milk&honey

[fic] Almost Was Good Enough, WiP

ronsard — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 23:16:47 GMT

Keep forgetting to update this journal.

Title: Almost Was Good Enough (3/?)
Pairing: Shisui/Itachi
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: AU, incest, verbosity, etc.
Summary: And last of all you, you'd always been my good luck charm / I should've known that luck's a waste of time.

( The thing was Shisui had left for a very good reason. )

[fic] Almost Was Good Enough, WiP

ronsard — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 13:40:05 GMT

I'm rather astounded by my unbidden commitment to this fic.

Title: Almost Was Good Enough (2/?)
Pairing: Shisui/Itachi
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: AU, incest, verbosity, etc.
Summary: And last of all you, you'd always been my good luck charm / I should've known that luck's a waste of time.

( He had been betrayed and acted out of anger, but now the door to Itachi’s room was no longer the door to his, and it didn’t seem worth it at all. )

[fic] Almost Was Good Enough, WiP

ronsard — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 05:14:15 GMT

Being under house arrest at the behest of Irene actually had some positive side effects. I hope to finish this one soon as it's yet another one-shot that grew seriously out of hand.

Title: Almost Was Good Enough (1/?)
Pairing: Shisui/Itachi
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: AU, incest, verbosity, etc.
Summary: And last of all you, you'd always been my good luck charm / I should've known that luck's a waste of time.

( Seven years ago he had snuck out of Mikoto’s house in the middle of the night and boarded a train out of town without a single word of thanks or goodbye. )

boy is this fandom old

ronsard — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 21:41:04 GMT

I made an AMV after the people over at YT bitched at me about it for TWO YEARS. I think it's kind of pretty even though no one likes this pairing and would rather bitch at me some more for failing to see the merits of C.C./Suzaku/whoever-the-fuck. Suck it, I'm biased toward girls with short hair.

Oh yeah, and WHY DID NO ONE ALERT ME TO THE EXISTENCE OF THIS? Oh-oh my God, so cute.

fic | axel/roxas | a cautionary tale

ronsard — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 05:10:09 GMT

Title: A Cautionary Tale
Fandom: Kingdom Hearts
Pairing: Axel/Roxas, chiefly
Rating: R
Summary: Veins full of light, he's one to stray. Pre-KH2.
Warning: I started writing this way before Days came out, so Xion doesn't exist. Hell, I started this in early 2008 so Xion probably didn't even exist in Nomura's mind at the time. I doubt anyone will have a problem with this.

a cautionary tale

veins full of light, he’s one to stray

ONE

Not that Roxas will care enough to remember this later, but it is actually around the time the dreams started that Axel’s face began to grow a new geometry. His is an interesting face, interesting but terrible, so it’s fascinating to Roxas the way it began taking on a brand new shape, the angle of cheekbones growing more acute, the cruel relief of the nose more prominent, the surfacing rays vectoring out of nowhere, evincing more than ever before a directed hostility. In the end, the tide of his flesh simply ebbs out, leaving two hollow caves where the eyes shine out viciously, interior coals. Perhaps this is the bones’ way of accommodating for the secrets that have come to play tenants inside their assemblage.

They’re going through a difficult period if you could call it that, but to do so would be implying that things are ever actually easy with Axel. They aren’t. At least not as far as Roxas can recall. His memory hasn’t been working too well lately.

Be that as it may, something is different this time. This feeling of cold water filling in between is more than the usual bullshit, his guts tell him, and the frustrating part is that he cannot tell anyone of the unsettled feeling that’s lodged itself inside his mind; he dislikes the pressure it’s created. Axel would have just laughed and called him a basket case. Assuming he isn’t elsewhere at the time.

Axel is pretty sweet with the ‘elsewhere’ these days. Without him the spacious, brightly lit hallways of the castle ring out with a new silence, as if to say: this is the resonance of lonely places.

TWO

Not that Roxas will be able to remember this later, but he first meets the prophet in a dream. In it, his footsteps echo unbearably on the marble floor of a gilded hall. There is movement, confusion glazed over his eyes, and when he sees the figure in black he almost mistakes it for a mirror image of himself, but other than the matching outfit this person is taller than him, wider about the shoulders. Roxas has gotten into the habit of sizing up other men in case they might find themselves on opposite sides of a battlefield. I can take this one, he decides. That long pale hair looks good for pulling, plus the blindfold.

Roxas has no idea what sort of a person the prophet is, or why he calls himself one at all. This is alright, he thinks, because he met the prophet in a dream and dream-people rarely offer reasoning for any of the things that they do. Roxas won’t remember but the first time he met the prophet in a dream, he ended up stalking around the Dark City for almost twenty-two hours afterward, until Axel came back from Oblivion and hauled him back to the Castle and slammed the door with his body so they could fuck against it not even bothering to peel each other out of their wet grimy clothes.

But that first time…

“The crown prince of the golden kingdom is sickening to death, and no one has any idea what is ailing him,” the prophet begins, non sequitur. “The servants and sick-nurses sit up with him every night, but every night each of them would nod off into slumber when the clock strikes twelve, only to awaken at cockcrow to find his condition worse than the night before.”

“What the hell?” Roxas says. The prophet ignores him. He has a feeling that, behind the black cloth, the prophet’s eyes are burning a hole through him.

“The king, wretched, has offered a peck of silver to anyone who would spend a night watching over the prince in his chamber without falling asleep. The punishment for failure, however, is decapitation. For this reason, no one in the kingdom dares to accept the task—until a young lad who was merely passing through steps forward and takes the offer.”

The sound of a slamming door rings out behind them and Roxas snaps his head around just in time to catch a smallish figure disappearing into the thick shadow at the far end of the hallway, the golden glint of an oversized crown flashing for a second before fading into darkness.

“That’s him? The prince?”

The prophet nods. “Chase him.” Roxas stares. Crazy, he thinks, totally crazy. Or maybe I’m crazy for dreaming up this shit.

“You’ve taken the reward,” the prophet goes on. “Now you have to fulfill your duty.”

He opens his palm and there, glinting against the black of his glove, is the peck of silver. The slight weight of it feels sinister in his hand. There’s nothing for it. He closes his fingers into a fist, gives chase.

THREE

He wouldn’t call himself a sleepwalker per se, not in the strictest sense of the word. His dreams end in wakefulness that ultimately occurs in bed, he doesn’t go anywhere in the spatial sense. But his sleeping journeys seem real enough that it feels exactly like sleepwalking. Once – and only once – he finds himself staring through the crack of a door into an abandoned hotel room. The first thing he sees is Axel’s long, naked back. He’s kneeling on the floor beside a bed, head buried at Roxas’s navel. Roxas himself is sitting on the edge of the bed right in the middle of a bar of sunlight shooting down from the skylight. His face tilted up in pleasure and thrill, heavy gasps of breath audible in the silent air. His propriety fingers tightly knotted in Axel’s hair. His eyes glazed and dopey from sweat and sun.

The slice of light is narrow but has a certain buoyant quality that fills up the entire room with a dusty glow, and all of a sudden Roxas entertains the absurd thought that perhaps this light has the ability to permeate skin and flesh, sinking under and shining out from beneath surface membranes, glowing red with the color of living blood. In this moment, he and Axel seem like diaphanous creatures, two members of a light-consuming, translucent-skinned breed glutted on radiance, veins pumped full of light, to the point they’re so bloated on the stuff you could scoop halos from their cracked-open ribs.

He remembers this day, clearly. This mission, and what they did after. He remembers that Axel was mean and selfish through it all. At least he’s quiet when his mouth is wrapped around Roxas’s cock.

Roxas grits his teeth. He wishes he could look away but he can’t. The back of his neck beads with sweat, fine strands of hair clinging uncomfortably to his clammy skin, but he can’t look away. This is the impact of remembrance. This memory was almost forgotten – suppressed – but dreams do not discriminate between such categories. So here it is again and this is when he realizes that he is scared.

Roxas wants Axel. It’s simple as. Roxas wants Axel, Roxas wants Axel, Roxas wants Axel, and if he could just understand why he wants Axel, he suspects he’ll immediately stop, which would probably be a good thing. Good, and marvelously simple. Except nothing is ever that simple for them. His want is terrifying, vicious and ravenous, he has to close his fist tightly around it and keep it hidden in the palm of his hand, out of sight out of mind, but even there it burns like a hot lump of coal. If it were to become common knowledge he expects there would be mass panic. Everyone would be afraid of how much he wants Axel.

They should be.

FOUR

One thing they don’t talk about is that day in the schoolyard under a swarming sky, this glorious afternoon dizzily motion-drunk. His ears are filled with blood and his mouth oily; the Keyblades flashing; the flock of Heartless a dark infinite cyclone all around, exuding menace. Hundreds of them, thousands of them, massed and screeching in hair-raising decibels. Hairbreadth danger. He tells himself it’s just a job but it’s a lie. This is a hunt, hunting for sport. He won’t ever be able to give this up, the taste of thrill and the adrenaline in his veins. A funny hormone, triggering the basest of human responses but for those without hearts it’s not a bad substitute. It’s easier to lose yourself in this chemical head rush than to chase after the unreliable echoes of dead emotions.

Later, the pointlessness of it all will devastate his mind. He’ll realize that it’s always him out here on the frontiers, granted the dubious privilege to be the first to offer his blood, and for what? But at this moment in time he hasn’t realized that yet, and he won’t remember it anyway.

“Hey Roxas! Check this out!”

Axel’s in the air, perfectly balanced on an invisible wave as he spins gracefully, gaining momentum. It’s beautiful, even Roxas has to admit, coaxing an impatient twitch out of his muscles and stilling him for so long a Heartless almost claws his eyes out. The chakram snaps out of Axel’s hand, swings in a deadly fractal arc shredding darkness as it goes. The swarm clears, and there is blue sky.

Roxas smirks. “That was pretty brilliant – ”

Wordlessly, they both stare at the serrated blade, lodged deep in the skull of a schoolboy. A real one, in blue suspender shorts. What is he doing there? This area should have been cleared the moment the Heartless swooped in. Axel steps forward slowly, pulls his chakram out. It slides free smoothly, liquid red gleaming against hard steel for a second before the weapon dissolves in a blur of light. Roxas thinks, nebulously, that Axel could have de-summoned the chakram without touching it at all.

The journey back is entirely silent. A faint nameless something jitters and hopscotches inside him. Axel makes straight for his room without a word – without looking at Roxas. He grabs a glass off a shelf and a decanter holding a dark gold liquid, tips it with such force it knocks against the rim of the glass and chips off a fragment that falls glittering to the floor. A light without heat. Cold light, Roxas thinks. Just like me.

“Stop looking at me like that,” Axel snarls suddenly, gripping the glass with astonishing force. “How was that any worse than what we always do? What do you think happens to the people of those worlds we herd the Heartless into? Commit to being a monster, or get out of the game.”

Monster.

“I didn’t say anything!”

“Doesn’t matter. I could tell you were thinking it.”

“Oh, so you read minds now? You should have said something, I had no idea.”

“Fuck off, you sanctimonious bastard!” Axel snaps, looking like he dearly wants to throw the glass at Roxas’s head. His words come out like bullets, viciously defensive, as if it’s Roxas who has done him an unkindness. Vowels and consonants strike him right between the eyes, and it is imperative that he leaves the room, right now, so he does, reels into the hallway and sags heavily against the far wall.

It’s difficult to properly apportion blame. Is there any at all? It was just a job after all. Things happen. Who is he to pass judgment? He’s nobody at all.

He feels terribly alone.

FIVE

He’s sitting in a wooden coal cart running on a rail at an unbearably slow pace. Far ahead, he can see another cart ricket-ricket-rickteting along carrying a crowned silhouette. He’ll never catch up this way. The prophet sits beside Roxas, hands folded demurely in his lap. He hasn’t shut up for hours.

“One of the things I use to document the progress of my atrophy is the fact that I no longer long for the sea. I’ve almost forgotten what it smells like. It’s strange to think that the illusion of endlessness always used to call up in me a sense of unrest. Cold, wet sand gritty between my naked toes, the snapping, salty wind, these things seem to me like memories out of a past life, pastel-colored, unbearably remote.”

“What does any of that even mean?” Roxas says irritably. “What the hell are you trying to say to me?”

“I’ll tell you another story,” the prophet says maddeningly, and launches into it before Roxas can voice a protest. “A long time ago, Princess Cottongrass lived in the Dream Castle, with her father the King and her mother the Queen. Princess Cottongrass was a beautiful blond and slender girl, and she had spent her entire life in the castle. One day when she was playing in the fields a large elk wandered by. ‘Who are you with such a splendid crown?’ asked the princess. ‘I am Long-Leap the Elk.’ ‘Please carry me into the world and let me see the life outside the castle.’ Long-Leap hesitates, warning the princess that the world is dark and dangerous, but the Princess is certain he can protect her, and climbs onto his back and holds onto his antlers. Long-Leap carries her into the forest towards his home.”

On and on he rambles, his monotone drilling a hole into Roxas’s skull. “Soon, the Princess and the Elk come to a dark tarn in the deepest part of the forest. ‘Hold on, there are dangers lurking in the waters.’ But Princess Cottongrass is already on the shore looking into the water. As she leans close, her gold heart slips off and disappears into the tarn. The Princess is inconsolable and looks and looks into the water to see if she can find her heart. The Elk asks her to come, but the enchantment already has her in its grip, and she doesn’t notice anything around her. Many years have passed, but still Princess Cottongrass gazes longingly into the tarn, looking for her heart. The girl is gone – by now she is just a flower, bearing the Cottongrass name. A small white flower at the edge of the pool.”

“What does it mean?” Roxas asks, but as usual he is ignored.

“Now and then the Elk comes to visit. Pauses for a moment and looks at the little one. He is the only one who knows who she is. Cottongrass – the princess. But she no longer wants to follow him back into the world – not for as long as the enchantment binds her. The enchantment lies far beneath the surface. On the bottom of the pool lies a lost heart – a heart of gold.”

“I haven’t even figured out what’s wrong with the prince yet,” Roxas says, with as much sarcasm as he can dredge up. “Now you’re going to tell me to find this Princess Cottongrass too?”

“No,” the prophet says. “That was only an analogy.” He might be fucking with him but Roxas can’t tell at all. The hardest part of living without a heart is the dissonance. Sometimes Roxas would walk through the seething streets of a town or city on a patrol beat and overhear laughter, raucous and bawdy, in response to some joke or other, except it takes some time for him to recognize it as a joke and even then the humor completely eludes him. For this reason, he stays with the Organization. If you think about it they’re not asking for much; just the ability to fucking laugh at something funny.

The cart lurches, and Roxas suddenly feels very ill between his eyes. He fights the urge to lean over the side and retch, fearing that he might topple right out. The prophet is actually smiling. He’s never realized how unnerving, how fucking creepy it is to see someone smile at you when you can’t see their eyes.

SIX

Axel wakes him up with a heavy hand on his neck and an unreadable expression. He’s saying Roxas, Roxas over and over like a prayer and when he opens his eyes the room wavers and all he can see in the dark is the faint gleam of red hair on the pillow next to him. Axel’s eyes are narrowed to slits, glowing absinthe between pale lids and very focused. He has a feeling he has forgotten something.

Far, far under the water lies a lost heart.

SEVEN

Roxas has a tendency to walk out in the middle of their arguments and Axel has a tendency to follow. To ensure it doesn’t happen this time, he opens up a portal and slips down a darkness corridor, tracing steps assured by long habit. He can see perfectly well but it’s simpler to let sense memory do the navigation. The corridor ends and a slice of sea wind cuts right across his face, brisk and stinging, sighing in a long, harsh moan that presses up heavily against his ears and rattles his bones.

It smells… dead.

But that isn’t true. In truth, it is merely dying. This nameless world is finished, slowly collapsing if you will, but it hasn’t seemed to realize that yet. The ley lines are still snapping, charged with negative energy, anti-matter. The horizon is receding inward, suddenly becoming a chartable thing, though it’s safe to say any map of this place wouldn’t stay the same for long. An unstable reality. He pulls up his hood and strides to the edge of a rocky shelf overlooking the grey water. Sometimes a person just needs a scrap of sea and some good old-fashioned solitude to get his head back on straight.

The next thing Roxas knows he’s being dragged out of the surf, gasping and choking up stale brackish water. His eyes sting so badly he wants to cry and the funny thing is if he does it would be the first time. Ever. Someone’s saying his name frantically. They’re too loud and his water-logged ears ache, he opens his mouth to tell his rescuer thanks and please shut up but only garbled noise comes out. Drowning is traumatic. Trauma can induce memory loss. Speech may be affected. This could be mild aphasia.

They sag down together on the brown, gritty sand and Roxas scrubs at his eyes until Axel floats into focus. His face is wet and pallid, ashen under an ash-colored sky. The black stains underneath his eyes seem more pronounced that way, running down his face in streaks. Crocodile’s tears.

“Hey, Roxas,” Axel says, voice shaky. “Buddy. You’re not allowed to do that to me ever again, okay?”

“I,” he croaks. “Fuck. I wasn’t trying to kill myself.”

“Yeah? Care to explain? Because that’s kind of what it looked like from where I was standing.”

“I was—” Sleepwalking. “I blacked out for a moment. I must be tired.”

“Shit,” mutters Axel, rolling over onto his back. He throws his arm over his eyes and laughs. It’s not the pleasantest of sounds. “Don’t tell me I’m gonna to have to start fighting your dreams too.”

EIGHT

He must have opened the wrong door. It is the only possible explanation. There are only two categories to his dreams—pseudo-memories and the chase for the runaway prince, he has never been inside this huge white room before, and the prophet is nowhere in sight. He hears suddenly the rustling sound of paper. It reminds him of fire. When he turns around there is suddenly a long white table in the middle of the floor, a girl climbing out of a big white chair. She is, fittingly, wearing a short white slip. A white sketch book tumbles out of her hand, falling with a quiet whisper of white pages.

“You shouldn’t be here,” the girl says, voice fluttering like a birdsong.

Roxas stares, fascinated by the soft light of her pale blonde hair gleaming against the glare-soaked, chalk-dusted air around them. “Are you her?”

“Am I who?”

“Princess Cottongrass. Are you her? Are you looking for your heart?”

The girl puts her hand over her mouth. Says, “You can’t stay here,” even though her big sad eyes look as though they’re inviting him to do the exact opposite. She could be a princess, with her flaxen hair and linen limbs and cherry mouth and gripping need for protection. She could be his princess. He takes a step toward her and reaches for her trembling hand to pull it away from her pink lips. Someone grabs his shoulder.

The prophet has arrived. There is bleak tension in his touch. He notices suddenly the way their dark garments seem to drain brightness from the room, like a black hole so dense light can’t escape. “You shouldn’t be here,” he says, much more forcefully than the girl, “We must go now,” and pulls Roxas through a door, the girl’s despondent face vanishing as it swings close. Roxas imagines that image will stay in his mind forever, the weak glossy blue of her wide, lonesome eyes. He hopes he’ll see her again.

NINE

Once they’re out of the white room Roxas shoves the prophet up against a previously nonexistent wall and crushes their mouths together, digging his teeth into his bottom lip, tasting blood and bitter spit.

“Don’t,” says the prophet when he breaks away for breath.

“Then stop me.” He reaches up and drags his fingers across the blindfold, irrationally peeved. “Why do you wear this?”

This time, the prophet does stop him: he grabs Roxas by the wrist and drags his hand away roughly.

“My eyes cannot lie.”

“Oh, that’s real funny because I don’t think you suffer from the same limitation.”

The prophet drops his head, pushes lightly at Roxas’s shoulders until he lets up. Roxas rubs his wrist, chasing a phantom pain. “I won’t come to you again. Not like this,” says the prophet, almost sad. “But we will meet again.”

“When?”

“When the time comes, you’ll know.”

“Do you ever say anything that makes sense?” Roxas spits.

The prophet looks at him for a moment, and raises his hand to Roxas’s face in an improbably tender caress. “I will tell you whatever you need to hear,” he says, leaning in to breathe softly against Roxas’s neck. “But if you want that, you’ll have to go back to the start.”

He wakes up aroused and struggling to breathe.

TEN

The dreams come to an abrupt end one night, inexplicably, in a lush meadow bursting with spring flowers and life. Roxas finds himself treading through a field, the ground beneath his feet carpeted with red and white and pink and blue. His steps leave a bruised, fragrant trail. He’s sick and dizzy and lightheaded from the thick scent, butterfly dust and incessant cries of birds, slogging toward an ending he cannot see. It’s hot, he’s suffocating, he wants to take off his coat, wants this to be over with already.

Finally, he finds the small figure curled up in a patch of lilac, the big gold crown glittering in the sunlight, studded with emeralds and rubies and so heavy it should crack that slender neck. The hair is brown and mousy. The eyes are blue and bright, the light of a brilliant golden soul shining out from behind them.

“Will you please open the door?” the prince sobs, looking up at him imploringly. “I’ve tried and tried, but no matter what I do it wouldn’t budge. It’s dark in here and I’m so terribly cold.”

Roxas looks around, blinking like a headlight-struck owl. He can’t see very well, the glare of sunlight is too bright, too hot, searing his eyes, but there is indeed a door some ten yards away, solid gold with a gilded handle, as ornate and extravagant as anything else he’s seen on this journey. Maybe it will lead back to the king’s castle. Perplexed, he moves toward it, blindly grasps the knob and turns but it resists his efforts and will not budge. Why does this feel so familiar?

“Hurry, hurry,” the prince cries behind him. It rouses in him a sense of irrational panic, he pushes at the door, then pounds on it. Throws himself against it, sick and sobbing, hammering at it with his fists, ramming it with his shoulder – as if he is the one desperately wanting to get out, to escape – and finally it jars open but it opens outward. A blast of freezing air slaps against his face and he finds himself standing before an abyss, cold and dark, a void, a living nightmare. He recoils from it. He wants to run.

“Thank you,” the prince says, coming to stand beside Roxas. “Now I can go home.” Just like that he throws himself into that gaping maw. Roxas screams and dives forward to catch him. There is a moment when their not-quite-solid hands brush and the incorporeality of their flesh sends a startling jolt up Roxas’s spine, but immediately it is gone and the darkness swallows up the crown prince of the golden kingdom in one gleeful gulp.

ELEVEN

The city moans under a thunderstorm. The fingers clamped around his throat are brutal and tight but Roxas can’t feel a thing through the bitter cold of the rain streaming down his face and neck. Axel has him pressed up against a wall down some rank alleyway, shaking him, hurting him, earnestly and violently and hypocritically furious.

“What is the matter with you? What is wrong?”

Roxas doesn’t answer. Instead, he stares sullenly at the ground. He won’t look up; he already knows he won’t like what he’ll see, and sure it’s already raining but fuck if he doesn’t miss the cockiness. The highhanded jackassery. The irritating smirks that always make him want to bare his teeth right back. Not a trace of those exists in Axel’s voice now, crackling in and out like a miserable radio broadcast. “Talk to me, you asshole. Look at me when I’m talking to you.”

Face-to-face, that’s the only way they’ve ever fucked. But if Roxas looks up now – if he looks at Axel, what he’ll see will be his cheeks wrapping tightly around the bones of his face, and immediately his throat will close up with what might well be the afterimage of heartbreak. The truth you withhold is the grain of salt you balance in your throat, never once swallowing. It keeps the flesh tender, agitates the wound and prevents it from healing properly, but you learn to live with the pain because to do otherwise would mean accepting that you’re living a lie.

They suffer each other, to have each other awhile.

TWELVE

A week later, Roxas leaves.

He goes back to Dark City, where the sky is blubbering still. For three days, he wanders around the gnarled roots of the desolate skyscraper forest, slaying Heartless with zero enthusiasm and getting dirty rainwater in his boots, just as tired and lost as ever but hungering for something more.

On the fourth day, he finds it.

Or rather, it finds him.

THIRTEEN

Roxas wakes in shackles and pain and delirium and for a moment before the dark figures of his captors throw shadows over him he remembers oh god he remembers. I will tell you whatever you need to hear. Things are pure but they’re flawed too; if you want something perfect you have to mix them together. Children who are snatched from their beds in the dead of night offered up as sacrifices for unnamed idols, empty gods have but a single truth to learn. Frightened and disoriented, with the words of false prophets rising in their minds, the old, boring life they so desperately ran from suddenly doesn’t seem so bad. But the worst is yet to come, for the worst is the knowledge – of how terribly lonely a person can be, how profoundly and helplessly alone. Behind the grand golden door, a peck of silver in their pocket, each of them will learn that they have been inside what they have wanted all along.

But by this time, he has already forgotten.

"In the desert
I saw a creature, naked, bestial,
Who, squatting upon the ground,
Held his heart in his hands,
And ate of it.
I said, 'Is it good, friend?'
It is bitter — bitter,' he answered,
But I like it
Because it is bitter,
And because it is my heart."

— Stephen Crane

________________________

This is a more extreme version of how I always imagined Organization!Roxas - cold, aggressive, contrary, and slightly unhinged. Every character that appeared in this story is a canon character btw, even the prince; you can probably guess who they are. See how I allow Axel and Roxas to bone but not Itachi and Shisui, why is that?

There will be more KH fic posted shortly, I'm determined to get rid of as many old-ass WiPs as possible to make room for all the incoming Mark/Eduardo, etc.

icons | tender lumplings everywhere

ronsard — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 18:57:36 GMT

I may have caught my cat's plague...

Art © Stephen Gammell | Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark

life's no fun without a good scare

1	2	3	4	5

6	7	8	9	10

11	12	13	14	15

16	17	18	19	20

Wrote a fic too:

Title: Asleep in the Human World
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Naruto
Genre: Soap opera. No, like, really.
Summary: Fools in love gently tearing each other limb from limb.

( First Ita/Shi K-drama in existence...? )

fic | kato on the shore | the green hornet

ronsard — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 20:45:10 GMT

Okay, so I thought this movie was brilliant garbage (what was Gondry thinking?) and the only reason I went to see it was because -- well, Jay Chou, but I think I still deserve a medal for writing slash featuring a character played by Seth Rogen.

Title: Kato on the Shore
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: The Green Hornet (2011)
Pairing: Kato/Britt
Disclaimer: These characters are not and will never be my property. Also this has nothing to do with the Murakami novel, I just thought the title was catchy.
Summary: Despite his many misgivings, Kato went back to therapy.

kato on the shore

Dr. Helena Marko wore cat eye glasses and had a consultation room the size of a mini squash court. Some undoubtedly overpriced interior decorator had transformed it into an Oriental oasis, earthy shades with a shit ton of orchid and an actual indoor waterfall. The floors were rich dark wood, and ornate bookshelves lined the pale green walls, radiating a sense of peace and comfort which unfortunately did not extend to the ergonomically designed chair Kato was sitting on.

“What would you say is the central problem in your relationship with Mr. Reid?” she asked, pen poised above a yellow writing pad that clashed with everything in the room.

Kato shifted in his seat to instill some feelings back into his ass cheeks. “What exactly do you mean by ‘relationship’?”

Dr. Marko clicked her tongue. “Now, Kato, we agreed not to enter that defensive space.”

“It’s like having a brother,” Kato said, defaulting to familiar griping territory. “A stupid and immature brother who breaks all your toys then demands you make more.”

“You seem quite bothered by this.”

Kato ran through a variety of responses in his head and settled for, “The nuns at the orphanage always said I didn’t know how to share.”

“And how did that make you feel?”

He blinked, once, twice, thrice, but the earnest expression on her face failed to change.

“Are you serious?”

“This isn’t going to work if you don’t meet me halfway,” Dr. Marko said in a mildly disapproving tone. It reminded him uncomfortably of Sister Mary Therese back at the orphanage, who had never let him get away with anything ever.

“Okay, then,” Kato said. “You try being half-Japanese mutt in the slums of 1980s Shanghai, see how feelings work out for you.”

“Ah,” said the doctor, jotting something down on her legal pad.

*

It was Lenore who had given him the number for Dr. Helena “How does the inner you feel today?” Marko when Kato had trailed into the office Monday morning mumbling about what an incredibly wronged existence he led. He had spent the previous night neck-deep in wires and circuits trying to install a fully functional communication system inside the Black Beauty so they wouldn’t have to go through that bullshit with the sushi-USB in the future. He was not keen on a repeat performance of the kind any time in the next century.

Kato was verbally and explicitly condemning Bill Gates and his mountains of cash to an eternal inferno when Britt shambled into the garage, blinked stupidly, and said, “Why don’t you just get a Mac, man?” at which point Kato nearly brained him with a wrench.

In another minute he began wishing that he had because of course—of course—this was the part where Britt launched into a series of increasingly improbable suggestions regarding their arsenal of gadgets. Try though he might, Kato knew he would never be able to communicate to Britt the difference between wishing something were true and doing the work to realize that wish. Though it would make his life infinitely easier, he regrettably could not punch through a cabinet door every time he wanted Britt to shut his incessant blithering for the five seconds it would take Kato to reach his Zen place and figure out a way to bail their asses out of certain death.

Lenore, apparently sufficiently Xanax’d that day, took one second away from her ruthless scale up the ladder of the news world to be a decent human being and listen to his rant before handing him a card. It was jasmine-scented and subtly ridged and printed in some font called Calluna Sans Light. In retrospect, Kato felt he should have seen some of this crap coming.

*

One very late night Kato emptied his seventh Red Bull of the day and suddenly realized that he had practically been living in Britt’s basement for weeks. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been home or which potted plant he had buried his spare key in. If the soccer moms next door saw him rolling up on his bike they might call 911 thinking an Asian gang war was about to break out on their front lawns. He worried about the interior state of his refrigerator, and had an uncomfortable feeling he might have once owned a cat.

“Yo, dude! What’s the haps?”

Kato engaged in a brief breathing exercise and took cold comfort in the knowledge that everything in this room down to the Styrofoam cup on his desk could be used as a lethal weapon. “Just working on some stuff,” he muttered. He was certain the possibility of killing a man with his mind couldn’t be ruled out of the human condition just because he had never given it sufficient mental application.

Britt waddled over, making that dim-witted expression Kato had promised himself a million years ago not to find endearing. “You ever take a break, man? Just hang loose once in awhile? Throw down the wrench?” He brayed with laughter. “Get it, because you use wrenches?”

“No,” Kato said. Kato took jokes very well but always let Britt think he missed the point completely because it was one of the things keeping Britt’s world from collapsing all around him.

“First time for everything,” Britt said, and sounded worryingly excited. “You got to learn to live a little. How about joining me for Movie Night? I have something awesome lined up.” He paused and wagged his eyebrows rhythmically to heighten the anticipation. “My dad never used to let me watch this movie, like it personally offended him or something.”

Kato began to decline but thought better of it. Britt naturally had his rec room tricked out with the best entertainment tech money could buy, and Movie Night was realistically one of the less migraine-inducing activities they could enjoy together on a Friday night. At least that was what he thought until he realized that Britt’s favorite movie was Batman and Robin. While his controversial-at-best opinions of Mr. Reid Sr. could fill several hardback novels, this was a subject on which Kato felt they could see eye to eye.

But Kato was already semi-dead on his feet so he planted himself on the couch anyway, maintaining only nominal consciousness to say, “No,” and, “Absolutely not,” and, “Not on your father’s grave,” every time Britt got misty-eyed over something like Batskates or Batsurfboards and turned to Kato with imploring looks. From what he’d been told this movie also featured something called ‘Batnipples’. Kato just did not even want to know.

He nodded off for real at some indeterminate point and regained awareness to R. Kelly singing about how peaceful Gotham City was. He could feel the softness of a pillow beneath his head, a thick afghan pulled up to his neck, and a flutter of warm air on his right cheek. Britt’s face was uncomfortably close to his; highlighted by the ghostly glow of the television, his normally bovine eyes had turned an eerie hazel which Kato also promised himself not to find fascinating.

“Two words,” Britt whispered suspensefully. “Jetpacks.”

“That’s one word,” Kato mumbled before rolling over and going back to sleep, where his vivid dream of committing seppuku with Lenore’s Jimmy Choos beckoned in surreal majesty.

When he woke up the sun was drilling a hole through both of his rubber eyelids. He peeled them open with the help of his fingers to find a tousled brown head cradled on his right shoulder, and for one surreal moment wondered if he had had a date and forgot about it. Then the faint snoring clued him in, cementing Kato’s suspicion that so much time spent in life-or-death situations had effectively obliterated their concept of boundaries, not that Britt had possessed any to begin with. He rubbed the grit out of his eyes and prayed he could go back to sleep and wake up in China, before carefully disentangling himself and slouching into the kitchen for the first latte of the day.

*

Despite his many misgivings, Kato went back to therapy. Not because he didn’t enjoy what he did but because he had enough self-awareness to know that a man who regularly dressed up as a vigilante chauffeur to infiltrate criminal syndicates clearly had issues.

“This isn’t how my life was supposed to turn out,” he found himself saying one afternoon. Outside the window Los Angeles was upbeat and unrelentingly sunny which only seemed to illustrate his point in high definition. “I grew up on the streets, I got degrees with honors from Caltech. I can do better than to be this idiot’s combat butler slash babysitter.”

Dr. Marko stared at him over the rims of her glasses. “Combat butler?”

“That came out wrong,” Kato said hurriedly. “I meant bodyguard. You know, since he’s billionaire playboy and all. So I’m his bodyguard… occasionally. Like on special occasions.”

“I don’t know, Kato,” Dr. Marko said. “It doesn’t seem like you placed much importance on professional achievements even prior to working for Mr. Reid. I’m given to understand that you used to work as a mechanic for the late Mr. Reid, am I correct?”

“I… like cars?” Kato said lamely.

“And now, your official position is…?”

“Chauffeur,” Kato said, though the very sound crucified him.

“Ah,” Dr. Marko said eloquently, and jotted something else down on her legal pad.

“I also make coffee,” Kato offered, though just saying the sentence crippled his will to live.

“And does your sense of discontentment extend to the quality of your work?”

“Not really,” he said. “I make great coffee. I mean, I make really fucking amazing coffee, you should try sometime.”

For the first time since they’d met, the professionally snobbish expression disappeared from Dr. Marko’s face, supplanted by a smile of astonishing width and generosity. “Well, Kato, I think we’ve finally made a breakthrough.”

“Really?” Kato asked, hoping this might disperse the pervasive sense of awfulness that had settled over his life like a cumulonimbus of nonsensical shit.

“Yes,” Dr. Marko beamed. “Now what we need to work on is a healthy way for you to learn to compromise for the sake of your significant other without sacrificing your personal integrity. The next step I believe would be to have Mr. Reid come in for a joint session.”

Kato leapt out of his chair. “My what?” He clawed at his face in epiphany, muttering, “Oh my God,” and basically bolted out the door.

*

It was all he could do not to go all Kato-vision on the freeway and redefine the meaning of road rage, and by the time he reached the newly reconstructed Daily Sentinel building, Kato had only just enough patience to run up to Lenore and say, “You recommended me to a total hack.” It was seven thirty in the evening so naturally the entire staff was present, every one of whom to turning to stare at Kato in the wake of his outburst.

“Dr. Marko is very good,” Lenore argued. “She helped me get through my failed engagement.”

“She thinks the dork and me are boyfriends!” he hissed in the lowest decibels possible.

Lenore’s eyes narrowed in a very pretty but condescending way. “You’re not?”

“Why would you think that?”

“It’s fine if you don’t want to bother with terminologies,” Lenore said sympathetically. “I mean, the only thing that really counts is that you two are --” She paused, and clapped her elbows together meaningfully. “-- right?”

Kato stared at her, appalled. “What?”

Lenore stared back at him, disbelieving. “You’re really not?”

“How is that a good prospect?” Kato boggled. “I always get caught up in his nonsense.”

Lenore smirked in her awesomely wicked way. “If by nonsense you mean genitals,” she said, and Kato said, “Guh,” and left the room.

He attempted to hide in the kitchenette but it was a lost cause since Lenore just followed him, pencil-thin heels clicking a menacing melody on the marble tiles that reminded Kato of the Jaws theme. “If you two are really not up to any hanky-panky then why did you go see Dr. Marko?” she asked. “It says right there on her card that she’s a relationship counselor, didn’t you see?”

Quietly, Kato felt all his vital essences leave his body.

Lenore’s expression softened into mild concern. Concern looked weird on her, and Kato wondered if all this emotional investment meant that she was finally having some success in her own love life. He suspected that she and Axford were having some kind of illicit office affair thing.

“Don’t be so hard on yourself. Britt seems like—and may actually be—an overgrown child, but deep down inside I’m sure he’s also looking for The One just like everybody else.”

Kato was strongly tempted to argue that Britt’s strategy for finding The One was to make headlines with his substance-fueled irresponsible frat boy antics. Admittedly this method had not worked out stellarly for him thus far. He did not particularly want to accept this as fact because if that were true then as a corollary Kato’s strategy for finding his The One must be binging on Cowboy Bebop and crying into his Faye Valentine pillow every night.

“If all else fails,” Lenore went on, “consider Valium.”

“You know, I think I will stick with Dr. Marko for awhile,” Kato said bleakly. “I’ve suddenly developed strong suicidal feelings.”

*

In what seemed like no time at all it was Friday again, and Kato was (as usual) working on some revolutionary and unimaginably complex project. Britt was (as usual) hovering and generally making a pest of himself, how incredibly appropriate. The LA underworld had been suspiciously quiet of late, which indicated that things were about to explode in their faces in a spectacularly messy and unpleasant fashion. The worst part was that he was almost looking forward to it.

Britt had just abused his eardrums yelling, “This shit is the balls!” for the eleventh time when Kato apparently went crazy and slammed his fist on the worktable, denting the surface. “Stop!” he shouted, making Britt jump away from him in fright. “Just stop! I can’t take it anymore. Stop this, stop everything, stop being… you. Stop.”

“What’s the deal with you?” Britt asked anxiously.

“This is way too stressful,” Kato said miserably. “I don’t want to be your boyfriend anymore.”

Britt made a noise that sounded like he was choking. “Since when were we boyfriends?!”

“Exactly! So tell me why I am, for the nth time in a row, spending my Friday night cleaning up after your stupid thick-headed ass?”

“Because we’re partners?” Britt said, confused. “Isn’t it like a shoong dee thing?”

“No, no, no.” Kato buried his face in his hand, more hopeless than ever. “This is definite not xiong di thing.” He could literally feel himself losing his assiduous grasp on the English language, which was always a sign that the situation was dire.

Britt frowned like he was actually capable of intelligent mental processes. “Are you having another episode like that time you threw a hissy fit and quit on me? Because I got to say, Kato, that shit gets old real fast, and I’m starting to think you’re tripping balls or some shit.”

Kato scoffed. “I should get unlimited number of free passes just for dealing with you and all your talk about getting ‘balls-deep in dudes’.”

“Balls-deep in attacking dudes, man,” Britt said, going a terrible but apt color green that he should really consider incorporating into his costume. “Balls-deep in attacking dudes.”

“Stop saying ‘balls’!” Kato snapped, making a hand gesture that simultaneously conveyed how much he hated this stupidity and Britt for bringing it down upon his soul. “Aren’t you supposed to be billionaire playboy? Why aren’t you out balling skanks and shooting heroin into your eyeballs like all other rich douchebags?”

