Itachi Uchiha

XXX

A specter hung over the room, kept at bay only by the single candle on the bedside table. He looked into it silently, his hands held loosely on his lap. He did not consider himself a nervous or impatient man, nor did he suspect anyone else would ever come to such a conclusion after spending more than five minutes with him.

But he felt it now. He felt it to the bone.

Kisame had not spoken a word as he himself said many, an entire saga lasting an hours and twelve minutes; yes, he'd counted. It was the only thing that he felt could keep his mind in check. So many secrets, so many events, so much that he had kept bottled up inside for many years. Some people knew bits and pieces of his true deeds: Hiruzen, Madara, Danzo. But no one had ever known the full and complete picture until now- he doubted anyone ever knew another's entire story. It was too vast a thing to understand.

But he'd done it now. Kisame knew everything. And now he sat on the edge of his bed with his hands folded before him and his head bowed to his chest silently; the same pose he had held for the past 30 minutes.

Wax dribbled down from the candle tip and down the stalk to join the slowly forming puddle at the base. His eyes watched it intently, almost praying he would be able to spend the rest of his life with this miniscule and pointless task. The world would carry on perfectly without him, all would be well, and he would finally come to rest-

"Why didn't you go after him?"

He blinked but found himself unable to stop watching the wax. "What do you mean?"

"While I was healing here. Why didn't you go after Sasuke if he was at such risk?"

"My answer hasn't changed. Three days were inconsequential compared to making sure you recovered from the separation process." A full minute of silence passed, and another bead came off the stalk. "Is... that all you had to question?"

"No. Not even close."

Itachi finally looked away from the candle to see Kisame was looking at him. His small eyes were ragged and drained, but there was noticeably none of the familiar anger in them. Strangely, Itachi felt more apprehensive with its departure. "What, then?"

Kisame chuckled weakly. "You've been lying to everyone about who you are. Everyone. The way of the shinobi is to act in silence and in the shadows, working for their people and succeeding through any means. But this... it's beyond anything I ever expected from anyone. Even you."

"You were a double agent for a time-"

"That's not even close to being the same!" Kisame stood up and began to pace. "When I realized Kirigakure was a corrupted shell of a village, I kept information to myself and sold them to dissenting parties in the nation who wanted the Fourth Mizukage gone. I lied, yes, but I did so with clear motivations and in good conscience; that's just how things worked here! That was the name of the game!"

"But you... you slaughtered your entire clan. Everyone you ever knew, alongside a psychopath whose goals you didn't even fully understand. For a Hokage who let it happen!" He ran a shaky hand through his hair. "He let you murder all of them for some abstract idea of 'the good of the village.' What good came out of that? Several hundred dead and a little kid who was traumatized for life? A prodigy in the village forced to live on the fringe and keep these secrets locked in his head? How did that help ANYONE!"

Itachi remained silent, his chest and throat aching with suppressed emotion. It was all the same second-hand thinking that often haunted him... but it was different hearing another's perspective on it.

"And the Akatsuki... you've been sending information back to the village, right? For that one Sannin to find, Jiraiya? Were you even feeding him intel when we first tried to kidnap the Nine Tails? Besides putting our lives in danger just to send that elder Danzo a warning, were you undermining the organization you worked for even then?"

"I did it to urge Jiraiya that the threat Akatsuki posed went beyond just his fascination with Orochimaru," Itachi said robotically, not caring it was rhetorical. "That the Akatsuki was a credible and growing danger that was bold enough to sneak into Konohagakure in broad daylight to-"

"SHUT UP!" Kisame slammed his fist upon the bedside table and it collapsed under the force. The candle was snuffed out as it fell, dousing them in total darkness. "Just how much of what we did was for the Leaf? How much of what we did was for the Akatsuki? How much of it just meant nothing to you, just more cover to keep this insane façade up so you could continue spying on all of us?"

There was nothing he could say that would make a satisfying answer, and they both knew it. Itachi looked down to the fallen candle, wishing he could have continued watching it-

"And our partnership. Our 'clan.'" Kisame sniffed above him. "How much of that was just a cover for your real objectives?"

