A/N: I think this is the longest chapter I've ever written. Aren't you proud of me?
Chapter Twelve: Haunted
Everything I see is a shade of dark. No stars, no moon, no light. Dark. And cold. And silent. Loud, crushing, silence.
I stand alone on the main road through the Uchiha sector, feeling very small in a vacant place. Just me.
In my peripheral vision the houses lining the street seem to twist upwards. They shimmer as though they are leaning to whisper to one another as they watch me with hollow windowed eyes. I panic and I run, my feet pounding against the pavement like thunder and my breath coming in ragged gasps.
Suddenly, a person materializes in the road ahead of me. He is smiling but he has no eyes, just holes framed with dried blood. Shisui opens his mouth to say something, but no sound comes out.
"What?" I hold a hand to my ear. "I can't hear you."
Shisui takes no notice but continues to talk animatedly for a minute. Then he throws back his head and laughs soundlessly until Akaime swoops down from the sky and lifts him by the back of the shirt. Together, they fly away. Smaller and smaller and smaller.
Next appear my parents, supporting each other and wearing sallow, haggard faces. Both of them clutch messy wounds in their chests.
"You coward." My father rasps, and this I hear loud and clear. "Don't you ever call yourself my son again." He reaches out with his bloody hand and backhands me across the face, only I feel nothing – his hand passes right through me as if I'm not here.
"Where have you been?" Mother asks incredulously, "I smell blood on you."
I point at her wound with a shaky finger. "You're the bloody one, Mother."
Her brow furrows. "That's ridiculous, I can't be bloody. I don't smell like blood."
"No, Mother." I reply, because she doesn't.
"I always knew you were an odd one." She frowns and shakes her head, and both my parents fade away before my eyes.
"Nicely done!" someone else calls from behind me. I whip around to find long, black hair and a mask with one eyehole. Madara.
"Victory tastes pretty good, eh?" he offers triumphantly. I roll my tongue in my mouth but taste only bitterness and sorrow.
And then another voice from the spot Mother and Father were at. "Nii-san," a watery tremble and a large sniff, "Please will you teach me shuriken jutsu?"
I try to turn my body to face Sasuke but I'm rooted to the spot like a stone. Madara steps closer. "No, no." he says, "Don't turn around. Don't look that way. Look at me! I'm your brother now."
Madara clamps a hand on my shoulder in what is possibly meant to be a gesture of comradery. He leans forward to whisper in my ear.
"After all," he breathes, "We're the same, you and I."
And then Madara's body twists upwards and all the houses loom over me and everything swirls together in a clump of orange, single-eyed mask.
I snap awake in my sleeping bag, eyes wide and heart pounding, but I stay still and silent in the way that all ninja are trained. For a moment, I'm not sure where I am, and then I remember how we decided that we shouldn't stay in the village, so we found a small cave in a cliff face in which to spend the night.
The crashing of waves is loud, drowning out the remnants of Sasuke's sniffles lingering in my ears. I feel like this hollow in the cliff is at the edge of the world, and everything I know lies behind me.
Through the mouth of the cave I see half sea and half sky, though part of the moonlight is obscured by a dark silhouette, sitting with his elbows on his knees and watching the water.
Pushing all thoughts of the Uchiha from my mind, I roll over and deepen my breathing, hoping that the nightmares are finished for tonight.
…..
Itachi was awake. Kisame heard him roll over in his sleeping bag and the jagged breathing that he was trying to stifle. He knew the sound – Itachi had probably had a nightmare. Well, everyone had to take one for the Team of Evil Murdurers, he supposed. Kisame had certainly had his share of them . . . not in a long while though.
He poked his tongue against his teeth, feeling the sharp points. It was a subconscious thing that he did out of agitation . . . that hadn't happened in a long while, either . . .
….
"Why do you do that?"
The voice was just curious, nothing more. Kisame pulled his tongue away from his teeth.
"Do what?"
"You're doing something with your tongue." She pointed to her own mouth. "What is it?"
"I'm not doing anything." He glared and turned his face away. She was looking at his teeth, which he didn't like because he was self-conscious about them. It wasn't his fault – they'd always grown sharp and serrated.
"Leave him alone, Miru." The fat man says, "He doesn't wanna talk. Jesus, he wouldn't even give you the time of day if you asked."
"It's wartime; you can never be too careful." The baldie replied, "If he doesn't want to talk, that's fine. Better than him blabbing our codes to everyone we meet."
