abyssus abyssum invocat:
summary: ((the clan founder whispers to him: it'll take much more blood to fill the depth of your love for your little brother)) Itachi tried to save both Sasuke's life and the Uchiha's good name, but the price was steep. As it turns out, the abyss is even steeper. / Dishonored!AU; Corvo!Itachi, incestuous undertones.
I disclaim any rights
note: I've tried to mix and match the Dishonored plotline, the Naruto canon plotline and general Meiji era elements together in this story. I don't think people would've appreciated me just switching out Naruto characters with Dishonored characters so I've tried to create a new plot all together. There are quite some artistic liberties taken with and purple prose implemented in this story and I'm still working things out, smoothing things over. Feedback is very much encouraged and appreciated.
Prologue
He crouches low on the gray-smoked roof tiles, hearing his own heartbeat and the muffled sound of the soles of his boots between his ears. The sallow surface of the full moon behind him threatens to swallow the teahouse whole, large and insatiable as it gnaws toothlessly on his silhouette. His maroon coat pools around his knees and the wooden sheath of his katana thumps against his upper leg as he surveys the almost abandoned street below; some of the bright red lanterns are sagging on their wires and spilling their discolored light onto the mud in patches, there's some ambiance in the form of the clanking of clunky geta, and the heat rises from the ground upwards together with the odor of sweat and oil and spices. The taste of the summer air is dry and stale on his tongue and the familiarity brings forth memories of hakuto jelly in ceramic bowls, the soft flapping of a paper fan, the sweet-sounding laughter from a child's mouth.
In the distance loom the walls surrounding the brothel's compound and the slope of its main building's roof, curved gracefully and beckoning with the motive of their kawara. Its traditional style curiously fills the gap between the newly-built houses made of brick, stone and concrete. Konoha has been gradually changing since innovations trickled in from the west – gradually, because he remembers when electricity generated from bright blue whale oil was a novelty and when the menacing dog statues guarding the shrine were mechanized and fully operational; clumsy in movement until even those small flaws were minimalized by the time he was thirteen – but now it seems like the change happens all at once. He clenches his gloved hands into fists and exhales through his nostrils, but the hot air gets caught between his skin and the inside of his catlike mask.
There's the jingle of a bell as the paper doors of the teahouse slide open and he uses his gift to dematerialize into crows; wings and beaks tear apart the material of his coat, his head and hair, his legs and feet, and he feels his eyes burn red in his sockets like black coals flare in the irori late at night, and the crows caw and croak out loudly as they flock over to the opposite apartment building. They constitute his slender frame as sleek black feathers become sleek black hair and the outline of his coat over his shoulders and the sleeves over his pale wrists. Some people are talking at the back of the building and he stealthily descends onto the roof of the lower backroom to eavesdrop on them. In the pocket of his coat, the heart he has been given by Madara croons in a dead man's voice (and the first time he heard this heart hum in Shisui's voice, his own heart nearly stopped), persuading him to get closer and closer because there's a bijuu bone somewhere hidden in the vicinity.
"Heh, you're gonna visit Yuuhi-san again, aren't you?" This is punctuated by a guttural laugh, the question mark only implied, rhetorical.
Shisui –no, the heart- no his heart, is humming, steady and persistent at the bottom of his pocket, a comforting weight against his upper leg. He settles himself on the ledge, trusting his gut that something has to come out of this seemingly innocent conversation.
"What of it, Genma?" Comes with the low sssht of a match being stricken, the content ah of the first smoke. Sarutobi Asuma – his eyes bleed from black to red, something wet and sticky slides down his cheek, the bloody manifestation of the mark.
Silence at first settles around the two like cigarette smoke, so poignantly there it's difficult to get around it. Then, the first exhale, a continuation of sorts in the form a stretched syllable.
"Ah, just figured it must be expensive." Here, he imagines Genma must shift towards Asuma to add to the point he's trying to make; he can almost hear the rustling of his clothes, the grind of dirt under sandal soles. "But your father must keep you well-stocked."
Asuma scoffs, but offers no clear rebuttal aside from an ambiguous statement that captures his attention. He threw me a bone.
and the heart thumps wildly, a staccato beat in eight handclaps.
He blinks slowly, and the blood is stuck to his lower eyelids as the red swirls back into the natural dark of his irises; and he categorizes this tidbit of information as something he must investigate after he's made sure Sasuke is saved, safe. Itachi Uchiha looks on towards the gate of the brothel, on towards the two foxes perched as brackets on each side of the opening, on towards whatever his new sense of sight could make him see.
Darkness was never as palpable, tangible. He doesn't remove his mask to dab at the dried blood in the groves along his cheeks, but he does press the mask closer to his skin, tries to push the air from between the polished hinoki wood and his unbearably warm face. Bird wings, sharp-crooked, the low cawing from between smooth crow beaks, his body turned from whole to parts as Shisui's voice dwindles to a hoarse whisper and the heart rests restlessly once more.
"You know," Genma says as his gaze flits from Asuma stamping down the butt of his cigarette to the murder of crows flying over the compound, "They say you gotta be pretty crazy about a woman to love even the crows above her home."
.
