Ficlet! GASP!
May. 7th, 2006 11:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
midnightdiddleA ficlet! Gasp! It's part of my blind!Itachi series. It was started long, long ago. Last December, in fact... And it's for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
dragon_bite. :)
Kisame was always loud when he was around Itachi. He would mutter to himself, or walk loudly, or sigh. Itachi was snarl and complain, but his head would follow the sound of Kisame, eyes trying to latch onto something.
Kisame never called it pity.
x
"What is it?" Itachi asked, a bare touch of suspicion in his voice. Kisame closed Itachi's hand over the round something.
"It's a sweet," Kisame said, and Itachi's empty eyes moved to his hand.
"Sweet?" Itachi hesitated, then brought his hand to his mouth, popping the candy into his mouth.
Kisame watched as the teenager ate the candy. Muscles in Itachi's jaw twitched as he sucked at the hard candy. "Do you like it?" Kisame asked.
Itachi's dull eyes flicked to where the voice was coming from, barely pausing on Kisame's mouth before they slid away.
"Maybe."
x
Once Itachi decided something, he never hesitated or changed his mind. It only took him moments to go through all possibilities and decide on the best course to be taken. It had only taken him the time to walk from his bedroom to the kitchen to decided to kill his family, all those years ago. Once Itachi decided on something, he never strayed from his course.
He swallowed the last sliver of the sweet, sugar coating the inside of his mouth, and held out his hand without a stray thought.
"Another."
A round weight dropped in his hand and Itachi set it on his tongue, heavy and sweet and flavor that slid down the back of his throat.
Itachi never said thank you. He never had, in all his life, and he never would. He never thanked Kisame for standing not twenty paces behind, or the Akatsuki for giving him a time and place to survive. He never thanked his father or uncles or cousins for fucking him over in his head, or thanked Sasuke for giving him a reason to kill his family. Itachi was far too stuck in his own mind, where red shadows detached from walls and slid down the floors, where the floors became walls became ceilings became doors became prisons, to notice anyone else.
x
Three nights after Kisame gave Itachi the candy, Itachi dreamed. In his dream, he could see everything. He saw Kisame, sleeping on the bed next to his. He saw Sasuke, arrogant and proud and terrified next to Orochimaru. He saw the Kyuubi-brat, pulling a drunk Sannin out of a bar, and he saw Kakashi-sempai fucking a chuunin teacher. He saw everything. He saw the way the waterfalls spelled the end to a friendship, and the way the clouds moved too quickly, and children died, claws in their throats. He saw more than he'd ever seen, and he saw too much, and it was delicious. He could taste it on his tongue, heavy and sweet, like the candy, and he wanted more. More more more, he wanted more than everything.
When he woke up, and black-red stared him in the face, he wanted to die. It was an interesting feeling.
x
"Itachi-san," Kisame said, holding out his hand. The curled ends of his fingers, clenched into a fist, touched Itachi's cheek, and the teenager shifted on his chair, turning his face so the hand slipped from his cheek.
"What is it, Kisame?"
"I have a sweet. Would you like it?" Kisame didn't say that he'd searched through half the town's stores before he'd found the same kind of sweet, sugar hardened into crystals. Itachi was painfully still, then he moved, reaching up to touch Kisame's hand. Kisame turned his palm down, then opened his fist, letting the sweets fall into Itachi's hands.
Itachi set one on his tongue, careful not to touch his mouth with his fingers, then held the rest of the candies in his hand, resting his hand in his lap. He was still as a statue again, and Kisame resisted the urge to touch him, because Itachi was a god.
x
The second time Itachi dreamed, his chakra exploded.
He could see everything, could see the way the ants were building tunnels under the ground, and the way the Akatsuki was moving, finding the demons. He could see the threads that connected everything, little red threads between his brother and the Kyuubi brat, with a pale, almost pink thread leading from them to the girl. He could see the black threads between Orochimaru and the bastard that was his bitch, and he could see the threads, without color, that ran back and forth between Kisame and himself. He could see everything, everything, and it was all there, in his head.
