A/N: For those of you who are reading this and also keeping up with the current Naruto timeline and plot, this will probably make no sense, as it is entirely NOT canon compliant. I messed with the timelines and completely threw all of Kishi's stuff about Shisui's eyes and shit out the window. I just don't know enough about the current Naruto plot to be able to write within its boundaries. I like my little scribbles the way they are, anyway.

All you need to know is that they are two years older in this story when Itachi actually kills everyone, and Shisui is a member of ANBU for most of it. Happy reading!

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto, or make any money from this. Mirror posted on Archive of our own.

While the Dark Earth Spins

X

"The world works in mysterious ways."

Shisui's voice brushes against Itachi's skin, a vibration in his ears. He is casual, laughing, humo trickling through his voice.

Shisi is being cliche again.

Catchphrases and taglines and epic war cries are frivolous and tacky. Itachi has no time for them. Frankly, Itachi thought Shisui would've known better than to try such a weak line with him. He is not so gullible. Nothing frivolous has a place in Itachi's scarlet-laced mindset, and he doesn't understand why things that don't belong seem to work their way in, worm themselves under the cracks.

Things like Shisui's smile, for instance, as it stretches across his face, a gash of shadow sprinkled with sun. Lackadaisical.

They are lying on the bank of the Nakano river, green grass hot and pale under afternoon sun-glare and cushioning Itachi's skin pleasantly as he lets himself sit for a moment that is blissful but not truly relaxing, because Itachi doesn't remember the last time he really breathed without feeling something hard and tight constrict in his chest.

The sun beats heat down on them in heavy drum beats. It is summer, fluid and mosaic and pulsating in the slight breeze that rolls over their clothes and flutters across closed eyelashes.

They've been lying out here for almost an hour, all of their self-designated lunch break, and Itachi's sweat drips down his cheeks slids off his nose and collects at his temples in salty droplets.

"Ahh 'Tachi, you just think I'm being silly, don't you?"

Shisui is speaking again, and Itachi likes to listen to Shisui talk, so he breaks his quiet reverie on the sparking light refracting off the river to focus on Shisui's face, whose hair is tumbled with bits of grass, eyes half-closed in drowsiness and lips quirked with a question he inevitably already knows the answer too.

Itachi forces the slack muscles in his tongue to work. (What happened to the tightness, the focus always coiled like a spring? When Shisui and he bake under the sun here between missions, he sometimes feels boneless.)

"The world's patterns aren't my concern, Shisui."

Itachi has a voice that always stays culturally soft and smoothly neutral, but Shisui laughs at him anyway, and the sound breaks from between his lips like shiny soap bubbles.

Shisui loves to rile him up.

"Sure, sure." He drawls, slippery and lilting.

Shisui is always comfortable with himself, with his voice and his hands and the way he lies splayed in the grass like a cat stretching languidly under the sun.

Itachi, who has never been clumsy but never been entirely graceful either, a slightly puzzled deer in the headlights whenever faced with a situation he's unable to cleanly address with mission focus, is decidedly not amused.

He stays clipped and pruned and closed together during clan gatherings, social occasions, family dinners. He's never quite known what to do with his hands when not fighting, and Shisui's attempts to show him have had varied success.

"Keep telling yourself that Itachi. One of these days I'll dazzle you with my wit and creative use of puns. You'll think I'm a really deep and soulful motherfucker."

Itachi doesn't bother to stop himself from snorting with thin amusement, and Shisui rolls over onto his stomach at the sound, a hint of triumph dancing merrily in his eyes.

"Did I get a laugh? Score number five for Uchiha Shisui today, folks. It's shaping up to be a pretty decent day, huh?"

Itachi knows that Shisui isn't talking about earlier that morning, when they'd been given an assignment to assassinate the newborn son of a high-ranking official who had started to plot against fire country's daimyou. He definitely wasn't talking about that.

The scroll with the mission details is sitting in Itachi's bento box, carefully rolled up and marked with the most auspicious details needed to complete the mission cleanly. Itachi likes to keep the mission clean, even if his hands aren't.

"You'd think Tachi, that by now you'd be warming up to my charm. Especially since we became ANBU. Big scary bat-spooks with our very own brand of nerdiness. You know everyone in the division is a sucker for a good bit of classical learning."

