title: il volto della madonna
summary: She promises herself she won't let him go without a fight; and if she has to let him go at all, then she will let him go only if he knows he is loved. That he always will be. – Mikoto and Itachi through the ages, from the cradle to the coffin.
notes: i had feelings. so now you'll have them, too.
.
.
.
Itachi is born soundless.
There is an awful moment in which she thinks he is stillborn; a minute of raw, unbridled panic that seems to stretch indefinitely, wrapping everything in a dark shadow and making her head spin.
But then the midwife pinches his bottom, her tut turning into a smile when he gives a hearty cry, and Mikoto's heart is soaring so high with relief that it's making her nauseous.
"What a good boy," the midwife coos, gently wiping the mucus he'd spat out. At this he sniffs, and if her chuckle is any indication, Fugaku's son has just imitated his father for the first time.
They wash him and bring him to her, wrapped loosely in a soft blanket of felt.
He is the most beautiful thing she's ever seen, full apple face dusted rose and perfectly lacquered pools of obsidian for eyes, peering at her with quiet fascination from underneath a brow of thick black hair.
It is in this moment that Mikoto knows she will always love him: love him so much swallowing the sun will feel like drinking water, love him so much that she will sell her soul in less than a heartbeat and think of it as too small a price. Love him enough to kill, and love him enough to die, all without regret.
Ah, she thinks, and can't help but smile. There's the maternal instinct I never thought I'd have.
She brushes stray strands away from his face and something inside her howls like a mourning. All the stories come back to her in a rush of blue-black-red and childish wonder – gods of thunder with their faces masked and fish maidens in jade pools who cry pearls instead of tears when they long for their land-bound lovers.
Her own mother used to whisper them to her, a long, long time ago. Though those were bygone days, now; the long-lost fragments of that tender, frail window of time called childhood. She'd been a child when the sky had turned red and the world was set ablaze, too, but it hadn't mattered to anyone anymore.
They'd put a blade in her hands and she had been very good at using it – in times of war, that was the only thing that mattered. Time had passed, and somewhere along the line, those violet summer skies had become a mere memory, one she'd tucked into the deepest part of her chest and tightly held on to.
And there, it had taken root: the crystallized tree of everything she'd ever lost.
Preserved within it, intact still, were all the details of her girlhood: the feeling of her mother's hands combing through her hair, mooncakes made on the sly outside of their proper occasions, the roses growing outside the kitchen windows, filling the morning with their heady scent. Her innocence, and the way those stories had made her feel as she settled a little lower underneath the covers.
Stories of love and loss, stories of gods and monsters and the men that stood between them.
Stories where there was still some good left in the world.
She recalled a tale about a warrior that had died standing, blood flowing from his wounds and coating his blade; even after his death he had continued to fight, first until his body was little more than tattered shreds, flesh hanging off the bone, and even long after that, only stopping when a shaman banished his ghost to the underworld.
"His mother had known it," her mother had said. "She had dreamed it when he was born."
And here she was, holding her son, thinking of that legend, her heart howling inside the confines of her chest like the sky was shattering and the world was coming apart at the seams.
Perhaps it is, she thinks, fleetingly. All of a sudden, it is hard to breathe.
It is in this moment that Mikoto knows she won't have him for long.
Her hold tightens.
She promises herself she won't let him go without a fight; and if she has to let him go at all, then she will let him go only if he knows he is loved. That he always will be.
There is a terrible, terrible sense of foreboding to all of it, too strong to ignore when all your life you've read the signs hidden in plain sight. She presses a feverish kiss to each of his temples.
(She doesn't know it yet, but she will only make good on one of her promises.)
Just like in the stories, he grows a year's worth within a day; or at least that's how it seems to her. His precociousness might have a hand in it. He begins reading at an age where most toddlers are still learning to distinguish a nipple from everything that isn't one, and by the time he is four, his keen intellect and unnatural grace are already well-documented.
"He is gifted," the elders say, and she discerns the hope in their eyes: he is the light they have been awaiting so desperately. The fire that will burn away their tainted past and lead the clan into a new era, one of light and prosperity. Mikoto cleans her blade of blood and keeps her scoffs to herself.
At this age, there is a war to be waged, and her cell has been reactivated. She will worry about the far future when the near one will stop looming over her with its' mouth crooked and full of jagged teeth.
Fugaku is against her return to the battlefield, of course, but there isn't room for choice, and so he begrudgingly concedes.
