Edit, 09.26.2012- The title of this has been changed because I have decided that all oneshots for this universe are going to be posted as different chapters of the same story (this story, to be specific). Just to simplify things I've already overcomplicated, since I have a ridiculous number of them planned, and there's too many to post as all different stories.
Title- Amazing Grace
Prompt- Eyes
Summary- There are awful, ugly things in existence that you just can't help but see, impossible to look away from, because they're compelling, and falling from grace is only ever fun to watch. Tragedy is all well and good until it effects you, but sometimes there's nothing that anyone can do to stop the clock from counting down to the end. And those awful, ugly things? This is one of them.
Rating- PG-13
Warnings- Character death, underage drinking, relationship involving a minor, language, ect.
Notes- First ItaNaru story ever! It's a monster of a story that tried to kill me, and ate all my attention until I was done writing. And because I apparently like making things really, really difficult for myself, this is the first fic in what will be an entire series of related oneshots, all of which are set in a mostly-kind-of-canon universe named, "To the Sky", which is borrowed from the song by Owl City of the same name, and has lyrics which are very fitting. Yeah, I'm totally crazy, and I tend to catch the writing bug which will last for months, so expect to see more (quite a bit more, if things go my way) from me in this challenge (and this fandom, and especially this pairing).
This was written for the ItaNaru Fest bingo challenge of LJ. Prompts are amazing creations. My bingo card of prompts has given me a ridiculous amount of inspiration.
A thank you to Justice333 for reading the completely unedited version and figuring out that I needed more ItaNaru bonding, which was the one thing missing I couldn't see. Also, coherence! I have none, and this only makes actual sense because of my amazing beta. A huge thank you to the wonderful Shaded Silvering Grey for betaing. (She has a story out, here in the Naruto fandom [ FFN story ID: 8491905 ], and you should go check it out, go check it out now because it's awesome.)
Long A/N is (absurdly) long, and long oneshot is even (absurdly) longer, hah. I do hope you enjoy (and if you do, please review).
Here we go.
to the sky
"Amazing Grace"
Amazing grace! (how sweet the sound)
That sav'd a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.
Verse I
Itachi was ten when his eyes started deteriorating.
(Only ten years old, and some of the older Uchiha whose eyes had started deteriorating naturally with age talked quietly among themselves:how it was such a pity, how it was such a waste for someone as talented as him, and he was so young.)
He had just passed the chunnin exams when it started, and at first the change wasn't even a hindrance (wasn't even noticeable) until it was. (He's just thankful that it happened when he was training in the village, and not while he was on a mission where it would have endangered him and his whole team.)
(And even now, Itachi sometimes tries to remember exactly what happened that afternoon in the training grounds, but everything is unexpectedly blurry, and the only thing clear is the memory of how much it hurt. He can remember activating the Sharingan, something that he'd done countless times before to where it was almost second-nature, and then he remembers his vision going fuzzy before it turns shockingly red. He sometimes still half-jokingly wonders whether someone smacked him in the head with a sledgehammer then, although he knows that a sledgehammer wouldn't have hurt nearly as much as it had. He remembers the red, and the pain, and then he remembers nothing.)
He passed out in the training grounds, (which he tries not to remember, just like he tries not to remember the way that his father scolded him profusely when he got home) and Shisui ran to find an adult after trying- and failing- to wake him back up. The required crash-course of medical treatment that academy students received had gone in one ear and out the other, and Shisui was hardly the picture of a well-trained shinobi as he babbled about the possibility of a stroke, and Itachi wasn't going to die, was he?
And he sat patiently and acted like a good little boy, just as his parent's would expect, and he let the Uchiha doctor (who specialized in Sharingan Complications, and didn't that just scare the ten-year old half out of his skin when he got a peek at the doctor's name tag and saw that) poke and prod at him, shine painfully bright lights in his still too-sensitive eyes. After more poking and more penlights, the doctor sent him home with instructions for Itachi to wear dark sunglasses until the sensitivity toned down, and make sure to get lots of rest. (The doctor gave his parents aseparate set of instructions, which included watching the boy very, very closely for any of the more dangerous warning signs, and he was sure that they would know the ones to watch for.)
For half a year, Itachi was completely fine, and didn't notice any more changes in his eyes. His vision went back to normal after a week of wearing dark tinted sunglasses twenty-four hours a day, and four days of enforced bed-rest. (His mother made him stay in bed those four days, and Itachi would never again underestimate his mother's skill as a kunoichi. Worried mothers could be much more formidable than most of the people he came across on missions.) His mother had wanted a week, but Itachi bargained for four days after he spent the first one staring at the ceiling, thinking about how if a person could die of boredom, he would be very dead.
