Ok so um, second chap up :)! This is gonna be slightly more, well "dramatic" than the last one... the plot thickens! or something

Also, Id like to thank pen-Aine and SkywardShadow (again) for reviewing :D! youre my inspiration people! (and also, S A F A R I G U R L for helping me fixing this up before anyone else could see it XD)

Disclaimer: do not own.

Im sorry for my english... as always XD

Second chapter: The odd incidents

The sunlit kitchen hadn't changed.

The hands rapidly and impatiently drumming away on the tabletop were the same.

Nothing had suddenly fallen out of place, it all looked like it always had – he should know, he lived here. The colors hadn't darkened, the shadows hadn't deepened.

But something in the atmosphere had shifted.

It was all different now.

And yet, to the man on the opposite side of the table Itachi spoke as if it was the most natural thing in the world:

"What must I do?"

This Sunday, after that dreadful Tuesday of fail, Shisui did something he hadn't done since he started his job (one in the beginning, oh, those were the times) and quickly as hell moved away from the house of his substitute family, that which was never really his home:

He didn't go to see Itachi.

This would've alarmed anyone that knew him - had there existed more than one of those -, seeing how his cousin was the closest to a normal social life he would ever get, and, this was crucial, the most important person in his life. And even those that didn't know him very well could tell that this was the highlight of his week; that if anything, this meeting was what he looked forward to, the major of the things keeping him going throughout his workweek.

His boss had seen him off the day before with a: "You look gloomy. You missing that friend of yours?", which had left Shisui speechless, because really, had he ever even spoken of Itachi? And even so, why the hell did that guy care? Scary.

Anyway, he stayed at home this Sunday, deciding to get some sleep instead, of which he was in dire need. Of course, this was made impossible by his idiotic mind, that insisted on spinning until he wanted to throw up and never, ever see an Itachi again.

No, really, that was kind of the problem.

While lying in his bed and staring up at the roof or straight ahead at the wall (and seeing neither), Shisui came to the conclusion that this wouldn't work. Why it had taken him over three hours of tossing and turning to figure this out, however, remained a mystery.

Yawning, he got up and then immediately sat down again, perplexed. Because seriously, what was he supposed to do now? This was a real tricky question, due to his life basically consisting of two things: work, and, you'd never had guessed it, Itachi. Sadly enough, that was it. It was really all he had. He supposed he could do something about it – there were those people at work who'd asked him to go out with them, and then there was that girl who usually hung around the bar, she had a thing for him, and then...- but it was too much of an effort.

And it wasn't what he needed. He suspected that he would feel alone no matter how many casual acquaintances he surrounded himself with. Even if you, and that was on good grounds, could protest against his own claim that he wasn't a hopeless, useless idiot (which his only ever girlfriend had suggested), he had much enough commonsense to know that this kind of compensating never worked.

Whatever. What he needed to do was to get out. Perhaps he could exhaust himself by doing something unusually tiring, like running - or any other variety of training, for that matter. Maybe he would fall asleep if he had himself physically drained as well.

Or maybe he could take a sleeping pill and just this once allow himself the choosing of the easiest way out.

Itachi didn't come to him that Sunday.

This was something he could conclude after waking up from his drug induced sleep the evening of said day, fearing that since he had spent most of the day asleep, he would be unable to go back to sleep later at night, without the use of prescribed medication.

Why was he surprised? Or what was he, disappointed? Anyway, he shouldn't have expected too much. He wasn't even sure his friend knew where he lived.

He'd been here sometime, right? Or maybe that was just in those weird fantasies I had.

True, he had had a considerable amount of erotic dreams about Itachi, and that was even before he stopped living in denial. Seriously, what the hell. He needed to get laid, badly.

Shisui smiled at this, despite it not being even remotely funny, and then decided that maybe that exercise idea hadn't been a bad one after all.

Everything was better than the nothingness, right? You had way too much of that in a society like this. And maybe then that irrelevant fact that Itachi haven't even bothered to call won't matter anymore. I'd like that.

