"ORPHEUS: How will you remember?
EURYDICE: That I love you?
ORPHEUS: Yes.
EURYDICE: That's easy. I can't help it." — eurydice translated by sarah ruhl
"Your speed has improved," Itachi says, gasping for air as sweat trickles down his temple. He lifts his head up from the ground, pulling Shisui's aching eyes along the way Itachi's hair dances in the breeze. "I would even suggest your fighting style was particularly vicious today."
"Maybe you're just getting worse." Shisui snaps back, and instantly regrets it. He turns his body away from Itachi, feeling the shame of his words override his temper.
A moment of shocked silence passes as Itachi drags himself up to his feet, the grass beneath rustling against his motions.
"Is there anything you want to talk about, Shisui?" He asks. His voice sounds calm, nonjudgmental, but Shisui knows better than to think that Itachi's tone communicates his thoughts.
Shisui grits his teeth, forcing his traitorous tongue back into his mouth.
"You shouldn't—" He stops, takes a breath, "You shouldn't apply to ANBU." He doesn't need to look at Itachi's eyes when he says it. The slight opening of his sparring partner's mouth is enough to show his shock.
"Shisui," Itachi step forward towards him, voice soft, "Why are you saying this to me? You know the consequences of such a statement."
Shisui grips his tanto tighter, still refusing to look at Itachi.
"I just think," He forces out, even as his brain screams at him to stop, "That this position won't suit you." His eyes pass the small, fidgeting hands across from him and resists the urge to throw up. A beat of silence follows as Shisui hears the gears turning in Itachi's mind.
"You know," Shisui continues, voice turning soft. He glances at Itachi, taking in the disheveled appearance of the young clan heir. Fuck, when did Itachi seem so small to him? "It's okay to run away."
Itachi takes a moment to think, eyes roving over Shisui's face. "Do you know why clan families try to have at least two children?" Itachi asks. The question is rhetorical.
"A spare," Shisui answers anyway. Nausea doesn't relent as he thinks of Sasuke's smiling face, bedroom surrounded by ninja tool plushies and childish books on how to identify poisonous plants.
He had once asked his mother if he was going to get another sibling after visiting several of his distant cousins, all of whom had sisters or brothers to babysit. "Quality over quantity." His mother had answered with a grin on their walk home. "You haven't died yet, right?" Shisui didn't say anything else as his mother's grin quickly dropped away, black eyes focusing on their destination to the academy enrollment ceremony.
"Exactly." Itachi quietly affirms, "The lifestyle of active kunoichi and shinobi can render them temporarily infertile, and the process of reversal can take years even with the addition of medical treatments. Therefore, the window of when to have children is small, so that they can go back to active duty in order to support the family, at which point all notions of additional children go out the window." With this, Itachi pauses, staring at the grass beneath them like it holds all of the answers if he just looked hard enough.
"If I become a disgrace to the clan," He continues, voice heavy with the words, "Sasuke will simply take my place, with no hope of escape if the position does not, as you said, suit him."
He lifts his dark eyes to Shisui. Shisui has no choice but to stare back.
"Do you want Sasuke to take my place?" Itachi asks. It's not a rhetorical question.
Shisui doesn't answer.
The Hokage and his council ask him to spy on his clan.
Of course, it's all for their concern over an important founding clan. It's all so that they know the best way to smooth over troubles. Yes Shisui-kun, of course this is a voluntary position.
Maybe even a part of Shisui hates. Hates the clan's expectations, hates the way they twisted Itachi and him into something dark, something broken in a way that crawls into Shisui's head in the dead of night as waves whisper into his ear.
He loves the clan and he loves the village, but he needs something to blame, to explain the deep wrongness itching in his bones. He cannot hate both, or he has nothing left.
Shisui is tired and young.
He says yes.
Itachi is eleven when they go on their first ANBU mission together.
As where most things go to shit, it starts in Kirigakure.
Hound and Crane hands them the mission parameters, as is procedure, before promptly vanishing without a word, which isn't procedure.
"I can feel you scowling under your mask, Bear-san," Itachi says softly, weasel mask shifting towards the scroll in his hand.
"I'm not scowling," Shisui says, scowling, "I just don't like Kirigakure. Bad shit always happens here, and Hound and Crane were being assholes."
Itachi hums in acknowledgment, neither confirming nor denouncing Shisui's growing superstition.