He woke up screaming. The everything burned, burned like the fire his father taught him to breathe, and he was burning alive. Kisame was yelling at him, touching him with his big hands, and Kisame's hands were like ice, and they burned in a very different way. Itachi swore at him, snarled and bit and scratched, and his chakra was burning, it was too much, and his skin was on fire with life, and Itachi had never felt alive like he did in that moment.
Kisame's fingers were on his neck, and Itachi could feel the chakra draining from him, and the fires on his skin and in his head and everywhere, because Itachi was everything, were dying out.
"Itachi-san," Kisame said, and Itachi wanted to kill him again. He was cold, freezing, and the fire had never felt so tempting.
"Please," he whimpered, for the first time in his life, and it wasn't important, because all he needed was the fire, the chakra that covered his skin and ate his veins and made him see again. "Please."
x
Itachi, the Akatsuki decided, was a problem. He was uncontrollable, a laughable mess that needed to be put down like a stray dog that bit the hand. He was, the Akatsuki decided, a vulnerability. They forgot one thing, though. Even when a god died, it would come back. Maybe it'd be half of what it was, and maybe it'd be a little broken in the head, but it would always come back.
Itachi was a god.
x
Itachi had never loved his family, but he hadn't realized that until Sasuke was born. He didn't realize how very different he was until he saw Sasuke cling to their parents legs, grubby hands latching onto their mother's skirt, and their father's pants. When he watched Sasuke give clumsy kisses, he realized that he was very different.
He didn't feel whatever it was that made Sasuke live. He had never felt it. Itachi wondered if he was very fucked up in the head, to not feel this. He felt other things, in spades. He felt fear, sometimes, and he felt anxiety. He felt a myraid of things, too much, and he wondered if that's why he couldn't feel love; because he felt too much already. He was filled to the brim, and it was threatening to drown him, in his own sea-salt tears he couldn't cry.
When Itachi had carried Sasuke on his back, years and years ago, he'd felt love like a tangible thing, beneath his fingertips. That's what Sasuke had been, a body burning with love and everything like love. Itachi had touched Sasuke, back then. He held Sasuke's hand as he walked Sasuke to school, and he'd tap Sasuke's forehead when the boy was being a brat. Sometimes, Itachi had thought that if he could just figure out Sasuke, he could understand love, and maybe then he could love his family.
He was, frankly, jealous.
x
"Itachi-san," Kisame said, and his voice sounded almost tired. Itachi wondered how many whores Kisame had fucked.
"Itachi-san."
His uncle had fucked whores. No one had ever talked about it, because in the Uchiha clan, you didn't talk about things that were as base as sex. Itachi had seen the whores come and go, though, walking down the dusty street at night, their faces pale, lips red, eyes dark. There had been a whore at his uncle's house the night Itachi had woken up from dreaming.
"Itachi-san."
It had been an almost mirror image. The whore had screamed, and his uncle had shouted. Her face had been pale, lips red, eyes dark, and Uncle's face had been pale, lips dark, eyes red. Itachi had almost found it funny, but nothing that night had been very funny.
"Itachi-san."
Itachi liked to think that he'd hated his uncle, even more than he'd hated his father. Lies. Itachi couldn't remember hating anyone, because he'd never loved anyone, either. People were just there, on the edge of his reasoning, and sometimes, when he turned his head too fast, he forgot they were even there.
"Itachi-san."
Like Kisame. Sometimes Itachi forgot Kisame was there.
"Itachi-san-"
x
The street was crowded, shoulders jostling him, and Itachi didn't quite flinch away. His senses were overwhelmed, sound taste touch smell, and he couldn't handle it, couldn't process it all fast enough. He was lost somewhere in his mind, he was sure, and so he stood in the center of the road, one hand touching the brim of his hat, other hand tucked into his cloak.