The following week was, well, like any other. Shisui barely had the time to miss his friend, what with his jobs keeping him busy, and when they didn't, they still left him too tired to think about anything but his own worn-out body, and, occasionally, his own worn-out body in relation to his bed.

They didn't use to see each other during the week anyway, so it wasn't that it actually was a change. Really, that weird outing the last Tuesday had been the exception, not the rule.

Only one thing happened that diverted from normality. But truly, it was weird enough to make up for every other oddness that didn't occur.

It was Thursday, five o'clock in the afternoon, and Shisui was on his way home from his day job, having had a real ugly argument with one of his colleagues. It hadn't regarded anything the least bit important - it was more a product of his own tired irritation and that asshole's infamous bitchiness - but it had left him angry beyond reason and frustrated as fuck.

This having been precisely before he got off, he was still in a pissy mood when he walked the streets to get to his apartment (only good thing about this job: it was close) and hopefully get a couple of hours' sleep before he started on the night shift.

Then, he just happened to look up. And right in front of him there happened to be a most familiar person, successfully exuding stuck-up arrogance even with his back turned.

"Sasuke!" Shisui said, and at the same moment he uttered the name it occurred to him that perhaps he didn't even want to be noticed by the brat.

Still, when the one he spoke to didn't bother to acknowledge him, he got annoyed. How weird the workings of the human mind were.

"Sasuke! Hey, wait up, bitch!"

This he shouted a little louder, and it finally caused the one addressed to turn around.

And yes, it was Sasuke. What was he doing here, anyway? This was where the bad kids hung, and despite him being set on constantly looking cool, he wasn't tough enough for them. He wasn't terribly far away from home, but Shisui doubted Mikoto would ever let her son run around unguarded in neighborhoods such as these.

Also, Sasuke may be stubborn and childish, but he wasn't reckless and, though it hurt to admit, neither was he stupid.

However, there was something about him that felt different. Shisui couldn't really tell what it was, besides those black clothes looking unworn and awfully expensive (and that leather jacket looked real). Maybe it was something in his demeanor? His posture?

In those black eyes, revealing as little as his brother's?

"Ah, you live somewhere around here, right?" Sasuke snarled and took an earphone out of his ear, giving a somewhat satisfactory explanation to his earlier deafness.

That smile had a new self-confidence to it, making it even more unbearably smug than before.

"Why the hell are you here?" Shisui snapped, so overcome by annoyance he forgot to be curious. "Get the fuck out or they'll rape your pretty little ass."

"You thinking my ass is pretty," Sasuke responded with the hint of a smirk, "is almost as creepy as your obsession with my brother."

Shisui didn't get the chance to reply to that before a very angry male voice interrupted them by screaming to what he thought might've once been a melody.

Sasuke pulled out a cellphone, a slim, black model that seemed as new and stylishly modern as his clothes. After having checked the screen, he gave his older cousin a peculiar look, in which Shisui read an unexpected nervousness.

"Yes?" When he answered, his voice had a worried note to it, too; the tone was free from the vehemence that it usually held. "Um, yeah, I was just on my way home. Yeah, no..." He paused and glanced cautiously at Shisui again. "I'm coming. I, I can't speak right now."

And that, if anything, was a very strange thing to say.

Shisui felt a shiver slowly trickling down his spine, a tremor running through his body like electricity. He couldn't tell why, but he knew the sudden coldness as fear; because something was wrong, and some deeply buried instinct inside of him had come to life for the sole purpose of warning him.

He felt...watched.

Sasuke hung up and turned his back on him, immediately starting to walk away, hurriedly, without caring to lock back once, or even to say goodbye.

"Actually, now I'm curious!" Shisui called after him and heard the odd eagerness in his own voice. "What are you really doing here?"

This was met with no reaction whatsoever, which was exactly as infuriating the second time around. God, he wanted nothing but to kick the bastard!

