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Chapter 1: Dawn
Chapter 6 Below
-Uchiha Itachi-
"Itachi, wake up."
"Itachi."
Itachi opened his eyes and regarded his partner calmly. The first thing he saw was Kisame retracting a guilty hand, and a bluish eyebrow twitched. "Did you have trouble sleeping?"
Apparently he had overslept.
"The nights in this country are short," Itachi said.
Kisame looked over at the rising sun over the waves. It was already two hours high. But the mist-ninja said nothing.
Gulls wheeled as the pair trekked along the sand. They walked in the wetness where their footprints were quickly erased by the swiping glasslike waves.
"Finally!" A voice behind them said.
The disturbance's whining tone signaled no threat and dually annoyed Itachi. Zetsu had risen from the dunegrass, grains of white quartzite sand rivuletting down the creases in his leafed crest. Itachi did not particularly like Zetsu: it was some kind of association that the plant-ninja always brought bad news.
"About time we found you two!" the white half exclaimed. "I can't see or hear well through the ocean."
Zetsu could not spy as efficiently underwater or at beaches. Itachi filed the information for later use.
"Pain requests you meet at a cave on the eastern bank of Rido Lake, in the Land of Rivers, five days from today,' he said matter of factly.
Itachi and Kisame looked at each other.
Zetsu continued excitedly. "It's a doosie, the whole gang is invited! Well, I'll give you a hint. We're going on a Tailed Beast Hunt!"
Kisame raised an eyebrow. "Tailed Beast Hunt?"
"Yes! Don't be late! Five days, Rido Lake, at noon!"
The plant-ninja seeped back into the earth. Itachi always found Zetsu's rare locomotion an anomaly. But Itachi supposed even his own powers, logical to him, looked enviously strange from the outside.
"Know anything about tailed beasts?" Kisame asked.
"The Nine Tailed Fox attacked my village when I was five. It destroyed the Uchiha complex and killed the Hokage...They sealed it in a child."
"The Mist's Tailed Beast has been missing since the death of the Mizukage."
"Hm," Itachi said. The hunt must be no small feat if the other teams were enlisted for the same task. At least, according to Zetsu, they had some days for themselves before they needed to report. Itachi was mildly curious of the mission, but not enthusiastic.
"Do we need to do anything before then?" Kisame asked.
Like say goodbye to friends and family? With a silent glance at the eastern sun, Itachi discerned their orientation, and led them in the direction of the Land of Rivers, a several days' walk away.
"It would be faster if we cut across the gulf."
"I can neither run nor swim a gulf."
"I'm not convinced you can swim at all."
The two ninja traveled a quiet day through the small countries. It was the custom of outlaws to make their routes through the disorganized and impoverished ring of states outside the great nations. These strapped militias did not track killers so long as they wandered peaceably.
As they walked along a path, the bisected village was freshly burned. A miasma of death, fine as silt and equally pervasive, clogged the air. A battlefield passed them by, and narrow flags streamed from spear points embedded in earth and armor.
"Looks like a civil war."
"Or a blood feud."
Hopping crows scattered before the two rogues. Most of the corpses wore old fashioned layered armor and carried swords. Like the Uchiha and Senju, he thought. But he doubted any were above genin in this battle.
He turned one of the soldiers over. It rolled too light in its iron shell, a woman, or a boy. A boy. Itachi searched him, but found only copper, and he left it. He did this to three other corpses, but found no food, only money.
"You check for threats. I'll search for anything useful," Itachi said, and Kisame disappeared.
Itachi stole suspicious and warily into the hamlet, a habit he could not shake despite the lack of threat. The thatch from the houses was half burned, and the village's inhabitants were dead or fled. He pushed open a garden gate.
Twisted in old rebellion against the dry summer grasses, gnarled black tree trunks reached towards the sky. His eyes flitted hopefully through the ravaged orchard like a songbird. Too high for even the lightest village children, a few orange persimmon fruits dotted the canopy.
With a flighting leap he landed on a tree's fork, picked the ripest fruit, and with his watchful eyes flashing left and right, he sank his teeth into the water-soft flesh. Persimmons were sweet and fibrous and very healthy. Life with Kisame had him eating a lot of meat. A hooded crow alighted on a nearby branch to observe him. He considered offering the bird a slice, before realizing it had ample preferable options.
The hamlet appeared abandoned from his vantage, and Kisame had made himself invisible. Itachi continued to explore the hamlet, but found little in the way of life or clues. The little crow followed him. An emaciated pig lay dead in a nearby pen. Kisame would like that. The patient crow watched him open the carcass and a squawk summoned her friends.
He walked into the mostly-intact adjacent hut with the pork balanced gingerly between his hands. The abandoned one-room house displayed a traditional kitchen: a pile of coals inset in a square hole in the center of the tatami floor. He might not be better at catching fish than Kisame, -no he was still probably better at fishing than Kisame- but he was definitely a better cook. With the pork fillet, soy sauce, peppercorns and herbs he found around the property, he practiced his art over a dead family's hearth. Kisame stepped through the threshold some time later.
"No one is here but some corpse robbers, who are hiding from us about a quarter kilometer away."
"How respectful of them," Itachi noted.
Kisame grunted. Itachi gestured for Kisame to sit opposite him as he continued to cook. Kisame's eyes traced out the window at the carnage, and he released an abandoned laugh.
"Reminds me of my teenage years.
Itachi followed his gaze. "Indeed."
The oppressive silence of dead men blanketed them. As the coal-fire stoked, the hut they sat in was empty from any laughter it had days ago. The universe had conspired to put two ruthless killers into a village that now offered no one to kill. The Akatsuki had always killed and left. Now Itachi would see what he created.
No. He spared the Leaf from this.
"The Eye of the Moon will end this excess," Kisame said soberly from across the coals.
"We'll find no satisfaction in illusion."
Kisame twitched his lip in a tight smile, unexpected to have lured Itachi to finally spar.
"How can you be sure that your belief that reality is superior to fiction, is itself not false?" Kisame's posed.
"Because I weave fiction."
Itachi had authored his ideal life once, right before he killed his clan.
He had cast Tsukuyomi on his… what was she? Izumi. He wove them a fiction of their life together, of having children, growing old and dying. And he remembered, for a few seconds that lasted her seventy years, she was happy. But through the whole thing he'd felt the unimaginable sense of dread that came with knowing he was in a dream. A few seconds later, Izumi's flesh was as broken as her mind was. And Itachi was broken in a new way too.
"I can show you," Itachi said. He hadn't meant it to be a threat but maybe it sounded like one. "What the Tsukuyomi is like."
A pause. "Don't."
Itachi let the conversation end. Kisame seemed most purposed in his whole life serving the Akatsuki. But to Itachi, his hunted years spent under red clouds was no life. He remembered no moments in the last four years where he was not either fleeing, hungry, hurt, exhausted, or lonely.
Or maybe this was normal and just came with being his age. He read that people his age needed more food and sleep. He had no one to ask. He looked at Kisame, but he decided not to.
The sweet, peppery scent of shogayaki goaded his hunger. His eyes flickered to Kisame; it probably smelled even better to him. Quietly proud of his wartime creation, he began to serve Kisame a proportionally larger serving to his own.
Kisame's fingertips interrupted his offering. "You eat it."
Itachi narrowed his eyes. For two days now he had not seen Kisame eat, on their lifestyle which burned tens of thousands of calories daily.
"There is an entire boar, already dead," Itachi reiterated.
"You're scrawny and should eat more."
He had never been spoken to that way. Silent in his irritation, Itachi ate. Kisame was an adult and a soldier, and would not die by starving himself.
Itachi's annoyance soured the food, and he had prepared enough for two Kisames. It was impossible for a single person his size to consume, and Itachi never liked overeating, especially in hostile territory.
"I can't eat all of this."
"What do you want me to do about it?"
"Do as you like."
He heard a small exhale from Kisame.
"Pork, it tastes too much like…" Kisame shook his head.
Perhaps he should have expected this. Itachi was suddenly uneasy with Kisame's candidness, when Itachi had been willing to bury the other day's incident. He worried he had been rude. He set his knife on the wood and stood. "Come with me."
Hesitant, Kisame followed him. Itachi halted before the orchard, the black-barked and scarcely-leafed persimmon trees stretching like dead fingers to the sky.
"I didn't think you ate fruit." Itachi explained the omittance. It seemed a ridiculous assumption now.
Itachi watched his partner's back as he walked forward, lit by the pink ash-hazed sun. He tried to focus on Kisame, or on the sunset, for if his gaze wandered, he would see the distance was fecund with death.
"Yo!"
Their eyes locked on the noise. Like a monkey from a tree branch, Tobi hung upside down from a permission limb. He completed his flip and landed sprightly on the earth to trot towards the two men.
Itachi and Kisame had the senses of beasts. No human could sneak up on them while they were awake. It was like the man had materialized from ash and smoke.
"Hi Kisame! Itachi! I thought of you, you know, and I knew I had to find you! Come see, Tachi! I found this toad that totally looks like you!"
Tobi had taken Itachi's arm and started pulling him in some direction. Itachi looked back at Kisame for something, —-he didn't know— for explanation, for sympathy, for help.