"Maybe it's just your bad attitude permanenting the air." He says, tone blasé and teasing.
Shisui lifts an eyebrow Itachi can't see. "Is that snark? Are you snarking at me right now? You get your first ANBU mission and you're already snarking your superiors. I'm putting this in my report and then telling your mom so she can ground you and take away your dessert privileges." He rambles on, body slowly relaxing as they walk into the sparse woods.
Itachi rolls up his scroll at the end of Shisui's rant, quickly putting it into a container that briefly glows before transforming into a henged water bottle. Shisui mentally curses as he realizes Itachi's successful plan at goading him into a calmer state. Fuck that kid for making me feel better, Shisui fondly thinks.
"Our informant's name is Nikki Danjō." Itachi says, interrupting Shisui's thoughts, "We have our orders to meet up with him around the surrounding forest."
Shisui critically eyes the skinny, half-rotten trees. "I think calling this a forest would be very generous. How would we know who the contact is?" Shisui asks, Mist-issue ANBU boots standing above the mud with a little chakra control.
"They hold a rat summons. One of the rats will give a signal before showing the summoner," Itachi answers, subtly rearranging his uniform.
Shisui huffs. "Ironic."
They walk for a bit, Itachi's boots squelching in the mud before he picks up on the type of chakra control exhibited by Shisui, who can't help but smile at the quick copy. Sometimes, a hands-off approach worked best with Itachi.
"Is it normal for these types of missions to be so... sparse in detail and backup?" Itachi asks, cutting through the noise of frogs and birds. This part of Kirigakure was surprisingly noisy.
Shisui hums in agreement. "Despite preconceptions, ANBU aren't generally dominated by jonin or 'special' ninja. You qualify based on your loyalty, which sends you into missions that have a dangerous lack of information in them, giving a loophole to the law given by the Second Hokage which states that 'Those Jonin and below will not be given missions that result in more than a 60% chance of death,' or something of that nature. Sometimes, they just want the mission off the books," Shisui answers, tone unruffled by the quiet ambiance of the chirping birds.
Itachi's face doesn't show anything due to the mask, but Shisui picks up on the slight fluctuation of chakra, now more familiar than his own. He makes himself grin, taking a moment to slowly reach for Itachi's ponytail. Despite knowing it was coming, Itachi still jumps as Shisui gently pulls on it, and Shisui chuckles from his side.
"Don't worry, that doesn't mean our mission has more than a 60% chance of death. It could be 59%," Shisui jokes.
Itachi stops. Shisui turns around, muscles tense as his hand stops on the hilt of his tanto.
A little moving bundle sticks its head out from under the fall leaves, pink nose sniffing as its whiskers twitch. Itachi bends down slowly, hand going into his pocket to pull out a Konoha-issue soldier pill that he places in his gloved palm. The white rat comes up and sniffs it once before quickly shoving it into its mouth and running back into the thin forest. Shisui remains tense as the cold wind picks up, rustling the hood hiding his distinctive curls.
A minute passes as they stand there exposed, activated sharingan taking up precious chakra. A slight drizzle starts before a short figure takes a step out from behind one of the tree's trunk, body half-hidden, but visible to both Itachi and Shisui.
Itachi steps forward. "Speak. We don't have all day," He says in his best menacing voice. Shisui can't help but let his lips twitch at the highness of it, the coarseness characteristic of katon jutsus only dampening the pitch.
The figure grunts. "Tell your Hokage the plan is underway, but we need more support," His eyes shift as he runs his hands through his sparse brown beard, body language projecting nervousness, "Ports have been disassembled and patrolled. More shinobi are defecting due to the purges, and we need safe harbor. The Seven Swordsmen of the Mist have now been reduced to—"
Their informant's head falls off.
Shisui and Itachi jump back, hands respectively going to their tanto and katana as blood hits their uniforms.
Shisui catches sight of a shadow above them and dashes to the right, teeth clenching as the enemy kunoichi destroys the earth where he stood, making mud burst upward and obstruct his vision. He spots Itachi throwing a kunai towards the woman, but she just grins at him, teeth sharp as Shisui's blood runs cold. He kawarimis backward, narrowing avoiding death from a gigantic sword that cleaves through an unfortunate stick. His chest heaves from adrenaline, eyes frantically darting back to where Itachi and the black-eyed woman were.