And for half a year, nothing bad happened and his Sharingan didn't seem to suffer from any complications that would make it necessary for him to see Dr. Sharingan-Complication-Specialist again.
For half a year, and then on Itachi's eleventh birthday he went to the playroom to spend a free minute with his little brother in between training with Shisui and a mission. His lips were curled in a smile that no one but little brother Sasuke received anymore. (Itachi's smiles became more and more precious in the time between the incident in the training grounds and his birthday. He'd never admit it, but in that time occurred the mission where he first killed a man.)
He smiled at his brother, and gently adjusted the position of the toddler's fingers on an old, dull kunai that Mikoto had given him on his fourth birthday to start training him as a shinobi. (Neither she nor Fugaku would admit it, but the child's honest curiosity and improperly aimed first throws with no technique had relieved them. It was a welcome change from the calculating cleverness that had been in Itachi's eyes when he had been handed the set of kunai on his own fourth birthday. Itachi had carefully picked one up, and wrapped chubby fingers around it in perfect mimicry of Fugaku's own technique, and hurled it at the soft foam target with unnerving accuracy. The boy had turned to them with dark eyes, and when he gazed up at his parents, the black orbs were just as calculating on them as they had been with the kunai, and his parents rushed to fill the uneasy silence with praise.)
Sasuke threw the kunai at the target, and Itachi knew as it left the child's hand that the aim was off, the force behind the throw uneven as well. The toddler gave an annoyed huff and stomped a small foot when it missed, and Itachi smiled, smiled, smiled.
He sat back on his heels to watch his brother's clumsy attempts with the kunai, and he turned his dark eyes, still knife sharp and calculating, to the target that was once his own. He followed the path of visible gouges in the foam to the center where the red paint was almost completely worn off from his throws that never missed even then. And Itachi stopped breathing.
(He remembers a little bit of Sasuke screaming and Sasuke grabbing at his shirt when he didn't breathe and didn't move long enough to catch the child's attention. There's a fragment of a memory of his mother's worried face peering at him from above, and his father's voice calling his name. And it's all like that, little bits and pieces, scattered and mashed together, nothing standing out except the pain. Same as before, exceptworse than before, which Itachi wouldn't believe if he didn't have the burning red memories filed neatly in his head.)
'Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,
And grace my fears reliev'd;
How precious did that grace appear
The hour I first believ'd!
Verse II
He had weekly appointments with Dr. Sharingan-Complications, indefinitely.
Weekly, he endured the poking and the lights, every week the same exam without fail. After ten weeks, Itachi started to feel like a lab rat whose entire existence was to be poked and have light shone in his sensitive, hurting eyes. But the doctor had to be good at what he did, or they wouldn't let the clan's heir spend an hour with him every week, right? Itachi tried to convince himself of that, but when he sat calmly on the cold examination table in the doctor's office, he watched the doctor consult with his peers just outside the door. He watched the frown on the doctor's face grow more pronounced with every weekly examination that Itachi forced himself to attend, and behave, and don't kill the useless doctor-man.
And after twenty of the weekly appointments that Itachi went to without fuss, without complaint, he took advantage of the doctor's practicallyscheduled consultation with his fellow doctors to snatch up the file folder from its spot on the counter. (Itachi still remembers what he had read with painful clarity. The memory, despite how many times he's attempted to block it out, make it less sharp, is crystal clear.)
Uchiha Itachi | Male | Born: June 9 | Age: 11
Dec. 3
- Patient suffered from an unknown complication with his mature, fully mastered Sharingan at age 10, which left him unconscious
- Isolated incident? Recurrent issue? Data insufficient for accurate diagnosis
- Examination of chakra paths performed by Hyuuga showed no visible damage to chakra paths
- Thorough examination of eyes and Sharingan produced inconclusive results
- Recommendation is for patient to be watched closely for signs of mental instability, and for any future complications to be reported to DR. UCHIHA (Specialist in Sharingan Complications)
June 9
- Patient suffered from second unknown complication with his Sharingan, from reports given, nature is different from the initial incident
- Examination of chakra paths performed by Hyuuga, results same as previous exam
- Examination of eyes and Sharingan remains inconclusive
- Recommendation is for a follow-up appointment in 7 days to monitor the situation
June 16
- See previous exam report, dated June 9
- Recommendation is for a follow-up appointment in a week to monitor the situation
Oct. 27
- See previous 20 exam reports (See Cabinet 675, file UCHIHA, ITACHI in filing room for further reports)
- Examination has repeatedly proved inconclusive
- Regular appointments (weekly, 20 weeks) offer no information as to the nature of initial complication(s)
- Complication(s) are still unknowns
- Recommendation is for patient to be referred to Uchiha Clan healer for further analysis
He closed the file, and placed it back on the counter beside him. The file shook almost imperceptibly when he put it down, and he curled his shaky hands into white-knuckled fists.
