Notes:
"You shall not go down twice to the same river, nor can you go home again… what is most changeable is shown to be fullest of eternity, and your relationship to the river, and the river's relationship to you and to itself, turns out to be at once more complex and more reassuring than a mere lack of identity. You can go home again… so long as you understand that home is a place where you have never been." — Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed
The earth quakes beneath their feet and the roar of a buji bellows in the distance, the malevolent chakra pulling them towards the direction of the village. Shisui and Toshiro barely make it to the outskirts when the Kyuubi's chakra hits. It makes Shisui's ears pop and the corrosive energy seeps into his skin and makes it seem like his blood is bubbling to the surface. It feels more familiar than his father's chakra signature.
Shisui doesn't waste any time. He ignores the chunin guard near the gate yelling at him to get back to his clan's police building, as per the third Hokage's orders. Shisui's gut tells him that the other will be dead before dawn hits either way.
"Shisui-kun?" Toshiro asks, freckles scrunching as he frowns next to Shisui, but he doesn't stop fucking following him when Shisui just needs everything to shut up.
"Bureaucracy is obsolete when big-ass chakra monsters invade your village. You can look it up in the handbook later," He says, voice forcibly cheerful. He resists the urge to scratch his skin.
Toshiro pauses, considering his words even as he pants from exhaustion. "That sounds like it tracks," He unhumorously jokes, legs stumbling as they grow closer to the jounin jumping and waving jutsu around the roaring beast. They continue running.
They meet up with a squad of Konoha nin on the border of a ring of destroyed trees, the heat from the beast rising to near unbearable levels. Shisui quickly defers to the jonin barking orders and runs with Toshiro and another hazily-recognized chunin. No one asks questions or objects to their presence, everyone scrambling to do something, anything to stop the chaos surrounding them. Shisui and Toshiro become part of the distraction team, meant to pull the Kyuubi away from the village's carved faces where seniors and children are hiding. Where his family hopefully is.
Shisui pushes away his worry as he brings up a grand fireball jutsu, which is promptly ignored by the Kyuubi in favor of moving towards the direction of the academy and subsequently nearer to the monument. Their weaving bodies and flashy jutsu aren't working, forcing everyone surrounding him to become frustrated. The increased desperation makes their footwork sloppy as the beast nears the mountain pass.
A chunin near him crashes into a splintered tree and doesn't get back up.
"The Hokage is nearing our destination, we just need to buy some time!" A higher-up barks out. Shisui looks back at Toshiro, silently asking for his support. Toshiro nods, eyes wide and scared. A faint grudging respect makes its way into Shisui's mind at his partner's bravery, but he ignores it to steel his nerves, pushing closer to jump high off a Hashirama tree into the air, sharingan spinning as he catches the edge of the Kyuubi's giant eye and—
Shisui's body crumbles to the ground.
He's standing on a beach, water lapping at his ankles as the smell of salt permeates the air.
Shisui has never seen the sea before. He's heard the haikus recited about it, the art praising its beauty in simple strokes, but his clan were always mountaineers, never settling close to large bodies of water apart from the Naka River. The clan members that were allowed out to Kirigakure's borders on missions always chuckled when Shisui asked to see the waves through their sharingan's memories, hands ruffling his hair before citing how different Kiri's rocky, seaweed-infested beaches were compared to the ones in the stories.
But this one, Shisui thinks as his toes wiggle into the sand, this one feels right.
His mind settles as he takes another step into the blue horizon, the sun caressing his skin in a warm hug. He takes another. The cool water shifts up to his waist as he wades in, mind gently pulling him deeper and deeper until Shisui realizes he can't breathe.
It's as if a genjutsu is broken. Shisui's narrow vision expands and he realizes he's deep in the sea, salt stinging his eyes as the pressure on his chest and head pushes and pushes until he's panicking, arms desperately flailing as he tries to search for the surface.
Shisui feels the dark, disgusting chakra before he sees the Kyuubi. All of his precious air runs out with an instinctual exhale at the feeling. Shisui trembles, taking gulps of the chakra his mind had translated into seawater. What Shisui had thought of as the seafloor begins to slowly rise up from below him, the rise in pressure doing nothing to push Shisui away from it, no matter how desperate he is for it to happen.