He could be being sarcastic, but it was Shisui, so you never know. For all Itachi knew, the conversation he'd walked in on the other day with Shisui and one of their fellow team members wherein both shinobi seemed suspiciously flushed in the face and blatantly avoiding eye contact with Itachi, could've been nothing more than a lively spat about the different literary complexities between literature and Jiraiya-sama's newest book release, as they had claimed. Kakashi-senpai would surely have been on the side of the Sannin.

Somehow, Itachi doubted it had been a strictly verbal conversation.

Shisui is the only one Itachi was ever unsure about. Everyone else falls into neat individual boxes with a swirl of red, but Shisui tended to continually break out of his.

Itachi considers wondering about it all a useless pastime. He much prefers to operate on factual evidence.

He had decided not to respond to Shisui's comment, to maintain his dignity and poise about the whole thing, but words somehow fall out of his mouth anyway.

"I didn't know Kakashi-senpai had that much interest in the subject."

Shisui also has this strange habit of pulling sentences out of Itachi he'd never planned on saying, not even if captured and threatened interrogation.

Shisui really laughs, throws back his head and everything, and Itachi glances at him sideways, curious despite himself. Shisui's eyes are crinkled in a tease.

"Well, I could say Kakashi really knows how to read someone, if I wanted to be crass." He apparently can't keep the innuendo from his overconfident, idiotically endearing tone anymore. Itachi shifts awkwardly, stiffening.

He is massively uncomfortable hearing about the numerous budding sexual exploits of his cousin. Thinking about it makes his neck hot, makes his chest tighten for reasons, reasons he doesn't really want to have to face right this very moment.

"Our lunch break has end-" He is cut off mid sentence as Shisui appears in front of him, all laugh lines and messy hair and breath that smells like sweet pork dumplings.

"Hey, 'Tachi. I don't think I'm really that interested in Kakashi's material, okay?" There is a small smile on his face, on his face with it's winged eyes and those sharp cheekbones. One of his hands-dirt under his fingernails but Itachi decides he really doesn't mind that, if it's Shisui's hand-comes up and pushes Itachi's hair behind his ear.

Shisui, for all he's only two years older, always seems like he knows exactly what Itachi is thinking, every single dip and turn and twist of his thoughts.

"Hmm."

"You have the softest hair, did you know that?"

Itachi wonders how Shisui can leap like that, from teetering on bitter to raucously sweet, and finds his mouth twisting up without really thinking about it. His lips feel slick in the humidity.

Their lunch break is ending. Itachi straightens up, emerging from the kiln of sun and grass, reaffirming his scowl as he remembers the mission that waits for them later.

"Shisui, your jokes are not that amusing."

Shisui squawks in mock indignation, but doesn't bother really being offended. He knows Itachi too well, by now. Instead, he hauls himself up from the dirt and dips his chopsticks in his bento box, offering up to Itachi his last dumpling. His eyes are casually averted, but a shadow smile still plays over his thin lips.

Itachi considers ignoring the dumpling, but Shisui's fingers beckon earnestly.

Itachi has always had trouble denying Shisui anything, from boyhood toys to extra shuriken to his heart. He notices the crust of dirt and dried blood around Shisui's pink-white nails again and sighs, snapping up the offering briskly.

He is still a little too peeved to show gratitude, but the special thing about Shisui is that he has no expectations of Itachi, not for laughter at his humor or thanks for his gifts. He stretches like a gangly, contented cat and vaults to his feet instead of waiting for any acknowledgement.

Sometimes, Itachi thinks Shisui doesn't wait for anything.

"It's way too hot for this. I'm going to wash off."

Even though they should be going to report back to HQ and really there is no excuse for wasting time, according to Itachi's vigorous regimen, Shisui slings off his vest and shirt and wades into the shallows of the river, splashing his face.

Water drips along the almond-milk of his skin, mixing with sweat, and the humidity cloaked on his back sizzles against the rebellious chill of the river. Shisui smiles like the honed blade of a knife and calls jokingly for Itachi to join him, hands flicking water bullets towards the bank with half-hearted velocity.

Itachi ignores the call. He bites the dumpling, tastes sweet pork explode on his loose tongue, and is distracted and momentarily confused by the shimmer and sparkle of the sun refracting off droplets condensing on the sleek line of Shisui's shoulders.