She leaves shortly after sunset, feeling her blood trickle into ice as it courses through her and pools in the dips of her joints. Her spine carries her weight differently, now; the mother has been tucked away into the same chrysalis where she keeps her childhood and happiness safe, and the warrior has taken her place. Mikoto knows that when she will snap her mask into place, there won't be a path to go back on. At least, not for a while.
But before that –
"Itachi," she says, softly, so quiet it's almost lost to the wind. She crouches so they're at the same level, and her son looks at her with those eyes dark enough to see your reflection mirrored inside them.
"Yes, mother?"
She brushes the hair out of his eyes and feels her heart clench. There's no mysticism to it this time around; just a visceral need to protect. Her determination steels her into something unfathomably implacable, and she knows that her blood has become cold enough to make Kiri winters feel scalding.
May the gods have mercy on the souls of the enemy, she thinks, because I won't.
"Give me a good luck kiss," she says. Itachi reaches for her face and then seems to think better of it; he stops, his small hands pleasantly warm against her skin.
"Only if you promise it isn't a goodbye one," he says with all the seriousness he can muster. And for Itachi, there's quite a lot of it; Mikoto laughs, the sound humming in her chest. She takes his hands in hers and kisses them, fingertips first, down to his wrists.
"I promise," she says. "I'm never going to leave you alone, 'tachi. Never."
His whole face lights up at that. How wonderful it is that he can still have absolute, unquestioning faith in a promise, she thinks, and mourns that the time he'll lose it is nearing. She'd wished he could stay a child for a little while longer, but their world was a cruel place.
There is smoke in the distance, burning indistinct shapes against the bright line of the horizon.
He gives her the kiss, hands wound tight around her neck. She holds him close, lets him cling to her as if she is a lifeline and he is standing in quicksand; genius or not, he is still a child. If anything, his intelligence only makes letting his mother march off to war that much harder – he is perfectly aware that there's a good chance she might never come back.
Perhaps it isn't absolute faith. Perhaps it is the absolute need to have faith.
She snaps her mask into place, and both pretend that neither one is crying.
Wars reshape the world, and this one is no different. The mountains of corpses left in its' wake translate into statistics read aloud in meetings that are only long for the sake of being long; compensations that are paid in coin or manual labor; borders that are redefined, giving cartographers something to do.
All of those things constitute only the visible part of the remolding, though. There's a darker half to it, one that runs deeper than blood, deeper than even marrow. You can see it in people's eyes, a contagious kind of numbness. A sense of cold, indifferent fear.
For many, this war has been their first good look at death. Their first true taste of loss.
Mikoto walks down the main street and feels as if she's in a ghost town. Rebuilding will take a while, so for now Konoha is mostly just ruins, some still smoldering. She hasn't worn anything but black for months, but that doesn't particularly bother her; truth be told, she hasn't really cared much for clothes ever since her marriage, and even before that she can count on one hand the number of dresses she's loved – all of them kimono, painted silk in colors only unmarried women can wear, their sleeves long and draping. She recalls her first one, sky blue with a plethora of flowers in red and white, and how happy she'd been when her mother had tied the matching obi in a lopsided bow.
It's not even the seemingly endless string of funerals that bothers her; in her line of work, you made peace early on with the idea that sooner or later you'll either bury your friends or they will come to bury you.
Her concerns laid in three places: one, the sensation of something twisted hovering in the air that still hadn't left her, despite the war being officially over. Then again, few wars are truly over when declared as such, she thinks, dragging her teeth along her bottom lip and pulling. No; better put, it's all one long war that never ended. Even in times of peace, the conflict persists, only hidden from sight. Which begged the question: where would the blow come from? Or, more accurately – where wouldn't it come from?
Two, something in Itachi's face and demeanor had shifted while she'd been gone.
While he had always dutifully obliged every attempt at training him (and always applied the new knowledge perfectly on the first try, she noted with no small amount of pride), she could tell that the way he saw those sessions had changed. If before there had been enjoyment, the sense of play, there was now a weight attached to every movement.
He had always understood on some level just how much harm he was capable of doing, but witnessing the war firsthand had made it real. She'd caught him staring at his hands and didn't need to be told to know what he was thinking: even with his child's body, he was deft enough to kill. There was a feline grace to her son that she had always found equal parts terrifying and fascinating; he was an apex predator by nature, not by nurture. It was built into him, lined along his bones like liquid fire.
