"Eventually something you love is going to be taken away. And then you will fall to the floor crying. And then, however much later, it is finally happening to you: you're falling to the floor crying thinking, "I am falling to the floor crying," but there's an element of the ridiculous to it — you knew it would happen and, even worse, while you're on the floor crying you look at the place where the wall meets the floor and you realise you didn't paint it very well." - Richard Siken
Shisui has just turned seventeen, and it feels significant in a way that he can't quite put a finger on.
Oh! Shisui thinks, startling himself with the first coherent thought of his sleepy mind. He grins into his pillow in glee, laughing as he realizes that this is the oldest he's ever gotten to become.
"Shisui-nii!" A chakra signature theatrically yells before pouncing on Shisui's body. So much for sleeping in.
"Oh no, my weak spots, I'm so defenseless!" He calls out, wiggling his body until Sasuke starts laughing uncontrollably on top of him, gripping the sheets with all of the willpower an eight year old can have.
"Train with me!" Sasuke yells into his ear. Shisui winces as he delicately shoves Sasuke into the tatami. Some things never changed; namely, his voice levels around Shisui. Susanoo knows the kid didn't get so hyped up around Mikoto and Fugaku.
"No, can't you see I'm busy? Who even let you in?" Shisui teasingly questions, shoving a pillow on top of his head.
"Your nice dad did, because I told him you promised to come to the training grounds with me today," Sasuke answers, trying to get into his line of sight to pout. It's more effective than Shisui thought was fair, and he decides to relent when Sasuke manages to start physically dragging him out by the ankle.
"I've created a monster," He moans out as they walk to the training post on a stiflingly hot day. Sasuke just beams up at him, and Shisui privately concludes that maybe it's worth it.
With Shisui abruptly deciding to leave ANBU early, all of the pressure fell upon Itachi to perform every mission perfectly, leaving him busier and harder to get an audience with than the Hokage. As Shisui tries not to feel the guilt of Itachi's deepening eye bags and Sasuke moping around alone, the two of them had become a lot closer than anticipated.
It's late in the evening when they both near the compound gates, Sasuke slung over his back in a familiar hold after a long day of shuriken practice.
Shisui stops when he smells copper.
"Sasuke," he starts, keeping his voice calm, "I need you to hide in the cave along the Naka river we talked about."
Sasuke stirs, shifting so close Shisui can hear the thump, thump, thump of his pulse. "But why—"
"Don't argue with me."
It's a tone Shisui rarely uses, and for good reason. The seriousness of it throws Sasuke off, and he obediently slides down his back, running as fast as he can in the opposite direction, looking back only once as the evening breeze rustles his bangs.
Shisui looks at him for a few moments, making sure he won't turn back, and then heads inwards, face grim and hand on his tanto's handle. He'd send a clone out to Sasuke, but he doesn't know if he'll have the chakra to spare for whatever fight broke out in his home.
He braces himself and heads in, weaving past the Uchiha emblems hanging from the official compound entrance. Even from this short distance, Shisui notices the eerie silence, no birds or cats or footsteps passing by his hearing. It isn't until he spots the first spray of blood on the outback of the Uchiha tea shop that he activates his sharingan and pulsates chakra to his feet to muffle the noise of his footsteps. Whoever is here is already waiting for him.
"This was inevitable, Shisui-san," Itachi says behind him, voice monotone. Shisui's widened eyes warily track him, Itachi's sharingan shining through the dark streets as he emerges from the shadow of Karai-obasan's building. Shisui can't move, can't think, can't feel the stab to his gut until Itachi gets close enough for Shisui to make out the telltale signs of a henge.
"Shisui!" Someone yells in the background, but it all falls flat, the sound becoming more and more muffled as Shisui's surroundings narrow.
"You both should have taken our offer," Not-Itachi whispers into his ear as his body slumps into the cold, hard dirt.
As his vision fades, he sees Itachi fighting the imposter with vicious intensity, mowing down the enemy and setting them on fire before throwing a desperate look towards Shisui, katana clattering as he runs towards him, still clad in that accursed ANBU uniform.
"Shisui! Wait for me!" Itachi yells. There's a soft pressure on his head, the feeling of limbs being moved, and then nothing.
A familiar darkness blankets him.
Shisui wakes up to the dulled sensation of something wet on his shoulder. It's enough to startle him, this unexperienced awakening to another life, and he attempts to squint his eyes open to figure out the foreign situation.
Sasuke, seven years old, looks at Shisui, tears rolling down his chubby cheeks as his eyes widen when it meets the other's gaze.
