Something is waiting for him in sleep, once he is able to dream again.
Kisame senses his unsettlement, as he senses everything about Itachi. It is almost distasteful, how much he trusts him, but there is everything in his hands (nothing, nothing remaining but the need to hold on to it, and that makes things different than what they really are- he could be the king of all the distraught women and their children piled atop the thrown Orochimaru has set up for him; it fits him perfectly, the intertwined snakes and spiders of their cobwebs for the past and future (the present is nonexistent, something he has to hold on to but slips away like his brother- perhaps that has been what it always is), but he chooses otherwise, as he has things waiting for him even if they do not understand how empty they are without him) and nothing left to rest it on.
Itachi doesn't believe in carrying weights on his shoulders-, just as he doesn't believe that there is truly, eternally, hopelessly nothing left for his future. Whether Kisame is there or not does not matter-, there is too much of a bond between them to be lovers.
Itachi doesn't believe love is half as important as it is significant.
Something is waiting for him in sleep-, something demonic and ugly and understandably different from him. When things are ignored, they change to suit their loneliness instead of the views of society.
That lonely, evil thing in it's rabidity will skin him alive with the solid blade and it's heavier handle, it's grasp on his sins is ever tight, just as it is ever alone. And it, with his flesh torn between it's teeth like the muddled indecision of whether leaving him alive would make him suffer more, is overwhelmingly less of a liar than him.
Things build-, he is the captain of the crew of that, he wears a thousand hats and a thousand faces (a thousand lies worthy of your clan, but you wouldn't know the difference between the truth- men in hats, and you are in their midst yet they are still bitter enough with your efforts at harmony that they can call you a murderer), and this thing he has built could be the looming of a presence he will grasp in the future.
That is their mission, after all, even if he does not rely on time or essence. He has destroyed his past and is blind to his future-, the eyes he has gained from Shisui (a parting gift for the murderer before he is beheaded with the lies and sins he has built himself as it's captain of demons still trying to play the parts of angels) see only what will come and what he does not believe in.
As empty handed as he is now, there are so many people ready to flow through him to make him complete. He is pathetic without his wholeness, fragile and delicate and dainty like the ancient stories of ballet and masquerades that seem more realistic with time (men of hats-, their hatred is bubbling and brewing and when they tip over in their anger something boiling will pour out their spouts).
There is Sasuke and the Kyuubi holder, tormented with each other like brawling lovers forced to forgive themselves so they will not shame their neighbors with their lack of courteousness-, there is Kakashi with his insanity and his foolishness-, there is a Hyuuga who can teach him to be beautiful-, and there is the small, priceless hope indistinguishable from it's ludicrousness, that he will live further than the amount of time to fix himself.
Something awaits him in his sleep-, the fact that he will die before he can ever become the lie he was before.
Bloodshed missed him and aimed an arrow (dripping and oozingdrippingandoozingdrippingandoozing) straight at the porcelain mask of a normal brother.
He did little to change, but he is different now.
Xxx-xxX
There is something beautiful in the Akatsuki-, Itachi has seen nothing of vanity and these horribly pretty men are against all of that nothing that he has held onto so tightly.
His palms are sweating against the faces of the die resting in his hands, and they look as they are without the sunlight burning in through the windows. Somewhere he remembers that he does not know whether it is even day, or whether someone had simply closed the blinds and drawn the curtains over the seeing glass planes, like demons smoldering the hell-fires with blankets of your own to lure you into something demonic, something inhuman.
It is certainly not the games of men, all of their eyes burning deeper into him than the fires smothered and sputtering the ashes of their last breaths. He is alight with their venoms, and only one of them is recognizably reptilian.
The whispers of snakes are resounding in his ears, and he hears too many voices without Orochimaru's help.
He remembers their names like a child remembering lines of the bible, their mothers preaching it to them as they sleep so they can put their wandering minds (and ears-, all children will hear their parents screaming at the other and that is the only way Itachi can learn that the Akatsuki is not perfect, even flawless in it's imperfections) to something helpful like believing the unbelievable.
If Itachi has heard the voice of God before it is not now- all that is heard is the shrill protests of devils to fall under their hands, so no sort of harmonium can be achieved where he rests.
He hopes he will not die here, in the midst of beautiful people. Beauty is something dangerous, something he is not accustomed with and what is unknown is epitome of the anti-christ.
Itachi is a very religious man in his forgiveness.
The dice slide through his hands instead of the steady shaking he wishes them to fall with (beautiful people are the most dangerous, because you get attached to their unshakeable prettiness like something selfish that you are not, and then you can never force yourself to stop what you have begun in that everyone will not be able to fix themselves before you end yourself, to make them regret hating you).