“I do!” Britt protested. “Well, I used to. I don’t have the time anymore, okay?”

Something in Kato’s head clicked like the solution to a math problem. "Wei shenme?" he asked, of no one in particular.

“You know, because we’re out kicking ass,” Britt insisted obliviously. “Together. Every night. You know.”

“Tian ah.”

Silence fell like an old lady in a Lifeline commercial. Britt blinked at him helplessly, and also looked desperately in need of a hug. Kato was beginning to realize this may be the root of the problem.

“So you’re stressed,” Britt said, enunciating each word carefully. “It’s true, we’ve been working, like, way too hard lately. Maybe we should take a vacation. Do you like Cancun? The Cayman Islands?”

Kato nodded in vague assent. A trip to the beach sounded like exactly what he needed. If he planned it well enough he might be eaten by a tiger shark, and then no one would make him deal with Britt or Dr. Marko or stupid Lenore and her filthy gestures ever again.

“Okay, I’ll hook it all up so you just… chill out, alright?” Britt said cautiously. “And don’t call me stupid, man, I have feelings.”

“Okay,” Kato grunted.

“So… want to watch another movie?”

Now completely beyond caring, Kato followed Britt into the rec room where he shot down his initial suggestion (Teen Wolf) and made him put on Shaolin Soccer. Inevitably he fell asleep before the ending and woke up in the morning with a damp patch of drool on his shoulder. Britt surprisingly was nowhere to be seen, but there was a silver tray on the table next to the sofa containing a cup of some brindled brown liquid. Kato was planning Britt’s slow agonizing death for desecrating such an instrument of art and fine precision when he saw the note, written in Britt’s scrawled hand:

MADE COFFEE.
@ OFFICE BOOKING FLIGHT.
DIDN’T WANT TO WAKE YOU. – B.R.

It was Saturday morning, blousy and somewhat fragmented, off-center, the sunlight softly diffused through the half-curtained window. Kato was certain he would end up in the hospital if he so much as sipped at the toxic substance on the breakfast tray, but what the hell. He cracked his neck lazily, thought about white sand and startlingly blue water, and wondered if Britt would be any less annoying in a tropical climate, if he might be able to marginalize that tendency by pulling on the curls of hair at the nape of his neck. It was effective on his possibly mythical cat.

*

end

no end to our descent (weirdly, fic)

ronsard — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 07:06:21 GMT

For anat_astarte who deliberated misused the top five meme for her nefarious purpose. It's my fault of course that this ended up being too long to fit in a comment, but still.

five times fugaku pretended he didn't hear a thing
naruto; pg-13; 1,245 words

1.

He’d thought himself a man of healthy ego until the day he asked Mikoto’s parents for her hand in marriage and her father turned a worrying color purple before leaving the room in silence. Mikoto’s mother gave Fugaku an apologetic smile and followed her husband into the hallway, where they engaged in a conversation the grisly details of which the thin shoji door did nothing to spare him from. He closed his fingers around his fiancée’s in a pincer’s grip, kept his mouth shut and wondered if his mother’s suggestion about the omiai would have been so bad after all.

2.

The night they brought Sasuke home from the hospital and he wouldn’t – bloody – stop – screaming.

The first four times Fugaku had dutifully got up to appease the hell beast they had somehow managed to spawn; the fifth time he hugged his pillow and closed his eyes really, really tight until Mikoto sighed resignedly and rolled out of bed.

“I think we may have chosen the wrong name for him,” he said, flopping onto his back. “The Wailing Pouty One is becoming ever more appealing.”

Mikoto, bouncing their sniffling son on one hip, gave him a tired but amused smile. “Uchiha Fugaku, veteran of two wars, intimidated by a crying baby.”

“Compared to this, explosions don’t bother me.” He stared at the ceiling hopelessly. “Where’s Itachi?”

Mikoto looked appalled. “Don’t tell me you want to foist your parental duties onto your five-year-old.”

“Only because it works.”

“He’s at a sleepover.”

“He’s --” There was a pause. “-- what?”

“I told you about it days ago,” Mikoto said disapprovingly. “Shisui-kun came over to pick him up this afternoon. Weren’t you the one who let him in?”

Fugaku cast his sleep-starved mind around until it latched on to the dim memory of himself opening the front door to find a messy dark mop somewhere around his navel. It had zipped past him across the threshold before he could properly identify its origin, yelling something about taking a bath in watermelon. He may have selected not to hear that part as well.

Sasuke, calmed, finally seemed to be drowsing against his mother’s breast, one tiny fist pressed to her collarbone. From the half open door, Fugaku could see Mikoto shifting him onto her shoulder as she walked away, dropping a kiss to the soft curve of Sasuke’s head with a tenderness that made his chest ache. Five minutes later, Round Six had begun. Despite the discomfitingly brutal elbow his wife sent into his ribs, Fugaku manfully stayed immobile until he finally drifted off to sleep where his surreal dream of being eviscerated alive by a tribe of apron-clad oni beckoned in comparative benignancy.

3.

One evening in late winter he was wandering through his house looking for a roll of parchment when he saw through an open door Itachi and his best friend sharing a kotatsu, dark heads bowed over an untouched plate of crackers, slow breaths rising like patient ghosts. Something in the way they were curved into each other’s space stilled his step. He thought he might be witnessing their first kiss, even though they weren’t touching at all. Itachi’s eyes were blank as glass. Shisui leaned in close and brushed his fingers across his forehead, and when his mouth parted to form the fledgling shape of something clumsy and misguided and perfect Fugaku turned his head and hurried away, reminding himself that shoji doors were still as thin and rubbish at muffling illicit exchanges as ever.

4.

When his second-in-command advised him against keeping Itachi in the ANBU. Fugaku lifted his eyes from the letter he was writing. A long black thread of ink relieved itself from the tip of his pen, leaving a glistening loop over the last kanji he’d written. He said, do you have a reason to suspect something’s amiss? Well, there have been some irregularities, nothing major but possibly worth noting anyway if you want to be thorough and Captain does want to be thorough, doesn’t he? It’s not a problem, is it? Of course not but perhaps Captain would like to have a look at these surveillance reports, just to be on the safe side, nothing to worry about. Who authorized this? It’s nothing official really, just one of the new officers volunteering his service, you know how enthusiastic these young guns are—anyway Captain will understand when he reads the reports, I’ll just leave them here shall I and Captain can peruse them on his own time. The door closed. Fugaku picked up the stack of paper and managed to read only the signature at the bottom of the first page before dropping the whole thing into the paper shredder. What kind of parents would put the kanji for ‘death’ in their child’s name, he wondered vaguely. Irregularities, indeed. I am not wrong, he told himself. I have a right to fight for this. I am absolutely right.

5.

And even in disaster there are quiet nights, he thought, startled and faintly astonished.

It was just beginning to get dark out, the air warm with the agitated flutter of insect wings. He was in the garden, killing time until dinner and trying not to think about going in to work tomorrow where a nightmarish amount of follow-up investigation awaited. That tended to be the case with suspected homicides. It had been hours since his subordinates had left. In a curious stroke of synchronization, neither Itachi nor Sasuke had left their rooms. On a less novel note, neither had spoken to him.

Late summer stifled everything into impermeable stillness, mired and humid like suffocation; in that silent stew you could theoretically hear every sound inside the house down to the grouchy creaks of its ancient bones. Mikoto was never one to weep loudly but he knew more or less every tear she had shed within these four walls over the last fifteen years. He knew she was weeping now, in the kitchen over the uncooked tempura, soft hiccups of pain escaping through her bone-white fingers. Her mouth against her palm, tremblingly soft. Pleasant meals, quiet laughs, unspoken understanding—these were the peaceful fluencies that they were leaving behind, maybe forever.

He took a walk. The wind swept his hair into his face, but he shook it away and looked up at the overarching trees lining Main Street. Once he passed through that gate at the end of his path he’d be surrounded; even at this hour there were people swimming in the dense heat, awash and sweating in faded fatigue vests and cheerful civilian-wear talking laughing living, and Fugaku the only man in red and black for miles around, cutting stubbornly through their rabble mass, tired of his tired dreams.

and the one time he couldn't deny it

There were screams in the streets growing louder and closer and when they reached the door the last house on the street it would be the end but for all that all he could hear was his wife’s breath her mouth on his forehead and the song of her voice in his ears singing him safely to an ending even if it was the wrong ending. The sound of it worked the tension from the back of his neck erased the murky hollow crease from his skin. Somewhere in between these frantic screams and the last bloody cut-throat gasp he would come to understand at last what those voices from beneath had been whispering had been telling him all along.

_________________

Yeah I obviously copped out with the "one time" and also forgot how to use the comma; anat_astarte also wanted inquisitive!Sasuke which I also didn't manage to include. Maybe someone else less fail can do something less emo with this prompt, it has so much potential.

These things are harder than they look, man .__.

inception | fic of the crap variety

ronsard — Fri, 26 Nov 2010 02:43:57 GMT

I only know how to communicate through fic, so this will just have to be my expression of thankfulness ♥

Title: Talk Turkey To Me
Rating: NC-17
Fandom: Inception
Pairing: Eames/Arthur
Disclaimer: I own nothing, save for Eames’s arsenal of ill-advised endearments. There were only so many times I could type ‘love’ and ‘darling’ before wanting to shoot myself.
Summary: "That mouth is going to get you in a world of trouble, Mr. Eames."

Written for onthecount, who tried to sell me the domestic potentials of Arthur/Eames. I don't think I managed to tap into them, but I also never promised good fic.

talk turkey to me

This one time, they were running a simulation or some similar bollocks and Eames somehow ended up with his hand down Arthur’s trousers.

As far as dream weirdness went, this was fairly pedestrian, idling somewhere between showing up for work naked and lying on the beach while blonde Swedish fraternal twins rubbed baby oil all over your abs, and yet also managed to amalgamate the essence of both scenarios into one unsettling portrait of sexual harassment.

–or would, if Arthur wasn’t flicking him those dark, come-hither looks from beneath his lashes, and while Eames was starting to develop some worrying suspicions about his colleagues’ subconscious frameworks, he liked his hand where it was.

Then, the real Arthur walked in.

“Care to explain?” he asked, lifting an eyebrow.

Eames was contemplating whether complimenting Arthur on the state of his endowment or inviting him to join the party would elicit the optimally amusing response, when some kind of bull-headed monstrosity crashed through the wall behind him, roaring bloody murder. The dream collapsed all around them, and they woke up to Cobb and his frowniest expression ever.

“We need to reassess,” he said, voice tense.

“My fault,” Ariadne gasped, waving her hand. “My roommate was teaching me to knit last night.” She shivered. “God, all those balls of yarn.”

“That would explain why I was feeling oddly mythical,” Yusuf said, rubbing his chest. “Gored to death before breakfast—do we have any more wine?”

Eames turned to Arthur. “There’s your answer. Pederasty was a well-known ancient Greek tradition.”

In response, Arthur said, “And corrupting the youths got you death by hemlock,” giving him a now-familiar expression that made Eames begin to appreciate classical philosophy in a way that had nothing to do with Socratic dialectic.

*

Regardless, nothing would have happened if not for Ariadne’s midterms meltdown. Probably.

“Come on, darling,” Eames said. He opened his arms expansively. “I’m only in Paris for three days. It’ll be like a team-bonding activity. Helps raise unity and morale.”

“It’s twenty pages long and worth half of my grade,” Ariadne protested, eyes huge. They should have started tracking her caffeine intake hours ago. “Plus Dom told me Professor Miles doesn’t curve his exams, and I really need to do well on this one because he said something about my research methods being dissatisfactory earlier in the term.”

Privately, Eames felt deeply for her, concluding that whoever invented the concept of the Graduate Seminar needed to be dragged out into the street and shot. This didn’t stop him from saying, “Cobb is just trying to spook you into falling in line. He can’t be around to coerce his snotrags into following in his squarish footsteps, so he’s taking it out on you.”

“Dom doesn’t use me as a substitute for his children,” Ariadne babbled, faltering into distress. Eames knew that fanning her insecurities was a good way to get what he wanted, so he tamped down his admittedly feeble sense of ethical responsibility and swept her into a shoulder hold.

“Where’s your sense of fun?” he said seriously, and added, “Listen, I’ll get Yusuf to choose the venue—he knows the Parisian scene like a lover’s body,” recalling that starry night in the Amsterdam bar when Yusuf had gotten kind of depressed and revealed to Eames his misguided youth’s adventure in supplying various French establishments with “the best shit” [sic].

“But the research methods...”

“Get Arthur to help you with that.”

“Fine, Ariadne snapped. “But only if you can persuade Arthur to come along.” She narrowed her lovely eyes. “And don’t invite Dom.”

*

Persuading Arthur turned out to be cakewalk once the whole Yusuf’s Recommendation deal was brought up. “Sure, but don’t invite Dom,” was his only condition, which proved that the planets must be in cosmic alignment this week because Eames had been previously convinced that Hell would freeze over before he, Arthur, and Ariadne managed to collectively agree on something.

He had initial concerns when they pulled up in front of the Lindbergh, which evaporated when Yusuf said, “Park here,” and led them around the hotel and down a suitably shady alley. A flood of glamazons flocked to Yusuf’s side the moment the bouncer buzzed them in, and whisked him away into the smoky darkness, saturated with heat and motion.

The vibe made Eames miss Tokyo, but Tokyo was Saito’s town, and he wasn’t sure if he had gotten over that entire Hold This Grenade While I Blow This Place to Kingdom Come debacle.

“This is all very intimidating,” said Ariadne. But in fact she did not appear intimidated whatsoever, striding into the throbbing fray with a swaying rhythm that showed off her body-hugging dress, skintight to the point where it looked like she had been poured into the thing.

She looked absolutely bloody gorgeous, nothing like the prim androgyne that Eames always associated with Renaissance paintings of nuns and holy virgins. This was what those birds would look like if you pulled them out of their gothic abbeys and squeezed their bodacious bods into slinky club wear before sending them tottering off to ball men like glittery whores on acid.

Arthur, for his part, was wearing some nice trousers. Arthur always wore nice trousers, but the pair he had on tonight made his usual wardrobe look like street urchin chic. They told a sweet anecdote about dropped keys and retrieval efforts that entailed bending over.

“Not bad, huh?” Eames said, sliding into the booth next to Arthur. He paused to smile at the drink fairy that had materialized to take their order.

Arthur smirked, flashing teeth white as well-intentioned lies. “I especially liked the part where you invoked a nonexistent Electra Complex to get Ariadne to go along with this.”

The drink fairy giggled and dematerialized with a firm click of stilettos. Eames cocked his eyebrow at Arthur. “Are we still on that Greek theme, or is this your idea of flirtation?”

Eames’s usual romantic strategy was to saunter through life with a roguish sneer that had been around so long it was like a mask eaten ineluctably into his face. This had worked out remarkably well thus far, so he had no reason to doubt its efficacy now. In the dark, he could just make out the movement of Arthur’s long lashes, fluttering shut.

“That mouth is going to get you in a world of trouble, Mr. Eames.”

“Hasn’t so far.”

“Then you’ve been very lucky so far.”

“Are you going to help me get lucky tonight, sweetheart?”

Arthur kissed him then. The skin of his jaw felt soft, smooth and expensive. He started slow, handling Eames like an enemy and an old friend, and Eames took a few seconds to admire the cleverness of it all before kissing Arthur back, hauling him in by the collars. He slid his hand around to that tender spot at the back of Arthur’s head, hidden under his hair, thumb stroking the juncture of ear and skull, lazily memorizing bone structure. Their breaths sparred.

“Join me in the VIP lounge?”

Arthur laughed against his stubbles, throaty and low. “Really, Mr. Eames? I think we’re a little too old for undignified quickies in the men’s room.”

“A dignified quickie’s still an option, then?”

“Quick doesn’t sound very appealing.” Arthur leaned back and straightened up in his seat, suddenly distant and tight-mouthed. It was Eames’s turn to smirk.

“Some other time, then.”

When he looked down, there were glasses on the table. He picked up his martini—Plymouth gin, absinthe rinse, brandied cherries—and took a quick glance around the room. Up by the catwalk, Yusuf was slouched in his seat, calmly sipping a drink while a dancer leaned over him, one large brown areola lingering centimetres from his liquor-damp lips. At the bar, Ariadne was in medias an intense conversation with an attractive person of indeterminate gender. It seemed to be going well—they were trading tequila shots and licking salt and lime off of each other’s milky wrists.

He could feel Arthur’s eyes on him all evening.

*

Not a month later, Cobb managed to book them such an unspeakably disastrous job that the rest of the team made a gentlemen’s pact to stop speaking to him for the foreseeable future. Eames took this lull in action as his cue to rain-check himself to Dubai.

Unfortunately, breathtaking coastlines and impossible architecture seemed to have lost their charms at some point between his last visit and the present, and even though Eames ran into an actual pair of blonde Swedish fraternal twins in Mamzar, his libido was a little anorexic these days—except when it came to thoughts of nice trousers.

After a week, he gave up and flew back to Paris, only to find that the Yank half of the team was scuttling off to partake in some cultish nonsense called “Thanksgiving”. He had never seen Cobb get this excited about—anything.

“Come off it,” Eames said. “If you colonists are going to slack off, have the balls to do so without citing an alibi more holed than a beehive.”

“I only wish we were making it up,” Ariadne said. “We don’t just have Thanksgiving dinner at our house, we have an actual Thanksgiving ball, where my father parades various Senators’ and Congressmen’s sons before me while my mother makes unsubtle hints about grandchildren.”

She threw her hands up in some wordless attempt to convey all the inarticulable horror of so much quality family time, which made Eames suspect that she harbored some deeply repressed childhood rage. “And then there’s all the tofu. I mean, have you ever seen a purple turkey?”

“Phillipa mentioned something about going vegan the last time I was home,” Cobb mused. “Do you think your mother would let me have the recipe?”

“I have lost all will to live,” Ariadne declared.

Eames leaned into her ear and whispered, “Think of it this way, you’ll be on the plane together for eight hours. My advice: get him pissed and pull a mile high club. AirFrance makes a surprisingly decent Bloody Mary.”

Ariadne rolled her eyes. “Anyway, I love how we pasteurize our history of blemishes like smallpox blankets and genocidal expansions for an excuse to stuff our faces.” She turned to Eames. “How come you never have to do family visits?”

Eames had spent a large part of his childhood and subsequent adolescence making a competitive sport out of giving his father apoplexies. He had not been welcome in his ancestral home since his sixteenth birthday, when Mr. Eames Sr. had discovered his son’s aspirations of becoming the next Frank Abagnale.

Yusuf was not utilizing this opportunity to visit his family either. Possibly they didn’t exist. Instead, he was going to Rio. Eames loathed him gently, and pondered the relative merits of a trip to Monaco. Surely five years was long enough for Interpol to have forgiven a person for a minor offense such as forging the entire royal family.

Then he found out Arthur was staying in Paris.

“I was thinking of making Thanksgiving dinner on my own,” he explained over the phone. Eames examined his voice for a trace of humor, and was mildly alarmed to find there wasn’t any.

“Were you?” he said wryly. “And who’s on the guest list?”

“Just me for now. There’s room for one more, I suppose.”

Eames couldn’t feign disinterest. He tried anyway. “Cutting it a bit close, darling. What if I had already made prior arrangements?”

Arthur snorted, and hung up.

*

Eames exited the elevator at 5:35 pm. Under his arm was a dignified bottle of Bordeaux, with an honest-to-God silk bow tied around the neck. He had offered to contribute something more substantial to the meal, but then Arthur had said, “Not unless you can find some pumpkin pie”, which sounded like something out of Harry Potter—too silly to be real.

Arthur opened the door on the third ring. He was, by his militant standards and no else’s, underdressed—Oxford shirt with the sleeves rolled up to reveal his sharp wrist bones, and those slacks that he probably slept in, accessorized with a furrow-browed expression. On another person’s face, it might come off as endearingly irritated, but Eames recognized this as the tip of a solid iceberg of rage, erratic sine spikes signaling catastrophic subterranean tectonic activity.

“You’re late,” Arthur said flatly.

Eames blinked. “Did we have a time?”

Arthur clicked his tongue impatiently. “Come in.”

The flat, like its tenant, was clean-cut and modern, all black wood and gleaming glass. Stark and monochrome, subtly edgy—roomy in the vertical sense, which meant he probably paid bitching heating bills in the winter. As Eames strolled down the narrow hallway, past rows of black and white photos of cityscapes and classic cars, an obese feline silhouette sashayed past his legs.

“Hey, isn’t that…?”

“Yusuf asked me to cat-sit Stevens.”

“Stevens?”

“Don’t even ask,” Arthur said darkly.

Eames tossed his jacket over the back of the leather sofa and followed him into the kitchen. He paused at the entrance, frowned. “Do I smell something burning?”

“The first batch of marinade didn’t come out well,” Arthur said, projecting an air of nonchalance. He was about at good at it as an elephant was good at pirouetting through a needle’s eye. His hair was doing a weird thing where it seemed to stick up on one side and lie flat on the other, something only seen on the plumage of certain exotic birds.

“What’s all this?” Eames asked. He swept his hand vaguely over the kitchen island which, among other things, supported a minor mountain of produce, a tottering column of books, and various pots and pans containing what appeared to be alternative life forms.

“Dinner,” Arthur replied. “Or it will be. Have you ever made candied yams?”

“Are you out of your mind?”

“Time to learn,” Arthur said, “Here,” grabbing a book at random to shove into Eames’s hand. “Sink or swim, Eames.”

Eames knew better than to argue with this disheveled, crazy-eyed holiday cheer, so he quietly collected his materials and went into a corner to spend some quality time with Talk Turkey to Me. The kitchen was on the tiny side, and it was a tight squeeze between him and the counter. His hips pressed up against Arthur’s arse as he passed, but Arthur did not even look up. He picked up a large pan housing what was either a smallish piglet or—

“Is that the turkey?” Eames said, awed.

“Yes,” said Arthur. He stared at it for a full minute.

Suspicions flooded Eames’s mind. “Haven’t you ever worked with a turkey before?”

Arthur waved the basting brush dismissively. “Of course, but this is a French-domesticated turkey. That right there should tell you something.”

“It tells me you’re a barking lunatic. A turkey’s a turkey.” He peered into the pan, and carefully prodded at the pale hulk. “So which way is the top?”

*

So Arthur, brilliant Point Man that he was, had obviously done his homework for the occasion, if the extensive collection of cookbooks and Internet printouts were any indication. He had, however, not been brilliant enough to notice that nearly all his recipes contradicted one another.

“Are turkeys supposed to collapse once you put them in the oven?”

“No,” Arthur said, completely deadpan, giving him a look potent enough to paralyze a rhino at twenty yards as he violently dumped the mushy pile of poultry bones and skin into the bin. His shirt was down to three buttons, exposing the clean lines of his collarbones, the rolled up sleeves speckled with a questionable substance that Eames knew to be Arthur’s paltry attempt at gravy.

Eames shrugged, and continued to relieve a fat tuber of its sandy, brownish skin. “You know, I think this might actually be a sweet potato.”

“At this point, I simply do not care.”

“Why’d you do this to yourself if you knew you couldn’t cook?”

Arthur pulled a face. “It’s Thanksgiving,” he grunted. “Seemed like the thing to do.”

“Family tradition?” Eames ventured. He was expecting a sudsy, elaborate tale involving a mother’s stifling sense of entitlement, a father’s vicious cycle of recurring disappointments, and possibly something about an overachieving older brother tossed into the mix. Disappointingly, Arthur just lifted his shoulder, and stabbed a wooden spoon into yet another pan, swirling the content around for a moment before placing it into the now-vacated oven.

He had the temperature on way too high, but Eames selected not to address this fact.

Invariably, a smoky smell filled the kitchen. Arthur looked over at him with a fatalistic expression and announced, “There go the mashed potatoes.”

*

In the end, Eames’s candied yamotatoes was the only item on the menu that survived the culinary carnage. They sat in the living room and ate themselves stupid, passing the bottle of Bordeaux between them like unwashed slum-dwelling Bohemians. Neither wanted to touch the gunky cranberry sauce that had splooged out of a can.

“I can’t believe you actually pulled this off,” Arthur said, a fork dangling between his fingers.

“It’s called knowing how to follow instructions,” Eames explained delicately.

Arthur snorted. “Which is yet another reason I can’t believe you pulled it off.”

“Whatever helps you sleep at night, sweetheart.” He spooned the last of his portion into his mouth. “We’re out of wine. Where do you keep the sauce in this place?”

Raiding Arthur’s pantries revealed a shockingly respectable mini-cellar. “You’ve been holding out on me, love,” Eames said, unearthing a 1978 Château. He hadn’t been aware one of these lovelies even existed.

The night deepened in a flush of warm, rosy-hued glow. Eames settled into an armchair. His eyes flickered from the corner where Stevens the cat had passed out face down in the food dish, to the enormous glass doors opening out to the balcony, beyond which they had a fantastic view of La Ville-Lumière herself, an ocean of twinkling lights. Historied streets coated in shades of a November night, gunmetal giving way to velvety midnight blue.

“Hope Cobb and his brats had better luck with their demon bird than we did.”

“I spent Thanksgiving with him once,” Arthur said from the floor. “Met the whole tribe. It was disturbingly domestic.” He mercifully did not reveal whatever ungodly number of Cobb-esque individuals existed in this unfortunate world.

“When was this?”

“Years ago. You know. Before.”

Right. Before. Code for the first installment in the two-part series that made up the segments Cobb’s life had been partitioned into following his infamous personal tragedy. Arthur had reportedly been there for the whole grisly mess. Eames only had casual acquaintance with the facts, even post-Fischer, and frankly, that was as far as he was willing to go.

Eames had met Cobb years before in the middle of a con. Granted, he had been conning Cobb at the time, but rocky beginnings made for stable professional relationships, and he’d very much like theirs to remain just the way it was.

“You’re sitting in my favorite chair.”

When he looked up, Arthur was running his fingers innocently over the mouth of the wine bottle. His tilted face held that exact expression Eames had—he choked back a laugh—first encountered in a dream.

“You know something,” Eames said, thumbing one corner of his mouth, “I was thinking that I’d like to fuck you in your favorite chair.”

A hood drew low over Arthur’s eyes. He put down the bottle, and got on his knees.

*

Arthur was, among other things, flushed and rock-hard, almost dripping over Eames’s stomach.

He had his lean, lightly haired thighs splayed over Eames’s legs, and two fingers slicked and buried inside his own entrance, breaths coming in harsh bursts. It was seriously the sexiest thing to come along since the part back there where he had gotten on his knees and sucked one of Eames’s balls into his mouth while simultaneously working his shaft, displaying his vast capacity for lateral thinking in a smug but also ridiculously hot way.

“So tell me, Mr. Eames,” Arthur whispered, hoarse and utterly filthy, nose a cold point on the skin of Eames’s neck. “What did you have to be thankful for this year?”

“I’ll leave your twenty Euros on the dresser in the morning,” Eames promised, and biting the pointy tip of Arthur’s ear, gripped the base of his cock and began to jerk. It thickened and jumped deliciously between his fingers.

Arthur dug his teeth into his bottom lip. He braced himself on Eames’s shoulders and sank down ever so slowly, the prat, putting his whole body into the push, and finally—finally—Eames was balls-deep in his tight, hot arse. He hissed, hauling Arthur in and made their mouths fuck.

“You have very pretty eyelashes,” Eames observed.

He ran his hand down the ridged ladder of Arthur’s spine, gently stroked the raised skin of a scar with the pad of his finger, slipped into the warm crease where thigh met body. “You’re very—” he went on, but lost track of whatever the hell he was saying when Arthur’s cheeks clenched tight around his cock, muscles flexing sweetly. Arthur raised himself on his knees and ground down with his whole weight, so that they were almost squeezed into the armchair. His hips snapped, he was about to explode he was so turned on, and he had to fuck Arthur, now.

Just when Eames was about to cause them both permanent damage shoving Arthur onto the floor and giving him some wicked carpet burns, Arthur muttered against his mouth, “Hey, don’t hurt yourself.” He wiggled and writhed, trying to reach for something behind Eames’s head, the tip of his cock dragging a slick trail along Eames’s belly.

“What're you…?”

The ceiling tilted, and suddenly Arthur was leaning over him, panting in hungry, desperate gasps. The faint shadows painting his face and chest highlighted that delightful sheen of sweat coating his upper lip, the slick tip of his pink tongue peeking out from between parted lips.

“Your favorite chair is a recliner?” Eames asked, smoothing his palm over the dramatic curve of Arthur’s hipbone.

“I have a bad back,” Arthur said facetiously.

He gave his pelvis a minute, experimental thrust, showing off his devastating attention to detail, at which point Eames nearly threw out his own back flipping them over so he could have Arthur on his arse and fuck him into a blackout.

*

They were insensate to the world until a relatively scandalous hour of the following day, even by his lax standard. Eames reflected that he couldn’t really accuse Arthur of lacking an imagination anymore, not after the impressive show he had given during the fuck-a-thon of the previous night. (Speaking of which, good call on the walk-in closet, he should compliment him on that later.)

Arthur grumbled, and nudged Eames’s leg with his knee. “Jesus, your toes are like icicles.” His hair looked even more ridiculous in the light of day. It was amazing that he could still move.

“Bad circulation,” Eames said. “And hey, good morning to you too, bastard.”

“Actually, I think it’s halfway into the afternoon,” Arthur said, glancing at the electric clock on the nightstand. He tugged at Eames’s shoulder. “You all done?”

“Give me a minute, love,” Eames said. “I think I might need a prick transplant after that little exercise with the towel rack.”

Arthur snorted into his pillow. “Classy.”

“Minute’s over.” He reached over and rolled Arthur onto his back. “C’mere, sugarplum.”

Arthur made a satisfied rumbling noise in the back of his throat. “The soul is willing, but the flesh needs some sustenance before it can go back to doing terrible things to other flesh.”

“Food trumps sex,” Eames agreed, kissing the pink shell of Arthur’s ear. “Breakfast, then?”

Neither of them was very fond of the idea of venturing back into Arthur’s kitchen, which by now had been stripped of all perishables anyway. So they wrestled their unwilling bodies into some clothes and wandered down to a bistro around the corner, where Arthur ignored Eames’s ardent protests and made them sit out on the goddamn sidewalk. Sure, it was all very romantic and delightful until a delightfully romantic piece of garbage blew into your profiterole courtesy of the Paris Department of Sanitation—or utter lack thereof.

Nevertheless, they drank their coffee and ate their turkey club sandwiches in that brisk late-afternoon air, and Eames spent a disgraceful amount of time watching Arthur puzzle over the crossword, offering rubbish answers and generally being mysteriously fascinated with Arthur’s sunlit hair, the underside of his chin, the smug crease at the corner of his mouth.

This was the only reason he didn’t put his cigarette out in Arthur’s mochachino when a nice breeze shivered past and a paper bag practically smacked him in the face.

*

The sunny weekend stretched its luxurious limbs and flopbellied into Monday, when one by one, the defectors began trickling back into the country. Ariadne was the first, bearing the appearance of a shell-shocked war refugee and a report that Cobb had remained stateside to take care of some family emergency.

“We’ve lost him to the dark side,” Eames said, shaking his head. “How could you let this happen?”

“What’s the emergency?” said Arthur

“You won’t believe this,” Ariadne said with a huge smirk. “Apparently, Phillipa has a boyfriend.”

Arthur arched his eyebrow at the same time that Eames chuckled and said, “Oh, he is never coming back, then.”

Yusuf shuffled into the warehouse at a quarter to noon, slack-faced and haggard, and stayed for fifteen minutes before taking off, mumbling something about free clinics and intense burning loins.

“See, this is why all those travel guides warn you against engaging in sexual congress with inappropriate people on vacation,” Ariadne remarked.

Eames was in the middle of discreetly tuning her out, flipping through the latest issue of Plane & Pilot—Christ, the new Socata TBM could coax a stiffie out of a coma patient—when he caught the sound of Arthur’s laconic drawl, saying, “Define inappropriate.”

“Why?” Ariadne asked. “What shenanigans did you get up to over the holiday?”

Arthur shrugged, slanting a sly look in Eames’s direction. “Never hurts to be careful.”

Eames put down the magazine and pasted a grave expression onto his face. “Is there something you want to tell me, cricket?”

Arthur smirked, and waited until Ariadne had fluttered off to orgasm over some software she had brought back from the States that guaranteed to help people architect like they had never architected before. “I don’t know,” he said with a slight wicked edge. “Is there something you want to tell me?”

“As a matter of fact, there is,” Eames replied. “It might take awhile though. We should reconvene. Say, my place? Saturday night?”

“You have a place?” Arthur said.

“Absolutely,” Eames said. “I have a chair, too. Several, even. Interested?”

Arthur lifted the corner of his mouth thoughtfully, and did something highly distracting involving two fingers and the cuff of his shirt. “I’m listening.”

“We can try them out one by one to see which is just right for Goldilocks’s discerning arse.”

But the point was—the point was that Eames liked that discerning arse very much, and somehow, after strenuous hours spent doing wonderful things to that arse, he found himself liking having breakfast on the sidewalk with its barmy owner as well. Right up until a poetic gum wrapper drifted into his sparkling water, when he actually put his cigarette in Arthur’s coffee.

*

end

[fic] The Curious Transformation of Miss Alice Kingsleigh

ronsard — Sun, 07 Nov 2010 23:32:01 GMT

Anyone remember this fic?

Possibly not, but I thought it deserved a sequel. So: a sequel it got. More adventures on the Caribbean Sea!

Title: The Curious Transformation of Miss Alice Kingsleigh
Fandoms: Alice in Wonderland (2010)/Pirates of the Caribbean
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1,830
Genres: General, Humor, Romance, Crossover
Summary: Rascals, scoundrels, villains, and knaves.

The Curious Transformation of Miss Alice Kingsleigh

Rascals, scoundrels, villains, and knaves.

“When you insinuated that I might one day meet a pirate, I never realized that you were referring to yourself!”

Jack smiled, catching the hilt of Alice’s sword with his blade, metal clanging noisily over the chaotic din of the besieged Wonder. “Pirate, love,” he crooned. “It wouldn’t have been very pirate-y of me if I had admitted to being one, would it?”

Alice scowled, parrying furiously. “At this point, I must insist that you cease addressing me in such a familiar manner.”

She lunged, thrusting for his neck. Jack raised an eyebrow as her blade snaked past his cheek, close enough for him to feel the wind from it. “You do know how to handle a sword, lassie.”

“I had a good deal of practice battling an extraordinarily ugly beast.”

“Then you must be pleased that this time around, you’re fighting a handsome devil instead.”

“Hardly,” said Alice. She spun and tried to swing her sword at his head, but nearly tripped over the hem of her own skirt instead. What a bother these things were. She resolved to procure some battle-ready trousers at her earliest convenience.

At this point, Lord Ascot’s guardsmen finally emerged from the lower cabins, waving their muskets frantically. Gunshots filled the air, but before they could get the upper hand on the pirates, Jack had leapt away from Alice and arced his sword through the air. In an instant, all of his men vanished from the deck, and before Alice’s despairing eyes, the Black Pearl was already pulling away, mast proud, her unfurled sails bloated with favorable wind.

Jack appeared at the side of his ship. “Fastest vessel in the Caribbean, darling,” he called back at Alice. “Save yourself some trouble and give it up.”

Alice rushed to starboard and leaned over the edge of the bulwark. “Well, I’ll let you know one thing,” she shouted. “I never believed a word of that story you told about the Fountain of Youth!”

Jack slapped a hand over his heart and made a highly tragic expression, which cracked away into a roguish smirk as he disappeared from the Pearl’s railing.

*

Night had fallen over the ransacked Wonder and her demoralized crew. Alice stood at the brig’s railing and stared down at the dark, silent water, the picture of romantic despondence, a woebegone Victorian heroine in the truest sense. A slow breeze rifled through her hair morosely.

Presently, a brilliantly blue butterfly landed on her shoulder. “Absolem, whatever shall I do?” she said, putting her head in her hands.

The butterfly gave her a look of arch disdain. She swatted at him crossly. “Oh, do behave.”

Absolem fluttered away from her, and landed delicately on the railing. What passed between them next was a moment of eloquent silence.

“Now that’s a little better,” Alice said, finally. “But I suppose I must first find myself a tailor.”

*

Before the soles of her boots had even warmed to the soil of Tortuga, Alice had marched into that small tavern of not-so-long ago and struck Jack full across the face.

“I may have deserved that,” he mused, rubbing his cheek.

“You horrible, horrible man,” Alice said, shaking with anger. “There are simply no words to describe the appalling depth of your horribleness.”

“I am a pirate, if dear Miss Kingsleigh has forgotten,” said Jack. “Pillage and plunder, rifle and loot—‘tis the very meaning of my existence.”

Alice set her jaw into a firm scowl. “I should have you arrested.”

“You could try, love, but I think you may find that to be a more difficult venture than you might have anticipated.”

“Well, this at least is entirely within my power to accomplish,” she snapped, and casually tipped over the bottle of rum on the table before them.

“Not the rum!” Jack wailed as his precious Water of Life spilled to the floor. “Not the rum, oh, oh, not the rum.”

“Serves you right,” said Alice. “You probably bought that with money gained from selling our cargoes!”

Jack shook his head sadly. “How you besmirch my honor, poppet. A pirate never pays for his own rum, savvy?”

The bartender narrowed his eyes, and began to crack his very prominent knuckles menacingly.

“…unless of course the rum in question is of an especially exceptional quality, such as the variety found at this here very fine establishment.”

A big, swarthy man appeared suddenly on her left. “Is this blackguard pesterin’ you, miss?”

“Well, no –” Alice began, but was cut off when another man materialized at Jack’s side, growling in drunken rage. In five seconds flat, a bottle had been smashed over someone’s head, and the room had erupted into pandemonium, proving that it was not only Jack who valued the medicinal qualities of Tortuga’s rum.

Obviously she hadn’t thought this adventure quite through. Obviously.

There was only one thing to do, Alice decided, and ducked under someone’s massive arm, weaving her way to the exit. How about that. Trousers really did improve one’s mobility.

*

When the loss of his hat finally became apparent, Jack’s cries of anguish were, reportedly, heard throughout the port.

*

Heavy footsteps sounded on the wooden pier. Alice put down the telescope and turned to face her visitor. “Well, look what the cat dragged in.”

Jack’s trademark sneer seemed somewhat more strained than usual. “I do believe you have a little something of mine.”

Alice planted her hand on her hip. “And I do believe you have my cargoes.”

“You’ve got to get past that, love,” Jack said solemnly. “It’s been how long now? A month?”

“Six days!” Alice exclaimed. “And what difference does it make how long –”

Jack tossed her a rolled-up scroll.

“What’s this?” Alice said, puzzled.

“It’s a map,” Jack said dryly. “As an apology, I will impart to you a bit of us pirates’ insider knowledge. Depicted there are some of the least known trade routes in the world.”

“And what am I to do with them?”