They're gone. Shisui grimaces, hoping Itachi manages to overcome the Kiri-nin quickly. I can't afford to worry, Shisui reminds himself, staring up at his new foe.
"Konoha-nin?" The large man asks, tone disturbingly polite as their informant's blood drips down the spiked sword. "I can recognize it in the way that you button the uniform up. Mist shinobi prefer tightened outfits in case they need to jump into the water."
Shisui continues to tense his muscles, preparing for retreat at a moment's notice. "I'll keep that in mind for next time."
The man chuckles in a way that causes a shiver to tingle up Shisui's spine, his blue shoulders shaking in mirth. "A bit presumptuous to assume I'm going to let you leave." The enemy nin's grip tightens on the sword's hilt, muscles slowly flexing under Shisui's sharingan.
Shisui jumps, chakra-enhanced feet leaving indents in the soft earth as he aims his tanto towards the man's eye. The Mist nin takes the bait, eyes shifting upwards and stance prepared for blocking. Shisui's genjutsued flock of crows disintegrates just before the tanto makes contact and Shisui feels the deep satisfaction of a job well done as he bursts out of the earth to grab for the man's ankles.
The sense of satisfaction quickly vanishes as the taller man sharply grins at him, collapsing into a puddle of water. Shisui isn't quick enough to dodge the kick coming from his left side, but he just manages to block it with an arm, softly gasping from the pain of a likely fracture.
"Not too bad," The tall man remarks, letting Shisui stabilize his stance, "I liked your little trick. You are just particularly unfortunate with your opponents today — a body like mine is genetically resistant to most types of genjutsu," Shisui critically eyes the shark-like feature of his opponent. A kekki genki? Or something more sinister?
The Kiri-nin laughs, quick and sharp. "There are not many genjutsu experts in Konohagakure outside of the Uchiha," His mouth opens to reveal a mouthful of sharpened points, "I'd love to try my hand against one of you, if that is who you are."
Shisui doesn't answer the unsubtle question, taking the chance to jump off into the forest, away from the body of water he knew he would have a disadvantage in. He shunshins in a zig-zag motion, taking careful pain to not crash into any roots or trees as he feels the chakra figure right behind him, trampling the forest debris that Shisui so carefully avoids. Shisui isn't a good sensor, but even he can feel the beacon of a truly ridiculous amount of energy emitting from his enemy.
He frowns, remembering his deceased informant. If he could get the head of Nikki into a sealing scroll, there might be a chance of one of the Yamataka being able to siphon off some information.
Decision made and silent apology geared to Itachi, Shisui takes the chakra-intensive risk of making a shadow clone, trusting his opponent's confessions about genjutsu resistance. The clone runs off in a different direction as the original Shisui suppresses his chakra, aura attempting to blend in with his environment. Shisui takes a precious moment to circle around, hearing the thunderous sounds of his opponent veering in the opposite direction, steps faster than what his figure and sword would suggest possible.
Itachi, His brain pleads at him. Shisui ignores it, feet carefully treading back to the campsite. Nikki stares up at him, blank eyes forever encased with an expression of surprise and horror. Shisui gets his black corpse scroll ready and open, hands reaching towards his informant's brunette hair.
Then the corpse blows up in his face.
All Shisui can think about as his mask breaks and his eyes burn is how stupid he was for thinking a body in an open field was a safe target.
He rolls backward, fractured arm taking the brunt of the pressure as he inadvertently yelps from the pain. There's a second of fearchasewhiteeyes as his clone's memories transfer, forcing Shisui to curse as he hears the large Kiri-nin laugh in the distance. He stumbles up to his feet, legs shaking from chakra strain as he forces himself to run back into the opposite edge of the forest, arm clutching his fractured one and black eyes frantically searching for his partner.
Itachi bursts out of the dark foliage, bark snapping from the force of his legs. Shisui doesn't have time to feel relieved before jumping from a chuckle behind him.
"Did Ringo-chan let you get away?" The shinobi asks, tone betraying nothing of his thoughts.
Itachi spits to the side, forcing Shisui to notice the dark blood coating the lower half of his face, weasel mask missing. With a start, Shisui sees that Itachi's two-tomoe has evolved into the standard three-tomoe, the same as Shisui's own.
"I'm afraid Ameyuri-san is bleeding out as we speak, Hoshigaki-san. You may have time to go back for her, if you wish," He says, tone used in a way befitting asking whether or not the nin would prefer sugar or honey in his tea.