Turned out that the doctor was just as useless as Itachi had first thought.
The doctor came back into the room, and gave Itachi a big, fake smile as he flipped open the file folder and leafed through the pages until he found the page that he'd written on at the beginning of the appointment, and folded it in three before sliding it into an envelope that was alreadylabeled with his parent's names.
He left the man's office with instructions to go straight home and give it to his parents right away. The walk seemed longer than usual, and he blinked, surprised at the image of the world in negative red and white. It worried him more than it would have before that his Sharingan had activated without him consciously making the decision. He blinked again, and the colors went back to normal, the edges of everything he saw softer than he thought that they should be.
He took the recommendation home to his parents, and listened to them tell him that he didn't need to visit the doctor for exams anymore, and Itachi nodded and played the part of grateful child flawlessly.
His parents remained in the study when he left, and he could hear their hushed voices talking hurriedly. He walked past the playroom that Sasuke practiced in, and went out to the training grounds where it first happened. (He avoided it after the incident, as did Shisui. The reminder that the perfect prodigy wasn't infallible was jarring.)
The edges of the leaves in the trees above him were softer than they were when he had been there last, and he wondered when he stopped being attentive. When had it all became boring and too easy to deserve his full attention. He blinked, and made the choice to activate the Sharingan. There was a moment where he thought it might be a mistake, a moment of familiar, searing pain that turned his vision red, and when his eyes cleared enough for him to see outlines and shapes, he realised that he was on his knees on the ground with his hands pressing against his eyes.
Itachi sat back on his heels and waited for his vision to clear, for the fogginess to fade behind crystal clarity. He waited, and when he turned his still-cloudy eyes to the sky, he realised that if it was going to clear, it would have already. In the uncertain light of twilight, he stood in the clearing of the training grounds, and turned the Sharingan off.
And when the pain finally cleared that time, Itachi had ended up back on his knees in the clearing, and he could see the sky pitch black through the trees.
He was twelve years old by the time that the Uchiha Clan's healer first had a chance to see him.
He was twelve when the Uchiha Clan's old, wise, possibly a little senile, healer examined his Sharingan, and then told him quite simply that he was dying, and that he wouldn't live past twenty-one.
It was only four months before the Uchiha Clan Massacre.
He doesn't remember joining ANBU, doesn't remember becoming a captain, but it must have happened because people always liked to mention it when they talked about how much of a prodigy he was. He doesn't remember that, but it doesn't matter because it wasn't important, and he remembers the important things impossibly well.
He can remember mourning. He can remember his best friend dying and leaving him behind. He can remember a funeral and a week of leave from ANBU because the higher-ups were worried about his mental state. He can remember black clothes, lots of black, and crying sometimes for hours without stopping. It's all a confusing, cloudy blur like his memories of both incidents with his Sharingan, which seem so very long ago. He remembers eyes, always eyes, because they have always, always been part of him, and part of the world he belonged to.
He does remember when the week of leave ended, and when he went back to be the perfect, prodigious (prodigal means very wasteful)Uchiha captain that the people knew him as. He remembers playing the part perfectly, even as everything became blurrier by the day.
Itachi also remembers the day that ruined his life. He's run the memory through countless times, wonders what he could have done differently, if he could have done anything.
He remembers Danzo, and he remembers hating Danzo even as he agreed to the impossible thing that the man asked of him.
He remembers remembering Sasuke, the little brother who was the only one to be gifted with his smiles. He can remember the tilting of the scales, and can remember the moment that he knew that Sasuke was the one he would choose.
It's all a blur, and not just because his vision failed a little more every time he used his Sharingan, but because his memories are scattered and fragmented. He sometimes tries to piece the scraps of memories from that time back together, but they mean too much to be patched together like a haphazard puzzle with all different shapes and missing pieces. It's a blur, but the things that really count are still clear.