Everyone is peering through the cracks in between his fingers, watching the die slide like soapy remnants of a cleansing ritual-, and in the midst of where he does not want to end his life, but inevitably will (because spoiled, selfish little boys who were born to be fair and fresh and kind but grew up as rotten, mean, adult men who should've stayed young forever do not get what they wish, not the finale of their selfishness-, what they truly want is wasted on the moments of supplying themselves with useless, hopeless things they do not want), he looks, almost, like he is praying.
Praying that the dice will land of something merciful or the incubus of his old dreaming will not resurface in these painfully beautiful men.
Thoughts, which seemed as an eternity have only lasted a moment (ironically like the mangekyou sharingan he has received, token-, spoiled little boys do not need power but they want it just as much), and the dice fall against the surface of the table, something unbreakable and cruel, like the cycles of death or knowing he will die.
Snake eyes.
Xxx-xxX
Itachi feels old, sitting at the table of the Akatsuki kitchen and squinting into his tea cup as he watches his reflection. People had always told him he looked like his mother, and perhaps, if he could remember her face for a moment even after the brutal slaughter he put her under, he might feel young again.
But ghosts are bitter and all he sees in the murky liquid sloshing over the sides of his cup is a boy who grew up too fast.
Xxx-xxX
The members who do not know him do not wish to ever understand who he is. The image Itachi withheld over them in his mind is now folded over himself-, some demon child teetering on the brink of believing he is immortal so he will slaughter each of them as much as he was known for in slaying his clan.
But he wants to remember their faces-, one day he will look back and picture their images, if not only to pride himself on the fact that he is not as senile as he should be with how utterly old he is.
He is some incubus from their imaginations, spurring the whores and the succubi to lure all the men into some trap. Shinobi understand games, whether shogi or sex or how they play with each other until one of them bleeds out his laughter as he smiles all the way through. Dying is a sport in their league.
Now those who see him only as a presence will speak to him of things they don't speak of elsewhere. Sasori will mindlessly (but with the utmost care-, Itachi has never seen a man who can be so cautious while unaware, but Sasori is less human than him) babble of things equally mindless, Kakuzu will speak in a deep voice in such a low tone that Itachi gets the impression he is choking (gagging and spluttering on what he is trying to admit-, he has always been lacking in sanity and he has to make him understand something that Itachi never will), things that are in other languages and his tongue is swirling in his mouth with both the impressionable death and the harsh clicking and baritones of his foreign words.
Zetsu is always half molded into the walls, head tilted to where his ears can hear Itachi's breathing as if he is excited that one of their members is alive. Sometimes he will converse with himself in harsh robotic sentences or a voice that is almost soothing (Itachi gets the thought that, as he listens to the Akatsuki's lead spy when that was the very intention Zetsu had planned for him, the man is betting back and forth with himself how long he will survive-, it is almost not a question, and Itachi will certainly die there, but the coolness of the more subtle yet just as realistic voice gives him some sort of comfort that he will at least be alive a little longer, if he does not break himself first), and when Itachi falls into the rhythm of him or their thin but unmistakable alliance as members of the same organization, facts stirred into motion and acceptance by the voices that will converse over Itachi's soul, Zetsu will be gone and there is only the odd, unfamiliar feeling resounding in the room.
It is only as Sasori murmurs of sand and no matter how long you are in it there are always remnants (if he were human, perhaps the grains would leave impressions on his heart instead of being stuck between his leg joints, Itachi thinks) in yourself, that Itachi realizes he spends most of his time drinking the same cup of tea in the barren walls of a room which is more of a home to him than the places more comfortable in design.
But if he holds the cup long enough and lets the color and the warmth and the steam seep into his skin (like the sand, little impressions of something not quite home but close enough for your rest pressing into your heart strings), perhaps the tea will be older than him.
Xxx-xxX
Sasori says that there are people much older than Itachi in the Akatsuki, and promptly gives him his age.
He then continues rustling through the cabinets for something that seems to be as lost as his emotions (his perfect, wooden hands too small for the years he has collected like some secret jutsus are reaching through the wooden doors of their kitchen cabinets everyday since Itachi came-, and it is certainly not for Itachi's conversation), something he will never find, and Itachi sloshes the tea in his cup while almost smiling.
Sasori tells him that Kakuzu has managed to become older than him and still keep a heart (three, he tells him-, Kakuzu has three hearts, even if they don't show as he mutters in his hometown language deeper than he needs to speak to not be heard (Itachi wouldn't listen anyway), and Itachi vaguely whispers to Sasori with a voice drained from under use that Kakuzu must be easy to find, with his three, working hearts (which is more than many of them could ever achieve) pumping and pounding against his chest where anyone could hear), and that one of their trainees is older and managed to keep a skin.