Kisame narrowed his eyes. "I may not work in Central Intelligence, but I'm not stupid." He hissed, "I know your precious codes are more important than your lives."
The short one harrumphed. "Fine bodyguard you are."
"I was ordered to guard the codes." Kisame said, "Not you."
"But we have the codes." The fat one pointed out, "So you have to guard us."
Kisame scowled.
Later, as they were travelling through the trees, the short man glanced sideways at Kisame. "Is it true," he asked, "That you graduated the academy through the Bloody Mist Practice?"
Miru's eyes widened. "You mean when they made the academy students kill each other to see who was the strongest? That's . . . nauseating! You really did that?!"
Her horrified tone bothered him – did she think badly of him for wanting to survive? He'd only been unlucky; the practice had been stopped the year after his graduation in order to produce more shinobi for the budding war.
"I did what I had to." Kisame replied defensively, "Any of you would have done the same. Besides," he added, addressing the bald one, "You're old. Didn't you do it too?"
"I'm not that old. Only forty." Baldie answered with irritation, "And when I immigrated to Kiri, I was already a shinobi. I never went to the academy."
Miru was still watching Kisame with a slightly appalled expression, whether she was aware of it or not.
Kisame turned his head to glare at her. "What?" he asked coldly.
"I can't believe they'd make you murder your friends." She shook her head. Kisame silently dared her to continue. And that you'd actually do it.
"I don't have friends." He muttered, "They're a liability."
.
There was no meat.
"There's no meat." Kisame grumbled, rooting through the bag of dried provisions and instant foods.
"It's war." Baldie answered with a yawn, "Meat is expensive. And rationed."
Kisame flopped an asparagus glumly back and forth in the firelight – he really hated vegetables, and asparagus was the worst. He was a programmed carnivore, and the closest thing they had to meat was a bag of smelly tuna flakes that looked suspiciously like it was meant for cats.
The fat nin had begun to recount a story related to food, and Kisame glanced around at each of the others. Only Miru really seemed to care about the story – Shorty was making snide comments and Baldie was laughing at them. None of them spared a second glance for Kisame. Not even Miru, who had been kind to him before.
Who was he to think he had a place here, being snarky with the best of them . . .? Because being snarky was about the only think Kisame was good at besides killing things, and somehow he didn't think Miru approved of killing things.
Not that it mattered what Miru thought. She was nothing special. Just some stupid Central Intelligence girl.
Kisame got to his feet and, taking his asparagus with him, melted away to lean against a tree several yards away. No-one seemed to notice his leaving. Distanced from the warmth of the fire, he shivered in the chilly mist-ridden air, and he shredded the asparagus with his shark teeth, wincing as it stuck in his mouth like a nasty, slimy, greenish, vegetable.
He remembered Fuguki's words to him days ago. "Do whatever you must to protect the codes! They could change the course of the war! The codes are more important than you can imagine." Fuguki had leaned forward to hold Kisame's gaze. "More important, even, than the lives of those who know them. Understood?"
"Understood." Kisame whispered to himself. It was unlikely that the codes would be taken with four chunin and one jonin protecting them, but it was clear that Fuguki cared nothing for the life of Miru or the others. If it came to sacrificing them for protection of the codes, Kisame wasn't sure he'd be able to let that happen, not after enduring the Blood-Mist Practice . . .
"What are you doing here by yourself?"
Kisame turned to find Miru standing behind him, and nearly dropped his plate of asparagus.
"Aren't you cold?" she asked.
"No." He lied. Getting cold was for wimps.
Miru did not mention the goosebumps on his arms. "You should come and eat with the rest of us." she tipped her head slightly. "Please?"
"No."
"Hashirou found a bit of jerky inside his jacket pocket. I'm sure he'd give you some." She offered.
Kisame considered. The promise of meat was enticing . . . but there was no way he was begging food off another man, and besides, Kisame liked to be contradictory for the hell of it.
"No." he said, and returned to his vegetable.
"Why not?"
Kisame poked his tongue against his teeth. "Leave me alone. I'm just the fuckin bodyguard."
Miru waited for a moment, and then turned back towards the fire. "We're all shinobi." She reminded him, before returning to the voices and warmth of the others.
.
The first ambush came at dawn the next morning. Twelve Suna nin leaping from the undergrowth all at once.
Kisame had killed one before anyone else had a chance to move. Two more Suna nin fell on him with shuriken whirling – he stabbed one in the neck and kicked the other against a tree where he lay unmoving.