The Kyuubi opens its eyes. Just one red, slitted gaze is twice the height of Shisui's body and four times as wide. Its corrosive chakra tumbles haphazardly around him, scratching burn marks deep into his chakra coils.
He whimpers. The water-construct around him hides his tears. If he were a braver man he might have asked why the Kyuubi was targeting his village and demanded it to stop, but Shisui is not brave, and he is not yet a man. He cries silent tears, too scared to even make noise, sharingan deactivated and hands held up to his face in an instinctive attempt at blocking whatever harm will most certainly happen to him.
The being made of pure elemental chakra, created by the Sage of Six Paths to bring ninjutsu into the world, snorts.
It's an impressive snort, mind you, with the water all around Shisui being blown around him like a current. It was only due to whatever force that kept him here was he able to withstand it.
"Why have you called me here, Uchiha? Having a little family spat?" The Kyuubi bares its teeth, as big as the Hokage monument, before coming closer to his defenseless body, as if the viscosity of the water meant nothing to the being. The word Uchiha is said with the same tone of voice his father had used when finding that the ant infestation in their kitchen had come back.
Shisui answers, not knowing what would happen to him if he didn't.
"I—" He panics, "I would like to ask you to stop! P-please," He stutters out, teeth chattering despite the unbearable warmth of the water around him.
The Kyuubi laughs, a great boom of a sound that shifts into a low growl. It bares its teeth before speaking into Shisui's mind, "It is your clan that has brought me here, therefore it is your responsibility to take away these damned seals, fool." It lifts a giant paw, making Shisui notice the large chains circling its body adorned with paper and ink that Shisui can only assume are seals.
"Then I'll free you! J-just l-leave us!" He says, losing bravado at the last pseudo-command.
The Kyuubi chuckles. "With one so young, you hope to release me from your eyes? You do not possess—" With this, it stops. Its focus narrows on Shisui's floating form, making him fidget from the stare.
"You have his blessing upon you." Its mouth does not move as the words boom into Shisui's mind loud enough for his head to feel like it's about to explode.
"W-what?" He barely manages to stutter out.
The Kyuubi ignores the question and brings a single claw up, reaching towards his face. Shisui can't look, can't turn away, can only stare as his death approaches.
The claw gently touches his forehead before the voice in his head says, "In exchange for remembering your cursed eyes, you will give me my freedom. Open."
It starts off slow, a crawling, itching sensation coming from the center of his stomach to the inside of his eyes. Just as soon as the itching comes, it turns into what Shisui can only imagine dunking his eyeballs into hot oil feels like. He screams, hands reaching up to claw at his head as he damns himself for having the stupidity to consort with a bijū.
It seems to go on forever before The Kyuubi commands, "Fulfill your end of the contract."
Shisui looks at him, blinking away the blood and saltwater, and then Shisui can see everything .
The chains around the tailed fox snap and it laughs — a horrible, guttural sound that boils the water around Shisui until his body can do nothing but wake up.
A muffled voice is screaming at him.
"I've got you," He hears Toshiro's voice sob above him. Shisui tries to focus on where he is, but his eyes remain blurry and filled with liquid. He attempts to will his body up as a loud roar slices through his ears.
"Stop, Shisui! Don't- the medics will come in a while, you fell, you collapsed mid-air, please don't move we just need to wait- I'm so sorry I couldn't get you I just—"
"Am I going to die again?" He whispers to himself, cutting the other off. He doesn't hear what Toshiro mouths to him as the sound of waves floods everything out.
He wakes up screaming.
Shisui scowls at his reflection, quickly shutting off the weird, four-pointed shape of his sharingan.
It's official. Shisui is fucking crazy. Admittedly, the thought of it took root in the back of his mind many, many years ago, but he didn't quite expect things to be this dire so soon. He isn't certain how old he is, but he's always looked young enough in his memory/hallucinations to not justify the mental degradation characteristic of some of the older, more paranoid fringes of the Uchiha clan. They were the ones who got sent far away to special civilian re-education centers or some bullshit place like that.
He's been trying to make sense of all the jumbled memories and hazy sensations that plague most of his days. They become easier to sort as the months' pass, but they all remain fractured, with inane variations of places, food, and people he can't recognize. It seems as if the situation has taken a toll on him physically as well, with phantom aches and pains marking an increased need for sleep.