He had no chance to do this, unfortunately, because before he knew it Sasuke had vanished. Though he could probably catch up to him if he ran – he must've went into some side street or the like – he wasn't motivated enough to try, not with his muscles already aching from overuse.

Instead, he decided to go home and go to bed.

It was only later he would realize he should have demanded an answer right then and there.

Two days later, Shisui heard the news.

It was one of the costumers at the bar that spoke about it, and it wasn't even meant for his ears; he just happened to catch it. Up til then, he had avoided the newspapers, walking right past the headlines, and hadn't been told by or eavesdropped on anybody else, nor listened to the radio (he had no TV). Apparently, his family hadn't found it worth, or just hadn't thought about, notifying him, either.

Uchiha Madara had escaped. They had started out with ten people and killed off five guards; but he was the only one getting away alive. Yet, the prison break was called "so successful that the authorities suspects the meticulous planning alone has taken months".

Then, the prison was one of those that you weren't supposed to be able to escape. Well, technically, they all were, but this was, like, at all. On any level. No matter how much you died in the process. The management had guaranteed, in an official announcement at that, that there were only two ways out, and those were 1, having your throat slit, or 2, slitting your own throat (the simple alternatives getting killed or committing suicide in more creative terms).

That Saturday night, after his smile had went from a wee bit strained to faltering to barely there, Shisui was polishing a glass while half-heartedly listening to the pathetic whinings of one of the regulars when a familiar name spilling from another drunkard's mouth caught his attention.

"...you know that Uchiha, what's his name?" she asked her neighbor. "What would you say if he just stepped in the door, there, right now?"

"Who?" her neighbor asked, while Shisui wondered how the hell Itachi or Sasuke had managed to catch the attention of this people (or, the least likely of all, if she was actually talking about their father).

"What?" the woman shrieked. "You haven't heard? Oh my god, where've you been this last week?"

Shisui's confusion rightly matched the one that was clearly shown on her companion's face.

"Hello?" She laughed and now there was disbelief in her voice, as if she thought her friend must simply be screwing her over. "The Uchiha? From the prison break? Sole survivor, mister M-something?"

"Madara," Shisui breathed, but neither of them heard him.

This was evident when the man next to her proudly exclaimed:

"Ah, Uchiha Madara!" as if he should be praised solely for remembering the name.

Shisui's head was spinning. No way. This had got to be a joke.

Madara... Really, he couldn't. It mustn't be true. Fuck, if it was...

What, it wasn't like they were the ones to set him up or anything. He wouldn't come bothering them, right? Because this wasn't a bad gangster movie. And he'd want to get the hell out of the city as fast as possible, wouldn't he?

Why would he care for some relatives that he only knew vaguely, some low-life refugees who hadn't come to visit him once?

Or perhaps he'd be pissed for that. Nah, that didn't sound likely.

If it was true. People wasting away in a place like this wasn't the most reliable you could imagine. He'd have to ask somebody else.

When his five minute break finally came, he borrowed the old, battered phone behind the bar and typed in a most familiar number. Thankfully, there weren't that many costumers around at this time, and those who were kept the volume of their conversations' surprisingly level.

"The Uchiha household."

The soft female voice answering was undoubtedly Mikoto's, but it was something about it that felt... off.

"Hey, it's Shisui," Shisui said and dismissed it as his overactive imagination, possibly strengthened by the shocking news he'd received mere minutes ago. "You know, I'm calling from my job so, you know, I can't speak for very long..."

"Oh, Shisui!" Mikoto laughed, but when she continued her voice held a tremble for just a moment, and overall lacked that certain, happy quality it usually had: "It's just you! I mean, of course it is. Who else would it be...?" She laughed nervously. "But I'm just babbling, what is it that you want, dear?"

And just like during that meeting with Sasuke, this creeping feeling of unease stole over him.

"I just heard," he said, and for no reason whatsoever, he lowered his voice. "About... about Madara's escape."

