I'd been working on this for a while, then dropped it, then got my hands back on it. I'm not sure what category this fits in; it's dark, raw, and kinda sad. I guess it's mostly character introspection, where I tried to deconstruct and piece back together the narratives of the most notorious Uchiha in the series. I've always thought Uchiha as characters had lots of potential, but this being a manga, they fell short on what they could've brought to say, a novel. Either way, my point with this was basically to bring together the Uchiha; to show that there's a pattern, to what it means to be part of them.
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"The moth don't care when he sees the flame.
He might get burned, but he's in the game.
And once he's in, he can't go back, he'll
Beat his wings 'til he burns them black..."
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うちはマダラ
Madara is made of dreams and memories and battle cries, but most of all, fire. It's hot and bright like the sun edging over the mountains at dawn and it scorches every living being under its grasp. Madara was born for greatness, or so he's been told his whole life, and everybody's foolish enough to help the lie become true. He ravages his enemies with blinding fury, and a trail of flames is all that's left behind.
Madara can be gentle and glittering, like a small lit candle in the dark as he pries his baby brothers' curious hands off his tunic, as he teaches Izuna history and ninshu, both black heads pouring over scrolls in the late night. He can also be swift and vicious though, deft hands marred with blisters working seals to burn down things to ashes. Unlike other elements, fire is nestled deep in the core. It squeezes his insides, the heat in the pit of his stomach gliding from head to toe till it wretches out from between his cracked lips. Madara's throat tightens, dry from the blazing heat. There's a reason Uchiha are naturally gifted with fire, few would embrace the searing pain so gladly. To Madara though, other pains run deeper.
You can't tame the beast not meant for the taking. It's a beautiful fantasy, that of peace, of children not dying by the thousand, but Madara is a creature of war, and though others like his softhearted friend of a Senju are quick to done the mantle of truce, his fingers grow restless to the stillness of peace. Once a warrior, always a warrior. No one had taught him how not to kill.
It shouldn't come as a surprise then, when Madara clads himself in full armor, gunbai in hand as he makes his way out of their dreamland. Konoha might have been built from dreams, but it was forged on bones and blood and ashes. Madara remembers, where others have forgotten. It's Hashirama who stands between him and the foundation of their childhood, eyes begging him to stay, hands full of yearning, frozen in place. Madara sneers, and the hurt in Hashirama's gaze is enough to make his resolve falter, but he was never one for sentimentality to begin with. He was made to endure instead. The embers in his loins crack and sizzle, urging him to lash out, to lit something – anything – ablaze, and Madara looks into the Senju's heartbroken and startled-full-of-promises-that-will-never-be-fulfilled eyes, and thinks Hashirama knows nothing. You can't tame the beast not meant for the taking, and Uchiha, well... Uchiha were never meant to stay.
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"I imagine a line, a white line, painted on the sand and on the ocean, from me to you."
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うちはオビト
Obito is made of glances and smiles and grudges, but most of all, longing. It shows in every halfway step, every hand that reaches out for something he never takes hold of. Even with his veins full of it, people like Kakashi never tire of reminding him how little of an Uchiha he is, because pride and arrogance are as much of a trademark as their Sharingan, and Obito has neither. So he settles for bickering and grumbling to shadow what he's not brave enough to do, and shuts down the nagging voice at the back of his head telling him to grow a pair. A gentle soul, Rin calls him, and it makes Obito's stomach churn.
There are two kinds of warriors in this world, those who become one out of will and those who become one out of need. There's no place for boys like Obito, who become warriors out of love. Every blow and kick and fall he takes under unfulfilled hopes, every scar he wears, is a three letter name. Goggles wound tight over his forehead, he marches through life in shadow, until he doesn't anymore, when he holds Rin's tattered body, her still warm blood dripping through his fingers, and swears vengeance under the glowing moonlight. Obito thinks he can be someone then, do something greater than anyone before him. A gentle soul, Rin had called him. Maybe she'd been wrong.
Donning the mask is easier than he thought it would be. To the world, he becomes no one. To himself, Obito becomes truer than ever. He trades smiles for deadly stares, shy glances for red-eyed curses, and childhood grudges for hate; and through it all, he stalks the sole reminder of his past like a hawk spotting his pray; with sharpened claws and an always watchful eye. Obito's wounds are a three-letter name made of soft rosy lips and encouragement, but his vengeance is branded on a silver-haired boy. Uchiha Obito is foremost, made of longing.
Watching his kin being slaughtered is disturbingly satisfying, every slash of Itachi's sword opening a crooked smile on their bodies. Like a child getting his hands on candy, Obito savors the fruits of a hard-won prize. For all of the reverence his family holds - held - being a trickster turns out to be way more rewarding than being an Uchiha. Under midnight's glimmer, he waits for a boy with tearful pitch-black eyes and red hands, and gives him a cloak in which to wrap up his sins. Uchiha were certainly never meant to stay.
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"Be hole, be dust, be dream, be wind
Be night, be dark, be wish, be mind
Now slip, now slide, now move unseen
Above, beneath, betwixt, between."
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うちは イタチ
Itachi is made of lies and silence and duty, but most of all, ghosts. They stick to him like the summer heat that engulfs his homeland, and he carries them unflinching. Itachi is conceived on the precipice of a war few understand and even less condone, and its aftermath runs deep in his young mind. Itachi is raised with the affection of a devoted mother and the strictness of a man used to leading and in the end, he's not really sure which one's in him the most.