Belatedly, Shisui realizes he did not wake up to his nursery ceiling, nor were his limbs short and filled with baby fat.
"Well, fuck," He croaks out, throat dry. Sasuke bursts into sobs and throws his tiny arms around him, limbs digging into his aching skin.
They stay like that for what feels like hours, neither of them speaking beyond Sasuke's wails and Shisui's quiet mutters of comfort until a doctor barges in, stuttering and backing away to be replaced with a Nara he doesn't recognize, her eyes furrowed and jaw clenched.
"Shisui Uchiha-san," She says, voice grim, "Uchiha Itachi has been convicted of serial inner-clan murder and was placed on grounds of immediate execution before fleeing the scene. We have dispatched patrols to secure him. You and Sasuke-kun were the only survivors."
Shisui can only stare as the woman patters on about how the finances of the estate will be handled, do you want to legally disown Itachi, guardian paperwork will need to be finished after you're discharged, T&I will not be necessary, Shisui-san, please calm down, you're distressing Sasuke-kun, just breathe for a few minutes, Nurse, I need your assistance please— !
Then there is nothing but that blissful silence.
When he wakes up, Sasuke is not there. His throat feels as if it had been stuffed with cotton, his limbs uncooperative as he tries to get his bearings.
Shisui stays in the drug-addled haze of limbo until a nurse walks in, carrying a clipboard.
"Ah, Uchiha-san," They exclaim before smoothing over their surprise, "It's good to see you awake. Do you know where you are right now?"
Shisui's brain takes a moment to catch up. "Hospital?" He manages to half-ask.
"Yes," They say, smiling in a way he has come to associate with every medic on the last hour of their shift. They come in closer, veering forward, but Shisui can't help but flinch as he takes in the overwhelming stench of disinfectant and decay. Mercifully, they pause and continue as if nothing was wrong. "We've healed the rest of your major injuries, although you should take it easy for a while and keep up this medication regimen for at least two weeks," They write something down and tear it before handing it to him, but Shisui's eyes pass over it, uncomprehending of the myriad of letters before him.
"We can discharge you now," They point out. Shisui forcefully lifts his gaze up to stare at them. The smile gets more frayed as they both sit in silence. Shisui has no idea what to do or say.
The medic clears their throat. "We can do it now, if you like," They repeat, quickly holding out a clipboard with a piece of paper and pen stuck to it.
"That's it?" Nobody bothered to even interrogate him.
The medic-nin's polite smile turns flat. "That's it."
Shisui looks towards the exit of the hospital, signs the paper with his unseeing eyes, and hobbles home.
He thinks about going back to his — now only his, forever his — house, but thinks better of it, heading in the direction of the clan head building.
The walls are chipped, and the air is clear and crisp, the normal sounds of sleeping families and background footsteps gone from the earth, creating a horrible vacuum of noise that presses against Shisui's head like a physical accusation. Not even the sounds of crickets dare to pull him away from the torture.
He pushes back against it, forcing his body to head to the center of the compound, the familiar route he had undertaken so many times with Itachi guiding his footsteps. He stops as he reaches the porch of Mikoto and Fugaku's home. There is dried blood on the wooden outpost.
Thinking about even heading into the main hall fills him with nausea. Shisui doesn't need to be a detective to spot the slashes along the doors indicating the place where his relatives died. Where the ghosts prowl.
Shisui shivers and quietly heads over to the kitchen window and unlocks it, slipping inside to be immediately greeted by a small chakra signature in a corner by the cupboards.
He finds Sasuke curled up on the wooden panels.
The only way Shisui even knew it was him was through the many, many blankets and pillows orbiting a small lump in the center, along with the faint flicker of familiar, uneasy chakra.
"Shi-chan," His mother snaps, "Get out from under the kotatsu! You know you can't sleep there."
Shisui stares at Sasuke for a couple of seconds, unable to place the multitude of feelings slowly churning within his gut.
"Sasuke-chan," he whispers softly, "It's Shisui-nii. Do you mind if I join you?"
An eye surrounded by burst blood vessels peaks out from under the thick fabric. Sasuke nods without a word.
Shisui's legs give out halfway to the bedding, the bone-deep ache and pain in his stomach coming to the forefront of his senses as his brain chants home home home.
He crawls on the tatami to Sasuke, pulling his legs behind him to close the small gap. The fabric brushes against his sensitive skin as his limbs finally fail, the pounding in his head eclipsing all thoughts.