He remembers that night, and remembers killing them all and locking away anything good left in him. He remembers that they're dead, and he did it, and Sasuke is there staring at him in horror. (Horror, his mind had whispered. You are horrifying.) He remembers leaving, and running from the look on the boy's face, and knowing in his heart that he made the right choice, knows that if Sasuke had died, it would have all been in vain.
He remembers that what he would become is a monster.
(And Itachi can remember the exact moment that he sold away what remained of his soul.)
Thro' many dangers, toils, and snares,
I have already come;
'Tis grace hath brought me safe thus far,
And grace will lead me home.
Verse III
His nightmares started the day after that night, and he sometimes woke up screaming, and he sometimes woke up with every muscle in his body tense and ready for a battle that would never come. But no matter which nightmare plagued him on any given night, when he regained enough of his sense to stand without needing something to lean on, he'd swear that the whole room smelled like blood. The smell of the blood that he had been paintedwith that night, hair soaked with it, the red under his nails and in his nose, everywhere. When he woke up late at night and could remember the nightmare of that very night all too clearly, he couldn't help but wonder if the smell of blood was him. Whether the smell of blood clung to him, even after a month of scrubbing his skin raw each night because he could still feel the memory of the blood caked on skin and hair even though he was clean.
The dark reminded him of that night. It reminded him of racing across the country to escape before he was caught and dragged back to face his brother's confusion and sorrow. He couldn't face that, he knew that, so he ran, and ran, even after he had reached his limit he ran past it because running (mostly) kept him from thinking about everything that he'd done. (He hated himself, a little, and ran away to make himself forget.) The dark brought back memories of drying blood clumping his hair together, sticky as it congealed on his face and clothes. It was everywhere, the smell overwhelming, and the accompanying stench of death was overpowering. In the first weeks after, he tried to go to sleep while it was still light out, to avoid the dark, but he always ended up waking up from a nightmare in the middle of the darkest part of night.
The nights he woke up in the early hours of the morning, he never tried to sleep again, not after he quickly learned that the nightmares were always twice as worse when he went back to sleep after waking up from one. He wouldn't go back to sleep, not when sleep meant nightmares and being tired was the more desirable of the two options. He'd pace back and forth along the length of his room until the sun rose and the soundly sleeping people started to stir around him. (He'd go through his day, and spend every moment dreading the time that sun would set and make the world dark and full of frightening memories.)
He took money with him when he ran. As much as he could carry with him, and it still wasn't nearly enough to make a dent in what would become Sasuke's inheritance when he was old enough and Itachi was dead enough for him to claim it as the clan heir.
It was enough to last for a year, at least, and if he was careful it might last for two. Enough to fulfill his basic needs until he found a job, maybe as a mercenary or maybe just a civilian job in a town small enough to not know who he was and what he was wanted for.
It paid for the motel rooms, at least, even if it did bring a bitter taste to his mouth every time he took out some more of it from his pack. They were trashy, creepy, hole-in-the-wall places. Somewhere that a missing-nin every once in a while wasn't anything strange, where criminal behavior was nothing to bat an eye at, and people who'd done even worse than Itachi could sleep soundly surrounded by other unsavory characters.
There'd be one in almost every village or town he passed through, usually near the red-light district, though sometimes just on the very edge of civilization. Never cost as much as rooms that were in the better parts of town, since the people who visited were looking for the same thing that Itachi was when he got a room in one of them. Just somewhere to stay for one night, a place to sleep that wasn't a cave or a tree.
But it was a bed, and a roof, and four walls with a locking door. A chance to get out of the rain when he was in Kiri, off the mountains that were scattered across Iwa and Kumo, out of the cold desert nights in Suna, and just out of sight whenever he risked venturing near Konoha.
In the places he didn't just pass through without stopping, and actually took the time to stay a night, get a good night sleep that sleeping sitting up in a tree just couldn't compare to, it was never an experience that he'd remember fondly. At least, not the motels.
The people could be... interesting. (Itachi remembers some of the stories that he heard from tipsy bar patrons. He remembers first learning that bars, bartenders, and the drunken customers were an excellent source of information.)
He was fourteen when he learned that if he opened the first three buttons on his shirt, and wore his hair down and messy, he could smile at the bouncers and get in without showing proof that he wasn't underage. Not that they wouldn't have been hard to bribe, with a little cash to keep them from saying anything as he would walk up to the bar and order a drink.