He vows to achieve the greatest illusion of all, the one that so many of his kin have already tried, and killed, and payed for, before him. He's grasping at straws, but still a child, Itachi thinks himself invincible. Peace, he whispers, but snaps necks and breaks bones and orphans children instead.
Sitting by the Nakano, legs dangling over the wooden deck, he smiles at Shisui's antics, how he manages to laugh at the world as if it were just a bad joke. Sometimes though, Shisui looks at Itachi with that aching twinkle in his eyes, as if he could peel layer after layer off Itachi's soul and see, and Shisui wishes Itachi could be less broken. But Itachi thinks he might have been broken from the start, before his bestfriend could even dream of shielding him from it all. The day Shisui dies, the part of Itachi that chased chimeras and hoped for a world where no more children had to dye their hands red, dies with him. Leaving Konoha, becomes easier than staying.
He holds Sasuke tight every night while his baby brother is soundly asleep, and sheds all the tears he will no longer be able to afford later. Standing at the edge of the cliff on which Shisui took his last breath, Itachi watches him die over, and over, and over again, until he's ready to kill over, and over, and over again – unfaltering. Sword still wet with his father's blood, a masked man throws a cloak over his shoulders, and Itachi thinks it fits him like a glove.
"Protect the village, and the Uchiha name…" had been Shisui's last words, but his smile falling down the abyss had held a thousand words more left unsaid. Itachi makes himself remember how the corner of Shisui's mouth would crinkle every time he chuckled, how Mikoto would hug both her sons and how Sasuke would squirm in her grasp trying to play the big boy; how Fugaku would wait for Itachi to join him for breakfast before heading out for his shift. Itachi must remember, because there's no one else left to remember for him – he's made sure.
The journey from Konoha to Amegakure is long and quiet, and Itachi carries the souls of the dead in each step he takes, but casts no shadow. Uchiha Itachi is no more, after Shisui asks a boy of thirteen to let him die with no one else but him and the moon as witnesses. But Itachi of Konoha lives on, and waits and waits and waits for the only piece of his heart left in this world to come finish him off, so he can finally meet Shisui again and watch his stupid cheeky smile. Uchiha were never really meant to stay after all, nor could they.
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"Because somewhere underneath, a part of us stayed like that:
fearful of the world around us, and - no matter how much we despised ourselves for it
- unable quite to let each other go."
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うちは サスケ
Sasuke is made of pain and hate and vengeance, but most of all, regrets. One day he's son to the most feared and revered clan, and the next he's just another orphan. They expect him to cry, maybe throw a fit or seek comfort, but Sasuke only stares blankly at whomever tries to strike a conversation, so in the end, they leave him be and ship him to Konoha's orphanage. Sasuke doesn't speak for a year, and by the time he does, all his words are tainted with the afterthought of death. His world has been reduced to stabbing his brother through the heart, just as he'd done with their parents.
Sasuke strolls down the streets of Konoha hiding in shadow, but he walks like a man who fears nothing, and all the moths come down on him to gorge on his weeping song. It's only silly girls at first, girls desperate for bragging about feelings they are too young to even comprehend, but the bigger hunters prey from afar, ready to mold Sasuke through whichever story suits them best. Sasuke's been branded in blood and long-past feuds, yet he's oblivious to it all, just another kid trying to live up to much too high expectations, and run away from the gutter. Sasuke walks like a man who fears nothing, but deep inside, he's still the child whose knees went weak before his brother, and every day he goes to bed thinking this might be the night he'll find Itachi crouching over his bed, ninjatō whistling in the air.
Sasuke thinks it a bad joke, when he's paired fresh off the Academy with the stupid loud prankster and the annoying fangirl, but his sensei might as well be even worse. Because Sasuke often catches Kakashi looking at him in pitiful understanding, and Sasuke's braved himself for all feelings but that. It takes him years to realize why Kakashi's the only person that saw through him right from the start, and when he does, Sasuke's been tormented by what cannot be undone for so long, his reaction is to kill Kakashi and anyone who might bring down crashing the reality that's been carved for him since he was seven years old; that Sasuke must live only to kill a man, nothing less and nothing more.
He's proven wrong though, with an arm less to count on and that idiot blonde still hanging in, lying next to him on cracked war-torn soil, smiling through it all. Stripped of his family and misguided goal, Sasuke's an avenger no more, only a survivor. For once, he's free to take the reins of his life, and realizes he has nothing. Just washed out memories of a childhood built on hidden truths, and a hollowing remorse. "I will always love you," Itachi had told him, crumbling to dust, and Sasuke had thought me too, but screamed you ruined me! in his head as well. Uchiha Sasuke leaves Konoha the same way he did the first time – even if this time it proves harder - with his mind set on stone, and no certainties.
Maybe it's true, what folklore says about Uchiha being rotted to the core, fated to never set roots in one place, least they'd curse it too. Or maybe, Konoha was built on one too many corpses. Sasuke hunches on top of the flying hawk, watching the village unfold behind him; the squeak of children gasping in awe filling his ears. Uchiha Sasuke is the last relic of a wrecked clan, and it is known, that Uchiha, in the end, were never meant to stay.
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Thoughts? This has been quite the ride for me.