The village people bustled around them, on their every day comings and goings. Simple, comfortable lives...
"Makes you feel out of place don't it?"
"Hmm?" She asked, looking up to her blue skinned traveling companion as he smirked down at her. "Sorry, what? I was a bit distracted."
He gave a snort,a strange, half laugh kind of sound. "I said, makes you feel out of place doesn't' it?"
"Not as much as you I imagine." She answered, daring a quick look to the people around them, most of whom stared at the blue skinned seven foot tall man at her side.
Kisame's only response was to look at one of the village girls, and smile his patented, savage, blood thirsty, feral grin, complete with a hungry leer in his eyes, causing the girl to make tracks, real quick.
"It has its advantages." He responded, chuckling.
"Don't you ever get tired of just standing apart from everyone?"
The kiri nuke nin gave a snort of laughter. Shifting the weight of Samaheda on his shoulder before he started walking. "We'll split up here, get what we need."
"Meet back in an hour?" She asked, noticing he did not answer her question.
He shrugged. "Whatever."
She rolled her eyes. No doubt he had no intention of adhering to any kind of plan, she'd have to find him after she was done. Sure he stood out, but going street by street looking for him was still going to be incredibly annoying.
Watching him walk off, she shrugged before turning down a different road.
She'd lost her mind.
After a virtually sleepless night, and hours of contemplation afterward, Temari had reached this one, laughably simple conclusion.
She just lost her mind.
Nothing else that she could come up with could explain her kissing him to her.
She paced up and down her room, to the point that the Anbu guard on constant watch and patrol was beginning to suspect that they were perhaps under some kind of illusion, no one that they'd seen could just pace up and down a room for, by their count, five hours going on six.
But apparently by all accounts she could, and it was now approaching two o'clock.
Then, with a suddenness that had the men looking to eachother for answers on what they should do, or if they should do anything at all, the Suna princess walked out of her room and marched down the hall, straight towards their leader's office, where, everyone in the house could sense his presence.
One guard looked to the other and with a broad shrug of his shoulders and hands, basically summed up the extent of his knowledge on how to proceed right now.
They were meant to keep her from escaping or being killed.
No one ever said anything about stopping her from going insane or annoying their boss. People tended to be smarter than that.
He knew she was coming long before she'd actually got there. Hell, he'd known this whole thing was going to come up again sooner rather than later since the moment it'd happened.
That did not mean he was fully prepared to meet this situation in its entirety when she came barging through his door, opening the sliding door with enough force to make it shake in its tracks.
"Alright look." Were the first words she said, allowing him the luxury of proverbially sitting back and watching the whole debacle unfold until he was ready to take part.
She began to pace back and forth, eyes looking everywhere but right at him, he listened carefully to her words.
"I-I don't know what in the hell came over me last night-" She began. "But whatever it was this...it was just." She seemed to be fishing for words. And Naruto did not envy her emotional state right now.
Not to say that he himself was the picture of inner harmony and calm at the moment, but unlike most, he did not feel the compulsive need to talk about his doubts and expose himself to look like a blubbering idiot at a loss for words.
Finally, at his continued quiet, she did gather up the nerve to look at him, defensive outrage emerging as a shield, finally, to hide her nervousness. "Would you say something?" She practically hissed.
The blond shrugged, tossing the papers he'd been holding onto his desk. "What exactly is there to say?" He asked instead, this was hardly a conversation he wanted to have right now, or ever. It wasn't a conversation he'd ever envisioned himself having.
He'd had sexual experiences before; curiosity and his own dislike of being ignorant had driven him to do so at some point during his teenage years. But those had been empty things, done through illusions and aliases with women he would most likely never see again, or even, had merely used as a means of gathering information, or infiltrating an opposing village in certain examples he could recall.
Something like this, something with an emotional...something that ghosted across the surface of his mind with simple memory was, at the very least, rattling, and at the very worst, it was potentially dangerous.
"I don't know, just say anything." She grumbled miserably, allowing herself to fall back against the wall, leaning on it as she rolled her eyes up towards the ceiling.
Naruto sighed, just barely resisting the urge to rub his forehead in frustrated exasperation.
Awkward was hardly even beginning to cover the way this conversation felt, to both of them.
In truth, to Naruto, there really was nothing that he could say that would lead the conversation to anything more than where they were already, which was both confused and frustrated. So, he would keep his silence. "We are done here." He concluded turning his back to her as he walked over towards a nearby bookshelf.
Which made things even more frustrating to Temari. She had a very strong urge to march forward to his desk grab the paperweight and throw it at the back of his head. Might not do her any good, but it'd help her feel better right about now.
She was not leaving here until something happened, even if it was just her annoying him and getting under his skin something was going to happen with this conversation, he would not just brush it, and her, off like he did with everything else.
"Just answer me one thing." She called out. Satisfied when he turned to look over his shoulder at her. She smirked a little. "Why'd you run away last night?"
Raising an eyebrow he echoed her question his voice conveying his disdain for her presumption. "Run away?"
Shrugging her smile grew just a little bit more. "What would you call it?"
He scoffed, but before he could get a word in edgewise Temari continued. If she wasn't going to get the answers or the progress she wanted at the very least she was going to have this. "Was the Demon King so frightened by a woman that he just marched off with his tail between his legs."