If he was honest, he'd admit he was scared. He'd been scared for a very long time, ever since he was a child, because this world, full of laughing crying screaming dying living stupid people always caught him about the waist, picking him up and carrying him away. This thing, this world, this reality he was never entirely aware of, had a way of catching him between one dream and the next, and when he was caught up into all of this, with the fishmongers and school children and gossiping wives, he was lost.
So he stood in the center of the road, pushing chakra through his feet to keep himself planted firm on the tilting planet. A shoulder hit his shoulder, hard, and he pushed back enough to keep himself upright. Itachi would wait, as long as it took, until Kisame would come. That was the way it was. Itachi would stop, lost and confused, and he'd wait, for minutes, or hours, or days, and soon, Kisame would come.
Kisame always came, tall and broad enough to block out the world. Itachi knew he'd come, so he stood there, and he waited.
And waited.
And waited.
And waited.
x
There were a million reasons for why Itachi had killed his family. They spanned from anger to frustration to a need to 'purify' the earth. Itachi had mouthed them all to himself over the last five six seven years. He had favorites, though the favorites changed from time to time. For a few months, right after the 'incident,' his favorite had been self-satisfaction. For a short stint, when he'd first joined the Akatsuki, it was for the need to become strong. For the past few months, though, it'd simply been for the reason of killing them. He'd killed his family, and clan, because somewhere, he'd wanted to.
He'd dreamt of it, the afternoon he killed them. He'd been sleeping in his room, and he'd dreamt of killing them all, one by one, from house to house to house to house to house to house to house-
Reality had been very close to fantasy, he'd discovered.
x
Itachi spoke in his sleep. Kisame found it fascinating, the way Itachi's lips would move, and the way Itachi's voice would whisper.
Ninja trained themselves to sleep silently. It was too much of a risk, to talk or snore while sleeping. Itachi had never bothered himself to learn to sleep silent as the grave. No one was a threat to Itachi; he had nothing to fear.
When Itachi talked in his sleep, murmured words that made far too much sense, that explained everything in painful detail, Kisame would always sit up. He'd sit next to the fire, or the window, or the table, and he'd watch Itachi breathe and whisper and pray. Itachi may not have to be scared for himself, but Kisame was always scared for Itachi.
x
"Itachi-san," Kisame said softly, near Itachi's ear. Itachi's fingers moved, tightening on the brim of his hat, and Kisame shuffled a little closer, his arm a few inches from Itachi's body, almost-not-quite wrapped around his waist. "Are you ready, Itachi-san?"
The fish-wives were bickering, voices shrill, and Itachi's body was as tight as their voices, chakra humming low beneath his skin. Kisame's fingertips slipped across Itachi's neck, blue skin dark beneath the shadows of Itachi's hat and cloak.
"What are you doing, Kisame?" Itachi's voice was painfully sharp, wicked enough to cut, and Kisame drew his fingers back, fingernails catching on the fabric of the coat, pulling threads of red and black.
"Nothing," Kisame said, voice not exactly frustrated. Itachi's head moved, tilting to the side, and Kisame watched as Itachi's fingers slipped from the brim of the hat.
Itachi said something, muffled by the hot summer air, and when he began moving, black above yellow dust, Kisame followed, two paces behind. He pulled the brim of his hat low, until he could only see the hem of Itachi's cloak, dragging the dirt, and he folded his hands into his cloak. His fingertips touched a paper bag, small and wrinkled, and he palmed the bag, candies heavy in his hand.
Kisame never called it pity.
dragon_bite. :)Kisame was always loud when he was around Itachi. He would mutter to himself, or walk loudly, or sigh. Itachi was snarl and complain, but his head would follow the sound of Kisame, eyes trying to latch onto something.
Kisame never called it pity.
x
"What is it?" Itachi asked, a bare touch of suspicion in his voice. Kisame closed Itachi's hand over the round something.
"It's a sweet," Kisame said, and Itachi's empty eyes moved to his hand.
"Sweet?" Itachi hesitated, then brought his hand to his mouth, popping the candy into his mouth.