"Oh? You know my name, how wonderful," He grins, small eyes crinkling upwards. Shisui takes the lapse in attention to signal to Itachi, who quickly blinks in acknowledgment.
Tomodachi caws. Their enemy shinobi looks up once towards the noise, and Shisui and Itachi scatter.
They run as fast as they can, Itachi stopping every few seconds to lay down a false trail or veer them towards another route. Shisui, still clutching his arm and shaking from exhaustion, lets Itachi completely take the lead, quieting down the part of his brain that still wants to micromanage Itachi's performance.
They gain good speed towards Konohagakure, but he can't hold back the protectiveness any further as he hears Itachi gasp, legs stopping on a tree perch as he wobbles. His small frame leans dangerously off the branch and Shisui quickly grabs him, activating his sharingan and forcing back the burn of chakra depletion to desperately roam over Itachi's figure, checking on any injuries, until his eyes eventually pass over Itachi's own.
He screams as his matured sharingan meets Itachi's own.
A hand instinctively reaches to clutch his eyelid as it forcefully forms the mangekyou and he can't breath, you have to move, GET AWAY—
There's a faint thud as his body meets soft grass. Shisui can't help but moan from the overwhelming sensations assaulting him, muscles contracting and relaxing at random as he convulses on the dirt floor. He needs to check on Itachi, needs it with every fiber of his being to make sure that he's okay, he needs to make sure Itachi is fucking okay but he can't open his eyes oh fuck where are his eyes—
"It's not real," He tries gasping out, breath hitching with every syllable, "It's- it's not real." Another breath, remember to breathe through your stomach, "Shisui. Report objective," He's mumbling to himself now, words slurring together like the night Genma found a hidden sake bottle in the scout outpost or when Anko kissed him on his fifteenth birthday with her mildly poisoned lipstick—
Focus.
Breath in. Hold breath to four. Exhale out in seven.
One. Two. Itachi-. Three. " A coup?" Four. Danzo. Five. He lets go of Toshiro's hand. Six. Don't stop me, Itachi.
Seven.
He checks his extremities first. His left toes twitch. His right toes take a few more seconds of breathing as his muscles relax every agonizing second. Shisui doesn't let himself think about how vulnerable both of them are right now, he won't let himself think about how he can't hear Itachi, can't think about that or everything will come flooding back and all the progress he made will be gone.
So Shisui does what he was trained to do — find the box labeled "conflicting parameters" and stuff it in the metaphorical pit of Fuck That. He forces his tense arm to grip the other and pull away from his body, cracking his eye open to check his surroundings. Even under the shade of the trees, the light piercing through his burning eyes is too much, but he discards the pain, curling his sensations into a tight ball in the back of his brain. Right now, he is a shinobi, and shinobi go beyond human limits.
It doesn't stop him from feeling the slight tendrils of panic when he spots Itachi's body motionless on the ground, save for the too-fast movement of his lungs. He's sweating, his little body making gasping sounds as his brows furrow, eyes closed.
Shisui takes his panic and steels it. "Objective — find shelter." He mutters to himself, words barely over a whisper as he forces himself upwards, kneeling down to carefully pull Itachi into his back on shaky legs.
On their rush to safety, Shisui had spotted a rough outline of a cave on the cliff of their route, and he dashes back there, Itachi's warm body firmly kept on his back. Slowly, steadily, he chakra-walks down the incline, head pulsing and vision blurry. He reaches the cave on shaky legs, thick ANBU uniform protecting them against the sharp chill inside as Shisui carefully lays Itachi down, his figure unconsciously curling inward as the pupils under his eyes rapidly shift in time with his breaths.
Shisui spends a moment looking at Itachi's face before collapsing, overextended body reaching to grab at Itachi, desperately wanting him to be closer, to whisper and apologize and scream as the tiny form stays silent and pale.
I would do anything for you, Shisui thinks to himself in horror, burying his face into the small figure wheezing in his arms. I did everything for you .
He falls asleep like that, rocks digging into his side as Itachi's breath stutters and blood drips steadily down his cheeks.
Shisui awakens to darkness.
There's a moment of panic before realizing where he is, sharingan quickly turning on then off as the frightening burn threatens to return to his sensitive eyes.
He glances around the dim cave, vision given only by the twinkling stars seen in the distant entrance of the opening crack. His arm still throbs in pain, an ache familiar and grounding within the quiet of the night.
