Posted un-betta'd, (again!)so if you see any errors let me know so I can fix them
also: reveiws make me feel loved and help me write when my muse abandons me...
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He was almost sorry to leave her there and he wasn't even sure why. It was better. Really. It was. Not only would she slow him down on the road, her recovery would be slower, more painful. He was doing this for her own good. And really, what kind of chance did he have anyway? The whole time it had been give give give. She'd barely spared him more than a skepticl glance... So why did he want to go back for her?A voice in the back of his head answered, and he was shocked. He was lonely.
He laughed at first. Loneley? Him? The great swordsman Kisame? The terror of theMists? Bah. But the more he thought about it, the more it felt like the truth. He had spent so many years with the Akatsuki, since he was almost 17, that he had become unaccostomed to the sound of silence. Although the Akatsuki was a group of eleite missing nins, they were a family in a warped sort of way. Kisame had grown used to the sound of them nearby, the gentle humm of the fan Tobi always ran in the next room, the occational explosion (inevitabley followed by shouting) from Deidara's room down the hall. And Itachi.
Kisame's chest got tight at that. He missed the sound of Itachi breathing in the bed next to his, or on the rare occation that the Uchiha allowed himself that weakness, in the same bed, next to him. He missed the taste of his skin, the smell of his hair. He missed those quirked, half-smiles that Itachi would sometimes get. A memory played un-bidden in his head. Itachi was laying in the hotel room bed, halfway to helpless after using his eyes once too often. Kisame was feeding him soup from a shallow blue bowl- the color of the bowl stood out vividly in his memory because of how nice it had looked next to the charchoal of Itachi's almost-blind eyes -and getting more on the younger nin than in his mouth. "Tsh." Kisame had scoffed, "What kind of Uchiha genious are you? Gettin' your ass beat like that..." Itachi had given Kisame one of his rare true smiles, "A bad one." Kisame had laughed at that, and Itachi's shoulders had shaken under the blankets in silent mirth.
His throat got tight thinking of what he had lost. It wasn't love. He did know that much, but it was friendship, an understanding. Trust. Something Kisame had had to do without in his days as a sword-for-hire in mist. It was nice to have someone to fall back on, to count on to always be there for you. A partner. A friend. A lover? Sometimes. But that was but the tiniest aspect of thier relationship to be indulged only when one or both of them felt that need so strongly that it was a nearly physical pain, and only then if there were no brothals or willing villiage girls nearby. Although, because of his appearance, Kisame usually had to resort to brothals or suffer in silence. It wasn't that he was unatractive, no, quite the oppisite, it was because he was different.
But Itachi had never seen him as anything other than just "Kisame." To Itachi, Kisame was a partner, a friend, a sometimes-lover, someone to back him up. And Kisame had left that. Another memory projected on the inside of his scull. It was a dark haired girl laying halfway to helpless against a tree after getting the life choked out of her by a beefy sound nin. Kisame was feeding her drugged tea out of a silver bowl- the same color as her eyes -and getting more down the front of her than in her mouth. "What kind of Hyuuga are you anyways?" A wry smile had twisted her lips as she choked out, "a bad one." They had laughed.
"Back already?" the orderly smiled as Kisame blinked in confusion and slowly accepted where he had ended up, almost unconciously. Sometime while he was thinking he had turned around and made his way back to the villiage, back to the hospital. "Uhm, yeah." Kisame started, "The girl..." The orderly smiled again in a friendly way and gave him directions to the Hyuuga's room. As he set up the tea pot on the in-room hot plate he thought about what he was doing sitting up here, risking his life and hers, making tea for a dark-haired girl that he only knew by last name and family reputation.
And, when he couldn't come up with a single reason why, he smiled.