"All," he quickly said, snapping his gaze up from the wreckage to stand as well. "Well, maybe at first when we hardly knew each other, when we were mistrustful. But once I spent enough time with you, it became more clear. None of that was a lie, I swear."

The other chuckled dimly. "How many other times have you 'sworn' for me and I realize now it was just part of your illusion? Why would I trust that now?"

"Did I not risk my life to save you from being consumed by that sword?" Itachi said irritably. "I think that's evidence of-"

"You don't get it. It's like your whole life and who you are has been nothing but a genjutsu placed on those around you. Misleading them to think you're some monster, or some stalwart ally to Konohagakure, or just a big brother trying to do what's right for their sibling. Which is the real thing, Itachi?" His hands clenched. "Just how much of yourself did you kill back in the Uchiha Massacre?"

Itachi stopped dead, his voice once again catching in his throat.

I've been doing this for Sasuke. For the Village Hidden in the Leaves. Haven't I? Sure, it's a little selfish, but...

Fugaku's voice hummed ominously in the back of his mind. YOU FAILED.

He looked down to the dark floorboards. What have I done, really? Sasuke is in Madara's hands, and trying to get him back will definitely end with me overexerting my body. Konoha will still be in danger from the Akatsuki. And me... what do I get? Glasses?

The door opened, but the physician did not speak as he had expected. Itachi blinked and suddenly realized he was alone in the room. He went out and followed Kisame's footsteps as they went outdoors into the night. He walked with an abandoned stride, and it did not take him long to catch up to him just outside the doorway.

"Where are you going?"

"Away."

"To what end?" Itachi demanded. "We've been doing all of this together, and now you just want us to run away? What about Sasuke?"

Kisame turned around and pointed tiredly at his chest. "Sasuke is your burden. Turns out he always has been. Me? I got strung along. I don't care about that damned brother of yours."

"And there is no 'us.' Don't follow me."

He was again stunned into silence for a moment, but his voice came back quicker this time. "So you are just going to run away?"

"I'm not running away. There's nothing to run from here. I'm just leaving."

"You can't just-"

"I don't owe you anything, Itachi Uchiha. You saved my life, and for what? To make me work with you to get this kid back from a monster you knowingly helped in the past?" He shook his head. "Huh. I guess I did, too. I wonder how much of my life has been made into a lie now?"

"Kisame-"

"I'm not going to hear it, Itachi," the other said tiredly, again with little trace of the usual buried fury. It was like listening to a grandfather reminiscence his mistakes to his grandchildren. "We're finished. This 'clan' of ours is finished, if there ever was one. All I can say... is thank you for finally admitting to the truth. That so much of what I had feared about you turned about to be right."

Itachi winced. "And what was it you feared."

His teeth glinted in a sad sort of smile. "That you were just another side piece used in someone else's life."

And he left him standing in the middle of the village. After a short while, in the darkness, he, too, departed.

XXX

Kisame Hoshigake

XXX

Before he left, he had to get Samehada. The blade, even if it had only recently tried to absorb his very essence, was the only ally he had left. It had just been acting in its very limited intelligence, sensing Kisame's despair and trying to rally behind him the only way it knew how.

As he walked to the Clan Hall, though, he was drawn to a noticeably worn shell of a building. From my rampage? He looked around, but every other structure around it had been repaired or was otherwise intact. In the moonlight, the village looked as fine as when he had first arrived. This one alone stood in a quaint sense of disrepair, its walls and roof still intact but with an an indiscernible age and loneliness about it. He found himself being drawn to it-

Even before he'd gotten close, he realized why he was attracted, but it did not stop his approach. He stopped just short of the first crisped plank of wood.

"They appropriately took their lives after the shame you inflicted upon their name."

He stepped onto the front step, and it creaked in greeting as he returned home. No one had taken care of his parents' home since they had killed themselves, leaving it to slowly rot and decompose. The walls looked ready to break at the slightest touch, and the thin clay roofing drooped depressingly off the sides. But somehow, some ancient vow held it all together. Perhaps it had been waiting for him?

He smirked at the superstition as he walked deeper in, then stopped before entering the kitchen. This was the furthest he had gone into the home since the last time he'd been here, hadn't it? His parents had blocked his entry out of fear he was there to kill them, and he had left without another word...

