@vehementem

     “What’s the use in telling me now?” While you’re dying. While you can barely gather the breath to say the words. While those words make you choke on the own blood filling your lungs –

What’s the use, Itachi?

     But impossibly dark eyes turned up to Kisame and he suddenly lost the capability to be angry. Itachi could barely see without their sharingan, so having it off was a rarity that spoke volumes of their exhaustion.

     Kisame sighed and sat down on the pier beside them, staring out into the gray expanse of fog that hovered over the water. He prided himself on being a great conversationalist - maybe he didn’t have a silver tongue, but it was close enough. This time, though, he was speechless. He was so used to losing the ones he cared for, whether by his hand or another’s… Death never knocked, it merely waltzed right into his life and took whatever it pleased… 

     So what did he do with the knowledge that the last person he had left was headed to their death? What did he do with their confession when there was so little time left? 

     The first words that came to mind was a heavy confession of his own - one that would admit that he didn’t need anything to be different. He was already lost to that heart-wrenching void.

     He’d never been here before, and despite all attempts, he’d made himself quite at home in the blackness. If he could go back in time, he’s not quite sure if he’d do it all over again, or if he’d force Pein to partner him with someone else to spare himself the pain of falling for a doomed man.  

     Kisame pulled his gaze back to them, studying ever-blank features. Would he really give up the chance to know them? Would he really go through his life with a partner he didn’t give a damn about - a partner he would never trust to watch his back? What if he never knew the infamous Uchiha Itachi? 

Who would he even be without them? 

     With a sigh, Kisame rubbed the back of his neck and looked for something, anything, to say. He wasn’t willing to give his secrets up, but he didn’t want to leave this conversation without having said something. 

     “…What kept you from it?” Even that was saying too much. What the hell was he supposed to do? His jaw clenched in the silence that followed and he tore his gaze away from their face to stare down at the water below the pier. It was that moment that he realized something. His sardonic laugh broke the heavy atmosphere and he shook his head, almost hating himself for not realizing it sooner. “We’re back at the start, aren’t we? How ironic,” He hated irony. “This is the same pier where we first met, isn’t it?” Even now, Itachi’s words echoed from that day. 

           “Anyone who has raised their hand against a comrade, even once, never dies a decent death…“

          “No matter who you are… you do not know what kind of human you are until the very end. One realizes their true nature at the moment of death…”

     He hated that those words would haunt him until the day he died and maybe even further. Maybe deep in hell where he belonged, their words would whisper through his head like some long-forgotten ghost. Maybe he would go mad. Who would’ve known that the kid he met on the edge of this pier seven years ago would come to mean so much to him? 

      “…How much time is left?” He wouldn’t choke on the answer. He wouldn’t mourn someone who still lived - he would be grateful for every moment he had left and pick up the pieces when they were gone.