Title: Simple Motions (Prelude)

Rating: R

Pairing(s): ItaSasuShisui, some SasuSaku/SakuSasu

Summary: In the water, it was a fine thing to lie.

Disclaimer: Naruto in no form belongs to me. It belongs to Masashi Kishimoto.

-You Do Not Lie-

“Sasuke,” his name is said, the word with each syllable profound and astounding in a form that is not a telltale of tease or cut joke, but simply said in a way wonderful and crisp in the water freshened air.

Shisui smiles at him and the world is turned and twirled at his finger tips like a luminescent display of fireflies during a summer festival.

“What is?” and he cocks his head to the side, the portrait of delicate, Shisui sighs, placing a hand to his forehead.

“Itachi-kun is asking for you.” And smile, weary yet mischievous as the kisses he often snuck against they boy’s lips while there are no eyes upon them- frowns.

“Be careful.”

Sasuke can only nod, the passing shadow as he reaches the door, sliding it with a calm of still wind, a curiosity making his heart race but something else causing his palms to sweat.

--

Shisui’s kisses always tasted of strawberries, even in the season when strawberries did not grow and it made him wonder.

“Shisui-san?” Sasuke’s hair is played with calloused fingers of someone young but with old hands, each short lock wrapping, curling thinly- entwining between large fingers. Something was off today when Shisui came into his room and talked about buying peaches.

“I hate the smell of them…” and he presses Sasuke against him in misplaced reassurance. “They’re too sweet, but then not sweet…”

Shisui was warm, but sometimes Sasuke notices, when his cousin’s hands are no longer spread over him in that search that is giving and casual yet intimate all at once, that his temperature was colder than anything. em Why is that/em And Shisui cannot miss Sasuke’s daze look, so soft like a the child he was, but deep as-

“The river,” Shisui starts, head almost coming off the pillow. Limbs twisting for loose holds. “Over flowed today.”

“Did it?” Sasuke does not want to ask why/how. He doesn’t care either way. He doesn’t care much about the things Shisui says, just the music he makes.

His cousin kisses him on the forehead hushed from the lack of attention he was receiving. “From last night’s rain.”

A pause.

“Do you know something about that?” the fingers tighten around to cup his skull, Sasuke’s hair is truly an impossible texture. em How can it be like silk/em

Sasuke does not answer.

He waits for brother.

--

He will not return.

“Why?” she asks and her voice is stronger than before and something that had laid still for many centuries wants to em move. /em

He shakes his head, the sullen snow recalling a time where he had so young a boy had unknowing of her identity quickly in a fashion like a mother, a brother, and a lover; had tied his own scarf around her neck.

“Itachi…” her fists are tight and strong and he is sure that one punch would be sure to send him flying into the tree behind him and beyond if she so desired. “-Is dead! You killed him! So why..?”

He is different from her, and deftly he wonders if her eyes are truly green and her hair is really pink, and from the shades of it, if blood is really running down her arm and dripping to the deep solid earth. He thinks it is. It is red.

But like all his kinsman had been, he is colour blind to everything except the clear crystalline blue that only one had been gifted by. He wonders why he is not allowed to see red, even though deep down he can really see it. Which is why-

She lets out a frustrated scream intending to lock him in another embrace and he finds himself wanting it. He backs away.

“Stay where you are.”

She stills and torn he wonders what she would do if she saw his wings. A hand moves to pull at silver wire in a pocket hidden in his long long sleeves. Her outfit has no sleeves, rather she has pouches and long white bands that lead to black (he presumes) gloves. His eyes itch and he feels something cool run down his face.

“Sakura-”

“Sasuke-kun,” her hand reaches out and clasps back to her side.

“Your eyes,” gasping words.

He turns them away wondering why the sight of her is blurred and defected.

“I will not return to that place.”