She sucked in a sharp breath, as if she hadn't known, or at least tried her best to forget.

"Yes, it's awful, isn't it?" She sighed. "I didn't believe it at first, when I got the news... Does it worry you? I don't think he'd care about you..."

And those were the same words he'd thought, so he just hummed in agreement, and nodded as if she could see him. Before he had the chance to ask more about it, Mikoto spoke again:

"How is work going, anyway?" she wondered, changing the subject like it weren't been that big of a deal, nothing they needed to discuss further. "I hope you're not overworking yourself. You do know you're always welcome to return home, Shisui."

"Yeah," Shisui said and tried to pretend they weren't both aware of the fact it would never happen.

He hesitated, then decided to ask something more about his dear old uncle, but was once again interrupted before he could, this time concerning the well-being of her sons and her husband (who were all so happy and healthy there had to be a lie in there, somewhere. Seriously, Fugaku was never happy.).

They exchanged a few more forcedly polite phrases and then goodbyes and with that, he hung up.

So it was true. Was that the reason for her acting so nervous? She had said he shouldn't worry, but hell, she had sure sounded worried herself.

Had Madara contacted them? No, that was just jumping to conclusions. If he had, they could just go to the police, and surely if they asked, they'd be provided with proper protection. But to him Mikoto had always seemed, despite her mild ways, a strong woman, stronger than his own mother. This anxiety she'd given proof of was way too far from her normal, oh so calm kindness – that alone was probably the reason for him overthinking this.

Shisui rubbed his tired eyes and returned to work.

Him imagining things or not, tomorrow, he would go see Itachi.

The Uchiha house came into sight when he turned around the street corner, and as always, it stood out against its gray-toned, depressing background; the well-maintained garden, the almost-new paint with its cheerfully bright blue, the facade in whole just holding a little more dignity than the houses' surrounding.

Shisui yawned and stretched and cursed under his breath, having had to force himself out of bed this morning, and that was even more forcefully than his everyday routine. Feeling sick in the way real hunger could make you, he had somehow swallowed down the last of some dreadful prepared lunch he had bought to torture his stomach into demanding less food. Then, while being all too aware of how much this made him want to puke, he had ridden the fucking bus to get here, which meant Itachi must be home and dying to see him or fuck it all.

Not wanting to be faced with the bratty, unmannered adolescent of doom that was Sasuke, he just tried the handle and, when noticing exactly how unlocked the door was, slipped inside without a second thought.

The hall was dark and the house was dead quiet. Like in, you said it, something killed that silence, and the perpetrator was something other than just the shadows, the mere absence, the echoing emptiness.

He should probably have some tests done. God, he was going freaking paranoid.

Because nothing fends off madness quite like giving into it, he decided that the best course of action would no doubt be sneaking around like a thief. Or a stealthy ninja. Ninjas were cool.

Also, any chance to avoid running into Fugaku was welcome, even disguised as something as generally harmful as paranoia.

He was therefore relieved when he'd tiptoed across the room and up the stairs, and so had made it thus far without discovery. Both of the doors to the brothers' rooms were closed, leaving the bathroom door the only one halfway open. There were no lights on – anywhere, what he'd seen, because the kitchen had been dark and the rooms beyond hadn't seem illuminated, either – up here, and when he thought about it, he was pretty sure he hadn't seen any lights in any of the windows when approaching it from the outside.

He wasn't just being paranoid – things were weird around here. Fuck, Fugaku should be up and about by now, sitting in the kitchen, reading the newspaper and/or preaching about work ethics. And Itachi should agree with him and add something about the pretty little rainbow wonders of being a no-life workaholic, while Sasuke was either still asleep or had joined them in the kitchen, half asleep rolling his eyes, and Mikoto gave her heartwarming smile, fed her family and said nothing that wasn't polite or practical.

But the house felt so abandoned it was creepy, and he couldn't understand how he hadn't noticed this before. And still, it had been unlocked. That would mean someone was home, huh?

