Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.

i.

The chakra-melded waters recede, letting his body fall to the thickly-grassed shore of the river.

Itachi's heart thuds harshly. The suggestion of a smile still remains on Shisui's blue-tinged face, searing his insides until they are nothing more than ash. Reality swamps his mind.

He's dead…He's dead…

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A struggle to maintain control and establish apathy follows. Itachi knows he must not feel anything, must not show any crack whatsoever.

It takes two days for Shisui's body to be found, and in those two days Itachi deepens his mother's suspicions about his behavior and makes his father scratch his head by behaving as if nothing is happening, behaving as if nothing is wrong.

Sasuke remains blissfully unaware as to why Shisui has suddenly stopped visiting the main house.

Shisui's body has lingered in the river for two days, during the height of summer. His funeral has to be held closed casket. His body is bloated, black and blue all over, swarming with the eggs and larva of blowflies from where it washed up on the shore under a bridge.

Itachi is called to identify the corpse. It's all he can do to do so and get out of the room before he is violently sick.

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For the next few days, all is quiet. His heart pounds at odd moments, his mind begins to race when he is alone, but he is a block of ice, emotionless and perfectly controlled.

But then, sitting alone, his heartbeat comes nearly to a standstill, slowing down and refusing to beat. Itachi can not catch his breath.

A spurt of spectral laughter fills his ears, mingling with the buzzing of insects at early sunset. It fades in and out, shimmering like the surface of the river. Shisui's laughter aches in the cavity of his chest, filling him where his heartbeat will not.

Itachi never realized what killing Shisui would do. He is dead, but he lives on, in every quiet moment and every river current.

Itachi sinks his head onto his knees as his shoulders begin to shake, and sobs quietly.

.

"You are Uchiha Itachi?"

Out of the darkness of the Naka shrine, a man comes. He wears an orange mask, one eye, the tomoes of the Sharingan spinning without cease, glaring at him like open wounds. The firelight of the torches makes him flicker in and out.

Itachi hesitates, reaching for a kunai in his pouch. "Yes."

The shadows deepen over the ridged mask. "I know what you are planning to do. I can help you, but you must do something for me in return."

Itachi is assaulted by the feeling of a powerful, dark chakra. The man screams of malice and an old evil.

Itachi runs from the shrine, and never looks back until he reaches the doorway of his home.

His eyes scan the darkened street. It is completely empty. There is no one there.

.

The muggy, windless night keeps the smell of iron from rising, casting a blood-tinted mist around the compound.

The full moon displays the scene without prejudice. Two boys stare at each other, one with a long katana drawn.

All around them, the dead keep their own counsel. Blood continues to seep sluggishly from their cold corpses. From a roof, a masked man watches, triumph singing in his veins.

In the wide street, the smaller boy charges the older. The older dodges, and easily leaves the younger sliding to the ground unconscious.

People will later say that Itachi lost his nerve.

The truth is, he never had it in the first place.

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Itachi is running. He doesn't know where, and he barely knows why.

Whenever he stops running, thoughts begin to flood his mind. First, Shisui's laughter and clever wit leaves him restless. Then, his father smiles at him as he dies and his mother bows her head and prays, before her head goes spinning away. Then, Sasuke stares up at him with eyes that will never go away. Then, the feeling of metal drawing blood from his wrists fascinates him once again.

Itachi sits by the riverbank, not knowing where he is, and stares at his arms.

His skin is too thin.

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"So, I've finally found you."

After his encounter with the man at the shrine, Itachi took the liberty of doing research on the old scions of his clan, and found a very interesting story of a battle between an Uchiha with a massive chakra and a Senju with eyes made of fire.

Itachi tries to look defiant as Uchiha Madara laughs at him.

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ii.

The Akatsuki is a place of darkness, where light comes through only in tiny patches then dies without hope.

Itachi knows he can hide his small light here.

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The boy Deidara stares up at him with hate-filled eyes. Itachi looks back with cool unconcern, practically daring the boy to do something about his hate.

Deidara is a child with a child's tenacity and a childish way of hating. He will grow, and perhaps his hatred will mature or die as he does.

But still, it is the first time Itachi has ever encountered someone who hates him enough to dream only of murdering him, who holds murder in his eyes when he looks at him.

It won't be the last.

