how did this even happen...

[mooneye]

It wasn't a bad sort of place. Lots of things to do and people to see. Plenty of freedom to dart over the rooftops and down the alleys--or out of the village and into the woods and rocky wild places beyond. Obito liked Michi no Sato.

He had stopped for lunch and was eating at a table outside the restaurant, watching people walk past. The food was good. The cold breeze was nice. Ah, yes. Years and years trapped in a cave with a crazy old man and a bunch of plant monsters--it had left him really able to appreciate the little things.

[ooc: here is an AU Obito in his twenties. Got through the time with Madara, and Rin's death, but didn't go completely evil after all of it...]

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[itachi_san]

"You're so funny... I didn't get to be a child." Itachi laughed under his breath. It sounded more like coughing, though, than laughing.

[seafare]

Kisame only nodded. It was true of many shinobi--but some more than others.

[itachi_san]

Half-lidded eyes met with a lopsided smile.

"What's it like?"

[seafare]

"What is what like, Itachi-san?" He passed his hand down the slender shoulder and the arm beneath the blankets.

[itachi_san]

"... Being a child?" he mumbled thoughtfully. "A real one... not one that has to fight in the war..."

The war he was referring to was the third shinobi world war. It was a brutal time in the Land of Fire, and across the entire continent. A lot of bloodshed. A lot of death.

Kisame was fifteen when the war ended. Itachi was only four.

"Is it nice?"

[seafare]

A pause. "Some of it was nice." The Hidden Mist had not been such an easy place to grow up, though there had been times with his mother and father, when he was very young, that had been pleasant enough.

[itachi_san]

"Sometimes... I wish Sasuke'd been born first... so I could have played and run around... cry without getting scolded..." he twitched a little. "But then he'd have had to kill everybody... And he'd be where I am... and that hurts too much... So its better this way... right?"

[seafare]

After a moment of thought. "Your life has been difficult, but you lived it well, Itachi. And I don't think anyone else could have done better with your burden than you did." A pause. "And now in this place where that burden doesn't exist, you get a second chance, remember. Not exactly a blank slate, but a new beginning, at least."

[itachi_san]

"Yeah..." his voice trailed off in a long smile. "That's right..."

Changing the subject was pretty easy. (Thank you, ever-winding stream of consciousness.)

"You're big..."

[seafare]

"Hm. You're small, Itachi-san." He drew one of his pale hands from beneath the blankets so that he could look at it. It was very small, beside his own.

[itachi_san]

Itachi's lifeless hand fit completely within Kisame's. He couldn't even straighten out his fingers on his own.

"Have I always been... this small to him?" He thought aloud. A few fleeting memories of the time they met flashed through his mind. "We're people, not fish..."

[seafare]

Those words made him go still, for a few long moments, before he resumed gently touching the hand in his own, stroking the knuckles. "I thought of that time," he said quietly. "It was the last thing I thought of, before I died."

[itachi_san]

"I think of that time a lot..." Itachi mumbled. His hand was cold. Kisame's was warm, and it made him smile a little. "What kind of person you become when you face death... or go here. It's the same thing I think... Or maybe I'm just dying a lot slower than you..."

[seafare]

Kisame was silent at that. "I think we become the people we are all along," he commented at length. And said no more than that. Just continued to brush him with the tips of his fingers, the flat of his palm, soothing him the way he would have a little child or an animal.

[itachi_san]

"...I like the person you were all along..."

Itachi closed his eyes, mumbling something else to himself as he started to fall asleep.

[seafare]

Kisame stayed lying beside him until he had fallen asleep and then gently rose, found a chair and moved it to the side of the bed, preparing to stay for a while, and keep watch.