A crawling sensation tingles up his spine as he realizes he's alone.
Shit , Shisui eloquently thinks as he scrambles to find Itachi, his left hand frantically feeling around the rocky walls. He doesn't know if Itachi left of his own volition or if an intruder came in unawares, so he doesn't cry out the name he so longs to say, taking care to tentatively reach out a short aura of chakra for anything hiding within the crevasses. Shisui does it in bursts, painfully aware of how his body was eating itself to sustain his chakra reserves as he pushes his weary legs deeper into the cave, leaving his back to the entrance. Any enemy nin that broke in most likely came through the other side nearest to Itachi.
Shisui presses onward.
He stops as his ears pick up quiet shuffling, a wet hacking noise following and quickly cutting off. Shisui's steps grow more purposeful at the sound, his injured arm close to his chest as he takes the time to bring out a kunai. Leaving his hands free for jutsu would've been better, but he isn't sure if even a shinshuin would cause him to collapse.
It isn't long before he spots a faint glimmer of pre-dawn sky in the cracks of stone, the faint smell of grass carrying into his nose. The presumed exit gets narrower and narrower until Shisui has to carefully shuffle through a wide crack, mind focused on the light's path until he steps on grass without realizing it, only fainting registering the outline of a forest. His eyes find themselves drawn to a small figure lying in between the big roots of a tree, staring back at him with wide eyes.
Itachi is looking at him in horror, throat struggling to catch air as he just stares and gasps for breath. He makes an awful retching noise, face forcefully turning away from Shisui to the nearest patch of ground as he vomits and then crawls back away from the pile of bile, fear present in his face as his sharingan rapidly flicks on and off.
"What did you do to me?!" Itachi screams at him, voice garbled with an emotion Shisui has never heard in his life. He takes a step back, shocked by the outburst. "What did you do?!"
Shisui blinks, and in the next moment Itachi is on top of him, small hands gripping his throat as he stares down, teeth bared and eyes wild. Shisui only takes a third of a second to spit out a choke and then wrestles out of Itachi's sloppy taijutsu, flipping them both over until Shisui pins both of Itachi's flailing arms to the side.
"Itachi! Wait! It's just me! It's Shisui!" He yells out, desperate to calm Itachi as his arm screams at him in pain.
"Shisui?"
Itachi's limbs stop thrashing, voice growing quieter and eyes taking on a less manic gleam.
"Shisui? Is it really you?" He asks, tone breaking and clattering as his teeth grind loud enough for Shisui to hear over the cacophony of wild breathing and fabric. He's gripping Shisui's shirt now, desperately pulling Shisui closer instead of pushing away.
And then he does something Shisui has never seen before.
Itachi starts crying.
His wet tears fall on Shisui's ANBU robe as his muscles unclench slowly, full sobs causing snot to start leaking from his face. Shisui can do nothing but hold him as Itachi suddenly shifts forward, bringing both of them together with frantic, shaky hands.
Shisui feels tired and stressed and keeps thinking about securing the perimeter, but he holds off on it, letting Itachi cry out as hard as he can into the forest, the cave's crack across from them unnerving in its darkness. He can't let himself let go just yet, can't let himself remember, but he can at least hold Itachi close, whispering soft reassurances to the person he loves most in the world as Itachi's sobs turn into small sniffles, and then suddenly—
Silence. Itachi passes out peacefully in Shisui's arms, body and mind clearly overextended. Shisui tenderly pulls him back, checking Itachi's face for more injuries in the dim light of pre-dawn. There is no moon to guide his way, and Shisui grimaces at Tsukuyomi's absence.
He lets himself breathe for a few moments, careful not to let his attention waver and fall into sleep as he dredges up a pitiful amount of regenerated chakra and lets it circulate around his body. Feeling the energy coursing through him, he picks up and shifts Itachi's small body to a familiar position on his back, jumping into the trees as he ignores the incessant urge to lay Itachi and him both down onto the grass and sleep for eternity.
There is no time to recuperate, Shisui darkly thinks. There never is for people like them.
Notes: FUCK YES LETS GO GAMERS
Important note: Itachi doesn't remember/the edo tensei stuff with him didn't happen; that won't get mentioned bc I shouldn't have to deal with All That. Everything that happened from Itachi's perspective finished after his and Sasuke's fight.
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