XXX

Kisame Hoshigake

It's strangely awkward, he thought, to be drinking tea at this time. He glanced at the room's other occupants. And with company such as this.

Ryuuda glared at the cup in Kisame's hands. "Something wrong with it?" he said flatly.

"No," Kisame said slowly, taking a deep sip; it ran through warmly and sweetly like an isolated stream. He turned to the other's wife and did his best to look thankful. "This is quite good," he hazarded. "Thank you."

"Thank you," Tusina replied quietly. Her face was mostly hidden behind silvery bangs. He waited if she would say anything else, but she seemed determined to wrap herself up as tightly as she could on her end of the table. Kisame again glanced to Ryuuda, who was straining his body to look as large and tough as he could across from her.

So this is the impressions I give to others. They either become afraid, or they become defensive.

He drained the tea in one last gulp, no longer savoring the taste. "I will retire for the night," he said robotically, standing up. "Thank you for your hospitality, as always."

"As you were," Ryuuda grunted, watching him intently from his seat.

Kisame left without another word, making it the ninth night in a row that the cycle had repeated itself. Wake up, visit Itachi, visit the valley lake to see the sharks, visit Itachi again, then return to the awkward comfort Ryuuda and Tusina were forced to provide him.

He almost felt bad.

This time, though, he saw something move in one of the hallway doors, which were almost always closed to him save for his own small room. He stopped and looked at the little crack, confused. A few seconds passed, and then a small eye appeared in it. There was something like a "meep!" from the crack, followed by a hasty stumbling back.

Kisame pressed his painted nails to the door and slid it open. A small boy was on the ground, rubbing his bottom where he had fallen. Now he looked up at Kisame, but there was more of a guarded curiosity on his young face; much like the one Kisame thought he had right now.

"Are you their son?" he asked gruffly, his frame almost filling up the entire doorway.

The kid nodded. "Who... who are you?"

Kisame raised a finger to his face to touch the twin markings by his eyes. "One of the clan."

"I've never seen you before. I wanted to get a better look, but Father said I wasn't to speak to you..."

Remembering his own treatment from his father, Kisame chuckled. "Brave of you to disobey him and find me on your own like that."

But the kid shook his head, grinning. "No, you found me, see? Now I won't get in trouble."

He baited me? "Crafty, too, eh?" Kisame shook his head, fully grinning now. "Well, you got me, kid. What did you want to ask me?"

"Where have you been?"

The grin faded a little. "I've been away. Why is my case different, hmm? The clan constantly feeds shinobi recruits to Kirigakure and abroad. What makes you think I'm different from them?"

"They always come home. But... this is the first time I've seen you."

"You hardly look older than five. You can't have seen many come home."

"No, everyone usually comes back at least once a year." The kid grinned in kind, now. "Come on, mister, I've got you figured out! I wanna know where've you been. Are you an uncle of mine? Old cousin? Come on, come on!"

Kisame stepped forward, and that one step brought him towering over the child. The younger one seemed to feel the sudden tension and his cocky persona quickly crumbled away into wariness. To his credit, though, it was no fully fear; he trusted Kisame enough not to be brutal enough to another clansmen.

Things have changed since I last returned to my homeland, he thought dimly. Shinobi allowed to return home. Children no longer fearing overbearing punishment from their elders. Unconditional trust amongst brethren. How things change.

"I am a rogue shinobi," Kisame said flatly. "I killed by sensei, severing my ties with the village, although he himself was a traitor. I work with a partner, but I would not hesitate to destroy him should I need a reason to do the same. Anyone who crosses me,

"Don't... don't you trust him."

Don't you trust him?

"Trust is a lie. All it earns you is manipulation by others. Always put yourself first, boy. That way, your life is always in your own hands. Your achievements, your failures, all of it." He clenched a fist in front of him. "The only one who can disappoint you then... is yourself."

The future shinobi of Hoshigake looked incredibly humbled, but he had not yet moved away from Kisame. "I want to become strong. Will you teach me?"

His voice was so assure of itself that Kisame had to do a double take. "What?"

"Teach me to be strong like you! Father won't train me, and I still have another year of the academy, but I always lose to everyone else. I want to become the best!"

"How did you get that from anything I just said."

The boy's eyes glimmered. "Able to kill your sensei? Your partner whenever the need arises? Anyone in your way? Isn't that what being a shinobi all about? Completing the mission no matter what?"

"SHIZUMA!"

The boy froze while Kisame lightly looked over his shoulder. Ryuuga was there, looking stricken. "I told you not to speak to him!"

"You said not to find him!"

Ryuuga entered the room, sidestepping around Kisame like he were an unpleasant insect. "Get to bed, now! And you-" He turned to Kisame, who was still significantly taller than him. "Out into the hall, if you would."