From this angle the sun floats right above Shisui's head, and Itachi is briefly struck by the possibility of the two merging together; the sun falling and Shisui rising until they form one glowing, shivering entity.

Then he focuses again and the image is gone. He swallows. Wiping sweat from his forehead with the edge of his sleeve where the Uchiha fan symbol sways somberly, Itachi rises to his feet and turns. His limbs move slowly despite himself, still drowsy in the soupy air of a summer riverbank that has long since drowned him.

He hears Shisui laugh again and faces away, waits by the tree's edge for his cousin to catch up.

He thinks of locked and calculated boxes and monochromatic red, of duty, of bleeding.

There is no room for confusion. There is no time.

X

Itachi has never remembered a time where he didn't know Shisui. He supposes at one point they logically probably hadn't met, but has no recollection of such a milky, half-formed era. Shisui came into Itachi's life and person fully formed, and even though he doesn't remember how, Itachi remembers snippets of childhood when he was a quiet, unassuming age of ten—sharpening kunai and shoving them into throats before bedtime- and Shisui was a precocious twelve-year old genius already gaining favor in the clan.

Itachi remembers nightmares. There were no bodies of the dead floating in his dreams, no faceless figures, and no bloodied blades. He is well familiar with those and how they came to be, and Itachi has never been weak or fearful of death.

No, Itachi dreamt of barren, howling landscapes gutted by black rivers, gaping and stagnant, clotted with blood. His dreams scattered him on wild plains with no end in sight, flung him high into a steel-gray sky and dragged him down plunge into icy water-breaking and dying. Itachi wakes in spasms; violent paroxysms that arch his rickety spine from the narrow bed and make his skin glisten in a cold sweat.

Somehow one night, one of so many that he doesn't remember if it's the first or the fiftieth, Shisui is there.

Shisui's voice is mellow, still boyishly high, warm and sleep-sweet. He reaches out, holding Itachi's face in both hands, palm to cheek and fingers slipping through Itachi's hair.

"Silly 'Tachi. It's not that hard to get to sleep y'know. Don't you know how?"

(It's a question Itachi never thought to ask himself, but now it repeats in a constant mantra through his head; Don'tyoudon'tyoudon'tyou... He might know the answer, but it always slips away, elusive as the first dew on flower petals. Itachi hasn't slept now for a very, very long time.)

Itachi feels rough calluses on the palms holding his face together and sees Shisui's eyes; slanted sharply and yet softer than a dove's wing. He could melt into those eyes, melded grey-black and glowing.

That night Shisui settled comfortably into Itachi's sheets, lanky bodies just beginning to stretch into full-grown limbs wrapped around each other, arms and legs gripping and grasping and tangling until he was curled around Itachi like a second skin, and with his chin resting on the crown of Itachi's head, lips practically in his hair.

Itachi shivered and shook for a long time within the cave of Shisui's body, fingers holding tight along the edges of Shisui's ribs, and listened to the steady drone of Shisui's heartbeats thumping steadily in his ear. Shisui murmured to him with sleepy yet insistent whispers, calm and slow-rocking as a mother's croon;

"Shh. Don't be scared. Don't worry. Shhh. Let's get some sleep, okay? I'm here."

Itachi listened to the steady stream of words and the slogging beats of a foolish little boy's heart until he could no longer distinguish between the two, and fell into sleep that was slow, and even, and pillow-soft.

.

After that, Shisui was always with him. Itachi fell nto bed and Shisui would be there, as if he had melted from the wall, or the sky. He reached out and touched Itachi's face with tender, slightly hesitant hands, and asked if Itachi would mind Shisui here tonight.

Itachi never said no.

He would bury his face into Shisui's chest, with his cheek against Shisui's heartbeat as though he could fall into Shisui's ribcage and stay there always, counting pulses of blood until he'd heard enough to stay asleep forever. Shisui curled around him and held him fast onto the bed, anchored.

Itachi knew the nightmares could never spit him into the sky if Shisui was holding him so tightly, and for the first time since he could remember his father teaching him how to grip a kunai, Itachi didn't dream at all.

During those nights, Itachi thought he knew how to sleep. This was how to sleep, with Shisui next to him, breathing innocent puffs of air against his jaw.

He doesn't know anymore if he was right, but you can always trick yourself, and Itachi is good at that, always has been..