Itachi felt himself being sucked in somewhere, transported somewhere dark, then moved again back to the human world. Kisame and the ash were gone. Itachi and the spiral-masked man faced each other in a grassy plain.
The red eye through the mask was narrow, the aura menacing.
"I let slide your insubordination at the brothel. But discrediting the Eye of the Moon to Kisame is a new level of idiocy."
Fear's icy brine chilled Itachi's veins. Lowering his act even slightly to Kisame had been a deadly mistake.
"Kisame is still in full support of the Eye of the Moon," Itachi said.
The lie to shield his partner flowed smooth as silk before Madara. But he realized then its plausibility. In mentioning the Eye of the Moon, Kisame had baited and strung Itachi as deftly as he would a catfish, and thrown him to an even bigger beast.
Madara made a dismissive, subvocal noise. "Do you remember our agreement from that long night?"
"You kill the Uchiha police force and don't harm the Leaf. I help you in the Akatsuki."
"It's a pact you'll only escape when one of us is dead. Too bad for you and the Leaf, you'll die first."
Itachi lit Amaterasu then. The inferno feasted on Madara's clothes, he smelled it roast his skin, and the elder Uchiha screamed and cursed, and he disappeared in a swirl. Itachi did not know what the retreat meant, but he did not think the incident was over, so he fled for the forest.
Moments later Madara appeared on a tree branch in front of him, unflamed. Itachi kept running. This was not Itachi's first dance with a teleporter— and he knew to deal with them better than most.
The bait untaken, Madara disappeared again.
Then Madara phased centimeters in front of him. Itachi should have crashed into him, but there was no collision, rather Itachi suddenly found himself cut around the waist by a chain. Madara viced it taught around him and smashed Itachi to a tree trunk.
"Pain was never the one you needed to worry about."
Terrified and adrenalized, Itachi zapped him again with the Amaterasu. Madara swore and disappeared. Exhausted and half blind, Itachi's trembling fingers started to untie himself.
Madara returned and kicked the chained man in the stomach. "That again?"
Itachi recovered and stared at him wrathfully. Madara's only eye was shadowed by the mask, and Itachi could not establish the contact he needed for Tsukuyomi.
"Each user of the Mangekyou has one ability for each eye. Yours are the black flames, Amaterasu, and the nightmare realm, Tsukuyomi, right?"
"Take your mask off," Itachi breathed.
"I've been meaning to teach you something for a while. You buried the knowledge of Indra's clan when you killed them. They were weak, but the eldest Uchiha knew the old paths, even if they could not climb them. And orphaned, you now need instruction in using our highest gifts." Madara's voice had adopted a helpful tone.
"I want none of the knowledge that has poisoned you."
Itachi said it, but he wasn't sure he was so noble. Beneath his fear was the instinct to collect advantages. He had learned long ago to enact what sin justice demanded.
"There's a third ability that everyone with two mangekyou has. You have the eyes, but there's a nose. How's your knowledge of religion, Itachi?"
"Very well."
"Good. Then you know already what we call him."
Their eyes locked. A hypnotic heartbeat passed in synchrony.
The air cracked with chakra and the space around Madara hazed cobalt blue. Itachi's lips parted in disbelief. A huge skeleton formed around Madara, which lengthened as it became threaded with corded muscles, skin, and at last armor. A huge blue, astral samurai.
Madara spoke. "Amaterasu emerges through grief. Tsukuyomi through fear. Susanoo is a wrathful god, and his likeness is unlocked by hate."
Quick as a whip, the Susanoo lifted Itachi, its hand covered his eyes and twisted his neck like a bird, and the other crushed him until his ribs cracked. Itachi screamed, and his lungs filled with blood, and he felt his spine compressing, and he knew he would soon die. But above the pain, above it all, he hated the man before him. He wanted Madara dead. He wanted to flay the skin off him. He wanted to rend him full of nightmares, stab him through the tsukuyomi, and burn his corpse. Because if Madara didn't control the fox, he would not be in the Akatsuki, the scorned Uchiha would not have revolted, and everyone he had loved would be alive.
And at last Itachi's cracking ribs ceased. His body was wracked with pain, but he could breathe. The air tasted ozone and electric. He could just barely see that red bars of chakra, like a ribcage, had formed around his own body in protection. Madara's susanoo released him.
"I need you alive for something, for now. This ethical streak, however... I'll rub that out soon enough."
He dared the hateful glare of a man who could not stand at Madara. "I'll soak the earth with your guts."
A laugh. "Good progress."
The blur shaped like Madara admired the fallen Uchiha a moment more; in Itachi's imagination he was smug. Madara disappeared in a silent vortex from his right eye. Maybe Itachi had played into Madara's hands, but they both had what they wanted. Itachi had knowledge, and he was not dead. Itachi's fiery ribs extinguished with the threat, and he collapsed to bleed his life unto the ungrateful earth.
Author's Note:
Apologies for the wait on this one, folks. Thanks very much to beta SilverLion for her help!
See you next time,
Kelto
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Akatsuki Fanfic: Campfires
FF Ao3 Tumblr
1. Dawn
2. Cannibals
3. The Lineage of Izanami
4. Slaughter’s Court
Chapter four is done just a week after three! Woo, let me know your thoughts.
Chapter 4: Slaughter’s Court, see 1. Dawn
-Uchiha Itachi-
Ironic, that he had been interested by an actress. It was an art he sympathized with; his whole life was an act. As he lay in her bed that morning, his fingers in her black hair, a peculiar thought struck him.
What if he just stayed.
Hato was exciting and kind, the sex was good, and maybe someday he would love her, or someone like her. He wasn't undeserving of love. He killed his clan, at least sixty individuals himself, but not because he wanted to. Itachi thought he deserved love.
Kisame would understand if he at one point explained wanting to stay. He would keep quiet in front of Pain and Madara. Or not, and Itachi could fake his death. Or not, and he could kill Kisame.
He dispelled the fantasy. He couldn't actually flee the Akatsuki. Madara would kill him, and if Itachi died prematurely, Sasuke could not redeem the clan's sins and abolish the cycle of hatred. It was Itachi's duty to be raise himself like a sow for slaughter, and he had accepted his fate the moment he raised a sword to his family.
Hato slept on and he did not wish to disturb her. Itachi rose, quietly put on his pants, and stole through the living room and into their courtyard. He didn't want to run into any family members while looking for a bathroom, he didn't think they even had bathrooms here, so once outside, he watchfully pissed on a tree. He remembered passing a water pump the night before which had showed signs of regular use. Finding it, he pumped the handle to coax a silvery vein of chilled water, which pooled between his spaded fingers, and trickled cold as a winter stone down his throat. With his wet hands he rinsed his sweat-salted face and hair, and the water on his lips tasted like birch smoke, horse grease, and Hato.
When he stepped to open the sliding door, he sensed another human presence had moved inside. He supposed he had been lucky to not confront a family member for this long. But Itachi feared no strict parents, and decided to go in anyway. A man painted a landscape with a slender brush at the table. Fair chance he was her father.
The older man lifted his eyes from the paper in a motion intended to induce intimidation. "Did you have fun with Hato last night?"
Itachi said nothing. The man's tone, well rehearsed, changed then.
"I know you," he said.
Yes, Itachi thought. I know you too.
"Uchiha Itachi."
"Taika Hiroki."
"I spent six years dismantling the trade of poppy milk in this village. I suppose you're here to kill me."
"Yes."
"Well," the old man smiled and rose from the chair. "I guess we better get started."
He pulled a ceremonial katana from the wall and in a fluid motion swung it to cleave between Itachi's neck and shoulder. His wise eyes stared only at the Uchiha's feet.
Itachi was half dressed, wore no shoes, carried no gear or weapons. He would not beat this man to death with his bare hands while half naked in his own home. Sliding on the wood, he came back in the bedroom and saw Hato had dressed and was tying her hair. She smiled when she saw him.
Itachi seized his belongings and slung on his clouded robe without a word. A katana in the doorframe announced the elder Taika's arrival.
Hato stood. "Papa, stop!"
"He's Rika's assassin, Hato!"
Itachi did not want to watch her face. He ran back into the house, out into the courtyard, where Taika followed him. The patriarch slashed his blade, Itachi blocked it with a kunai, and a clear sparking ching! awoke the household.
Itachi threw a kunai behind him, and for an instinctive second Taika reacted to this strangeness by looking at Itachi's eyes. The fight ended then. His genjutsu could drop an untrained civilian unconscious with eye-contact. It was as simple as altering the chakra flow to the hypothalamus. As the father's knees buckled, Itachi caught a thought directed at him.
Put the wounds in the front, may She not think, I died running.
Taika Hiroki slumped to the grass of their garden. Itachi had struck him unconscious with a gaze, but the rest would have to be done physically. He picked up the old man and drew a fatal slash through his jugular.
He heard a creak. He swung his head towards the noise, and Hato flinched. She stared with wide eyes from a doorway, and she gingerly held the discarded kunai. He wished that she would just run away.
He stood over the corpse. "My name is Uchiha Itachi, Scourge of the Leaf, and I was contracted to kill your father."
"Did you plan to use me the whole time?"