Fear. Anger. Misery. Lies. That's all my life has ever been about, hasn't it? Infecting me and anyone who I ever got to know. What a world I live in.

The invisible barrier preventing him from moving forward disappeared and he went into the intestines of the home, which wasn't saying much; only his own childhood room and that of his parents lied beyond here. He passed by theirs, noting it looked as orderly as he had known them to be save for the inevitable decline in state. But he pressed forward to his, with the door still closed-

"On a memory trip?"

He started, but quickly relaxed. "You must have been a good assassin before you became a mother. I didn't notice you arrive."

"That's what graduating from the academy during the Age of the Blood Mist does to you. You become the best of the best." Tusina quietly walked to beside him. "Ryuuda saw you come here from his posting and told me."

Kisame clicked his tongue. "Probably thought I was coming here to rob, didn't he?"

"He's my husband and he protects the village," she reminded him. "But no. He has a lot of respect for you, you know. Even after you became a criminal, you represent the old ways of the Hoshigake. Warriors free to do as they please with nothing holding them back, unlimited strength-"

"Free? Don't make me laugh." Kisame's hand on the door fell away and he just looked down at the knob. "I've never been free. Always have been tied to someone's goal. Someone else's endgame. I've never been myself."

She put a hand on his arm, but he shrugged it off. "Don't."

"Okay, I won't." She crossed her arms. "But you're being a child."

"I'm being a child? The entire world acts like everything is a game! They'll tell lies like we're all just children on a playground trying not to tell someone who their crush is, or hiding someone's lost ball from them! Do they even think about what lies do when we're all adults? We're supposed to be the honest ones and know how things are supposed to work, but NOBODY knows ANYTHING about ANYONE!"

She leaned against the wall and sighed. Her fingers pricked at her forearm before replying. "Did it ever occur to you that you wanted to be with people?"

He shot her a dirty look. "What?"

"You worked with those people because you wanted to be with someone, didn't you? A belonging. A family."

A clan-

"They used me and destroyed who I was," Kisame snarled. "All of them. It was all just lies fed to me to make me do what they wanted- what about what I wanted?"

"What do you want?"

"I- I-" He flung his hands up in frustration. "I don't know anymore! So much of who I was is gone- even my own parents didn't give a damn." His hand went again to the door, but he could not bring himself to open it. He knew all that he would find beyond it was an empty room...

"Come here was a mistake," he said suddenly, and he barged past Tusina. "There's nothing left for me in this house or village. I need to-"

Tusina grabbed his arm with surprising strength and pulled him to a complete stop. Before he could even resist, she'd flung him onto his back and straddled on top of him with her legs locking his arms tightly down.

Nothing was said at first, they simply looked at each other. Her eyes were fierce and somehow familiar-

"Do you remember when we kissed at the Academy?"

"Wha- what?"

She smiled sadly. "It was a few weeks before the final exam. I'd had a crush on you for a long time, and I figured if one of us were going to die after the exam I'd confess then and there. It was just like this, too- I challenged you to a sparring match, pinned you down, and..." She puckered her lips into a kiss, and it quickly broke down into a laugh. "Just like that. You even had that same stupid expression on your face that you do now."

He blinked and felt his face tingle. "What are you talking about, we didn't kiss-"

"After the exam, we were different." She put a hand to his left cheek, and it tingled more than ever. "The things we did in there, things children should never be made to do... it took things from us. It took me a long time to accept that the Tusina before the exam was not the one who came out after it. I know you were the same, other graduates I've talked to had the same detached life for a while. We were... missing ourselves."

Kisame looked up at her in the confines of the decaying room, suddenly feeling very hot in the face. "What's happened to us?"

She shrugged on top of him, but her hold over him never wavered. "I spent my life very absent minded, I think. When I heard you were plotting against the Fourth Mizukage and then fled the village, I had half a mind to do the same. 'Why stay in a place that hurt you so badly?' I wondered. You were... inspiring, even if you were not the same awkward koto-playing boy I knew before the exam."

Inspiring? Me?

"So why did you stay?"

