Genius and madness go hand in hand

[dangodragon]

Where: Konoha training fields
When: April 18th
Notes: Open, Itachi's having fun setting up a training area for more fun. Come have fun with him?


The training area had a "reserved" sign hung politely on it, and Itachi had been working for several hours now. At times it was obvious he was setting up traps, but he'd also stop and stare at nothing for a while, a frown of concentration on his face. He'd already used up a substantial amount of chakra, but a chakra pill had kept him going and now he was almost finished. He was smeared with dirt and had sticks and leaves in his hair and stuck to his clothes. Frequent breaks were key. He’d gone home and slept for a few hours already, but his mind wouldn’t calm down enough for him to sleep more than that. He'd only run into his father on the way out of the house, which was perfect since Fugaku was the least likely to send him back to bed to get more rest. As he couldn't sleep, the obvious solution was to get ready for putting Sasuke through hell, if he agreed to it.

If not Sasuke refused, then Itachi could always drag Shisui out here to have some fun. That would be a wonderful “I haven’t seen you in awhile” gift. The poisons would all have a day to lose some potency, so they’d be annoying but not dangerous. All the traps were made to immobilize or cause minor damage. All good for testing someone skills when you needed them to stay mostly unharmed. Itachi considered that he probably look a little crazy right now, going here and there and coming back frequently to sit down under a tree and drink water and nibble on whatever snacks he’d brought. He had a small pile of equipment under a tree at the edge of the training area, most of which he’d already pulled out and tinkered with when he was resting.


OOC: Feel free to come and stare or talk to Itachi while he's resting, hanging from a tree, staring into space....whatever.

Comments

[shunshinoshishi]

"Obito hasn't requested an audience with you since then?" It was more a statement than a question. And he was rather disappointed by the fact that they hadn't spoken, too. Shisui knew he couldn't poke Obito about it without letting him know that Itachi had divulged sensitive information. Not that anyone ought to be surprised, but there were certain things that just weren't conducted in a particular way.

He gave Itachi one last squeeze before taking his arm away from around his shoulders. "Just-- don't beat yourself up over it, okay?"

[dangodragon]

"I only got in last night," Itachi pointed out. "And he is a very busy man." he doubted Obito knew and was letting him stew. That wasn't Obito's style. Itachi gave Shisui a jaundiced look. When had he ever beat himself up over anything? Sarcasm. Humor for the jaded.

Shisui, Itachi reflected, probably came the closest of anyone Itachi knew to knowing all Itachi's secrets and the things he'd done he wasn't proud of and the things Itachi shouldn't have been proud of, but was. Or had been. Still, there were secrets between them.

Itachi now felt drained, the black feeling settling down around him again now that he was still and had unburdened himself to Shisui at least partially.

[shunshinoshishi]

"Ah." So he'd met Ashiko very, very recently. Allegedly for the last time. And as for beating himself up-- Shisui didn't think anything would come out of mentioning it for the millionth time, but... Just making sure there was no room for anybody thinking Shisui might have suggested otherwise.

And secrets... They had a few between them. Everybody had secrets. That was normal, in Shisui's opinion.

However, the weight pressing down on Itachi's shoulders seemed to nudge Shisui too. Which is why he sighed, softly, shaking his head. Elbow to knee, Shisui brought his hand up to press thumb and forefinger to his temples. "Stop." Just stop it.

[dangodragon]

Itachi gave Shisui a fond if not exasperated glance. He patted his cousin on the back with a patronizing gentleness. "Ah, poor Shisui, suffering from the migraine of shared angst. Obviously as one reaches the venerable end of life, one is no longer able to safely process the intense mental misery of the younger generation and exposure to it causes acute head-aches."

Itachi paused suddenly "Maybe that's why people drink." It made everything seem less important except sleeping or getting warm. If one needed to sleep a night away and misery wouldn't let them, it seemed like a reasonable solution.

[shunshinoshishi]

His back stiffened in response, muscles going rigid, just barely keeping it together and keeping him from reaching back and grabbing the other's hand away from him. "Save that smart-ass comment for another time, Itachi, this isn't funny."