Jack’s mouth lifted into a cockeyed grin. “Isn’t it obvious? Follow them, and in no time, you’ll make back twice the amount of goodies I, uh, borrowed.” He held out his hand expectantly. “Now, Miss Kingsleigh, my hat?”

*

While the great Captain Sparrow enjoyed an emotional reunion with his beloved headwear, Alice politely averted her eyes and returned to her contemplation of the sea. Through the lens of the telescope, she gazed out at the faraway horizon, veiled behind a nacreous curtain of sea mist.

“Going home, love?”

“Yes,” Alice said distractedly. Dear green England, how she missed it so—but beneath that, there was another ache, a knot of longing whose name she could only vaguely place.

It was time to go home.

Jack sighed softly, and adjusted his hat so that the brim fell low over his eyes. “Well, I must admit that you look rather more distinguished wearing it,” Alice conceded.

There was a whisper of movement, and Alice only had time to catch the white flash of Jack’s suspiciously sharp canines before his warm, peppery lips were on hers, brown fingers cupped to the curve of her cheek. Immediately, all the blood in her body came to a boil and rushed to her face.

He broke the kiss as suddenly as it had come, and scooted back to put a relatively safe distance between them. Alice’s mouth hung parted in shock. She wanted to yell, “How dare you?” or possibly, “Why on Earth did you do that?” but all that came out was a mumbled, “Nghrgh?”

Jack chuckled. “Yes, that is precisely the reaction I was going for.”

Alice swallowed, hard. “For the love of God, why?”

“Because I wanted to,” he said maddeningly. “And when you want to do something and are presented with a prime opportunity to do it, what reason is there to let it slip?”

“That’s a terrible line of reasoning,” she sputtered.

“Pirate, love,” Jack said, hopping off the pier. “And now I must away.” He waved his hand in a majestic arc. “Fare thee well, lovely Miss Kingsleigh, and know that you will always remember this as the day that you almost captured the heart of Captain Jack Sparrow.”

Alice threw her telescope after his retreating head.

*

When she returned—and of course she did, there had never been a shred of doubt—it was as if she hadn’t been away even a day. It felt like coming home, and in a way, it truly was. Alice flew down the familiar green hollow, the pearly blue mist of Underland chasing at the fluttering hem of her skirt. The air smelled just as she remembered it, damp and mossy and spiced with an oddly tropical undertone, soaked with invisible magic.

She was back! And proper-sized, too!

Tarrant was the only one at the table when she finally broke through the wall of trees. From inside the mansion, Alice could hear Mallymkun and Thackery bickering over some matter of terrible import—quite likely, the amount of saffron one should or should not add to onion soup.

“I’m back.”

Those bright green eyes turned to her tranquilly, calmer and gentler than she had ever seen them—had ever known them to be capable of being. A snap of breath caught sharply under Alice’s breastbone when his lips paused and curled into a beckoning smile.

Up close, Alice thought feverishly, they didn’t really look all that similar, not all that similar at all. Jack’s sloe-dark eyes never held that soft, tender light when he looked at her. (No, Jack was more liable to look at Alice like he was undressing her with his eyes.)

Not the same at all.

“Did the big blue sea wash away any of your muchness?” Tarrant asked, laying down his cup.

“Quite the opposite,” Alice said, pulling out a chair to his right. She paused for a moment, and bent to place a quick peck on Tarrant’s lips.

It was terribly difficult to suppress a satisfied grin when she saw his electric eyes flaring wide in amazement.

“As you can see, my supply of muchness is not only very much intact, but appears to have increased in quantity,” Alice said, taking her seat. “How’s that for a voyage?”

“Why?” Tarrant said, blinking slowly as though caught in a daze—a spell.

“Because I wanted to,” she said, covering his hand with hers. She turned her palm and twined their fingers together. “And when you want to do something and are presented with a prime opportunity to do it, there’s no reason to let it slip.”

For a moment, Tarrant seemed at a loss for word (what a rarity!). Then he shrugged helplessly and said, “My darling, you always had all the best arguments.”

With that, he squeezed her hand lightly, letting his warmth flow out into her. It was quite curious, Alice thought, but the smile on her lips had a definite pirate-y edge to it.

Curiouser still, it felt perfectly at home there.

The End

would have killed to dress up like this for halloween

ronsard — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 18:41:02 GMT

I promised these to soleil_et_pluie awhile back (in exchange for some exciting booty, ehem), but as usual I went a little overboard.

Icons, anyone?

Art © Sylvia Ji | Official Website

sylvia ji: the sugar skull collection

1	2	3	4	5

6	7	8	9	10

11	12	13	14	15

16	17	18	19	20

21	22	23	24	25

26	27	28	29	30

Happy Halloween '10!

ronsard — Sun, 31 Oct 2010 23:19:46 GMT

Because I refuse to believe SasuNaru is the only pairing I would make this kind of effort for:

Title: Reverberations
Fandom: Naruto
Pairing: Itachi/Shisui
Word Count: 1,722
Summary: Four days on the road. (Like a good book, I can't put this day back.)
Disclaimer: All Naruto characters herein are the property of Kishimoto Masashi. No copyright infringement is intended. Awesome illustration courtesy of the incomparable sixpersimmons ♥

reverberations
four days on the road

Itachi stood on a riverbank.

Before him, the water glimmered dizzily in the sunlight, reflecting the sky, which was beautiful, blue and sheer. Little green waves. Interiorly, he was held rigid by a feeling of ferrous, inexorable peace, plodding through his veins upstream.

There was only one thing on his mind. One word. One name.

"Sorry. I kept you waiting?"

Shisui stepped out from behind a grove of trees. He grinned at Itachi, rubbing the back of his neck.

"I don't mind. I was watching the sky."

"Interesting hobby. So, work's done. Ready to go?"

"Which road are we taking?"

"This river flows north. We can just follow it home."

Shisui's eyes scanned the water, thoughtful. Itachi intently stared at the sky.

"Been a long time gone, hasn't it?"

"Yes."

"Well, what're you waiting for?"

They walked.

*

Progress was slow because Shisui kept stalling to ponder his surroundings, a rock here, a tree there. He seemed utterly fascinated with every little thing he saw, as though encountering them for the very first time.

"What's the name of this country again?"

Itachi told him. Shisui smiled nostalgically, drew circles in the dirt with his foot.

"I always wanted to come here. I wanted --"

He stopped midsentence, turned aside and coughed into his hand. It was a strange cough: choked and sputtering. The kind of sound youâd make trying to dislodge something from your throat.

Itachi again looked up at the sky. Which was still clear. Which was still beautiful.

"It's getting dark."

"Let's stay in this area for tonight."

*

In the morning, Shisuiâs cough had slightly worsened. His voice went ragged with it, so for a very long while, Itachi made a point not to speak.

This worked out reasonably well.

As could be expected.

The wind was colder that second day, but the sky was cloudless. Something hung loosely in the air, indefinable in quality, suspended in the infinite spaces between serrated patches of awareness.

They walked.

*

"What's this?"

"What's what?"

Itachi reached up and traced his fingers along the stripe of reddened skin.

"This. This mark on your neck. It wasn't there yesterday."

Smirk.

"Been looking at my neck, Itachi?"

"I wasn't aware that was forbidden."

Shisui shook his head with amused disapproval.

"You shouldn't say things like that. Too direct. People won't like you if you say things like that."

"I don't think it matters much whether people like me or not."

"You're right. It's not so important, is it? It's not like you can take it with you."

"Your neck --"

"Geez, you're persistent. I don't know, alright? Probably an insect bite or something."

Pause.

"Let's move on, we're losing daylight hours. Maybe we'll get there before the sun sets today."

They didn't get there before the sun set, but that didn't seem to matter very much either.

"Let's stay in this area for tonight."

*

The insect bite was still there the next day. If anything, it had gotten bigger, darker, implying perhaps that it had been perpetrated by a creature of possibly supernatural origins.

Itachi thought about voicing this opinion, but dismissed the idle thought. Perhaps he was simply tired. Shisui had coughed all night, and he had slept badly.

The sky was tedious and grey this morning. Dull. Hesitant. A sky that held its breath.

They walked.

Shisui coughed.

They walked.

Eventually, the sun slipped behind the purple mountains.

Eventually, they stopped walking.

*

"Let's stay in this area for tonight."

*

By the end of the fourth day, the coughing had turned so violent that Shisui could hardly walk. His harsh, explosive breaths devastated the still air, which tasted like a bitter fruit. Like ashes.

Itachi kept walking.

In the end, Shisui flopped down on the trunk of a fallen tree, panting.

"I think my lungs are smaller than I thought they were."

Itachi tried to imagine his own lungs contracting within his chest, throbbing arduously as sour air bubbled in and out of them. Smaller, smaller, smaller -- until finally, they simply collapsed upon themselves.

"There was a cave a little further back on the trail. Let's rest there for awhile. I'll help you. Please come, quickly."

And Shisui came. Above them, leaded clouds shifted in unforgiving formations. Readying themselves.

*

The sun had almost fallen.

Outside: silence. A dense fog moved sluggishly along the ground.

Shisui lay on his back, gagging through shallow breaths. The sound of his efforts resonated in the enclosed space, despondently ricocheting off the cave walls.

The bruise on his neck was almost black, a solid choker of mauled skin.

Itachi lay down beside him and closed his eyes against the guileful shadows. Against the slow elapsing of silent hours leading into the night.

Breathed in and out.

Their torsos rose and fell in tandem.

Up and down.

In and out.

*

"Shisui."

"Yeah?"

"I had a dream last night."

"Was I in it?"

"Yes."

Coughing.

"You told me that we weren't going to make it home --"

Coughing.

"-- because --"

Coughing.

"-- you were dead."

Silence.

Slowly, Shisui sat up. He met Itachi's gaze, and quirked his lips sardonically.

"There you go again, saying awful things."

In the tepid light, Shisui's eyes were like heavy coals. He had stopped coughing.

*

A soft drizzle had settled in for the night. Inside the cave, it was pitch black. Shisui lay on his right, a solid presence stroking his hair tenderly.

"Tell me more about the dream."

His throat was suddenly freed of that fitful lump.

"You were dead. You drowned in the river."

"Glug glug glug. Dreadful way to go."

"I held you by the neck and forced your head under the water. Like this."

His hand formed a vise. He didn't need to see to know what would happen when he closed it around Shisui's neck, just as he knew that, behind the darkness, Shisui was smiling, a smile of knives.

He smoothed his hand over Itachi's, tightening it around his throat.

"In forensics, this is what weâd call a perfect match."

Itachi didn't flinch. Visibly.

"But you were saying?"

"You struggled. You were stronger than me, even with the sedative -- you struggled, and I dislocated my shoulder. I had to hide it the next day during practice with Sasuke."

"Mm-hmm."

"There was no mark on your body when they found it. I injected chakra into your flesh -- just a bit -- and the blood vessels healed themselves."

"Clever."

"I erased all the traces. Then I planted the note, let your body drift downstream, and went home."

"And what else?"

Pause.

"What else, Itachi."

"Your mother -- at the funeral. She tried to jump into the grave, but your father held her back. She kept clawing her neck -- it got all -- all bloody."

Shisui nuzzled his neck, nipped softly at the warm skin. He shuddered.

"She -- the screaming. She was saying that she -- that she would --"

Improbably, Shisui sighed. He traced his fingers slowly along the edge of Itachi's jaw, lingering on the fluttering pulse under his chin, aimless.

"-- that she would kill herself --"

"Itachi."

"-- but she never got a chance to, because --"

"Itachi."

"-- because I did it for her, the next day. I killed -- they -- I killed -- I --"

Two fingers descended upon his lips, damming the babbled stream of words. A feathery touch.

"That's enough."

Shisui lifted his fingers from Itachi's lips and placed his mouth there instead. Itachi parted it with his tongue to taste the decay.

Silt and tears and swallowed regrets.

Bitter things, but he was used to the taste, and it didn't bother him.

"Let's stay in this area for tonight."

"this is what we'd call a perfect match." (art by sixpersimmons ♥)

Tangled legs and swirling mist, chilled on damp, wearied skin. Fingertips pressed each to each.

Soft breaths, here and gone again.

"I would have done it too, you know."

Pause.

"If they had said to me, 'Hey, Itachi's a traitor, kill him,' I'd have done it, no question."

"Would you really have?"

"Does it make you feel better to believe that?"

"No."

Deep sigh.

"I'm always going to want the best for you. Even if I don't know what that is. Only the very, very best."

Longer pause.

An impatient noise.

"What is it that you want me to say then?"

"I'd prefer if you didn't say anything."

"Fine."

Sounds of shuffling.

"Don't go."

"You know I can't --"

Numb fingers twined.

"Please."

Sigh. Long and defeated. There were no more words, because there was nothing left to say.

*

His nails buried into willing flesh.

He scratched, clawed, burned and scarred. Leaving new markings.

(These will stay, won't they?)

Kissed and sucked and bit. Creating new bruises.

(Surely they won't be lost. Surely.)

He knew it. As certainly as he knew his own existence. Some things could not be lost.

(And surely this time, they have come to stay.)

A cry and a sweeping, uncontrollable wave. Bliss and panic coagulating. Falling into darkness.

Sudden emptiness, and the shadows grew pale with invading morning light.

He didn't really know, after all.

Rain.

*

Itachi opened his eyes. It was morning. He looked around, but there was nothing to see.

There never had been.

Wearily, he got up, straightened his coat, and stepped outside into the brilliant sunlight. The air smelled crisp and new, the way air tended to smell after a rainstorm had passed. Nothing was different in the world. Nothing had changed.

"Did I keep you waiting, Itachi-san?"

Kisame stepped out from behind a grove of trees. He smiled at Itachi, swinging his heavy sword over his shoulder.

"Did you rest well?"

"Reasonably."

"No more of those dreams, then?"

"Those were not dreams."

Questioning look.

"A common side effect of using techniques that concern manipulation of the mind is that, at times, they leave behind echoes. The more powerful the jutsu, the more vivid the after-traces."

"I see."

"In my case, the echoes just happen to be -- of a very particular nature. That's all."

"These 'side effects' do seem kind of troublesome. Aren't you concerned at all?"

"No, Kisame. Echoes, no matter what, are only echoes."

Kisame stared. He stared back.

Finally, an acquiescing nod.

"Let's head back down to the river. We've got a long way to go."

They walked.

The sky was sublime.

*

written to a sorta fairytale

I decided not to go to the parade, because after yesterday, I've had enough of crowds for awhile. No, seriously. Instead will attend a small cocktail masquerade and then maybe hit Nightmare: Superstitions after midnight.

My dress. I'm going as a zombie flapper :D I have the feathered headband and beaded necklaces, and my friend is lending me his boa. Good thing it's all black because I have a feeling I'll be getting intimate with some fake blood tonight...

Have an amazingly spooky night, everyone! ♥

[fic] somnambulist

ronsard — Sat, 18 Sep 2010 18:55:22 GMT

Still archiving.

Title: sonambulist
Fandom: Naruto
Pairings: Shisui/Itachi
Summary: Unzip my body, take my heart out.
Disclaimer: All Naruto characters herein are the property of Kishimoto Masashi. No copyright infringement is intended.
Dedication: Written for technovanilla

( The moral of this story is that I should never attempt writing erotic asphyxiation again )

[fic] Reclamation and Its Discontents

ronsard — Sat, 18 Sep 2010 18:51:14 GMT

Archiving stuff from the summer exchange. Let me tell you, I had such an emolicious field day with that thing. A+, would angst again.

Title: Reclamation and Its Discontents
Fandom: Naruto
Pairings: Shisui/Itachi, Shisui/Kabuto
Summary: Misery loves company. May the best man win. AU to an extent.
Disclaimer: All Naruto characters herein are the property of Kishimoto Masashi. No copyright infringement is intended.
Dedication: Written for kalliel

( ROMANCE SCHOMANCE, IT'S CREEPER TIME. )

[fic] The Colder Water (Shisui/Itachi, Part VI)

ronsard — Sat, 11 Sep 2010 23:09:54 GMT

Whoops, I actually had this finished weeks ago, but in all the exchange-related madness I forgot to post it here. Well, here it is, anyway. (Speaking of that exchange, take a look at our master list. I still can't believe it went that well. My cute little fandom ♥)

Title: The Colder Water (6/6)
Fandom: Naruto
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Shisui/Itachi (actually turned out not so much, huh...)
Summary: The devil is in the details. Shisui. Itachi. A sorta love story. (Novella)
Disclaimer: Naruto is the property of Kishimoto Masashi.

The Colder Water

Part VI

*

Cinder and smoke
You’ll ask me to pray for rain
With ash in your mouth
You’ll ask it to burn again

*

It was a surreal experience, walking out of that office. The main hallway was just as quiet as before, but there was something new and unspoken in this dense hush. Shisui could sense it when Yasuo flashed him a small smile as he passed—the men grouped around him following suit—but the full reality of what he had done didn’t sink in until he was almost at the door and Yuudai came flying out from one of the side offices. He ran up to Shisui, and dragged him into a bone-melting embrace.

“I knew you’d come around,” said Yuu, pummeling his fist into Shisui’s back like he wanted to knock the breath out of him. “I just knew you would. You’re way too smart not to realize what’s what.”

He let go of Shisui and took a step back, eyes brimming with genuine affection. Shisui gave him a grin, feeling it pull tightly at the skin of his cheeks.

A soft expression settled over Yuudai’s face. He clamped both his hands to Shisui’s shoulders, and looked him straight in the eye. “Hey. All that stuff between us—it’s water under the bridge, alright?”

“Yeah,” Shisui said weakly. He tried to do something with his hands that didn’t involve them fisting into the material of his pants until the knuckles turned chalk-white, but it didn’t work.

“This is going to be great, you’ll see.” Yuu’s voice was thick with excitement, gaining vim and vigor as he spoke. “Now that you’ve made the right choice, I mean. Everything will be just fine. More than fine. It’ll be great. Just really, fucking great.”

Shisui still couldn’t think of anything to say, so he just nodded dumbly, and let Yuu’s voice wash over him, much like the silence of before.

“Shisui, you know that’s all I wanted, right?” Yuudai said, strong wrists propped earnestly by his neck, a steady, even weight. “For you to make the right choice? You’re like a brother to me, you know?”

Yuudai had three younger sisters, ages thirteen, nine, and four, all of whom worshipped him like the sun and moon in their celestial dome. He was a model son to his parents, a solid comrade in a tight spot, and for the most part had been nothing but good to Shisui. But Yuudai was also wrong. He was not Shisui’s brother. He had never taken a hit for him. He had never followed Shisui into the mountains.

You never let me bleed on you, Shisui thought. You’re not my brother, and this is not the right choice.

But he had no right to think like that anymore. Slowly, Shisui unclenched his fists, and smiled at Yuudai in the way that he knew made his eyes laugh—like this was no big deal and that he really believed what Yuu had said about how things were going to be alright, great, really fucking great. So what if the hypocrisy of it clawed its way into his heart and rent his ventricles apart?

“So I better go,” Shisui said with a prosaic shrug. “Got my work cut out for me and all that, right?”

Yuudai nodded, and gave his shoulders each a firm squeeze before letting go. His smile followed Shisui to the door, bright with trust. Shisui almost felt sick again, so he quickened his pace, practically ran out into the open air. He took several deep breaths to quash down the suffocating feeling rising inside him, the air scorching his lungs on its way down. The afternoon was quickly draining as he made his way down Main Street, the desire to be anywhere but here burning a hole through his chest.

He saw Sasuke running toward him even before he heard his voice.

Shisui considered leaping off in the opposite direction. He didn’t have any information to give, and if Sasuke was calling his name in such naked desperation then obviously neither did he, and therefore they had no business talking to each other. But apparently Sasuke was a lot faster than he’d previously given him credit for, because he reached him before Shisui could make a decision.

Shisui said, “Skipping school’s not going to put you on the fast track to becoming a great ninja,” which coming from him must be eleven kinds of rich, but whatever.

“I’m not…” Sasuke sputtered, clutching at the strap of his schoolbag. “I didn’t.” His bottom jaw settled itself, and he said in a tight voice, “Nii-san still hasn’t come home.”

“I think I’m aware of that, yes.”

Sasuke stared at him mutely. His expression seemed dangerously brittle, full of a hungering need. It was unacceptable. Some sort of delusion was at work here. They might share a favorite person, but that didn’t make them kindred spirits, and it sure as hell didn’t make them friends.

“Come here,” Shisui said. Sasuke came to him, willing and completely unguarded, like he was expecting a hug, some gesture of comfort, a friendly touch. Instead, Shisui took him by the shoulder, leaned down, and said, “I’ll tell you a story, okay? Listen.”

“It’s a pretty short story,” he said pleasantly. “It’s about this guy, right? He lives in a village, and as far everybody else is concerned, he’s a decent guy. A decent guy with a younger brother. And it’s about this girl, who also has a brother. And this other guy, also a brother, an older one. And one other girl, now she has a sister. And you know what all of those people have in common?”

Silently, Sasuke shook his head.

Smiling very slightly, Shisui said, “I killed them all this year. Really, I’d show you my mission log, if it weren’t completely confidential. I never met any of them until the day I cut their throats, or broke their minds, or whatever. All I knew about them, I learned from recon reports. All this in a three-week span. Impressive, right? Now you know why they call me one of the best. That’s what you want too, isn’t it?”

“So that’s the story.” He let go of Sasuke’s shoulder. “And the moral of this story is that you can’t depend on other people to lick your wounds. The sooner you learn that, the easier it’ll be for you down the line, understand?”

The expression on Sasuke’s face, already unstable, finally collapsed like a tent bereft of its poles, quietly but suddenly. Shisui couldn’t help but think bitterly that all this just happened to dovetail so nicely into the odd little pattern their relationship had fallen into these past few weeks. All for the best, really.

“I hate you,” Sasuke screamed, scrunching his eyes up in an effort to push back tears. If the sky weren’t so wide, his voice would echo. “You’re supposed to be his friend. I hate you. I hope you die.”

Shisui reined in a bitter smile, watching Sasuke wheel away from him and run in the opposite direction, wiping his eyes furiously. In Sasuke’s place, maybe he’d want the same thing.

There was time enough for that. His decision was nothing more than insurance for the future; at this moment, he still had the present to contend with. Sasuke was only eight. He still had both of his parents, clean hands, a nice pat future, he’d get over it. With any luck, so would the rest of the eight-year-olds in the clan. Made the right sacrifices, and you wouldn’t have to make too many of them.

That was why it mattered, right?

He needed to be doing something. It was a bad day to be a certain training post, because it was about to get the shit torched out of it in T-minus 5 minutes. It wasn’t much, but it was something.

Something prodded the back of his mind. He looked up at the sky, to the west, where a flock of birds were flying in a circle.

*

If he hadn’t been so preoccupied with certain new developments in his life, Shisui would have remembered that he had meant to investigate the mystery of the forest. Now was as good a time as any. He took the shortcut by way of the river, cutting through the reed beds on its far bank, still verdant in late summer. Blood hit the sky. The evening wind was beginning to pick up when he entered the mouth of the trees, and it took him approximately two seconds to realize that he was probably walking into a trap.

But all the old books had it right. You couldn’t nab the cub without entering the tiger’s den.

Warily, he stalked through the underbrush, expecting at any moment an attack or the freaking sky to be dropped on his head.

And came it did, in the form of a small black blur zipping through the space that, hadn’t he moved out of the way, would have been occupied by Shisui’s head.

What the fuck was that?

Two seconds later, another shadow went whizzing past. Then another. And another. Soon he was dodging fulltime, assailed from all directions. It felt like being shot at, except as far as he could tell there wasn’t a sniper in the area, and anyway, a sniper couldn’t be everywhere at once, right?

Another flurry rushed him—the bullets, for lack of a better name, seemed to be multiplying by the second—and he didn’t launch himself away quickly enough. One of the shadow bullets sliced right through his upper arm, leaving a stinging burn. He stumbled, just for a fraction of a second, and barely snapped his head back in time to avoid another direct headshot, which grazed across his eyebrow instead. Blood trickled eagerly into his eye. Shisui wiped it away, and let his Sharingan flare to life.

There. Now he could see.

It was, all things considered, pretty embarrassing to be caught in a genjutsu without even realizing it, but in his defense, it was a pretty unusual one. Shisui licked the swipe of blood off his knuckle as he reassessed his situation. Realistic genjutsu he’d dealt with in spades, but this wasn’t it. Neither was he incapacitated, lying somewhere on the forest ground while his mind was violated. No, he was still in possession of his senses—it was the environment that had been altered.

The shadows had him surrounded, spawned from the very darkness that shrouded the forest. Hostile chakra all around, the air saturated with it, alive with a buzzing sound reminiscent of hungry locusts.

Yes, he could see now.

This was a maze.

Currently, he was on the outer edges, and these… things, whatever they were, were no more than sentries keeping guard. So there must be something that needed guarding. Somewhere at the heart of this elaborate puzzle lay the answer to his mystery, and from the looks of it, the answer was determined to make things a little too interesting for him on the way in.

But then? He was pretty sure he’d fought worse.

And? Reading chakra flows was practically his specialty.

The mass of shadows roiled restlessly like a wave, and exploded outward without warning, sentient shrapnel hungry for blood. Shisui bent double, clawed out a quick seal—and he was in the air. A bullet sliced right through his body, which flickered and vanished. Just a mirage with a fake chakra signature. He was about a dozen yards ahead.

And then there was nothing but the motion of his body, more natural than breathing, more perfect than oxygen. Nothing fancy. Take it back to basics, Uchiha. Take it back to basics. Inside the silence of his flesh, his blood was roaring, every nerve in his body singing the shrill, frenzied song of fight or flight, fight or flight, fight or flight.

It all came down to speed and instinct. This was the move that’d earned him his name, the last image that many of Uchiha Shisui’s enemies had seen—or rather, hadn’t seen—right before they’d died. Shadows were peppering him left and right, but he was beyond their reach now. His body left a trail of afterimages, a smear of decoys that dissipated upon contact with the bullets. A simple, but useful modification.

But the swarm didn’t give up. They were annoyingly persistent. Shisui counted his leaps as they came. His highest record up until now had been 350 consecutive Shunshin steps—currently, he was pushing 400, and starting to feel it. Soon, he’d have to stop to catch his breath; something told him his pursuers did not share this limitation. If he didn’t figure out the way to the center of this artificial space, he’d never be able to throw them off, and it was only a matter of time before his stamina gave out…

430.

440.

45—found it!

The ground dropped out from beneath him.

Not a problem. His body shifted into automatic semi-controlled fall and braced for impact…

…which was approaching much faster than anticipated. He was being jerked downward by a sudden immense gravity, and had zero time for preparation. The ground he hit felt more like concrete than any cushy forest floor, and not even his adjusted stance kept him from dislocating his shoulder, but he just shifted quickly to his side and slammed it into the ground, once.

Felt it pop back into place.

Good.

He would definitely be feeling that later when the adrenaline wore off, but right now…

Right now the physics of his surroundings were changing again. Shisui leapt, but didn’t get very far before his body fell flat to the ground, dragged down by the stupendous force of gravity. He tried to push himself up, and cried out in pain as the muscles in his bad shoulder snapped and strained. It was like being caught on a sheet of flypaper, fastened in place with hot glue. I’m just an insect here, Shisui thought furiously. Strapped down with nowhere to fly.

Footsteps sounded somewhere to his left. Shisui’s spine stiffened, his heart thudding wildly in his chest.

“Very impressive,” said a cold voice, sexless and disgustingly conversational. “You move like a phantasm, and you can even read the energy flow well enough to navigate within my illusion. A highly commendable effort.”

The new arrival was now standing right next to his ear. If he could just turn his head, just a few inches…

“But this is still a controlled environment. As a genjutsu user, you should have anticipated that.”

Shisui tried to raise his head and something hard—a heel—slammed flat across his nape, sending little flowers of pain blossoming on the back of his eyelids as his face hit the ground. A coppery taste filled his mouth, wet and raw.

“That’s enough now. When you know that you can’t win, it is wiser to stand down.”

“That’s what you think,” Shisui growled, and drew his consciousness into himself, let the Sharingan swirl. Reached out for a foreign strand of consciousness, for a sign that would prove his opponent was even human and…

Nothing.

The pressure removed itself from his neck, and with it, the choking hold of gravity. Shisui rolled onto his side, and a foot smashed into his solar plexus, doubling him over like a shrimp. Before he had time to catch the next shattered breath, down it came again, stomping square across his outstretched wrist. Started grinding. He heard rather than felt the crunch of bones.

Yeah, that was no genjutsu.

“So you think you can do better?” the voice asked mockingly. “I’ll give you another chance. Let’s see what you’ll make of it.”

A flash of movement off to his peripheral right. Shisui lunged, faster than humanly possible but still – too – slow. His body jerked into immobility in midair, and plummeted to the ground again. Even strengthened with chakra, his bones gave a sickening crack.

“Was that all? I feel let down. Surely you can do better than that.”

He was being toyed with, like a mouse that couldn’t even see the cat’s paw coming down until its spine had already been crushed. “Fucking coward,” he hissed. “Show yourself. I’ll take your head off.”

Eyes wide open, nerves singing, Sharingan burning through his chakra reserve like a bushfire, but still he couldn’t see anyone around. Either his enemy was invisible, or he was blind. Whatever that presence out there might be, he was at its complete mercy. It wouldn’t even need a weapon. Just one kick, one blow to the throat, one something and he’d be…

No.

The skin of Shisui’s knuckles split open as he slammed his fist into the ground. Push. He had to push for it. It had to be there, that strand of consciousness. He just had to look harder. He had to find it, and grab hold of it, because in this fight, it didn’t matter if you were strong enough or fast enough or clever enough. Finding that elusive wisp was all it’d take to turn this battle around.

Contact.

And once again, he was floating in the sweet cool of that deep, black water. He let it wash over him for a moment, a cool balm over his injuries, and then began to seek out his opponent. There would be no mercy shown today. Once he had wrapped his fist around that mind—and it wouldn’t take long, with no other minds around to distract him—he would crush it to bits.

Below him. A very faint presence. Weak.

Shisui smiled to himself, and started to follow the wavering trace. Can’t get away from me now. Let’s see who needs to do better, you bastard.

He sank deeper and deeper, sensing the signal grow as he approached. It was like deep-diving for pearls, and the pearl wouldn’t know what hit it.

Closer and closer…

The signal growing stronger, practically jumping out at him now…

Almost there…

The realization slammed into Shisui’s chest like a stone fist, nearly knocking the breath out of him. He floundered in the water, trying to halt his descent, but there was nothing to hold on to. His legs kicked back and forth uselessly. Oh God. Oh God. What he had taken for a weak, crushable thing was actually a behemoth, a monster lurking in the shadowy depth of these treacherous waters, and he had to get away, get as far away as possible before it noticed his presence. Because when it did…

When it did, the sharp, foul claws would reach for his tiny, insignificant essence, and tear it to shreds.

Shisui’s heart quivered and recoiled. He had made a gargantuan mistake. He was no Susano-o, he had not been called upon to slay the serpent in the deep. He was just a boy, a weak, pathetic little boy who couldn’t even protect those he loved, how could he possibly triumph here? He was the inferior one, he had to escape before his mind was cut into quadrants, and then he was swimming frantically, rising through the darkness, but instead of breaking through the surface of the murky water, emerging to sunlight and open air, he was caught, he was being dragged down, down, down into the deep…

He made the mistake of opening his mouth in a silent scream, which drove all the oxygen out of his lungs.

The mind within him shrank in on itself, screaming.

(Why?)

He was face down on the ground, but he was still in the water, sinking fast, got to fight it. He was still in the water, but he was on the ground. Why was he still in the water if he was on the ground? How could he be on the ground if he was still in the water? How? Why? How? Why?

(Why am I so weak?)

He couldn’t move. There was no way out. He was trapped, like a cornered rat. Oh God, I don’t want to die, please, no, I don’t want t—

(If I were stronger, I could have gotten out.)

The death of the mind was analogous with the death of the body. The death of the mind was analogous with the death of the body. The death of the mind, the death of the mind, the death of the mind…

(If I were stronger, I could have protected them.)

Not enough. He was so weak, still so weak.

Not enough.

(If I were, were, were, were, were…)

“Not enough,” Shisui rasped, in a voice he barely recognized as his own. His fingers clawed into the hard ground, skin shredding, slippery with blood and grit as his nails broke off one – by – one.

“I need… I need more.”

He coughed, and pain stabbed into his chest. A red, bubbling froth welled up over his lips, blending into the red mist in his vision, then fading, to purple, then black. He could feel his consciousness cracking under that immense pressure, threatening to shatter into a million bloodied shards. Soon, his mind would be crushed, and he would be lost. His skin was sloughing off, flaking off like a chrysalis, making way for something new to emerge, something alien and grotesque—inhuman.

(More. More. More. More, more, more, more, more…)

“Power.”

It was over.

He was not in the water. He was on the ground, gasping for breath, and it was over. All was still. There was a pressure in his head, like when you had to sneeze but couldn’t, and it just built and built and built.

“You want more power,” said the faceless voice. Shisui could barely make out the words through the ringing in his ears. “That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it?”

“I understand how you feel. You lived like a blind man for most of your life, complacent in your own meager ability, thinking you were invincible just because you knew a few cheap tricks. Then one day, you opened your eyes and realized that the world was much bigger than you.”

His opponent was standing over him once more, and this time, he didn’t try to fight. This time, he stayed down and kept his head low in total surrender, prone and flightless.

“That’s why you decided to become what you are. You trained until you puked blood, you went further than any limits you’d ever set for yourself. You finally learned to separate the wheat from the chaff, to see what’s truly important—and for that, you only had to barter a piece of your humanity. You made yourself something above that, and in doing so, you set yourself apart from the rest of them.”

A long pause, and then the voice continued, “I admire that. And I understand.”

“What?” he heard himself mumble, his voice thick with blood. Could be internal bleeding. Wonderful.

“I know that you feel it too. Don’t you?”

“Feel what?”

“The hunger.”

What the hell was going on? What was being demanded of him?

“But what you can do is not as important as what you choose to do. All the power in the world won’t save the blind. Water is measured by thirst, glory by want. Do you know what it is that you want, boy?”

Yes, his battered mind screamed. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes...

He had one wish, only one wish, a wish he would weigh the entire world against, and he couldn’t die until he had let it free.

“Please… Please tell me… tell me where he is.”

The kick came out of nowhere, smashing into the side of his head. The tenuous breath rammed out of him. His neck flopped—why was it doing that, was it broken, had the muscles been turned to jelly?

He blacked out momentarily.

No more than a second or two, because he could still hear that high, cold voice, pronouncing his sentence as it slowly faded away.

“Disappointing…”

“But I suppose you’ve earned it.”

*

There were cicadas in the afterlife. Interesting.

Blackness. No movement. Blood seeping from his nose. A mossy, wallowing smell, like… moss?

As if overcoming tremendous resistance, his heart flipped over—in slow, uncertain beats—and kicked back in. The sound of it reverberated like thunder in his ears. Da-dunk. Da-dunk. Shisui rolled himself onto his back, gave a sharp, loud exhale of breath, and shuddered back to life. His mouth gaped open, dragging down air in large, broken gulps. Like resuscitation. Like birth.

He was alive, and his brain was already triaging the situation. He was a) still in the forest and b) lying in a way that made sharp twigs cut into the skin of his neck. Okay. He could work with that.

Shisui struggled to sit. Tried to move his left shoulder as subtly as possible. Not subtly enough, because it made a thread of pain shoot up the length of his neck, but it was acceptable for now. Serviceable. His hands were a total mess, of course, all the old scars burst open across the thatched palms and a bunch of new ones waiting to form, but flesh wounds hadn’t been worth fretting over since he’d been six.

Examined his wrist—and if he’d thought his shoulder hurt, this was a whole other world of pain. Probably a distal radius fracture, which meant a month in a splint at the very least. He reached into his weapon pouch and groped around for the packet of emergency pain-killers. Dry-swallowed the whole thing, and pretended it was just the taste that made him wince.

It’d take something a hell of a lot stronger to dull the hammering in his head—but frankly, he was damn lucky to still have a head at all. He had feelings in his legs. Whatever the hell this was, he would survive.

A muscle twitched suddenly in Shisui’s cheek, breaking open a cut that had had enough time to start healing. He—no, it wasn’t a mistake. He’d felt it. That chakra signature. Out there beyond the trees.

*

Shisui tore through the field of reeds, using no more stealth than what had become natural to him. Being noticed was the point. He ran on foot, fearing that if he took a Shunshin step his heart would rupture in his chest. He barely had the chakra to feed the Sharingan anymore, but pushed for it anyway, ignoring the pain that splintered out from behind his eyes. He had to watch out for movements—any movements at all. The trail was so faint and he was so exhausted, it would be so easy to miss…

There.

He shifted course, doglegged forty-five degrees to his right without slowing his pace, and hoped to God that he wasn’t hallucinating from the adrenaline rush to his brain. His feet skidded to a halt as he reached a clearing in the reeds, and…

And standing in the middle of it, awash in cool moonlight, was Itachi, the point of Shisui’s compass, looking as though the Earth had just reopened and spat him back out again.

The heart inside Shisui knitted itself together so quickly that it felt exactly like it was breaking all over again. He reeled toward Itachi, to hug him or hit him or kiss him or something, anything at all to prove that he was there and real and not a figment of Shisui’s fevered imagination. His mouth was already forming the shape of a word—a name, a curse, a confession—when Itachi turned around, and saw him.

Later, Shisui would think that, had he not had the shit beat out of him in the forest earlier, he would have been quick enough to move out of the way. Had his mind not been too busy sending off prayers of gratitude to God and Kami and Buddha and a host of other deities whose names he couldn’t pronounce, he wouldn’t have needed to move out of the way, because he would have already noticed.

He would have already noticed that Itachi was wearing his ANBU mask, that his sword was unsheathed and clutched in his hand. That the stalks of reed around him had been cleared in a wide swath, as though somebody had spent a good amount of time systematically cutting them down in cold, methodical rage.

The kind of anger that could, say, propel a person to charge at their perplexed best friend and crash into him with savage force, sending the both of them flying backward, and for the nth time that day, Shisui found himself on the ground, with the fun new addition of Itachi straddling him. Nice.

Shisui had at least fifteen pounds on Itachi, who was comparatively slight and frankly built like an anorexic girl, but the moment he landed on his back, he knew he had lost the advantage. With Itachi’s knees digging into the side of his ribs, he could neither reach his weapon pouch nor move his hands to form a seal, and with the slick katana blade pressed against his throat, his chances of physically disarming Itachi and freeing himself were significantly reduced.

It wasn’t that he’d forgotten what Itachi could do. It was just that, outside of sparring sessions, Shisui had never expected that strength to be used against him.

He’d do well not to make that mistake again.

“Itachi,” Shisui said slowly, “would you mind getting that sword away from my neck?”

Itachi seemed not to hear him. The moon shone clear over his shoulders, the strong wind blowing clouds like skeins of dirty cotton across the sky. The hand not gripped around the sword’s handle was on Shisui, forcing his shoulder to the ground. He could hear his bones creak as a dull pain crept across his body—and now he was officially pissed. Now he had had enough. He had put up with way too much tonight, and he wasn’t here to play games. If it were anybody else, he would have already had the person writhing on the ground clutching their head, or gasping from a sharp blade driven up between two ribs.

