Disclaimer:
I do not own Naruto or Itachi or Sasuke or anything in this story. Kishimoto owns all rights.
Warning! Spoilers for the truth about Uchiha Itachi and the Uchiha clan and Madara.
Phantasmagoria
a constantly changing medley of real or imagined images (as in a dream)
There is five minutes.
There is a clock. He can hear it ticking. The air is noxious and substantial, heavy like the sky is weighing down upon the ground. It is the detritus of a lost story, a lost clan.
Some stories are better off unfinished.
He dreams. He dreams of worlds where there may be frivolity, where there may be chivalry, yet there is a maelstrom.
The redolence lingers in the air and it is a smell that is not easy to place, yet it revokes memories. Too flocculent to be pleasantly reminded of the past that he lives in yet too nodular to be considered the future.
The world is depleted of bloodshed. War is deficient.
His eyes see.
The river shines very brightly in the moonlight. He stares at it and sees his reflection.
Does this river dare remind him of something he lost so long ago?
The bamboo reeds lie on the shore and there is a fire lit beside it. He can hear people shuffling through the river across the shore from him.
But they cannot see him.
He prefers to stand in the shadows.
He always has his sharingan activated. He likes it better when people can see the red and black.
It all has to do with psychology.
He is very quiet.
It's not that he doesn't want to talk to anyone, it's more of the fact that he doesn't have anything to say to most people.
It has always been presumed that he is evil just because of his quiet, apathetic demeanour.
That just goes to show how wrong perception can be.
To be put quite plain, Madara is an evil man.
He met him when he was hardly a four year old child. He had seemed respectable at that time. He had been nice and he was strong.
As he aged, as he learned more and more, he realized how wrong his first impressions had been.
Madara was a manipulator.
He was the person who ordered around all the pieces on the chessboard. The mastermind behind the darkness.
He had been a pawn.
A very important piece within the game that was forsaken to be taken out.
Life was like one big electronic. It was powered with batteries.
There was the most powerful batteries.
And there was the weakest batteries.
Itachi had been a AAA battery.
He can remember his family.
His father with his apathy and strong muscles and powerful- he doesn't want to think. Doesn't want to remember all the vexatious memories that tear at his skin and heart.
Yet he remembers ardor and feels the kindness transude through his mind.
His mother who was strong, caring, loving, kind, and just, just everything.
He can remember days with his family at home when he was given one of his scarce opportunities to stay home and not go on a mission.
His brother-
Oh. His brother.
His brother with those dark eyes that stare with such innocence and such happiness.
Those eyes that are always smiling back at him.
Those eyes that see more. So much more.
Those delicate scleras and the capillaries that delicately vine through his eyes to meet the pupil.
He remembers days where he sat staring at kunai and shuriken and memorizing every detail and forever painting the image within in his eye.
He remembers days where he trained his mangekyou sharingan. When he learned the techniques.
The days he spent, sitting on the floor, imagining his own world within his own eyes and perfecting every angle and refracting every bit of light and color.
And he breathed chakra into it.
His world lit up around him.
His eyes saw.
It was not perfect but it was close.
He has always seen things for their potential, after all.
So as it is, everyone has to die at some point.
When their batteries ran out of power, they died. They ran out of energy and their body shut down.
He has always believed that there is a clock.
This clock doesn't tell you what time it is.
Rather it tells you how long you have until you die.
He knows when he is going die because the ticking gets louder every second.
He is a genius.
He is not a genius because he can think two hundred steps ahead of his opponent or because his head is loaded up with information.
It is because of the way he thinks.
It takes him approximately two days to perfect his world.
He does not test it out on anybody until a year later. It works exactly as he expects it too. From then on, he begins experimenting on new things.
Unlike most people he accepts things that will never be and things that are.
He accepts the fact that his family is dead. He accepts the fact he killed most of them himself.
He accepts the fact that his brother is the one person he must always act in front of, yet his brother is the one person he loves the most.
He is thirteen years old and he has murdered his family.