The laugh came back. "I met Ryuuda," she said simply. "He wasn't a graduate of our exam, but he was someone who understood me nonetheless. He had his own demons to fight, and it helped him come to terms with my own suffering."

He waited for more, but she seemed lost in the memory. "That's all? You just... fell for each other?"

Her eyes returned to eyes, and the tingling resumed. "I never forgot about you, Kisame," she said quietly. "I love Ryuuda and Shizuma, and I can't call what I feel for you now the same. Those feelings did die in the exam along with the other parts of me I lost... but you were an anchor to those times. You still are. You're still you, even if you can't recall those memories."

You're still you.

Am I?

His left snaked up behind Tusina's right one and unlatched it from its grip over his arm. The movement caught her off guard and she tumbled off of him, and in a flash he had moved his much larger body over hers, completely transforming the situation so that they were now in opposite positions. Her eyes looked up at him with the same fierce intensity, the same intensity he recalled many years ago from a day in the training gym-

Their lips met for the briefest of moments; he had not even known he had moved down until he felt the sensation of their connection. As soon as he had done so, he peeled back and got off of her. "I-I- I'm sorry, th-that was uncalled for."

Tusina picked herself from the floor and stood before him, a full head and a half shorter. But there was no betrayal or pain on her face, just...

"And that went just as it did that day, too."

Kisame stumbled back into the kitchen, his back striking the counter painfully. "Who am I?" he groaned. "What part of that was the real me, and the me I am now?"

Tusina walked up to him again to sidle on next to his shaken frame. "We are who we are," she said in the same simple tone. "Every day, the person we were yesterday changes and adapts and learns. We're always changing, making do with what we can." Her hand gripped his tightly, and he could feel the intensity of her eyes even if he did not meet her gaze. "But it helps if we have others to get us through that process. We can't figure it out alone."

"And not everyone you wanted to belong with wanted to use you."

Itachi smiled right in front of him, a rare occurrence. "We are a clan."

He'd felt the sincerity then, knew it wasn't a lie. Even before Itachi had started telling him the whole ugly truth, he had been speaking genuinely. Why had he chosen to ignore that after the fact?

Because I'm afraid it'll all be a lie anyway.

"Anyway, I came here more to give you something. Well, some things, I suppose, if you really are going to leave us tonight."

He looked to her desperately. "Tusina, what do I-"

"Don't ask me what to do," she reproached, although there was some playfulness yet snuggled in her tone. "I just saw my friend suffering and wanted to help. That's what we're meant to do. Now come outside."

Hesitantly, Kisame followed her back out of his parents' home-

"WHOA!" He was almost knocked down by the sudden charge, but there was no malice behind it. A giant, slobbery tongue climbed over his neck and face over and over, eagerly mounting him with the sensation of a hundred bristles-

"Soon as I mentioned your name, it came with me," Tusina laughed. "I think it missed you."

"And I missed it." He pulled Samehada off of him, and the living sword growled affectionately as it extended the handle to him. He took it, and a rush of warmth was exchanged between it and his hand. The blade relaxed, and he happily strapped it to his back once more. Together again, as it should be.

But no sooner had he done it than his eyes were drawn again to Tusina, who had picked something off the ground-

"It started as a hobby to keep myself busy while Shizuma was still an infant," she confessed. "Taking care of a child is much slower and duller compared to assassinating shinobi abroad. It kept me going... and it reminded me of you."

His shoulders sagged. "It's..."

"It's yours." She extended it towards him. "The base is the one I found in the firepit behind your family home. I reconstructed it bit by bit from there. Even if I used it for a while, it's true owner was definitely not me."

Hands shaking, he took the beautiful koto from her. The strings were drawn tight and even in the moonlight, the polished wood shined back at him. It was as if it had never meant the destruction of fire. "I don't know what to say," he said gently. "Besides... it smells like baby powder."

Tusina came forward and wrapped her thin arms around his giant frame in one of the only hugs he'd ever received in his life. "You're still you in there," she said, her voice trembling ever so slightly, and he put a large hand behind her head. "You always have been... and you always will be, Kisame Hoshigake."

Tears of his own glistened in his eyes, but he held her tightly so that she could not see them. "Yeah. I always will."