Sakura bites her bottom lip reminding him-

“If you’re so cold you should have brought a scarf out to wear as your own,” and he swiftly efficiently ties it with a practice neatness and her bottom lips trembles, she tries to hide it by biting it with teeth that look a lesser white compared to the falling snow. Tears in her eyes she nods and he shakes his head in a way very much like Shisui.

He puts his hand on her head with such soft hair, different from the silky yet oily texture of his brother’s. A clean that is dry and damp in places from snowflakes falling in her hair, he hoists the borrowed red umbrella from his shoulder to hers, over her head so that it would remain dry. She would remain dry. “Don’t be so absent minded in the future.” He tells her and walks away shivering delightfully under falling snow, blending perfectly if it touches any part of his skin. But his hair is too dark, and his clothes are as dark so that he has not the perfect camouflage.

She walks home and keeps the umbrella, occasionally running her fingers over the waxy fragile texture of old paper and wondering if the scarf would ever loose the smell of tea the boy had carried naturally. Wondering what kind of blood makes a person walk with or without it in the snow.

And his hand shakes and he cannot help them from taking hers, so abrupt that a more startled gasp unfolds from her lips, a tangled butterfly. That place is constricting, far more that the snakes in the sound with their long cold bodies, or the old songs so new in clairvoyance that it shook his very core. He had made no promises, no oaths, had no ties as his dead family had in that place. Crushing them to the point of extinction. He closes his new eyes for a second and sees brother, smiling in a time and place that would never let him reach.

His head bows at this point and when he lifts his eyes he sees her are indeed a green that none of the words Kabuto had said woven in a poet’s voice had been able to describe. em Beautiful. /em And Itachi had told him sakura blossoms were pink, the same shade her hair had? There is a sort of wonder on her face, as they both meet eye to eye. Almost confusedly she says, with clarity. “Your eyes are blue.”

He sees colour and is distracted by how red her lips are turning from the bite and the cold. They still see eye to eye when he decides and says, “Please marry me,”

--

Shisui often told him not to lie.

In this world there were liars every where. Shisui had told him not to lie.

Do not lie. Do not lie. Do not lie.

Do not lie.

But he does.

--

She wears red and he finds the tears drop listlessly, unfeeling down his face the small forbidden rain only Itachi had the grace to witness. Sakura looks from the mirror worried, dainty hand pressing dainty lips she acts as if to touch his forehead. Instantly he wants to tell her to leave, but fingers press against his forehead, not the hand and the tears keep falling.

She says nothing.

He says nothing.

--

Itachi had never said anything and Shisui had talked too much of anything.

“I don’t understand,”

He holds brother’s hand, the skin full of lines that like to press against his skin and bury their secrets in. Brother leads him from the shrine, the smoke of incense still staining their clothes and body.

He can only think that the thing he did in there with brother was exactly alike to what he did with Shisui on glass moon nights when Itachi carried out missions and mother left with father to a place full of traditional clothes and rooms with old lanterns to speak of political things boys his age did not entirely understand.

Shisui will be angry.

And the thought does not frighten him as much as the thought of em Itachi will be angry. /em He stays silent as he is tugged home, the hand sweaty and hot, not at all cool like Shisui’s.

When they return home Itachi asks Sasuke to make him tea.

Disbelieving for a second he shows unwanted hesitation he knows he’ll be punished for later but otherwise sets out to the kitchen, hands frantic to find the teapot.

“Which type?”

Itachi answers picking out his words carefully as a crow does to old decaying bones.

“Chamomile,”

Sasuke just cannot stand to tell him they do not have that kind. Hands shaking he stops reaching into the high cupboards and takes the pot off the stove.

He accidentally spills boiling water.

--

Sakura cuts her hair again, never to put it back in the red ribbon at this hour or day. Nor the long red string she had seen Sasuke fingering before he told her to meet him at the Nakagano river, that wistful quality on his face drawing her to him in a stimulation of wonder and sorrow.

“There aren’t any clouds in the sky,” he had said.

And she hears him play the last few notes on the flute.

It hurts.