Kisame obliged him, and the guardsman shut the door. "What were you doing with my boy? Were you going to kill him?"

"Do you think me that kind of man?" Kisame asked, disgusted.

"I don't know anything about you besides that you murder people for a living," Ryuuga snarled. "Don't you ever go near my son again, or I-"

"You think you can take me on?" Kisame started, anger welling from nowhere. "Come on, let's step outside and put yourself where your words are!"

Ryuuga clenched his fists, but his eyes betrayed the fear in his soul. "Don't go near my son," he said again, not backing down. "I won't ask you again. I don't need you filling him with nonsense, not when I'm trying so hard to raise him to be a good man!"

"He's already thinking how a shinobi should," Kisame sneered. "There's no stopping that, not when that's how it is outside of the confines of this village. Things may have changed here since I was a boy, but everything else has stayed the same hellpit. You ought to be giving that boy more exposure, otherwise the minute he steps onto the battlefield he'll be gutted-"

"Shut your mouth!" Ryuuga shouted. His voice brought his wife down the hall, completely fretful.

"Ryuuga, no! Don't start things with him!"

"Get off of me, Tusina! I won't let this monster creep upon our child!"

Kisame laughed hollowly and then left the two parents standing in the hallway, bemused. He closed his door behind him and sat upon the raised cot, feeling completely empty of emotion.

How long had he been telling himself he'd left the lies of the world behind him? Figuki Suikazan of the Seven Swordsmen had fed him tragedy all his life, and he had sworn when he slew him and accepted the freedom Madara Uchiha had offered, he would distance himself from his old life. A life filled with deceit, depression, misguidance, and lack of meaning.

But was now any different?

He looked out the window, to where he knew Itachi was fighting for his life with the help of the physician. Would he really kill him, if Itachi provided a reason? He'd said it so matter-of-factly to the boy; would Itachi be treated the same as any of the others he had killed for his missions as a Kiri-nin?

Madara was right. This world does not deserve the credit it gets. Every passing moment is just a different representation of hell. A world designed for people to grow up to be killers, and no matter how they try and fight it, it is what they end up as. His fists clenched so hard that his nails drew blood from his pale blue palms. What game am I playing myself? To tell the truth, all the time, that is what I sought to do. But this...

"You told yourself what you wanted to hear."

His hands relaxed, but the anger remained. The voice, again. What is this, my mind playing a joke on itself?

"You're not honest with yourself and who you are. You just keep lying to yourself and force others to reach the mindset you ought to have for yourself. You're a joke."

He put his face in his hands. I am not in the mood for an existential lecture.

"Then keep playing hypocrite. See what it gets you. See what Itachi will think of you when he finds out your high and mighty persona is a lie."

Itachi? Why would I care about what he thinks?

"You know why."

The voice faded, and Kisame stood up in frustration. "Gah! What does that even mean!" he hissed aloud to himself. Realizing he was talking to himself again, he strained to not put a fist through the wall and instead went to the room's only window to look out upon the lake. Five more days until the ritual, and I'm unbalanced like this. Heh, Samehada may even end up not recognizing me. How pitiful.

There was a knock on his door, surprising him. "Enter."

The door slid open, and to his greater shock Tusina was there, head slightly bowed and wearing a dark blue gown.

"What is it?"

"Will you take a walk with me?"

"Huh?"

Her face grew red, but there was yet determination in it. "Please?"

Better than getting angrier and putting my fist through their home. "Very well."

XXX

They went around the valley lake, not really speaking to one another. No one was around, save for an occasional patrolman. Kisame enjoyed the quiet and the gentle sounds that came with a lake: the lapping of the small tide, the humming of insects, the water rippling with the animals inside of it. It was almost like he was truly coming home...

"You don't recognize me, do you?" Tusina said at last.

Kisame frowned and looked at her in the moonlight. "What do you mean?"

"We were both students at the academy. During the reign of the Fourth Mizukage." She smirked some. "The girl with the hair almost touching the floor? It's probably why you don't recognize me now."

He thought back to his old life, and indeed he pictured a smaller version of the woman beside him, flowing silver hair that followed her ankles with every step. "I do somewhat, yes." He looked away immediately after. "We must not have had the same class, though, since..."

"I know." Her voice grew somber. "I'd be dead."

Long ago, when Kirigakure had been a place of shallow murder and deceit under Yagura the Third Mizukage, the classes of academy students would be forced to fight one another to death in massive ways. It was said the victor would obviously be the stronger of the bunch, but more often than not it only produced megalomaniacs and callous shells of the people they used to be. Many of them went rogue, making the classes ultimately pointless since even the victor technically didn't stay around long. Kisame had been one of those victors... and it was a thought he had not put much time into for some time.