"No. You were the kindest anyone has been to me in years, Hato."
Her gaze was not sorrowful. It was not hate. It was an ice-cold shocked fear of the betrayed that knew it stared a devil in the face, and that no measure of piety could save it.
Itachi knew he was beyond forgiveness, apology, and redemption. But he faced Hato, looked her in the eyes, and for three vulnerable seconds, he bowed low.
When she stabbed the kunai towards his head, he flickered away to the roof that ringed the courtyard. From the vantage he observed the priestess drop the clattering knife in the blood, fall to her knees, and weep at her father's corpse.
He heard the ceramic roof tiles clatter next to him. The four fire-breathing chunin from the play had arrived. Standing in a square around him, they parsed clumsy signs and raised trembling fingers to their lips. Itachi clutched his kunai. In that moment, the entire military might of Honomura was extinguished. From the corner of his eye, in the viscous creek of red which tumbled down the curved tiles, the final synapses of a dying white hand twitched their last.
From his position on the house's eaves, Itachi felt eyes on him from the street, and he knew who it was. Itachi alighted beside his partner, who grinned his monstrous teeth at a job completed. They turned their backs, their red clouded robes rippled, and they left the village quicker than most people could see. The wind snapped cold on Itachi's arms: they were cloaked to the elbow in blood.
He contemplated his actions as he plunged through the trees. Not once had Itachi questioned the order once the attack began. He had decided it necessary and functioned on the assumption that Taika must be killed. A holdover from his Anbu days, he thought.
He followed orders in the Anbu to serve his village. He killed the Uchiha to save the world. But this, why did he kill this man? Why kill his harmless guards? Itachi thought his grasp on the concept of morality was cracking, and soon enough, he would kill anyone with ease. He realized he was underway to becoming like the true killers of the Akatsuki. Not zealous and purposed like Hidan, but something worse: cold, bored, and unflinching, like Kakuzu, Sasori, and Kisame.
Itachi had slept with this girl, and not ten hours later he had unflinchingly destroyed her life. The Scourge of the Leaf was no longer convinced of the pure selflessness of his martyrdom.
He considered the mathematics. Employed like this, over five years he may kill two hundred innocents so he could stay alive long enough for Sasuke to kill him. But the Uchiha's honor was a poisonous, racial, militant, radicalism which he hated. His family's hubris was the only worthwhile thing about them he had killed. The world was not better off if Sasuke rekindled the cursed Uchiha honor. And if that rekindling was not necessary, Itachi did not need to raise himself as a black sow for Sasuke to slaughter. He, Kisame, the Akatsuki, would make the world worse, and perhaps the noblest course of action was to remove these evils from the equation directly.
He thought about Shisui. He would be approaching his late friend's age soon. Shisui had failed to think of a way outside the ethical predicament of his being alive, and solved it in the most desperate way he knew.
The wind shrieked cold on his bloody arms. The dead Taika smiled from his memory. 'Well, let's get started then.'
- Hoshigaki Kisame-
They had lit no fire. Itachi said it was not safe. It was notable to Kisame, that the only ninja in the Akatsuki who could drop an enemy by looking at them, was insistent about remaining unseen.
Kisame had stolen supplies from the festival on their flight from the village. Some food and drink, but most importantly cloth and paper, which were highly life-improving materials for camping. Deep in the mountain crests some twenty kilometers from the village, Itachi had professed he must wash himself, and had stopped the pair for the night at a creek.
They settled down to rest around their nonexistent fire and organized their new and old belongings. Kisame cut the stolen white cloth into a long strip for Samehada, and with the scraps Itachi made bandage sized strips. The young man looked deep in melancholy thought as he worked, and at a particular moment, sighed frustrated.
"Aw," Kisame teased. "Itachi is having girl problems."
"Kisame, I ruined her life."
"Sorry," Kisame retracted. "Do you want more food, sake, or what?"
"None of these things would make me feel better."
Kisame poured a small serving of sake into the abstemious Itachi's bamboo. "Then let's talk."
"Do you ever contemplate the point of people like us existing, if we only make the world worse?"
Kisame knew many killers. He knew enthusiastic killers, indifferent killers, and regretful killers. Itachi may have had the highest body count of any man his age. But Kisame was sure of this: one did not kill as prolifically as Itachi and have the regretful personality. When killing became his profession, a man calloused his heart, or cracked like an egg.
"You killed your mom, your dad, your brothers, and this assassination mission bothers you?"
A sudden determination seized Itachi. "I didn't kill my brother. No, I killed everyone but him."
Itachi had a living brother? Interest caught his tone. "Why did you spare him?"
"Why raise a sow." Venom dripped the parricide's voice.
Kisame hesitated. He thought about when Deidara named them all cannibals the other night, and what those ancient clans did with eyeballs. Would he harvest the eyes from the child he let live? Kisame received convoluted signals from Itachi. Uchiha Itachi was either the most evil man he'd ever met, or he had no place in the Akatsuki at all.
Kisame's instincts were fine, and he trusted his suspicion. "What if I told you, I don't believe you killed your clan."
"You'd be wrong. I killed eighty people that night."
"I'm not sure you're evil," Kisame ventured, calm but solid. "I'm not sure you're one of us."
Their eyes met and Itachi sighed like a teacher.
Kisame heard a rustling then, of someone running exhausted and clumsily through the leaves, and he rose to fight. Itachi's worthy paranoia had not concealed them. A slender blue hand braced itself against a tree, and the arrived woman clutched at a bundle at her breast. Her familiar black eyes flashed to meet Kisame from the shadows, and her panting lips smiled weakly.
"Kisame… I hoped to the gods it was you."
He looked to Itachi, to make sure what he saw was real. The fire ninja stood tense and confused, ready to reach for a knife or a bandage, but he waited for Kisame to show him which. Akaei was always a fine sensor, she could sense chakra in the air as good sharks blood in the water, and she had tracked him to these borderlands.
He strode to embrace his exhausted niece, to hug her, gods, she had gotten so tall, she was taller than Itachi. Akaei was warm in his arms; she escaped whatever of Mei's prison camps they had her in, and found one of the only surviving members of their family. She looked up at him urgently, someone else's blood had dried on her lilac cheeks. Then she looked down, and like a tender secret, bared to him the bundle she shielded at her breast.
"Kisa, they're after me. I… he's..."
He looked down. He did not know how she had come by the baby, but Akaei chose to protect it, and that was all the license he needed. It had its mother's cheek markings, Hoshigaki markings, and pride for his withered clan bloomed in his chest. Akaei found the right uncle: he'd kill her pursuers. He'd shred them to greasy ribbons and if there was anything left he would toss the bleeding fatty hunks to his sharks. Finally someone he could relish killing. He swung Samehada off his back and stared daggers into the dark.
Tsseer!
Akaei yelped then, and staggered forward, blood spraying from her lips. A windmill shuriken quivered between her shoulder blades as she landed on the ground with splayed limbs. The baby screamed as it fell from her arms. Kisame looked at Itachi.
And Kisame realized that Akaei had never existed in this forest at all. Akaei had worms in her eyes and roaches in her heart, with bloodmist for a funeral shroud. His niece had been dead ten years. And he wondered how Itachi could know what she looked like.
"Not so evil, am I?"
Kisame's mind reeled. He wasn't sure what he felt; if a killer like him deserved to feel betrayed.
Itachi smiled like a knife. His teeth shone sharp and white like a small predator, a weasel, who killed hares three times his weight. His incarnadine eyes glowed bright as blood. He must be drunk, or drugged, or crazed from the stress.
A trickle of something rare and unwelcome entered Kisame's heart. His hand grazed Samehada's hilt in warning. "Watch yourself."
Itachi laughed. "Bring out Samehada! We'll make the world a better place and kill each other!"
"Itachi."
Two kunai pierced the nearest tree trunk at the level of Kisame's thyroid. He must have remained disoriented from the genjutsu, because the noise cleared his head like a bell. Itachi's voice was cold enough to crack stone:
"Fight. Or I'll kill you with a thought."
Kisame swung Samehada to smash it across Itachi's midsection, and the blue scales shredded lichen from the tree, and bark and fungus flew off in a cloud of spores. Itachi had dodged the showful strike lithely, easily, but it wasn't enough. Just being in the air near Samehada had the desired effect. And if Kisame would not swallow Itachi whole, he would carve him slice by slice. He did not know what Itachi wanted, but Kisame was determined not to fall prey to it.
Approaching glints. Kisame retracted his blade mid strike to block Itachi's steel. It was necessity: Itachi did not miss with a knife unless he wanted to, and he no longer knew what Itachi wanted.
Kisame struck at him, and Itachi dodged each swipe, but never by far enough. He would notice the chakra drain soon. The younger ninja would try to jump in with a kunai, but his reach with a knife was one tenth of Samehada's, and Itachi's strikes tested he was unable to draw a hit and escape the broadsword unscathed. His knives streaked by, but Kisame knew he only carried about twelve. Itachi could only get close enough to strike Kisame from one predictable angle.