“I hate you,” Sasuke says and the words cut through him as a knife does, achingly and haunting. Itachi thinks Sasuke is too beautiful to be among the living.

Why? He wants to ask and shifts across the futon, pinning the boy beneath him, tempted to break those wrists again.

I love you. Is what he wants to say and does not, kissing against closed lips and against smooth skin that was colder than-

Oh god.

“Brother, kiss me,” and Itachi does and this time the lips open and both struggle for breath in the water of the deep deep ocean.

It was in water that Sasuke displayed the mimicked motions gained from genetic ability and ghost stories.

“Shisui,” he murmurs and Itachi pretends he cannot hear. For water has clogged up his ears and vividly he smells salt. They are no where near an ocean, even if they are in the depths of it.

--

They stand aside and Sasuke glares at him with red eyes so like his own.

But they are not his own.

And the face, sharp cheekbones, the neck- long and elegant, limbs and body slim and graceful. Skin whiter than snow and hair the pitch of upcoming midnight in winter he moves as fluid as water, so fast his body moves in flickers.

Itachi knows these motions as he knows the back of his eyelids.

“Shisui,” stares at him with dark blue eyes, white speckles dashed across them so small, too small to represent stars in prophetic meanings from a greater creator. His fingers are wrapped around a tattered outer robe that falls from its soft pink into littering petals.

“You’ve cut your hair.”

“I have,” the sound of the river rebounds in his ears and he sees yesterday with such clarity he wonders if Sasuke still barely reaches past his elbow. Shisui pulls up the sword held into hands held still behind her back and shows him it. Kusanagi.

“In order to obtain the Mangekyou Sharingan,” the wind shifts through hair longer than before, and Itachi knows he is staring at old photographs faded by time and calm storms. “It is not that you must kill your best friend, but-” the lips do not hesitant to mimic the sound of the water “You must witness their death.”

Shisui, she peels off the long pink kimono with its soft and old the fabric is of heavy silk and it falls into the waiting water, flowing by in a never ending course, the obi trailing behind a long scimitar snake, a green the colour of growing leaves.

“Thank you,” she says and calls it his fate. She plunges the sword into her breast and through her heart, blood a red her eyes would never be- spilling from her in a swirled arch over the moist rock, gravity takes her and she flows into the river.

Itachi does not stop her, does not call this destiny.

“Shisui,”

The blue eyes glare up at him defiance written in every shade. He sees the colours of now and knows it is only a matter of time before he becomes completely blind.

“I will kill you.” The owner of the eyes holds his head high, chin uplifted and lashes note fully long as they had always been and Itachi finds him still ever more striking.

“But how will you defeat me?” Itachi shifts undaunted into a fighting stance, seeing water spray leap forth from the front, from the back- “You gave Kusanagi to me,”

Shisui smiles.

Itachi continues.

“You gave the Mangekyou Sharingan to me,”

Shisui turns his head just a little to the right and-

Itachi blinks and finds himself a second too late to wonder why it was not over. “But Itachi,” Shisui says lips crimson a mockery to his eyes.

“I did not give you this,”

The body flicker. A mirage.

A hand touches his cheek gentle in caress and warning flashes through his mind in poisonous darts. But putting distance between something as quick as light is difficult and when those soft lips touch his own-

“You’re welcome.” Sasuke says.

Itachi feels a quick pierce of silver flame, bright and not at all dark as his had been, stretching and reaching against the confinement of his ever envious heart. The water was cold and set to carry him away to the pits of hell where Sasuke would surely come for him with the falling rain.

--

Sasuke does not.

Shisui does.

A red moon rises.

Do not lie.

--

Nights before.

“It has been decided. The clan has decided.” She says to Itachi. That painted smile coy and lost. “Sasuke will carry out his duty-“

Itachi is silent, but his fist hits the door’s wooden border so hard the floor boards shake and it is a wonder he did not break it.

Shisui looks at him disapprovingly. “You knew this day would came, Uchiha like Sasuke and me- no only Sasuke and me.” She bites her lip, and continues “that carry the first cell can only exist by rebirthing darkness like our real mother did.”