He knocked on Itachi's door because, yeah, you did that, but then decided that he had made a habit of entering without permission lately, and this needn't be an exception.

Therefore, he let himself in.

It took his eyes a few minutes to adjust somewhat to the dark, and when they had, he noticed two very weird things.

1: Itachi was sitting on his bed. This didn't sound the least bit remarkable in itself, but in this context, it sure stood out. Really, he was doing absolutely nothing, and this with too stiff a posture to suggest he was lazing around (which hadn't been a likely alternative anyway). And he was so still it was like he'd been paralyzed, frozen, turned a stone statue, or whatever fancy simile you might think of making.

2: When Shisui had stood there staring at the spot where he knew the bed to be, waiting for the outlines to appear out of the darkness, and after this had spent at least one stunned minute wondering why the hell his best friend looked as if he'd been petrified by some mythological lady with snakes in her hair, he still hadn't moved.

Fact was, Itachi hadn't reacted to his entering in any way. Shisui got a creeping feeling of this being one of those scenes that was taken straight from a bad movie, tentatively the sort where you see someone sitting upright, seeming all fine and dandy, but then when you poke them on the shoulder they fall over, dead, and very much so.

To prevent himself from squealing like a little girl, Shisui spoke bravely:

"Hey, what the hell is with you? This is the second time, and you better not tell me it's due to you being a slave for your brother again, because that just sounds wrong. Heh, heh."

This was truly very funny, and uttered in the deepest voice he could master (which kind of sounded like a little girl trying her best not to squeal, and failing), and should have had Itachi laughing, at least a bit. That was appropriate, and polite, and of course did not happen.

Instead, Itachi turned his head barely an inch towards his guest, a movement that easily could have gone unnoticed in the dark.

"You're not dead!" Shisui said happily. "I mean, not that I thought you were. That would, I must say, be most unlikely. Seeing how you're breathing and all."

To those intelligent observations and highly necessary comments, his cousin still didn't give an answer.

Yes, Itachi had it, too. Just like Mikoto, just like Sasuke, there was something that wasn't quite right about him. It was like they were all in on some big practical joke, and Shisui was the only one left unknowing. Like the joke was on him.

Because Shisui was getting awfully tired of being kept in the dark – and yeah, that was in two senses – he flicked the light switch beside the door, hoping to at least rectify one of those.

Itachi shielded his eyes with one of his slender, white hands and made a small, startled noise that was so out of character it wasn't even funny.

Or perhaps just a little.

"Morning, sunshine," Shisui laughed and was rewarded with a chillingly icy stare.

It was so hostile it actually made him shut his mouth. Everybody who had spent two minutes in his company understood that this had to indicate something extraordinary.

The stiff air in here was making breathing harder, it dried his mouth up, had a headache pulsing with the thick beating of blood behind his too breakable temples.

"What are you doing here?" Itachi asked, as if Shisui was the one acting strange, and that was by coming to see him at home on a Sunday, which he had been doing since, pretty much, forever.

Itachi's voice was utterly lifeless, to a degree that was unusual even for him. And those eyes... Shisui hadn't seen them so devoid of warmth since his younger cousin had been told about his little brother's issues in school.

Yeah, right before the finger-cutting incident.

"What's with y'all?" Shisui muttered, having his sensible feeling of hurt (perhaps even fear) overridden by annoyance. "Sasuke's a bitch...well yeah, but more than usual, and he goes around in clothes suggesting you've won the lottery, and damn was that phone call weird... and your mom... yeah, speaking of weird phone calls. She was so damn nervous and she refused to talk about uncle Madara... who, by the way, has escaped, which really doesn't happen 'cause this aint a crappy movie." Itachi calmly regarded him, as if waiting for him to get to the point. "And also, you're not up...again. And your house is so silent I got the feeling no one was home, and when I finally find you, you don't even bother to greet me, instead you just sit there like you're fucking dead and then glare at me like you wish I was."