But that means...

He looked at her; she looked like an ordinary housewife, beautiful and motherly without a trace of viciousness in her any graduate like himself would have had. Her long hair was much shorter and kept just below her neck, although the bangs remained stretched out.

"I graduated like you did," she said matter-of-factly. "In case you were wondering. My class was one of the last to do so, before the regime change." They walked a bit further in silence, then: "It changes you, something like that."

"I'll say. You seem nothing like me."

She nodded. "It comes up, sometimes. A murderous rage, a different part of myself I wish I could control. Ryuuga calms me down when they happen, but they're still there. Even though I wasn't wounded during the exam, it's like a deep wound exists that I can't heal. You're a bit of the same, aren't you?"

"Hmm?"

"I can tell you want to be different, but the things you've experienced prevent that." She nodded her head almost knowingly. "You've seen much more than I ever did, but somehow you still appear calm most of the time. You're incredible."

"How do you know I want to be different?" he said gruffly.

She smiled. "You didn't kill my son, did you?"

Kisame shook his head. "First your husband, now you? What is your obsession with me killing your boy?"

"No, it's not like that. Just... our clan has a horrid history, Kisame. But the stories that were told when you abandoned the village, they make those tales look small." Her voice grew wistful as they walked the lake. "I didn't really believe them. Propaganda, I thought, to make you look bad and save the face of the government. But when you never returned to the village... I figured you'd actually done something cruel. That you'd done something not even the Third Mizukage could stand."

"When you learn horrible actions about a person, you expect them to be horrible when you meet them. But the way you spoke to the Elder Council, the kindness you've shown in our home, and the softness you took with Shizuma... they were disarming. It made me think maybe you weren't a horrific man as the stories had said."

They walked for a bit while Kisame wracked his mind for a reply. He hadn't expected anything like this at all. "I was hardly soft with your son," he said finally. "I told him how things were, and not kindly either."

"And from a man who supposedly killed his sensei in cold blood as well as many other allies without a second thought, what would have been the body of a small child you have no connection with on top?" She was looking up at him, but she quickly looked back down, looking mollified. "That was a slip, I'm sorry."

"Don't be; you can't help it, as you said." They were nearing Tusina's home again, and Kisame could see a light and shadow where Ryuuga was likely waiting for their return. "Why did you bring me out here for a walk?"

"When even Ryuuga cannot bring me all the way down, I walk around the lake. It's something we always did as kids... it reminds me of a much simpler time. When we were unmolded by the world and just lived freely and happily."

We? He could scarcely remember a time when he was not out fighting. But she had not paused in step or word; it must have been true. A time when we were unmolded... is there ever such a time? Truly?

"I have difficulty showing it, but you are welcome in our home. With time, I'm sure Ryuuga would come around, too. Whatever you did out there, I know it was for-"

"I killed my master." He stopped fully, looking down into the edge of the water. "And I plotted against the Third Mizukage, to overthrow and kill him. Even though he commended me for killing my master in the first place. Even though he looked upon me, the killer of 99 other students, with gratitude. He was glad I murdered for him until I turned against him, the one who destroyed other lives on whim!" He looked over to her, feeling kinship he had not felt before, knowing she had lived through as close to what he had. "How, in any sense, is the world fair like that?"

For a century there was only silence between them, her face showing shock. But it eventually turned soft, and she walked to be beside him, standing on the edge of the lake. "What do you want, Kisame Hoshikage?"

"I want this world to be not be how it is. I want it to be honest with itself, just for once, so it can see how ugly it's all become. Maybe then such things will cease to happen."

"Things like what."

"Things like myself."

He felt a tear welling up in his eye, and that his body was shaking. "This is you being honest with yourself," the voice murmured. "This is how you actually feel. A person just as ugly as the world you condemn."

And he had no retort for it.

But Tusina did.

"We're all ugly at some point in our lives," she said quietly. "Someone like me, who would look at me and believe I killed 99 of my classmates? What man would know that about someone at think 'this is the woman I want to marry?'" She chuckled. "I thought that way for a long time. I hated myself, and I hated the world for putting me in such an obscene position. Was life like this elsewhere? Were others suffering like I did? Should I take my life, or take the lives of those who did this to me? And then you're back to thinking you must be some sort of monster to think about murdering others so easily."

She bent down to the edge of the lake and picked up two smooth stones. Kisame looked down at them, then at her as she held one out for him to take. "What's this for?"

"Skipping, what else?"

He hesitantly took it, watched as she tossed hers out onto the surface. One, two, three, four. Then it sank down below the depths, never to be seen again.

"Now you go."

"We're pouring our hearts out, and you want me to skip a rock like a child?"

Her smile as she looked at him was sad. "You're a very blunt man, Kisame. But just think... were we not happier as children?"

