Uh, this is my tea break from the rest of my fics. That's why it will be shorter than THM and Enigma - and it will be updated sporadically. Inspired by the Godfather, guys - best film of all times.
Metamorphosis
Chapter I
Trapped
"The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why." -Mark Twain.
Humid, hot air filled the streets and street corners of Konoha. Some people despised that hot heat; some people adored that hot heat. For each and every one person that filled the streets and alleys and corners, their views differed. Everyone was different. Everyone thought differently. It didn't matter if two people were related: because even if they were, their thoughts and views and perspectives were still different, because no matter how much two people are alike, they have different experiences, and have grown up in two totally different ways.
But experiences also change people. Would one say that they were a different person with each passing minute, each passing conversation, each passing thought they had? How can one person remain the same five years later? The simple answer to that not so simple question: they can't. And they won't. And they never will - because, even though those two same people - one from the present and one in the past - have the same name and the same parents and the same childhood, they don't have the same amount of experience. Because one has lived five years longer.
So, if people change every second of every minute, does that mean that they become a better person because of it? Not necessarily. No, not at all. Nothing is set in stone. As a wise man says, the only thing that is certain is that nothing is certain. But... some still hope. But that hope was foolish, and Itachi Uchiha was everything and anything but foolish.
And it wasn't that he hoped that no one would change; in fact, it was the exact opposite: he hoped that everyone would change.
The people around him often made him wonder about his views on right and wrong. What is right, what is wrong? What is justice? What is crime? How can one be achievable without the other? Is a thing like peace even possible with the amount of folly and lies hidden underneath the surface? What is peace? What is war? Technically, he knew all of the definitions of all of those words. But really? The definitions were inadequate and undeterminable of those terms that are so important to the skeleton that society was based on.
And even if he wondered, even if he knew what was right and what was wrong... It wouldn't change anything. Because even if he knew, it wouldn't change who his father was, what he did, and how what seemed like his whole family was involved except for him.
So what in reality was Fugaku Uchiha, what did he do to make his eldest son Itachi Uchiha question the very laws that humanity was based on? What could be so thought-provoking?
Nothing, really... Except for the fact that his father was the Don (another word for the Head) of one of the five major mafia families in Konoha. Yes there were five - but from those five, there were two that were the most powerful: Uchiha and Hyuuga. And he was Itachi Uchiha, thank you very much. From what he knew, their family specialised in gambling and casinos; which, by the way, were very much illegal in the Country of Fire. If one was able to prove the Uchiha's link with the business, they could very well be thrown into prison for life. Not only that: many people would be really happy with the development.
Itachi gazed at the fan that was spinning and spinning and spinning, the fan on his too white ceiling. It was spinning as much as his head was; the only difference was that his head spanned of different possible outcomes and futures for the entire family. Family. Clan. No, the Uchiha preferred calling it a 'family'.
For the mafia, the family was everything. You could never betray it, never get rid of it, never do anything about it - it was almost like the fact that you were born as an Uchiha predetermined everything. No, not almost - it did. Because he was an Uchiha, he was expected to inherit the business - that very, very illegal business - and to deal with all the shit that came along with it, and make sure that their money kept growing and growing and growing. Never mind the fact that it was dirty money, money earned through crookery and lies; yes, never mind, because no one seemed to ever mind expect him. Even Sasuke.
But there was no point in dwelling on stupid things; he'd decide something to do for himself. He'd find meaning in the meaningless, and become someone that his father had never been and never would be: someone great, someone honourable, someone noble. And he would do it because he could. Maybe then Sasuke would have something he could be proud of in his family - something other than gambling and money and crookery.
Shisui was a great candidate for inheriting the business anyway. Shisui, his first cousin who had always been outspoken and spontaneous, who looked so much like him but at the same time not; who he knew since way before he could actually remember knowing. Shisui, probably one of the only people that he could trust. Itachi felt somewhat guilty for burdening someone so close to him like this - but maybe it was for the better, since Shisui was a good candidate, and his father had never mention that he'd trap Itachi the same way that he'd been trapped: the same way all the Uchiha had been trapped after Madara started the stupid business in the first place.
Madara was the founder of the Uchiha. His portrait hung in the entrance of the main mansion; whenever he stared at the painting, he'd get a chill because he could almost imagine the portrait beginning to cackle, and because the artist had incorporated a maniacal gleam in Madara's black, black eyes. From Madara, there were portraits made of every Don Uchiha after that - but there were only six in total (his father included). And he was supposed to be the heir to the next portrait.
But for Sasuke, he'd promised that he'd find himself and became a role model of a brother - an example - because no one else in his family seemed to be capable of doing so.
Reviews? Uh, sorry that it was all over the place. But that's how a drabble is supposed to role, right?
Aurora.