Characters: Mikoto, Itachi
Summary: He has nightmares. But not like this. Sequel to Footsteps.
Pairings: None
Author's Note: This is a sequel to Footsteps, obviously; I suggest you read that first.
Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.
It rained the night before. Never hard but long enough to turn the earth to mud and for the green leaves to be laden down with water like flimsy pitchers. In fact, when the morning comes it's still raining, leaves discharging their load before taking on another, the sky cast a twilight shade of blue instead of normal morning shades of lavender and pink and gold. Mikoto hate mornings like this, mornings that have confused themselves with evenings.
And it's likely that it's the rain that keeps anyone else from hearing Itachi's screams.
Mikoto is wandering about the house in aimless fashion when she hears it and it takes her only a second to recognize the sound and go racing towards Itachi's bedroom on the other side of the large house; a mother, Mikoto likes to think, will always be able to recognize her children's cries. The lock's been set but is easily picked (she is a kunoichi, after all), and Mikoto is inside.
Itachi's room is so bare that it more resembles a cell than anything else—the narrow window, rising from the floor to the ceiling, is the only source of light—Mikoto has always noticed. The only thing in it is the tatami mat, and Itachi isn't lying on that. He's crouched by the window, katana nearby, and is writhing and shaking in sleep, screams and cries rising from his lips.
A moment comes where Mikoto stands paralyzed in the doorway, and can do nothing but gape. The light off the katana, though dull seems to blind her.
Itachi has nightmare. Itachi has always had nightmares. It's a fact Mikoto has come to accept, though not like, as Itachi's lifestyle as Konoha's foremost soldier starts to eat away at him. All soldiers have nightmares, eventually, especially child soldiers.
But… but not like this. He's never… screaming, or shouting… What is he shouting about, anyway?
Another numb moment and Mikoto can make out the young boy's whimpers as he writhes at the floor.
Shisui… walking on the roof?
It's what he's moaning about, about his cousin walking around on the roof, with footsteps that sound like earthquakes.
And in the third moment, Mikoto shakes off her lethargy and jumps forward.
The katana is kicked unceremoniously away from her thirteen-year-old son, sliding across the carpet with a dull hiss like a snake and Mikoto glares at it as though it can be blamed for everything. She's down on her knees before she can even think about it, never comprehends the danger found in coming near a sleeping nin in a state of distress, and pulling her sleeping son to her, holding his head to her chest and stroking his hair in a vain attempt to comfort him.
Sobbing stops as abruptly as the rain sometimes does—but not this morning—though eyes are still screwed tightly shut. Mikoto draws her teeth down on her lower lip and stares out of the window, eyes raking the dark hollow of the gate.
"M-Mother?" Itachi doesn't really behave like a child, not anymore, but when his eyes, reddened around the edges and bloodshot across the sclera open, he looks more like a child than Mikoto has ever seen him, cheeks wet and sparkling with dried trails, hair caught on his skin and in his mouth, not trying to extricate himself from her grip as he normally does when Mikoto tries to hug him.
Mikoto's expression is something resembling but not identical to a gentle smile, raising a hand to brush hair away from his face. "You had a nightmare, Itachi. Don't you remember?"
His eyes grow blank and dull and heavy, as though he's not really slept at all. "Yes," Itachi murmurs, voice faintly muffled. "I remember."
The words are still there, etched into the wood walls as if with a carving knife, starkly visible.
Mikoto's black eyes follow the invisible words as they burn themselves into her eyes, her mind, all of her. 'Shisui's walking on the roof. Cousin's on the roof. He won't let me sleep. He won't leave me alone. Why is he here? What is he still doing here?'
Itachi… What on Earth…
-0-
The day passes and though Itachi shows no sign that he was ever screaming, digging into the carpeting with his fingers or crying, sobbing in his sleep, he still seems to Mikoto's eyes taut and tense and pale, far more so than usual—a mother's senses are always unusually attuned to her child, and being a kunoichi Mikoto has finer senses than usual, anyway. He moves through the house like a ghost, gliding, feet that are shuffling yet barely touching the ground. Mikoto finds herself watching him more closely than usual.
It's afternoon and still overcast—all four members of the Uchiha head's family are crowded into the kitchen, Fugaku and Sasuke at the table, Mikoto at the chopping block chopping vegetables for a stew, and Itachi leaning against the countertop, arms crossed, eyes following the progress of the kitchen knife obsessively.
It's almost enough to make the hairs on the back of her neck stand up.
Neither Sasuke nor Fugaku notice anything, of course. Sasuke at eight is hardly what any could call a trained observer—he's too busy chattering about his day at the Academy to anyone who'll listen to notice anything really out of place with his brother, just like he never notices when no one's listening to him and the light flickers overhead, again.
Mikoto sighs exasperatedly and frowns at her husband, who doesn't look up from his newspaper. "I thought you said you were going to get that fixed."
"Later, Mikoto. I haven't had the time today."
And Fugaku never notices anything, though how much that's due to genuine ignorance and how much of it is due to Fugaku's selective eyesight Mikoto will never know. He's always seen what he wants to see and nothing else, forming opinions and suppositions when it comes to his family regardless of the facts—Why can't he show the same detachment and passion for the truth here as he does in the police force?
Fugaku wouldn't notice if Itachi was exhibiting signs of something "being wrong" by getting on the roof and screaming.
Just like he was claiming Shisui was doing, minus the shouts.
That brings Mikoto back to what has been making her abstracted and her strokes down on the carrots uneven.
"Itachi." The Uchiha matriarch's voice is perfectly bland and mild as she chops vegetables, but every nerve in her body is tense and primed. "I haven't seen Shisui around today; as I understand, it was his day off, and he normally spends those here, for the mornings at least—he's such a late riser," Mikoto adds with an indulgent smile that doesn't trick Itachi into thinking she's not paying attention to his reactions. "Do you know where he is?"
The boy stiffens and Mikoto can see the shadows gathering on his soul in an attempt to block out the light she's casting on it.
Itachi's eyes fix firmly on the linoleum floor and the way a beam of light casts rainbows of light across the floor.
"I don't know," Itachi says, in a tone that leaves Mikoto unsure if he's telling the truth.
-0-
The next day, it's not raining anymore but the grass on the banks of the Nakano is still slick with rainwater, as Mikoto oversees the three men who are pulling a vast, foul-smelling something out of the river, holding handkerchiefs to their noses as they do so; Mikoto follows suit.
It's a corpse, she realizes, seeing the distended, bloated features as though from miles away, but the smell impacts her as though she's leaning close over it and drawing in a deep breath.
"Where do you… want it, Mikoto-sama?" one of the older men gasps as the youngest of the party breaks off to retch miserably in the nearby bushes.
She closes her eyes momentarily. "Just lay the body down." Suspicion sweeps over her. "And let me look at it."
They step aside in deference for the mistress of their clan, as Mikoto glides down the hill with far more grace than any of them managed and casts her eyes down on the corpse. She drops to her knees, the smell not affecting her the way it does the others since she's so used to it—has fought in two wars, to become used to the cloying, sticky smell of decay and putrefaction.
At first, Mikoto doesn't recognize the face she stares down upon. It's distorted to the point of being nearly unrecognizable, the cheeks almost entirely eaten away by maggots and blowflies. I guess we'll have to use dental records to identify the body, she muses absently.
Then, she starts to see similarities, similarities to someone she knows.
She doesn't skip a beat.
"Hello, Shisui," Mikoto murmurs.
Part of her question has been answered. The rest remains to be seen.