Shisui moves into the moonlight and Itachi thinks she looked better in shadow.

“This is our curse, as it is our curse that our mother’s after birthing us will try to drown us in water, proving that they are not really our mothers and that we who are not their real child should be rejected-“

“Sasuke is different.”

“That may be so,” Shisui nods, temporal and fleeting her blue eyes look hard into Itachi’s still dark as the night sky, “Mikoto did not try to drown him… and as such,”

“He does not have blue eyes,”

Somewhere a dog barks and Itachi wonders how far sound carries through the Uchiha compound.

“This is our curse.” She fingers at the seal around her eye.

“If Sasuke does not hate enough, surely his genes will…” she does not continue glaring startling at Itachi whose lips move surely, but do not.

“The hatred he has for you is not enough, it is too light, casual, and even loving. Our kind,” Shisui steps forward white tabi socks pressing strongly against the worn old wood polished again an again. “If he does not hate enough,” and her fingers, the whole of her hands flutter, fingertips butterfly wings brushing against the sides of Itachi’s neck, eyes wide and blank as Itachi does not look away. He remains still.

“He will die in his half-made darkness,”

“Shisui, what is it you are-”

“Shut up!” her footsteps retreating and she shakes her head shocked.

“You know what.”

It is evening when Itachi had finally come to slay his mother, and only his. He wondered is this what Shisui wanted him to do? The rest of the clan lay in synthetic ashes.

“You’ve come for Sasuke’s sake, haven’t you Itachi? My son…” And her eyes are not moist but captivating and as dark as his, if not more so. Fugaku lies cold at her side and Itachi wonders if he killed his father or Mikoto had already done it for him.

He only moves to pull out the used katana.

She lifts her neck, prepared and sacrificial “I’ve been prepared for this day ever since I chose not to kill Sasuke. I had hoped by not trying to cast him out back into water would change his fate,” she sits on the ground, legs folded under her, calm and composed and Itachi knows he really takes after his mother. His mother.

“But in truth I was only trying to alter my own. This is my divine punishment,” she smiles softly as mothers do “Thank you,”

Itachi wonders if he will say thank you when he dies. He slices the katana through her neck, with a dull thunk blood spurting from her neck it rains in thick torrents across the tatami mats, a red imitation of rain.

“Sasuke likes the rain,” Shisui had said, eyes widening, she too- as Mikoto had thought: fate could be altered.

It could Itachi decided. He was doing it right now.

Fate did not exist.

Fate did exist.

But it could be controlled.

It is dark and he did not shake in the cold, his mother’s blood warming him until the night made it cool. He waited for Sasuke.

--

“Shisui,” Hana, a cousin of theirs had her foot pressing directly on Shisui’s back, making him bend over. The imitation of a pretzel.

“Yo! Hana-chan,” he waves, smiles and is weary of her shiny shoes and disapproving frown. “Whatever you are saying to Sasuke, stop it,” she swung a school book bag menacingly toward his bowed head. “I don’t want him brain washed by your bizarre se-

--

She did not understand.

“What are you doing? Sasuke-kun-“

He slaps a hand over her mouth, eyes wide and staring. Staring at, at-

--

“What are you doing, brother?” Sasuke asks, figure barely reaching past his elbow, Itachi feels only fondness and a bit of regret. He shifts his fingers through Sasuke’s hair, heart beating ridiculously fast. Trying to contemplate words befitting for answer.

“Teaching you…” he pauses. Folding into a crouch, he bends and looks into Sasuke’s eyes still a black, a grey that made him thinking of falcon feathers. Their lips near touching, Itachi shivers. Sasuke’s skin is so smooth beneath his touch and haltingly he smells of almonds. Still.

Itachi presses his lips against Sasuke’s and wishes he could do so everyday till infinity.

“Simple motions,”

--

“Nothing,” Sasuke tells her.

Sakura believes him. In him.

Do not lie.