The last thing he feels is a hand gripping his bony wrist, the palm too small to circle all of it. A warm breath that comes towards his face shakes every so often.
Shisui dreamlessly sleeps.
It's too warm.
Shisui shifts away from the heat suffocating him and the lump mumbles, smacking him in the face with a careless limb. Shisui is too tired to care, however, and as he forcefully cracks an eye open he spots the unforgiving Konoha sun beaming directly on him, Sasuke, and the thick blankets still tucked into the corner of the kitchen.
Shisui slowly blinks and shifts his gaze to the ceiling.
It wasn't a dream.
His spine still aches like a motherfucker.
"Shisummm…" Sasuke mumbles. His forehead is sweaty and he clearly is still asleep, but he grips Shisui's shirt like a lifeline.
Shisui gives out a soft sigh. "Go back to sleep, Sasuke-chan. Everything is all right."
At once, Sasuke's frown relaxes and his hands unclench. Shisui's heart simultaneously weakens and hardens at the display of trust. Somehow, it gives Shisui the energy to untangle himself from the web of fabric, making sure to pull the heavier blankets off from Sasuke's little form in order to alleviate the heat.
No matter how quiet he tries to be, it doesn't stop the faint crack of bones as he lifts himself upward, feeling every one of his mental years like a stone around his neck. Shisui grimaces as he hears another vertebrae pop.
He opens the fridge and the cupboards softly, careful not to wake Sasuke as he glances to take stock of what they had. Those horrendous protein bars are missing from a spot Shisui knows Mikoto kept in a corner, as well as a few other packaged snacks. Shisui grimaces as he takes in the view of wilted fruits and vegetables.
He sighs. It's weird, Shisui muses, how even in the worst of circumstances, at the end of the world as he knows it, someone still needs to get the groceries.
He glances towards the door of the main room and then back at the kitchen window. A cumulation of emotions and thoughts circle his mind as the logic of It's just a room! and Someone I knew died in there collide in a frustrating barrier that roots his feet to the spot.
In the end, it's what would set an example for Sasuke that pushes him to make his way towards the unassuming and imposing wooden frame. He turns the knob, and with one last hesitant pause, opens it.
There's nothing there.
Shisui lets out a slow blink as his eyes gaze around the familiar tatami and sparse decorations. Over there, his mind gently nudges as a wispy memory reminds him of a smaller Itachi beating him at a game of shogi with surreal calmness as Shisui pulled at his own curls in frustration.
He lets out a shaky breath. Focus. He needs to focus.
Wait.
Shisui frowns as a clear, chemical scent wafts up his nose. He goes past the door frame and stands in the middle of the room. There's no blood, he realizes. Not a trace of anything occurring except for the gashes on the walls.
With faint horror and a small, shameful feeling of relief, Shisui realizes they cleared off all of the grime and corpses as he slept. No evidence.
His feet quickly pad over to Fuagku's office, the soft thumps filling the hallway until he opens the shoji and stares out into the sterile room.
The empty room, to be precise. All of Fugaku's haphazardly arranged forms and scrolls are gone, cleared out as if they never existed in the first place, which Shisui is more than aware is not the case.
No evidence.
Groceries, he desperately thinks to himself, fighting down the urge to laugh at the empty walls. I need to get groceries.
He clings to those thoughts as he trudges down the compound path, spotting faint flecks of brown that were missed on the cobblestone as the clack of his geta echo. He probably looks ridiculous, walking around in his formal clothes, but if he had to stay one more second in those sweat-soaked reminders of his hospital stay, he was going to rip them off himself.
It isn't long until he's pulled out of his morbid daze by a lone figure standing by the gates.
"Toshiro-san?" He whispers to himself, incredulous. They hadn't properly seen each other in years, not since— "What are you doing here?" Shisui loudly calls out, feet quickening towards his destination.
His old teammate shuffles, looking embarrassed, the copper head of hair looking disheveled and haphazardly thrown into a ponytail. "I guess I just wanted to see if you were alright, but… I wasn't gonna go into the compound," He starts to say, but it trickles down into a mumble. Shisui has never known Toshiro to be an underconfident man, even as an unskilled genin. The dissonance is unsettling.
"Oh," Shisui forces himself to remark, "Thank you." The words are stiff and awkward, painfully unlike how he would have reacted just a few days ago. Shisui grits his teeth, mentally bashing himself to get a grip. The hot sun beats on him like an accusation.
"I'm fine, however," Shisui says, forcing more vigor into his voice. "I was just about to head out into the market, actually. So if there's nothing else—" He makes his way past his old teammate, but Toshiro grabs his bicep, making sure he goes slow enough to not trigger any reflexes.
