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I watch, unable to smile, as he obliges his baby brother and plays with him in the dusty road. His movements are tense and strained, clearly forced, and I find it amazing that Sasuke, even as young as he is, does not notice.
There is something wrong with Itachi. Oh, yes, there has always been something wrong with Itachi, but this goes beyond the deep-rooted post-traumatic stress (which I know he has, even if Fugaku won't acknowledge it and denies it even when it's staring him straight in his stubborn face), far beyond it.
Fighting scarred Itachi. He was just a boy, a small boy, and they sent him out into the wide, cruel battlefield far too soon. He became a man on the battlefield, an old, desperate, broken man, and since that day I have never truly seen my son when I look into his eyes. What I see instead is a bleak emptiness, a desolation that needs to be filled if it's not going to swallow him whole.
That all is disturbing enough, and it would be more than enough reason to say that "something is wrong" with Itachi, but this… This is different.
When he thinks I'm not looking, he passes such sad looks over my face, as though he thinks that it will be the last time he ever sees me. True, the missions he are sent on are invariably high-risk, and I myself am on occasion sent on less than harmless missions; however, his face has the resignation of one going to a terrible fate.
Of late, he has been neglecting his studies and his duties to spend time with Sasuke. I know Itachi cares greatly for his little brother, but I've never known him to disregard his duties simply to be around his brother. And when he's with Sasuke, the look in his eyes is that of someone treasuring up every last happy moment in a place where no blade will ever pierce, as if he thinks the good times are about to end.
He has become estranged from his father. Fugaku isn't the easiest man to get along with, but up until recently Itachi and Fugaku have operated at a sort of accord. Now, it seems thatnothing but hard glances and tense words are passed between them, always accompanied by a latent threat ill-hidden in the tensing of vital muscles. I don't need to activate the Sharingan to know when they are on the verge of clashing.
Something is going to happen. Before long, Itachi is going to snap like a shamisen string wound too tight. I don't know what has set him down this path, because he has grown so far away from me that he is no longer "my boy", he is no longer the child who came to me when he was hurt or hurting. He is an instrument being played to perfection, except he is being played by two opposing forces, and it's tearing him apart.
How do I know? I'm his mother; I always know when there is something wrong with my boys.
There are secrets in his eyes, and I fear those secrets. Because when Itachi finally snaps, every living thing near him will fall down with him, and those secrets are the key.
"Husband, there is something wrong with Itachi," I quietly declare when Fugaku steps back into the kitchen. Outside, Itachi and Sasuke continue to play, and the former looks up and stares at us as though he can hear us.
"Nonsense," Fugaku scoffs, though like me he is keeping his voice down. We both do these days, when talking about Itachi.
I bite my lip, cease washing the dishes, and turn around to face him. Fugaku's face is wary and tense, as it always is these days. He walks a tightrope, but it's no excuse for turning his eyes away from what goes on in plain sight.
"Fugaku, Itachi has been behaving strangely. Strangely for him. I know you've seen it."
He shakes his head, glaring at me. "You're being foolish, Mikoto. Itachi is Itachi; he's the same as he's always been."
He doesn't listen. Fugaku is a master in the art of denial, but that is an art that I have never mastered. Something's going to happen, soon. I just hope that maybe, just maybe, someone will listen to me before it does.
Itachi is going to snap. And I dread imagining what he'll do when he does.
The night cloaks the fallen bodies that I know exist outside of our house. I can smell noxious fumes of blood copper rising in the air; the pall of death hangs like a mist over the compound. A cloud shifts from the moon, and I see silver moonlight fall on the bodies of my kin.
Fugaku lays beside me, his eyes closed, blood still seeping from his mouth despite the fact that there is no longer any heartbeat to fuel the blood flow.
I look up at my son, holding his bloody katana; I can not rise for the severed tendons in both of my ankles. With my Sharingan eyes, I look at him.
He has snapped. I can see it in his face. And as I feared, he is hell-bent and determined to drag us all down with him as he falls. I see phantom tear trails on his face, the ghosts of tears that will never be physically shed, but I know he is crying deep down where no one but I will ever see. His eyes are glassy and lifeless, like that of a Sunagakure puppet, being pulled by invisible chakra strings.
My darling son is not as he once was. He who valued peace will now show no hesitation in killing his own kin. His dead eyes gleam with a sort of madness, a madness that makes the Mangekyo (God only knows who he killed, though I suspect it to be Shisui; Itachi and Shisui were always fond of swimming in the Nakano) glimmer like the reflection of the moon onto a night pond, after casting a pebble into its depths. The ripples never stop.
"Sasuke isn't here," I whisper, giving him a look I know must seem eerily calm. I have been fighting in wars since childhood, and I would be lying if I said that I any longer possess any fear of death.
"I know." Itachi almost smiles, and for a moment his blank eyes flare back into life with a flicker of relief. Then all is gone again, and staring into his eyes are like staring into blood pools. Liquid, yet lifeless. "Be still, Mother."
The flash of silver moonlight on his katana blade as he swings, the blade homing in on my neck, reminds me that I always knew.
I always knew that if no one listened to me, this day would come.