It was different in civilian bars, the need to be manipulating because he wasn't old enough, since the bars owned by ninja in ninja villages never stopped the kids that they knew needed it, and they didn't keep the minors out. Because in ninja villages with child killers, and underage ANBU who knew a thousand ways to make the most hardened criminals talk, sometimes the kids did need a drink, and sometimes they needed it more than most of the adults.
He never spent much time in those places when he was still a Konoha-nin, even though he knew his presense would never be questioned. Avoided them, because he'd always taught by his parents that it was a sign of weakness, and he couldn't show weakness as the perfect clan heir.
After getting drunk the first night he had tricked his way into a bar, and feeling blissfully numb and not hurting for the first time since he'd been a little boy, he realised why some of the ninja spent all their time outside of missions drinking themselves into oblivion. He made sure to never actuallydrink the drinks that he'd buy as props after that night. He never wanted to become one of the drunken men who talked endlessly about past times to validate their existences in the world, as only fragments of the people they'd been.
Then Itachi started to wonder why alcoholism or drug addictions were never more of a problem in the hidden villages, but he stopped wondering after he heard a story by a middle-aged man in a dark corner who was drinking himself into an early grave.
He heard about killing, and how the missing-nin had ran because he couldn't take the killing anymore because it hurt too much every time. Some of the others had frozen for a moment, and something like jealousy was on their weathered faces. Then the one by the bar who resembled a shark too much to be normal had laughed, and slapped the man on the back and told him that he was too weak, too thin-skinned, and too sensitive.
Itachi sat in the shadows and watched, listened, and that night he found out for the first time why it never was a problem for the other ninja, and why it always killed a little part of him to commit the unforgivable crimes that other ninja could do without blinking.
The ones who never drank to forget, who never regretted the things they did for their villages, they were ninja and could turn off that part of themselves that would have made it hurt. By sheer force of will, they suppressed human feelings, and did their jobs because they were ninja and ninjalived for their villages. They lived to do anything for their villages, and they could because they didn't need to feel when they turned it off.
Itachi tried. In the days to come, Itachi would try almost every night, but wouldn't ever figure out how all the other ninja did it, how they desensitizedthemselves to the things they did. It was a disappointment, failing at something that everyone else could, all the others who weren't prodigies and weren't genii like Itachi was.
Later, after the bar closed for the night and the people had left, Itachi tracked down the man who had called the drunken one weak even as his eyes gleamed with jealousy.
He was a reckless, foolish little brat, that was what the man had called him when he asked why the tall man had been jealous of the one who hurt. He asked him why he couldn't turn it off, why it still hurt, and asked how he could, how he could turn it off and make it stop hurting.
The shark-man had put his hands on Itachi's thin shoulders, and frowned down at the boy with a weary set to his sharp, inhuman features.
Itachi never forgot what he'd said. Never forgot how the shark-eyes had clouded with sadness, and what could have been regret, as he said to Itachi, "It means that you're a better person than the rest of us, kid."
It wasn't an answer, or at least not the one that Itachi wanted, but it answered his question. Maybe more than he wanted it to.
The shark-man had left, disappeared into the shadows of a doorway, and Itachi had bribed the busboy who was still cleaning glasses alone in the empty bar to give him a mostly full bottle of saké, which he drank the entirety of and got ridiculously drunk because the numbness would sink into his skin, and his bones, and his heart. He could pretend that he didn't feel, that he could turn it off when he wanted to and that he wasn't a better fucking person than everyone who could, because having a conscious wasn't much fun at all. He remembered the shark-man with the sad eyes, and thought,go to hell.
He'd dropped the bottle off the edge of a footbridge, and puked on the base of street light before he stumbled back to his cheap motel room to lay on the lumpy bed with the stained sheets, and not sleep all night.
And laying there, he pictured jealously in the shark-eyes, and thought viciously, You don't know anything.
He'd been a missing-nin for almost a year, on the run for almost a whole year, when he noticed that he was being followed from village to village.
It wasn't him being careless that made him take so long to notice. It wasn't that, it was more a case of the tracker being more skilled and experienced at hiding than the tracked was at searching.
The only reason that he even noticed at all was because shark-men with blue-grey skin who were twice the size of a normal man weren't exactly the most inconspicuous trackers. Which was why the man had been wearing a nearly flawless genjutsu, one that would have fooled Itachi if it hadn't been for the Sharingan seeing through it in a second.