If it were anybody else…

Do it.

Maybe it was just the painkillers making his head all fuzzy, but that thought sure didn’t seem to have come from him.

Do it. You know you want to, you know you should.

Do it, and he’ll never be out of your sight again. He’ll always be safe, and he’ll do whatever you want. Your every wish. It’s the right thing to do.

He’ll be yours.

That’s what you want, isn’t it?

Isn’t it?

Something wet and hot hit his cheek. Shisui blinked, and his mind was clear again.

“Shisui,” Itachi whispered. “You came for me.”

With a slow blink, Shisui deactivated his Sharingan. He stared unwaveringly into the dark slits presumably shielding Itachi’s eyes, willing their gaze to lock.

“Of course I came for you. I’ll always come for you.”

Itachi’s entire body convulsed in a heavy, spasmodic shudder. He slid bonelessly off of Shisui, and threw his sword aside. In a frantic movement, he ripped off his mask, bent double, and vomited green bile on the dry dirt.

Shisui pulled himself up, minding his various injuries. He shook the numbness out of his body, and carefully edged toward Itachi, who was still sailing the Good Ship Puking to My Death, making horrible retching sounds as his shoulders seized. For no reason, he picked up the mask Itachi had discarded. The inside of it felt wet against his fingers, the lacquered surface slick with water—and so was Itachi’s face when the moonlight caught his skin, skating off his sweat-daubed forehead.

“Hey,” Shisui said softly. “Hey, look at me.”

He reached out and cupped Itachi’s chin, tilting his face up. His skin was stark white, and there were dark areas under his opaque, unfocused eyes, swollen like bruises. Shisui unhooked Itachi’s breastplate and dropped it to the ground, next to the katana and the mask—all the deadly toys that they had accumulated in their attempts to outrun each other to adulthood, now as good as junks. All the accoutrements gone, and then there was just his best friend, unshackled and whole, returned to Shisui by the fates.

All the darkness that had been injected into him dissolved into nothing, poison sucked out of a wound. He was trapped in a gravitational field—caught in Itachi’s orbit, inexorably drawn to him regardless of the distance in between.

Feeling positively unhinged, Shisui leaned forward and carefully pressed their foreheads together. Itachi’s breath felt warm on his cheeks. He was grateful that he’d left his hitai-ate at home today, because in terms of comfort skin beat metal, hands down.

“We need to get you cleaned up,” he muttered. “I think the river is just down that way. Let’s…”

He changed his mind mid-sentence. Given the way Itachi’s body was wilted like a broken lily-stem, that course of action probably wouldn’t work out so hot.

“Put your arms around my neck,” he said quietly. “Go on, just do it.”

Itachi complied without a word. He stopped shaking, but did not stop holding on.

“Ready? Up we go.”

Itachi stumbled a little when Shisui scooped him up to his feet. Shisui caught him, and then they were sagged against each other, holding fast. His face ended up buried in Itachi’s right shoulder, which should have been highly awkward but wasn’t, just their bodies slotting together like old puzzle pieces. Edges worn to fit. It was kind of amazing, Shisui reflected, that his face hadn’t formed a permanent dent in the shape of Itachi’s shoulder blade by now, given the sheer ridiculous number of times he had awoken from a lazy cat nap to find his head pillowed there: during soporific lectures, on interminably boring stakeouts—once, in the sultry hollow beneath a tree, with a north country storm roaring across the sky.

“Geez,” Shisui said, “who’d have imagined our first hug would be like this, huh?”

It must be a sign that he still understood his target audience, because his words elicited from Itachi a wry laugh—a soft, broken, slightly hysterical sound muffled into the juncture where Shisui’s neck met his shoulder. The choked tremor sent a trill of shivers rippling down the length of his spine. He thought he could feel Itachi’s heartbeat, faint and uneven against his chest.

It made something inside Shisui crack open and overflow, warm and profuse, like all of the scars inside him had been ripped clean open. He tightened the circle of his arms, crushed Itachi’s smaller body against his. He should have done this forever ago. He should have done this the moment he’d laid eyes on Itachi. He should never have let go.

“Welcome back, kiddo,” Shisui whispered, voice going a little throbby. He couldn’t help himself from pressing his nose briefly into the soft crook of Itachi’s neck, inhaling the warm, familiar scent of his tired skin—tipping his grateful smile down onto that graceful curvature like an imprint.

Then he bent his knees, and used the leverage to hoist Itachi’s body up halfway over his uninjured shoulder, like a laborer heaving a sack of grains. For a moment, he was worried that his body wouldn’t be able to handle the single-shoulder carry, but it was a nonissue. Itachi felt almost weightless in his arms—and fittingly so, because Itachi was not a burden, and would never be, regardless of how much baggage he brought into Shisui’s life.

Gathering himself carefully, Shisui steadied his steps, and began to follow the distant sound of water.

*

The river opened up behind the last curtain of reeds, dyed in silvery moonlight. The light almost hurt Shisui’s eyes, which still hadn’t recovered from Sharingan-abuse. The water was sequined with it, dripping with the liquefaction of colors that summer nights produced. Shisui set Itachi down on the lip of sand that kissed the river edge, and gently peeled off his gloves, then the sweat-soaked turtleneck, which he balled up to dip in the river. The water felt cool and soothing on his tattered hands.

He worked quickly and efficiently, wiping Itachi down from head to torso, moving the wet cloth lightly over his back—which, as Shisui had surmised, was also covered in bruises, now faded green and yellow. Shisui stared at them for a moment, and then pulled off the v-neck he was wearing over his undershirt and tossed it into Itachi’s lap. When Itachi just stared at it, fingering the dark material thoughtfully, Shisui grabbed the shirt from him, dragged it over his head and manhandled his unresponsive limbs into the armholes, readjusting the wide collar that threatened to slip over the slope of his shoulders.

“This feels weirdly familiar,” he muttered to himself, wiping Itachi’s cheek in slow circles with the wadded up shirt.

Itachi’s lips tilted softly upward. I kissed him there, Shisui thought, his face heating slightly at the memory of lingering warmth. It felt like something from a whole other lifetime.

“You’ve gotten better at this,” Itachi said. Shisui knew he was thinking of that first day, when they had run to the river after the scuffle with Douchey Classmate 1, 2, and 3. God, had he really used to think that busted lips hurt?

“Practice really does make perfect,” he said blandly. “You didn’t even help. You just sat there. And then the raid siren went off, and you ran. Didn’t even let me introduce myself.”

“Emergency response protocols stated that children were to report to a parent or guardian in the event of a raid,” Itachi said. “I found you again the next day.”

“Yeah, I remember. You already knew who I was by then.”

“I asked.”

Had he now? That must have been an interesting conversation. Shisui wondered how Fugaku might have reacted to his son’s question. Perhaps the seed of defiance had already been planted in him even at the tender, milk-toothy age of four—and really, that surprised him not at all.

Done with his nursing duties, Shisui tossed aside the wet shirt and settled down next to Itachi on the bank. Silence fell around them, thick and heavy. There were a million questions he wanted to ask, but looking at Itachi’s tired face, the listless slump of his shoulders, Shisui found he couldn’t bring himself to voice them. Later, he told himself. I’ll have time to ask later. There would be time.

What could he say instead?

Guess what? Kagura-san asked me out, and I turned her down.

So we’ll be working together again soon. Got any cool mission in mind?

I fought a demon or something today. Almost lost my life. Don’t suppose you care.

He said, “You want to hear something freaky? I used mind control on Danzou.”

Any other person would have at least raised an alarmed eyebrow, but Itachi barely even looked up.

“Well, he sort of asked for it—no, like, literally,” Shisui explained. “But here’s the thing. When I was in his mind, when I had control over him—I really wanted to kill him, Itachi.”

He stopped and stared at his hands, red and blistered. “I came so close to doing it. I don’t know what came over me, and I don’t even really know what stopped me in the end, but for a moment there, I just wanted to snap the bastard’s neck. Or you know, make him snap his own neck. Or something.”

His voice consolidated in his throat. “I tried to murder one of the village’s leaders.” And I’d do it again in a heartbeat.

But that’s not even the worst thing. That’s not even skirting the tip of the Bad Things iceberg. The worst thing is that I went to the clan. I sold you down the river, you and everybody else in this village—but mostly you. You probably won’t forgive me, will probably hate me for it, but I don’t think I care, because at least that means you’ll still be around to do it.

You, you, you.

“Shisui,” Itachi said. “Would you ever use that technique on me?”

“Very funny, you jerk,” Shisui muttered, crabby. “Don’t think I’m not tempted to. Maybe then you’ll keep your ass out of trouble, huh? Free will’s overrated anyway.”

Itachi was unfazed. “So you’re saying that you would,” he said matter-of-factly, and Shisui was once again filled with the urge to take him by his stupid bony shoulders and shake, shake, shake.

“Of course I wouldn’t use it on you,” he snapped. “Damn it, what is wrong with you?” When he had time, he would try to make a comprehensive list. “Probably wouldn’t even work anyway. You’re so pigheaded you’d probably just do whatever you want even if you were under mind control.”

Itachi said nothing in return. Again, they sat in uncommuning silence, each alone with his thoughts.

If he were totally honest with himself, Shisui had to admit that he was afraid. He wasn’t sure if he would have enough strength to drag Itachi away from these dark forces, all the amassing demons and ghosts that flocked around him, raking into his flesh with their foul claws and leaving imprints in the shape of flowering bruises. He wasn’t sure he was up to the task, and that slithering doubt scared him shitless, because for perhaps the first time ever, this felt like a fight he wasn’t going to win.

Once more, Shisui could see himself standing on the far side of a desolate no-man’s-land, wreathed with smoke, the smell of rot and cordite. Itachi was on the other side, and when he broke into a run, so did Shisui, leaping over bodies and fallen weapons to clear the distance. At midway, their little, not-yet-calloused hands found each other, and together, they sank into the earth.

“One day,” Itachi said abruptly, “perhaps not far from now, I will ask you to do something for me.”

Shisui stared at him in question, but Itachi didn’t seem to notice. His eyes fluttered shut as he sucked a short, ragged breath in through his nose, quietly let it out again.

“Promise me that, when that day comes, you will do exactly as I ask.”

“Do what?” Shisui said. “What the hell are you talking about?”

Itachi shook his head. “I can’t tell you,” he said. “But I need you to promise you will do it.”

“But…”

Itachi’s eyes snapped open then, dark and endless in the ghostly light reflecting off the water. “Shisui,” he said gravely. “Have I ever asked you for anything before?”

Shisui opened his mouth to speak, but closed it with an audible click. He knew Itachi was right. He had never asked anything of Shisui for as long as they’d known each other, and even though Shisui likely owed him favors enough for this and future lifetimes, he had never come to collect on those either.

But why couldn’t he shake the feeling that—given the way the question had been phrased—Itachi was actually asking him for some kind of permission rather than making a request?

“You’re right,” he said. “I do owe you.” The words were practically tripping out of his mouth now, losing foothold over the tip of his tongue. “But, look. I can’t—I can’t just agree to something I don’t know anything about. I mean, how do I even know if this is something I can do, you know? If I promise to do something that turns out I’m not capable of doing, it would be the same as lying to you.”

At this, Itachi gave him a look of such pronounced weariness that Shisui felt something hard back up in his throat. His head was filled with noise, an angry voice that sounded suspiciously like his dad, ordering Shisui to give it up and just make the damn promise already, he’d been taught better than that, didn’t he see what an asshole he was being?

With inhuman resolve, he forced that voice back into the dark of his mind, and slammed the door on it. He held his gaze, waiting for an answer.

“It is,” Itachi said at last, “a very difficult task.” His voice was thick, almost slurring around the words. The density of it devastated the still, still air.

“Well, no shit if you’re being such a spook about it,” Shisui said, frustration whetting his tone. “Look, I don’t care how hard it is, just tell me outright if this—this task you’re going to ask me to do—is it something that I can do?”

There was a long silence, punctuated only by the ceaseless trilling of the cicadas. Shisui waited, holding his breath, and presently…

“Yes.”

“Then alright!” Shisui said, a little too emphatically, wild about the edges. “I promise that if it’s something within my power to accomplish, I will make sure to do whatever you ask. I swear. On my mother’s and my father’s graves.”

Itachi turned away from him. “You don’t have to do that,” he said. “I just wanted to hear you promise.”

“Well, there you go,” Shisui insisted. He wished Itachi would look at him, but then didn’t, because he wasn’t certain he would like what he might see. “So everything’s okay?”

In response, Itachi gave a faint snort—mostly an outward rush of air. Ineffably bitter. “Yes,” he said, almost too softly to be heard. “If you promise, then everything will be okay.” A smile ghosted over his lips, faint and unbearably remote, a fleeting trace of moonlight. “Thank you.”

Drowning in Shisui’s sloppy, overlarge shirt, Itachi seemed so strange and solemn with that intense light spilling all around him. A silver negative that lived in a space of his own absorption, somewhere Shisui couldn’t touch. The ripple of the water made moving shadows on his white throat. Though nothing about him had notably changed, he nevertheless seemed like a whole different person from the boy Shisui had known all his life. His eyes were vivid and sharp, like dots of ink. The gods of old paintings had eyes like those, eyes that saw only visions of another realm.

Once, Shisui had believed that theirs was a changeless friendship, which would persist even if they were old or maimed or dead. The realization that maybe he had been wrong hobbled him, cutting off his every tack of thought. Snapping ropes, rending sails, striking down his mast. His heart heavy with dread. Things had changed, were changing still, and even though he had gotten Itachi back, Shisui knew they would never be able to go back to the life they’d had before.

But the tenderness unfurling within his chest was the same, and so was the memory of Itachi’s heartbeat, a faint, fluttering, possibly-imagined tremor against Shisui’s breastbone. And if these things were the same then everything else had to be the same—the same as they had always been since Shisui had at the age of six wiped blood from his lips and decided that, really, taciturn four-year-olds with prematurely-lined eyes weren’t so bad. Everything was the same, even if it didn’t feel that way, because that was how the story had been written, right? In his bone, in his flesh, in the arteries and chambers of his heart—an internal map—and as long as it was there, he could never stray.

It was still summer, but late night brought the chill, and Shisui shivered in his flimsy shirt, felt goosebumps mushrooming across his skin. Behind them, the stalks of reed rustled eerily in the soughing wind. His ears were still ricocheting with the shrill song of the cicadas—did they ever fucking stop?

He’d better go take care of that wrist if he planned on ever using it again.

“Let’s get out of here,” Shisui said, rising to his feet and brushing his clothes of imaginary dirt. He looked down at Itachi, and added uncertainly, “You want to stay over again?”

Itachi met his gaze blankly. For reasons unknown, Shisui began to feel flustered.

“I mean, you definitely have to go home and let them know you’re alright,” he prevaricated. “But it’s pretty late, and if your mother or Sasuke sees you like this, they’ll lose their shit.”

Itachi’s brows furrowed. “I’m not injured. My family has seen me in direr states than this.”

Shisui frowned back at him. “Yeah, and so have I, but that’s not the point, is it?” He stuffed his hands into his pockets, and went on awkwardly, “So you following me or what?”

Itachi’s eyes widened. “What did you say?”

“I asked,” Shisui said, “if you’re going to follow me.”

The sand at Itachi’s feet scattered as he scrambled forward. “Yes,” he said, in a choking rush, like the word might be snatched away if he didn’t give it substance fast enough. “Yes, Uchiha Shisui, I will follow you.”

Shisui’s mouth fell open, but before he could say anything, Itachi had dipped his head, stress-limp hair falling to shield his face. His shoulders shook in a faint, low-grade tremor. Shisui thought he might be laughing soundlessly to himself, but it was hard to tell for sure. He certainly couldn’t find any humor in this situation, and that made a cold breath of fear shiver through him.

Another minute passed. When Itachi looked up again, his face had smoothed back into impassivity—yet when he opened his mouth to speak, it was to utter a statement even more asinine than the last:

“Will you wait for me?”

Shisui wanted to yell, “I’m waiting right now,” but realized suddenly this wasn’t the question he was being asked. He wasn’t sure what that question was, but he had a feeling that it wasn’t his place to know.

So instead, he nodded and said, “Yeah, I’ll wait. I will wait for you.”

The weight of two blind promises sank down into his bones, filling the fleshy linings of his heart with lead, but it seemed to lift a heavy burden from Itachi, because he slid fluidly to his feet, with all the grace Shisui had come to know so well. Tossed his hair back, shook out his weary limbs, and said, “Alright then.” Precise as a paper-cut, every wrinkle of disturbance ironed flat. “Let’s go home.”

Shisui nodded silently. He began walking up the bank, but made terrible progress because he couldn’t seem to stop glancing over his shoulder every couple of seconds just to make sure that Itachi was still there, that he hadn’t vanished, been swallowed up by the ground again while Shisui hadn’t been looking. After a few minutes of this, Itachi finally noticed his anxiety. He quickened his pace, until they were nearly abreast, and silently took Shisui’s wrist in his hand. Leading, but at the same time allowing himself to be led. This was it, the swaying give-and-take rhythm that had always traced the veins of their friendship, giving life to its pulse. It made something flare up within Shisui again, a kind of solemn, blossoming warmth that made him feel for the first time that maybe, just maybe, he could do this.

In his heart of heart, he knew that this was far from over. Dark days lay ahead of them, and tomorrow morning there would be things to worry about—Danzou, his deal with Fugaku, the malevolent entity in the forest. But for now, with the light curl of thin fingers around his wrist holding down his place in the universe, steady as the earth, all-enveloping as the sky, all of that ceased to matter. He was Uchiha Shisui, Shisui the Mirage, Scourge of the Underworld, and as long as he still had something to fight for, not even an army from hell could make him stand down.

So let them come, Shisui thought, squaring his shoulders as they walked together into the unwavering darkness ahead.

Let them take their best shot.

*

I felt soft fingers at my throat
It seemed someone was strangling me

The lips were hard as they were sweet
It seemed someone was kissing me

My vital bones about to crack
I gaped into another's eyes

I saw it was a face I knew
A face as sweet as it was grim

It did not smile it did not weep
Its eyes were wide and white its skin

I did not smile I did not weep
I raised my hand touched its cheek

(Harold Pinter, “Ghost”)

________________________________________

A/N: I know this story has major issues, but still, it's the fic that started it all, so... yay yay, it's done it's done! And about time too, I'm getting kind of fed up with this characterization of Shisui.

Writing Inception fic for onthecount. At the astounding rate of ten sentences per day, I should finish around Christmas.

[fic] [khr!] Une Chanson Pour La Dame Perséphone

ronsard — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 21:22:32 GMT

So the final deadline for bitter_nakano's summer exchange is TODAY. Crazy, right? Where did the summer go? And even though I'm so nervous I almost drank nail polish remover instead of coffee just now, I'm also full of warm, gooey feelings. By tonight, I will know whether we can start posting tomorrow ♥

(Seriously, I'm about to have a cardiac incident here. I'm clearly the most incompetent mod ever, how do people do this?)

Somehow, amidst all this madness, I miraculously managed to finish something for oh_shit_santa's Summer Fest. I'm going to count this as my belated contribution to International Day of Femslash as well. Random-ass pairing is random.

Title: Une Chanson Pour La Dame Perséphone
Fandom: Katekyo Hitman Reborn!
Pairings: M.M./Chrome, mentioned Mukuro/Chrome and Mukuro/M.M.
Rating: R for femmeslash :)
Disclaimer: KHR and all its characters are not my property.
Summary: Your enemy is sleeping, and his woman is free.

( The context is more important than the concept. )

I have also been tepidly following the postings over at sn_exchange, and subsequently discovered that... I don't remember anything about this pairing, or why I liked it in the first place :| There is one fic that knocked my socks off, though: RUN. It is all kinds of delicious, m'mmm.

[fic] The Great Pantomime

ronsard — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 11:07:20 GMT

I was trying to figure out what Shisui could have been doing for Madara in The Burning of Paper Instead of Children. Anyway, this story isn’t it, but it was way more fun to write. It should either make you laugh or creep you out - if it does both, I'd be very chuffed.

Title: The Great Pantomime
Fandom: Naruto
Pairing: Madara/Shisui
Summary: A villain knows his heroes.
Warnings: I will warn for... Madara? Purple prose? These two seem to go hand in hand for me. Blah blah, Uchihacest Special Creepass Edition, you know what to expect.

The Great Pantomime

Hide a knife behind a smile.

* * *

A meeting:

Footsteps sound on the rotting pier. The clack-clack-clacking of wooden sandals, punctuated by a heavy, painful clumping, stairstepped. The young man – a boy, really – snaps his head the way he’s been taught, but the willowy figure in the fog poses no threat to one such as him.

“My apologies. Did I disturb you?”

“No. No, not at all.”

Eyes meet, dark to dark. The mist swells over still water, thins away to reveal, and the boy stares, lips parted. Clean bones and creamy skin in this diluted light; a faded green yukata just-so opened to expose the suggestion of sharp clavicles. It’s quite the sight, for thirteen-year-old eyes.

“I did not think anyone else knew of this place. I’ve come here every day for the last seven years, and this is the first time I’ve been found out.”

“I can go – if you want. Sorry, I didn’t know...”

“Why should you be sorry? Stay. I’d like the company, if you wouldn’t mind.”

The man leans against his cane and turns his head, shakes out the soft rattle in the back of his throat, one that could signal illness or melancholy. Either could have accounted for his blighted gaze, his sunken eyes. Something moves inside the boy, a quivering something, small and swiftly beating – or perhaps just the beginning of it.

“Of course I can stay. May I ask – what is your name?”

*

Days before:

“So that was an Uchiha,” Kisame remarks. “Modern day edition. Looks a bit green, doesn’t he?”

“That only means he’s at his peak,” Madara says. “We as a people are not built for longevity.” He smiles scantly. “With the obvious exceptions.”

Kisame palms the handle of his sword. “All the same, I’d love to test his mettle.”

“We can’t have that. Isn’t it a big enough risk for you to enter Kiri during these times?”

“Monsters are only superstitions, Madara-sama. As far as the people of this village are concerned, I don’t exist.” His gaze turns thoughtful. “Of course, it probably doesn’t hurt to be a little cautious. Now that this country is no longer under our control.”

“That remains to be seen.”

He thinks of the arrival of the delegation from Konoha. The youngest among them, whose shoulder he knocked into outside the Mizukage’s palace. He was disguised as a filthy beggar, and the boy paid him no mind then, blindly dismissive of those below his mien. Nearly a century has past, but that trait, regrettably, hasn’t been bred out of them.

“You’re planning something,” Kisame says. “Would you mind telling me before I go?”

“You can call it an experiment in getting the most for the least amount of effort.”

“And the test subject?”

“You have to recognize an act of providence when it stares you in the face, Kisame.”

*

Some men are born heroes, and then there are those who need a little help.

A hero’s journey is clearly sectioned. It begins with isolation, because all heroes start out very, very lonely and very, very alone. As young babes they are sent drifting out to sea in a frail wicker coracle, to wash up on foreign shores. The ousting from the community mimics the severing of the umbilical cord: the first step everyone takes to stand on their own two feet.

Shisui is going through this elementary motion. The best from a long line of excellence, he left his father and mother, left his brothers and sisters, his home and fond relations: all for the sake of a pridefully held burden. One that, as it turns out, weighs less than a cork. Kirigakure has always been notoriously insular. It’s only recently that envoys from other villages have been allowed to enter the country, but even so diplomacy remains a polite fiction. The village keeps its miserly ways, and gives not a farthing to those who darken its doorstep.

With no purpose, and the way home barred, the hero-in-the-making suffers. The point of the first motion is to ease you into suffering, which, as anyone knows, is what heroes end up doing most of the time. For a novice like Shisui, the shock hits like an infliction. People are people are people. The whole of humanity is a family of sorts. Surrounded by an ocean of his species, why does this loneliness twist him so, choking his heart with the bile of desolation?

Madara can tell him that this desolation is nothing compared to, say, the golden, sun-washed desert, where the sand is fine like white sugar and the hot wind scoops up the sun and pours it down on the terrifyingly flat landscape. The clear blue sky is merciless to new outcasts who trudge to the summit of the tallest sand dune, tear off their armors and throw their arms wide open to scream at its bottomless face, IS THERE NOTHING ELSE YOU WANT TO TAKE?

But that was in another century.

*

Let’s try this again:

A hero needs, first and foremost, a lonesome path. Then, lonely and destitute, he will seek solace in an object of adoration.

This is where he comes in.

Beauty is important, but not just any kind. The lonely only seek others of their kind, so it must be the kind of beauty born for sorrow, for an elegant grief, the kind that would be painted and written down and remembered and celebrated, terrible but exquisite. That kind of beauty.

Of course, it’s also no good if the object appears unattainable. If there’s one quality that encompasses all heroes, it’s the pathological need to be needed.

That is why he limps.

It easily becomes a routine. Every day, after completing his meaningless duties, Shisui goes to the abandoned pier and waits for his strange new friend, who comes to him leaning on a birch cane for support, moving tenderly and somewhat unsteadily. Never falling of course, but retaining always the possibility of falling, loss of balance in an unspoken promise.

There’s no one else on the empty beach, just them, the waves, and the seabirds wheeling overhead. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Shisui casting him uncertain looks as he hobbles and strains, leaving a trail of imprints on the damp sand. His mouth twists after each particularly long step. “It only acts up when the weather is bad.”

Shisui sends a worried look at the curdled sky. “Perhaps we should head back, Kazuya-san.”

Names are souvenirs that he picks up and casts off when they no longer suit his purpose. This one is a remedy and that one is a weapon and this one scorches like the sun and that one kisses like the moon and this one saved a hundred lives and that one destroyed a thousand more.

Kazuya is an adornment.

The peaceful one. An imprecation, a curse, a malediction.

“You head back. I’ve kept you long enough.”

“You asked for my company. I’ll only go when you don’t want m—it anymore.”

*

On guidance:

Shisui smiles one day, lips and eyes. “I’m fourteen today.”

“That’s wonderful. You should have told me.”

After awhile, as the idle days spread soothing balm over the wound of his aimless loneliness, the hero will grow restless, and desire direction. Typically, a mentor will arise to provide it. Unfortunately, there’s no one around who feels obligated to give Shisui advice of any sort, and there isn’t time to conjure one. So, he’s taking shortcuts.

“We’ll celebrate,” Madara says, and because it’s September and everything is grey like ashes left over by the blaze of summer, they go for a drink.

Shisui has, from the first, kept his hands to himself, but he loosens up with the easeful glow of liquor, and boldly allows their elbows to touch, accidentally on purpose.

“Is fourteen a good age to be?”

“Being young is generally good. You’re on the brink. In the moment.”

“How old are you, Kazuya-san?”

“Too old for you,” he says, and hides a smile behind his cup as colors flood Shisui’s face. The boy doesn’t say much after that, focused with deadly intent on the glossy bottles that tumble in and out of his hand, waging a rigorous negotiation with himself.

Being on the brink also means teetering on the edge of a fall.

When the alcohol releases Shisui, the sun is high in the sky and the bedroll wrapped around him smells like smoke and ink. He finds his host by the well in the front yard, straining with the pulley. “Good morning, Shisui-kun. How does your head feel?”

“Alright,” Shisui says, wincing. “Is this where you live?” He casts his red-rimmed eyes around, takes in the cloves of dried garlic hanging from the rafters, the few chipped bowls on the table, the shoji doors badly in need of patching. The flagrant poverty alive in every object.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t offer you your own bed,” Madara says. “You should wash those clothes when you get back. They probably smell like me all over.”

“I don’t mind,” Shisui says. “I don’t mind smelling like you. I… Well…” His gaze snaps onto the bucket of water faithfully rising from the well’s depth. “That looks heavy. Let me do that.”

The current leaders of the Uchiha would be shocked if they could see their child wonder now, abusing his famed ninjutsu to help an outsider with the mundane business of living. His nervous energy drives him into a frenzy; he sweeps the yard, chops firewood, sorts radishes for pickling in a fraction of the time it would take another person. At the end of the hour, Shisui presents him the meal he has cobbled together, prouder than a soldier returning from a great victory.

But lunch is soon over, and as the sun slips from the apex of the sky, Shisui’s excitement fades. He lays his chopsticks across the empty bowl. “Is there anything else I can do for you, Kazuya-san?”

Madara shakes his head. “Thank you for the meal,” he says, and sends Shisui away, crestfallen.

*

A week passes and Shisui says again, “Is there anything else I can do for you, Kazuya-san?”

“At this rate, I’ll have to start fabricating problems just to pacify your persistence.”

“You always say that, but there’s so much to do around here.” He is, in fact, stubbornly attempting to mend a tatami square, despite Madara’s assurance that one mended mat won’t make much of a difference to the general décor.

“Don’t trouble yourself, Shisui-kun,” Madara says soothingly. “I’ve always managed.”

“Yes,” Shisui says. “But you shouldn’t have to.” He seems to catch himself, and presses on awkwardly, “Doesn’t it get lonely, living by yourself and so far away from everything? You should keep something for a companion. A pet, or…”

“Or what? A wife?”

Shisui’s mouth snaps shut. He puts down the tatami mat, props himself on the edge of the walkway and lets his knees swing a little, jittery.

Madara smirks. “Who would marry a cripple?”

“Please don’t say that,” Shisui pleads, the hurt obvious on his face. Standard procedure when a stray follows you home is to drown the whelp, but his personal protocol requires more finesse.

“Shisui-kun,” he begins. “You don’t like your current lodging very much, do you?”

“No,” Shisui says immediately. “I feel like I’m being watched all the time over there.”

Madara concedes that this is likely true. “Well, there is plenty of room here.”

Shisui’s eyes widen. “You really mean it?” he says, beaming like official housing provided by the Mizukage’s office is somehow deeply inferior to a ramshackle hut all but buried at the foot of the misty mountain.

“Of course, I can’t guarantee that you’ll find these accommodations very comfortable either.”

“Why not?”

“The roof leaks.”

“Does it?” Shisui says brightly. “I’ll fix it!” And just like that, he is gone in a whoosh of wind.

*

So Shisui moves in. He brings with him a small kalanchoe planted in a rice bowl – “These leaves make a good cure for coughs.” – and his unspoken desire, pressed tightly to the roof of his mouth. His time in Kiri should be nearing its end; his colleagues have begun, one by one, to hand in their final reports, glad to be released from their thankless job. But Shisui continues to delay his departure, making up excuses to stay behind, presumably so he can fix every tatami in the house.

Madara leafs through the pages. Even this far, they have only covered the preliminary stages. More than a beauty to worship, a mentor to venerate, a lonely road to travel, what a hero needs is a cause. So, shortly after the bell rings in the New Year, Madara gives him one.

“Wake up, Shisui-kun. We have to leave.”

Shisui throws the blanket aside and sits up, fully alert. “What’s wrong?”

“The village is under attack,” Madara says. “Put on your clothes. We have to move further up the mountain.”

So.

In the Year of the Tiger, the Kaguya clan launches an ambitious assault on Kirigakure. Under the cover of night, a mist as dense as a brick wall, they descend upon the sleeping village with less than 100 men, and slaughter ten times that number, two civilians for each shinobi they cut down.

The two of them stand at the edge of a rocky parapet and watch it all unfold, distant and out-of-focus. The darkness is alive with tiny bright dots that indicate the houses writhing in the forced embrace of the fire. Shisui, who has brought them here with three Shunshin steps – “I’m sorry about this, Kazuya-san, but please hold on.” – looks upon the sight with furrowed brows, which is strange because Madara is fairly certain he was alive during the Great War.

Then again, it’s unlikely he’s ever witnessed violence as senseless as this, not on this scale. The Kaguya make an art of war, turning each house, each street into a territory, and defend it to their last drop of blood. Blades to flesh, blows to bones: slaughter at its purest. Admirable.

But war, he knows, is won with numbers, and as waves upon blind waves of Kiri’s fighters sweep over them, the fire of the Kaguya is hacked down by this impersonal flood.

“Why are they doing this?” Shisui asks.

The correct answer would be: because they can. It’s the perpetual human condition, not stopping while you’re ahead, always trying to just take it and run. You have to understand the past in order to anticipate the future. He is so old that his grudges have rotted away inside him like the flesh of unpicked fruit, but the festering wounds they left ache still.

Instead, he says, “In your village, a bloodline limit is considered a mark of pride, isn’t it? Well, in this country, it is a damning brand. But people can only be trod upon for so long. If you shed their family’s blood and drive them ever deeper into the mountains, you shouldn’t be surprised that they will eventually rise against you.”

Shadows of other business are calling to him. Words from Sasori reveal that Orochimaru is prowling these lands. He must deal the finishing blow quickly, and be away – it’s improper to allow a place to be haunted by too many ghosts.

“You asked me once why I lived by myself.”

“Is it…” Shisui’s eyes widen. “Are you…?”

Madara can and will always say that he never lied to Shisui on that night. The boy has always drawn his own conclusions, and he simply doesn’t take the trouble to correct him. He shifts his weight uneasily, and Shisui’s eyes immediately fly to the cane, his lame stance. A dark wrinkle appears on the seat of his brows.

“Did they do that?”

Sometimes, silence is more effective than the most eloquent of words.

Shisui glares at the chaos below, infuriated. “They shouldn’t persecute you. They have no rights.”

“They are the ones who make the rules of this land. They have every right.”

“That’s wrong.” Shisui clenches his fists with force enough to bring pain. “I won’t stand for it.”

*

The house miraculously escaped the attack, so unlike many of Kiri’s residents, they are free to go back to their chaste, cordial life. The only thing that’s changed is the gathering hardness in Shisui’s eyes – and it just so happens that it’s the only change that matters.

“I want to be stronger,” Shisui says one day. “I need – I need to get better.”

Madara looks at him in question. “And why do you feel you need to be better?”

“Because – I want to help you.”

“Help me do what?”

The atmosphere between them is thick, viscous and slow-moving. Saturated with the stuff of deception, and yet not a single lie has been uttered. The beauty of it strips him to the bone. Fourteen is really not very many years. Even one more would have made all the difference.

“I want to help you take back this country.”

Were all confessions in the history of lovers as impressive as that.

“That’s gallant of you,” Madara says laughingly. “But how do you plan on doing that? You are leaving soon.”

Shisui grins at him, jaunty. “That’s just the thing. I was meaning to tell you, because of the instability caused by the attack, the Hokage’s finally approved my request to extend my post.” He neglects to disclose exactly when this particular request was made. “I’m in for the long haul now.”

There is something startling, something impervious and distillate in Shisui’s bright, unequivocal eyes. Madara can almost hear his thoughts: in his mind, he is already saying goodbye to his home, wandering through the old sights and caressing the old faces, soon to be left by the side of the road. It calls up within him wisps of memory, of other men that he has known, but one by one they have sunken into the earth, and now no one remembers their names but him.

“So,” Shisui goes on uncertainly, “that’s one thing out of the way. As for the rest…”

“Well.” Madara drops his eyes demurely. “There could be a way.” He lifts his face in a tender smile. “Would you like to see what I can do for you?”

Shisui is fourteen but his expression seems much younger as Madara advances. He cradles the boy’s face in his hands, skirting the border of intimacy, sending Shisui’s eyes darting to the floor.

“Don’t look away.”

The illusion sweeps into place under a mask, and Shisui shudders and blanks out as it crawls over his skin, his skin dissolves over his bones, and then his head slips beneath, complete gone under. It says a lot about the state of his dear old clan that one of its most brilliant offspring can’t even recognize the technique that once made his ancestors feared across the continent.

Shisui comes to an hour later with Madara’s hand wiping a cool wet cloth over his hot forehead. “That was…” he gasps, breathless. “That was brilliant.”

*

Training:

Shisui’s bare torso glows a cool blue in the dark. He arches tightly under Madara’s hand, and his skin is contrarily warm and smooth, the only source of heat in the entire room. His mouth gapes open, raw and sore, bottom lip bleeding from deep teeth marks. A heart beating in an electric flurry, furious with life.

“Again,” he says vehemently. “Do it again.”

“As you wish,” Madara whispers, and carefully puts him under.

*

In September, they make their first breakthrough. In a manner of speaking.

“I didn’t,” Shisui sputters, face paled, his irises still red and whirling. “I didn’t mean to. You have to believe me Kazuya-san, I never meant to—”

“I believe you,” Madara says. He straightens up, putting distance between them, and pushes down the slightly nauseous urge to expunge the foreign traces still lingering in his consciousness.

So that is what it feels like. A sudden burst of cold in your chest that spirals up and up, and an unpleasantly oily aftertaste, not unlike biting into a greasy morsel. No wonder his body reacts in repulsion; that was an incisory invasion, a fine knife along the skin, even in this incomplete form. For the first time, he wonders how powerful Shisui really is. He doubts Shisui knows it himself.

Across from him, Shisui’s expression eases with palpable relief – but he’s running his thumb softly over his lips in wonderment, as though trying to recapture the fleeting connection of a moment before. His eyes are too bright, glassy and drugged with untold want.

“I believe that you didn’t mean to,” Madara continues, and a dark flush spreads across Shisui’s cheeks. He drops his hand into his lap, where it tightens into an unhappy fist. “But our subconscious has a way of revealing desires that we aren’t aware of ourselves.”

Shisui turns his chin, sniffy and resentful. “If you know already then please don’t make fun of me.” It’s tragically amusing.

“If I remember correctly,” Madara says lightly, after a short silence. “You’ll be fifteen in a few days.”

Something changes in Shisui, like a current streaking up his spine – like he’s finally, finally found the invitation he has been searching for all this time. The wind’s changed. Shisui turns his shoulders so they are face to face, and quietly crawls toward him, hands and knees.

“Am I still too young for you?”

His bold lips ghost over Madara’s, breath caught in his throat. “You’ve never let me do this before,” he says. “Will you let me now?”

Madara doesn’t say, “Yes,” but he does tug Shisui into him. He tastes his throat, his young skin, while Shisui’s fingers flutter over his pulse, high on the early autumn light, on the triumph of an unexpected victory. He believes this a conquest, and not the submission that it really is.

*

At fifteen, hands and lips and tongues are of course not enough for Shisui. When someone loves you, their body loves yours, it’s simple as that, and so on his birthday, with darkness shrouded all around and the sake from dinner still smart on their breath, they act out a foregone conclusion.

“I’m not hurting you, am I?” Shisui says as he leans over him, breaths ragged. He’s asked the exact same question three times, in between nervously sliding his hand up Madara’s thigh at the dinner table and where they are now, coiled around each other on the floor with their discarded clothing fanned out in disarray around them, the frigid air cold on their bared skin.

Madara quirks the corner of his mouth. “No,” he says, and nudges Shisui’s hips with his, drawing from his bitten lips a choked gasp.