Itachi gets up and pretends he doesn't hear the feel of Sasori's words which is more out of place in both the puppet master and a place as hollow as the Akatsuki hideout, and reaches into the cabinet pulling out the sugar bag and sliding it towards Sasori across the countertop.
"It's good for you," he tells him, pausing dully in the entranceway and knowing fully well that Sasori cannot eat at all.
Xxx-xxX
It is the first time he has been out of the kitchen, but he carries his tea with him cradled in his hands (like the flowers pressed between her palms which are backed up against her breasts, begging and pleading that Shisui was not killed by her son), and wonders what type of pain it must be to not be able to cry as he hears the dry chokes coming from the kitchen.
He faintly wonders whether Kakuzu decided to speak to himself or Sasori tried to pour the sugar grains down his throat.
Xxx-xxX
When Orochimaru speaks to him it is only in blunt statements that could mean a thousand different things. It is in the way that a child will expect a stranger to understand what they are telling them simply because their mother used to-, the accents of the draining adolescence ties their tongue in knots even though Orochimaru is not young. But he is some dark figure standing over them, and despite the considerable lack of taste compared to the expanse of his with all the surgeries and manipulations it has spoken through, they can still feel the soured loyalty which has expired in it's time.
Nothing in Orochimaru waits forever, and the only one blind to the fact is Sasori. Perhaps it is because of the knowledge in them that he cannot feel, and it is ever made known that if one cannot feel himself he will never feel another (then again, the ways Orochimaru's name appears in Sasori's vocabulary in a constant repetitiveness that reminds Itachi of his brother's bad aim with kunai (everything else hits dead center, glares and the two fingers prodding a sibling's forehead, and Sasuke should've been the oldest brother) begs to differ), or perhaps it is the sounds that come from their shared bedroom at night.
Xxx-xxX
It is only after Orochimaru leaves that Sasori begins to slide through the halls of the Akatsuki still inside Hiruko, as if he was suffering a minor case of memory loss like a man forgetting that his spectacles are still on his face.
Xxx-xxX
They do not have enough members.
Ultimately, the numbers account for each bijuu, but they will never account for the empty spaces. They have all been over the other more than once, seen each other too many times in the same hallways that never change as much as them, even when they are considered perpetually unchangeable.
The Akatsuki headquarters is stronger than them in that they each will never understand it-, a man who was there his whole life could still get lost, because no matter how strong the man, he will not be able to see in the dark.
Xxx-xxX
Their faces are endlessly sickening in the light.
Itachi is so used to seeing them in the darkness, that when they step outside to train on occasion he will see them as the same but with unfamiliar faces and an ugliness that is different.
Xxx-xxX
There isn't anything to say but in different languages-, they will be understood if they speak with familiar sentences, and at times Itachi wants nothing more than to be left alone, even in the place where he should be more lonely than before.
The clan houses were full to the brim with people, but it is only in the Akatsuki which has too much space and too little change that he feels it is unacceptable to feel lonelier.
It is different from men like Kakuzu, who isn't really considered at all-, those who have too little insanity will want to be misread until no one understands them. To be understood, in the Akatsuki, is as impossible as it is unwanted, and on Kakuzu's part, perhaps he is hardly insane.
Xxx-xxX
Orochimaru participates suspiciously well on what the organization lays before him. It is one of the only obligations Akatsuki holds towards it's members, but Orochimaru's reputation speaks miles ahead of him (not even his tongue can catch up in it's length-, the width is there, too, expanded over a million rays of the soured milk of a mother's breasts, dried up from the reluctance of a child who is convinced he is old and wise beyond his years) and tells them all that Orochimaru is not one for cooperation.
And even with the various hands over their eyes and ears and all that ever mattered to a ninja, Orochimaru cannot blind everyone to his intentions. Itachi never saw anything, and you cannot add to the color of darkness-, it will always be pitch black and empty, and empty spaces do not fill themselves when they become emptier.
Xxx-xxX
Sometime between the years Itachi's name has changed. Kisame no longer calls him (or is able to call him-, the restrictions are there, either because a harlot is not called by what she is in the same way that Itachi is not called what he is, or because it is easier to lie when you're washed in blood so no one can see you're face, meaning that morphing a child's pun into something that meant all the bad luck on their shoulders from the start is not understandable in the slightest, and things that don't make sense make the most of sense when no one understands their reasoning anyway) 'kid' and now it is the curt, murmur of a name that Itachi sometimes forgets is his in the midst of hoping it isn't, embroidered in the delicate grace of stitches Kakuzu could never wear.