She may have gone too far too quickly, because after a second's pause he turned around, eyes now fixed on her as he stalked forward, intent in his stride.
It was enough to make the taunting smirk that had adorned her beautiful face falter and her body tense up as she pushed herself off the wall, standing straighter.
He walked until she was forced back to the wall again, so close she could almost feel the warmth of his body against her own as he leaned over her.
She placed one hand on his chest, a useless notion to be sure, but almost instinctive. It was all she could do really, her other hand clenched into a tight fist at the lack of a weapon on her right now.
She looked up as he reached out, the thumb of his left hand tracing her jawline as he leaned down. For a brief moment that shot a lightning bolt of fear down her spine, she thought he might kiss her again before she saw him stop, his lips and face so close to hers the warmth of their breaths mingled together.
"I will answer your question if you will answer mine?" He said, sky blue eyes staring straight at hers with almost electrifying intensity.
Her eyes moved for a moment traveling from his eyes to his lips, a movement he was sure to have seen, and she cursed herself for her distraction as she took in a slow breath. "And what would that question be?"
"When you kissed me." He began, his voice low to her ears as he spoke. "Did it mean something to you?"
Her heart lurched in her chest, and she suddenly felt short of breath, of all the questions she thought he might have asked, this was not one of them.
It was more sheer surprise than anything else that elicited this reaction really.
But it was hardly a question she'd dared pose herself even, let alone had an answer for.
And so, with slow deliberate movements, she raised her other hand, and placed it against his chest, pushing firmly, and feeling immensely relieved when he stepped back. If it came down to it, she couldn't have forced him. She was grateful he'd conceded.
"Look-" She finally said. "lets...just forget last night, or this...ever happened. Out of sight out of mind alright?" She'd wanted to make it sound like a demand.
With a small nod that seemed to convey more understanding than what she may have actually seen he accepted. "Very well."
This time when he turned away, she decided to cut her losses and leave the room.
Kisame walked down the road, eying the various goods lined on the vending stalls, content to ignore and to (mostly) be ignored by the common passerby.
A fruit stand caught his eye, out here in the outskirts of the marshlands, it was rare to find fresh fruits like apples, grapes and such. And these did look fresh.
He walked closer, and was actually impressed as the vendor barely batted an eyelash when he laid eyes on his seven foot form.
"How much?" The monster of the mist asked, looking across the assembled fruits.
"For which produce sir? The prices vary." The vendor explained with a patient smile.
"The whole thing." The swordsman clarified.
The Vendor balked, and after two or three seconds started stammering out a response when Kisame, loosing his patience waved him to silence and tossed a whole bag of gold coins onto the counter-top.
"Never mind, that should cover it."
And so, a few minutes later, Kisame had the weight of an entire sack full of fruits over his shoulder to join Samaheda's bulk, with a smaller bag of strawberries in his hand that he picked at as he continued marching down the road.
He smiled, it'd been quite a while since he'd had fresh strawberries.
He stopped mid step, something catching the corner of his eye that made him smile.
"Ahh cant mistake that...the stench of blood."
No you cant." The person answered, his back still turned towards the Nuke nin. "Not when you know what to look for. And not when the same smell is around you as well."
Kisame laughed as he often did before looking at the man. "Strange clothes for you, Itachi." He commented, almost casually. "Never took you to pose as a peasant farmer in your spare time."
"This is not posing." The Uchiha said, turning around to finally face his former partner. "Or at the very least, it wont be soon."
Kisame's features lost their smile, a seriousness entering his eyes as he regarded the Uchiha anew. It was the answer he was expecting. But it was hardly one he would have wanted to hear.
"So...what? You think you can make it? Just put down the blade, pick up a plow and that'll be the end of it? No...you're a killer Itachi. Just like me."
"Overestimate the enemy, and you only serve to underestimate yourself, making defeat, a certainty." The raven haired ninja responded calmly and this time, Kisame did smile, though it held little warmth. "Case and point." was his reply.
The Uchiha took a breath, sighing through his nostrils.
"We are facing something...we have never faced before Kisame. A change so vast and so unstoppable, that it will take the whole world with it." He said simply. "And so I...will change as well."
His piece said, the genocidal criminal knelt to pick up his belongings and met Kisame's gaze with his coal black eyes before he turned his back on the Nuke nin and walked away.
Kisame watched him leave, a scowl twisting his lips into a subtle sneer.
By the time Akina walked up behind him, Itachi's figure had faded far into the distance.
"Here you are." The young woman said walking up to him before looking over to where his eyes seemed transfixed. "Uhh, Kisame?"
Snapping out of his thoughts the blue skinned shark man looked down at the blond. "You done already?" He asked.
"Yea I-are those strawberries?" She asked, a hopeful gleam in her voice. "Its been ages since I had strawberries."
Wordlessly, he passed her the bag, his appetite having vanished now. Hefting the bag of fruits and his sword on a better position along his shoulder he spoke to the young woman. "Lets get moving. The sooner we leave the less chance I have to catch something from all these farmers and their animals."
Akina nodded, chewing absently on a particularly juicy strawberry as she followed him out of the town proper; the veiled meaning behind those words lost on her.