Kisame felt Itachi phase behind him, and he jabbed the sword under his arm to land a strike on something solid but yielding. He spun to look at what he hit. Itachi clutched at his stomach— the scales had shredded his shirt and bled his skin underneath. His other hand grasped for support at the tree like Akaei's had, and his sharp shadow-hooded eyes evoked a bloodthirsty hawk. Then he fell to his knees.
Masterful though he used it, Itachi's small body held an unimpressive amount of chakra. His already low stamina was expended and eaten. Kisame stood above Itachi like an executioner with Samehada raised. The fire ninja braced himself on hands and knees, looking a lot like the coughing boy on the sand. But his hawk eyes threatened murder.
"Do it," Itachi said.
"No."
"Can't kill a partner?" Itachi dared.
"I can. I have."
"Plunge it!" Itachi demanded.
Fine, boy. Kisame stamped down his spine with the full weight of the erect sword's tip. The Fire ninja's limbs buckled, his chest plunged on to the earth, the breath crushed from his body, and his legs shook against the ground on impact.
"And this time, I won't kill my partner." Kisame finished his previous sentence. He lifted the sword from Itachi's back.
Itachi turned himself over and coughed blood. His black eyes looked wrathfully at Kisame. And Kisame thought, even now, Itachi could maim him with those eyes. But easy as it would have been, Kisame noticed the whole fight, the most effective weapon in his arsenal went unused.
"Why not," Itachi demanded.
"Because, you might be the only friend I've ever had."
Itachi's arms splayed out to his side in defeat. "Damn me."
Itachi lay wounded. But he made no motion to move or bandage himself. Kisame did not intend to help him unless he asked. He waited for Itachi to explain, to apologize. Not for fighting him. But for genjutsuing him and stabbing his long-dead niece through the heart. For using him like a tool. For trying to commit suicide. But half an hour passed in silence, Itachi stared and bled, and nothing was said.
"I'll get you into the tree."
"I don't want to sleep in the tree."
"Too bad."
Kisame leant Itachi against a sturdy fork some seven meters up. He slumped. He would fall when his eyes closed, if not before. Taking the cloth intended for Samehada, he tied a white belt around Itachi's waist and the tree limb. He stared down at the fire ninja.
Itachi's silence continued and he did not meet Kisame's eyes. Be it defiant, depressed, or ashamed, Kisame considered it incredibly rude. The silence awarded Kisame the last word like he was beneath arguing with or explaining to. And right now, if not an explanation, Kisame required acknowledgement. He leaned in close enough for his huge serrated teeth to flash inches from Itachi's soft face. Even Itachi was not unaffected, and at last his black eyes lifted to meet his.
"You've got problems, Itachi. With the world, with yourself. But killing yourself, killing me, isn't gonna fix them."
Author's Note,
Again, this is a pretty M story in terms of violence and themes, and the strongest of it is yet to come.
Wooo thanks for reading. This story will be ambitious in length and we're still only in the exhibition. Let me know your thoughts.
Kelto
#campfires#chapter 4#kisaita#itachi#kisame#fanfiction#celticfeather#keltodier#thanks for reading!!!#akatsuki#akatsuki fic
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Chapter 1: https://celticfeather.tumblr.com/post/188433697686/akatsuki-fic-campfires
Cannibals Chapter 3: The Lineage of Izanagi
-Uchiha Itachi-
Something particularly loveless prodded Itachi awake.
"You're the last watch till dawn," Kakuzu said. Itachi activated his sharingan as he woke, his dark eyes shifting to red. He could see Kakuzu's green ones were dilated near-sightlessly in the blackness.
Itachi rose and leapt up their chosen watchman's tree. The sharingan allowed him to see a wider spectrum of visible light than a normal human, and what should have been the black jungle night gained a strange ultraviolet tinge, a whitish-purple color somewhere between neon and dark that his language could not well describe. The stars and chakras shined different, coldly-bright, minty colors too. But he saw no glows of enemy shinobi in the night, just the gentle silver chakra silhouettes of sleeping birds and insects, and the three ninja below him. He let his sharingan fade. In an hour it had become bright enough for ordinary humans to see.
He alighted between the three ninja sleeping on the ground to no response. So much for Kisame's 'I only half sleep' claim.
Unsure of the best way to wake them, Itachi announced at normal volume, "It's dawn."
They rose quickly and quietly, professional in every mercenary sense of the word. For a troupe of cantankerous rogues, Itachi was surprised no one complained. He supposed that would resume once they decided they were no longer being hunted.
"No sign of the enemy since I've been awake," Itachi reported.
"Time to get the hell out of the land of Lightning. Anyone gotta take a piss, now's the time," Kakuzu said. After a short moment, the four ninja oriented themselves against the eastern dawn, and began leaping through the trees.
"Where's Zetsu when you need him?" Deidara muttered as they ran. "He'd say what Pain wants us to do about this."
"You don't need Pain or his pet mushroom. You have me," Kakuzu said.
"Yeah? And who made you second in command?"
"I'm the one who actually talks with our contractors. So naturally, I have our mission intel, and there's no reason to stop work."
"Hmpf," Deidara said.
"Since you fucked up the least, Kisame, I'll let you pick what you do." Kakuzu said. "You want to fix this Raikage incident, or make some money?"
Kisame looked at Itachi for his opinion. Itachi merely raised his eyebrows in reply.
"Make money," Kisame answered. Good. Itachi wanted to be away from this disaster.
"Great. You two go to this shithole village and kill their patriarch. When you're done with that, some pirates could use a lesson in not leaving witnesses." Kakuzu tossed a scroll to Kisame and one to Itachi, who each caught them deftly. Kakuzu then looked at Deidara.
"Deidara, you and Sasori will fix your fuck up. We don't want the Cloud or Mist investigating the Akatsuki. Blame it on different terrorists."
"How do we do that?"
"Doesn't matter," Kakuzu said.
Deidara frowned. But his calmness suggested he thought Sasori would know how to fix it.
They were soon over the border of the Land of Frost, where they said the brief goodbyes of stiff men. Itachi and Kisame continued west. Deidara went north. Kakuzu south. They stopped at a collection point on the way to get Kisame a new robe and gear, and began their ascent to the next mission's village in the afternoon.
They stopped along a river to prepare. The mint-colored alpine meltwater cooled the air in a low dense pocket from the beating sun. Itachi opened the scroll of mission intel and familiarized himself with the details. "Small town. Better we don't make a stir."
Kisame grunted in acknowledgement and stepped towards the river, swinging Samehada off his shoulder. He summoned a large deep-blue shark along the bank. It opened its mouth, and Kisame pressed the wrapped Samehada inside its white-fleshed throat. The two ninja being armed to the teeth was useful for intimidation, but a hindrance to infiltration. As if it was a loyal horse, Kisame patted the magical shark once on the muzzle once it closed its jaws around Samehada.
"You ever touch a shark before, Itachi? Try it."
Like he had been invited to partake in the most dangerous petting zoo, Itachi wet his feet at the bank where the shark, high as his hips, swayed half submerged. He thought the shark would look at him, or at least acknowledge him, but its circular black eyes didn't waver. With a slowness Itachi hoped the fish would interpret as respect, he brushed his palm against its exposed gray flank.
"It feels like sandpaper."
Kisame smiled. "Shark skin is actually made of dentin, the same material as teeth."
Because they need more of that, Itachi thought. He removed his hand, and deeming its duty done, the huge probably-sentient carnivore disappeared with a puff of mist to the realm Kisame had summoned it from.
"It's not easy to make a summoning contract with a shark, you know. Ninja tend to not come back," Kisame said.
"I thought you said sharks don't like how people taste."
"Oh, the sage sharks of Koraru Depths make exceptions for arrogant Mist chunin. You don't taste that bad."
He sent Kisame a reproachful look at his choice of pronouns, but Itachi's face was something of a resting scowl, so Kisame seemed not to notice.
To appear like a traveler of the civilian sort, Itachi untied his shuriken packs and the ninja headband. They kept their robes, no one yet recognized the red clouds as unique. He thought living in the forest on the run gave him enough of a convincingly rough appearance. Lifting his gaze from the water's reflection, he regarded his partner.
"Do I pass for a trader?"
"You look fine. It's your voice that's the problem."
"My voice?"
"I don't know how much you know about the Hidden Mist, but there we have a caste system, and the Hoshigaki belong to a certain caste. And people like me can tell by your dialect, Itachi, that you come from a noble family, and there's not a chance in hell you're a traveling merchant."
Itachi never thought of himself as in an upper class, and caste had been abolished in his land seventy years ago. Kisame's background in the Mist allowed him to perceive things that Itachi never intended to exude. "I see."
"Try gotcha, instead of I see."
"Gotcha."
Itachi pulled a piece of paper from the scroll and unfolded its careful nine-faceted square. A sketch of the man they were paid to kill stared back at them. Taika Hiroki. About sixty years old, leader of the local clan, someone had it out for him. Kisame nodded, having committed his face a last time to memory. Itachi burned the incriminating documents between his fingers.
The pair climbed ancient stairs carved from wood, stone, and roots, along a humid forested mountain crest. Traditional torii winged gates arched over their heads, and the small village soon appeared along a glacial lake between the mountains. A chunin posted at the doorless entrance looked the two travelers up and down. He pulled a root of wild licorice from his teeth before he spoke.