Whether it is because Itachi has grown up or because he is the very reason Orochimaru had left is lost, somewhere in the blanketed sky of gray clouds and it's wholly underestimated bleakness-, the day breaking and crackling like a shattered mirror in their views, and everything from his name to the Akatsuki to Sasuke screams that something horrible and ugly is trailing after him like a dog shot in it's leg still determined to catch it's pray, by simple obedience or because no one has told it to stop.
There is no one who dares to interrupt the cycle, no one on his side who would. It is endless and mindless and hopeless, and like his effect on most of the people he meets, the Kyuubi child is the one nail bulging from the sidelines which is not rusted or equally as hopeless as themselves.
But they have other reasons for wanting him (needing him, in the way a family needs one another-, liking is stronger than hatred and if anyone ever truly loved their blood relatives there would only be liars, to keep everyone who they loved safe from what was really outside of their arm's reach, and no one is that selfless anymore), because if the Kyuubi was within one of them, the fine picked and pruned one who has been there since his mind was empty and open to their beliefs, then everything would be wonderful in the ways they know to be true.
The Kyuubi is older than most of them and he wouldn't mistake Itachi for what he really is, they would all be children, like some distorted family image in a broken mirror, with the wavering pictures complete in their movement and abstract lines which never really need to withstand.
In the end they were all grateful of their Leader, because he opened up the wound for them to step into. People like them have no right to heal-, but the first step to healing is to be marred, and in a sick, demented way, Leader invited them to the hoping for hope.
Xxx-xxX
Awake is the only way Itachi is ever really alive. In sleep, he is wary but exhausted, and cannot be awoken for anything but some kind of danger that would affect him if he did not reject the intent of the other (and that's exactly the same truth as death-, when nothing else matters but dying more than you are already dead).
He doesn't understand why he sleeps so much, other than the slim chance that being awake so long for the chance of speaking to his little brother or because he was sick (and tired, tired in a way that is more exhausting than the fact that you have not slept) of dreaming things about him that normal big brothers don't dream of.
Or perhaps because there was nothing in Sasuke's eyes that stated he loved him more than he was told to (Sasuke is ever obedient to people, and that is why he lets Itachi love him and forces himself to hate his older brother more than he used to in the back roads of the pit of his stomach, flipping the mattress to a side you want to sleep on more), and that is just as tiring.
That is why he does not wake up when Kisame shakes his shoulder and asks him if he would like to train (but maybe, just maybe you want to see the Akatsuki as beautiful for forever, and ugly, untruthful things like the sunlight go against everything you've placed your hands on and sworn).
Xxx-xxX
"It's good for you," he tells him, trailing a finger across the tabletop as he leans over Itachi's shoulder.
Itachi doesn't know if he is speaking about himself or if he has spoken of something Itachi should know but does not. There are hands on his wrists, like self-harm leaving bloody convulsions over his skin.
This is nothing to do with self-hatred, even if he has brought this upon himself in the places he has stepped towards. The Akatsuki is not something to be trifled with, and Orochimaru is three steps even ahead of them. The snakes are hissing in his ears and their rattling tails are hitting his back, in thick, even strikes that are similar to their voices.
It cannot be simply this man who he once considered his ally-, these words have come from nowhere or someone who is not him, and Itachi has never known Orochimaru in the same ways that no one has known him. He wonders if telling him that he understands what game he is playing more than even he himself would make him keep his hands at his sides and his tongue to himself.
Orochimaru is older than him in years but younger in age-, Itachi has seen twice the blood and half the life, and the more familiar death is to him than the increase is unmistakable. He is closer to dying in more than simply the ways they are, the rest of his acquaintances.
The only part that stands out to them in a room full of darkness where nothing but words have a glow about them is that Itachi must be foolish for not remembering a simple face.
Children always remember their mother's image, and Orochimaru is fooled with Itachi's body that he is an infant, still.
The lack of scars has nothing to do with skill, after all.
"Orochimaru…" He will forget his face.
(He is not Itachi's father, and not even Itachi's biological one is remembered in the dim light of a den that is surrounded by black-, and in darkness, not even where they are is recognized.)
Burn. Burn through snakes and spiders and all the spiteful things they ever said.
Xxx-xxX
Sitting near each other, Itachi realizes that they hardly eat together.
It is something new and partially refreshing to the tedious schedules (what is repetitive is simply you in your fullest of truthfulness-, you cannot be unpredictable just as these men before you cannot, and the only thing you ever really surprised people in was the way your acceptance was limited to the fact), and perhaps all of them were drawn to this in the way insects are drawn to bright lights.
Itachi wonders if they will burn themselves on this array before them, but it is unlikely-, they are careful and have the scars to show for it that they have already learned to be.
There is the quiet announcement that Sasori will be getting a new partner the next week, but none of them are hardly any bit surprised. Itachi believes somewhere within him that Sasori is hard and bitter towards him (whether it is because he drew Orochimaru's attention to his power or because he made him leave, it is unclear, and perhaps it is both) for what he has done, or that he has taken away the freedom of speaking they all once swam in.
