Disclaimer: Don't own Naruto. Oh well...

Kisame knows that Itachi is not all-powerful.

Kisame also knows that Itachi wishes that he is. Everytime that Itachi or him get injured, he sees the Uchiha grit his teeth and remain abnormally tense for hours, glaring at anything in sight. Sometimes, a mission takes longer than Itachi would like, and Kisame is forced to stay out of arm's reach for a few hours until he calms down, or risk facing Itachi's wrath.

Kisame knows that Itachi hates his eyes even as he loves them. He needs their power; it's what got him to where he is. At the same time, however, they are destroying his sight, almost to the point of complete blindness. Itachi is adjusting to his bad vision, but sometimes, when the blurriness causes him to make a mistake, Kisame has to drain all of his chakra with Samehada to keep him from destroying everything in the area.

Kisame knows that Itachi often drives himself into the ground in his attempt to learn more and be more powerful. He is used to walking out to the Akatsuki training ground in the evening and finding his partner collapsed in the dirt from chakra exhaustion and dehydration. Itachi has learned not to fight Kisame when he is lifted because Kisame is much physically stronger than him, particularly when he is drained of all of his chakra and bruised all over. Now, he simply goes limp whenever Kisame picks him up, and allows his partner to look him over and wash the blood and grime and dirt off of his face and arms.

Kisame knows that Itachi is not all-powerful, but he's never going to stop Itachi from trying to reach his goal.

A/N: Another one-shot because I love Kisame and Itachi. And I was bored. Reviews make the world go round, you know. So review. If the world stopped spinning, it'd go flying off into space and we'd all die. O.o