"What brings you to Honomura?"
"We're merchants," Kisame said.
"Here for the festival?"
"Of course."
The guard escorted them in. A minor official who clearly did not get enough visitors gave them each wooden travelers' passes. What a bothersome village.
Itachi felt more endangered in these hamlets. He paradoxically would be less noticed in a large ninja village. It was in these tribal redoubts, where most of the settlement consisted of a single clan, that he knew he was immediately recognized as an outsider. By the introductions they made with petty officials, the pair gleaned that three quarters of the settlement's two-hundred-odd population had the surname Taika, and it would not be easy to find theirs.
But the presence of the foreigners attracted mercifully little attention at the festival. Like moths drawn to the warm haze of paper lanterns, the outlaw pair wandered dazed to the center of the fairgrounds. After weeks in the forest they were transfixed by the live music, the vendors, and best, the greasy scent of real food -not whole animals- which glistened with salt and sauce. They looked at each other with testing eyes that betrayed the same poorly concealed thought.
"How much money do we have," Itachi said.
Kisame checked himself. "I've got eight hundred."
"I have one thousand."
Crap.
"I'll find some more money," Kisame said. Good. They were on the same line of the same page. In less than two minutes, Kisame had stolen a two centimeter wad of cash from a food stand.
Itachi's eyes darted from stand to stand. "What do you want to eat?"
"Do I look picky to you?"
Bristling with treasures —foods on sticks and cups of tea and sake between their knuckles— Itachi and Kisame seated themselves at one of many low tables near the town's stage and began to eat. Soon enough an announcer entered stage center, and introduced an act on the origin of deities.
"How's your knowledge of religion, Itachi?"
"Average."
The play began as they ate, and rusted to art forms, Itachi found himself paying rapt attention. Two actors dressed in white robes, a woman and a spear-wielding man, stepped onto the stage, where white lanterns cast the empty scene in an ethereal fog. Dipping his spear into the water, or rather tapping the stage floor, the man created land, and the white-clouded lanterns slid on the string to be replaced with ones tinted a jungle green.
"Izanami and Izanagi," Itachi whispered to Kisame. "Siblings, but also..." he waved his hand in esoteric explanation.
The creation gods Izanami and Izanagi had several deformed and normative children. First born was Hiruko, stricken with a hunched back, and cast into a river. They had many others, at last birthing Kagutsuchi the fire god. Izanami died giving birth to the flaming infant.
"And with Izanami's end, the world's first death occurred, and with it the age of creation. Intent to amend his wife's unjust fate, Izanagi plunged into the underworld, which then, was not separated from the realm of men," the narrator read.
Izanami wandered through a darkened stage, and stopped short. Behind a veil shined the unmistakable silhouette of his beloved wife.
The curtain lifted, but the woman it revealed was not fair Izanami. The actress's serene white face-paint had become putrefied in death. Children's gasps accented the moment. Fingers curled in shock at his rancid beloved, Izanagi turned away. His wife was enraged at his superficial rejection, and spurred demons after her former lover. Izanagi raced from the underworld, off the stage, where demons in fur-rimmed masks chased him through the audience until Izanagi circled, panting but safe, back onto the stage of the surface world. He pushed a prop-boulder over the cave, forever sealing life from death.
The narrator stepped onto the stage, and a spotlight centered on him, with Izanagi bathing himself in background.
"Izanagi cleansed himself from the underworld in a rushing river. The water that streamed off his face became three new gods:"
The spotlight jumped to greet the new characters in regal dress:
"From one eye sprung the proud moon god, Tsukuyomi."
"From the nose, the mischievous god of sea and storm, Susanoo."
"And from the other eye, artful and enlightened, patron of our village: Amaterasu the sun."
"Amaterasu was by far the most righteous and beautiful of the three new gods," the narrator crooned, and stooped low to leer at her backside. Amaterasu raised her fan to her face, whumphing the announcer without a lapse in grace, and the audience laughed.
The three new gods greeted the world of men -the audience- each with kabuki flourishes that reflected their personalities. He thought Amaterasu made eye contact with him from behind her fan.
"Hm." Kisame smiled slightly and his pupils slid to Itachi.
Itachi sipped his tea. "We might be the most interesting thing that blew into this town in a week."
"You should talk with her."
"I'm not good at flirting."
Kisame snorted. "Just like your knowledge of religion."
"I'm not being modest. I haven't spoken with a girl my age in years. In this town, I'm just a merchant."
"A kind, handsome one."
Itachi was struck that Kisame had called him 'kind.' He did not think Kisame would evaluate someone with that category. Not knowing how to take the compliment, Itachi stared back at the stage. Amaterasu and Susanoo competed over who was a stronger god. Amaterasu had just turned Susanoo's sword into five human beings, versus Susanoo's ability to spring only three from her necklace.
Their low table quaked. Kisame had plunged his cup down so hard and fast that his drink sloshed over the rim. His wide nose wrinkled and the stare Itachi met was battle-urgent.
"There's blood, buckets of it, enough to drain ten men."
Itachi forced his shoulders to relax. They must not act or show awareness of this yet. His eyes scanned the crowd as a cheering arose and the taiko drums beat an excited sinister trot into the space between his ribs. A column of fifteen men and boys carved a path like a wild river through the parade grounds, a coarse wooden platform undulating on the men's shoulders. Atop it glistened a bleeding heap of fresh red muscles and white fascia. It was a dead, skinned, horse.
Kisame squinted. "What the hell?"
"The crimes of Susanoo. Upset with his sister, he flayed the skin off Amaterasu's horse," Itachi explained. He also noted that in these conditions, Kisame could not differentiate human from animal blood.
Susanoo charmingly presented Amaterasu the horse carcass from the audience. Amaterasu strode off the stage in grief and anger, her silken white-red sleeves snapping, and the stage darkened with the egress of the dawn goddess, plunging the realm of men into darkness. Susanoo smirked and laughed, and the loping demons in fur-rimed masks began to howl. String instruments climaxed crescendo and fell, marking the end of the play's chapter. The audience gasped and clapped. The festival night was now without the Sun's guidance, and any kind of crookedness could occur before dawn returned.
The men heaped the horse onto a pyre, and a chunin lit it with a fire jutsu, enflaming a birchwood pile which was small enough that the meat might be cooked rather than carbonized. The village had a dark interpretation of their worship: Itachi thought that the goddess Amaterasu would not appreciate the flaying of another horse in her name. But the villagers seemed to like it.
"The Leaders of the Mist would consider this barbaric," Kisame said, his sly eyes smiling behind his cup.
Itachi matched Kisame's sentiment. No, the great ninja villages did not sacrifice simple horses to gods of sun, but sacrificed men and souls to gods of war. Gods they hailed each time they smithed a kunai, and who licked their lips at each newborn baby.
The next performance started, some students playing taiko drums. It was a banal sight compared to the play. Itachi ate his dango and drank his tea, listened to the music, and watched thick smoke rise from the pyre.
A gang of the village's teens stood by the pyre, the actress for Amaterasu among them. She had removed the headdress and white facepaint, but she still wore Amaterasu's red and white wake-sleeved furisode. One of the group looked at him and Kisame and giggled, as if discussing a dare. Then Amaterasu looked at the two travelers and grabbed a tray. He realized with a start that she was coming towards them. Kisame, who smelled caste like he smelled blood, tugged Itachi's robe, telling him that this is when merchants stood.
She dipped her head in greeting. "Excuse me sirs, my name is Taika Hato. I'm priestess at our temple and actress at the theater. We noticed you're not from around here. Would you like some horse flesh?"
Itachi blinked: the sun goddess Amaterasu had just offered him to eat her horse. He stumbled out a yes.
"And you, sir?"
"Please give me the shoulder, Miss Hato."
"Sure. May I ask your names?"
'Itachi' meant weasel. Weasels were small, ambitious, mean, and hungry. His parents' birth judgement had been imperfect: Itachi had become a man who was calm, sharp, and observant.
"I am Karasu. And this is my companion, Mekajiki. It's very good to meet you, and thank you for the food." Itachi bowed his head and gave himself a name meaning crow, and swordfish for Kisame.
"You're welcome! How was the show?"
"Your performance was stirring. I only hope your next act is soon: if I remember, demons terrorize everyone on earth until Amaterasu comes back," he said, trying his best to exude friendliness, but he had not spoken to anyone he considered a friend in years. He sat down, and with a gesture to the empty space, he invited Hato to join them if she wanted. He noticed Kisame's chin dip near-imperceptibly in approval of his manners.
"You know your religion," she said, taking a seat. "Stick around tomorrow at seven to see me kick Susanoo's butt. What brings you two here?"
"You mean, you can't tell by our dress?" Itachi asked.
"It is odd," she agreed.
Itachi smiled. "We're charcoal burners."
"So you...?"
"We fell trees, burn the logs in an earthen kiln using fire and water style, and then travel from village to village selling the charcoal. Smiths burn it to keep their forges at the correct temperature. It's also used in cooking, fertilizer, detergent, explosives, traditional medicine- even cosmetics. We've got a wagon full of it down the road."
Her look between the two men deduced Itachi was the fire user. "How good is your fire style?"