He has disturbed their patterns in the same way he has ruined them, and some days Kisame asks him if he will leave the organization so they can be who they were.
They are all picking at the food on their plates, all of them except Zetsu who is not surprisingly absent. They have been told he is spying on Orochimaru where he was last seen in the north, but none of them believe even Zetsu will find him (after all, he never did spy very well on Itachi and all he ever did was argue with himself over whether they'd all die faster or slower than they all expected). Snakes have the odd tendency of disappearing completely.
"His name is Deidara." Kakuzu says, and their heads snap towards him as if none of them believe he could have spoken (bravery and foolishness have a thin line drawn between them, but it is some sort of miracle that they are all mostly sure that he is simply being brave, being the first to speak the truth as if he doesn't want to hear anymore lies). There's something hopeful and human in their faces, even if they don't know what they're getting into. Anything is better than now, their chopsticks sliding the food across their dishes like it is poison and the only thing not dangerous is their conversation, which is not particularly safe in the slightest even if they can't see that. "And it is advised that you call him that-, he apparently does not like being called anything else."
It is silence, the milky, wet light of a flickering flame burning at the center of their table leading all of their eyes to it because looking at the floor would make them feel like children. Kakuzu is staring at his closed fists which rest a few inches away from his dinner plate, and they tighten visibly as though it is fascinating to watch himself squirm when he is not remotely afraid (at least not on the inside where he can't tell the difference in danger-, his body still reacts, as all of theirs do and that is all that keeps them alive, even in the torn half-lives they are producing; his skin and his bones are clear as the days they never see because light is perhaps as dangerous as Kakuzu's outline). Their eyes tilt towards that hand, clenching and squeaking as the leather of his glove slides across the sweat on his skin.
They can see he is frightened, but do not mention it amongst themselves-, it is almost enlightening that at least one of their members is not brave border lining on stupidity like the rest.
Sasori opens his mouth, the jaw crackling from swinging down after being clenched shut (or perhaps that sand that sticks to his joints is still in their from the kisses pressed against the dunes-, trying to feel something in Sasori's body is utterly hopeless but they see him try it all the time until the point they are almost sure he is getting results, although the backs of their minds always repeat that nothing is there at all in the way that silence blockades their chances of living) for the whole duration of their meal. His plate is empty, sitting lonely and forgotten as his soul but not as discarded and thrown away.
Kakuzu still managed to keep his soul and live forever, but he has lost any mentions of his mind- what is the true price of sanity?
"Does he have a last name?" He asks, and the awkwardness breaks and crumbles under the iron fist that is still only made of wood (Sasori is magical in the way an entertainer will pull a dove from his hat-, the way they scream and cheer for him in the crowds because there is that small, unmentionable hope that he will fix everything better with snapping his fingers and having everything reversed while the little white birds fly out from his clothes like something otherworldly as him).
Kisame gives a lying smile into his fist, and it is no where close to being free but it is still something of their own, which is more than they could have said before Sasori asked a question he actually meant (doves are a symbol of freedom and release, and individuals are being let out one at a time from their cages-, Sasori is magical in the way of denying what makes a sense that they can understand, because none of them really want to understand each other).
Kakuzu squeezes his fist again, and it looks like a black sponge lying on the tabletop as it sucks in their attention towards it-, he is thinking hard, harder than he has in months and harder than it'd take for him to slit their throats or rip their hearts from their chests. He is trying to think of a reply to the question, one that would allow the conversation to continue longer than a few marred, desperate moments between the Akatsuki of wanting to feel unbound.
He finally shakes his head and will not let himself look back at his hands.
Kisame stares forward across the table at Sasori and gives him the half-hesitant look of trying to decide whether to squeeze his shoulder. Sasori is, after all, the child of them-, even if he is older than half of their organization.
But if you looked at him you wouldn't mistake him for in his fifties, and first impressions are all it takes for one of them to kill a man. That's why Itachi looks so hollow and their Leader is shadowed, because it's easier to murder people who didn't know you (that's why they hold Itachi and Sasori in such high regard above the rest, because they've all known what it is like to severe ties and those two were either brave enough or stupid enough to pretend to not care about what they did, and convince themselves to the point it was almost true).
"It's not like it matters-, he probably won't last for more than a week or so." Kisame says blankly, his careless bluntness almost making him sound brave as his words resounded over the room. They all want to cry for it, either that no one lasts long or that the few sentences spared to the hungry silence sitting in the air is the longest time they'd spoken to each other for a month.