And now every wheel inside his head was spinning madly, piecing together ways in which every motion meant to destroy could instead serve to protect.
She couldn't be more proud of him.
He was her son, through and through, but bloodlust was one thing he hadn't inherited. Neither hers, nor Fugaku's – Fugaku, who enjoyed watching carnage more than he enjoyed dipping his own hands in the blood and guts of another living being.
At this she pulls a face. She doesn't love her husband; never had, never would. Some days she found it in her to respect him, but most of the time he was just another assignment she had had no choice but take. Duty came first, especially when you came from a clan as old as the Uchiha.
Often, in a deep part of her heart adjacent to the place where she kept her childhood, she allowed herself to hate him. Hate him for eating up her youth, hate him for eating her time and hate him for binding her tight enough to suffocate. He hadn't left anything of him behind in their son, and Mikoto felt a visceral, ugly satisfaction at that. He didn't deserve to sully something so perfect, or to feel any pride for having had a hand in his birth. Itachi was the only good thing their marriage had given her, and he was all hers.
Though – well.
A hand lowers, cupping the underside of her belly; gentle, ever so gentle, almost as if she is afraid even the lightest touch will break the life growing inside of her.
I suppose there are two things, now.
Three: she is pregnant.
Unlike his brother, Sasuke is born screaming.
He claws his way out of her womb, almost, all nervous veins as if cut from one long piece of sinew, limbs contorting into expressions of impatience that border on the improbable.
Mikoto can't help it; she laughs, equal parts amused and relieved. With him, she doesn't have to worry. He is a vivacious bundle of life that loudly thunders his arrival into the world, and she knows in a way only mothers can know that with time he will grow to be his elder brother's mirror: similar enough to be mistaken, yet fundamentally polar. If Itachi is the apex predator, then his brother is the apex survivor.
For his part, Itachi is marked by the birth, a scar that leaves an impression as deep as the one left by the war.
His tireless pursuit of a way to forge a shield out of a thousand blades is finally given a concrete reason; he finds purpose in the lines of his brother's bones, in the vulnerable flesh of his minuscule chest. Mikoto places him in his arms, and he cradles him gently, with the same sense of awe and fear that she had held him with years ago. In turn, Sasuke reaches up, probably having reasoned that the best way of getting to know an unfamiliar face is by giving it a good smack or two.
It is in this moment that Mikoto ascertains that her love for them both is as desperate as it is boundless.
"He's so tiny," Itachi whispers.
"And so are you," Mikoto says, keeping her tone quiet. "But you'll take care of him, won't you?"
Itachi gives a nod of terrible solemnity. "Yes," he says. "Yes, I will."
They're almost unchanged when, three months later, Konoha is bathed in blood.
Fugaku had been at the station since the early hours of the morning; he spent more time there than at home these days. Mikoto didn't mind. Even if he were home, there was little he could do for their children, especially in times of danger. Neither of them was exempt from protocol just because they were parents.
"If things take a sudden turn for the worse," she says, gentle but firm, "take your brother and run."
Itachi hefts his brother a little higher on his hip, the perfect image of a miniature mother hen. It makes her smile.
"I know. Take road essentials from the shelter's supplies and go to Nekobaa's." He hesitates for a moment, and then: "Mother?"
"Mm?"
"Will...the fox. That's the one that was sealed inside aunt Kushina, isn't it?"
"It is. She was supposed to give birth tonight. Something must've went awry, and it got out."
His brows knit, concerned. "Will she be alright?"
"I don't know. Supposedly, extraction kills the vessel. However, she is an Uzumaki, so unless she does something extremely stupid, her clan's life force should keep her going for at least a few more years." Or at least, that's what she hoped.
Heavens, don't let me be the one to find her body. Please. Anything but.
She clasps shut the straps of her sheath. "C'mon," she says, crouching down. "Give me a good luck kiss."
He does, eyes swirling between black and red. Later, when she'll see him again, he will have fully awakened his Sharingan; that knowledge eases her heart. Her boys will be safe.
When she puts on her mask, all she can think is: Kushina.
She is the one that finds the bodies, the blood that had seeped out of them not fully absorbed by the soil just yet. The bodies are still warm, hearts still beating, but the pulse of chakra is a light about to flicker out. She is no medic, but she can bet they have no brain activity at this point.