"Just the basics," he said modestly.
Hato's eyes changed from simply friendly to that of intrigue, and her expression became appraising and hopeful. "For the last act, the village guards cast fire jutsus as tributes to Amaterasu. You should join them."
"I couldn't possibly intrude on your ceremony as an outsider."
"When it comes to this ceremony, I am the authority. Plus, gifts from strangers mean more than gifts from friends, we say."
Itachi nodded. He would make an offering of flame to Amaterasu. And the girl, her representative, smiled with her eyes. "Thank you, Karasu! They'll love it."
Kisame stretched, looked at the two youths, and stood to leave. His gaze alerted Itachi not to expect his return. "I'm going to… get some more sake."
"You don't want to watch your friend perform?" Hato asked.
Kisame grinned and waved. "He's not so impressive."
Hato led Itachi backstage to meet the village's top military brass: a gaggle of four men spanning years fifteen to thirty who passed a ceramic bottle between them. The root-chewing gatekeeper was youngest among them. Hato was received warmly by the soldiers. She introduced Itachi as a pious charcoal merchant, and he was quickly ignored by the men.
For this dangerous and final act of the night, the stage had been stripped bare of its curtains and paper lanterns, and strapping men spilled buckets of water across the hardwood stage. A grinning bucket-spiller splashed the remaining water dregs onto the squealing children in the front row. From the backstage tent, Itachi watched the first four performers submit their offerings, each casting the biggest sun he could into the night sky in honor of Amaterasu. The crowd shrieked and laughed, fire reflecting on their wide scleras. Stepping forward for his turn, Itachi decided he would create a fireball that was the third largest- no need to upstage the locals.
Itachi mounted the stage as the penultimate performer left. His eye caught on Hato staring at him encouragingly, she flashed a thumbs-up, and he was bolstered with a better idea. Halting just one step onto the stage, Itachi faced profile, and his chest swelled like a bird. He blew, and his fire bloomed a deep ferrous red sparking with trace elements, and the chakra fireball sprinted across the stage in the shape of a stallion. Mane flaring, embers sparking from its light hooves, the fleet, shrieking horse appeared and faded in a vacuum roar. He returned backstage to raucous applause. When the soldiers' mouths gaped wide enough to catch frogs, a quiet grin cut Itachi's lips.
It hadn't been larger than yours, he thought.
Hato linked arms with him and led him through the festival crowds. She would introduce him to people and he would forget their names. Villagers welcomed him like a hero and plied him with sake. A kind old lady handed him a skewer with cubes of horseflesh. Any friend of Amaterasu was a friend of theirs. He was happy. Kisame was gone, the mission was something for tomorrow, Hato was a nice girl, and he could pretend to be normal for a night. Her attention made him feel pleasantly male, that he wasn't strange, isolated, murderous or evil.
She had showed him around the small town and they found themselves walking along the cold, white-graveled shores of the glacier lake. The gentle summer alpine night glowed cobalt blue, lightened by a huge low moon, whose coolness was relieving compared to the warm and dark frenzy of the blood festival.
"Actress and priestess," Itachi said as they strolled. "One's devout, and old people would say the other is sinful. I haven't met a person who's been both."
She smiled. "Each coin has two sides, and the same goes for you. Where'd a merchant learn ninjutsu like that?"
"The road is dangerous… and," he whispered like sharing a secret, "Sometimes really boring."
"Hah! Can't be less interesting than here."
"Did you know, that was a curse you'd tell your enemies in the old days? 'May you live in interesting times'?"
"Sounds menacing when you say it. Can you do other ninja tricks?"
In a heartbeat, he threw three kunai in a perfect line along a slender birch, each resonating a deep thunk that merged into one. A white and gold moth fluttered impaled on the center knife. She gasped.
But when he looked back at her, her face seemed uncomfortable. The throw was well above chunin level, above most jounin. Itachi knew he should not be careless in his desire to impress her by throwing beyond the abilities of a merchant. But somehow, the throw had not pleased her.
"Is something wrong, Hato?"
"What I liked about your fire jutsu wasn't its killing power; it wasn't a weapon, it was art."
"Art..."
"It's like how you and Mekajiki use fire and water style to make charcoal. Your fire style painted Amaterasu's horse, and it was beautiful. Performance is art, and it makes people happy."
Itachi regurgitated what he knew of art. "Do you think art is a single rapturous instant, or eternal?"
"Weird question. Art isn't a period of time, but a place. It transports you somewhere you've never been before, to some feeling you've never felt before"
"Hm," Itachi pondered. He thought that was a better philosophy than that of either Deidara or Sasori. He wondered how mad they would be if he answered like that, and decided he would next time they asked his opinion. Which would probably be never.
She smiled at him. "I've got a stupid dream. Wanna hear it?"
"I'd love to."
"I dream to lead a group someday that practices more peaceful uses to ninjutsu than war. Even if it was just a traveling circus of theater artists, and all we accomplished was making some villagers laugh."
"You've already got a talent for performance. The road is dangerous, but train and surround yourself with others like you, and only a fool would rob you."
She smiled sadly. "Dad wants me to marry a prince in the next village."
"Bring the prince along."
The actress said nothing and skipped a stone over the lake. It failed after two stops, and she made a noise of embarrassment. Itachi picked up a small flat stone and also skipped it badly. Ripples in the lake reflected the moonbeams like bobbing driftwood.
"It's late," Itachi said after a while.
"Do you have somewhere to stay?"
Itachi did not answer right away. She said, "Stay the night at my house."
Itachi bowed. "That's very generous of you. I would be happy to stay overnight in your stable, and my partner as well, if possible."
There was a sly shift of her eyes, lids heavy around her big, black pupils. "I think he'll have found an inn by now. But that shouldn't stop you."
Hato escorted him across flagstones that shone silver in the moonlight. Carrying their shoes, opening a sliding door with the utmost care, the two tiptoeing teens entered her sub-clan's complex and slipped into her bedroom.
Itachi set his shoes along the wall, wondering to what extent he should undress himself. When he turned around, Hato had knelt on her white futon. With her eyes trained at him, she slowly loosened the belt of her furisode to bare her chest. Itachi did the same. He reached to kiss her, she kissed him back. He shed the rest of his clothes, then did the same for her. He leaned into her. This is what people did.
He shuddered at the unfamiliarity when her weak hands touched his neck, they were warm and soft, hot as death-blood. He banished the rising memories, memories from the last time he did this, no, from the last time he thought he did this with Izumi that terrible night. Their bodies fit together like hot white ivory, and like smoke and steam, a very un-normal man tried his best to do this very normal thing.
Author's Note;
Heyo, thanks for supporting this fic. I plan to post Chapter 4 around Friday Nov 23. This will be a long dramatic fic with probably about 10-15 chapters this length, and I have a lot of progress made already.
Let me know your thoughts. And thanks of course to thanks again to beta myochiikurin!
Steadfast,
Kelto
Follow on FF or Ao3
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13409132/1/Campfires
https://archiveofourown.org/works/21019778/chapters/49992863
#split this one because it was too long#but chapter 3 yay!#this was delayed because i literally could not write the last paragraph how i wanted for two weeks#but its an important skill to just say yeah im 80 percent satisfied with this and publish it anyway#campfires#naruto#akatsuki#akatsuki fanfic#itachi#kisame#kisaita#celticfeather#keltodier#thanks for reading!
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Akatsuki Fanfic: Campfires
On: FF Ao3 Tumblr
First. 1. Dawn
Previous: 4. Slaughter’s Court
Campfires chapter 5: Kraken Hall
-Hoshigaki Kisame-
Thukk.
Right by his ear. His awakened eyes slid right. The tag of a paper bomb waved from a kunai.
Kisame sprung away in the fraction of a second before its detonation. Adrenaline damped pain: his neck and shoulder had been torn open, he did not know how much. His priority was seizing a few seconds of distance and time.
Midleap he looked for the boy, he was gone, the white cloth that bound him a twisting ribbon snaking to the forest floor.
Flickers manifested into crouching shapes on tree branches. Their animal masks denoted the Anbu of the Hidden Leaf, though the rogues were outside the Leaf's territory. The masks' inset eyes were round and black like a shark's, but leaf ninja moved like ghostly gray leopards. The assailants were three ninja: two men, one woman, and a ninja hound.
He had to get them out of the trees, the leaf ninja the advantage there. They met him on the ground. He grasped Samehada's hilt, and from the reserves of stolen chakra, his steaming flesh began to rapidly regrow where it was damaged. He grinned at the three masked ninja.
"Tell me, am I next to Itachi in your bingo book?"
There was no answer and a lightning jutsu struck at Kisame then. Huge and white and it sucked the air from the ground. He let it strike along Samehada, most of it was absorbed and channeled along the sword's scales, with the rest of the lightning shocking off into something behind him.
He felt Samehada purr. Or perhaps it was more like a stomach growling. As the leaf ninja stared in disbelief, he smashed the sword into someone's body, the shock traveled up his arms, and the exhilaration of combat flooded him.
He quickly dispatched the other two ninja with crushing strikes from his sword. Then the dog sprung at him. Dogs were not pets in the Mist. He grabbed the beast by its forelegs and winched them apart.