Xxx-xxX
They all watch each other in the way predators watch each other-, each of them is not the other's definition of prey, but if it comes down to it, they'd all agree that they would not sacrifice themselves for a member of the organization. There are always the people who come to them and wouldn't mind dying for their cause (like Deidara, who came to them three days ago and eats their food and laughs with a similar madness-, people can be accepted easily into the Akatsuki if they meet the guidelines well enough, and if Deidara can still smile and almost mean it then he is more of them than they are)-, but their causes and their souls are two different things, even if one feeds the other unconsciously when they are alone with their thoughts and there is no one to prevent the realizations that they are not what makes the importance of the Akatsuki, but the Akatsuki creates the importance of them.
And there are some people watched more easily than others, not because they have less of a mask but because they have made their mask familiar without acknowledging the fact. Knowing that a person is hiding, even without knowing what it is which is unclear, is the first step of an impression of a man.
They know Zetsu by two people and they know Deidara for his uncanny knack of fitting into the standards put before him and they know Sasori from the hunger in his eyes.
Perhaps what scares them most is that it is not predatory, and Deidara is easily half his age but still has to take care of his seniors. They all know that, eventually (when dawn turns to dusk and the day break is repairing itself into a new night-, they know that then, Deidara won't be able to stand that things change before he can become accustomed to them, before he can rise and fall with the sun-, but the sun refuses to wait for him and men cannot die and be reborn daily as the cycles of the moon), Deidara will be exploded with his excuses and that which he has suited himself to.
They cannot last forever, none of them, not even with Deidara who would gladly die for them (for their cause, but for a moment, they can live by those moments he lives for, and pretend that there is someone who would support them into another life, even if it is impossible), or Zetsu who could see and hear everything but what he, solely himself wanted to hear and see, or Itachi, who was blind but could see them better than they could, because men cannot make out their livings and their scrawlings throughout darkness but Itachi who has (almost like Deidara, he once was blind but now he sees, sees all the mistakes with his eyes tightly screwed shut like nails tacked to a wood flooring board, that everyone bleeds onto in the end) become accustomed to it.
They will all end soon, the end of an era that no one could really make out clearly, but it is better that the unseeing cannot be seen or understood in the ways they want to be if they really think hard enough (harder than Kakuzu when he clenches his leathered fist like trying to soak up the answers of a world that virtually did not have them through the sponge in his hand which only he believes is there).
They all see their ways to it, but Itachi cannot understand that hoping Sasuke will gain the sharingan to find him and tunnel him away from what has gone bad and soured with it's bad people is utterly hopeless in itself. Sasuke never cared for him, and no matter how much bad luck is on his little brother's side people are born with different paths, even within family, and they were only ever connected by blood.
Perhaps thinking that led him to this-, people can only pretend there are connections to themselves, but the feeling of Sasuke truly connected to him felt right beyond reason that he should love him more than he would love someone not connected to him at all.
His parents always told him to be nice to family, to love them and cherish them and they never realized (maybe they did, maybe they knew his intentions but they couldn't see anything wrong with them, either) that he would take it in different ways than they were meant.
For years, thinking of his brother as his hands slid into his pants only meant he was fulfilling the obligations as the clan head and as someone who is kinder in his cruelties than in his smiles (frowning doesn't break a face, doesn't crack it down the middle like a broken mirror, which is bad luck and you have never needed more of that). And if Sasuke ever listened to his mother and father, he would be insightful and wonderful and loving, and sinful as he undid the button on his pants.
Xxx-xxX
The members of Akatsuki are all different from each other, but the same in the ways you'd expect snowflakes to be (each one is nothing like the other, but your eyes can trick you to see that, for a moment, they are exactly like the others), in the ways that children from different families all sitting in the same playground are the same. They all have something waiting for them, something out of reach and similarly untouchable, something overwhelmingly priceless that they are still insistently paying for.
Perhaps labeling the object of their reach with a price tag sticker pressed to their forehead like a garage-sale doll (raggedy and lifeless, flopping over the flooring of their houses like fish pulled from the depths of the sea, and twice as ugly with the sparkle of someone who cannot be held closely, because they are too large and uncannily hostile) was the very thing that pushed them away from what they wanted. Things untouchable do not want to be touched, or marred with their dirty fingers and sweat stained palms.
"It's not always people," Kisame tells him over their whispered conversations in their rooms (you never know who is listening in the Akatsuki-, there are tape recorders in the walls and ANBU members in the trees, and their own allies would give a handful of silver pennies to hear what they spoke of in their privacy), the stone walls craning their necks to look at them closer like a grandfather speculating which one of his children failed the least as they grew older. "They can want money or gratitude or dominance."
They both know the answers to all of those, the reasons-, reasons are as close as you come to answers, because no questions have their counterparts in places darkness has no opposite and light does not exist.