The weak, oaky light of the oil lamp lights the thin edges of Shisui’s face, long curled lashes, the full bow of a mouth. Messy smile, clean jaw. Here is fantastic genetic alchemy, marrying sharp, frugal Uchiha lines with the riot of exotic, ringleted excess that must have entered their blood in later years. The result is this flawless, earthly specimen, and if there is such exquisiteness in the world to be had then it must be had – he must close his hands around its tender neck and squeeze it dry, until nothing is left but a husk, beautifully-shaped emptiness.

Everything about Shisui is smooth and sleek and lissome, streamlined for ease of motion and brimming with hope and compassion, like he’s made of it. His body spills secrets his mind would have preferred to keep. Madara pockets them, and greedily arches up against the uncertain hands gripping the slants of his hipbones, stroking his body and watching the flush spread exquisitely across Shisui’s pale chest, his high cheekbones. Curled up in the new winter quilt afterward, sore and mortified but obviously ecstatic, Shisui looks about ten years old.

“There,” Madara says, sliding down next to him under the blanket and running his hand over warm ribs. “Now you can smell like me all the time.” Shisui laughs, delighted, and rolls them together in the deepening night.

*

Love is the sweetest of pleasures when first it is new. The bone-chill of the Water Country loves Shisui that winter, swirls down from the clouds to rest in the corners of his eyes and the hollows of his neck. It’s hard to be utterly convicted in a nihilistic universe when there’s someone to cradle your loneliness until it warms, light up the dark corners in your shell. Contentment gleams on his lips during those winter months, and he walks his path like the blessed men of legends who wander into the mountains to lay with a smiling, lazy-lidded god.

It’s not everyone that gets to feel like they’ve gotten all that they’ve ever wished for at the age of fifteen. Really, it’s almost a kindness on Madara’s part, to facilitate this blissful sojourn.

Almost.

But time passes in the rolls of the tides. Soon, it’s a new year again, and the next chapter of the story has begun.

*

“I’m ready.”

Shisui swings the heavy cloak over his nondescript clothes. The mist wraps around him like a cold fist holding a burning rod of steel. Outside, it has snowed, and the ground is an alarming white, ice crystals hanging from the stern edge of the roof, decadent ornaments of the ascetic.

After months at the whetting stone, Shisui’s new sword is ready to be unsheathed, and it is a thing of beauty, a poetry of long, silent verses, nothing at all like his body that moves in short, straight bursts of speed. It is the most brilliant invention to have come in decades – rewriting thought planes in many cursive strokes – and Madara is proud to have engineered its creation.

“Godspeed,” he says, arranging the clasp of Shisui’s cloak, stroking a finger down the slope of his cheek. “You hold both of our lives in your hand.”

Shisui’s eyes harden. “I would never let anything be traced back to you, even if I’m captured.”

“If you were captured, you wouldn’t have a choice. Your body will be made to turn against you – to become your prison.”

“No,” Shisui says. “There must be a way.”

“There is,” Madara says. “If you’re willing to try it.” He returns, splaying his hand to show Shisui the answer to his dilemma.

“What is that?”

“It’s a pill.” He holds the thing up between two fingers. “A capsule. Certain sects of shinobi use it as a simple method to prevent information from being tortured out them, in the event they’re incapacitated and can’t rely on ninjutsu to do the job.”

“The job?”

“Poison, Shisui-kun,” Madara says brightly. “The casing is plastic. You cheek it, and when the time comes – when it becomes necessary – crush it between your teeth to release the liquid.”

He smiles thinly over Shisui’s restraint frown. “It’s a very potent solution. I would understand if you don’t wish to use it, it’s only an option.”

“I’ll take it,” Shisui says, very quietly. “Can you help me put it in place?”

An open mouth signifies complete surrender, accepting whatever the other chooses to pour down your throat. The ultimate proof of devotion. The denial of all other idols. Every night before they go to bed, Madara removes the capsule from Shisui’s red, obedient mouth, and every morning, he carefully places it back inside again, in an endlessly repeated cycle of cruelty and tenderness.

A kiss, a kick, a kiss, a kick.

Nothing is more precious than pain, for this, after all, is the age of martyrdom.

*

And so it goes. The trees sway in the wind, fill with leaves, then lose them. The moon grows fat and thin as the earth spins between it and the sun. From the safety of the mountains, he tears a nation apart. With his ten fingers, he sweeps celestial light from the sky, and all the world is dark.

But some days, Shisui has doubts.

“Are you sure?” he asks some nights, tossing and turning in their bed. The moon breaks through the branches outside the window and falls in faint, elongated quadrants over his body.

“Sure of what?” Madara replies. Shisui clenches his teeth around something, but then seems to think better of it. He rolls over again, clutching at the sheet, and breathes a soft, content sigh when his lover leans over to lick the night sweat from his neck.

And some days, Shisui is sullen.

“Have you been sleeping well?” Madara inquires. He knows Shisui hasn’t.

“No,” Shisui clips. His eyes are inky and dull, and his fingers quake under the bowl. “I’ve been having these really awful dreams.”

So he has – only they are not dreams at all, but echoes. His head is pregnant with them, heavy, desperate for relief, but he has no idea, and can only rub at his overstressed eyes in fatigue. It’s that long-time curse, Madara knows. No Uchiha is exempt. It’s only a matter of time.

“You know, I used to have about two nightmares a year,” Shisui says, only half-joking. “Since I met you, I’ve moved up to two a night.” On some subconscious level, perhaps he’s finally realizing that Madara is the worst thing that has ever happened to him.

Too little, too late. Being in love, he knows, is like being possessed.

It’s around this time that Madara’s other life beckons him away from his deep hermitage. It’s Konan who comes to greet him when he steps out of the unforgiving rain, ankles damp, wiping his knuckles on his coat. Her pale eyes look suffocated, like a water stain on thick paper, undoable and spreading, begging for an end. Why she thinks this look should be directed at him is anybody’s guess. It’s no one’s fault but hers, choosing someone who went so far away.

When he returns to the giddy drizzle of the Water Country, Shisui is sitting on the front walkway with an expression that suggests he has plumbed to new and undiscovered depths of insomnia. His face is all eyes when he jumps to his feet and stumbles toward Madara. “Where did you go?”

Madara considers his options. He has been gone nearly three days; it’s hard to come up with a reasonable explanation, so he doesn’t hesitate to give an unreasonable one.

“From time to time, a person needs his solitude, Shisui-kun.”

Shisui looks unconvinced. “Is it because of what I said?”

Madara gives him a chilly look that says, “Why should you think that?” but clearly means, “Maybe.” Shisui’s face falls.

“I’m sorry,” he says miserably. “I won’t say things like that again. Please come inside, it’s getting cold. I’ve made dinner.”

*

Shisui shreds a letter from home, quietly but viciously.

“They are such fools.” A rip. “Limited and short-sighted.” A tear. “There’s no hope for a single one of them.” He lets the scraps of paper flutter to the floor without a hint of remorse.

It’s not happy tidings. His parents are anxious, his siblings miss their handsome brother, and the leaders of his clan wonder if his vast talents might be better employed closer to home. There’s something desperate in their carefully phrased pleasantries, but of course Shisui doesn’t notice.

Over time, he unlearns gratitude, divests fealty, and believes himself free, one who only appears to belong to his family, rinsed of the muck of their dependence. The orphaning of oneself is a step every hero must take, and with it, Shisui is that much closer to completing his journey.

“Won’t you get into trouble for failing to reply?”

Shisui shrugs. “I’ll write back, citing some bullshit about the situation here demanding further attention. The mission reports will corroborate it. It’s not as if I don’t bring honor to their name.”

“Your name, Shisui-kun,” Madara reminds him. “They are your family. You shouldn’t deny their request so easily.”

“I don’t care about that.” Shisui shakes his head firmly. “I’m not a child anymore, and I’m needed here more.” A brave moment, and then his treacherous youth gives him away, ekes out of him a beseeching look. Am I right?

Madara, of course, does not reward this shameful honesty with affirmation. He says, “Are you sure that is alright?” and could have laughed because of course it isn’t alright. Of course it isn’t.

“I want to help you, Kazuya-san. I want to do something that matters.” For an instant, Shisui’s face glows, like a sky lofty with winds and clouds. “Will you stay with me always?”

“Yes. I will stay with you.”

Shisui smiles gratefully. “Then it’s alright.”

*

Some days, Shisui is angry.

Some days, he’s tired. Some days he’s sick of being stouthearted, of living a double life. On those days, he gives in to the exhaustion that coats his bones, and that exhaustion breeds an anger that bruises to the guts, explodes outward like a lit match in a powder keg.

It’s winter again and Shisui is almost full-grown, approximating the man he’s been blindly stumbling toward, but now the smile on his lips is only the remnant of something he has already changed his mind about. On a parallel path, his body slouches toward ruination. Strength leaks from his dehydrated cotton bones, and with it: joy. Every shred of muscle holds a nameless ache.

His body pains him, and because he cannot shrug it off and abandon it somewhere, even for a little while, he rages, violent and inconsolable, lets accusations fly like knives. “I can’t live like this! I don’t want to do this anymore!”-etc.

“Then stop,” Madara coolly suggests, with the air of flicking off a watermelon rind. “You may leave anytime you want.” Which is cue for Shisui to storm out of the house, letting his swift jumps carry him away, forgetting that he can’t leave – that he is, still, sea-locked.

The further he runs, the tighter the hold. His debt is unpaid.

He returns in the falling dark still hungry and savage, and they fuck but don’t kiss, consuming each other like a disease. They shred each other to raw, bloodied strips, and Shisui knows he is losing – has lost again – but he keeps at it, loses again and again. Maybe it’s punishment. Maybe he thinks he deserves it. It’s a stupid thought, but it’s his right. If he can pay for his own mistakes, he should have the luxury to make them.

Shisui post-anger is a collapsed structure, a wounded beast licking at a wound that keeps getting larger with each tongue stroke. “I’m sorry,” he says, over and over, leaving raspy, fevered echoes in the hollows of Madara’s collarbones. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

Madara wants to say, again, “Why should you be sorry?” but even though this is the only time this question is honest, the story has moved on and that is no longer the right line. He reaches down instead and drags Shisui out of the roaring current by the scruff of his neck. “Sleep now,” he whispers. “I would never let my dear one drown. Come back to me.”

And Shisui does, each and every time.

*

One day, in the spring of his third year in Kiri, Shisui has a visitor.

Madara observes their seaside meeting from a distance. This young emissary, then, is the clan’s last-ditch effort to pry their brightest star from his chosen orbit. Judging by Shisui’s reaction, the gambit is not entirely without merits.

Itachi’s arrival bares all the lingering secrets of Shisui’s heart. This child of steel is Kazuya’s predecessor, his juvenile prototype. Precocious, he has already taken the initiative to begin his own journey. The same age that Shisui was when he first became Madara’s foundling, the stark hunger in the boy’s eyes when he looks at his cousin proves he too must be right in the middle of the second heroic motion – finding someone to love.

But whatever incendiary possibilities once existed between them have sunken beneath the waves. The look Shisui gives Itachi now is still and vacant as the sea, and before Madara’s eyes, a sweet diorama unfolds on that endless, windblown beach. Shisui, gallant and generous, is callously if unknowingly rebuffing his childhood friend’s clumsy advances, the way he’s brushed aside the longing glances the boys and girls of this village have cast his way for the last three years. Quite expertly, he takes the proffered heart between his teeth, holds it fast, and shatters it to pieces.

Then again, nowhere in the hero’s rulebook does it say that his love need be requited. It is but another kind of suffering, to gaze upon the beloved whose neck is ringed by another’s kisses.

The ghost of ambition again flares in chest. Soon.

But easy, easy now. One at a time.

Shisui comes back from this meeting troubled and quiet, and for the first time in years his eyes are turned westward, scanning the uneventful horizon, his thoughts crowding around the distant land that lays on the other side of the ocean.

“I have to go home for a little while,” he announces. His voice is tremulous, like a cup weary of holding heavy water. “I’ll be back soon.”

Like a crow who smells hot blood, Madara flies across the sea, walking on wind and water even as Shisui’s boat bobs fitfully in the roiling waves. His bones thrum and sing. Dear green Konoha. He could raze it to the ground over and over, but they will burn themselves on false tyranny.

Enchanted with the disaster brewing in his homeland, he tarries, and Shisui beats him back to Kiri’s shore. He finds him back at the house curled up on his side like a shrimp, swaddled in the heavy folds of the futon. Madara kneels down to touch his shoulder, gently shakes him awake.

“Kazuya-san,” Shisui says dreamily, turning to him with unfocused eyes. “It’s you. Thank God, I was having the most terrible dream.”

Madara lightly brushes matted hair away from his temple. “What was it about?”

“I don’t remember,” Shisui says, pulling himself up. “But it was dreadful.”

“You look upset. What happened at home?”

“Nothing,” Shisui says, evasive. Shadows overtake the corners of his eyes. “I’m a little worried about Itachi. I think something bad is going to happen to him.”

*

Actually, it’s Shisui upon whom misfortune falls.

A grimy twilight finds him falling across the threshold in a clatter of limbs, arm broken, clothes ripped in a dozen places. When Madara removes the poison capsule from his mouth, several of Shisui’s teeth come with it, eager blood darkening the arches of his gum.

“Ambush,” Shisui chokes, spitting and coughing. “I don’t think they know it’s me, but they know.”

“Someone must have suspected something,” Madara says, with as much urgency as he can muster.

Shisui nods with difficulty. “It was an ANBU. The captain of Yagura’s personal guard.”

“Terumi Mei.”

Shisui doesn’t question how he came into possession of this knowledge, which saves Madara the awful trouble of having to explain how he oh-so-meticulously tipped her off himself. The sound of his breathing, shallow, labored – in and out, in and out – suggests shattered ribs. A pause, a whimper, a sigh, and the crooning laughter of the wind in the distance. His fingers flutter helplessly in the air before grasping Madara’s bony hand, a mute appeal. He coughs and a shower of blood sprays Madara’s clothes, thin, red, and piteous. A terrible tableau.

There’s nothing worse than the sight of a fallen hero, humiliated and undignified, spread out in his lover’s lap like a limp sack of flesh.

It makes the slightest twinge of culpability raise a timid finger to tap at the back of his skull, but it will not be let in. The will to power is too strong in him, too forceful, and the emptiness it has gouged inside him is such that every other upheaval now seems negligible, barely a scratch on the skin, numbed from too many years living like this.

To make progress he must conquer.

It’s not just about building a dream and tearing it down, but it’s also the spectacle of demolition, the obligation to stay and watch it all come tumbling. The history of pain is only his to document. He is the longest hair, white before the rest. He is the burned meat on the plate of a prisoner’s last meal. He is the purveyor of greatness. He is the mutilator of innocence.

*

“It’s over,” Madara says, stepping into the bedroom. “They are going to release the Sanbi. The Godaime Mizukage has been appointed.”

Shisui raises his head wearily from his sickbed. “I’ve failed you.”

“On the contrary, you’ve done a splendid job. A change will come.” He can already see the shape of it in the village’s rising bones. “The people of this land should thank you.”

“But they won’t.”

“No,” Madara says, and the bitterness in his voice is only half-affected. “That is how these things go. They will come for us. It’s only a matter of time.”

“I’m going back to Konoha,” Shisui says, dragging himself up with effort. “You should come with me,” he goes on, and Madara raises an eyebrow in spite of himself, wondering if the next thing Shisui will say might be something like, “I promise to do right by you.”

“I cannot leave,” he says, reciting empty, nebulous lines. “My heart sleeps in this land. In truth, my soul has been dead for years, and my body has lived on only to see this day.”

That must hurt, a stray basket splint striking quick into clumsy skin. “But you promised,” Shisui protests, gasping from the freshly inflicted wound. “You promised to stay with me.”

“Only while you’re here.” Gentleness, at its core, is just entropy-in-action. “It was good while it lasted, wasn’t it?”

Shisui doesn’t answer. Dismay flounders in his bloodshot eyes. His unbearable distress can be heard, like there’s a soft, sighing hole in his chest, and through it, his lungs flex in and out. What is lost? The life that he has lived here, warm-tinged with cooking fire, rich with wood smoke.

What remains?

Slowly, he turns to face the wall, completely beleaguered. Retribution prowls on the horizon.

*

Shisui stands in the doorway with a small travel pack slung over his shoulder. “I have to go,” he says, superfluously. “I’ve been summoned.”

His bruises haven’t yet faded, and when he speaks it sounds like there’s a blockade in his throat, stiff, choking, relentless. That’s the place where love and resentment come to mingle, birthing a sour taste that never quite goes away. The bleached summer light is so bright and vast that he can make out as if in an X-ray Shisui’s limbs through his clothes.

“So this is goodbye.”

“No,” Shisui insists. “I’ll come back.”

Madara smiles ruefully. “That’s not possible. The nets are closing in, the way back will be barred to you. You should leave now while you still can.” He feels almost sad, because in a way, this is the end of something. “Go home, Shisui-kun. You’ve done enough. Go back to your family.”

Shisui lifts his chin stubbornly. “That isn’t my home anymore. I’ll come back.”

Layers and layers, being stripped off. They’ve almost reached the core. He can taste the iron of its blood in their goodbye kiss.

*

So Shisui leaves, and this time, he will not follow. This time, he will wait. If Shisui doesn’t come back, the hedge will have failed. His patience will have yielded poor fruit, and he will lose.

But then, what are the chances of that?

He’ll wait.

*

A storm comes rolling in from the west. Planes of water slice through the air, and then slabs of it, as thunder grumbles behind the clouds and hard winds whip into the black, brazen face of the mountain. The sky, having held its peace for so long, now sticks its slimy wet tongue down from above and laps up every inch of earth it can reach, tears tree branches aside to get at more.

Madara stands below the edge of the roof, close enough to the rain to have its cool breath on his throat. The world is dividing. He can feel the sundering like a blade.

Night.

“Kazuya-san… Please open the door…”

Shisui staggers through the door, and the storm surges in after him, so delighted to receive these alms. Shisui, of course, is sopping wet, everything hair down numb with cold. He doesn’t even seem to notice that Madara is no longer limping, that the cloth of his garment is dark. It’s only fitting: Shisui himself has taken that place. Tragedy hobbles heroes – and redeems them.

“I’ve come back.”

“I can see that. What has happened?”

Shisui doesn’t speak, but Madara knows that he’s staring down into the fissure at his feet, the gulf of emptiness that he must leap over, that widens with each second left undecided. All this vastness has no place in it for men, let alone great ones. Caught in the pre-trembling of a house that must fall, he who was once provider and protector shivers with a child’s frightened need.

They’ve come a little bit full-circle, haven’t they?

Madara runs his fingers in idle patterns through wet, glossy curls. “Shisui-kun,” he says, very gently, soft as a mother’s lullaby. “Would you like me to help you?”

“Yes.”

“And in exchange for my help, what would you do?”

“Anything.” His face is wet, perhaps not just with rainwater. It seems incapable of holding together a coherent emotion.

The cure for anything is salt-water – sweat, tears, or the sea.

“I’d do anything.”

“Then look up.”

And as Shisui’s head lifts obediently, a growl of thunder sings the final curtain down. The painted lambskin sloughs off, and the foul snout of the wolf at last emerges from beneath. Shisui’s eyes, always dark and serious, grow wide and opaque with despair, as the face that he has loved for the last three years tears and tears away.

“Oh God,” he chokes. “Oh God.”

*

A moonless night. The wind filters through the apertures in the rotten wood of the pier, rousing a chorus of low moans. The night boat that will smuggle Shisui back out of the Water Country rocks a little in the black-green water. At the end, as was at the beginning, there is a silent sea.

“Do you remember my instructions?” Madara asks, sliding his hand softly up Shisui’s spine.

To his credit, Shisui doesn’t immediately flinch away. “Yes,” he says, and swallows compulsively. It takes a moment before the last hollow syllables would come. “Madara-sama.”

Not even a faint glimmer remains of the sheen in his eyes that used to signal adoration and adulation. Now faded away like the morning dew. He is almost insensate to the world outside his head, having finally learned that, yes, even forbidden things can taste bitter.

“Don’t worry,” Madara says. “I will fulfill my promise. I will stay with you until the end.” He’s always placed great value on thoroughness. I will be with you before you think to call my name.

Tomorrow he will again make that journey across the restless, undulating ocean, like a dark crosswind dogging his disciple’s heels. There is nothing they can do against his coming. He will come, so that at the very last moment, just before the dirty water surges over his paling face and his seventeen-year-old soul leaves its body, Shisui will be able to look up at his unholy ghost and hear the same whispered words, hear it in the mourning wind.

I am with you still.

With one last, sweet exhalation, Uchiha Shisui will consummate his journey, reaching the end of his reachless path.

appendix: the hero laments his lost love

It is years before he hears Shisui’s name mentioned again, and by then, he’s already halfway through another fool’s heroic arc.

“Do you remember Shisui, Madara-sama?”

Itachi lifts his eyes from the shogi board, and they are an open book, still glistening with that pitiful hunger even after all these years.

“Kisame told me that the two of you crossed paths while in Kirigakure.”

“Yes,” Madara replies, and takes Itachi’s chariot. “Of course I remember Shisui.”

“What did you think of him?”

“If I recall,” he trails off. “He was quite heroic.”

Itachi tilts his face away. There’s something abominably farcical in the way he makes elegance of useless things. The proud lift of the chin. The agonizing sadness of the eyes. All the hopeless gestures that could be loosely categorized under waiting, because that is what waiting looks like.

Madara has no pity to spare him, having long unlearned generosity. It’s your own fault for choosing someone who went so far away.

He goes on, ruthless, “It’s such a pity that the time we live in is no age for heroes, isn’t it?”

__________________

Why 'Kazuya'? Well, the meaning, for one, and also I... anagramized the letters in 'Yakuza'. Shut up you love me.

“The cure for anything is salt water - sweat, tears, or the sea.” -Isak Dinesen

mini-spinoff fic by venusian_eye, which is actually better than my fic, lol ♥

supervillains who make me cry

ronsard — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 23:43:18 GMT

CLAYMORE

riful/dauf

He starts at first light. Builds slow, makes bones from stones and raises the skeleton of the structure just the way she likes it. By day, she perches on his shoulder like a bird, whispers cheerful instructions into his ear as he labors under the hot sun.

With the fall of the evening she rises, unfurling like a poisonous flower, linen to iron. His woman. His moon. She opens up and takes him into her, and as they rock together with the turning of the Earth, she spreads her limbs into every corner of their lair, shatters it once more.

[fic] My Girlfriend Who Lives In Canada (AU, Part XII)

ronsard — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 22:30:28 GMT

This icon speaks quite succinctly for my feelings at the moment.

Title: My Girlfriend, Who Lives In Canada (12/12!)
Fandom: Kingdom Hearts
Rating: T
Pairings: Axel/Roxas + others
Disclaimer: The Kingdom Hearts franchise and its characters do not belong to me.
Summary: It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single high school boy in possession of a good libido, must be in want of a girlfriend—or a pretend one.

XII.

Eventually, their Lifetime movie moment had to be interrupted when Roxas finally remembered that he had in fact promised his dad to be within easy reach. That had been a good couple of hours ago, so they hopped back into the car and drove faster than humanly possible—so you know, normal-Axel—back to the hospital. Roxas debated making Axel hide in the car, but then figured that if he was going to be keeping Axel around on anything like a regular basis, he might as well start easing his loved ones into it now before the crazy hit them in the face full-throttle.

So he brought Axel up to Naminé’s room and made up some A-plus lies about meeting him at some college open-campus event, which miraculously seemed to work. It was lucky, he reflected, that Axel was still wearing his nice-if-wrinkled preppy ensemble from the night before. His hair alone was still questionable in spite of the ponytail’s best effort, but that was hardly unusual for a college student. Even more astoundingly, Axel managed to turn on the charm Roxas hadn’t previously known he possessed, and lay it on thick enough to smother any suspicions Roxas’s father might have been harboring regarding the veracity of their account. Before Roxas knew it, they were discussing test scores and admission statistics, which would probably disturb him a lot should he dwell upon it for any length of time.

At one point, his sister did shoot him a slightly skeptical look, but considering the fact that their relationship was still on the rocks, Roxas figured she would be too cowed to ever call him on it.

It turned out that Naminé wouldn’t be discharged for at least another day, so Roxas and his father fought the requisite battle over who got to stay with her, which Roxas ultimately lost when his dad pulled the Someone Has To Mind The House And Prepare For Her Arrival card. Roxas put up the token huffy protest, but in the end allowed himself to be packed into Demyx’s car for the journey back. He loved his baby sister, but he also loved the idea of finally hitting the sack after the harrowing experiences of the last two days.

It was already dark when they strapped themselves down and prepared to leave. “How about some ambiance for the ride back?” Axel asked, popping a CD into the player.

Momentarily, the car was filled with the uneven beats of a song that Roxas realized, to his horror, might be rap. Axel seemed incredibly proud of his eclectic taste, bobbing his head along to the music while the inebriated-sounding singer rambled something about two zigzags and going down to the park to “smoke dat tumbleweeds”.

“Where do you even find these songs?” Roxas asked. “And does anyone actually drink the troll vomit that is Colt-45?”

“Oh?” said Axel, raising an eyebrow. “One college party, and he thinks he’s a liquor expert.”

“I just don’t think you should be talking about music,” Roxas said. “After all, your country is responsible for Nickelback.”

“Don’t even start,” Axel said darkly. “Those losers would never have gotten half as popular if it hadn’t been for the brain-dead suburban teens of this country eating up their shitty albums. That late 90s early 2000s period was basically a musical wasteland of popular grunge turds. Goddamn American emos.”

“I don’t know,” Roxas mused. “I kind of liked Linkin Park.”

Axel stared at him in unbridled horror. “Dude.”

“No, seriously,” Roxas said, smirking. “I think their lyrics are deep.”

“That’s it,” Axel said as he threw the car into reverse and rolled out of the hospital parking lot—pedestrians scattering in panic, narrowly avoiding being pancaked under the wheels. “As soon as we’re back in Amherst, I’m giving you a thorough cultural reeducation, and none of it will involve bad nu metal with unsubtle references to cutting.”

He made a face at the steering wheel, and muttered, “Their lyrics are deep. Jesus.”

*

Somewhere out on a particularly deserted stretch of I-90, Roxas almost had a heart attack.

“Oh fuck,” he muttered, clawing his hand in his hair. “I completely fucking forgot.”

“What?” Axel said, eyes wide. “What’s the problem now?”

Roxas turned to him with an expression he hoped was an appropriate medley of imploring and tragic. “I’m going to need to borrow your phone again.” He paused, and added, “Also, would you mind making a little detour when we get back to Amherst?”

*

“Are you 100% sure about this? Because I’m okay with taking baby steps in the beginning—well, maybe not baby steps. Teenager steps. Rated PG-13 for language and sexual situations.”

Roxas resisted the very compelling urge to roll his eyes. “Yes, I’m sure. You sound like you’re the one who’s about to shit himself.”

“Oh please, you wuss.” Axel made an unflattering snorting sound through his nose. “Don’t lie and tell me you’re not this close to a full-on freak out sess. You didn’t make a peep the entire drive up.”

“If you’re at all aware of the enormous potential for this to go horribly wrong, you wouldn’t be shooting your mouth off right now,” Roxas said, glaring out the car window. They were parked a block down from his school, and even from here he could make out the distinct soundtrack that customarily accompanied the merrymaking of hormones-driven teenagers finally allowed to cut loose for one night in the entire academic year.

“So you gonna send that text or what?” said Axel.

“Yeah, yeah.”

Taking a bracing breath, Roxas pressed down on the ‘Send’ button his thumb had been hovering over for nearly fifteen minutes, and didn’t exhale until he was certain the message had gone through. This was it. No going back now. He unhooked his seatbelt, praying to Jesus, Elvis, and Buddha that this venture would pay off and not go up like the Hindenburg, causing his entire life to fall apart around him. Again.

“Hey,” Axel said just as Roxas was reaching for the door handle. “It’ll be okay.” He didn’t sound quite as confident as usual, which Roxas realized was becoming something of a running theme. He probably shouldn’t find that endearing, but did.

“Yeah,” he said, and in what was clearly a spontaneous lapse in sanity, raised himself up and leaned over the gear stick to drop a kiss on Axel’s cheek.

There was a moment of complete silence.

“Oh my God,” Axel said finally. “Oh my God, did that really just happen? Tell me that didn’t really just happen.” He was evidently on the edge of a rib-fracturing laughing fit. “I’m sorry, did I fall asleep on the wheel because clearly I missed the part where my boyfriend swapped bodies with a twelve-year-old girl.”

“Give me shit about it later, okay?” Roxas said with a grimace. “This is totally a big deal. I need every ounce of support I can get.”

The exquisitely mean expression on Axel’s face softened. “You can stop pouting now,” he said, voice indulgent. “I get it, okay? Now go do your thing. I’ll see you at Black Sheep afterward, as agreed.”

“I still think we should have gone with Lone Wolf,” Roxas said, just to be a giant tool.

“Maybe next time,” Axel said affectionately, and practically shoved Roxas out of the car.

*

All in all, Roxas was feeling rather grateful for a lifetime’s education in feeling awkward and out-of-place, because it had totally prepared him for the crushing humiliation that was rolling up in front of the school looking like a Depression-era tramp while everybody in a mile-wide radius was decked out to the nines in the best the local prom-slash-pageant boutiques had to offer. It was becoming clearer than ever that Axel was having an erroneous influence on him: the more time Roxas spent in his immediate company, the lower his grooming standards became, deplorable as they were.

He was distracted from this line of distressing thought by a brief flash of another familiar red-haired figure. Kairi was standing at a street corner, dressed in a pink, strapless gown of a full, shimmering material that, under the pale light of the street lamp, looked like it would feel really nice to the touch. Roxas craned his neck for a look, and saw that she was in medias a huddled conversation with Sora and Riku. Judging by the looks of things, Olette hadn’t been the only one aiming to double-up the number of her JP escorts.

In a sudden fit of nosiness, Roxas surreptitiously ambled his way over, and as he did so, saw Kairi take a step back and give her friends a playful push, saying something to them in a low voice. Twin uncertain looks flitted across both boys’ faces—Sora even opened his mouth to speak, but was silenced by Kairi’s quelling hand. She leaned forward and hugged him briefly before stepping away again, giving Riku a firm nod. Granting permission of some kind.

By the time Riku and Sora were walking away from Kairi—Riku placing a tentative hand on Sora’s back, sliding lower as they walked—Roxas had cleared the distance. He had a feeling he had walked in on a private moment, watching the lonely bow of Kairi’s shoulders as she drew them into her chest, wrapping her thin arms around her ribs. Portrait of a girl left, for once, out of the trinity to which she had always belonged. Roxas felt a stab of epiphany regarding the nature of that little pantomime he’d just witnessed.

Roxas, despite crippling social anxiety, had what he fancied were chivalric tendencies, which were probably what made him clear his throat and say, “It’s their loss.”

Kairi wheeled around in surprise. “Roxas,” she said. “That wasn’t what you think—”

“Of course not,” Roxas said quickly. “I was just, you know, trying to be funny. Sticking my tongue in my cheek. Guess I suck at it.”

Kairi grinned at him. “This is the only chance they have,” she explained. Her smile turned mischievous. “You know, before Riku chickens out again and runs away to college without breathing a word.”

“For the record, I am totally filing that information away to use against him in the future,” Roxas said.

Kairi laughed lightly. A few strands of her auburn hair had slipped out of their elegant knot, falling to frame her heart-shaped face. She was beautiful like that, light and unguarded, a milky, insubstantial light tracing the slim curve of her collarbones, the graceful arch of her neck. Her laugh was the open, capacious kind; it invited you in, made you want to get to know the girl behind the smile, made you want to smile back.

“Save the last dance for the loser who missed out on the Prom?”

He reached out one hand to Kairi, palm up in an internationally-recognized gesture, and even though he looked like something fished out of a dumpster and she was a Homecoming Queen in the making, she still took his proffered hand and allowed him to pull her into a clumsy spin that would have made Roxas’s former ballroom dancing teacher cry. One hundred hours plus of lesson apparently only amounted to him managing to dip Kairi without dropping her headfirst on the pavement.

People were turning around to stare at them, whispering among themselves. Roxas ignored them, and spun Kairi again in a dizzying swirl of pink satin, her bright laughter melodious in the muggy night. Haters to the left. Like any of them would have a chance with a girl like her in a million years.

“There’s my ride,” Kairi said, slightly breathless, and tipped her head toward the opposite sidewalk, where a group of her cheer squad friends were waving at her from the back of a large Jeep.

“Have fun,” Roxas said, releasing her hand. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.” Then again, considering all the sketchy activities he’d gotten up to in the past few days, this advice probably didn’t carry as much weight as it might have once upon a simpler time.

Kairi gave him another crinkle-eyed smile, and squeezed his shoulder in solidarity before running over to her friends. Roxas rode that warm gooey feeling all the way back to the school entrance, arriving just in time to see Olette and Pence spill out the front door—Olette bright-eyed and lovely in a flowy orange silk number, Pence mildly uncomfortable in a rumpled powder blue tuxedo with a stiff collar that appeared to be choking his airway.

Really, Roxas reflected, he had no room to be judging Riku at all, because the mere sight of his friends and their identical ear-to-ear smiles was doing all sorts of scary things to his innards.

*

On the way to the coffee shop, Olette ran the gamut of a comprehensive range of emotions verbally translated to, “Oh my God,” and, “How could you not tell me?” and, “Wait, did you try to tell me?” and finally, “Oh my God, why did you not tell me?” Pence just blinked away his initial wide-eyed amazement and busied himself with the task of tearing his shirt collar apart. Roxas couldn’t help but feel a little irrationally insulted by that.

By the time they arrived at Black Sheep’s storefront, Roxas was on the cusp of yet another attack of onset cowardice, and began to entertain the futile hope that the same ailment had befallen Axel and that he had backed out at the last minute. This was, of course, not to be, as he could clearly see Rosalina parked outside the café, her gleaming frame familiar and dear—reminding Roxas that what he should really be worried about was the endlessly likelier possibility that Axel had returned to his asshole baseline and had shown up wearing Doc Martens and a ballet tutu over striped tights or something equally awful. He had yet to make any overtly mocking remark after learning via one shamefaced confession that he had, for the last few weeks, stood in as the default muse for Roxas’s Ballad of the Fictional Girlfriend, but at this point, he’d be stupid to put anything past Axel.

Thankfully, Axel had refrained from any cross-dressing douchebaggery. The most questionable item of clothing he was sporting was the t-shirt under his fleece scarf that read, charmingly, I DON’T LIKE BUSH, I LIKE SHAVED. As usual, he was lounging vegetatively at a corner table radiating glazed affection at the jumbo cup of cocaine-laced Black Sheep coffee in front of him, looking like someone who had found his zen center and wasn’t about to vacate it any time soon.

During the walk over, Roxas had spent a worrisome amount of time envisioning how this meeting was going to go, running through all the horrible outcomes his highly active imagination had cooked up, and yet for some reason, he had still failed to account for the unspeakable atrocity that actually unfolded.

Axel and Olette liked each other.

Axel and Olette liked each other.

“Olette and Pence?” Axel said in a thoughtful voice Roxas was certain he had never before used. “You two must be really close with Roxas, huh?”

“Oh we are,” Olette said, grinning. “We’re his best friends.”

“Totally BFFs,” Pence added dryly.

“Is that so?” Axel drawled, arching an eyebrow as he brought two fingers to his lips. Roxas tried not to look him in the eye. “Apparently, fickle Roxas here has many, many of those.”

Olette nodded knowingly. “I think he just keeps up the loner act because he likes the attention.”

“Hello?” Roxas asked, waving his hands in an impressive imitation of avian death throes. “Am I not still in the room?”

“Hush, baby,” Axel said dulcetly. “Us girls are talking now, isn’t that right, Olette?”

Olette muffled her laughter in one fist. “You know,” she said, “you don’t really look like an ‘Anna’.”

Roxas used every ounce of strength in his soul not to bolt for the door. Bloodshed of some kind was imminent. He sipped his organic green tea, and silently formulated a plan to pen an epically vindictive limerick titled Ode to an Eminently Canadian Young Woman to be anonymously distributed across the Amherst campus. The challenge was meshing the anapestic meter format with choice imageries such as “hair the color of autumn maple leaves” and “eyes like the Yukon Trail”.

“Looks like I need a refill,” Axel said, shaking his empty cup. “Does anyone else want anything while I’m up?”

“I’ll come with you,” Olette said—brightly, but sinisterly. “I want to take a look at those cupcakes.”

At this point, Roxas ran out of question marks and despair, so he decided to just roll with the punches. He did not look up from his cup until he was certain Axel and Olette had left the table, at which point he found Pence staring at him intently.

“So,” Roxas said, pointing vaguely at Pence’s unfortunately colored suit. “The Junior Prom?”

“Yeah,” Pence said wearily, fingering the wreck he’d made of his white bowtie. “Thanks a lot for bailing out on me, by the way. It was a lot of fun being on the receiving end of the resident star quarterback’s death glare the entire night.”

“Rai was there?” Roxas said. “Who’d he go with?”

“His friend Fuu. I’m pretty sure she only took him as a pity date. The guy is pretty pitiful these days.”

“Someone should tell Olette that before Fuu’s name ends up on her list of people to destroy socially,” Roxas said darkly. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that Olette had had Axel backed up against the pastry displaying case. She was looking rather feral. Roxas was deeply glad that he couldn’t hear what they were talking about over the din of the coffee house, because there was a distressingly high chance that the conversation was of the And What Are Your Intentions Toward My Friend variety.

“Thanks for not making a big deal out of this whole thing,” he told Pence. “It’s actually kind of freaking me out how chill you’re being about it.”

“I wasn’t really surprised, to be honest,” Pence said. “You were always pretty questionable with your strangely sexual fascination with T.S. Eliot.” He smirked at Roxas’s rude gesture, and added, “Have you told your family yet?”

Roxas sighed. “I’m working myself up to it. I think I’ll test drive on Hayner first. On a scale of one to disastrous, how badly do you think that’ll go?”

“You’re such a drama queen,” Pence said. “As long as you have Olette and her unholy powers backing you, I’m sure you’ll be golden. If you require even more handholding, I’ll be glad to continue lending my wise guidance in this time of your sensitive need.”

“Right,” Roxas said. “That’s it. That’s exactly what I want. You as my designated life coach. My cruise director for the rest of it all.”

Pence shrugged. “Well, if you want to stay in the closet, I have no real objection to that either. I’m starting to think that if you retain your chick magnet status until graduation, there might be some fringe benefits in it for me. I fully believe in the trickledown effect.”

Roxas rolled his eyes. “I never had that status until Olette started spreading onerous lies about my love life in the girls’ locker room. And that term doesn’t mean what you think it means. Reaganomics is a lie.”

“Lies indeed,” Pence said, stirring his coffee solemnly. “The descriptions you fed me were way, way off. We totally agreed on classic redhead, and Axel’s not that at all. He’s really more… the exotic type.”

“I will kill you with this mug,” Roxas said. “Seriously, you’re the first on my list.”

*

“That actually went a lot better than I expected,” Roxas mused as Rosalina rolled to a stop at the corner of East Street.