One, two, three, dog, down. Done.
He stepped forward to the bodies to make sure the job was finished, but his limbs didn't obey him. He looked down, an ink black shadow had reached to his foot, and somehow he could not move. One of the crumpled men he'd thought dead had wielded a shadow like a tentacle. He tried to budge his leg,
Kisame struggled against the bind. He could move slightly. A few more seconds of fighting and he would break free. He stared inevitable death at the man, and Kisame did not smile.
At that moment a shape, small and angular, inspective and fearless as a crow beside a carcass, appeared beside the crumpled Anbu. The Anbu's head turned to regard the sudden darkness over his shoulder.
"Uchiha...Itachi..."
Well? Kisame wondered of his partner. What will you do?
Itachi's red eyes looked deeply into the mask. Kisame could not know what nightmare was shared. But what he did see was Itachi's kunai strike. The tentacle around Kisame's leg uncoiled, and the fight was over.
Kisame wondered what summoned the assailants. Like a bird Itachi was so visually focused. Last night he had allowed for no fires, no loud noises. But as fine as his sharingan was, it could never see a scent. From their skirmish hours before, the boy smelled like a bloodbath. And Kisame, feeling responsible, knew that he should have been wiser.
Itachi stepped to each of the three corpses and lifted their painted masks. He stared into their faces.
"No member of the Leaf's two ninja hound clans are among these dead," the former Leaf ninja said.
Kisame's eyes slid suspiciously to the surrounding forest. So, their main course was elsewhere.
Then Itachi placed the masks back on. To face the afterworld as they lived, he supposed. The sanctity of a human body never really mattered to Kisame. Dead meat was dead meat. He accepted none of the people in this clearing, alive or not, would ever receive a proper funeral.
Itachi parsed signs and raised a hand. Dozen of crows and ravens and hulking raptors bigger than cats arrived from somewhere. The birds were fearsome, but lightweights by nature, and Kisame wondered what a bird did with a human pelvis.
"You know what doesn't leave bones?" Kisame suggested.
Itachi's expression did not change.
"Sharks."
Icy Itachi looked at his expectant wards and then at Kisame. "Leave them the hound."
Kisame lifted the human bodies and threw them into the river, and summoned four freshwater tolerant sharks. At a scarcely perceptible twitch of Itachi's finger the obedient ravens plunged. His bull sharks needed no such instruction, and when one did not not focus closely, the splashing sounded peaceable in comparison. The ravens, social and hierarchical, argued noisily with each other over the best positions. With a businesslike demeanor, the two ninja turned their backs to the clamor of devouring.
"The Leaf will have sent a second jounin squad after us. I will reroute them," Itachi said.
Itachi intended to bait an informed jounin team alone, in his condition, and probably half his unimpressive chakra with a shadow clone.
Kisame smiled. "Still slightly suicidal, I see."
"I expect no problems."
"Are you gonna say something to me about last night? Or are you just gonna let it fester?" Kisame said.
Itachi's eyes were sharp. "Do you want me to apologize for attempting suicide? Or for abusing you?"
"I want you to acknowledge that you looked into my head, revived my dead-sister's dead-kid, impregnated her, and stabbed her through the spine. To try to get me to kill you, because you decided that you can't cope with the fact that you're a killer. Have I got that right?"
Itachi continued aloofly. "I am different from all of you. Senseless killing bothers me deeply."
"You are so elitist. You think I wasn't bothered by it? You think when I was a boy, I wanted this?" Kisame gestured at himself, huge and beastly and covered in scars.
Itachi was midstride, but he stopped at Kisame's words. Kisame continued menacingly.
"I grew up in the Blood-Mist Village. I was younger than you when I became a killer. I have no family, no purpose, and almost no friends. So what I want to know, Itachi, is why you don't accept it like the rest of us."
"I can deal with the fact that I'm a killer. What I could not accept last night, Kisame, is my continuing existence in the Akatsuki causing dozens of unnecessary deaths. But whatever. It doesn't matter- you were right anyway. Ending myself is not going to solve this problem. It must be fought directly."
"Directly?" Kisame repeated. The word insinuated rebellion. Wars were won with less manpower than that would require for a rebellion against the Akatsuki, and Kisame knew he was under orders to take Itachi out if he did so.
Wisely, Itachi did not elaborate. The dark haired young man looked somewhere and Kisame followed his gaze down. The dog was just a skeleton. The winged scavengers took the bones in their slender beaks and flew away with them.
"We must leave now," Itachi said.
Kisame stepped onto the now-still water to hide his tracks and scent. He showed the scroll between his knuckles. "I'll start Kakuzu's other mission," he said gruffly.
"Hm."
Only a few wind-trembling feathers testified what happened at the scene, and the two ninja vanished with the wind that scattered them.
—Uchiha Itachi—
Itachi broke a twig between his fingers. In this moist climate, a twig would not have snapped naturally. The Anbu would halt to discuss the stick for a few precious moments and come to the same conclusion. Animals could leave smears in the moss. But only ninja leave decoys. Even if they did not have a second dog, they would know it was him.
But these Anbu would have another dog. No Inuzuka had been among the dead. No Hatake had been among the dead...
Ninja who abandon the rules are scum. But ninja who abandon their comrades are worse than scum.
Itachi thought he had embodied the persona of cold parricide. Apparently not. His ruse of coldness had been translucent as ocean water. Strange round, silver and black eyes regarded him from his memory:
You might just be the only friend I've ever had.
He had been cruel to manipulate his partner last night. Kisame had been uncomfortable fighting him, even as easy as Itachi planned to make it. He would find Kisame and apologize properly for his manipulative attempt. Maybe he could convince him to spare some of the bandits, Kisame probably would probably kill most of them if he did not interfere. Itachi hated these Akatsuki kill missions: Kakuzu, Pain, could just try and punish him for leaving some people alive after the goal was achieved. Kisame was right. Death would not solve the problem of Itachi's existence; he would have to think his way out.
That was far enough to cost the Anbu the necessary time. He parsed signs for a shadow clone, and his double unceremoniously continued forward. Last he tested, he could be separate from his clone for two kilometers before it disappeared. The real Itachi jumped some twenty meters to the water, expecting that if he did not touch solid matter, his scent would vanish in seconds in the air.
But he was not sure. He did not see his world through scent. He threw a final glance towards the past, towards the Anbu, towards his old captain Kakashi, then ignited his sharingan and focused on the way before him. Now, to track Kisame.
—Hoshigaki Kisame—
Kisame lowered the hand-drawn map and stared at the island that filled its place on the horizon. It was a fine little place for a bandit camp.
He stepped across the ocean water to where the stolen wooden skiffs crowded the island's white sand shore. He found the cave entrance by smell. Men: those lazy brutes had taken to pissing where they ate.
He walked into the tunnel. It would be inconvenient to swing Samehada in such a small place, but he did not expect the bandits would want to stay there long. Someone saw him and asked him a question. Kisame shoved their head into the wall and kept walking deeper into the cave. The scroll's task had been to 'eliminate the bandit threat,' and he would do that in the way he decided most enjoyable and convenient.
Two bigshots argued in the common area, surrounded by lower members. The two leaders raised swords at him, but he twisted their arms around, and thrust one into the blade of the other. Then the screams started. He threw the trembling survivor to the ground and stepped on his neck. A surrounding man threw a knife, Kisame returned it.
A woman called her comrades to flee. The remaining members streamed around him, out of the cave, down the beach, and Kisame stalked after the prey unhurriedly. They untethered their rowboats and launched them into the waves, running astride their vessels, tossing oars to each other.
He wet his feet in the surf and shed his robe on the beach. A grin slit his lips. He parsed a few signs and a water dragon overturned the skiffs and spilled their human cargo into the sea. He let Samehada's spiked pommel embed in the skin of his palm. What a terrible day to be a pirate, he thought as the cool tide sloshed against his now-sandpaper hide.
He smashed a skiff with a whip of his tail. The electricity in his snout fired ablaze, they were so alive, so frantic, so afraid. This prey was small, a tenth of his weight, almost small enough to swallow whole. Their tender bones waned and crunched in his jaws. He'd bite, tear, release when the muscles flexed limp, and bite the next thing that moved. The blood was intoxicating, heavy, arousing. The meat in his mouth did not taste bad.
He pictured Itachi. The cruel face he made last night shined in his mind's eye. With his grinning teeth and the weasel look in his bloodthirsty, fight-hungry eyes. Bring out Samehada!
An impulse occurred to him. He had not done that before. But that did not mean he could not start. He was frightfully hungry. A chemical of frenzied excitement flooded his brain, no longer fully human, at the prospect.
He identified a target. He sank into the depths for a pregnant moment. Then he snapped the red-muscled braided whip of his tail, shot dart-fast towards the surface, and a second before he breached, yawned wide a razored chasm of death.
—-—
Kisame staggered human out of the waves. He descended from the fogging rausch, the tremendous high. His hands trembled from ecstasy, from shock, from disbelief.
An uncomfortable feeling plagued him. It was the first time in fifteen years that he felt it. Not quite fear, not quite cold, but it gripped him around the chest like those. It was the unfamiliar realization that, maybe, he had done something wicked.