Kisame watched as the teenager ate the candy. Muscles in Itachi's jaw twitched as he sucked at the hard candy. "Do you like it?" Kisame asked.
Itachi's dull eyes flicked to where the voice was coming from, barely pausing on Kisame's mouth before they slid away.
"Maybe."
x
Once Itachi decided something, he never hesitated or changed his mind. It only took him moments to go through all possibilities and decide on the best course to be taken. It had only taken him the time to walk from his bedroom to the kitchen to decided to kill his family, all those years ago. Once Itachi decided on something, he never strayed from his course.
He swallowed the last sliver of the sweet, sugar coating the inside of his mouth, and held out his hand without a stray thought.
"Another."
A round weight dropped in his hand and Itachi set it on his tongue, heavy and sweet and flavor that slid down the back of his throat.
Itachi never said thank you. He never had, in all his life, and he never would. He never thanked Kisame for standing not twenty paces behind, or the Akatsuki for giving him a time and place to survive. He never thanked his father or uncles or cousins for fucking him over in his head, or thanked Sasuke for giving him a reason to kill his family. Itachi was far too stuck in his own mind, where red shadows detached from walls and slid down the floors, where the floors became walls became ceilings became doors became prisons, to notice anyone else.
x
Three nights after Kisame gave Itachi the candy, Itachi dreamed. In his dream, he could see everything. He saw Kisame, sleeping on the bed next to his. He saw Sasuke, arrogant and proud and terrified next to Orochimaru. He saw the Kyuubi-brat, pulling a drunk Sannin out of a bar, and he saw Kakashi-sempai fucking a chuunin teacher. He saw everything. He saw the way the waterfalls spelled the end to a friendship, and the way the clouds moved too quickly, and children died, claws in their throats. He saw more than he'd ever seen, and he saw too much, and it was delicious. He could taste it on his tongue, heavy and sweet, like the candy, and he wanted more. More more more, he wanted more than everything.
When he woke up, and black-red stared him in the face, he wanted to die. It was an interesting feeling.
x
"Itachi-san," Kisame said, holding out his hand. The curled ends of his fingers, clenched into a fist, touched Itachi's cheek, and the teenager shifted on his chair, turning his face so the hand slipped from his cheek.
"What is it, Kisame?"
"I have a sweet. Would you like it?" Kisame didn't say that he'd searched through half the town's stores before he'd found the same kind of sweet, sugar hardened into crystals. Itachi was painfully still, then he moved, reaching up to touch Kisame's hand. Kisame turned his palm down, then opened his fist, letting the sweets fall into Itachi's hands.
Itachi set one on his tongue, careful not to touch his mouth with his fingers, then held the rest of the candies in his hand, resting his hand in his lap. He was still as a statue again, and Kisame resisted the urge to touch him, because Itachi was a god.
x
The second time Itachi dreamed, his chakra exploded.
He could see everything, could see the way the ants were building tunnels under the ground, and the way the Akatsuki was moving, finding the demons. He could see the threads that connected everything, little red threads between his brother and the Kyuubi brat, with a pale, almost pink thread leading from them to the girl. He could see the black threads between Orochimaru and the bastard that was his bitch, and he could see the threads, without color, that ran back and forth between Kisame and himself. He could see everything, everything, and it was all there, in his head.
He woke up screaming. The everything burned, burned like the fire his father taught him to breathe, and he was burning alive. Kisame was yelling at him, touching him with his big hands, and Kisame's hands were like ice, and they burned in a very different way. Itachi swore at him, snarled and bit and scratched, and his chakra was burning, it was too much, and his skin was on fire with life, and Itachi had never felt alive like he did in that moment.
Kisame's fingers were on his neck, and Itachi could feel the chakra draining from him, and the fires on his skin and in his head and everywhere, because Itachi was everything, were dying out.
"Itachi-san," Kisame said, and Itachi wanted to kill him again. He was cold, freezing, and the fire had never felt so tempting.