After having offered this clever summary, Shisui fell silent, patiently waiting for a satisfactory explanation.

This was too much to ask, obviously, because his friend just kept on looking at him as if he had just discovered something surprising about Shisui's usual idiocy: its limitlessness.

"I think Madara's escape may have riled you up," Itachi then offered. "You seem to be drawing lots of groundless conclusions from a few random, unrelated facts."

Now, he suddenly sounded unaffected and composed, so utterly normal it was weirdly unsettling. As if he had thought it over, then decided that the best course of action was to feign his usual behavior, like he was starring in a play, acting the role of himself.

"Uh, well..." Shisui suddenly felt a little embarrassed, recalling his quite pointless breaking and entering in painful detail. "Technically, I haven't been able to conclude anything... but, you know, that still doesn't explain, well... your brother's clothes."

A curious half smile changed Itachi's face, had his eyes softening.

"So you have met my brother?" he asked and there was still no telling what he was thinking - for all his cousin knew he could just be making conversation. "Late hours provided father with a bonus, so let's just say we have slightly more money than usual..."

"And Fugaku decided to spend it on Sasuke?" Shisui sneered. "His useless disgrace of a son?"

Those were overly harsh words, but hey, his patience was wearing thin.

Apparently, so was Itachi's.

"Not another word." His voice was murderously calm, and all winter nights in the north couldn't measure up to that cold. "Don't you dare speak about my brother in that way."

Ouch. But damn, he was to blame. He should've known there were places you seriously didn't thread.

In Itachi's book, badmouthing Sasuke was similar to kicking puppies and eating kittens, or possibly worse.

"As for mom, she is fine," his best friend continued. "I do say, the prison break had her a bit anxious, but we have all agreed that, logically, there exists no actual threat."

Itachi held his gaze, unflinching, so alike his usual self, and Shisui wondered if that was the reason for this exaggerated analysis: if he was simply reading too much into things because of his own nervousness. His friend seemed normal over all, supposedly. After all, that glaring business was one of his trademark moves.

"But I know you," Shisui's mouth said, because even if he mere seconds ago had considered letting it go, his right-brained personage couldn't process what his mind did its best convincing him of. "And this isn't..."

"I heard he was sick...and dying." Itachi interrupted him silently, intensely. "Why would you break out like that?"

At those last words, Shisui, unprecedentedly dense, finally understood to whom he was referring.

"He was?" he said, stupefied. "I had no idea... he, really? Well, that's gotta be a shitty life, in there." He shrugged in his usual carefree manner, was surprised at how unfamiliar that attitude felt, and had the sudden realization that recently, Itachi hadn't been the only one acting out of character. "Perhaps he didn't want to die in a cell."

Itachi cocked one eyebrow.

"I suppose that could be it," he agreed, albeit hesitantly.

Comforted by the atmosphere having changed back to normal (it had probably been that one week break, really, he couldn't leave the kid alone for twelve days), Shisui gave a crooked grin and dropped down at the end of the bed.

"So, what've you been up to, 'Tachi?" he asked and patted his friend on one outstretched foot. "You miss me?"

Thank fucking god, things were back to normal. It was just him, easily indoctrinated, a victim of his own ludicrous conspiracy theories.

Since fate hates you and always means to fuck you over for thinking stuff like that, Itachi's next remark had his smile vanishing.

"I'm not in love with you," his cousin said, matter-of-factedly.

It was a demonstration of unbelievable clumsiness, one that exceeded adorable and even laughable and, if his rapidly increasing blood pressure was any indicator, came much closer to infuriating.

Shisui would have told him this if he hadn't been so busy with contemplating the dangers of jumping out a second floor window (and the possibility of running with a broken leg.).

"Trust me, I am grateful for your feelings," Itachi mumbled, his face as blank as ever those words rang empty. "Unfortunately, I'm incapable of returning them. It is a simple fact that I'm unable to force myself to feel what isn't there."