It was a mistake, he'd know later, to activate the Sharingan that day. It was an automatic reaction, something ingrained since he could barely walk. And it had been perfectly fine, apart from one time after a fight when he'd deactivated it and woke up twelve hours later on his back in the spot where he'd turned it off, and there may have been four or five other incidents that went the same as all the rest, but the majority of the time it was fine.Perfectly fine, and it just figured, Itachi would think sourly, that it stopped working smoothly on the one day he really needed it.
The shark-man, Kisame ("Call me Kisame, kid," he'd said with a sharp-toothed smile), apparently had a bit of a soft spot for careless kids on the run from their villages.
Itachi didn't wake up for an entire day this time, a whole twenty-four hours. It had been the same again, the red, the pain, and then the nothing.
When he did wake up, it was feeling probably ten times worse than he had the morning after he'd met Kisame the first time, and this time he didn't even have a saké-hangover. Although, it might be considered a Sharingan-hangover, which was what Kisame had said jokingly, not knowing that it got Itachi thinking, and the boy-genius had decided that it was as good a term as any, since he didn't really know anything about the whole complicated complication situation.
The shark-man had been sitting in a chair next to the bed that Itachi woke up in, and at seeing the look on the boy's face, he'd immediately produced a glass of water and a couple of white, unmarked tablets that Itachi swallowed without question, and then regretted it when all of his training had kicked in a moment later. (Kisame had laughed for five minutes straight at the sick look on his face, and just laughed harder when Itachi asked what the pills were.)
And, Itachi had thought, whatever they were, they worked. (A lot better than any of the painkillers the doctors had tried the first two times, back when he was still a good little clan heir, and a hell of a lot better than the pills that had come in the first aid kit he'd brought with him from Konoha.)
"If I was going to kill you," Kisame had pointed out after Itachi was feeling less like he'd been kicked in the head by an ox, "I would have done it while you were unconscious and defenseless, instead of poisoning you after saving you."
"Silly little Uchiha," he said and then ruffled the boy's hair, showed sharp, pointy teeth in a grin.
It was a valid point, Itachi admitted to himself, and was only a little ashamed that he hadn't thought of it before as he scowled and batted the hand away from his head.
Why didn't you? he wanted to, but didn't ask, and the question must have been clear on his face, since the shark-man had replied anyways.
"I don't know." He shrugged helplessly, and then shrugged again. "Just don't know."
Itachi was had been a missing-nin for exactly a year when his semi-alliance with Kisame became official, and what he'd loudly claimed was just temporary, was really kind of lasting. (It was around the same time that Kisame admitted he kept the kid around because he might have been getting a little bit attached to the boy.)
They worked together, their weird partnership worked really, really well, which was part of what made Itachi consider staying with Kisame for a lot longer than just "temporary". It was... better. Better to be on the run when you were on the run with someone else, someone for company and social interaction, even if neither of them talked much at all. It was just better, and not as exhausting when you didn't need to keep your guard up 24/7 because you actually had someone to watch your back.
It worked, and when they ran into various ANBU across the nations who would try to take them back to their village for interrogation, or if they just ran into people who wouldn't go without a fight, they'd work together and watch each other's backs. Itachi watched out for Kisame when the shark-man would leap in headfirst and start hacking at their opponents with that sword. Took out the ones that weren't Kisame's immediate interest, and blocked blows toward the man that he didn't seem to notice.
("Kunai, shuriken, senbon- they don't even scratch me," Kisame had said in explanation the time that Itachi had yelled at him for not blocking a kunai headed straight for his jugular, and had almost gotten scalped when he made a reckless move and aimed a fire jutsu at the kunai to change its direction, and then tackled the much larger shinobi, who would have scalped him if Kisame hadn't plucked him off the boy by his neck, and then tossed him onto the ground like a sand bag before finishing him off ruthlessly. After Itachi had finished yelling, Kisame had scolded him gruffly for being an idiot, picking a fight with someone three times his size, and didn't he know better than to be so damn reckless?)
And it was a little weird, and it wasn't something that you'd think would work, but it did.
They made a good team, and it benefitted them both enough for them to try to make it last.
So it lasted, and they decided that they would stick together as a team until one of them was captured, killed, betrayed the other, or when Itachi turned eighteen, or when they both assessed that he could take care of himself proficiently enough to not die. Whichever came first. (After making the deal with the brat, Kisame decided that if Itachi turned eighteen, or if he got good enough to fend for himself, he'd stick around just to make sure that no one off'd him while he was sleeping. After all, dying young would be a waste of the training that Kisame planned on giving him.)