"Please," he whimpered, for the first time in his life, and it wasn't important, because all he needed was the fire, the chakra that covered his skin and ate his veins and made him see again. "Please."
x
Itachi, the Akatsuki decided, was a problem. He was uncontrollable, a laughable mess that needed to be put down like a stray dog that bit the hand. He was, the Akatsuki decided, a vulnerability. They forgot one thing, though. Even when a god died, it would come back. Maybe it'd be half of what it was, and maybe it'd be a little broken in the head, but it would always come back.
Itachi was a god.
x
Itachi had never loved his family, but he hadn't realized that until Sasuke was born. He didn't realize how very different he was until he saw Sasuke cling to their parents legs, grubby hands latching onto their mother's skirt, and their father's pants. When he watched Sasuke give clumsy kisses, he realized that he was very different.
He didn't feel whatever it was that made Sasuke live. He had never felt it. Itachi wondered if he was very fucked up in the head, to not feel this. He felt other things, in spades. He felt fear, sometimes, and he felt anxiety. He felt a myraid of things, too much, and he wondered if that's why he couldn't feel love; because he felt too much already. He was filled to the brim, and it was threatening to drown him, in his own sea-salt tears he couldn't cry.
When Itachi had carried Sasuke on his back, years and years ago, he'd felt love like a tangible thing, beneath his fingertips. That's what Sasuke had been, a body burning with love and everything like love. Itachi had touched Sasuke, back then. He held Sasuke's hand as he walked Sasuke to school, and he'd tap Sasuke's forehead when the boy was being a brat. Sometimes, Itachi had thought that if he could just figure out Sasuke, he could understand love, and maybe then he could love his family.
He was, frankly, jealous.
x
"Itachi-san," Kisame said, and his voice sounded almost tired. Itachi wondered how many whores Kisame had fucked.
"Itachi-san."
His uncle had fucked whores. No one had ever talked about it, because in the Uchiha clan, you didn't talk about things that were as base as sex. Itachi had seen the whores come and go, though, walking down the dusty street at night, their faces pale, lips red, eyes dark. There had been a whore at his uncle's house the night Itachi had woken up from dreaming.
"Itachi-san."
It had been an almost mirror image. The whore had screamed, and his uncle had shouted. Her face had been pale, lips red, eyes dark, and Uncle's face had been pale, lips dark, eyes red. Itachi had almost found it funny, but nothing that night had been very funny.
"Itachi-san."
Itachi liked to think that he'd hated his uncle, even more than he'd hated his father. Lies. Itachi couldn't remember hating anyone, because he'd never loved anyone, either. People were just there, on the edge of his reasoning, and sometimes, when he turned his head too fast, he forgot they were even there.
"Itachi-san."
Like Kisame. Sometimes Itachi forgot Kisame was there.
"Itachi-san-"
x
The street was crowded, shoulders jostling him, and Itachi didn't quite flinch away. His senses were overwhelmed, sound taste touch smell, and he couldn't handle it, couldn't process it all fast enough. He was lost somewhere in his mind, he was sure, and so he stood in the center of the road, one hand touching the brim of his hat, other hand tucked into his cloak.
If he was honest, he'd admit he was scared. He'd been scared for a very long time, ever since he was a child, because this world, full of laughing crying screaming dying living stupid people always caught him about the waist, picking him up and carrying him away. This thing, this world, this reality he was never entirely aware of, had a way of catching him between one dream and the next, and when he was caught up into all of this, with the fishmongers and school children and gossiping wives, he was lost.
So he stood in the center of the road, pushing chakra through his feet to keep himself planted firm on the tilting planet. A shoulder hit his shoulder, hard, and he pushed back enough to keep himself upright. Itachi would wait, as long as it took, until Kisame would come. That was the way it was. Itachi would stop, lost and confused, and he'd wait, for minutes, or hours, or days, and soon, Kisame would come.
Kisame always came, tall and broad enough to block out the world. Itachi knew he'd come, so he stood there, and he waited.
And waited.
And waited.