This was how Shisui came to be. Itachi knows that those first few nights of shaking shoulders and whispered words are the ones where he knew Shisui best. On those nights, his world had only two astonishingly simple colors: the black of Shisui's eyes and hair and inky sky through the window, and the soft fleece-gray of his blankets..

Of course, he doesn't know those colors anymore. Mellow words and sleep-shine breath have no place in Itachi's world.

Itachi lives in a world of crimson haze and blood-choked throats; first, always, and last.

X

When Itachi is twelve and Shisui still appears every night like clockwork to cast sleep spells;

Another mission stained with blood, another objective completed, and Itachi sprawled in his room at the compound, lying on his floor and staring at the ceiling.

It had been his first ANBU mission.

ANBU is a hard thing when you're twelve. (It is a hard thing always, but at twelve, first solo assassination wearing the bone and mask; Itachi knows anything that he had left of a soul is gone, really gone.)

He can still feel the fine neck of the girl underneath his palms, snapping just so. Her spine had been still new and growing and far too easily twisted. It had barely taken chakra. He remembers wide blue eyes he didn't look at, a wide smiling mouth turning down in fear he didn't notice, and a single ribbon of blood he hadn't tenderly wiped away.

The village had commanded and Itachi, armor still shiny-bright, had obeyed. The village had to be kept safe, had to be safe. There must never be another war in Konohagakure, ever. Itachi knows that.

It's his duty to do the things that keep the village safe, whatever those things might be, and Itachi does it because he must. There is no other option.

There is no option of enemy shinobi infiltrating Konoha, no option of Sasuke's baby fists having to hold a kunai before he holds chopsticks.

There is no option for anything else, twelve year old Itachi realizes, with the phantom memory of a girl-child's skin under his fingertips. There is no place for anything else.

He acknowledges this fact, understands and files away the information in one of the neatly organized boxes hanging in his mind, and then rolls over and throws up violently, heaves of breath wreaking through his body and bile in his throat and salty tears spilling from squeezed eyes.

Shisui finds him. Shisui knew, and he'd been looking. Shisui always finds him.

(Shisui is the only one who ever knows and looks.)

Shisui croons softly in Itachi's ear, voice low and lilting. He brushes Itachi's sweaty hair back from where it's plastered by sweat over his forehead, all of the spitfire fight and cut-throat tongue which usually keeps Shisui sharp as a finely balanced blade vanishing the second he slides open the door to Itachi's room. Shisui holds him, because he is the only one who understands right now, and gives him water to wash out his mouth. Shisui whispers to him a bedtime story about a rabbit who raced into flames in order to feed his remains to a starving wolf pack, who were his friends.

It's a ninja story, a ninja proverb, and Itachi listens hard, shaking despite himself.

Shisui murmurs in his ear, holding Itachi against his own unsullied amour, black and white and freshly polished porcelain, and Itachi closes his eyes as he feels Shisui trace schematic patterns along his unsnapped spine.

X

Itachi has done a hundred ANBU missions. He doesn't vomit anymore. Shisui has done two hundred ANBU missions. He vomits sometimes.

Itachi holds his head and give him sips of water, and when Shisui has smiled- thin and wicked-and joked about something stupidly- "I know I'm really fucking hot right now, so no need to remind me"- and walked away whistling after ruffling Itachi's hair, Itachi doesn't think about the old proverb, because there is no point to the bedtime stories anymore.

Still, sometimes Itachi sketches random, looping designs over Shisui's back while the his cousin heaves his body dry.

If you asked him about it, he would say that you've been misinformed, but Itachi has always been a good liar.

X

Itachi hears they are sending Shisui away and his throat is suddenly tight and sore; a relentless, aching constriction that cracks his usually smoothly unwavering voice in half, almost desperately, when he asks his father why Shisui's talents are being so fucking wasted. Why were they sending him to the remote, dangerously political hidden village of Kirikagure, why were they separating him from where he could bring the Uchiha clan name fame and power, banishing him.

Banishing him from Itachi.

Uchiha Fugaku's mouth is hard, as it has always been hard, and his jaw is rigid, as it has always been rigid, and there is nothing Itachi wants more in that moment than to break that tightrope, steel cable of a line.

But he does not.

Itachi holds himself in check, heart racing as he bows his back in a stiff apology. Fugaku is dismissive, businesslike. He never has been anything but businesslike, for Itachi's entire life.