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Sometimes, the dreams come in measured spurts. Sometimes, they are random and completely disjointed.

Iron lingers in the air and fills his nostrils. Death and despair beat on his chest. The darkness spirals out of control, until his light is nearly swallowed up and consumed.

When Itachi wakes up, only the sound of Kisame's heavy breathing in the bed next to his greets him.

The blinds are pulled down over the window, and the bands of light stripe his face and make him remember that he's still breathing too.

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iii.

Itachi has come to hate all rivers.

He stands by a river in Ame no Kuni, and counts the ripples on the water as the torrent—so unlike the slow, placid rivers of Konoha—crashes over the beaten rocks.

Shisui and Sasuke both tread water, beckoning him onwards, pleading, cajoling.

Itachi screws his eyes shut, holding his face in his hands, wishing he could find a way to forget.

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Sasori has a disturbing tendency of knowing everything about everyone in the Akatsuki. After Konan, Madara and the Leader, he has been a member for the longest amount of time, since he was not much older than Itachi himself had been when recruited. Itachi muses that he wouldn't be surprised if Sasori knows that Tobi is Madara or if he's come face to face with the Leader.

One day, Sasori comes to him, and asks him if he has been keeping track of his brother.

For the rest of the day, Itachi wonders if Sasuke has grown at all since they last laid eyes on each other.

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Itachi starts to cough up blood.

Madara tells him that activating the Mangekyo speeds up a person's metabolism. That, combined with overuse of the Mangekyo, puts an enormous strain on the body and tells him that if he wants to live to see twenty-five, he's going to have to stop using the Mangekyo so much and change his eating habits to compensate.

Itachi hears none of it.

He has always had nightmares of the taste of iron in his mouth and blood smears on his hands. When that nightmare finally becomes reality, his dreams shift to dark torrents of water all around him.

When he should be dreaming of iron in his mouth, Itachi dreams of drowning instead.

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iv.

There was a day, a long time ago, when Itachi was a child. Sasuke hadn't been born yet, and the war was still raging.

Every day, his mother would take him in to town. Sometimes, they would go to the marketplace and look for whatever small trinket or sweet caught Itachi's eye. Sometimes, they would visit a younger friend of Mikoto's, a tall young woman with fire red hair, and stay at her apartment and have lunch. Sometimes, they would go and sit on the bank of the Nakano, sinking their feet into the cool water as Mikoto pulled him close to her and stroked his hair.

Itachi goes to the florist in Amegakure and buys snow white hollyhock every year on his mother's birthday. It was her favorite flower.

The showy white petals with their silk-smooth surfaces remind him of the feel of her skin as she has laid her cheek across the top of her head.

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His eyes are fading. Itachi keeps his secret well, and in the end only Kisame, Konan, and undoubtedly Madara know what's happening to him.

Nothing ever comes without its price, and the Mangekyo Sharingan is no exception.

Everything is going slightly fuzzy. With the Sharingan, Itachi's battle sight is just as sharp as ever but in laxity nothing is as well-defined as it used to be.

Itachi watches as black and white fades into gray.

He thinks of Sasuke and Shisui, smiling and laughing. Though he may be unable to forget, there will soon come a time when he will no longer be able to see them.

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Sasuke will be eleven now. Itachi wonders if he has graduated from the Academy yet, if he has re-awakened his Sharingan yet.

All the "yets" crowd in his mind and scream at him to get his attention.

Itachi closes his eyes and does everything he can to block them out.

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v.

The Sandaime Hokage is dead. The news comes to Itachi as a shock.

Itachi had no love for the Sandaime, the selectively blind man who allowed the machinations of his subordinates to destroy a clan and nearly a village along with it. He had no love for the man who sat by and allowed him to become a kin slayer.

Shisui's face still haunts him at night, proving to Itachi that he's still alive, that he will never die as long as there is a water drop in the world to host his spirit. Shisui lives in death as he never could in life, and Itachi has the Sandaime and his councilors to thank for that.

But now that Sarutobi is dead, Sasuke is vulnerable. Itachi has no idea if Danzo, Koharu and Homura will keep their words or not, but he's betting on the "not".

Itachi starts to walk towards Konoha.

.

Chirping birds greet Itachi as he stares at his brother for the first time in over four years.