They are each personally poor and undistinguished and submissive in themselves, and they see faults in their mistakes, in what they had chosen not to aim towards as a child and had suddenly sped up to reach as they became adults.
Itachi rolls over on his bed with his back facing Kisame, and at first he thinks that perhaps the darkness consumed his words, or the ever hungry silence ate them like the sink drain with the discarded food on their plates from the night they spoke of Deidara and tried unsuccessfully to come in touch with each other. The Akatsuki headquarters is alive and springing with life, eating and moaning and groaning like old men unsatisfied with how they used to live.
"And what do you want?" He asks, swallowing a moment to late to hide behind the silence as much as they all hate it. Kisame's response is shadowed and hollow, and each of them are speaking as tentatively as their movements (small, baby steps, tip toeing across the room because any disturbance would awaken the monsters and the bad things that hid underneath your bed and in your closet for all the years of your life, and if you can keep them sleeping maybe you will not be so exhausted with your child-eyes scanning the room; you've been a ninja too long, and everybody knows it).
"You aren't supposed to ask a person a question, Itachi-san…If you don't answer your own first."
But what none of them understood about Itachi (he hid it so well, so much, so wonderfully that all of the Uchiha clan would bow down once more to him-, he is skilled, he is a master at the game which in itself is invisible to everyone else, and you wouldn't dream of them ever understanding which makes you torn between screaming until they just get it or smiling because they don't), was that he masks were drawn tight across his face. Reading his masks was only reading a barrier, and once they thought they knew him he was no spectacle of their eyes and ears and gossiping words between the times when he was not there to make them out, but could still hear the scandal from the cheap hotel-bed of a room he shared with Kisame, which was not as much of a home as the head quarters.
But he wouldn't tell Kisame, no matter if they loved or hated or had a bond that would eventually fade but was now strong, because loving his brother so much looked wrong to people who hadn't heard it asked of them before.
He almost wants to say, where it is deep down and ugly and ravenous for the blame, that Mikoto and Fugaku started it all, with their sweet, honey-coated requests he could not deny or answer to at all, and their strong, willful demands (even if his were stronger, if he was ever the willful son, but things hard and certain were more comforting than anyone could understand and feeling them unbreakable against your back, less breakable than the family bonds that tied blood to blood and made it impossible to say no to what they were, made you sure that they were only trying to make you a good man who will grow up to be a greater child) of loving and training and being strong.
Kisame doesn't know that, doesn't understand it, and that's why Itachi doesn't tell him, but keeps asking.
"What do you want?"
"You wouldn't understand." Is his reply, and Itachi understands that he will never understand his partner. That is all he can give him, and maybe that's all Kisame ever expected. Maybe that is what he wanted, because understanding he wouldn't understand is still understanding, after all.
But in the same way as two snow flakes you're sure of being exactly alike, he doesn't want Kisame to be able to understand he won't understand him. He wants everyone but Sasuke to be lost and drowning in the hope that one day they will simply get him, because they have yet to earn the privilege.
Sasuke is mother and father's special child, and in ways he doesn't get, Itachi has always just wanted to do what they asked.
Xxx-xxX
In the hazy clouded worlds of dreaming, the apron swings over invisible hips throughout a dark world with white fog-corners, and Mikoto is as dead as she was when she was alive, as dead as she is now resting in the tombs next to a family of graves she never belonged near.
And her hands reach out to him, patting his hair back from his face-, sweat-streaked and empty and with the one woman he could've ever loved in her sex all he can think about is Sasuke.
"That's a good boy, Itachi," her mouth is at his ear, that unsightly long nose she would rub against his own when he was a child. It always excited him in the ways it wasn't like anyone else's, long and dainty and as much of her's as his own.
Everything about a mother belonged to their son, and Itachi thinks that Mikoto always wished she had a daughter instead. But none of her dreams binded him to her, not in the way Fugaku was, even if she was a live changer (a life saver, the sweetness of her voice and the secret candies in his mouth, sucked between his lips so he looked ridiculously like a fish or the unfamiliar baby-face blowing bubbles that lived in the room across from his for a month and cried and woke him up late into the night but never disturbed how he lived, not in the way she did, their mother who managed to balance a household of men who were not even slightly interested in knowing the other and never did come to in her arms and lulled by her lullabies and the voice she hummed them in to tune with) in her own ways.
She was as difficult as chewing and swallowing, ingrained in their memories on how to act around her and hardly anything new, but comforting and still interesting in her familiars. She was a pretty woman, with her big doe-eyes and her doll cut hair, the dresses resting on her curves and the edges of her sleeves rolled up to her elbows with one hand always occupied. But that was the duties, the oath of a mother, and she fake smiled her way through it with her eyes curving into her happiness that never really existed.