It wasn't. And the sudden tension between them was almost so solid you could cut through it with a knife. "If you think drinking's going to fucking fix shit, why don't you try and drown yourself in sake instead of moping about what could have been and what you should have done?" Shisui rarely swore, but when he did, it meant he was frustrated. And angry.

Just --why?! He wanted to help. He wanted to make things right for Itachi but Itachi wasn't letting him.

[dangodragon]

As soon as Shisui stiffened, Itachi drew his hand back. When Shisui swore, Itachi's entire posture changed. He sat up straighter, not moving away from Shisui, but not leaning towards him. Itachi sat perfectly still, barely breathing and eyes firmly fixed on Shisui with a blank expression.

His mind was racing, tripping over itself as he took in the words, the tone, and tried to come up with the proper answer. Beyond the initial conclusion that he had seriously, to follow Shisui's example, fucked up.

Itachi bit down the initial impulse to tell Shisui he'd tried drinking and it had gotten him into this mess. Would it have made a difference if he hadn't been drinking? He was beginning to think it wouldn't have mattered at all. He'd hit a wall with Ashiko, and that was the issue: his emotional excess and inability to kill someone he liked--liked. Maybe this would be more excusable or at least expected if he were in love with Ashiko, but he wasn't. She was a friend, nothing more, and that was enough to have Itachi compromising for her benefit at the cost of Konoha's.

That was the crux of it. That was how shallow his loyalty was. He'd die for Konoha, murder strangers, lie, cheat, steal, torture, but he wouldn't kill a friend he should have never made. Itachi felt a little sick, but Shisui was right. It was time to stop moping and do something.

Obviously he couldn't trust himself to do what was right here. Itachi dug in the pouch at his hip and came up with a blank scroll. He'd brought a lot of random things with him today, including a pencil for marking traps on his map of the training field. Itachi pulled the scroll open. Being able to put on paper what his eye saw was a skill Itachi had been trained in since he was young. He wasn't at artist, but he could accurately depict people's
features by now.

"Her name is Kuzuryu Ashiko. She's usually in or around Oto. She works for someone who's attached to the new hidden village, possibly even Orochimaru. She's a civilian with some fighting skills, but she is a civilian. She doesn't travel with any bodyguards or companions, and she's easily drawn into polite conversation." Itachi handed the sketch of Ashiko, just head and shoulders, to Shisui.

"I should have brought her in for questioning, or done it myself. I should have killed her, as she could all to easily figure out who I am if she speaks to her master about me." Itachi kept his eyes steadily on Shisui. "I c-would not do any of those things. I did not." And he had failed. This was more than a childish mistake. This was endangering his village. The offering of the sketch was giving this up to Shisui. If he had her face and where she traveled, he could find her. He would find her.

This was what he was going to do about it. He was giving it over to Shisui. Hewas admitting defeat and his inability to do what was needed. He was admitting he'd failed the teachings and beliefs Shisui had instilled in him since he was young. He'd failed his village. He'd failed Shisui. He knew that.

It wasn't enough to make him go back and kill Ashiko.

And that--that was the thought that drove him to feverish action. That was what ate at him whenever he stood still. That was what was going to keep him up all week and have him pacing halls.

He should have killed her. He shouldn't have even hesitated.

[shunshinoshishi]

​​Itachi's blank expression was met with something strained from Shisui. Shisui himself had a tendency to close off, shut himself out from any outside help and bear the burden of all the blame on himself. But he couldn't stand to see Itachi do it. He saw himself in Itachi then, and it infuriated him. There was frustration clawing at him, this need to want to reach out and grab Itachi by the shoulders, shake him till he was almost blind. It was what he sometimes wanted to do to himself, but knew better than to act upon it, aware that the problem was an intangible one.

And at the same time, he wanted to pull Itachi into an embrace, dig his fingers in the other's man's flesh, grip bruising.

But Shisui did neither. he could only stare back at him with that same pained expression.