Sasuke has grown considerably. He is probably a foot and a half taller. His black hair is longer, his arms more muscular. His Sharingan is fully matured, blazing crimson red as lightning chakra bursts light bulbs above them.

His chakra is strange. It isn't like most ninja, isn't like most Uchiha. It is darker and heavier, and Itachi nearly shudders as he realizes that it reminds him of Orochimaru. He wonders if the snake has been interfering with his brother's development.

Sasuke is staring down his brother with hatred in his eyes outweighing even Deidara's; there is no room for softness or kindness there. There is only hate and darkness.

Itachi stares at him, utterly lost. An emptiness fills his chest and the sound of sloshing water ripples in his ears.

This is what you wanted, he has to remind himself. This is what you wanted.

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Tucked beneath his shirt, folded against his bare skin, there is a picture.

In this picture, there are three boys. All three are obviously related, with black hair, dark eyes, fair skin and wiry frames.

The smallest boy is no older than six or seven. He seems to be in the middle of a laugh, his large eyes crinkled up as he clings to the pant leg of one of the older boys.

There is a very tall teenage boy in the picture. He has curly hair, long, loose arms that someone could speculate swing when he walks, and a roguish grin that bespeaks mischievousness.

Standing to the left of the picture, there is a boy, shorter than the tall teenager but much taller than the smallest boy. He has very long black hair pulled back in a low ponytail. He is smiling softly; the way no lines form around his mouth implies that he doesn't smile very often. He has gentle eyes.

No one would be able to connect Itachi with the boy in the picture anymore.

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Itachi burns the picture, and struggles to tread water.

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vi.

Late at night, when Kisame has gone to sleep and there is nothing but the sound of silence to keep him company, Itachi thinks of Sasuke.

He thinks of Sasuke deep within the cool tunnels of Orochimaru' sanctum. He thinks of his tiny little brother, laughing and smiling at him, becoming cold and lean and utterly soulless. He thinks of the boy who always wanted to play with him becoming another skin for the snake.

The thought keeps him from sleep for a very long time, as Itachi vows to himself again and again that he will never let it happen.

.

He begins to dream of Shisui again. Itachi dreams of him, a grinning, laughing boy, always the light of his life. He wishes more than anything that he could see him again, one last time.

When Itachi wakes up, alone as always, he comes to a horrible realization.

Shisui will be sixteen forever. Whatever green land he has gone to, he remains the same, forever smiling and taking in the world with a genuine joy that years of bloodshed, suffering and war could never erase. He will not change.

Itachi, on the other hand, can only get older as the years pass and treat him unkindly, can only get grayer, grimmer and gaunter. He continues to hack up blood, and it puts an unhealthy pallor upon his face.

If they were ever to meet again, Shisui would not recognize him.

Itachi's light begins to go out, and the waters grow darker and deeper.

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vii.

The blood comes after nearly every fight Itachi participates in now. He can't fight in even a minor skirmish without blood seeping from his mouth, even if he doesn't use the Mangekyo Sharingan.

Itachi can only assume that it is the blood in his lungs that sounds like water in his ears.

He has always bled too easily.

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When Itachi dreams, Shisui no longer comes to him sharp and clear. Instead, he is a gray mass, a shadow without form, a being with no face.

He no longer speaks nor laughs, and Itachi doesn't know what that sounds like anymore.

When he wakes up, he finds his pillow flooded with tears, because he can no longer remember Shisui's face, and it strikes him deep in that last, soft place.

Itachi has always longed to forget, ever since the day it happened. But now that he has begun to forget, he finds that that isn't what he wants anymore, and that forgetting doesn't make him happy.

He can't stop what he has already begun.

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viii.

Itachi's body is failing him. He can see nothing without the Sharingan anymore; his sight has deteriorated to near nothing. He is blind, completely and utterly. Madara calls him a fool for not harvesting the eyes he has saved for him, but Itachi does not care, does not listen.

His blood seeps from his mouth without warning now. Walking across a room is enough to bring it on. The medications, the herbal remedies, all of Sasori's foul-tasting solutions can't stop it anymore.

Itachi doesn't know how he'll manage to fight.

When he stares into the empty eyes of his little brother, he knows the end is near.

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As Itachi lays dying, he envies Shisui.

It only took Shisui eight minutes to drown. Itachi would have given anything to spend half as many years drowning.