“Told you Axel Knows Best,” said Axel. He braked the bike, and pulled off his helmet, shaking out his flattened hair. “The truly amazing part is how a freak like you managed to score such sweet little friends.”

“Seriously, do you even hear yourself talk?” Roxas said. “What was it like when you first came out to your friends?”

“What friends?” Axel said. “Well, there was this one guy who got all weird and judgmental about it, all because of one harmless little kiss in the mall. He’s kind of an anal-retentive dick, that guy. Name starts with an R, you might know him.”

“I’m sure he had his reasons,” Roxas soothed.

Axel looked thoughtful for a moment. He raised his eyes, and said, “I don’t want to jinx everything, so don’t take this the wrong way, but—are you really okay?”

“What are you talking about?” Roxas said, frowning.

“It’s just that trying to get through to you all this time has been like pulling teeth, but now all of a sudden you seem to be pretty cool with the way everything went down. You took to this idea suspiciously fast.”

Roxas smirked. “What can I say? You’re just something of an acquired taste.”

“Fuck you,” Axel said wryly. “I’m serious.”

“So was I,” Roxas said, and pretended to dodge when Axel made as though to box his ear. He sobered up in time to say, “Well, it’s like, you know, how sometimes you spend a long time resisting something, and by the time you finally give in, you kind of forget why you were fighting it so much to begin with?”

“I don’t know anything about that,” Axel asserted with confidence. “I never give in.”

“I’ll bet,” Roxas said, smiling slightly. Giving in wasn’t so bad. Sometimes.

“You know,” Axel began, low and tense, “I could kill you.”

“What?” Roxas squeaked. An irrational twinge of panic shot through him like a bolt—obviously those dark criminal suspicions from the early days had never quite dissipated.

“For today,” Axel clarified, in a way that managed to explain exactly nothing. “What I mean is, I haven’t forgotten the long, ridiculously detailed list of reasons why this wouldn’t work that you gave me last night on the drive up. Granted, none of those reasons made any damn sense, but you still gave them. And then you turned around and took it all back, just like that.”

Roxas felt his ears burn. It took an astronomical amount of effort to keep his head still, but he couldn’t look away. Visible guilt was a sign of weakness in the animal kingdom.

Axel continued to stare darkly into the distance. Then he shrugged and said, “But it’s okay, you know. I know it’s because you’re so young. It’s in your blood to be fickle and wanton.”

“Please,” Roxas said with immense relief. “There are grade-schoolers more emotionally mature than you.” Baby steps, right. Just watch for the bumps in the road as they came.

“So, um,” he said awkwardly. “Guess I’ll see you later?”

“You sure?” Axel said, eyes gleaming. “Don’t want to drive up to the top of the hill and make this a night to remember or anything?”

Roxas immediately snapped his mouth shut. His entire head was starting to feel like a nuclear power plant on the verge of critical meltdown—but only for a minute, because right then the sound of Axel’s awful braying laughter galloped in and saved him from probably hemorrhaging something out of anxiety.

“Please, Goldilocks, don’t flatter yourself. You haven’t showered, your clothes reek, your hair is matted sideway, and your breath smells like a public latrine. Even I don’t have the testicular fortitude to go there.”

“You know, I think I’m starting to lose that acquired taste,” Roxas snapped. Before he could stomp away, however, Axel had reached out and reeled him in by the front of his shirt. His breaths came warm and fast on Roxas’s cheek. He felt only half-awake, feverish, and there were at least a dozen reasons why this couldn’t work, he was well-acquainted with them all and shouldn’t even try. This might just be another disaster in the making, but Axel’s lips were soft and wet at the corner of his mouth, long fingers curled into the hair at the back of Roxas’s neck, and somehow that made it seem alright.

“Well, goodnight,” Axel said easily, ending the sudsy moment. As he sped away on his scooter, he looked over his shoulder at Roxas and shouted, “There’s always next year, baby! By my decree, Cinderella, you shall go to the Prom!”

Roxas put his face in his hand. He could only hope that his neighbors were deep sleepers.

By the time he managed to unlock his front door and drag himself into the foyer, Roxas came to the realization that he was clinically dead on his feet, everything hair down numb and leaden. The house was cool and dark, wrapping its roomy hush around him like a soothing blanket. He staggered down the hallway and up the stairs without bothering to turn on the lights, allowing sense memory to guide his steps, and before he peeled off his clothes and fell into bed in a dead faint, spared just enough time to remember that, pretty soon, his entire family would be under the same roof again.

Really, he couldn’t wait.

*

There were a million and one things Roxas should be doing on Sunday, most of which involved cleaning out the cluttered house in preparation for Naminé’s homecoming, but early Sunday afternoon instead saw him loitering on the sidewalk outside a certain Amherst dormitory. There were simply no limits as to how pathetic he allowed himself to get these days.

“Is that you, Abercrombie Kid?”

Some part of Roxas jerked, like his viscera had developed a Pavlovian response to the sound of that voice. He dully reminded himself that running for his life was not an option, and sucked in a long breath before turning around to face Larxene and her scary, drink-lacing smile.

She was sitting behind the wheel of a gorgeous onyx Bentley, and Roxas had to take a moment to boggle at the students of this school and their conspicuous consumption. Seriously, what was up with this unnatural bubble-like upper-crust existence? Suddenly he understood his father’s obstinate need to drive Ford Tauruses and stick it to The Man—even though, technically speaking, Roxas’s dad was The Man.

“Not even second base,” Larxene said, eyes flashing like the predator she was. “That’s pathetic. And I gave you my best mix, too, what a waste.”

“In some places, people can press charges for that,” Roxas pointed out.

“I was just trying to do you a favor,” said Larxene. “Judging by the fact that you’re skulking out here at this hour of the day, I’d say that I made a good call. But be careful now—with prolonged exposure, the crazy might get on your pretty face.” She blew him a disdainful kiss, and then threw her car into reverse, leaving Roxas behind in a cloud of perfumed dust.

In the hallway, he ran into Zexion, who was armed with coffee and his laptop case and therefore was evidently on his way to the sim lab. On a Sunday.

“I heard from Axel,” Zexion said. “I’m glad to hear that your sister’s alright. Send her my best.”

“Thanks,” Roxas said with a smile. “So Demyx stayed over last night?”

This wasn’t a real question, as he’d already passed the communal bathroom on his way in—Demyx was apparently a sing-in-the-shower kind of guy. He really knew how to carry a note.

“And you’re here to see Axel,” Zexion replied coolly. “You might want to watch your step in there. We’re moving out, so the place’s kind of a mess.”

But in fact the common room did not look like any kind of mess whatsoever, the walls lined with boxes neatly stacked and labeled in a clear, erudite hand that could only be Zexion’s. Axel’s room, when Roxas entered, did admittedly resemble war-torn Bosnia, half-packed cardboard boxes covering nearly every inch of the floor—including one filled with what appeared to be mini versions of the homemade rocket he and Axel had set off back in April. Where had those been hiding during Roxas’s last visit? Clearly he hadn’t looked closely enough for signs of the crazy.

“Go sit on the bed before you trip over something potentially hazardous,” Axel said seriously. His hair was pulled back from his face, and he was wearing a scruffy white t-shirt that said I CAN’T AFFORD TO ♥ NY, probably because he wanted to cause Roxas mental pain.

Almost in spite of himself, Roxas tilted his head to look at the ceiling, and was slightly startled to find that all the postcards were gone. Further inspection revealed that they were piled into a small box sitting at the foot of the bed. Without these colorful accoutrements, the spiraling quote looked strangely bereft, a black, ungainly flotsam all swallowed up in a sea of white.

Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.

“I like that quote too,” Roxas said.

“What?” Axel said distractedly. He followed Roxas’s gaze. “Oh, that. Yeah, I might have been a little drunk when I put that up there.”

“Where’d you first read it?”

“I saw it spray-painted on a men’s room wall in some nightclub in… I think this was like, San Francisco. The Castro, maybe. Anyway, it caught my eye. Cool, huh?”

“It’s Vonnegut. He was on my high school reading list, freshman year.”

Axel blinked at him. “Are you for real? I don’t actually remember most of my high school years, but I’m still pretty sure we never had to read shit like that.”

“Yeah, well, maybe things are different up north. You also didn’t go to Collegiate on the Upper West Side, so count your blessings.”

“Figures,” Axel said, and went back to sorting clothes. “Somehow I always knew you were a poor little rich boy. Say, you never did any of that crazy Gossip Girl shit, didja? You just never know with you quiet types…”

Roxas pulled a pained expression. “Every day, I discover something else about you that kills me a little bit inside,” he said, and almost in the same breath, blurted out, “Why’d you choose me?”

Axel whipped around and stared at him incredulously. “Jesus Christ. It’s only been two days, and you’re trying to back out of this already?” He dragged a hand over his face in a manner Roxas found to be needlessly melodramatic. “Roxas, listen, I haven’t even had coffee yet. It is way too early in the morning for this shit.”

“You’re full of lies,” Roxas said, pointing out the paper cup sitting on one of corner of the desk. “It’s one in the afternoon, and you’ve clearly been up for awhile.” He paused for a moment, and added, “And this is not a meltdown, I promise. I’m asking you seriously. I—I really need to know.”

“Know what, exactly?”

“Why me? Do you just enjoy making things difficult for yourself?”

Axel pointed a finger at his face. “Hey, don’t try to pin your neuroses on me.” He rolled his eyes, and went on, “Though, since you asked, you could say that I tend to selectively veer toward the challenging cases.”

“Because you’re a masochist?”

“Maybe it’s more about making sure whatever you’re going for is really worth all the trouble.”

“So you’re saying if I were easy you’d immediately lose interest?” Roxas said skeptically.

Axel made a face. He jabbed his finger at Roxas with greater emphasis, stopping just short of squashing his nose. “Believe me, easy is not a word that comes to mind when I think about you.” He stopped, and shrugged lightly. “But I don’t know, that’s sort of the charm. Just think of that saying, goes something like ‘I don’t want to join any club that would have me for a member.’”

“That’s Groucho Marx, and the line’s actually…”

“Really? I thought that was from Annie Hall.”

Roxas’s mind reeled for a moment. Was this how it was going to be? Would their relationship be forever plagued by association with relentlessly neurotic rom-coms?

“It is,” he soldiered on. “But see, Woody was quoting Groucho, who might have been quoting Freud. What he said was…”

“That it was the key joke of his adult life in terms of his relationships with women? Yeah, I remember. Wow. Cheerful stuff.”

At this point, Roxas recognized the dull aches he had started experiencing for what they were—pangs of remorse. If this was going to work out in any shape or form that wasn’t complete dysfunction, he was going to have to do something he had never before attempted in his life: he was going to have to try.

“Well,” he began contritely, and decided that sounded passable. “It’s a great movie, but that doesn’t mean we should use it as a primer for relationships or anything.”

“Yeah, especially given what we’ve already agreed on regarding scripts,” Axel said. “But we can reenact the scene with the lobsters sometime, if you’d like.”

At a temporary loss for words, Roxas let his eyes wander, and almost immediately found himself looking at the box of postcards—like he was always searching out for them. Perhaps when Axel moved into his new lodging, wherever that was, he might let Roxas help tape them up again. Idly, he picked one out of the box at random. Nova Scotia. Instead of writing, the card had a single curl of gold hair taped to it.

“Why postcards?” he asked, fingering the lock of hair. Tragic attraction to small, bossy blondes indeed.

“What’s with you and all the questions today?” Axel said. “I used to have a Polaroid camera, but I broke it fighting off a mugger in Rio. Then I figured, why take my own pictures when I could buy them and contribute to the tourism industry.”

“That sounds so wrong coming from your mouth,” said Roxas. “And you really see yourself as a tourist? Do you have a fanny pack too?”

“Why? You want me to model it for you?”

“I’d rather sandpaper my eyeballs. So have you really been to all these places?”

Axel laughed. “Are you crazy? Do I look like I’m made of money?” He bent down and rifled through the stacks of postcards. “Look, most of these are still blank—and that’s because I plan on eventually going to all these places. Once I’m there, I’ll give the card to a local and ask them to mail it back to me, and that way I get the postmark too. It’s totally fucking genius.”

In the smallest voice his mind could manage, Roxas had to admit to himself that it was, in fact, kind of genius. Surely he’d get over the shock any day now.

“So where are you staying this summer?” he asked, just to have something to say.

Axel made an indistinct gesture at the air. “Demyx asked me to housesit for him while he’s off being a bleeding-heart psycho in Cambodia or whatever.” Demyx, Roxas decided, was a terminal masochist. “I just need a dumping ground for all my shit—I’m gonna spend the summer on the road too. Trying to hit some of those landmarks in my collection, right?”

“Yeah,” Roxas said glumly. His own summer held engaging prospects such as taking standardized tests and drafting college essays. With his spotty records, he knew he needed all the application padding he could get, but he was still seventeen and it still sucked a whole bunch.

Axel cocked his head, and gave Roxas a considering look. As though reading his mind, he said, “Hey. Maybe—someday—you could come along with me on one of these trips, yeah? No marriage certifications required, I promise.”

Roxas smiled back at him. “That’d be nice.” Frankly, if there were one place he would like to visit, it was a certain mystical land up north known as Toronto, setting of The Cunning Man, a Canadian cipher shrouded in mystery that Axel had spoken of in tones alternately reproachful and besotted.

“You bet,” Axel said, grinning and loose and relaxed. He reached over his shoulder and pulled off his t-shirt, tossing it onto the pile of dirty laundry he’d just finished sorting out. The light from the window glanced and caught the faint sheen of sweat on Axel’s chest. Roxas’s mouth went a little dry.

“You ever noticed how girls take off their shirts from the front, but guys pull theirs off by the back of the neck?” he said, flicking his tongue slowly over his bottom lip.

“What?” Axel asked, bewildered. A glint of interest flared in his eyes. He placed one hand on his hip, sliding his fingers over the smooth bone peeking out of his waistband, skimming the light trail of hair on his lower belly. “Seen a lot of girls take off their shirts, have you?”

Roxas smirked, and pulled Axel in by his endearingly crooked wrists, fully intending to show him exactly how much he knew about the fine and subtle art of shirt-removal.

*

Exactly three weeks from the day Olette had marched into the cafeteria and set into motion a chain of events that would ultimately change his life, Roxas found himself walking to school without feeling, for once, like a hunted animal. His head felt light in the softness of June, and he was thinking of sunny days and having Naminé home for the summer. She would probably like Amherst, like the quiet, tree-lined streets and pretty storefronts, and maybe when she’d had time to settle in he would take her out to the Dickinson Homestead, to the cemetery to find Emily’s grave and lay a pebble on her tombstone.

In his heart, Roxas knew that it was far from over—just the previous night, he had sat up until two in the morning perusing the National Multiple Sclerosis Society’s website, bookmarking links and looking up information on how to care for MS sufferers. To say that their family had had a rough couple of years would be an understatement of the criminal kind. He had to be ready, had to keep his head above water. Before I could raise my Heart from one, another has come.

But for now, the grin on his mouth felt right and perfect where it was, and he knew better than to mess with a good thing.

On the steps of the entrance, Roxas saw Pence. His face held that blurry, owlish look that meant he had spent the entire night coding again and fallen asleep on his keyboard around five in the morning. Roxas knew Pence was probably on Google’s shortlist or something, but if he kept this up, no hypothetical amount of trickledown popularity from Roxas could possibly get him through senior year in one piece.

“Is the binary numeral system the new language of lovers?” Roxas asked sweetly.

Pence shot him a dirty look. “Good morning to you too, jerk face,” he said—and that was about all he managed to get out before a hulkish blur tackled him flat, screaming, “I’m gonna rip your head off, motherfucker! Stay the hell away from my girlfriend!”

By the time someone thought to fetch Olette, Roxas had already sustained an elbow to the ribs in a heroic attempt to pull Rai off of Pence. As Olette strode into the fray yelling about how stupid they were and how she was going to kill each of them dead and then learn black magic to resurrect them just so she could kill them again, he helped Pence to his feet, and reflected that, really, he should have known the cycle of pain would have just begun afresh.

For some obscure and difficult to explain reason, Olette did not seem at all offended by her ex’s attempted assault on her supposed best friend. She was, as a matter of fact, rather taken by his action, and the Great and Terrible Olette-Rai Rift finally came to an end, to the vast relief of the general populace.

“I’m sure she’ll give him hell for it later,” Roxas consoled Pence, once Olette and Rai had scurried off to do whatever reconciliation-related things that heterosexual people did.

Pence snorted. “I wouldn’t bet on it.” He wiped at his bleeding lip, and said, “Do you think any girls saw me sock him in the eye back there?”

“Dozens,” Roxas said facetiously. He had, in fact, seen Rai’s Prom date Fuu send a mildly impressed look Pence’s way when he’d got in his one lucky punch, so maybe it wasn’t all in vain.

He knew life had completely returned to normal when he walked into homeroom and found Hayner slumped over his desk, wearing an ominous expression that only an early morning encounter of the Seifer-kind could have engendered. Pence was still making proud noises about his latest display of masculine brawn, and when Olette whirled through the door a few minutes later, humming a cheerful tune under her breath, Roxas found it difficult to believe that so much had changed.

And right on cue, his phone began belting Katamari on the Rocks at him.

SEVEN PERCENT OF AMERICANS DON’T KNOW THE FIRST 9 WORDS OF THE AMERICAN ANTHEM BUT KNOW THE FIRST 7 OF THE CANADIAN ANTHEM.

Roxas snorted. He scrolled to the bottom for the usual pictorial depiction, but then almost snapped his phone in half when he saw what Axel had sent. Somehow, he’d always known that he would one day take up with a ravening pervert. (But he’d save that picture for later, more private perusal anyway.)

While waiting for the teacher to show up, Roxas decided once and for all that a) he really needed to find a less obnoxious ringtone, and b) even if he couldn’t yet take Axel up on his offer to take Roxas far and far away, that did not mean that they weren’t allowed to take field trips every now and then. In fact, he knew just the place.

With a smirk wide enough to break his face, Roxas flipped out his phone again and began punching in a new message.

how do you feel about muppets and musical theater?

THE END

______________________________________________________

It's over, it's over, it's finally over. I may be slightly delirious, excuse me. Took way longer than it should have, but here we are. This brings the total number of my finished multi-chapter fics up to... two. I seriously haven't seen anything through since my first fic ever. Wow.

This was actually supposed to be the second to last installment, but then I realized that I didn't have enough material planned for two whole chapters. And now I have to go ~~write the sequel~~ compile the soundtrack. Can someone offer this girl a tutorial on how to make a FST cover? ;___;

[fic] SPLASH — or The Stripper Fic You Should Have Talked Me Out Of Writing

ronsard — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 23:03:41 GMT

The only word to describe this fic would be “ill-advised”. Or possibly “wretched”. Wretchedly ill-advised. And you thought Prom Fic or Jacking Off In A Cave Fic was stupid and undignified.

Title: SPLASH
Fandom: Naruto
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Shisui/Itachi
Summary: On a scale of one to ten—ten being the bomb scare at the Reuters Building last May—this was still registering at least a seven in terms of stupidity.
Warnings: AU. AU like a motherfucker (but hey, at least it takes place in Japan). What am I even supposed to say here? It's the Stripper Fic.

( Pretend that when I say NPA, I actually mean FBI, and when I say Tokyo, I really mean New York. )

I wrote this really, really quickly—and I’m talking like, “Oh my God I cannot stop to think about this for even one second because I will lose my mind.” The problem with me is that whereas most people will look at this premise and think, “Aha! Crack!” I look at it and think, “Aha! Cheesefest romantic comedy meets gritty cop drama with a side of after school special!” A 110% serious sappy ending. And a PG-13 rating. Score!

Notes:

1) If you can place which movie Itachi’s last line is stolen from, we are clearly soul mates and should immediately elope.

2) I know that go-go dancing is not technically stripping. This is probably a cop-out on my part, but consider this: I don’t actually know any male strippers. I do, however, have a couple of guy friends in the go-go scene, who were gracious enough to let me tackle them with a notepad and questions like, “What are some of your signature moves?” and, “On average, how many dollar bills can be stuffed into one g-string?” Besides, while I find stripping to be sleazy-as-hell-unless-you’re-Dita, go-go dancing can be fucking awesome, and is more about energy than, like, nakedness. Most of the time.

3) Splash is a real gay bar in New York, on 17th between 5th and 6th Ave. Yes, I modeled the club in this story after it, and yes, the go-go boys shower on stage. Campus Thursday, kids, free admission for college students and discounts on Long Island Iced Tea. Go hunt for your RL Itachi! /shot with a Glock 22 10mm.

4) OH OH OH I CAN'T BELIEVE I FORGOT ABOUT THIS. Okay, so this is something that my baby sister pointed out to me (I know, I know...), and I really have to share it with you: Itachi was totally meant to be a stripper, okay? Just listen to his theme music. Seriously, WHAT IS THAT? The anime people must really hate him, because that music makes me want to die a little inside.

To combat my cockblocking ways, soleil_et_pluie has taken the liberty to give you That Time At The Christmas Party in word-form: Office Party. Kakashi/Shisui. If you're not into that, I DON'T KNOW YOU.

And then octavius_x wrote an entire sequel which manages to be much deeper and better-written than my actual fic: Bang. U gaiz why are you so determined to put me out of business? D:

ALSO, did you know that bellicosus is an awful person -- and by awful, I mean FUCKING CRAZY AWESOME. Check dis shit out:

[fic] Across The Hallowed Ground (Part II, WIP)

ronsard — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 05:55:18 GMT

Fic, fic, fic, nothing but fic! Aside from this, all that currently comes out of my mouth is bitchery, might as well go with the lesser evil.

Title: Across The Hallowed Ground (2/7)
Series: Naruto
Characters: Shisui, Itachi, and others.
Summary: In the wake of an attack on the Academy, an order was issued for all the students to evacuate to the countryside. One group never made it to their destination.
Disclaimer: Naruto is the property of Kishimoto Masashi.

Across The Hallowed Ground

Part II: Hunters

***

Day 1.

The sun was just beginning to dip below the tree line when Shisui woke. He blinked a few times to rid himself of the muddled traces of sleep, and took a quick survey of his surroundings. Through the resinous shadow, he could just barely make out the shapes of trees and rocks—though being twenty feet above the ground helped a bit.

After a moment to reorient, Shisui leapt out of the tree. He had walked most of the previous night and the following morning, taking the mountain path that the Third Year’s instructor had mentioned, and had reached his limit around noon. It would be dawn before he needed sleep again. There was a small spring a little way back if he remembered correctly: a cool drink, something to eat, and then it was back on the trail.

He’d barely taken two steps when four dark shapes dropped out of the sky, and Shisui found himself surrounded.

“Hey kid,” said one of the new arrivals. “Where’re you going?”

The other three men moved in to tighten the circle, menace evident in their steps. Who were they? Bandits? Enemy troops? Definitely ninjas, but even in this grudging light, Shisui could tell that the four men wore no allegiant insignia. Could they be deserters? Missing-Nin?

Any way you sliced it, this was really bad news.

Thinking quickly, Shisui drew himself up and said calmly, “Back to my team. I snuck off for a nap, but now I got to get back before sensei comes looking for me.”

He didn’t expect that to fly, but his lie did manage to throw his stalkers long enough for him to grab two smoke bombs from his pouch and hurl them at the ground. Through the rising smoke, he launched himself forward, and tried to dart between two of the men, but one of them noticed him at the last minute and moved to block his path. Shisui ducked quickly before he could be grabbed, and drove a kunai into the man’s side, right up between two ribs, grounding it in as far as he could. He rolled away as the shinobi heaved forward, retching in pain, and jumped immediately to his feet, ready to break into a run—

—but he wasn’t fast enough. Shisui felt the breath choked out of him as his body was jerked roughly backward. One of the attackers had caught him by the back of his jacket. He picked Shisui up clean off the ground and slammed his head into a tree.

His temple hit the bark with a sickening crack. He blacked out.

*

When Shisui opened his eyes again, his hands and legs were tied. The side of his head ached something monstrous. He shook it tentatively, and the world seemed to reorient itself.

He was lying sideway on the ground, shrimped up against a tree with a gnarly root of some kind poking into his back. It was dark, though Shisui knew he couldn’t have been out for very long. As his eyes adjusted, he saw his attackers sitting in a circle around a fire, eating dinner and speaking in low voices among themselves. None of them had yet noticed that he had regained consciousness. The smell of cooked food drifted into his nostrils, making his stomach twist.

He darted his eyes around for his belongings. His rucksack was sitting at one of the men’s feet, his weapon pouch piled on top of it. They looked, for the most part, unmolested. Shisui gave his wrist an experimental turn, and felt the rope bite into his skin. The knot was sturdy, but simple—he would be able to undo it given time and motivation.

“What’re we going to do with the brat?” one of the men said.

“Sell ‘im,” another grunted. “We’re heading west. They do all sorts of kinjutsu experiments in Kusa, there’s a pretty high demand for… live test subjects. Know what I mean?”

There was a loud chorus of laughter. Shisui bit his lip to force the dizziness away, and went back to work on his restraints with renewed fervor. Motivation didn’t get much better than that.

At this point, Shisui became aware that one of the rogues was staring straight at him. He froze, spine stiffening as their eyes met over the crackling fire. The man’s bare torso was wrapped in bandages, and Shisui realized that this must be the one had stabbed earlier during his attempted flight. He had a tattoo of a wolf on his neck done by someone who had some very weird notions about what wolves looked like. There was something in the man’s beady eyes that made Shisui vaguely nervous.

“He’s awake,” the injured man said, jerking his head in Shisui’s direction.

“So?” asked one of his companions.

“The little shit stabbed me,” the first man grumbled. He brought his thumb to his lips and flicked out his tongue to lick it. “I gotta teach him a lesson.”

The other man pulled a face. “Fuck you and your disgusting habits, man. Take him behind those trees if you’re gonna do it, none of us here want to watch that shit.”

What was that all about? What were they planning to do to him?

The man with the tattoo rose to his feet, moving in the slow, labored way of a person compressed by pain. He pulled out a knife, and made his way toward Shisui. Crap. He had to work faster to loosen the knot. Almost got it. Almost—

The knife sliced through the rope binding Shisui’s ankles, narrowly missing his skin. The man was crouching over him, looking down at Shisui with that same fevered expression that suggested hunger. Up close, the skin of his face looked dark and leathery, marred by several streaks of whitish scars. Eyes black, twitchy like an epileptic rat.

“Stand up,” he ordered. When Shisui failed to comply, the man pointed the knife in his face and repeated his command, voice low and loaded with malice. “Stand up.”

Shisui struggled upright, stretching his legs a few times to shake out the numbness that had settled into the muscles. He had managed to undo most of the knot, but had to hold the coil of rope in place to avoid suspicion. The man walked him into the grove of trees, the knife held to Shisui’s back. Maybe once they were far enough in the woods he could try to make a dash for it.

A hard, sudden shove between the shoulderblades sent Shisui tripping face-first into the duff. He barely had time to spit dead leaves out of his mouth when his captor was upon him, one large hand splayed over the back of his head to force him down. His breath felt hot on the back of Shisui’s neck. Something was going to happen to him—be done to him—and he didn’t know what but sheer panic rushed up his throat like surging vomit anyway. His face was still smushed to the ground and he could barely breathe, his nose crushed and suffused with the damp, loamy smell of the forest soil. He couldn’t turn his head or move and he was going to die.

The rank gusts of breath were still on his neck, scattering strands of hair, and they were growing shallow and ragged in a way that made Shisui want to recoil, curl in on himself and get as far away as possible. And then his shirt was being lifted—the cold air made goosebumps mushroom wildly across his clammy skin, but not nearly as much as the rough palm that was sliding up his back, lingering nauseatingly at the indented spot just above his waist. Fingers tugged at the band of his shorts, blunt nails scraping his frightened skin. No one had ever touched him in this horrible way before. No one should be allowed. Something very bad was about to happen and he wanted to turn his head and throw up—

—and that was when Shisui remembered, through the suffocation and haze of panic, that his hands were free and that he’d been trained to fight. He drew in his elbow with all his strength and swung it backward in a blind arc.

Miraculously, it made contact: his attacker yelped and reared back instinctively, clutching his bleeding nose. Shisui twisted around, and taking aim, sent a vicious kick straight into the man’s injured side. He scrambled way quickly, shrugged off the rope, and began clawing out seals as fast as he could. Snake. Ram. Boar.

The man had recovered and was rising to his feet. He wiped his mouth, and picked up the knife, a dark fury twisting his already-hideous visage into something terrible, demonic. Shisui’s pulse was running sprints in his ears, faster, faster, he was running out of time. Monkey. Horse. Tige—

The fireball hit his assailant full in the face just as he was about to launch himself at Shisui. The man howled in unimaginable agony as the flame engulfed him, and continued to scream for a long time, the high-pitched sound almost inhuman, rending the stillness of the night. The fire went out almost immediately but his clothes and hair were still burning, the top of his head a crown of ashy, blackened wisps, aflame. One eye was welded shut, the other scorched and rolling into his skull, caked with mucus, mired in the sooty creases of the eyelids. Traumatized skin giving off a gut-souring stench—but now his screams of pain had drawn the attention of the other three. Voices sounded in the clearing, they were coming.

Sharp panic shot through Shisui’s paralyzed mind. He had to get away but there was no way he could outrun them, no way to escape, and without thinking his fingers came together again in another seal and all he could think was, Away, away, get me away from here…

And suddenly his ears were filled with a whoosh of wind, and for a fleeting instant his body felt light and formless, melting into the air itself. When he was solid and anchored again, Shisui found himself thirty feet above the ground, and had to quickly grab the trunk of the tree to keep from falling to his death. His mind reeled with shock and triumph—he’d spent for-friggin’-ever practicing that technique, but it had never worked this well before.

Awesome.

Shisui braced his feet on the branch for purchase, and peered down at the three shinobi, clustered around the burnt man and shouting angrily at each other. The air still soaked in plumes of coagulated smoke. He drew back into the shadow. They were searching for him on the ground, but it was only a matter of time before his location was found out. He had to get out of here now.

His supplies. Without them, he had no hope of making this journey, and while he could do without most of the stuff, he couldn’t part with his weapons or Hana’s bracelet—the Seal. There was no other choice. He had to go back for them. Maybe he could pull it off. The distance wasn’t that great…

Taking a deep breath, Shisui formed the seal, and narrowed all his thoughts into a small, dark corner of his mind. There was a roar of wind in his ears, freezing on his cheeks, and then his body slammed into the dusty ground with enough force to knock the breath out of his chest. With relief, Shisui realized that he’d just barely avoided rocketing straight into the campfire, which would have been nicely ironic. Definitely needed to work on his navigation, but no time for that—he dove for his rucksack, and struggled to pull the straps over his arms. He grabbed his weapon pouch, and looked up in time to see one of the rogues raising a kunai, taking aim…

The blade sliced through the air, nailing into the ground with a loud thud mere seconds after Shisui vanished from reality.

*

Shisui ran. One leap after another. Pop. Reappear. Pop. Reappear. Here for one moment and gone again, his blood singing a hungry, primitive chant with neither melody nor cadence.

He tried to keep up the jutsu for as long as he could, and when his strength bottomed out and he went sprawling in the dirt, picked himself up and kept on running, legs pistoning under him so rapidly the muscles screamed and threatened to tear. He flew blindly through the threadbare wood, cruel lashes of wind nipping his face, until his foot rammed into a protruding root and his body went tumbling, down and down a long slope stubbled with shrubs and jagged stones.

Luckily, a pile of mulch broke his fall. Shisui lay flat on his back in the sludge and tried to catch his breath, staring up into the sky above, where drab clouds gathered in tangled skeins across a moonless canopy. Dead leaves squelching with moisture. Branches everywhere. The air still as death: breath-puffs faint, ghostly white.

His heart still thumping, Shisui pulled his battered body to a sitting position. He listened warily, but the only sounds in the bitter dark were the distant cries of night birds. There was no telling where he was or how far he’d run, but it seemed that his former captors were not giving chase. Nevertheless, he crawled to a base of a large tree and tried to shield himself as best as possible in its embrace. His legs scraped and quaking—he was freezing, but couldn’t risk starting a fire.

The shakes did not go away. Instead, they appeared to be getting worse by the moment, wracking his entire body. Fractured sobs were fighting their way up his throat, hot, humiliating tears streaming down his face. He scrubbed at his cheeks furiously, clawing his aching eyes in ineffectual swipes. Stop crying, idiot. Stop crying right now or I’ll kill you. Get it under control.

He got it under control.

What next?

First, strap weapon pouch back on.

Then, check belongings to make sure nothing was missing.

He groped blindly through his rucksack, and only breathed easily again when he found everything still in its place. His fingers brushed the worn goatskin of the Living Seal, and he closed his grip upon it tightly, feeling a solid blockade lifting out of his chest. Couldn’t lose this. It was more important than anything, than his life. He placed the Seal carefully back into its compartment, and felt something sharp poke his finger.

Hana’s heirloom bracelet. Shisui pulled it out and dangled it in front of his face. “Hey, aren’t you supposed to bring good luck?” he said mockingly. “Because I could really use some right now, you useless piece of crap.”

Then he looked up into a pair of piercing amber eyes.

How the wolf—mountain dog?—had snuck up on him, Shisui had no idea, but that didn’t change the fact that it was there, right there, long snout inches from his nose. He froze in shock, hands falling slack to his sides. It didn’t even occur to him to draw a weapon.

Was this how he was going to die? Mauled to death by a friggin’ wolf? This was so unfair. He’d come this far, gone through all kinds of horrible things, and now he was going to end up being premium canine chow. Some good luck charm.

The wolf hadn’t moved from its position. It was still staring at him with those pale, glittering eyes, like it was assessing Shisui—only that was crazy and ridiculous and completely impossible. Then again, he wasn’t even sure this animal was a wolf. Normal wolves, to his best knowledge, weren’t pale blue. Or the size of a small tiger. Or faintly glowing at the edges.

Maybe I’m dreaming, Shisui thought frantically. Excessive amounts of adrenaline went to your brain and made you hallucinate. Obviously, he had gone temporarily insane. That probably happened a lot to people who’d narrowly escaped death.

The very, very blue wolf tilted its head, and took a small step forward. Shisui flinched—hallucination or not, it was still very big, and probably had correspondingly big teeth—but his terror changed to surprise when the great animal lowered its body and began licking the cuts and scrapes on his bare knees and calves. For a figment of imagination, it had a strangely realistic tongue, very wet and warm, a little rough on the skin. Scratchy. Huh.

After a moment, the wolf lifted its head, and applied itself to licking Shisui’s face, running its warm tongue over all the scratches left by rocks and twigs, the throbbing bruise on the side of his head. This done, it dropped onto its powerful haunches and carefully placed its head on Shisui’s shoulder, nudging his head lightly as though dropping an unsubtle hint.

It was as close to a comforting touch as he could remember receiving in days, so Shisui threw away the rest of his rationality and wrapped his tired arm around the wolf’s neck, burying his face into its taut shoulder. Hallucinations had body heat? That was one for the book. He closed his eyes, let his breathing even out. The wolf made a rumbling noise in its throat, and nuzzled Shisui lightly with its wet nose, pressing in closer to shield his body from the iron cold.

The wind was picking up. It raked frosty fingers through the leaves, sending them twirling. A flash of lightning flared, and thunder could be heard trundling in the east. Imminent rain.

Shisui raised his fingers tentatively, and scratched the back of an alert ear. “So I know you’re not real or anything,” he whispered into warm fur. “But do you happen to know some place I can crash for the night without getting rained to death?”

The wolf made a low noise again, and lifted itself gracefully to its feet. It turned, and began to walk away. A sense of desolation overtook Shisui, but then the wolf looked at him over its shoulder and beckoned with its head. Evidently asking him to follow. This entire adventure was ill-advised enough without following supernatural manifestations into some unknown depth of these dark, sinister woods—but hey, what was one more act of insanity?

The air chilled steadily as they made their way through the dense trees. The wolf kept to a sure, unhurried pace. It seemed to know exactly where it was going, and felt no need to arrive there with any urgency, which was more than could be said for Shisui. Incorporeal beasts might not mind being rained on, but he certainly couldn’t afford a spontaneous case of onset pneumonia.

After what seemed a very long while, the trees sparsed out. The scent of flowering briar filled Shisui’s nose, sweet and powdery, and he gazed with awe at a huge camphor tree, soaring majestically up over him into the sky, the dome of its thick leaves roofing the entire clearing. The wolf trotted through the briar patch, and beckoned to Shisui again. Using its snout, it shifted aside a curtain of moss, revealing a hollow in the base of the great tree.

Gratefully, Shisui crawled forward, going as deeply as he could into the dark tunnel, which weirdly seemed to go on forever. The narrow corridor was suspiciously free of slime, carpeted with a thin layer of dry grass. The moss curtain rustled. The wolf had followed him into the tree hollow, which against all reason managed to accommodate its large frame with ease. It curled up near the entrance, and blinked at him with those large, glowing eyes.

I’m here. Don’t be afraid.

My craziness is just beyond hope, Shisui thought, but dismissed the thought when exhaustion crested and shook him all over, sucking him under its sweep. Yawns threatening to shatter his jaw, he unpacked his camping blanket and wrapped it securely around himself. He settled down beside his otherworldly guardian, and curled in as close as he dared.

Outside, the storm was raging like nobody’s business, rain pouring down in tiny waterfalls, pattering with increasing intensity. Shisui closed his eyes and fell asleep to that heavy, earth-steady rhythm, his dreams absent of nightmares.

*

Day 2.

Sunlight on his face, soft and gauzy, sieved through a thin green curtain. Birdsong. The air rain-washed and fresh, a clean, sharp scent like new winter, and for a moment Shisui had absolutely no idea where he was or how he had gotten there. He remembered being captured—a faint chill touched the back of his neck, which he ignored. Then he had escaped by virtue of pure awesomeness, and after that… there’d been a really big tree, and then this hollow where he’d evidently spent the night. Everything else was a blur.

When he was ready, Shisui parted the moss covering carefully and peeked outside. There was no one around. He stepped out into the sobering morning, and something at his feet caught his eyes.

A single pawprint was imprinted in the soft, damp earth. It was big enough to fit his entire foot.

Couldn’t think about that now. If he did, he’d lose his mind for good.

It turned out to Shisui’s relief that he wasn’t as far from the main trail as he’d feared. By some stroke of luck or act of divine intervention or something, he had also gone in mostly the right direction. Despite the ordeal of the previous day, Shisui felt rested, full of renewed strength and confidence. The day was dewy and clear, deceptively gorgeous for October. From here, he’d have to be more careful, take advantage of daylight hours, walk nonstop until he reached his destination if he had to. Still, it was comforting to know that you had at least one card up your sleeve to get you out of a tight spot.

*

Day 3.

Mid-afternoon saw the end of the road. Shisui came down from the mountain, and found himself in a lush valley. About half a mile ahead, he smelled woodsmoke—cooking fires—and came upon a small encampment of what turned out to be refugees from the Fire Country. Happy to be among his countrymen again, he merged into the colony and weaved through the medley of tents, hoping against hope to find the First Year party among them, or at least someone who had seen them around.