Watching Itachi sketch the person in question, Shisui pursed his lips. Itachi was giving him the job of finishing up what he started. Itachi was literally handing it over to him. He wasn't going to go back and finish up himself, was he?

Shisui eyed the other while he sketched the woman out.

He could finish what Itachi had started. That went without question. He hadn't formed any prior attachment to the person in question to harbor anything that would hold him back. But even so, it wasn't the village he was worried about yet. It was Itachi.

Would Itachi forgive him for it? Would he come to resent him? Would it only add layers to the guilt he was already trying to fight off? Some of those questions were rhetorical; Shisui already knew the answer to them.

When he was presented with the finished version, Shisui's eyes bled into crimson, spinning lazily as it memorized the face on the parchment. The sketch, now in Shisui's hands, was promptly set on fire, flames licking Ashiko's face almost as though it were a grim predictor of events to come. Shisui felt no pain, the fire dancing in his palm until there was nothing but ashes. He watched in silence as the fire burned holes in the face first, then spread like a disease, engulfing her, and then the space around her-- a slow, ugly crackling following the edges of the charred remains.

For a long moment, there was nothing but ashes sitting in his palm that a sudden gust of wind ripping through the trees swiped off of him.

"What's stopping you?" His voice had lost the strained, tense bite to it.

What was she like, he wanted to know. Why was she special-- so much so that Itachi would choose her over Konoha...

[dangodragon]

Itachi tried not to take it as symbolic as Shisui burned Ashiko's face away. Shisui was efficient. She wouldn't suffer. Itachi looked at his dangling feet an considered his Shisui's question. There wasn't a dramatic, neat answer. It wasn't one thing. If it had been, maybe it wouldn't have bothered Itachi very much, He'd never liked killing. He would rather spar with a friend than go through a fight where he had to kill people. He specialized in incapacitating his opponents, usually. He could be messy and brutal as anyone, but if he had a choice, he could choose something quick and quiet. He could have done that easily with Ashiko. He could have poisoned her or snapped her neck. She never would have known.

Itachi breathed out. He could list the factors, small and large, that he thought had stayed his hand. None of them would be reason enough. Most of them were not even good reasons. "I got too familiar with her." He'd made her a habit and people like things they were used to. He should have held back more. He should have gravely offended her at some point so that she would avoid him. Itachi shook his head.

"I let myself think it didn't matter, because the person she knew wasn't real anyway, so why did it matter if she became friends with him? She had some good information on the area," Itachi paused. "I was stupid. I got involved, and then like a green genin, I let emotion get in the way of doing my job because I admired her." Was that the right word? he held her in respect, but he had respected several men he had killed without thought.

He hadn't really answered the question, had he? What was stopping him? Just liking and admiring this girl? Was this the start of a bigger problem? A reluctance to do the dirty work he'd always accepted as his dirty to keep others clean and safe?

"I don't really know," Itachi admitted.

ohman.... :c this is frikkin late...

[shunshinoshishi]

He was efficient, but not if he chose to drag it out. It depended on how he was feeling. That they didn't know much about her for now was probably a good thing. Nothing pertinent, at least. He didn't care for what kind of tea she drank or what color she liked best, though admittedly, that might come in rather handy in the future should he bump into her.

But let it be known that Shisui was no stranger to torturing the enemy, like a cat with its prey before going in for the kill. Once upon a time he had taken pleasure in it. Although-- he didn't wish to revisit it. It bothered him to this day, that he would have actually taken pleasure in something that made him sick to his stomach today. It was something he had never really told anyone about, not even the then-Hokage. Self defense, Hokage-sama. A blatant lie, of course.

He hadn't spoken a word of the incident to Itachi either. Itachi had only been eight at the time; surely it wasn't something you casually spoke about.

He'd never really talked about how he'd gotten his mangekyou at all.

But he listened for now as Itachi spoke, every word sinking in like blood to fresh cotton sheets.

"What about her did you admire?"

Admiration was such a strong word.