He knows just how wrong that sounds, yet he accepts it.
It's far too late to apologize and it is a realized fact, so he does not attempt to.
Whirlpools still mar his shut eyelids and he still feels the blood, warm, sticky, and slippery on the hilt of his blade. He doesn't waste any time when he kills them. There is no reason to prolong the suffering of them so he does it quickly.
It is a little known fact that Uchiha Itachi cried when he killed his mom and dad.
He dried his tears shortly after that. It would not do to waste so much time.
Still, one night every year Itachi mourns the family that he had lost when he was too young.
One night is all he will allow himself. Or so he tells himself. He knows that he lies to himself and he realizes when he does so. He likes to tell himself that he does not think of his family very often yet it is very very clear to him that he thinks about them multiple times a day.
It does not do to waste so much time.
After all, those who presume they have lots of time are the ones that waste the most.
He has always had a fascination with eyes. It may have something to do with his bloodline limit but he suspects that there is more to it than simply that.
He has always seen more than everybody else.
It is one particular night when he begins to doubt that.
He has just been accused of murdering Uchiha Shisui. He figures it is cold irony, the relation between his name and his death.
He handled the three military police without half a thought. Then his brother had yelled at him to stop.
He turned and looked directly into his younger brothers eyes. They hold simmering emotions and he realizes that his brother has always seen past his mask. They have always seen through it.
Those eyes will see.
Akatsuki was different, for lack of a better word.
He has always wondered about the red and black on the cloak but he never inquired about it.
Deidara and Sasori were weary, tiring.
Kakuzu and Hidan were disrespectful.
Zetsu was odd.
Pein and Konan, he doesn't really know.
He is glad Kisame is his partnet because they have a mutual agreement.
Orochimaru was interested and hostile. He attacked Itachi in some fatuous attempt to attain his body and eyes.
That was the last time his left hand was used for a long, long time.
His world has always been painted in red and black.
He isn't particulary sure why that is but it is. Maybe it is because blood had used to be a fascination of his when he was younger but he no longer wanted to see anymore blood. He had seen too much already.
He may always be silent but inside his head it is very noisy.
He can recall the taste of iron in his mouth and blood, hot and red and dripping.
Things should be different.
Inside his own world he can make a difference.
Uchiha Itachi is four year olds.
He has learned to walk on water with his chakra. He did it without any help and without anyone teaching him anything.
He can do the Uchiha family tradition fireball jutsu.
He has seen war and seen a valley full of dead bodies.
He is formally inducted as the heir of his clan.
When Uchiha Itachi is four years old his childhood is taken away from him.
Itachi is seven years old.
He graduates the academy at the top of the class.
He has the highest score ever recorded at the academy.
Sasuke's score was the third highest recorded.
He is eight years old.
When he gains his sharingan it already has all three tomoe.
He is eight years old yet he can aim better than anyone in his clan.
He is thirteen years old.
He is an ANBU Captain and has seen torrents of death and violence.
He is given orders to kill his clan.
It is only when he reaches this age that he begins to mourn what he has lost throughout his life.
His memories of blood haunt him.
Itachi Uchiha is a thirteen year old boy who has never had a childhood.
Itachi is eighteen years old when he is reunited with his younger brother after five years.
He is forced to act as a heartless man who cares nothing about his own flesh and blood and it tears him up inside.
He knocks his brother into unconsciousness with a broken wrist and broken ribs and a torn up mind.
His brother turns thirteen years old when he is comatose.
He is twenty years old when he is killed by his own brothers' hand.
Everything in his life had been a façade to protect the person who will destroy him. He almost finds it ironic. Almost.
His last moments are the loudest ones in his entire life.
Before he dies he sees his brothers' eyes. They are the same as they had been so many years before.
He knows that his brothers' eyes see more.
They always have seen more.
Maybe those eyes will be able to light their world of darkness.
He remembers his own created world and thinks that maybe it is best left his own.
It is immaculately perfect.
As he dreams it should be.