The Lord has promis'd good to me,
His word my hope secures;
He will my shield and portion be
As long as life endures.
Verse IV
Itachi was fifteen when he first woke up to blood leaking from his eyes like tears and the stench of copper filling up his nose. He'd been dreaming of a place that he'd long since left behind, yet still missed so much that it hurt more than killing. (Later that night, as he tried to scrub the blood stains out of his pillowcase in the leaky bathroom sink, he couldn't tell whether it was tears or blood still running down his cheeks.)
He was fifteen, and sleeping in one of the creepy motels. The pillow that had been under his head was streaked disturbingly with blood. Not that it had been particularly clean or spotless before, but the red is somehow brighter, and bleaches out the rest of the colors.
He startled awake, and he realised after a moment of letting his senses stretch to the edges of the room, that he wasn't alone.
The blood tinged his vision red, and he half expected pain to go with it, blinking through the cloudiness at the figure in the corner. His vision may have been red, but Kisame was familiar enough to be recognizable even then, with his vision hovering at somewhere less than half.
"I smelled blood," Kisame said in lieu of a greeting, and his arms crossed over his chest made him seem imposing, and made Itachi feel small in response.
And of course, Kisame had probably smelled his spilled blood enough times to know that the blood-scent in the air was Itachi's, and that was never a good sign, so of course it would bring the shark-man running, Samehada out and ready to fight.
Better to affect an air of disinterest, put on a blank mask to hide his panic, and dab gently at the blood drying on his cheeks with his fingertips.
"What's wrong with your Sharingan?" Kisame asked bluntly, and leaned the huge sword against the wall while he fished a handkerchief out of a pocket to dunk in a water-glass on Itachi's nightstand. The Uchiha took it after Kisame pushed it into his palm, and used it to scrub the blood away, red still dying his vision.
"There's nothing wrong with it," he said condescendingly, like it should have been obvious.
The shark-man snorted, and grabbed Itachi's chin to tilt his head back and look into his eyes. "You're tryin'a tell me that this is normal, and you think I'm gonna believe it?"
Put like that, it made Itachi feel a little foolish, but that... Sharingan-hangover or whatever-it-was was making his head spin and the world spin with it. "Would you blame me if I said 'yes'?" he asked smoothly, and brought a surprisingly shaky hand to his forehead.
Kisame held out a blue-grey palm, and Itachi squinted to see the familiar white tablets he was offering. Same ones as before, and the same situation as before; Kisame handing him a glass of water and him downing the pills in one gulp. He didn't worry about what they were that time, and to be honest, he probably didn't want to know what kind of drugs that Kisame was feeding him, just knew that they worked, and that was enough.
It was almost enough to make him laugh, that Kisame was giving his mysterious, unknown drugs that really worked, and worked well, well enough for Itachi to know that they were probably pretty damn potent. He'd take them, because whatever they were couldn't have been worse than the Sharingan-hangover.
And he was sick, really fucking sick and Kisame knew now, and maybe he knew before too. It would explain why he'd had the pills the first time, ready for when he woke up with Kisame in the motel room. The blood, that was what made it seem big. Too bright and too real, unexpected, not that he knew what to expect at all as he got sicker, other than dying young. Maybe it seemed a little too real to Kisame as well, which would explain why he looked a little rattled when Itachi finished washing the blood out of his eyes and looked up at his watching friend's face.
"That's not just nothing, and not even you can just brush it off," he said flatly, narrowing his eyes, warning the boy that lying to him would not be a good idea.
"Well," Itachi started, then stopped, because there wasn't really any good place to start. "I'm going to die before I'm twenty and it's somehow the Sharingan's fault, but I killed anyone who would have known more about it before I could ask questions about how I should expect the deterioration of my eyes to happen before it ultimately kills me, which seems like it's probably getting kind of close since I'm crying blood which doesn't seem like a good sign."
And. Well. Sure, he'd definitely take the opportunity to just blurt it all out in one breath to get it over with, semi-hysterical monologues after midnight in motel rooms and all that. At least, Itachi thought, Kisame didn't seem to expect that.
The expression on his face made Itachi start to sort of giggle helplessly and hysterically, a hand clasped over his mouth as he stared at Kisame, who seemed to be frozen in shock. Something wet started running down his cheeks as he blinked in rapid succession, and tried uselessly to get his hysteria under control.
