but just then Zaku groans on the ground. Itachi looks down at him with a weird mix of disgust and guilt.
"Y'know," Shisui says carefully, "you ain't the lawman here anymore. I can take care of this."
But Itachi shakes his head and reaches for the cuffs hooked onto Shisui's belt. Shisui hands them over and Itachi goes to kneel beside Zaku, whose eyes are starting to open. Itachi murmurs something to him that Shisui can't hear.
As Zaku's eyes start to fill up with tears Shisui looks away, his own eyes dragged to where Dosu's corpse is cooling a few feet away. A shiver crawls down his spine even though it's a warm night.
He spends the next few minutes trying real hard not to think about anything at all.
"We should go," Itachi says at last. Shisui turns and sees Zaku shaky but standing, his hands cuffed behind his back. Somewhere in the thirty seconds Shisui was looking away, Itachi also managed to tie a tourniquet for his bleeding arm. Which is pretty typical when he thinks about it.
He hasn't moved two feet when a drop of water hits him right in the eye. Shisui blinks.
"What the—" He tips his head up towards the black sky and is rewarded with another wet drop to the face. And another. Before long it's raining so hard he can barely see five feet in front of him.
"Shisui," Itachi says just behind him, and Shisui turns to see what he's pointing at.
The flames that had been swallowing up his stable are hissing as they fight against the water. It's a losing fight. The fire shrinks and shrinks until finally, as Shisui watches, the last of it disappears into strands of gray smoke.
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