And waited.
x
There were a million reasons for why Itachi had killed his family. They spanned from anger to frustration to a need to 'purify' the earth. Itachi had mouthed them all to himself over the last five six seven years. He had favorites, though the favorites changed from time to time. For a few months, right after the 'incident,' his favorite had been self-satisfaction. For a short stint, when he'd first joined the Akatsuki, it was for the need to become strong. For the past few months, though, it'd simply been for the reason of killing them. He'd killed his family, and clan, because somewhere, he'd wanted to.
He'd dreamt of it, the afternoon he killed them. He'd been sleeping in his room, and he'd dreamt of killing them all, one by one, from house to house to house to house to house to house to house-
Reality had been very close to fantasy, he'd discovered.
x
Itachi spoke in his sleep. Kisame found it fascinating, the way Itachi's lips would move, and the way Itachi's voice would whisper.
Ninja trained themselves to sleep silently. It was too much of a risk, to talk or snore while sleeping. Itachi had never bothered himself to learn to sleep silent as the grave. No one was a threat to Itachi; he had nothing to fear.
When Itachi talked in his sleep, murmured words that made far too much sense, that explained everything in painful detail, Kisame would always sit up. He'd sit next to the fire, or the window, or the table, and he'd watch Itachi breathe and whisper and pray. Itachi may not have to be scared for himself, but Kisame was always scared for Itachi.
x
"Itachi-san," Kisame said softly, near Itachi's ear. Itachi's fingers moved, tightening on the brim of his hat, and Kisame shuffled a little closer, his arm a few inches from Itachi's body, almost-not-quite wrapped around his waist. "Are you ready, Itachi-san?"
The fish-wives were bickering, voices shrill, and Itachi's body was as tight as their voices, chakra humming low beneath his skin. Kisame's fingertips slipped across Itachi's neck, blue skin dark beneath the shadows of Itachi's hat and cloak.
"What are you doing, Kisame?" Itachi's voice was painfully sharp, wicked enough to cut, and Kisame drew his fingers back, fingernails catching on the fabric of the coat, pulling threads of red and black.
"Nothing," Kisame said, voice not exactly frustrated. Itachi's head moved, tilting to the side, and Kisame watched as Itachi's fingers slipped from the brim of the hat.
Itachi said something, muffled by the hot summer air, and when he began moving, black above yellow dust, Kisame followed, two paces behind. He pulled the brim of his hat low, until he could only see the hem of Itachi's cloak, dragging the dirt, and he folded his hands into his cloak. His fingertips touched a paper bag, small and wrinkled, and he palmed the bag, candies heavy in his hand.
Kisame never called it pity.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-05-13 08:22 am (UTC)And Kisame's concern that he never voices but expresses in other ways is beautiful.
Thank you so much. That's what's most important to me, Kisame's concern and his actions towards Itachi, so... Thank you. :) And you're friended back.
no subject
Date: 2006-05-13 07:42 pm (UTC)How Itachi relates to Kakashi, Sasuke, etc., is sort of one-dimensional, and in fact the only person in the series that he has complicated interactions with (barring flashback Sasuke) is Kisame. I don't really see how people can be more interested in Uchihacest then Kisame/Itachi, because the dynamics aren't as interesting. Like how they're always standing next to each other and thus far never fight without each other (I don't think using puppet people to fight Team Seven and Team Gai counts, since in reality they were sitting within five feet of each other the entire time). I just find it impossible to contemplate one of them killing the other. Who doesn't love villains that are cruel to their enemies but trust their allies?
Itachi would never tolerate Kisame saying something like, "I'm worried about you," because that would be acknowledging a weakness. But, like in your fic, it is possible to imagine him relying on Kisame as long as it is publicly acknowledged that it was only a convenience and not a necessity, even if it wasn't true. Even if both of them knew this, Kisame saves Itachi's pride by pretending this isn't the case, which you conveyed perfectly in your fic.
And thanks! I've only written Kisame/Itachi a total of once, so you won't see that popping up on my journal, but I tend to keep spam and real-life stuff to a minimum, so your friend's list won't be full of crap.