"The village needs a skilled diplomat to secure the tender balance Kiri's political uprisings have shaken and an ANBU captain in one. Shisui fits the job perfectly." His eyes glint in the shadows appraisingly at this son, because Uchiha Fugaku always appraises his son instead of really seeing him, ever since that first moment a toddler Itachi had been caught slicing his face open playing with the family shuriken.

"There is to be no disgrace brought to him by seeming displeased about an honorable assignment, Itachi. Shisui does his duty to the clan."

Itachi wants to scream at his father, to dig his nails deep into his skin. He wants to lift his shirt and trace his fingers dramatically over the patterns of scars painted across his ribs.

Itachi wants to lock onto his fathers unforgiving gaze and demand retribution: "These scars are the places where I have bled, the places my fucking soul has splashed onto my skin and burned because of duty to my clan. This is where you have peeled off those dried pieces and eaten them, called them duty, because you love me, you love your son. Now, show me yours. Show me. Show me."

But he does not.

Insubordination is pointless.

Instead, he leaves to find Shisui; black-eyed, velvet-voiced Shisui, who is packing travel bags that are too big.

Shisui doesn't turn from his activities when Itachi slides open his door with a thud, but his hand flicks a kunai towards Itachi's head.

Itachi snatches it from the air before it makes contact with his forehead and examines the newly minted metal and elegant silk cord wrapping. The ring at the base is polished to a gleam. It is finely made, well-wrought metal, elaborate scrolling along the edges.

A gift.

He throws it to the ground, buries its tip in tatami paneled floor with a satisfying crack. Shisui straightens over his packing.

When he turns, there is a smile on his face, dancing like the sun over that river they always were sitting by, just sitting and sitting and sitting.

"I take it you spoke to Fugaku-sama."

Itachi doesn't dignify that with a response.

Shisui runs a long-fingered hand distractedly through the riot of his curls that refused to stay Uchiha smooth. They are almost more unruly than Sasuke's, and the thought makes Itachi's lips twitch. "I have to take the mission 'Tachi. You know that. It's a fucking pain, but I've got to."

Shisui knows he has to. He doesn't argue with the truth. (Itachi knows now that there was a time when Shisui did argue, when he threw a veritable hellstorm with his argument, and when he would've stopped at nothing to change the facts, to get his own way with that touchingly spoiled charm of his, but it had only been once. It had only ever been once.)

Itachi knows a great many rattle in his brain whenever he turns his head; they toss and fidget when he sleeps. He knows about duty, he knows about suffering. He knows there is injustice in this world, and death, and hands that tighten around throats. He knows that the situation in Kirigakure is going to be more than a fucking pain. Its going to be a shitstorm, a vipers nest, a war.

War, which shatters minds and tears men apart like wet paper. He is aware. He is thirteen, and he is excruciatingly, horribly aware.

Itachi doesn't know how to respond. Shisui leaving is something that never once occurred to him. Shisui leaving is not an option Itachi even considered to be possible.

How is the world supposed to turn now? How are things supposed to be normal? How is Itachi supposed to sleep and breathe and live if Shisui is not with him, by his side, drifting through his dreams.

Without Shisui, things seem faded. There is less brilliance in the world, less sunburst. Life is already taking on muted colors, fabrics losing texture and voices becoming echoes, and Shisui is only packing his bags.

He stands out in the haze like a knife-bite contrast, the bright illumination that makes one cover their eyes when they come out of a dark room.

Itachi and Shisui are geniuses. They were prized babies, gifted children, and now somehow they've grown up too quickly and become part of an adult world, a world demanding they bleed with blank faces and forget the words to bedtime stories. (Adults are what they are; thirteen and fifteen and fucking veterans.)

Shisui has always breezed through life; a quick-witted boy, effortless and engaging. Itachi used to stand quietly in a corner, soaking in the brightness from that playful, wicked little child in the center of the room tentatively, as though drawn helplessly into to his orbit. What is Itachi supposed to be, now?

Itachi remains very still, his mouth a complicated jigsaw.

Shisui flickers suddenly in front of him. The travel bags are over his shoulder, his bone amour glints against his chest, and the mask is tied to his hip.

It is too late.

Itachi feels his fingers twitch, as though for chakra, racing to fill the emptiness that drains through him like a leaky pipe. Shisui is leaving and Itachi is late and they must say goodbye now, even though Itachi has never had to really say goodbye before, not to anyone important.