The only constant is the memory of his deaths. Those, he thinks, shivering, stay very fresh in his mind.
"If you keep your face like that, it'll stick that way!" His father, alive and whole, yells from the kitchen, voice echoing across the hall into the bathroom. Shisui has no idea how he can tell what he's doing, and, frankly, he's too scared to ask. He just assumes it to be a latent bloodline limit that activates when you become a parent.
"Your mother asked you to get ready five minutes ago."
Shisui jumps, not noticing the figure behind him. His father looks at him pointedly, arms crossed and unamused. "You and her are due to meet the clan head's family soon."
Shisui very carefully does not swallow, thinking back to the dark pull of Itachi's eyes awakening his sharingan. "I would like to practice my katas instead, Tou-san."
His father lifts an eyebrow. "Well, I suppose I can't begrudge you that. Very well, you head to the yard, and I'll tell your mother what you're doing before I head out on my mission," He says, turning away.
Shisui very carefully breathes out.
This is the fourth attempt at life, and he is determined to behave. He keeps his sharingan hidden until the age of six, he says a moderately cheerful "Hello!" and "I'm home!" at the right times, and, more importantly, he does not meet Itachi. Shisui graduates early, desperate to fill his time with anything other than the gazes of children he knows will die or wish they are dead. His dad hands him his grandfather's tanto on his sixth birthday after Shisui officially gets field promoted to genin for killing an enemy squad of children transporting medicine to the Iwa border, a fact known to him from a year pouring over Konoha documents in a war that has yet to happen. He looks proud, and Shisui smiles back because that is what is expected of him.
Shisui thinks about showing his father the Grand Fireball Jutsu, but thinks better of it, starkly remembering the look on his father's face.
His mother pulls him aside later in the night, whispering about she has something so much better than a lame chakra sword, check this shit out — don't tell your father I said shit — as she proudly takes out the family crow summoning scroll. He doesn't feel anything as he slits enough blood for a handprint.
That evening, he looks back at the tanto propped up against his nightstand. The image looks familiar, as if he's seen it a thousand times in a thousand nights, but his brain feels thick as if his thoughts are moving through sludge, and he can't think of any concrete reason as to why.
He falls asleep to the sound of rushing water.
The bells of the Nakano shrine chime a few days after Shisui's sixth birthday. His mother and father quickly leave the house without speaking or inviting him along.
He thinks about it during the increasingly sleepless nights — warning his parents, warning the clan, warning his future teammates, warning the village over their fate. He talks himself out of it, rationalizing their disbelief and the inherence of fate.
But when the nights get colder and the meals taste blander, Shisui realizes there is something deeper, something more broken about his decision.
He doesn't care.
His mother, who he loved in the short years he had, is gone. His father, somewhere, knew a version of him that is dead now. Kyomi-sensei knows nothing of him. Even Iruka from the academy wouldn't spare him a glance in the street.
Shisui is a ghost possessing his own corpse, and he can't bring himself to open up to a future that hasn't yet proved its investment.
In the end, it doesn't matter. Homare nominates him for the war, his father is declared dead, and Shisui helps Shizune birth a doomed girl called Shinju Sarutobi.
Shisui sticks back as he watches a small figure run across the fields of metal and earth. Itachi's kunai soaks with blood as he stares down at his first kill. Fugaku joins his son, both of them turned so Shisui can't see their lips as they speak.
Eventually, he goes home.
The constants in Shisui's life are this:
Death.
Training.
War.
His father.
Shinju.
Funerals.
Politics.
Itachi.
Shisui pulls out another strip of softly cooked egg to give to one of the smaller summons, expertly evading the beak of an older one ironically named Tomodachi.
The smaller summons, barely considered a teenager, happily squawks as she gulps down the meal. Tomodachi pecks his head in a move too quick to evade. Shisui groans at the treatment. "You keep eating it all, Tomo, leave some for Ahō," He chastises. Tomodachi pecks him again. Shisui's eye twitches.
"If you're not going to behave, I'll clip your wings and throw you into the Naka river next to us," He emptily threatens. Shisui has taken to watching the Naka river from one of a few cliff enclaves from time to time. It's peaceful in a way that has become an increasing rarity in his life, and he uses the calmness to help bond with his new crow summons, as per his mother's advice.