No luck.

Evening fell, and all the positive energy he had accumulated in the last two days seemed to fade with the sunlight. It took all the dignity he possessed not to fold up his arms and hide his head behind them. He compromised by placing his chin on top of them instead.

“What’s your damage, kid? Looking at your long face’s killing my appetite.”

Shisui looked up sullenly into the face of the Leaf Chuunin he had sort of barnacled himself to in a bid to gather information. The young man—Benkei, his parents must have been in a mean mood—was part of the team charged with guarding the refugees. He was big and red-cheeked and extremely talky, which was good because it meant Benkei was very willing to dispense whatever insider’s knowledge he possessed. Bad, because the insider’s knowledge he possessed had nothing to do with Shisui’s mission. Worse, because the man just couldn’t take a hint.

“What’d you say your name was again?”

“Whatever.”

“What was that?”

“Hiroshi,” Shisui said, lifting his head. “Sorry, just busy thinking.”

Benkei shot him an amused look. “You do that a lot?” he said, and cackled like this was the height of grand comedy. Shisui wanted to bury his entire face.

“So you were saying something,” he said deliberately. “Something about Kumo occupying some place? Where’s that?”

“It’s this little village on the edge of the county,” said Benkei. “Just a couple miles from here, actually. Tiny place, maybe one-fifty in population tops, mostly civilians.” His expression darkened abruptly. “I don’t think too many of them made it out in time.”

Shisui swallowed hard to get rid of the lump in his throat. “Why are those Kumo guys even staying there? Their village’s losing, shouldn’t they be trying to get out too?”

“They probably want that too,” Benkei said cryptically. He took two roasted corns off the fire, and handed one to Shisui. “Kind of hard, though, with our ANBU pressing in from this front, and the forest to their back.”

“What’s wrong with the forest?”

“What’s wrong with the forest? That’s where it is.”

Shisui blinked. “It?”

“The demon fox, of course.”

“That’s a real thing?”

Benkei stared at him in stark bafflement, clearly offended by Shisui’s skepticism. “Excuse my language, but where the hell have you been, kiddo?”

“On the run.”

“Are your parents shinobi?” Benkei asked.

“Uh, no,” Shisui demurred. “My mom’s dead, and my dad is a—fruit-seller.”

One lie plus one truth and a half wasn’t bad. His dad certainly talked about the virtues of fresh fruit in a balanced organic diet often enough to outsmarm a real salesman, anyway.

Benkei made a frustrated noise, like this was exactly the kind of thing he’d expect from a fruit-seller’s son, which made Shisui feel a bit insulted on behalf of fruit-sellers everywhere.

“The demon fox is most certainly a real thing. Don’t let any of the other guys hear what you just said, okay? Some of them still have friends and family out there fighting—and let me tell you, it’s bad.”

“How bad?” Shisui asked.

“Bad,” Benkei said seriously. “It took out an entire district of our village on its first appearance, and then just—vanished. That’s the worst thing: you just never know when it’ll pop out of the ground again. It’s only been three days, and the casualty—oh, and supposedly, it lives in the forest, so do you even have to ask why nobody dares to go in there?”

“Okay,” Shisui mumbled. Like he had time to be worrying about this mythical mumbo-jumbo now. Why was he even talking to this guy? This was the epitome of stupid.

Benkei tilted his head to the sky, suddenly philosophical. “Half a decade of war, and just when things are starting to settle down, some demon comes along and goes on a rampage. I keep telling people, the gods must really hate ninjas, ‘cause they sure don’t seem to want us around.”

Bet people just love hearing that, Shisui thought, and lifted his eyes to the sky as well. His mind held no demon-tinted thoughts. In this moment, the road felt endless, the distance unbreachable.

“Are you here by yourself or something?” Benkei asked, sounding perplexed. “Your father isn’t accompanying you?”

“No,” Shisui said blandly, gnawing on his roasted corn. “He wanted to stay behind to—man the family’s shop. My old man’s all into his job like that.”

“People these days,” Benkei muttered. He gave Shisui another skewer of corn, and a painfully earnest smile. “Well, you stick close to me, okay? It’s really easy to get lost in all this madness. You don’t want to get left behind, little buddy.”

“Sure,” Shisui said slowly. Strangers with this degree of earnestness made him super awkward.

Benkei jumped to his feet and wiped his hands on his pants. “I have to go patrol. Help yourself to the food, and then get some sleep. We’re heading out early tomorrow.”

Shisui nodded, and forced a reciprocating smile that felt more than a little wobbly. Oh, he was heading out early tomorrow alright. For a moment, he felt a bit sorry for Benkei, who would probably freak out a little when he found out that his new charge had disappeared on his watch. Hopefully he’d get over it—and not hold it against Shisui too much for making off with a good chunk of his rations.

***

End

Oh, and there is this:

If you've promised to sign up, and yet for some reason haven't, sign up. I see you when you're sleeping, I know when you're awake... DON'T MAKE ME HUNT YOU DOWN.

And now I have to get to bed to prepare for the EPICNESS that is Germany vs. England tomorrow. At least I hope it will be epic. At this stage, I have no expectations. (But hey, hey, Ghana today? Awesome right? They kicked so much American ass, I was ROTFL-ing all the way ♥) ETA: FFFFFFFF. STEVEN, HAVE SOME OF MY TEARS ;___;

[fic] Boys Will Be Boys (NC-17)

ronsard — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 00:31:42 GMT

So Hinata-fic is definitely happening. I went over the 1000 words mark, there's just no stopping now. It was even turning out pretty decent (if horridly dull, and not quite as gen as I'd thought it would be) but then--I had a moment. And that moment led to this. All I'm saying is, you should probably not click on that cut if you still want to retain some modicum of respect for me...

Title: Boys Will Be Boys
Fandom: Naruto
Word Count: 1,741 words
Pairing: Not quite ItaShi--and yet it's rated NC-17. FIND OUT WHY.
Disclaimer: Naruto is the property of Kishimoto Masashi, who would be perfectly within his rights to put a hit out on me should he ever see this.
Summary: Uchiha Shisui, a cave, and a very sleepless night.

Boys Will Be Boys

***

It was bound to happen sooner or later. Personally, Shisui would have opted for later. Or never. Upon consideration, never would have worked just fine for him.

They were on their way back to Konoha after a long but disappointing mission on the border of Suna, consisting almost entirely of mundane if not easily-dispatched tasks. Shisui felt that they had spent way too much time getting intimate with the elements, but tragically the warm bed he longed for was not to be had. The journey home was all grasslands and forests, but on the third night they’d stumbled upon a cave, saving them the trouble of having to pitch their tents. And hey, if they happened to disturb an irate bear of some kind, at least it’d instill some excitement into this uninspiring adventure.

If anyone ever asked—and he really hoped that no one would—Shisui would have to blame the hard tacks he’d had for dinner. He’d always found them slightly suspect, but evidently they contained some hidden pharmacological property that inhibited sleep even in subjects thoroughly wiped from a day on the trail. Frustrated, Shisui squeezed his eyes shut and tried to think of the most boring subject he could recall. Fugaku’s New Year speech! That would put him in a coma in no time. He mentally began enunciating every monotonic syllable, reaching for sleep.

That lasted for approximately seven point five minutes.

The first thing he heard was a soft rustle of cloth. He dismissed it out of hand—sure, Itachi was a quiet sleeper, but even he had to shift around a little now and then. It was petty, but Shisui couldn’t help the twinge of jealousy: they had both consumed the same blocks of concrete, but clearly Itachi’s inhuman biology was effectively warding off their deleterious effects. Determinedly, he returned to the task of calling up in acute details the exact timbre of Fugaku’s soporific voice as he had extolled the virtues of thoroughness in forensic investigation—

The next sound he heard wasn’t quite as easy to explain.

It was not so much a sound as a series of little noises, slow and strangely slick, shaping the motion of something sliding back and forth. Something like, say, a wet tongue against skin. What the hell? Shisui boggled. Was Itachi licking himself over there?

Just as he was debating the best and most risk-free way to voice an inquiry, the noises came to a stop. Shisui would have gladly let it be, but he was now wide awake, ensuring that he did not miss the next rustle of cloth and definitely did not miss what came after that.

The slide of skin on skin was back, just as smooth and slick as before, except now there was something different about its frequency. More greedy and urgent. Familiar. Yeah, it was definitely familiar. There was a certain rhythm to this motion, an even slip-sliding, moving in one determined stroke after another—holy mother of fuck.

All the blood in Shisui’s body instantly reached boiling temperature and rushed to his head. It had to be that. No way in hell he could be mistaken. Somehow, against insurmountable odds, his baby cousin had discovered the fine and traditional art of erotic self-stimulation.

Well there goes my robot theory, Shisui thought distractedly, but then experienced yet another heated full-body flush when he heard Itachi make a choked, half-broken noise in his throat. He was swallowing, hard, almost involuntary, the click of his throat obscenely loud in the still hush of the night. This was impossible. They were in a forest, for fuck’s sake, it should not be this quiet. Quiet enough for him to make out with perfect clarity each of Itachi’s quickened stroke, the slick slap of his palm, the subtle whisper when the back of his hand brushed the fabric of his pants. His rhythm was gaining speed, suddenly all jagged and sloppy—jerky, desperate, typical of someone who couldn’t have been doing this for very long.

That much was apparent. It was clear, Shisui seethed, that nobody had given Itachi the So You’ve Discovered You Can Touch Yourself There talk that Shisui’s father had subjected him to in his twelfth year, which, while traumatizing, contained the very vital instruction that such pursuits were to be conducted strictly in the privacy of one’s room. Or possibly in the bath. In the bath, where he would be naked, all wet and flushing and hesitant, tentatively reaching one clumsy hand into the soapy water and down between his splayed thighs to grip his—

Itachi, lying a mere two feet away from Shisui, gasped softly and let out a hissing sigh, breathing it out through narrowly parted lips.

Oh my god, that’s just not fair, Shisui growled to himself. The movements he could deal with, but did Itachi have to make noises while he jerked off too? Where the hell was all his stealth? Was he even a ninja? If he hadn’t had the basic sense to go outside and touch himself where his only witness would be the tranquil night, the least he could have done was to make sure that Shisui had fallen asleep, or maybe cast a genjutsu over himself to conceal his illicit activity. Shisui direly wished he could cast a genjutsu on himself to block out this horrible reality, but that would require hand-seals and in this moment, even the slightest movement could prove fatal. Itachi’s attention might be… elsewhere, but that didn’t guarantee that he was any less of a paranoid hair-trigger basket case, and Shisui would not, would not be caught eavesdropping like some kind of sick voyeur. Even if Itachi didn’t murder him for it, he would voluntarily strangle himself with his forehead protector.

In the horrifying silence of the cave, Itachi let out another pained half-groan. There was a crinkling sound, then a soft thump—he had heaved over onto his… back? No, face-down, all his sighs and moans muffled into the bedroll, and then there was—oh fuck—the slide of his small body against the cloth. Itachi was grinding into his bedroll, rocking his hips and thrusting into his fist. He had to be out of his mind if he thought Shisui couldn’t hear that, asleep or not.

Shisui tried to keep his breathing even. He hated himself. Why did he have to be such a good shinobi? If he were more incompetent he would probably not even notice any of this. For that matter, why couldn’t Itachi have been born a girl? There wouldn’t even need to be that many alterations. Surely girls didn’t do this kind of—on second thought, perhaps it wasn’t a good idea to wonder what girls got up to, never mind what girl-Itachi would get up to. Sleep. He had to feign sleep. He slammed his eyes shut—a fat lot of good that was doing. With his eyes closed, he had virtually nothing to focus on but the images in his head, accompanied by the very real and very present sounds, which seemed to increase in volume in his blindness.

At this point, Shisui again experienced the unpleasant sensation of all the blood in his body rushing to his head—but not that head.

What the fuck? What the fuckity fuck? He had not spent all his Academy days fighting off plebeian taunts like, “I bet you get it up for your cousin,” only to find out seven years down the road that he really did get it up for his cousin. He caught his lip between his teeth, hard enough to draw blood, and swallowed the coppery tang as quietly as he could. Flicked his tongue over the wound, then out and across his suddenly dry lips. Shivered. He was so ridiculously hard his pants were tenting—if he could just reach down, brush the outline of his erection, one touch, a little almost-friction or something, just to get some relief and, you know, not lose his mind. But he knew that if he did, it would be all over for him, and no amount of steely self-control would prevent him from shoving his hand down his pants as well and mimicking Itachi’s every stroke and jerk. Best friends did everything together, right?

On the other side of the cave, Itachi was still moving. Shisui had had his back to him all this time, but he didn’t have to actually look to know that Itachi was nearly arching off the bedroll, toes curling and stretching against the threadbare cloth as he fucked his hand. He was straining against the pressure of his own weight, driving his hips faster and faster. His skin was probably flushed, damp with exertion, his loose hair falling into his face and getting into his mouth. His breath was quickening, panting and gasping—he was so close, so, so close. Come on, you freak, just a little more, get this over with, please, Itachi, please…

With one last shudder, a sound halfway between a moan and a whimper, Itachi’s body jerked in a quick succession of small thrusts, and then it was over. He sagged down into his bedroll and went still, going limp like all his bones had melted to water. Shisui opened his eyes, let out a silent, shaky breath. His body was still vibrating lightly; he had to force it to stop. Itachi was sucking in short little breaths lazily, quiet and sated and all but ready for sleep. Unbelievable. It was clear he didn’t plan on getting up and going to clean himself or anything, so Shisui was just going to have to pretend to sleep in tomorrow morning to escape the mother of all awkward moments. He had a feeling he’d become an expert at diverting his eyes and becoming politely fascinated with inanimate objects by the time they reached Konoha.

Shisui clenched his teeth, and kept his hands fisted tightly in the rough fabric of his bedroll. He would wait, wait until he was certain that Itachi was asleep before getting up—just to be on the safe side, he’d even use Shunshin. It killed a piece of his soul to think that he’d have to resort to ninjutsu for this wretched purpose, but at least Shisui had the decency to seek solitude when he was seized by the need to get in touch with his inner self.

___________________________________________

CAN I PLEASE HAVE THAT INTERVENTION NOW?

also, did you know that 'choke the weasel' is an euphemism for jacking off? i did. SO WHY DID I NOT INCORPORATE IT INTO THIS FIC IDEK.

[fic] Across The Hallowed Ground (Part I, WIP)

ronsard — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 07:09:12 GMT

Given my track record with WIPs, this is probably like shooting myself in the face :\ It's been a ridiculously long week, though, and I still can't stop coughing every two minutes, so whatever, I'm clearly not in my right mind.

Title: Across The Hallowed Ground (1/7)
Series: Naruto
Word Count: 3,680 words
Characters: Shisui, Itachi, and others.
Summary: In the wake of an attack on the Academy, an order was issued for all the students to evacuate to the countryside. One group never made it to their destination.
Disclaimer: Naruto is the property of Kishimoto Masashi.

Across The Hallowed Ground

Part I: Apart

***

Day 0.

It was negative one hundred bazillion degrees up there on top of the hill, and the crunch of frozen, iron-hard earth beneath the soles of his feet was starting to feel like child abuse. Shisui turned the blade of his hoe over to attack another square of soil—chop-chop-chop, one, two, three—before digging it snug into the ground. Every gust of wind felt like an open wound on his damp face, raising dry-grass noises in the distance.

He propped himself against the hoe’s handle, looked down into the valley. Below him, the ground appeared as an empty rice bowl. The steps leading up to the temple looked like a long white spine, ramrod, cutting into the brownish wood. Shisui squinted at it, hoping to see people coming up, and was disappointed for approximately the twentieth time that morning.

“Why aren’t they here yet?” he muttered to himself, dabbing sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand. “What the heck could be taking so long?”

“Talking to yourself now? Did you catch a head cold or something?”

He turned, and saw Inuzuka Hana picking her way across the field toward him, Saburo bouncing along at her heels. The annoying little mutt immediately dug his paws into one of the fresh-chopped rows, and began attempting to build some kind of tunnel in the dirt.

“Can you tell him to stop that?” Shisui said. “He’s undoing five hours’ worth of hard work.”

“Glad to see you’ve made so much progress,” Hana said tartly, but signaled for her nin-dog to sit anyway. “Lunch is ready, by the way. You should go clean up if you want any of the good stuff.”

“Oh yeah? What’re we having?”

“Soybean rice and bran cakes.”

“Again?” He couldn’t help groaning to himself. “At this rate, we’re gonna forget what real food tastes like. Why’d they have to send us all the way out in the middle of nowhere anyway?”

“What were they supposed to do after Kumo’s raid?” Hana said. “It’s really lucky that none of the students were killed.” Inexplicably, she dipped her head, and began to toy with one of her long bangs, a smile tugging at her lips. “You were pretty brave back there.”

Shisui rolled his eyes. “Yeah, figuring out how the vent system worked took real guts. Wouldn’t even have needed to if everyone hadn’t been stupid and got all freaked out about it.”

“I didn’t freak out,” Hana lied. “Anyway, it was pretty scary, what happened to Saitou-sensei. I don’t know why you didn’t freak out, to be honest.”

Loath as he was to admit it, she had a point. Decapitation as a concept was outlandish and even kind of funny when you read about it in fairytales and comic books, none of which even approached the grisliness of witnessing the real thing in action. No matter how many times Shisui closed his eyes and tried to shake the image out of his head, it always came back, a stubborn burn on the back of his eyelids.

“Well, we all got out okay, so you can stop blubbering now,” he mumbled. “I still can’t believe they made us evacuate. Like we’re babies, or civilians.” The word ‘civilians’ felt like an evil curse coming out of his mouth. “We’re supposed to be shinobi-in-training, and they’ve got us out here plowing fields.”

“It’s for the war effort. There’s food shortage on the front.”

“Fighting is for the war effort. Plowing is for cattle. What useful skills are we supposed to be learning here? Dig these fields well, young warriors! A perfect crop of turnips is the key to the great ninja arts!”

“You better hope we get a good crop, unless you want to eat soybean rice forever,” Hana said darkly. “You guys are so slow the war will probably end before you even get to sow the fields.”

Shisui scowled, and kicked a dirt clod at her. “So why aren’t you out here busting your butt, anyway?” he said. “You’re stronger than anyone else here, freak girl.”

Hana glared at him, and stuck her nose in the air. “You’d better clean up and get to the mess hall before all the bran cakes are gone, ‘cause I’m not saving you any,” she said loftily. “Come along, Saburo.” The pup yelped, and trotted back to the temple behind his mistress. Not cute. Not cute at all.

*

They got an hour of free time after lunch, which Shisui usually used to coerce his classmates into a sparring session or practicing with kunai. For the most part, he’d been successful, but today the collective class had been afflicted with an airborne laziness virus or something, because he found himself alone on the training ground, all the other cretins having scuttled off for a nap or a game of BEING A SLOTHFUL SLACKER WHO SLACKS.

“They are so obviously going to fail the grad exam,” Shisui announced with great justice, nailing another flawless kunai into a tree trunk. He aimed a few (deadly) spin kicks at a battered punching pole, and then decided to take a break. He’d go to the gate. Who knew when some refugee party might spontaneously decide to show up and need welcoming?

It must be his lucky day, because he’d barely cleared the pine grove when he heard them. Bright chattering, which meant kids. The air was a cold, October crisp even in the early afternoon, but Shisui could no longer feel it; he was nearly vibrating out of his skin with excitement. He broke into a brisk run, sandals scraping against the stone tiles, and arrived at the gate just as the party reached the top of the steps.

Immediately, his heart plummeted. The members of the group were Academy students alright, but one glance informed Shisui that they were all older than him. This wasn’t the First Year class.

“Sensei!” Shisui shouted, spotting a man in a Chuunin jacket. “Can I ask you something?”

The man looked around in surprise. “What is it?”

“Are the First Year students with you guys by any chance?”

An odd look passed through the Chuunin’s eyes. “No,” he said. “I’m only escorting the Third Year class, I’m afraid.”

Shisui frowned, and broke into a nervous babble, “It’s just that I was told that their group was supposed to leave the day after us, and we’ve been here nearly a week now and they still haven’t got here. Do you—do you think something might have happened?”

The man pointedly ignored Shisui’s question. “Do you have friends in the First Year?”

“Yeah, one. He’s my cousin actually. Do you know when they might get here?”

“Well,” the man started, in a deliberately slow manner. “The First Year party was due to depart on the same day as us, but they’re taking the mountain path. It’s longer, but safer. My guess is they’re going to arrive in a couple of days, so you just sit tight and wait for your cousin, okay?”

Shisui was quiet. “Okay,” he replied, after a moment. The Chuunin nodded and gave him a clap to the shoulder, before filing past with his charges. Shisui stayed on the steps. He stared into the shadows of the pine forest, until his eyeballs threatened to freeze over and he heard the bell signaling that it was time to get back to work.

*

The wind got colder as the day waned. As the temple bells rang in the twilight, Shisui made his way down to the steps again. The sky above him looked like dry dirt, growing darker by the minute. A kami in every scrap of nature. He was doing exactly what the Chuunin had advised him to do, sitting and waiting, and it felt like total crap.

After about fifteen minutes, he heard someone come up behind him. Hana dropped herself on the step just above the one Shisui was sitting on. He noted that Saburo was not with her.

“So you gonna tell me what’s gotten you all in a snit or what?” she asked.

“Or what.”

Undeterred, she prodded him in the arm. “Come on. Who put fire ants in your morning miso, huh?”

“I’m worried about my cousin,” he said distractedly, and almost bit his tongue. He could have kicked himself. Keep your mouth shut, moron. This was nobody’s business, let alone some meddling girl.

Hana twirled the end of her ponytail thoughtfully. “The war might end soon.”

“Says who?”

“Miyuki-sensei. She was saying last night during reading lesson that Yondaime-sama is coming very close to signing a peace treaty with the other villages.”

“A peace treaty? What’ll that do?”

“I don’t know. End the war, I guess.” She smiled, and tugged on his sleeve. “I’m going to the nursery to visit my baby brother. Wanna come?”

“Why would I want to do that?”

“I thought you were worried about your cousin?”

“Obviously I didn’t mean Sasuke.”

“Oh,” Hana said, chastised. “Right.”

Mostly because he felt bad for snapping at her, Shisui said, “Fine, I’ll come.”

By the time they got there, however, he’d already begun to regret his decision. The nursery always smelled vaguely of powdered milk and soiled diapers, and Shisui had always been slightly creeped out by the sight of so many little cribs all in one room. Babies weren’t his favorite things in the world anyway. Unless something could walk and talk and was normal-sized, Shisui didn’t feel like he could trust in its human credentials.

Hana didn’t seem to share his sentiments. She was leaning over the crib railings and making gross cooing noises at her brother, who proved exactly which clan he belonged to by raising up the kind of ruckus that wasn’t meant for human ears. Shisui could sense all the caretakers glaring daggers in their general direction—Kiba was keeping the other babies awake, and inciting them to follow his bad, awful, no good example.

All except one, of course. Shisui walked over to a corner of the room, where Sasuke was sleeping the sleep of the deadest dead in his crib, one chubby fist stuffed halfway into his slobbery mouth. This kid could sleep through a massacre, Shisui thought, pulling a face. The day his class had left Konoha, Mikoto-sama had personally asked him to look after her son. It’d only occurred to him later that she might have meant the wrong son. Nothing could possibly happen to Sasuke here, in this temple up in the cold hills, far, far away from fires and sharp blades alike.

Feeling useless and glum, he made his way to the door, fully intending to abandon Hana to her bizarre girl-habits, and had barely taken a step into the hallway when he caught sight of a familiar face. It was the Chuunin instructor who had been herding the Third Year class earlier. He was talking to one of Shisui’s own teachers; neither had noticed him. Shisui was just about to call out a greeting when something the Chuunin said stopped him cold.

“One of your kids asked me about the First Year class today.”

Were they talking about him? Immediately, Shisui ducked back into the nursery, and plastered himself to the wall just inside the doorway to eavesdrop.

Presently, he heard Matsuo-sensei’s deep voice. “Must have been Uchiha Shisui.”

Okay, this was definitely about him.

“He’s been asking about them nonstop since the day we got here,” his teacher went on. “I think he has family in that class.”

“Poor kid,” the Chuunin said with a sigh. “I didn’t know how to tell him, so I had to lie.”

“Shisui, what are you doing?” Hana asked. Shisui snapped his head around and motioned for her to be quiet. Her dark eyes widened in realization, and she slid up behind him to listen.

“What do you mean?” Matsuo-sensei was saying.

“Don’t tell any of the kids, okay? I don’t want them to panic, especially if they have friends and siblings in the First Year. We ran into an ANBU squad on the way up here, and they told me that, well, you know the area outside Konoha that merges onto the mountain path? It’s been taken over by retreating Kumo troops.”

“So you’re saying…”

“Yeah. The First Year party was probably caught behind enemy lines. Frankly, I doubt any of them even made it out.”

“Oh my God.”

“I know. And we thought the attack on the school was bad. I’m telling you, that peace treaty can’t come soon enough…”

The voices tapered away as footsteps sounded in the hall, but Shisui was no longer listening.

*

“Shisui, stop!”

“What do you want? Just leave me alone!”

Hana grabbed his arm. “I know what you’re planning to do,” she said, eyes narrowed. “You can’t do it.”

“Of course I can!”

“No!”

“Don’t try to tell me what to do,” Shisui yelled, and then came to his senses enough to lower his voice. “What would you do if that was your brother out there? You gonna stand around and let people tell you not to go look for him?”

“Of course I wouldn’t,” Hana said hotly. “But I wouldn’t do it alone either. I would ask the teachers or some other grown-ups to come with me.”

“If anyone else cared enough to search for him, they’d be out there searching already. You heard that Chuunin. They think everyone in his group is dead.”

Hana bit her bottom lip, draining it of blood. “And what if—what if they’re right?”

Shisui gritted his teeth. “Shut up,” he snarled, fists balling at his sides. “Shut the hell up.”

This being Hana, the command had the exact opposite effect. “No, I won’t,” she yelled back, angry soprano rising with every word. “You’re an idiot, Uchiha Shisui, thinking you can just go out there all alone, you’re going to get yourself killed, and you don’t even know, you don’t even know what the heck you’re doing or where you’re going, and—”

She would have likely gone on shouting herself into a panic attack if Shisui hadn’t slapped his hand over her mouth. He sincerely hoped he wouldn’t get bitten and contract rabies or something for the trouble.

“He’s not dead, okay?” He grabbed her hand and pulled her down the hallway. “Come with me.”

The boys’ dormitory was a large room in the back of the temple, right by the rear entrance. Since all the other students were either taking their baths or down in the mess hall at this time of day, it was completely empty. Shisui crawled into his bunk, and grabbed a square of goatskin from under his pillow. He shoved it under Hana’s nose.

“You see this?”

“What is it?”

“It’s a Living Seal. I have one, and he has one. You put a bit of your chakra in it, and then swap. If one of us dies, the ink on the other person’s Seal fades away. Does that look faded to you?”

Hana stared at the complicated pictogram in awe. “I’ve never seen a seal like this before.”

Of course she hadn’t. Shisui remembered with perfect clarity that day in March, the late afternoon sunlight filtering through shoji doors, soft and golden with new spring. They hadn’t set out to invent a new seal or anything, just messing around with ink and paper trying to replicate some of Yondaime’s famous techniques. Scrolls of all manners spread out all around them like butterflies, paper wings covering every inch of tatami. Jutsu catalogues, history of seals, cryptology—even a geometry book that neither of them had been able to make head or tail of.

The Living Seal, like a lot of cool things in life, had been an accident, blood from an insignificant paper cut touching a random assortment of looping lines that bore equally little importance. Everything about it had been mundane and utterly normal, up to and including the part where they’d gotten in trouble for testing the Seal out on Mikoto’s chickens—but memory had retroactive powers, smoothing delicate watercolors over a child’s clumsy scribbling.

Itachi was withdrawn and sometimes infuriating and looked ridiculous in that golden light of late March with a stripe of Chinese ink smeared across his tiny nose, and like hell Shisui was going to lose that. Like hell he was going to just let it go.

It’s all my fault, he thought, a sour feeling tearing sharply into his guts. He should have tried harder to convince his friend to come along with his group. He should never have left him behind.

“He’s not dead,” Shisui said again, this time with enough vehemence to make Hana flinch. He jumped off the bunk and stalked out of the room, already thinking up preparations for his trip.

No, Itachi was not dead. He was, however, lost somewhere out there in the dark world, and it was Shisui’s job to find him and bring him back. It had always been, and it would always be.

*

Shisui lay quietly in his bed, listening intently to the sound of light snoring rising and falling all around him. It was an hour after lights out, and most of his classmates, worn out from a day of hard labor, were already sound asleep. The teachers had also turned in for the night. It was time.

The hallway was dark and silent when he slid open the paper door carefully, the only sound that of the highland wind coming in from under doors and windows, howling distantly over the hills. The bathroom was right beside the sleeping quarters, and even if someone saw him going in, they wouldn’t be immediately suspicious. Closing the door, Shisui hopped on top of the wooden tub, kicked out the window screen, and jumped outside into the brisk air.

Only about a week until the full moon, and the grounds were practically soaked in soft silver light. The bright, waxing moon hung heavy in the dome of the sky, wreathed in wisps of cloud that resembled the cotton candy sold at summer matsuri. Shisui circled quietly around to the front of the temple, and crawled under the walkway to retrieve the rucksack he had stashed there earlier in the evening.

All the necessary supplies had been easy enough to procure. There was his weapon pouch, of course, secured at his hip. Flashlight, map, compass, water canteen, camping blanket, grappling hook, and a length of rope—these he’d brought from Konoha and never bothered unpacking. The food had been the hardest to get, but by skipping his evening lesson Shisui had managed to sneak into one of the storerooms and pilfer a bunch of soldier pills and hard tacks. He’d grabbed some normal foodstuff too, sealing them inside two small summoning scrolls to keep.

Everything was going according to plan. At this rate, he’d be halfway to Konoha before they even realized he was gone.

Just as he was crossing the moonlit courtyard, a familiar voice called his name. “Shisui, wait!”

It just figured that not only did the members of the Inuzuka clan have the sharpest noses in the village, they had to be the nosiest too. Shisui swung around and hissed, “I swear, Inuzuka Hana, if you dare to tattle on me…”

“I’m not,” Hana said, breathless. She was dressed in thin pajamas, her hair loosened from its usual ponytail, tumbling wildly around her shoulders. “I just wanted to give you this.”

She handed him a small medical kit, which was incidentally the only thing Shisui had failed to get his hand on. He had no idea how Hana had figured out that he’d be needing one, but for once, he was grateful for those undoubtedly occult female senses that she evidently possessed.

“Thanks a lot,” he said, and maybe-sorta grinned at her. It felt like the first time he’d smiled in days. “You’re alright. I mean, for a girl.”

“Here, take this too,” Hana said, and pressed something small into his hand. It was a leather bracelet, ornamented only by what appeared to be two very large, very sharp, very white fangs. In the moonlight, they gleamed at him in a really freaky way.

He was decidedly less enthusiastic about this parting gift.

“Listen, Hana, I’m not really into jewelry…”

Hana gave him a look. “That’s not just any ordinary bracelet. Those fangs came from Yama-inu, one of the legendary nin-dogs of our clan. They’re supposed to bring you good luck. My mother gave this to me before I left the village so me and my brother would be protected by the kami.”

Shisui blinked. “If it’s so important, maybe you shouldn’t give it to me.”

“I’m not giving it to you,” Hana said huffily. “I’m letting you borrow it. Just be sure to bring it back to me safe, okay?”

It was possible she might be trying to bid him well. Shisui felt oddly touched by the gesture, so he pocketed the apparently legendary bracelet, and said, “I’ll try my best,” feeling his ears growing slightly warm even in the chilly air.

Hana gave him a small nod. Without warning, she rose to the tips of her toes and planted a quick kiss on his left cheek.

“Uh,” Shisui said, completely stunned. He was still trying to process what had just happened when Hana reared back and slapped him square across his right cheek.

“What is your problem?” he sputtered, rubbing his stinging skin. He hadn’t been kidding about her freakish strength: when the occasion called for it, Hana could hit harder than a grown man.

Hana ignored him. “Bring back my bracelet,” she said one last time, voice hushed and somewhat watery, before pivoting on her heels and running back toward the dormitory.

Shisui stared dumbfounded at her retreating figure for almost a full minute. Then he shouldered his heavy rucksack and started down the steps leading out of the temple complex, shaking his head as he went. He had known it all along. Girls—and Inuzuka girls especially—were insane. Stark, raving, rabidly insane.

***

End

__________________________________________

So, what do you guys think? This story is pretty simple, the chapters are short (for now), and I have most of the plot planned out. Plus when TCW ends I will need a new project to prevent me from succumbing to more stupid one-shots (seriously, don't look in my writing folder). Continue, or no?

(This fic is not Shisui/Hana, I swear XD This fic isn't Shisui/anyone, really, and anyway his princess is clearly in another castle. I just found that shounen hero/tsundere main girl dynamic highly amusing.)

And um, those of you whom I promised to do things for? I will get back to you right away. Sorry :( gtfo cough you're not wanted here

[fic] The Colder Water (Shisui/Itachi, Part V)

ronsard — Fri, 28 May 2010 17:05:02 GMT

Recap: So last we saw these rock stars, Itachi ran away, Fugaku wanted Shisui on his team, but he was like, hell naw, I'm not that kind of girl, and Sasuke was failsauce. Onward and forward!

Title: The Colder Water (5/6)
Fandom: Naruto
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Shisui/Itachi
Summary: The devil is in the details. Shisui. Itachi. A sorta love story. (Novella)
Disclaimer: Naruto is the property of Kishimoto Masashi.

The Colder Water

Part V

*

Shape your mouth
To fit these words of war
I see the arrows falling backwards
Burning for a cause

I’ll swim with you
Until my lungs give out
Oh I can raise you from the deep
Or drown with you in doubt

*

The summons came for him on Monday.

Despite his bold words in the Hokage’s office, Shisui hadn’t actually expected anything to come of his request, so it came as a considerable surprise to him when he heard that Danzou had decided to grant him an audience that very afternoon.

He got over it.

The Root Headquarters was an old abandoned industrial complex at the edge of the village, a vast, echoing building with sprawling walkways and an exterior veined with rusty, clanking pipes. As he followed a masked shinobi through the main entrance, Shisui found himself plunged into near-total darkness. The small oil lamps lining the long corridor barely shed enough illumination to enable navigation. It made Shisui wonder how the whole organization managed not to collectively develop bone diseases, since there was just no way their bodies could generate enough vitamin D for optimum health under these working conditions.

“In here,” the Root shinobi said, opening what appeared to be a random door. Shisui blinked, grateful for the mask that hid his bewilderment. The moment he stepped across the threshold, the door behind him slammed shut. He’d be concerned about walking into a trap if, you know, he was the kind of person that worried about such things.

Inside the doorway, there was another narrow hallway, leading to yet another door. Shisui raised his hand to knock, and stopped himself halfway, feeling like a total moron, bristling with the tension of a creature that was hunted—or hunting something. He grabbed the handle instead, and let himself in.

“You took your time,” Danzou said. He was sitting at a small table, under a spill of insubstantial light, doing something that looked suspiciously like drinking tea, even though the thought of Danzou the Freakazoid consuming earthly substances was still too strange to countenance.

“I apologize, sir,” Shisui replied, mumbling a little at the last syllable. “I wanted to—have the time to prepare myself for the occasion, and all that.”

“It’s impolite to address your superior from behind a mask,” Danzou said. “There is no need for concealment here.”

Seriously? This coming from the man who trained his subordinates to be incapable of emoting?

Nevertheless, Shisui knew he couldn’t afford his usual flippancy here, so he reached up and dutifully removed his mask. He lifted his eyes, met Danzou’s gaze from across the room, long and hard. He was acutely aware that they were both waiting for the other to speak first, and counted it as a minor victory when Danzou laid down his cup and said, “Sandaime told me that you wished to speak to me in person about some important matters.”

The raspy scrape of his voice was so dry it could have sandpapered wood. Shisui drew his shoulders back, and said, “Yes, sir. I wanted to ask you about the whereabouts of my cousin—that is, Uchiha Itachi, the ANBU captain who was recently embedded with one of your squads for a mission.”

“I’m perfectly aware of who Itachi is,” Danzou said. “I will be happy to answer your questions, if you would oblige to answer some of mine first.”

Shisui deliberated, and then figured declining wasn’t an option. “That’s fine with me. Fire away.”

“In your opinion,” Danzou began without delay, “what is the best way to carry out a mission?”

Shisui raised an eyebrow. “What way, sir?” His mouth had never taken a vacation before, now was clearly no time to start. “Whatever way doesn’t get you and everyone else on your team killed, I guess.”

“So you prioritize the safety of your comrades over the objective of the mission?”

“Depending on the situation, I have this weird tendency to think that those are essentially the same thing.”

In the dimness of the room, he could see Danzou squinting at him. “You would think that,” he said. “Your father was Uchiha Tadahiro, am I correct?”

What was with everyone’s sudden obsession with bringing up his dad?

“Yeah,” Shisui said slowly, wondering where the hell this was going. “That was him.”

“I’ve heard a lot about him,” Danzou mused. “He was quite famous during the war. Did you know that back in those days, your father was known as the Three-Day Flag?”

“No, I didn’t,” Shisui said, stunned. It was inconceivable that Danzou, of all people, was telling him something he hadn’t known about his own father. “Why was he called that?”

Danzou didn’t immediately respond. Calmly, he poured himself another cup of tea, and took a sip. “Has anyone ever told you about the Battle of Himeji Fort?”

That, he had heard of. “My father earned a Bronze star in that battle.” Said star had been one of the first things his dad had burned after his mom’s passing.

“Do you know what it was for?” asked Danzou.

Shisui shrugged. “Courage. Outstanding service. Could be any number of things.” If there was one thing he and his dad had ever agreed on, it was that war honors were nothing to make a big deal about.

“Himeji was one of our vital strongholds,” Danzou said, and continued before Shisui had a chance to remind him that he hadn’t come here for a storytelling session. “It stood over the Kikyo Pass, which is one of the major passages into the Fire Country, as you probably know. During the time that your father and his company were stationed there, the fort came under an unexpected siege. Their supply line was cut off, and the nearest allies were over twenty miles away.”

Shisui blinked, and couldn’t help but care a little more.

Danzou cleared his throat quietly. “In order to keep Himeji from falling, they had to hold the fort for at least two weeks before reinforcement would arrive. Outnumbered four to one, and with no supplies—after the first week, you can probably imagine what morale was like among the troops.”

He gave Shisui a probing look. “Some went mad,” Danzou said chillingly. “Some ran away. But the great majority stayed faithful until physical death, and Himeji did not fall. Do you know why?”

“No, sir.”

“The only thing that kept the Konoha shinobi from breaking rank entirely,” said Danzou, “was your father’s action. With two shattered femurs, he could no longer fight, but as commander, he had to keep his men from losing hope. So, in the middle of the siege, he had his subordinates hoist him up and tie his body to the flagpole, where he continued to issue commands and direct the battle. It’s said that whenever our shinobi faltered, they would look to the top of the wall, and regain courage to fight.”