He gropes for himself.

Hands cup Itachi's head, palms warm and smooth along the lines of Itachi's meets his eyes squarely, and Itachi feels his world abruptly align itself back into smooth patterns of black lashes and deep pupils.

There is a reason he never has to say very much around Shisui.

Then Shisui smiles, mouth a lazy gash of shadow in the darkness of the room suddenly draped in heavy purple twilight, and the aristocratic angles of his eyes crinkle slowly. "Get some sleep, 'Tachi."

Itachi is thirteen, and he doesn't understand the stab of unnamed emotion that guts his chest.

He nods.

Shisui strokes his thumb against Itachi's sharp cheekbone once, and then he is gone without another word. The body flicker transportation jutsu is one of Shunshin no Shisui's specialties, and the Uchiha have never been good at farewells.

All at once, there is only a sparse room and a lingering tingle on Itachi's face.

Itachi feels sick; colorless and tasteless. His throat heaves for breath with dry rattling noises and his eyes itch fiercely. He never wants move his feet again.

But Itachi has a mission too, a duty to his clan and his village, and so he turns around and takes a deep breath and walks slowy out of the room he will return to sleep in every night for the next month.

(In the boxes of his orderly mind, Shisui is shut up tight, so tight Itachi thinks he can't pry the lid off.)

He picks up the hand-crafted kunai from the floor before he leaves. Shisui hated to be wasteful.

X

Missions are quick, efficient, numerous. Itachi completes his objectives perfectly, returns directly to the village. Itachi wipes his blade and mask clean of blood with a damp and stained cloth, files his reports with a deft pen and a brisk slide of inky paper, and returns to his family in the clan compound with carefully even steps.

Itachi eats. He watches his little brother with quiet, evaluating eyes, and he makes small conversation with his mother when she inquires after his day with white hands and a white voice.

Tomorrow, he will do the same thing again.

He will do the same again many, many times.

If things are monochrome, dryly wasted and crumbling along the edges of his mind, perhaps he pretends not to notice.

Sometimes Itachi is even good at lying to himself.

The first few months, Itachi slept in Shisui's room, and it was easy, as though Shisui was simply on a bit of a longer mission, due to come home any night and fall on top of Itachi in his bed, smelling of mud and sweaty exhaustion and sweetness. His sheets still smelled like grass and spice and watery green tea; his desk didn't have dust.

On the first day of the third month, Itachi wakes up, calmly dresses and brushes his teeth, and closes the door before he reminds himself the room is not his own.

When Itachi remembered, he stopped sleeping there.

After that, it was a bit harder.

Sasuke is small and vaguely pink-faced, clinging to his sleeve and pant leg with admirable leechiness, selfishly happy to suddenly have Itachi-niisan to himself so much now. Sasuke has always been possessive, since that tender baby age when he first learned the word 'mine', and Itachi would be annoyed, but he has never been annoyed with Sasuke in his life, and doesn't think it's possible to start now.

Itachi flicks his brother's forehead bruised, because he doesn't know how to say "You are the most important thing in my life right now," to a four year old.

He never knew how to say it to anyone.

X

When Itachi sees Shisui again, it is two years but only five letters later, and Itachi is angry, so angry, because he knows the situation in Kirigakure is beyond fucked up, he really did. He's heard about the mass murder, about the systematic ethnic cleansings. He's heard about the horror and it's made him sick, but he can't manage to stop himself from burning up inside, burning burning burning.

Why the hell did Shisui leave him? How could he have left? How could Shisui leave him and not visit and hardly write, did he really believe Itachi was that fucking noble? That fucking self-sacrificing?

There is just as much horror and disaster and death right here in Konoha, right under their very noses, and Itachi has discovered it all by himself.

Itachi has sacrificed more in these past two years, sacrificed everything he is and was and will be for the clan and the family and village, but he would've never let go of Shisui, not until the end of the world, not for anything.

Only now he doesn't need too, because of course Shisui didn't bother to ask his permission before giving himself up. Shisui has never asked Itachi's permission for anything.

Now, He stands there in front of Itachi on the dusty road into the the Uchiha compound, seventeen years old but really so much older than that, old like a hard-handed soldier, old like a weary warhorse, finally broken. His stance is rigid; spine an upright board and hands straightlaced by his sides. It's not how Shisui has ever stood before.