By now, the others were on their feet. Baldie and Fatty were working together against a puppeteer and Shorty was in the process of impaling someone. Miru was being ganged up on by three nin, and dueling all of them bravely but with obvious difficulty; one of them cut her across the cheek and another on her back. Kisame took out two others on his way to her. There was the sound of gushing water as Shorty performed a jutsu, combined with the chattering of puppets.
Kisame cut down all three of the nin surrounding Miru with ease as she wiped the blood off her face with her sleeve, only to have it drip again.
"Thanks," she breathed, then her eyes widened as she caught sight of something over his shoulder. "Behind you!" she lunged forward and stabbed with her kunai under Kisame's arm. Then her face took on a horrified and surprised expression, and Kisame turned.
Miru had fatally wounded a child-nin who had been about to attack Kisame, stabbing him in the gut. Still alive and fully aware, he looked at her with tears welling in his eyes and blood pouring from the wound. Miru, made a strangled noise, and even Kisame was moved to pity for the child.
She knelt on the ground and took the dying child into her arms. "Just a kid." Her voice cracked and tears rolled down her face as the boy struggled for breath. He looked to be maybe nine or ten, chest heaving and face contorted in pain.
"Sora!" someone screamed; a Suna nin who had seen the boy fall. She charged, face a mixture of grief and rage, lifting her katana to bring it down on Miru's head. Kisame blocked the blow, leaning over Miru and the boy. Three slashes was all it took; the kunochi fell to the ground with a thud.
She was the last of them; all was quiet, the ground was littered with bodies, weapons, and blood. The rest of the Cypher Division huddled around Miru. When Kisame glanced back down at the Suna boy, his body was still, his eyes glassy and unseeing.
Miru closed his eyelids and whispered something under her breath that may have been a prayer. Wiping her tears, she lay him on the ground and got to her feet. "We should bury them."
Baldie shook his head. "No time. There could be more – we have to leave as quickly as possible."
The sun was breaking the horizon as the Cypher Division got their things together and took off through the forest.
.
Kisame was eating by himself again. He was surprised that some jerky had been saved for him, but still felt he didn't belong in a group telling stories by the firelight, and so had skulked away again. And again Miru approached him, and this time, she brought her own supper.
"Um, thanks for saving me today."
Kisame looked up, and then back down again. "Yeah . . . don't think you're special or anything." He answered a little defensively. A gentleman would have thanked her for saving him from the child-nin as well, but Kisame wasn't a gentleman.
"Of course not." She smiled a little. "Are you sure you don't want to eat with us?"
"Very sure."
At this, Miru sat down beside him at the base of the tree. She smelled mostly of sweat and blood, but then, so did everyone else.
"What are you doing?" Kisame blinked pretty stupidly.
"I'm going to eat with you. So you're not all alone." She picked up her disposable wooden chopsticks and plunged them into her instant noodles. As she leaned forward to eat, she winced almost imperceptibly.
"Hey – what's the matter?"
"Hm?" Miru wondered, "Oh, I got a little scratch on my back, that's all. But it's fine. Don't worry, I won't slow us down."
"And the one on your face?" If Kisame had been thinking clearly, he wouldn't have reached over and brushed her hair back so he could see the cut. He inspected it in the dim light and frowned; the wound was deeper than he'd thought, and there was a lot of dried blood around it.
"It's fine." She gently pushed his hand away.
"No, no." he protested, "You should put a bandage on it. Hold on, I have some here." Kisame rooted around in his bag until he triumphantly produced a roll of bandages and some gauze.
Miru made to take the supplies from him, but he pointed to her noodles. "You eat," he commanded, "I'll do it."
….
Sitting on the edge of the cliff, Kisame watched the waves roiling below. Such a long, long, time ago that had been. It really only been about six years, but it seemed so far away that it might be part of a different lifetime.
Ah, well. It didn't do to dwell on the past. That had been a different time, a different Kisame. And what might have been had not been, so he might as well forget about it, and forget about her.
A/N: So what did you think of the dream? Kisame POV? Miru? I intend to complete Kisame's story later in another flashback. but I think writing Kisame falling for someone was probably one of the most difficult things I have ever done. I really wanted to show two sides to Kisame, that's why I gave him a flashback instead of dictating it to Itachi. Not to mention that he'd never dictate that to Itachi in the first place.
pls don't think badly of me for writing about dying children ;-; I didn't want to, but realism and detail are very important to me in a story and it was mentioned in Naruto that children were used as soldiers during the 3rd ninja war. and Team Minato was only 13.