"I just wanted to let you know that I don't believe the rumors. No one with a brain does, anyway," He says, staring into Shisui's eyes.
"Well— " Shisui's voice cracks and he hates it, he hates that Toshiro is staring at him and he hates what Toshiro just implied.
Fuck. He didn't even think about what everyone else thought of Shisui Uchiha as one of the last of his clan. At worst, he would be seen as an accomplice. At best, his survival was a fluke.
Shisui chokes down an ironic laugh.
"T-thanks," He manages to finish. He attempts a grin, and the furrowed brows on Toshiro's face says it all. Shisui brushes the hand away, feeling the imprint like acid. "I'm fine, though," Another attempt at a smile.
Toshiro's brows furrow deeper. "Careful, you're gonna sound like Hatake," He says. It was worded as a joke, but his tone was anything but. Kakashi's psych evals were a well-known topic amongst the gossip rags of the upper chunin and jonin.
"What a horrible comparison," Shisui tries to banter back. He winces as his tone turns deadpan.
The awkwardness turns stifling as neither of them figure out a way to continue the conversation.
"Well," Shisui begins, dragging out the word. "I'm gonna head out. Thanks again for the heads up. If you need anything—" Don't contact me, "Let me know."
Toshiro straightens and nods. "The same goes to you, Uch-" He abruptly stops. "Shisui-san."
Shisui takes the out that he had created and hurriedly walks past, trudging towards the marketplace as if awaiting his execution.
After everything that happened, such an event would have yielded lighter steps.
Toshiro's words unsettle him more than Shisui is willing to admit. He's always been desperately aware of what people think about him and how that influences how he is treated, and the rumor issue is just one more cherry on top of the shit pie.
He forces his hand in his pocket as he walks down the dusty path back to his compound, placing his fidgeting hands into stillness as they attempt to carve a hole into the cardboard bags of food. Now would not be a good time to let his shadows know that he's on the verge of another mental breakdown.
Shisui isn't naive enough to think he isn't being trailed. Honestly, he's surprised no one has ordered a hit out for him within the higher-up circles. Fuck knows he's taken ANBU missions with far more dubious moral circumstances than killing a potential accomplice to an S-ranked missing-nin.
Shisui kicks a pebble in his path as this swirl of his thoughts darkens. But then again, being one of the last remaining Uchiha leaves his eyes in high demand. Maybe they're hoping he can pop out a few babies to mellow him out instead of causing a diplomatic incident by taking his sperm by force.
A flicker of flames on the edge of his vision pulls him away from his macabre thoughts. His step slows, and he cocks his head to the side, eventually noticing the smell of smoke wafting from the doorway of a clan member who will never again walk those halls.
Shisui's curiosity gets the better of him and he veers his course, geta clacking against the stone as he takes his time meandering up the porch and into the dim hall, taking no heed of the instinct to announce himself to an empty room. Even knowing no one was there, it still feels like an intrusion.
He wearily looks around, the tiredness of his body coming back in full force as he gazes into the small room, letting them roam over the solid wax melting across abandoned shrines and dried flowers.
He shifts himself to the sight of a flickering light in the corner, a lone candle and wooden bowl filled with some type of carved figurine laying unobtrusively in the northern spot of the dim room, barely letting in enough light for Shisui to make out the grim faces of his relatives' long-dead portraits, if he wanted to.
He doesn't bother taking off his shoes as he walks towards the flames, geta carelessly leaving indents in the tatami. Shisui sets the food down and peers down at the objects, taking the figurine in one hand.
The bowl is well-made, varnished, and shallow, possibly bought from a vendor. Shisui doesn't need the sharingan to be able to tell that the other object is hand-carved, rough strokes purposeful but unskilled. Shisui's first instinct is to label it as a dog, but the longer body and face turn the mental category into a wolf.
Shisui flinches as he realizes what he is holding, his hands gripping the wooden wolf forcefully as he runs out of the house and into every other building, finding each and every one possessing the same shallow bowl, wooden wolf, and simple lighted candle posing in the name northern corner of each main room. The skill of the wolf carvings increases with each home farther out in the compound.
A funeral rite from the Hatake clan, done when Shisui and Sasuke couldn't.
And Shisui, gasping for breath in the middle of an abandoned street, encircled by empty, bright houses, feels his eyes begin to burn and cries until the pulsing lesions of his heart begin to dull to a soft thump, thump, thump.
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