His face is too hard and his eyes are too tight, and he looks at Itachi as though he isn't seeing him anymore, not really. There is a new scar on Shisui's face, deep and black over his hollow left cheekbone and down across those knife-thin lips that used to laugh so often, and it seals his mouth closed.

Itachi hates that scar.

Sasuke is hiding behind Itachi-niisan's leg, because this strange shinobi in front of them wears his Uchiha emblem like its a mourning banner. This shinobi with the ragged scar and the lean limbs and the furiously hard eyes is scary, is brutal, is dangerous.

Sasuke peeks behind Itachi's thigh and Shisui's gaze flicks down at him for a flash of a second, a slight almost half-smile sneaking over his face for a quicksilver moment, as though he might want to say something.

His fingers twitch- as though he is suddenly teetering on the edge of something; about to touch Itachi's face with his old wanton playfulness, about to crack a witty joke about something silly and pointless and then everything will come pouring out, everything will be okay, everything will be right again, finally, in Itachi's permanently wrong world.

-but then the millisecond of time is gone. Shisui is glossed over, a man in his place who has seen too much and become changed, become different, become broken. He salutes Itachi-like Itachi cared about fucking formalities now or Shisui ever had before-and then simply walks away with his shoulders still and his pace too steady, like it was easy

Itachi watches him go, something in his chest splintering into a hundred pieces with a quiet clatter.

X

Rage boils in Itachi's stomach, deep and sad, and he wants to howl, to tear his hair out and sob until he's nothing anymore, nothing but empty, for once. Itachi has never been empty before, too full of Shisui and loyalty and gut-wrenching love, and now he wants it more than anything, because it was just too fucking unfair.

This had been the thing he needed most in the world. He just needed to know he still had this one fucking thing.

But Shisui's gone, underneath war-tempered steel and duty and Kirigakure genocide, and Itachi's whole life has been unfair, and he just can't do this anymore.

X

Fours months later, Shisui is underneath Itachi in the cold black water of the rushing Nakano river.

Shisui, who quit ANBU upon return to Konohagakure to join the Uchiha police force permanently, Shisui who was leading the clan coup with more fire and ruthlessness than a mad man, Shisui who had a cruel laugh now, when he laughed at all, a laugh like something in him had snapped.

Shisui who held his head in his hands at night, rocking back and forth. Shisui who is vicious and hard on the mouth of anyone who looks twice, Shisui who runs his fingers over the scar on his face like it was all he had left.

Shisui's breath gurgles in his throat as Itachi pushes him under again, hands as gentle as they could be, tenderly clutching around Shisui's throat. Shisui would be the first, because Itachi wouldn't be able to bear having him be the last, it had been decided. He just wouldn't fucking bear that.

Itachi is crying, because all his nightmares have come back and and because Shisui is clawing at his shoulders desperately. Itachi is crying because he knows Shisui would've wanted him too.

Konohagakure must be safe. Sasuke must be safe.

Shisui isn't a high-ranking shinobi for nothing, and he gets his head above the depths again, gasping and cursing and looking so alive still, furiously and gloriously alive.

Shisui stares wildly up, his eyes blazing like he can see Itachi in front of him again, like suddenly it's all he's ever wanted to see.

There is something like a smile stretching over Shisui's scarred mouth.

"'Ta-chi..."

Itachi knows what he is doing- He's an ANBU level shinobi and a genius and it is not terribly difficult to drown someone, he knows. Somehow he has the upper hand now.

Itachi can hardly see through the tears falling hard and silent from his eyes when Shisui stops struggling quite suddenly, when all the fight is gone and he closes his eyes over his sharingan slowly under the water, river weeds obscuring his face. Itachi holds him under, a limp ragdoll, until he is completely sure his objective has been accomplished.

Then, he pulls Shisui up with him onto the bank of baby-fresh grass, and tries to get some sleep. He doesn't get any for a long, long time.

X

The thing is-

The thing is, Itachi doesn't like to remember Shisui when he became hard as flint and uncompromising as polished brass, when he forgot how to smile without pulling his mouth into a grimace.

That had been the ending, and when Itachi he catches himself thinking about it, he doesn't like to remember the ending. It isn't really true to think of Shisui like that, and he knows Shisui would scoff at him for not remembering correctly.