Besides, it's not as if it's the river's fault for giving me nightmares, Shisui ponders. Cursed rivers don't exist.
It's at that thought that Shisui spots a figure careening down the highest point of the Naka cliffs.
Shisui spends a precious moment with his mouth agape before rushing toward the opposite side of the river, sharingan active and legs bursting with chakra, trying to reach the person cleaving through the air. Desperation sets in as he realizes he won't make it in time.
Thinking fast, his chakra pulls Tomodachi as he continues to rush forward, ducking out of the way as the large crow answers by brushing past him, nosediving towards the person below.
Shisui continues pumping his legs and dismisses Ahō for chakra conservation, chest heaving with deep breaths as he furtively hears Tomo caw at the figure before attempting to slow his descent by grabbing the man's — no, the figure was as big as Tomodachi — child's shirt with his talons.
Shisui watches as the stupid kid brushes Tomo away before flipping over midair and slowing his descent down with two kunai, piercing the stone behind him to delay the momentum.
Sharingan still active, Shisui slows down from the breakneck speed he had established, mentally categorizing the way the ninja would land without injury at the current pace they were making. The knot in his gut unfurls as he decides to land in the trees facing the riverbank, curious to see who the shinobi was.
Itachi, Shisui notices, startled, lands with textbook delicacy, the ground below him softly indented from chakra cushioning. The clan heir looks up past the cliff where Tomodachi circles. Shisui's eyes narrow as he spots one crow and then another joins his summons until a proverbial cloud of them gathers around the small figure, cawing maniacally.
It's an unsettling sight. Shisui can't help a shiver of apprehension go up his spine as Tomodachi lands on Itachi's delicate arm with practiced ease, both of them staring at each other in seemingly silent communication.
Eventually, the murder slowly disperses. Shisui's eyes track Itachi's back with intensity as the younger one walks away, mind wheeling at the strange turn of events.
Tomodachi silently lands next to the branch across from Shisui, displaying none of the instinctual closeness exhibited a minute ago towards Itachi.
A curl of curiosity prods Shisui's mind.
"Do you know him, Tomo?" Shisui can't help but ask, staring into Tomodachi's blank eyes. The crow starts grooming himself, dismissing Shisui's question.
Shisui sighs.
"You're name's Itachi, isn't it?" He says, voice confident. Itachi startles, kunai slipping out of his grasp at the unexpected question. Shisui grins.
"I've been watching you here at the training ground for a couple of days, you're sort of weird, you know?" Itachi continues to stare at him, eyes wary. "I saw you take a nose dive off the Naka cliffs."
Itachi tenses.
Shisui holds up his hands, smile firmly fixed. "Hey, I'm not judging. What really stuck out is the fact that my crows seemed to recognize you. You wouldn't happen to know anything about that?" He asks, voice calm and friendly.
"Your crows?" Itachi whispers, voice confused.
"Well, not all of them were my crows. I have a contract with the crow summons," Shisui expounds, voice betraying a hint of pride, "And they seemed to take a liking to you." A pause. "For some reason."
Itachi relaxes minusculy, his calloused hands still curled around his kunai. He looks at his hand, as if surprised, and pockets the weapon before turning back to Shisui.
"I was thinking about what I should do…" Itachi says, voice drifting off into thought. Shisui patiently waits for him to focus. "And then these pretty birds came and tried to eat my hair."
Shisui can't help the twitch of his lips at Itachi's childish phrasing. "They weren't eating your hair, they congregated around you because you jumped off a cliff and I didn't want you to die."
Itachi blinks, long lashes curling over his cheek as he brushes a stray hair away. "Why didn't you want me to die?"
Shisui's mouth opens and then quickly closes with an audible click . So much for gaining control of the situation; this kid was throwing out diversions with the skill of the Iwa Explosion Corps.
"I'm- I'm not gonna answer that question," Shisui weakly replies. "I just wanted to know if you, uh, knew my crows."
Itachi turns his head, apparently dismissing Shisui in favor of a particularly interesting leaf. "I don't know any crows. I didn't know crows had people. I thought they could only be bound to spirits."
Itachi turns back, chubby cheeks pulled into a tight pout that would've looked intimidating on literally anyone else. "I answered your question even though you didn't answer mine, so now I want repayment," He says, voice carefully enunciating the words as if reciting them from memory. Shisui can't help but huff in amusement.