He swung Samehada off his body and flung it viciously against a palm tree, and he leered at it with shark teeth bared.
"Look what you made me do!"
The words felt hollow when they became reality. He knew better than to decry an object. It was not Samehada's fault, it was not Itachi's fault. The deed had been his alone. He knew not which god to pray to forgiveness, or demon for sanctuary.
"Holy Buddha, Amaterasu, Susanoo, fuck it, Jashin, anybody."
He knelt on the sand.
"Why did I do that?"
Kisame's gods, as always, remained silent.
Looking at the familiarity of his own limbs made him want to retch, but he knew retching would not absolve his sin. He did not know the physics of it. If he ate something big, and then he shrank back down to normal size. But he felt gorged and sick and he could not bear the thought of eating. He could not bear the thought of meat, of flesh. Of muscles pulling under skin, of intricate ligaments gently meshed to slippery bones... He looked away from his own body and towards the ocean horizon.
He did not indulge in the sleep his exhausted body craved. He sat on the beach, feeling strangely nervous. He let the surf wash coolly over him, but it brought little relief. Something brushed by his hand on a wave. He feared what it could be. He held it in front of his face to eclipse the setting sun, but it was just a harmless abalone sea shell, and the iridescent mother-of-pearl material glittered gently like mica in his hand.
He stood up from the surf and took Samehada off the tree. The moment he did, he was blasted with the instrument's chakra sensing ability. Itachi was tracking him, and a shock of unease probed him: he did not want to see Itachi right now.
Water crested around his ankles. He rubbed the smooth abalone shard with his thumb like a netsuke. He felt the sharingan-wielder nearing and decided it would be too much effort to evade him.
"Hey." A pause. "Bandits are taken care of?"
"Yeah."
"Do we have bodies to dispose of?"
"No."
Itachi had speared two fish next to a burning, salt-blue piece of driftwood. "You want some?"
"I'm not hungry."
Itachi's vivisecting black eyes probed him. Or maybe it was just a normal look. Kisame feared what he could see with those eyes, if he could read inside his mind, and pluck his nightmares into reality, like he had with Akaei.
Itachi waved his hand. "Come sit by me."
Kisame sat by him.
"Kisame, I'm sorry I attacked you last night. I thought a world minus me was for the best."
"Itachi, the day men like you are the bad ones, is the day this world has gone to shit," he said.
"I manipulated you, and I terrorized you, and I tried to kill myself. Do you forgive me?"
"Yeah. But do it again, I'll..." bite you in half, he would have said to someone else, sometime else, but he found his usual bravado unappetizing. "Don't do it again."
"Thank you, Kisame."
Itachi ate alone, neatly and quietly. Kisame stared at the abalone shard and stroked it between his thumb and finger. It was smooth and flat and not quite triangular, like a tooth, or maybe a teardrop.
"I did something I regret today, Itachi," Kisame eventually said.
Itachi looked over the moon-streaked water. "At times it's hard to live with our crimes. But we need to understand that we are worthy of our own acceptance."
Did he know? Maybe. Maybe those eyes saw every thought Kisame had ever thought. But Itachi did not grasp the crux of the incident that troubled Kisame.
"It felt good."
Now Itachi understood the severity of the problem. The young man bridged his hands before his nose and closed his eyes, and stayed quiet. Somehow Itachi's recognition sobered Kisame.
"I understand if you want to spend a few days away from me, or want to leave altogether," Kisame said.
"If you're sorry, I'll forgive you."
Kisame raised a calm eyebrow, looking down at his sea shell. This was different from Itachi's crime. "I'm not sure this is yours to forgive."
"Then, I accept you."
He contemplated the sentiment. Unlike forgiveness, acceptance invoked no debt, no guilt, and nothing to prove. There was nothing about it he could interpret as ingenuine or undeserved. It was merely a validation of his existence. He did not ask for forgiveness, or was so forward as to say he deserved it. Acceptance… Kisame liked that.
Itachi's eyes slid to the object in Kisame's upturned palm. "What is that?"
"It's an abalone shell." He passed it to his partner.
Itachi's eyes flashed red for a second and he smiled small. "It's beautiful. It has many unique colors, ones humans cannot even see. What kind of animal lived in it?"
"An abalone is a big, ugly, sea snail the size of a rat that eats slime."
"The universe is wise, how even such a wretched creature must not stay ugly at its core, is it not?"
"You can have it if you want," Kisame said. Itachi was a small, pretty man who seemed to like small, pretty things.
Itachi handed it back. "I think you'd better keep it."
He turned the silvery rainbow shard around in his palm. Yes. He would keep it, to remind him of the stupid, ugly, scum-eating, ocean creature that Itachi decided was still beautiful. He was glad Itachi found him this night. He would be miserable alone. The two ninja sat before the glow of the salt-blue flames, and stared up at the thick belt of stars.
"If you're not a bad person, and you've hated killing in the Akatsuki the whole time, why did you decide after this mission to off yourself?" Kisame asked.
"Utilitarian ethics. I had a goal, but I realized that fewer people will die if I was dead."
"Avoiding physical trauma… it might not be the most ethical thing, you know," Kisame said.
Itachi gave him a doubting look. He was starting to not be terrible at reading Itachi's expressions.
"Have you ever thought about what makes you happy?"
"Rarely," Itachi said.
"Maybe this eye of the moon scheme can make the world a better place for people like us," Kisame said.
Kisame noted Itachi's flinch. Of course Itachi would know, he and their leader were related, after all, but it was a privilege for Kisame to know the secret of the Akatsuki's true plan, the Eye of the Moon.
The Uchiha looked at him intensely. "You know the truth."
"That our leader is Uchiha Madara? Yes. He recruited me personally," Kisame said.
"Even I… was not strong enough to kill the Uchiha clan alone. Madara helped me do it."
Itachi's lips were uncharacteristically loose, and Kisame, always a hunter, identified when to act. "History paints Madara as a fanatic for his clan. Why would he cull his own legacy?"
"Some sixty years ago, Madara thought the Uchiha betrayed him when we wanted peace alongside the Senju."
"Then maybe it makes sense for him to kill his clan. But you… I can't explain why you'd do it."
The silence hung. Itachi did not relieve it with an explanation. Kisame's luck had run out and Itachi returned taciturn.
Kisame looked around. It was well into the night. Itachi probably did not like this exposed beach for a campsite. "Where should we sleep?"
Itachi signaled their departure by standing. "I noted a possibility on my way."
Kisame looked out into the blackness. "You can see in this?"
Red eyes gleamed. "Moderately."
Kisame took a torch from the fire for himself, washed the evidence into the waves, and followed Itachi.
With the starfield and ocean on his left, Kisame followed the small swift shadow through the dark hemisphere along the rocky coast. Itachi sprang down the sharp rocks with the same limberness of the Leaf Anbu, and he realized the boy had spent his formative years among their ranks. Kisame felt somewhat clumsier, hindered by the dark and a torch. They found themselves in a tidal cave which overlooked the sea, with shallow tide pools on its sharp floor. He peered into one: an octopus wilted into the cracks at his face.
"Need we be concerned about the tide?" Itachi asked him.
Kisame noted the lack of algae on the wall and the height of the moon. "No."
Itachi leaned his back against the sharp wall and let his legs sink. Kisame doused his torch in an unoccupied tidepool. With the moonlight that reflected in flashing tortoise-shells from the ocean, he could see the silver edge of Itachi's short, angular face.
Itachi stared at him for a moment, as if deciding to say something. He said, "Good night, Kisame."
Kisame was caught off guard. But he too formed his lips around the strange words. "Good night, Itachi."
Itachi closed his eyes and Kisame leaned himself on the wall opposite him. But now Kisame was watchful, and for a while he stayed awake to the sounds of waves. Comforting, hollow sounds, that like the breaths of ghosts, reminded him of a home that no longer existed.
Author's Note:
Thanks for reading!
I am looking for a new Beta for this story. If you are 18+ and might be interested in looking over this story with me for style and plot, please write me a message. I'd love to have a partner to make this piece as strong as it can be. Thanks!
And if you like reading this, please do let me know your thoughts!
Steadfast,
Kelto
#Campfires#sorry im a few days late i had to find a new place to live#and rent an apartment in a language i dont speak legalese of#But I did it because I am unkillable!#and also im flying home for christmas which will be nice#I am also looking for a new beta for this story so please let me know if you are interested#its a lot of fun I think!#thanks for reading#naruto#fanfiction#itachi#kisame#kisaita#celticfeather#keltodier#And again this is super M rated but I guess this chapter is as bad as the story gets
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I plan to update Campfires on Friday (and I’m posting about it here so I stick to it.)
Also I’m looking for a new Beta reader for it, if you are 18+ and might be interested in looking over future chapters for style and plot please write me a message! It’s a fun job. Thanks! 🦅🔥🦈
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I left my home in the USA and moved to Austria yesterday. I’ll be here for at least a year working and researching. I don’t know if anyone here follows me for me, —or for anything really, because my reblogs stretch from animals to linguistics to anime— but a big change in my life occurred, and I thought I would tell the void. Thank you for listening.
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