He had no response, and so he threw it. Five skips, and she clapped her hands together in excitement. "That's good! I can rarely get that many!"

Kisame wasn't sure how to respond, but part of him felt slightly happier. He bowed his head, feeling immensely awkward in doing so. When was the last time I ever showed another respect or warmth like this?

Not since Fuguki.

Tusina put a hand on his shoulder, and he straightened until it was forced to fall off his tall stature. "I know there's still a bit of you like that left in you, too," she said softly. "You're not as ugly as the world wants you to be, unless you're trying to be. That's when the line is crossed, I think."

His already small eyes dilated further. "And what makes you think I've not crossed it?" he asked threateningly, testing her resolve.

But there was no fear, just the same sad smile. "Because people who've crossed it wouldn't likely be skipping rocks, would they?" She took his hand for a moment, soft against his hard skin.

"I hope this helped, comrade. Good luck at the ritual. "

Then she left him standing there as he looked after her, once more at a loss for words. Skipping rocks? Comrade? Could things really be this simple?

He didn't know. He picked up one more rock from the bank, feeling it between his hands. Was I happier as a child?

"No doubt."

Were things simpler?

"No doubt."

Did... I play koto?

"Every day."

And though the awful strum of the one in his mind played, he was unshaken. He tossed the rock for five skips, and as it sank below the water he swore to himself to fix all the snapped strings so that it would play well once more.

XXX

Other

Outside, rain pounded relentlessly against the worn metal. It was as relentless and domineering as his presence in the room, looking impotently through the one eyehole at the other. His greatest tool currently, the one that had replaced Itachi when the he realized the other was too uncontrollable.

Very soon, even this weapon would be outclassed.

"I find it difficult to believe they both would have deserted," Pain said moderately, hands folded before his pierced face. The Rinnegan did not look at his mask, rather at the low table between them that supported drinks for the three of them. Behind the seated Akatsuki leader, his pet paper crane, Konan, stood in quiet loyalty. Both admirable tools he'd crafted with the world's cruelty as his putty.

But they were nearing their end.

"Zetsu has confirmed us from the spores placed on them. I thought I had finished off Itachi, but it seems Kisame rescued him and has taken him to Hoshigake Village in the Land of Water."

"His home?" Konan interjected. "He has stated many times he'd never seek to return there. Are you certain?"

"As certain as I am you both are wasting my time by not complying," Madara said with a bite of impatience. "Why they've both deserted is beyond me; well, not entirely true. Itachi I have always suspected to harbor intentions that did not align with Akatsuki... Kisame is likely unaware of this." He grinned behind the mask, remembering their last encounter- their last real encounter. "His comradery with the Uchiha has blinded him. All he needs to do is be woken up, and he will remember himself."

The angry drops were all that could be heard for a moment. Just when Madara thought that Pain would defy him, the other eloquently stood. "What would you have me do? Kill them?"

"They're liabilities," Madara agreed. "Itachi is, at the very least. He will need to be disposed of. I would attempt to barter with Kisame, as I said."

"It seems wasteful to kill a man like Itachi." The orange-haired figurehead spread a hand before him. "Perhaps he has lost focus, like Kisame?"

"Now you're just acting like Kisame," the masked warrior sneered. "You are a God, or so you claim. Surely your attachments to mortals like them are holding you back? Yes, they're great assets, but they have now become great threats to our goals. Goals, I recall, you swore to accomplish at any cost on my behalf."

The Rinnegan narrowed. "I have accepted your counsel. But do not ridicule me for seeking to preserve life. As you told me- as many as possible ought to experience the gift of the Eye of the Moon."

Your sentimentality is buried deep, Nagato, but mark my words, it will still be the death of you some day. "Do as you will, then," he sneered. "Just know I warned you."

Pain nodded and beckoned to Konan, who nodded and began to dissolve into hundreds of paper cranes. They all began to take flight, one by one, out the gaping mouth of the metal tower they were residing. Within a minute, they had all dispersed out into the heavy rain.

Still the other lingered. "Something else?" Madara asked a little dryly.

"You have no qualm about killing one of the last living Uchiha?" Pain asked with the faintest sign of curiosity. "I understand he destroyed your clan, but even so, he bears some of the last blood similar to your own. But your intent seems to be absolutely sure he dies."

Madara shrugged, wondering why the three glasses had been set out if none of them would have been able to drink in the first place. Formalities. Just like all this talk. Actions that seem wasteful holds many benefits.

But what is even more beneficial are those actions not seen by others until it is too late.

"No qualms whatsoever," Madara Uchiha gloated. "Have no fear, the future of the Uchiha is very much ensured."

"How so?"

And he chuckled lightly. "I would hate to ruin a perfectly good surprise."