"All right, I'll bite. What's your question?" Shisui replies, hands on his hips.
"What's the meaning of life?" Itachi asks, face serene.
Shisui flounders at the unexpected question. Seriously, what's with this kid? He thinks. His off-ness only drives Shisui's curiosity further.
"Uh. Well, there are different ideas. Some think we exist to serve a higher power, whether that power is divine or human. Some think there's no meaning, so we just live and die by the rules that we make up. Some find meaning in a simple goal to strive for, usually large, but also sometimes made up of small, multiple goals," He finishes. It was a question he had asked himself before, but even he knew the question wasn't age-appropriate for a five year old to ask, or socially acceptable to ask strangers about.
"My goals…" Itachi starts, then purses his lips, leveling Shisui with a focused stare. "I want to be the strongest ninja in the world and stop all wars."
Shisui looks at the five year old, chubby hands gripping a kunai a fifth his size, and laughs.
Itachi scowls at him.
Shisui continues laughing at him, peaking at Itachi's face through his tears. He stops. "Wait, you're serious?"
Itachi somehow manages to scowl harder.
"If you keep your face like that, It'll stick," Shisui teases, "It's what happened to your dad."
The sudden look of horror on Itachi's face is almost enough to send Shisui back into a fit of laughter, but he curbs it into a small giggle. Itachi blushes, face red from embarrassment.
"Hey, I want you to train with me," Shisui says with a grin, sticking out his hand.
Itachi blinks. "What?"
"Train with me, and I'll give you my family's summoning scroll for the crows. It'll help you in your goals," Shisui finishes.
At this, Itachi's eyes narrow, taking on an intelligent gleam. Shisui's grin widens.
"You're being too nice to me," Itachi accuses in a tone reserved for finding a thief in your room.
"I'm just exchanging goods with services," Shisui shoots back, mock-offended. "I get the clan heir's favour, and you get my scroll." He pulls his hand out farther. "Do we have a deal? It's a pretty good one."
Small fingers cautiously reach forward before wrapping around Shisui's. His skin is warm and sweaty, and Shisui can feel a thin layer of dirt on them from his training.
"Itachi!" Yells a voice behind them. Itachi's eyes widen as he turns his head towards the noise.
Shisui disappears back into the trees, remaining far enough away to see them from his vantage point.
"Wait, how did you know who I was—" Itachi starts, turning his head back, but Shisui is already gone.
"Itachi," Fugaku says, emerging from a thick shrub, leaves attached to his yukata. "Your mother told you to be back by now. She sent me to collect you."
"Sorry for being late," Itachi says, sounding appropriately chastised, "I think I met an obake, Tou-san. It said it'd help me with my training by giving me a summoning scroll for the crows."
Fugaku scoffs. "Your Baachan has been feeding you too many stories. That was Uchiha Shisui, of the Kagami branch. He's rude for assuming you'd want to contract with the crows instead, but harmless," Fugaku pauses, "You would do well to align yourself with Shisui-kun before you surpass him. I suppose I can grant you my blessing for the summons, as long as your training does not falter."
"Yes, Tou-san," Itachi dutifully says. The pair walk slowly towards the main branch building, vision firmly focused on their eye level.
Shisui sniggers from his place in the trees. An obake, huh? What a weird kid. Already, this life is a little more interesting.
His smile quickly fades as he rewinds their conversation in his memory. There's something wrong with Itachi, and Shisui doesn't like the uneasiness that comes with it.
A crow circling above the groove of trees pecks him.
"Ow! Tomo!" Shisui hisses out. Tomodachi puffs up and pecks his head again, landing on the branch across from Shisui.
"Fuck!" Shisui mutters. He scowls back at the bird and resists the urge to pull out his own kunai. "If you're going to be a jerk for no reason, then I'm leaving." Tomodachi just looks at him, black eyes blinking. Shisui sighs and shunshins back home, bemoaning his luck in summoning.
Tomodachi takes a few moments to look out towards Itachi's direction before following.
Notes:
*"Obake (お化け) and bakemono (化け物) are a class of yōkai, preternatural creatures in Japanese folklore. Literally, the terms mean a thing that changes, referring to a state of transformation or shapeshifting."
Chapter next week!
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