Itachi can sometimes picture him, all easy grin and lanky fifteen year old spark, balancing his ANBU mask on one careless fingertip and laughing sideways at Itachi across a flickering fire;

"'Tachi, you're getting me wrong. Cut a guy a break here, you know I love you."

Itachi, on those rare occasions when he can think about it all without forgetting how to breathe, likes to remember Shisui like this:

Hands cupping his face, a mouth coaxing sweetness carefully from under his tongue, lips smiling mischievously against his own. There was a single summer, spent basking in the hot grass by the riverbank, a summer when Shisui was pithy and selfish and delightful, just learning how to move in some special way that made all of the girls in the village sigh.

He'd kissed Itachi, hot on his mouth with his hands trembling a little in Itachi's hair, and Itachi-who was maybe too naive about it all but also maybe really fucking wanted it, because this was Shisui and Itachi has always wanted everything Shisui had to give-kissed back.

Itachi remembers that Shisui bragged a lot about all the exploits he managed to get up into, of course always quite by accident. He came back to Itachi with his stories, earnestly eager, and his fingers were warm when he would slip them up Itachi's shirt or slide his palm tentatively down Itachi's stomach.

His voice was always nervously breathless, excited by this intoxication of pure discovery and budding pleasure that was contagious. "If you-I mean-I learned how to try this-"

Itachi remembers them tumbling frantically together in the bushes along the river, laughing and awkward and sweaty, hands everywhere and lips dripping with wonder.

They didn't get far- they were too young, and too simple, and they killed people every day but later that night or when they ate lunch by the river Itachi remembers the way Shisui's back would arch when Itachi kissed along his neck, lips clumsy with enthusiasm. He remembers the way it felt when they grinded their hips together so frantically that Itachi felt his veins quiver in half-formed ecstasy, Shisui's pink mouth suddenly falling open above Itachi's as though he could see something too beautiful to describe.

When they snuck into each others rooms and fell asleep tangled into one another, still boyish in the way Itachi liked to hog all their covers and Shisui had the softest, most soothing snores Itachi had ever heard, then or since, Itachi remembers feeling dreamless, weightless, safe.

This is the way Itachi likes to remember Shisui, because Shisui had been like the goddamn sun that summer, and Itachi was warmed in the glow.

Sometimes he remembers Shisui in other ways. There are fleeting memories of a ruthless police captain who ordered a public whipping Itachi hadn't even realized was fucking legal in Konohagakure, or a tired little boy who rubbed his back and whispered stories to Itachi when he got back from an mission and couldn't stand to face himself in the mirror.

Shisui had been so many things, and now it's been long enough that all of Itachi's versions of Shisui blur together sometimes, scarred mouth and sleep-sweet breath mingling until all Itachi can see is the soaked black curls of Shisui's hair, clinging slick and wet to his forehead when Itachi dragged him haltingly from the river on their very last night.

Itachi remember him in that golden summer and is grateful for it, because he knows he doesn't deserve to dream of those days.

X

When Sasuke's blade is flying straight into his chest and Itachi is bleeding out onto the cold stone floor, red on his hands (He used to always long for pristine palms and clean fingernails, but would you just look at him now) and red down his cloak and streaming from underneath swollen eyelids, when he can see his little brother-not so pink and small now, but still just as possessive and Itachi will not pretend he is anything but impressed by that-who has eyes of crimson fire and holds lightning in his palms, Itachi sags down against the wall in something almost like relief because he is so tired. It was all finally ending, fucking finally.

Shisui's quicksilver smile tears across Itachi's blurring vision in a here-and-gone flash, a gash of mocking and wickedly triumphant shadow.

Itachi remembers, quite unexpectedly, that he never really told Shisui how when Itachi looked at him his heart swelled up painfully into his throat. How he would've followed Shisui to the end of their river and back, just to stay at his side.

Itachi has never told Sasuke either, but he hopes-when his fingers trail one last bloody path down Sasuke's forehead and he sees his little brother's eyes snap open in shock-

He hopes Sasuke knows.

X

Fin.

I have slept with you

all night long while

the dark earth spins

with the living and the dead,

and on waking suddenly

in the midst of the shadow

my arm encircled your waist.

-Pablo Neruda "Night on the Island"

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Thank you for reading

-LuteLyre