Itachi remembers that she only ever pretty when her eyes were open, or else she looked unproportional with that long, feminine nose, which was too feminine on a face that was as plain as a sky with no clouds passing over it.
But he doesn't remember the rest of her face, just the curving eyes which he is almost, almost sure in a hazy sort of remembrance that they were black and crystallized like porcelain buttons, and the nose which didn't match either the clan or the house or the plain, dull face worn down over years of being a mother to people who wouldn't speak to each other unless it was a desperate situation.
He hasn't seen Sasuke in the same amount of time, but he remembers him clearly in the ways he will remember a long, dreary day that never seems to pass, because you were meant to remember something, to fill the void with useless things because without them you are emptier. Pointless things are more important that way, just as loving Sasuke is as pointless and still everything he has worked towards in its significance.
He doesn't think of that, though, as he looks into the light outside of their hide out and realizes how ugly the light is.
Dreams are just dreams, and he should know that, being in power with the mangekyou and casting all the bad nightmares into people's heads. But dreaming and real things that simply are not real anymore has always severed the lines between reality in the way that blood and bones are scattered on his hands, separated between himself and the world even when his hands are clean.
There has to be something more than isolation, but there never has been and Itachi can only try to not accept the fact. People don't change, not Kakuzu or Deidara or Sasuke, and Itachi will always listen to what the tombstones whisper to him as he sleeps, because they only want what is good for him.
Xxx-xxX
-If blood is thicker than water-, we wonder how thin water has to be.-
Xxx-xxX
Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto, which is property of Masashi Kishimoto-sensei. We SO love him.
AN: ZOMG gfdytruytyed! I hope this didn't end up seeming funky, because yeah, it WAS written over about a week, and YES, this is no illusion!-, it IS, actually IS about 8, 000 words. A little over that, actually, but anyway-, moving on, I hope everyone didn't turn out to OOC, or anything. I hope Itachi didn't seem like a whiney baby, and I hope that you all enjoyed the Akatsuki-ish chapter. I love the guys, all of them, so I had to write something for them. I also hope I didn't stab you to death with the length, it might seem a little repetitive, and god knows you can't take endless metaphors and symbolization unless they're A) in short parts or B) you take breaks in between. Anyway, I'm soooo proud of myself here for finally writing something this long, so give me a hand, here.
Also, on an even greater note, I especially hope that Sammy (CatGurl2004) enjoys this, as a part of her early birthday present from loving, wonderful me. Fish face! (…Cabaret reference, sorry…it's in reference to like…blowing kisses. XD Not Kisame, nuh-uh)
All you reviewers out there are the love, folks, THE love. Thank you all for your reviews, and especially Narroch (who kept this story coming, hope you enjoy the chapter, dear), and CatGurl2004, who supports and inspires me all the way through. You guys give the best reviews in the universe, I swear. :D Thank you, again!
Scroll down and enjoy the extra scene, everyone! XOXO –Your super special awesome chocolately fudge coated author of Burn
Orochimaru: Lady, do your rants ever end?
Tobi: -shouting- Shut up! Shut up, you! You're just the story character! You don't know people!
EXTRA SCENES:
I originally wrote the second section of this chapter, and as you notice I kept the overall same idea of Itachi, Akatsuki, and card and dice games-, but tried to make the newer version less OOC and tried to only imply they were nutty and not straight out say it, as in the first version below. So here's Take One, 'Playing with the Boys'. Enjoy.
Xxx-xxX
They are in the corner of a room, lifted just barely off the ground in the stout, creaking wooden chairs. Itachi is one of the only ones who's knees do not press against his chin, but the small blessings are doubled over a ten fold with the snake's whispering in his ears.
He hears too many voices without Orochimaru's help.
The dice are in his hand and he has the time to ask himself why he agreed to falling into their games except for to prove to himself he was not inferior to them in anything but his age. If anything, that is pulled and shredded like some animalistic mating pattern, the rough nails down his back scarring deeper than the cuts on his hands (a woman had begged for forgiveness, on her knees and praying and kissing his hands-, he has become a god again, or a devil-, and when he denied her something so simply gained and lost, something she had experienced in it's dry insincerities through child birth and miscarriage and widowing- she had clawed his hands in the knowledge that if she got him angered enough, he would kill her faster).
They land on the table, clicking and humming against the roofs of their mouths as the men surrounding him have smiles plastered over their faces-, some synchrony of insanity or perhaps the sanest of actions Itachi has experienced. At least madness is at it's most truthful when least hidden.
Diced and hanging over them like flesh torn and cut into strips, the Akatsuki is smiling.
There are no sane persons here.
The dice land-,
Snake eyes.
Xxx-xxX