Now, humiliation was probably one of Shisui's least favorite feelings, and definitely one of the ones he had hardest handling. Therefore, he felt his face grow hot, he knew his ears were soon to be dangerously red, and he wanted to respond in the most overused, typically manly way there was: by shrieking "I hate you!", pulling Itachi's hair and running out of the room crying.

Instead, he just gasped, like somebody had knocked the air out of his uncooperative lungs. Rammed him into a wall, grabbed him by the hair, and hit the back of his head repeatedly against unforgiving bricks.

Yes, love was like that. It made people melodramatic idiots. It made melodramatic idiots even more melodramatic and idiotic. Truly, it was a feeling worth dying for.

Really, when had he gotten so damn sensitive and overly caring? He acted like a guy out of something by women, for women.

"I believe our conversation is finished," Itachi said softly. "If you don't have anything to add?"

"Uh," Shisui answered intelligently.

Then, he got to his feet and got to leaving the room with as much dignity as he could muster, all gracelessness and bitter confusion. He was running away again, because that was what you did when you couldn't break down in front of other people and your best friend had just transformed into a cruel bitch.

He could tell that Itachi's eyes was boring into his back, but decided against looking over his shoulder, too concerned with salvaging the last of his image to admit it really didn't matter.

As if the house had come to life from him stepping into it, two-third of the remaining family had now magically materialized out of nowhere. Fugaku was sitting in his usual spot in the kitchen, going about his usual business, and since the door was left halfway open, he could see Mikoto's back where she was seated on the front steps of their lovely home.

"Good morning," Shisui muttered to his stepfather something or another, and hastened by before said person had any chance to answer him.

Mikoto was wearing a white nightgown, with her ink black hair spilling down her back, an unbrushed and yet seemingly soft veil of darkness.

She held a steaming cup in her one hand, and – and Shisui frowned at this – a lit cigarette in her other.

Seriously, Mikoto smoking? When the hell did he get whacked on the head and go to another dimension?

As he watched, she took a slow, satisfied drag and put her cop of coffee down by her side.

"Good morning," Shisui muttered, and she jumped.

He noticed her wiping her cheeks before she turned her head, rubbing her eyes with the back of her hands. It could be she was tired.

It could be she'd been crying.

"Good morning, dear," she whispered, and her voice was brittle like glass.

"Are...are you okay?" Shisui wondered, carefully stepping around her, shaken by what must be distress, barely visible in those soft eyes, quietly lining her otherwise young looking face.

You would never have believed this woman had had two children. You would never even begin to suspect that there was steel within her, that of a fighter who wouldn't budge, but wouldn't hurt, either.

She was quite like Itachi in that way: someone who had endured, who had lived the darkness of this world, and still nursed that naïve idealism, keeping it alive, that kind which people like him had never even had to begin with.

He wondered what it was, if that was goodness.

"I am fine," Mikoto said and smiled at him, somewhat sadly.

Since he knew that squeezing answers out of her wasn't the easiest, and because his encounter with her enigmatic son upstairs already had left him frustrated enough, Shisui cursed under his breath, told her goodbye and turned his back on her.

Sooner or later, he would probably have to face this, but right now, he was happy with escaping, like the easy-going bastard he was. He could be courageous tomorrow.

Itachi let his eyes slip shut and concentrated on his breathing, never before noticing how much such an easy task took out of him.

His heart...hurt.

"I missed you too," he said aloud, systematically unclenching his curled fists and holding his pale, long-fingered hands up in front of him, giving them his undivided attention.

He was no doubt a most questionable friend.

But it had been of necessity. Itachi winced when he saw the thin line of dried up blood under his fingernails. Such carelessness. But then, Shisui hadn't seemed to notice. Shisui wasn't one for the little details.

This was good, for Shisui mustn't see it. It was of uttermost importance that he remained unaware of the blood on Itachi's hands.