[dangodragon]

Itachi looked at his toes again. One of his toenails was split and he'd plastered it back together. His shoes were dirty, and he had a leave caught between his toes from calling through the trees all morning. Itachi took a moment to dissect his nebulous feelings for Ashiko.

"She's polite without being bland, and clever with her words," Itachi started slowly. Of course, he was attracted to people who could hold intelligent conversation. "Her loyalty is admirable, even if it's to a man who doesn't deserve it." She was elegant to, and Itachi was oddly attracted to ideals. She'd caught his eye with her formal kimono and neat manners the first time they'd met, after all.

"I think it's partly..." Itachi paused. This was something he wasn't sure he wanted to admit. "I wasn't anyone to her but a random stranger. I had no significance beyond the time we shared and the words we said to each other. I didn't...whatever I said, it mattered to no one but myself and her. It wasn't colored by my bloodline or my affiliation, nor until recently did it seem like our relationship had any importance to the duties I have to those things. She enjoyed my company simple because she did, not because of what she could gain."

Itachi kept on, the slow dissection of his thoughts aloud something he would only do for Shisui. Everyone else got the perfected words he thought over, not the wondering verbal trickle Itachi was reasoning his way through now. "She made me feel normal." Itachi spoke more quietly now, some unspoken longing in his voice for an unguarded moment.

"I liked spending time with her--I liked her because she liked me even though I was no one special. Even though I was just another face in the crowd..." Itachi paused. "That's not admiration is it? It's infatuation."

[shunshinoshishi]

Shisui listens, silent, thoughtful, watching Itachi as the other listed out what had been on his mind. On any other day, had Itachi told him the same, Shisui would have teased him. It did sound like that sort of attraction after all. And it makes him somewhat sad, somehow, to think that that was the main reason Itachi enjoyed her company. It was understandable, though. Perfectly so. Here, their family name and reputation preceded them. They were Uchiha before they were anybody else, even before they had a chance of coming into the world.

There's a soft exhale a few moments later, and Shisui shifts his gaze back onto the sky, watching a family of birds fly across the horizon.

He mentions nothing about his fears that she just might be fishing for information because she already had a good idea who he was, that he was Uchiha, that he was of importance politically and strategically to Orochimaru (if the man really was her master). He says nothing of the fact that he didn't trust her to be honestly 'normal' with him, that he feared it was all an act, a farce. Because that is what they were supposed to believe, weren't they? That was what had been always drilled into them. If, for even a moment, someone could help him shed that and just be himself-- Shisui knew he'd cling to them like they literally were his lifeline, his means of escaping into himself, sans the hypervigilance, sans the political identity.

And he didn't want to deny Itachi that, although he worried that if it were merely an act on the woman's part... how was he going to take it?

So he says nothing. Instead, Shisui leans forward and reaches around Itachi's shoulders with his arm to pull him into a sideways hug, his fingers digging into the other's arm in a slight squeeze. It was meant to be reassuring.

"It's normal to feel that way."

He tilts his head to touch Itachi's.

"How long has this being going on?" He adds quietly. "And is talking all you've ever done?" The corner of his mouth teasingly twitches into a smirk at that~

[dangodragon]

Shisui doesn't have to mention his worries about Ashiko's authenticity. Itachi can hear them loudly in his own mind, and he knows how Shisui thinks. He knows what he would be worried about if their situations were reversed, but he's almost certain the odd friendship he had with Ashiko was real. She warned him off and allowed herself to be vulnerable around him. He can't imagine her doing that if there weren't something real there.

As soon as Shisui speaks his last words, Itachi opens his mouth to object 'nothing' before his entire face goes red. There had been drunkeness and a lack of clothing, so can he really say that with impunity? Whatever he says now, he's blushing hard enough Shisui probably won't believe him, but Itachi tries to compose himself anyway.

"I told you, we've been running into each other for several year, and yes we only talked." Now that last bit is a lie.

"I taught her to swim," Itachi adds a little helplessly. There's nothing wrong with that, right? And she braided his hair.