“I’ve never heard about any of this,” Shisui muttered, awed. People had sort of stopped mentioning his dad’s shinobi days after his supposed fall from grace.

Danzou regarded him coldly, with no pretense at sympathy. “For three days, Uchiha Tadahiro remained tied to that pole, in the direct line of fire, with nothing but water passing his lips. On the fourth morning, reinforcement finally came, and Himeji Fort was not lost. That kind of self-sacrifice can’t be taught.”

He paused, and added in a low voice, “Which is probably why it is so rare. Especially among the people of your clan.”

“Excuse me?”

Danzou seemed not to hear him. “You were probably an Academy student at the time. Do you happen to recall the two precepts issued to all non-civilians during the war?”

“We burn the enemies in their beds to make room to advance,” Shisui said, in that quick way he hoped would prevent him from slipping up and saying something overtly revealing.

Danzou gave him a slow nod. “And clear a wide swath of bodies to have room to withdraw,” he finished. “Good soldier.” Utterly matter-of-fact, like Shisui should be flattered by this, should take it as some kind of compliment. It made his skin crawl.

“In some ways, we’re all defined by the war,” Danzou went on, lifting himself out of his seat. He was not a physically imposing man, and Shisui, with his father’s rakish build, stood almost at an equal height.

Your war, Shisui thought furiously. Out loud, he said, “The war is over.” From time to time, his naivety still got the better of him. Not often, but from time to time, a fragment would cut through to the surface.

“The war has never ended,” Danzou said flatly. “Wars never end. Haven’t you noticed that we, as a profession, are in the business of war?”

Shisui wasn’t much of a philosopher, and even if he were, he couldn’t refute that. That truth was the basic tenet, the cornerstone of their existence. When they weren’t fighting their own wars, they were out there risking their necks fighting other people’s wars. In war, you were told to fight for a cause, but it was no cause but his own hands that had brought death to close to a hundred people, no cause but his own eyes that had gazed upon so many faces in their last moments, some settled and ready to die, and some not.

“Men will never give up waging war,” Danzou said. Shisui had been told that Danzou and the Hokage were the same age, but whereas Sarutobi looked wizened, sinewy and age-speckled, Danzo was roughhewn and battle-scarred, something almost leonine in his bearings. “War is a drug. The rush of battle is an addiction, potent and lethal. All you can do is cull the impulse before it even manifests.”

“With all due respect, sir,” Shisui said through gritted teeth. “I think I’ve answered enough questions for today.” Not that any of them had made a lick of sense anyway. “Can we start discussing what I came to see you about?”

“I will answer all of your questions about Itachi,” Danzou said. “But before that, I have one last request. I’ve heard much about that unique jutsu you’ve recently developed. From what I’ve been given to understand, it’s a very impressive technique.”

“It’s nothing special,” Shisui lied. “Functionally speaking, it’s not much different from the Yamanaka clan’s Shinranshin technique. Anyone in the Uchiha clan could do the same if they—”

“Nevertheless,” Danzou cut him off, “I wonder if you would mind giving me a practical demonstration.”

“A what?”

“A practical demonstration. I’d like you to use your jutsu on me.”

Shisui could feel his mouth gaping open, and slammed it shut with haste. “Aren’t you afraid I might get into your head and find out all your secrets?” he asked, eyes narrowed in challenge.

“What makes you think I have anything to hide?” Danzou asked dryly. “In any case, if your technique truly possessed that capability, a demonstration would be even more greatly appreciated. You would be a strong asset to the village—the Interrogation Squad, for one, would highly value your assistance.”

He gave Shisui a hard stare, daring him to contradict. Wily old fox. He knew how to play this game alright—knew it inside out, had probably made up all the rules. With inhuman effort, Shisui forced himself to uncurl his fists. “You say I can do anything?”

Danzou nodded. “Anything.”

So Shisui said, “As you wish,” and kindled the Sharingan before Danzou even found a moment to blink.

*

The first thing Shisui became aware of was that something was very different.

The moment he redirected the flow of chakra within his body and groped for that thread of consciousness, it was as if a doorway was flung open in his mind, and he found himself submerged—suspended in what felt like deep water, cool and dark, like floating through eternity. There was no discomfort at all, and…

No pain.

Nothing. That needling pain at his temples—gone. The strain on his Sharingan—gone.

He could sense—all around him—the traces of thoughts that made up the minds of others, and realized with mild shock that he could map, with pinpoint precision, the positions of every other person on the premises, just by tracking their mental presence. He had been working all this time to increase the range of his control but this—this was unthinkable. A whole other level.

Yes, that must be it. This was evolution, natural progression, the breakthrough he had been hoping to reach. Up till now, his technique had always been something of a balancing act, results vs. handicaps. At the start, it had been little more than a crude form of hypnosis, piggybacking on another’s thoughts and riding along like a sleeper agent, adding a nudge here, a little compulsion there before having to withdraw. Later on, he had reached the point where it had been possible to box up those thoughts, working around the core rooted deep in the victim’s psyche, or, with weaker minds, plowing right in and shattering the insubstantial scrim of their shielding through brute force.

Yes. Victim. Prey.

But now… But this…

This was not bad at all.

In fact…

In fact, it was fucking fantastic. He could really get used to this. This white-hot certainty in his mind. This mercurial flow of power. This slow song of victory.

And people thought he shouldn’t be using this jutsu why?

And there was his next victim now, a paltry, insignificance skein, a ball of chalky light floating before him in the cold dark of the water. It would take no effort at all on his part to reach out and overpower Danzou’s petrified mind, like scooping a goldfish out of the barrel at a summer festival.

His knuckles… itched.

He closed his fingers around the ball of light, and squeezed.

And in the world of reality, Danzou wrapped his own large hands around his veined necks, right over the windpipe, and squeezed. Shisui increased the pressure, and Danzou did too, easily, without any resistance.

His face was purpling, eyes bulged. His brain losing oxygen. Before Shisui’s eyes, the man sank to his knees. Soon, he’d have to stop. If he went any further, exert even a fraction more force…

So what?

He hated this man.

Yes, he hated this man. It was clear to him now that Danzou—Danzou was the source of all that had gone wrong in his life as of late. He hated this man who had taken away his favorite person, and with his fist crushing Danzou’s very consciousness, it all felt so…

Inevitable.

The urge choked him like a large pill. It crawled down his back like an itch, nestled into the center of his spine and lodged itself into the space between two vertebrae like a splinter, dissolved into the marrow. A hot rush, like vomit, surging up his throat. Just a little harder. One little nudge, one extra step. Just one.

Shisui had killed his first man at the age of eight. In retrospect, it had probably been awful—everything from the act itself to the moment his team leader had dragged Shisui back to camp and poured cold water over his head and bloody hands. It had probably been awful, but he hadn’t had the frame of reference at the time to contextualize that awfulness, and by the time he had, repeated exposure had rendered it useless.

Shisui had killed his first man at the age of eight, and it had probably been awful, though it hadn’t seemed that way to him. Later, though, he would learn that not everyone would have reacted the way he had. In fact, a lot of other kids—adults, even—would have broken down, would have given in to the awfulness of the experience. Some of them would never have recovered. It had occurred to him then that—maybe—it wasn’t normal to deal with it the way he had. That, maybe, he wasn’t normal.

He’d gotten over it.

He hadn’t regretted any of his kills, and if he killed Danzou now, he would get over that too. Danzou wouldn’t be his last, and he wouldn’t regret his death either, even though it wasn’t duty. Even though such a death would have come from nothing but his own desire for it.

But…

Stop it.

Don’t be an idiot. You need him to talk.

He blinked—and it was over. His Sharingan flickered out.

He let go.

Immediately, Danzou’s fingers unclamped from his neck, leaving a ring of red, and he slumped forward onto his hands and knees, coughing and retching violently. For a moment, Shisui was shot through with the vague fear that he had already gone too far and would momentarily find himself behind bars—but then, Danzou had said ‘anything’.

“Good,” Danzou choked, wiping his mouth with his sleeve. “That’s… that was very good.”

He pulled himself gingerly to his feet, and said, “You’ve acquitted yourself well today,” like he was merely dispensing platitudes to an obedient underling. You had to envy the alacrity with which he had regained his composure. That narrow gaze was on Shisui again, steady, calculating.

Shisui jerked his head impatiently. “I’ve done everything you asked. Now you have to hold up your end of the bargain and tell me where Itachi is.”

But the moment he brought his eyes to Danzou’s, he knew that he had been outsmarted. “I will give you all the information I have at my disposal,” Danzou said, voice low and dark. “And that is no information at all. The squad he was embedded with lost track of Itachi on the way back to the village. I have no more knowledge of his whereabouts than you do.”

“You—” Shisui snarled. Suddenly, it became clear to him what all the circuitous questions and carrot-and-stick theatrics had been about. “You lied to me. You lied just to get me to show you my technique. You old bastard, I’ll—”

He took a step forward, still half-drunk on the rush of absolute control, and found himself with four glittering blades pressed flush to his throat. Careless, so fucking careless to let those damn Root cockroaches sneak up on him like that. The inside of his skull felt like a city under siege. The space beneath his scalp filled up with hot air; the room spun.

Just go ahead and try something, Shisui thought savagely. I can take you all. Already he was backing himself up, dipping into his chakra reservoir, molding it into a coiling thread, and all he had to do was reactivate the Sharingan and that deep dark water would envelop them…

No.

That shit was treason. Was he insane? Had he gone out of his mind?

“Alright,” he managed to get out. “I’m standing down. Get your goddamn swords away from my neck before I put them through your guts.”

“As I thought,” Danzou said, in that same mealy voice that raked bony fingers through Shisui’s mind. “I think it’s time that you were leaving, Uchiha. I will have my subordinates escort you out.”

“There’s no need for that,” Shisui said sharply.

Danzou’s expression hardened. “I insist.”

The streets outside were empty and red-stained when the four-man squad ushered him out of the complex. The sun was setting fast, the sky to the west a wall of ruby clouds. The moment they had deposited Shisui on the sidewalk, the Root men took no time in melting back into the shadows of their headquarters, and then it was just him and that dreadful, syrupy light, the vacuous hush of the encroaching night.

He looked down at his hands. They were shaking.

Some went mad, some ran away, but the great majority stayed faithful until physical death.

Danzou clearly didn’t know his ass from his elbow, he decided bitterly. Shisui was fighting that war right now, every minute of every hour of the day. Out there beyond the palisade, it was all madmen and defectors, but no matter where Shisui looked, he couldn’t see a single person standing on his side.

He’d never felt so alone.

*

Nearly a week went by, and still no words about Itachi.

Shisui didn’t remember much about that week. It seemed to ebb away in a smear of days. He breathed, ate, and presumably slept. Sometimes he opened his mouth and noise came out, but mostly he just let the huge awing silence wash over him like a soundless wave, drowning him in oxygen.

His leave was up, but ironically, he now had a reason to stay in Konoha. It mattered not at all, because on the occasions he had bothered showing up at the office, Mamiya had leveled him with various expressions of concern barely discernible from homicidal irritation. “Even if you wanted to work, I wouldn’t give you any assignment,” she had said flatly. “As much as I would enjoy the peace and quiet of the office without you around, I don’t actually wish to see you get yourself killed.”

In addition, she had also informed him, in no uncertain terms, that if he tried to break into the Hokage’s office one more time, he would not only be forcibly removed from the premises, but would also be wise to start polishing his résumé.

“Just go home, Shisui,” Mamiya had told him in the end. “Things will work out for the best.”

Except the stupid old bag didn’t actually know that, and in any case, going home was not a viable option. Shisui knew being in the house would just equate to a whole lot of brooding and a million hysterical trips into the kitchen, so instead he scoped out one of the more remote archives rooms and hid there under the blatantly false pretext of trying to catch up on his backlogged paperwork.

This worked for about five minutes before Kagura sussed him out, cornering him in the jungle of filing cabinets to confess her feelings for him.

Shisui’s mind went completely blank. “Wow,” he said, genuinely stunned. “I mean, Kagura-san, that’s just… wow.”

Kagura winced slightly at the honorific, but continued to smile hopefully. With her cheeks dimpled and brown eyes softly downcast, a stray lock of hair brushing the side of her face, she was unbearably pretty.

Even that was seriously underselling it. She was beautiful, all legs that wouldn’t quit, brilliant and sweet, knew how to dispatch an enemy in sixty different ways—and was very obviously suffering from some kind of severe psychotic break, because Shisui had no idea what someone like her would see in him otherwise. And in a moment, it became apparent that Shisui was having a psychotic break himself, because the words that came out of his mouth were, “I’m sorry, Kagura-san. I’m really, really sorry.”

Kagura looked like she’d been slapped in the face. “I understand,” she said, uncharacteristically bashful. “You probably think it’s weird, since I’m older than you.”

“No!” Shisui protested immediately. “That’s not it at all!” There was a kind of bleak irony to it that he hoped she would never pick up on—given his track record with older women who had long dark hair and were way out of his league, Kagura should be exactly his type.

He opened his mouth to give a lengthy explanation, which would probably go something like, “I’m related to relentlessly coldblooded lunatics one of whom I accidentally went to first base with and also the people in my immediate family have a tendency to go all stupid and suicidal when it comes to emotions so in short I am so not good enough and you can do way better.”

But in the end, he just ended up repeating himself: “I’m really sorry, Kagura-san.”

It was either the best or worst possible response to give, because it made Kagura sigh softly, and send him a smile, wobbly but gracious. She might as well have kicked him in the nuts.

“I always kind of knew I didn’t have much of a shot anyway,” she said kindly. “After all, it would be very hard for someone like me to compete.”

“Compete?” Shisui echoed in confusion. “No, I’m not seeing anyone, it’s just—”

Kagura shook her head. “If it was just that, I would actually feel a bit better about my chances.”

“But you just said—”

“If you could see yourself right now, you would understand,” Kagura said. “You may be sitting here talking to me, but your mind might as well be a thousand miles away.”

And when Shisui continued to stare at her without any comprehension, Kagura gave another sigh, a concerned frown splitting her brows neatly. “You should get some rest, Shisui-kun,” she said. “You don’t look good. Have you been sleeping well?”

She sounded like she might want this inquiry to segue into some kind of extensive discussion about feelings, which Shisui decided he could not handle today. Or any day.

“I’m doing just fine,” he lied, and jumped to his feet, giving in to cowardice. “Anyway, doesn’t look like I’ll be getting anything done here today, so I’ll just… get going. I’ll see you later, alright?”

As he ran from Kagura’s imploring gaze, Shisui found himself thinking, strangely, about the year he’d been eleven—the Year of the Dog—when the sky had taken revenge on the land and rained for seven days and seven nights without reprieve. The Nakano had bloated with water, overflowed in a torrential spill, and for days it’d seemed like the entire village had lived on that groaning bank, heaving sandbags against the collapsing dam and trying to keep their minds from being crushed under the thrashing flood. On a scale from one to ten, ten being Tailed Demon Attack, that year’s flood didn’t rank very high in terms of catastrophic disasters, but for this, it seemed more apt as a metaphor.

It was his own fault. It was his fault for being willfully blind and deaf, for not having the foresight to seek higher ground while the water had slowly been seeping in, lapping docilely at his feet. Now the floodgates were broken, and he was in over his head.

*

The worst part, Shisui realized, was that if something were to happen, nobody would tell him.

He had lived for so long within this abnormal bubble-like existence wherein all the shipwrecks and rocky shoals revolved around a single person that somehow he had managed to forget that, to the rest of the world, he was no one. To the rest of the world, Shisui was just Itachi’s former partner and somewhat distant relative, and if something were to happen, nobody would tell him. Not the clan, certainly not Root—at best, he would receive some kind of notice from the Hokage’s office after all the dust had settled, and then Fugaku would probably inform him that he wouldn’t be allowed at the funeral, and Shisui would go into rage blackout and accidentally mind-control the man to death and be tossed in prison to rot for the rest of his mortal days, which would probably be a positive at that point.

Shisui wasn’t some distraught war bride, and so was not found throwing himself prostrate over his father’s grave weepily bemoaning his various woes into the cold, unyielding stone. That didn’t stop him from hovering around the general area of the memorial cenotaph anyway, doing increasingly unforgivable things like tracing his father’s engraved name with his fingers and sitting with his back pressed to the cool black marble staring unseeingly at the sky. His mind turning like a wheel, every scrap of thought dredging up like sea wrack out of the tide, scuttling in and out of rat-holes. He thought about flashfloods. He thought about destiny. Mostly, he thought about whether there would be anything left to hold him to Konoha should the nightmare scenarios of his inner-mind theater come to life.

The clan?

He’d already made it clear the other day that he wanted nothing to do with them anymore.

His friends?

No good. Their faces swam indistinctly before his eyes. They had shared comradeship, many hours of laughter and conversation and camaraderie, but when it came down to it, no one would ever compare.

His duties to the village?

Now there was a real possibility. This was his home, the place where he had been born and raised, and he was an all-Konoha boy through and through, all fire and spunk and mile-wide protective streak at heart. It seemed natural, almost unquestionable that one of his highest priorities would be to serve the village to the best of his ability until the day he died.

But.

But.

A village really wasn’t just a place. It was people, and when it came down to it, there was ‘people’ and then there was ‘your people’. Shisui calculated the difference, and then tried not to think about the fact that over the years, the number of his so-called “Precious People” had dwindled from three to two, then one, and was currently running the very real risk of hitting rock bottom.

Somehow, in all his sixteen years, Shisui had never known love could feel like this. Like you were just constantly and completely broken, and then put back together again, only the one piece that was yours was now beating in the other person’s chest. Someone should have told him this, but the only person who could have had been too busy running away from a broken heart himself.

Although he’d come close to it, his father had not left the village—but then again, he had had Shisui to think about. Sometimes Shisui liked to pretend that he had been nothing more to his dad than an afterthought, a postscript after the curtains had already fallen on his personal tragedy, but that was just him being an entitlement jerk. He had been the one thing keeping his dad tethered to Konoha, and if Shisui had been the one to die instead of the other way around, he knew that his dad would have thrown it all away. He would have thrown it all away, gone rogue and killed whomever they dared to send after him in cold blood, all natural non-violent way of life or not. He would have done all that and more, and he wouldn’t have cared, because there wouldn’t have been anything left to care about.

Shisui knew this with bone-deep certainty, because at this moment, that was exactly how he felt. He’d taken a lot for granted, stupidly believing that time would never run out, but now it had and there was nothing he could do but lay the story straight—and this was what it was about:

It was about nine years, four months, three weeks, and half a day. It was about split knuckles and cut lips, a skewed but consistent sense of justice, and later, about cinder and smoke and shakily-held weapons, a world where the ground cleaved open underfoot and the sky was full of flying death. And yet later still, it was about parallel paths and warring convictions, not-so-shakily-held weapons and mingling blood, sultry autumns on a riverbank and one memorably frigid winter when silence took the rein. It was about a night in July on the way up north, hiding in the warm, mossy hollow of a fallen tree from the rolling thunder and the furious rain that fell from the sky in sheets upon back-breaking sheets, a cramped space that seemed not so cramped because all the edges had been worn down to fit in the course of a shared history.

It was about permeation, about something that needed nothing, because it had sprung to life fully formed, already perfectly synched like one flow of oxygen that fed two separate hearts, and to change even a single component part would be suicide, no question about it.

It was a story. A story written on his skin, scarred into his heart by the prickling of tattoo needles. A story about what happened when people met when they were barely children, and then immediately stopped being children. A story about skies and roads and bridges and rivers, but mostly, it was a story about love—love unspoken, love in exile, love under siege.

Yes, it was a story about love, and no, it wasn’t the greatest story in the history of the world but it was his. It was his goddamn story, and when it came down to it, no one would ever compare.

So really, what else was there?

“You can come out,” Shisui said to the air. “I know you’re there.”

“I’ve never seen you out here this early in the day,” Kakashi remarked, stepping into the clearing with the customary absence of sound. “I had the impression you weren’t a morning person.”

Shisui did not turn to look at him. “I know what favor the Hokage asked you to do.” He scratched absently at the tattoo on his arm, as if Kakashi’s appearance had just reminded him that it was, in fact, still there. “He wanted you to watch me, didn’t he?”

“Not anymore, Shisui-kun,” Kakashi said lightly. “As I said before, you passed.”

“Funny, I don’t remember asking to be put through some kind of test,” Shisui said crossly.

“That was the point.”

He sounded sympathetic—and all things considered, he likely was. Once again, Kakashi would be the one to understand where Shisui was coming from, even if this considerate silence was all that he could afford to offer. It made Shisui wish he lived in a world where the question ‘Are you okay?’ was a perfectly acceptable conversation opener, and not just invitation to vast, horrible personal trauma. It was like a cruel inheritance, curse and blessing rolled into one, and it just kept going on and on in a feedback loop.

“Maybe you were too hasty,” Shisui found himself biting out, halfway to insanity. “Maybe you shouldn’t have passed me so easily. You don’t know what I might decide to do next.”

“That’s true,” Kakashi replied. “But neither do you.”

Shisui glared at the air in front of him. “I’m not going to talk about it,” he groused. “If you’re going to stay, you should know that I’m not going to talk about it, so don’t bother asking.”

“I don’t intend to,” Kakashi said. “You don’t have to talk about anything you don’t want to, Shisui-kun.”

“Fine,” Shisui said, folding his arms over his knees. “I won’t.”

So they stayed there, and didn’t talk about it.

*

By the following day, he had reached a decision.

It was already late in the afternoon when Shisui rose. He dressed wearily, pulling clothes from his closet that seemed relatively neutral, which was hard because apparently Shisui didn’t own anything that wasn’t an Uchiha shirt or some part of his ANBU uniform. It was an empty gesture, he knew, but somehow, it felt important. Lastly, he went into the kitchen. He took down the note from his fridge, and ripped it to shreds, letting the torn pieces flutter to the floor as he walked out the door.

Mamiya glanced up from her desk when Shisui walked through the door, and immediately opened her mouth to speak. He raised his hand in a pacifying gesture.

“Relax. I didn’t come to badger the Hokage. I just want to put in a transfer request.”

She stared at him incredulously. “You’re resigning?”

“No, no, you misunderstand,” Shisui said. “An internal transfer. I’d like to be removed from Field Unit and placed into Intelligence as soon as I’m cleared for deployment again.”

There was a pause. Mamiya narrowed her eyes, and said, “Why?”

“Like you said, it’d probably be good for me to keep a lighter ops tempo from now on,” Shisui said. Casual as casual. “If I work for Intel, I’ll get to be home a lot more often, too.”

“Something tells me it’s not the village you’re interested in sticking around for,” Mamiya observed.

Shisui shrugged. “There’s that too. But same difference—it all works out to both of our advantage, doesn’t it? Win, win. This way, you won’t have to enforce furloughs just to keep me from running amok.”

For a long moment, Mamiya just looked at him. Then she diverted her gaze to the tottering pile of paper on her desk, and said, “I’ll have to speak with Hokage-sama.”

Her voice was cold—impersonal and without a trace of irritation. The way it had never been before.

“You do that,” Shisui said, and left the office.

Five minutes later, he was standing at the top step of the Military Police Headquarters, courtesy of three Shunshin leaps. A record, even for him.

Shisui had lost his mother at the age of four, when the war clinic she’d been stationed in had burned down around her and the clan had failed to send assistance when she’d radioed for help. He had watched his father slowly disintegrate like a crumbling mountain, the tenuous hope of recovery dashed on the day of Yondaime’s death, and had practically raised himself from the age of seven and done a damn good job. Shisui was the one who’d led his classmates on the run the day a platoon of Cloud shinobi had broken through the village’s defenses and decapitated their Chuunin instructor right in the middle of the Academy’s courtyard. He had performed more S-rank missions than he could remember off the top of his head, had broken every bone in his body at one point or another and lived to tell about it, and somehow, this still felt like the hardest thing he’d ever have to do.

There was no help for it. This wasn’t a fight he could win alone. He needed allies. When all the options you were presented with seemed equally terrible, you had to go with the devil you knew.

All Shisui knew was: there were things he needed to know. He would never be left out in the cold again.

No one stopped him as he walked down the bland, yellowing hallway, though he could feel himself being watched. Just before he reached the end of the corridor, a door to his left clicked open and someone stepped out into the hall. It was Yasuo, who blinked at Shisui in surprise.

“Shisui,” Yasuo said, frowning, “what are you doing here?”

“I wanted to see Fugaku-sama,” Shisui said in a rush. “He—the other day.” There was an odd, sort of ashy taste in his mouth. He took a small breath, and said, “I’m ready to accept your offer.”

Yasuo just stared at him, eyes searching and dark. Then he smiled, firm and somewhat relieved. “I’m glad to hear that,” he said simply, and clapped Shisui on the shoulder. The weight almost staggered him.

Nevertheless, he pushed himself forward, taking the last few steps toward the large door that stood at the end of the hallway. Yasuo followed him. He knocked on the door, and then held it open for Shisui, nodding at him with the same warm smile that Shisui couldn’t bring himself to return. He was almost glad to have an excuse to get away, until he stepped inside the spacious office and found himself face to face with the man he had so often wished would do the world a favor and remove himself from the gene pool.

Fugaku regarded him silently over the top of his desk, and it was possible Shisui had lost his mind because he found something oddly familiar about that look—a look that reminded you of the shortening days of winter, chilling air.

“What is it that you want with me?” Fugaku said.

Shisui wondered stupidly if he should get down on his knees, but then remembered that the very fact of his being here was enough of a supplicating gesture in itself. Even dogs had pride, but in this moment, Shisui didn’t feel at all regretful about lopping off all of his in one big, useless chunk. Pride hadn’t gotten him very far, anyway. Pride couldn’t help you swim.

Better get right to it, then. “I have just now lodged a transfer request with the Hokage’s office,” Shisui said haltingly, trying to keep his voice neutral. “If it goes through, I’m going to be working in the ANBU’s Intelligence division from now on. The same division as Itachi.”

“And?” Fugaku asked.

Shisui swallowed hard. “And I have thought a lot about what you said to me the other day. I’ve decided that you were—” He had to take a moment. “—that you were right, and that the clan’s best interest is my best interest as well. So. I’m here to accept the assignment that you spoke of the other day—the other day at the meeting.”

Every stilted word that stumbled out of his mouth made him feel like a traitor of the greatest magnitude, but he had anticipated that and made a point to sandbag those thoughts. This was necessary, he rationalized. Omelets and eggs, you had to be willing to break a few.

Or perhaps that wasn’t it at all. Perhaps this necessary evil was also an act of self-preservation, a reserve lifeline. Itachi, he reasoned to himself, had always seemed to Shisui like a vast ice floe, muted and frozen over, but hiding all the cold sea under its surface. For years, Shisui had been wandering blindly across that icy veneer, heedless of the insidious cracks growing like vines under his feet. As precarious and deceptive as that surface was, it was all that made up his standing ground, and if he should allow it to shatter, he would plunge right through the broken ice into the dark water below, colder and more obliterating than even the corpse-skinned winter sky.

And if Shisui kept feeding himself horseshit like that, perhaps the words would get beat into his head, so that even if he didn’t start believing them, he’d be too concussed at that point to notice.

“You were quite adamant in your refusal the last time we spoke,” Fugaku said, breaking the silence. He seemed to be sizing Shisui up, weighing his words. “What made you change your mind?”

Shisui deliberated for a moment, and then said, “Family is an obligation, not a choice. And anyway, it—it might not even matter anymore.”

“We don’t know that for certain,” Fugaku said tightly. “You should have hope.”

That made Shisui startle, and look up into Fugaku’s steady gaze. He had never liked Fugaku, but even he had to admit that the man had an imposing, almost compelling air about him. It wasn’t really that weird. He was, after all, Itachi’s father. A father, Shisui thought, staggered with dissonance. This man standing before him was a father. He had a son—two, even—and for a moment Shisui wondered if Fugaku had ever been the kind of father who put family before duty and honor, who bought his children presents above their age, always in a hurry for them to grow up as all fathers tended to be.

If so, he had gotten exactly what he’d wished for: a son who had never known how to walk like a boy, loose-limbed and free, but had from the first adopted the gait of a soldier, treading hard upon the heel, weighed down under the yoke of duty. Shisui almost wanted to ask Fugaku if he thought it was worth it.

“I know we’ve had our differences, Shisui,” Fugaku said. “But if you are willing to lend your cooperation, I’m certain that we will be able to put the past behind us, and work together for the good of the clan.”

He paused, and gave a short little sigh, almost weary. “And for Itachi, of course.”

“Of course,” Shisui echoed. “Now will you tell me about Itachi’s mission?”

“Until you’ve proven yourself trustworthy,” Fugaku said in a measured tone, “information will only be given to you on a need to know basis.”

“Well, I think this counts as needing to know,” Shisui snapped, shoulder jagging with frustration. “How am I supposed to proceed with my assignment if I don’t know anything about it? And personally, sir? I would think that the very fact that I came to you today should be proof enough of my ‘trustworthiness’.”

Fugaku’s response was to shift slightly sideway in his chair. The expression of faint scorn receded from his face, replaced by a distant kind of concentration, stark in profile. Momentarily, he snapped his gaze back to Shisui, and said, “You are right.” There was no trace in his voice of the empty politeness from a moment ago; it was now cold, flat.

“Take a seat. What I’m about to tell you must not be allowed to leave this room.”

*

“Fuck,” Shisui muttered, raking one hand through his hair. “Fuck.”

Fugaku said nothing, just sat in silence with his hands folded over his desk, which Shisui felt was rather considerate of him given that Shisui was freaking the fuck out. His face, skin, eyes, every bit of his body felt hot, burning up. And only a week ago he’d worried about committing treason by killing Danzou. This revelation made those delicate concerns look monumentally stupid.

“There’s got to be some kind of mistake,” Shisui said. He could feel the tremor in his throat shaking every syllable loose. “The clan—we have too much influence , we’ve always been here.” Strange, how those we’s slipped so easily from his mouth. “They can’t just shut us out like that.”

“They can, and they have,” Fugaku said. Not derisive, just matter-of-fact. “The recent dismissal of our clansmen from their official posts is just one example. This has begun long before that.”

“What about the MP?” Shisui asked. “The Uchiha still have control over the police force, right?”

Fugaku made a dismissive noise. “That’s a polite fiction the village’s leaders keep up in an attempt to placate us and keep things on an even keel. In reality, our jurisdiction grows more limited by the day.” His eyes hardened. “If you had ever bothered to take an interest in the clan before now, you would have known that.”

“Well, I’m here now,” Shisui snapped. Family grudge aside, you’d think someone would have thought to inform him of their clan’s imminent demise. “Tell me—” Everything. “—tell me what I need to know.”

“While you were away on the field,” Fugaku said, “our agent within the Hokage’s office was able to alert us to the existence of—how should I put this—certain plans that the Council have in store for the Uchiha clan. If we don’t make our moves now, it’ll be too late once they are implemented.”

Shisui narrowed his eyes. “And by agent, you mean…”

“Yes,” Fugaku said. “Our inside man in the Hokage’s office—in the ANBU—is Itachi. Or at least he was, until very recently.” He tilted his head in Shisui’s direction. “But you’re already aware of that.”

“Have you tried,” Shisui began, feeling terribly stupid, young and gauche and helpless, “negotiation—I don’t know, just talking it out?”

Out of what was probably pity, Fugaku chose not to point out the glaring flaw in his argument. “Even if Sarutobi Hiruzen could be reasoned with, we have no hope of negotiating with the Council—much less certain other parties.” He paused, and gave Shisui a meaningful look. “I’m speaking, of course, of Danzou Shimura, leader of the organization known as Root. As far as we know, they’re the ones responsible for Itachi’s disappearance.”

Shisui looked at the ground at his feet, and felt incredibly heavy. Fugaku’s words were weighing him down, his body a rock in this chair, mountainous. Slowly, he brought his eyes up to lock gaze with the man sitting opposite him.

“I know that you admire the Hokage,” Fugaku said. “I would go even as far as to say that you are close to him. But when it comes down to it, do you think that he would stand against the Council for our sake?”

And Shisui thought of that morning, seemingly a geologic era ago, when Sandaime had sent Itachi off with the squad from Root, out into the world beyond his control.

“You take pride in your ability as a shinobi. How would feel when the children of our clan are stripped of that right and barred from attending the Academy? Will you wait until then to act?”

Invasive questions, those—and no wonder. This wasn’t just about deserting the village, about running away when there was nothing left to stay for. No, this was bigger than that, bigger than him, bigger than anything he’d ever experienced. How did you make a decision like this? How did you stack the weight of a village up against that of one person?

Hadn’t he already done that?

And there, there it was, the nick in the edge of that axe. In war, you were told to fight for a cause, and Shisui knew that his had been chosen for him long before he could have been aware of it. His banner held the face of a person, his war cry the shape of a name. Itachi’s presence under his skin was a vaccine against the plague of reason. Shisui heard his voice even in his absence, urging him to rise to the occasion, and felt himself rinsed of doubt, his vision scrubbed by sudden clarity.

“What must I do?”

“Initially, I only intended to have you keep an eye on Itachi,” Fugaku said, “but now that you’ve been made aware of where we stand, there is a much more important mission that you might be able to undertake, should you be willing to accept it.”

“And what mission is that?” asked Shisui.

Fugaku laced his fingers under his chin. “In the event that—” He halted, seemingly finding it difficult to complete his sentence. “In the event that Itachi does not return, I want you to take up the task he had been assigned—to replace him as our eye and ear within the Hokage’s office. You will be in a perfect position to do so, once you’ve settled into your Intelligence duties. Do you have any objections?”

Shisui opened his mouth to speak, but Fugaku held up one hand to stall him. “Think about it carefully first. It’s a highly difficult task—and dangerous, considering the instability of the current situation. You shouldn’t make any rash decision.”

The quelling hand formed a fist on top of the desk. “At the same time, do consider this: we have not entirely given up hope on reaching… a peaceable solution. Persuasion may have to come in the form of manipulation.” Words encrusted with portent. “That is a unique capability that no one but you possesses.”

Shisui nodded, to show that he understood.

“Because of your father’s decisions,” Fugaku went on, voice going a bit gravelly, “I have admittedly never been quite certain as to where you would choose to stand. But if you accept this mission, your loyalty will be unquestioned. It will be the ultimate proof of your devotion to the clan.”

When has that ever mattered to me, Shisui thought, but said, “I’ll do it—I accept the mission,” anyway, because this was what Itachi had wanted and that was why it mattered.

Silence descended, heavy, seal on paper. A struck deal.

“As a token of trust,” Fugaku said. “I will disclose to you some highly classified information regarding the circumstances of your father’s death.”

Shisui jerked in his seat. He’d entirely forgotten about that. His heart rate jacked to hammering-speed. He remembered to blink when his eyes started to burn.

“I’ve heard that you were recently called to a private meeting with Danzou.”

It was like there were no secrets in this damn town. Some hidden village.

“While you were there, did he make of you any special request?”

“Just one,” Shisui said cautiously. “He asked me to demonstrate my mind-control technique.”

Fugaku nodded, as though Shisui’s answer had only confirmed what he’d already known. “There’s no point in beating around the bush,” he said. “The investigation we conducted led us to believe that Root was behind your father’s death. However, we suspect that Tadahiro was not their true target. It is our belief that Danzou is going after you.”

Shisui clenched his fists over the top of his knees, digging the nails into his palms. “And in your investigation, did you happen to uncover why they might be after me?”

“Your ability is not just an asset to the clan,” Fugaku said quietly. “You shouldn’t be surprised that there are those who covet it for much less honorable purposes.”

Shisui wasn’t aware that mind-controlling your way through a coup d’état constituted an honorable purpose, but he kept his mouth shut and let Fugaku’s solemn voice roll over him.

“If it is indeed your Sharingan that Danzou seeks to obtain, it stands to reason that he would have wanted to conduct preliminary testing using materials collected from your closest living relative.”

Those words, they hit him like a blow to the throat. “You mean he conducted trial runs using my father’s stolen Sharingan?” His voice shook, seized by a savage combination of anger and disgust that Fugaku somehow interpreted as fear, because he said, “You need not worry. The clan is prepared to take every action necessary to protect its own. You’re one of us.”

The unspoken ‘Don’t ever forget that.’ lingered in the air between them.

“Very well, then,” Fugaku went on, businesslike and brusque. “Everything from here should be straightforward enough. From now, you are an undeclared member of the Military Police. I will arrange for you to work under our Head of Internal Affairs. In the future, you will report directly to him.”

“Yes, sir,” Shisui said. He had to take a moment to steady his breathing, before saying, “If there’s nothing else, I’ll be on my way.”

His mind swelled and wallowed with the ebb and flow of this new information, struck broadside by rough waters. A strain of reasoning cracking along slowly in hairline fractures. Danzou might have had a hand in his father’s murder. Danzou could be after him. Itachi had gotten tangled up with Root somehow. What was the connection here that he was not seeing?

“Shisui,” Fugaku said abruptly. “Before you leave, may I ask just one thing?”

Shisui stopped in his track. It didn’t occur to him to say yes or no—to say anything at all.

“What is it that you like about my son?”

Shisui blinked. He shifted his gaze to the floor, bit his lip. What, indeed.

“It’s hard to say,” he said finally, looking up. “We met when I’d just sort of lost all my family. In one way or another, I guess being friends with him made me feel like I’d gained something back.”

For the first time, a look of surprise flitted across Fugaku’s features, a frail instant in which the hardness of his jaw line faltered and he became almost see-through. Shisui toyed with the idea of calling him on it, and refrained, out of deference to Fugaku’s earlier consideration of his own weakness.

“That is all,” Fugaku said, after a moment. “You may go. I wish you the best of luck with the task you’ve been entrusted with.”

Shisui smiled back thinly. “I doubt it’s luck I’ll be needing, sir. But thanks for the thought.”

Fugaku nodded back at him. They had, somehow, come to a kind of understanding.

The door closed with a solemn finality behind him.

It had begun.

*

End of Part V

____________________________________________

Since writing the last chapter, I came to the realization that I’ve up till now been unduly mean to Fugaku. Coup instigator and surly clan head he may be, but in the manga he was shown to actually care about Itachi. Uh, he tried to shield him from the Police, at any rate? I always knew there was a reason I was so nice to him in Deep River.

I apologize for the delay in... everything. Everything I promised to get done will get done tonight.

drop whatever you're doing: it's fangirl time!

ronsard — Thu, 13 May 2010 17:10:53 GMT

Look look look, we're totally legit now :D

bitter_nakano,bitter_nakano,bitter_nakano

Thank you pochibubblytea for taking up the scepter and preventing me from committing stupidity with my n00bness. Thank you questofdreams and pouikee for lending your graphical talents. Everyone else who offered to help, KEEP 'EM COMING ♥

So yeah, POM POM RAH RAH JOIN JOIN JOIN. Um, also, if you love me even a little bit, would you mind pimping the community a tiny bit? You know my social anxiety and I are crap at this kind of thing orz