Almost Sucks

Almost Sucks
by Mashiro

Naruto fandom, series, no spoilers
AU, BOYS LOVE: Naruto x Sasuke, Kakashi x Iruka, Lee x Gaara

first version: February 19th 2007, Monday
second version: November 18th 2008, Tuesday

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DISCLAIMER: I don’t own the rights to the Naruto series or characters and I make no money writing this. I’m just a fan. This is fan fiction.

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51: You suffer, and I do too

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Itachi sat in a chair in front of the window. The sun was shining outside but had already wandered away from that side of the building. It was afternoon. The trees outside were bright but Itachi’s chair and Itachi were dark.

He didn’t hear many things. The humming sounds of the building were blocked out, as were the screaming of the patient that had lost his mind more than usual and the nurse and security attempts to get him under control. The other patients were blocked out as well, most of them. It wasn’t that unlike being alone really, if you blocked everything else out. Itachi closed his eyes and let them stay closed for a moment before he opened them again with what could have been a sigh soft.

Kisame was sitting on his bed with his legs crossed, sorting the worn cards of a game for children between age 8 and 12. It wasn’t that it really interested the man, he did it to confuse the nurses, or so he said. There were a bunch of different pictures on those cards and apparently Kisame had heard somewhere that how you sorted the cards said a lot about your mental state. You could sort them according to color, or according to shape, or according to the first letter of the words that first came to mind when you first saw the pictures or according to a whole bunch of other things, or so Kisame said.

Sometimes Itachi helped him with the sorting but today he just listened as the cards moved against each other and Kisame’s fingers. Today was a good day. It was almost like not being here at all.

Itachi didn’t flinch when the bird hit the window and broke the almost silence with a loud and sudden bang. He didn’t even blink.

Kisame flinched violently; Itachi saw it in the corner of his eye. All the man’s attention immediately turned away from the cards as he jumped off the bed and hurried over to the window with a ‘whooa!’ and pressed his face against the bars.

“It must have totally died!” he said and looked over his shoulder at Itachi. “Did you see it?”

“No,” Itachi said.

He hadn’t. Not really. It had just made a blur, hit the window and disappeared. Kisame had turned back to trying to see. Not that he could. They were too far from the ground and the bars were too far away from glass.

“Think it could still be alive?” Kisame mumbled; as if to himself.

“No,” Itachi said and looked for a moment at the bright trees outside that weren’t hidden behind Kisame’s head. “It will have died.”

“Huuh...” Kisame hummed.

Itachi’s mind was comfortably empty. His body was comfortable as well. He liked that chair. He liked that place in the room.

Soon Kisame tired of trying to spot the body of the bird and went back to his cards and made himself comfortable again with his legs crossed. Itachi found himself thinking that the body of the bird must be down there, still warm but soon cold because it would have fallen in the shadows.

Then he found himself thinking about his younger brother and the time they had found a dead bird in the flower bed under their kitchen window. It had been small and grey and had become one with the dead autumn flowers and the brown fallen leaves. Their mother hadn’t had time to make the bed ready for winter yet. Sasuke had been sad but Itachi had told him that death happened sometimes.

“I think it will be some time before he comes to visit me again,” Itachi said, as if to himself.

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