So Mikoto does the only thing she can do for them: cradles their newborn son to her chest, willing her hands not to tremble, and bites back the screams.
The terrible sense of foreboding looms over her again, stronger than ever, and she curses herself for not insisting to be present for the birth.
I could've saved them.
Naruto latches onto her fingers, still crying, as most newborn babies do.
I could've saved them, and he wouldn't be an orphan.
Both of her sons grow and morph, as does Kushina's: Itachi becomes a forest fire that the elders cannot control, which brings her immense joy, while Sasuke retreats into himself, starved of his father's praise, which makes her hate her husband that much more.
Naruto has become ostracized, shunned because of the terrible beast he hadn't had a say in housing. It takes all of her willpower to not peel some loudmouth woman in the marketplace like an apple when she hears her say, "That little beast killed his parents."
Not like they look at them with better eyes, anyway. Most still believe the Uchiha have played some part in the attack, and the elders' actions aren't doing much to change that opinion.
With every day that passes, the shadow of that terrible sense of foreboding grows darker. It gathers deep in her belly, knotting itself around her guts to the point where the pain has become physical. There are days when she can't even eat. The weight loss goes unnoticed by most – except her son.
But then again, Itachi is hers. Of course he notices. There is too much sadness in him now, though, and so she doesn't blame him when he doesn't ask. He walks like a man that has the weight of the entire world on his shoulders, and in the right light, Mikoto can almost see the outline of where the globe burrows into his bones. The animal inside her howls, mourning the loss of his childhood.
The strange tension boils in the air at ever rising temperature, an elastic cord that has been stretched too thin; she can feel it prickle at the back of her neck, tiny little sparkles of electricity and malice.
When the day that it finally snaps comes, he kills them last.
Mikoto thinks again of the stories – of how the warrior died standing and fought long after that, until he was a mere caricature of humanity, his flesh dangling of his bones. She thinks of how his mother had known his ending all along, but never known her own.
What a cruel thing destiny is.
"It's alright, 'tachi," she says, hopes her voice isn't as shaky to his ears as it is to her own. "You know that, right?"
"It's not," he whispers. His eyes are filled with tears. "You know it's not, mother. None of this is alright."
Fugaku's body is cooling at her side, so she can't really argue. As much as she despised him sometimes, she'd never wished his outright death. Especially not by his son's hand.
"It's war, Itachi," she says, stern despite the softness. "In times of war, blood is the cheapest price. Of course it's alright, especially since you're doing it for him." She sighs. "Come closer. Sit with me, one last time. Please?"
He complies without hesitance, and she notes that it's the first time their roles are reversed. He crouches so that she can reach him with ease, and she presses a kiss to each of his temples, and then to his forehead, cheeks, nose, and, lastly, to his lips.
For good luck. And goodbye.
She doesn't need to say it for the both of them to know it.
"I love you. Whatever happens, whatever you do from now on – please remember that. Remember that your mother loves you, and that you are forgiven, and that I'm proud of you."
Her hands come and rest above his own, clasping them tightly. She guides his sword through her chest and smiles, the edges of her world fading to black. She dies in his arms and thinks she can hear him say it back: "I love you too, mother. Forever and always. And I'm so, so sorry."
He comes back, sometimes. Slips in through the gates and takes the side streets, unnoticed, without even needing to hide his face. People very rarely pause long enough to note the features of a stranger passing by.
He comes and visits the graves, meticulously weeding them and wiping the dust off the plaques, and lights incense when he's done. Then he sits down in the dirt, silent, and stares off into the distance, losing himself in his thoughts. Sometimes he startles, and she wonders if perhaps he can see her, or if it's his own mind that's haunting him. Every now and then he talks, quiet and reflective, and a smile always plays in the corners of his mouth when he tells them about Sasuke. She runs her hands through his hair and mourns the loss of physicality; her fingers always go right through.
She watches him grow from boy to man across the span of these visits, notes his growth and then his weight loss and the way the illness settles into his body, taking over it.
On the last visit, he coughs blood into his fist and lacks the power to wipe away the splatters that have landed on the stone.
"I'm coming home soon, mother," he whispers. He hovers, for a moment, before ghosting his thumb over her name. "Your son is coming home. I'm almost done paying my penance. You'll wait for me, won't you?"
She lets her knuckles smooth over his cheek. This time, the touch is almost corporeal. He feels it and smiles, leaning into it.
Of course I will, 'tachi.
.
.
.
fin.