He palmed his cheek, and knew from the smell that the wetness wasn't tears, at least not completely. There was probably two thirds blood in there, which didn't help anything. Itachi stared at his hands, covered in red, and the laughter dissolved to tears he let out a sob as he covered his face with his hands.
After a moment he could feel Kisame's hand on his back, rubbing in tentative circles, and he knew that it must have seemed pretty bleak if Kisamewas trying him hand at comfort.
Until he was sixteen, Itachi only knew about Akatsuki what he'd learned when he had been an ANBU.
He thought that Kisame probably had a hand in keeping him in the dark, probably kept away people who might tell him things, and kept away people who knew him as a member of Akatsuki. He wouldn't have found out, if not for a person who Kisame couldn't keep away, and managed to let slip some of the secrets before Kisame turned up and decapitated the poor guy.
He never would have taken the shark-man for a liar, and maybe he was a bit biased from all the time travelling with him and trusting him, but it wasn't something you'd think to look at him. Scary, strong, or deadly, they came to mind. Liar, or manipulative? Not so much.
He never even thought, not for a second, about the possibility that Kisame would lie to him. It made him feel like a fool, which wasn't something that was common for Uchiha Itachi, and he definitely didn't like it. That he had been so trusting, and let Kisame watch out for him while he was sleeping, cover his back in fights, and Kisame had been lying.
Deception, from someone like Kisame, it wasn't anything that Itachi would have thought of on his own. Even when he was told the truth by a loose-lipped missing-nin who was too quick to talk, it was difficult to believe. And apparently, Kisame had been planning on telling him soon.
He'd been a member of the Akatsuki the entire time they knew each other. Long term mission type of situation, get the kid trained up and ready to start, then he would have a partner lined up for immediately after joining.
The leader of the group ended up deciding to take advantage of the situation, since Itachi knew anyways, and Kisame said that he was skilled enough to take care of himself, he might as well join a few months ahead of schedule.
It wasn't like he had many options to choose from, and this seemed to be one of the more favorable ones. And, he got to stick around with Kisame, because lying and deception aside, the guy was kind of the closest friend slash mentor he had, and there was probably something ironic about the fact that his only friend was part shark and more of a vicious killer than him. Probably some irony somewhere, but Itachi started to hate irony around that time, when it got less amusing and more like a smack in the face.
It wasn't a completely dumb idea, since he'd be getting paid for some of the assignments he was given, and he wouldn't be left completely defenseless, since he was sticking with Kisame, and that was probably one of his better choices in life.
Not a total failure, he got rooms in the Akatsuki base, which was better than the motels he'd been living in ever since he left Konoha. Not a totally bad choice, and it wasn't like it was much of a choice at all, not if he wanted to keep living. Every single Akatsuki member, against a dying Sharingan user who refused the offer to join them. Wouldn't be much of a fight, wouldn't be much of a fighting chance for Itachi, and becoming one of them seemed better than that.
Better than dying, but he still couldn't scratch his Konoha hitai-ate. Wouldn't, couldn't, and he gave it to Kisame to the shark-man to do it for him. The gouge through the leaf symbol made his chest tighten painfully whenever he saw it, and he avoided looking at it more than necessary.
Then he was given the red cloud spotted coat, and that was pretty much the extent of initiation. He put on the coat, and tied his scratched hitai-ate over his forehead.
Itachi's reflection in the mirror wasn't anyone he knew, and wasn't anyone he wanted to.
He was one of the Akatsuki.
It's like being an ANBU again, the blur of the crimes, the memories clumping together and the loosing any sense of time passing.
He uses his Sharingan more in the first month of missions than he did for the entire time he ran from villages with Kisame. The assignments are routine, and completing them is more muscle memory and instinct than anything else. Too familiar, and so much like ANBU had been, right down to the corrupt and ambitious leaders, which makes his stomach twist to think about.
A blur, and there's lots of pain in his eyes and lots of red, red, red.
He wakes up with his eyes bleeding almost every night, and it gets so that he starts keeping a towel under his head when he sleeps to soak up the blood and stop ruining pillows.
Kisame knows, was there the very first time that it happened, and lives in the set of rooms right next to Itachi's, which is close enough for his shark-nose to smell Itachi's blood. He knows, and keeps a watchful eye on Itachi whenever they go out, and an even more watchful eye on his during the fights.
But then he goes and collapses during an assignment, which is nothing new, but is still unexpected and horribly, terribly, painful.
There's the red, and now it reminds him of crying blood, red clouds and tell-tale cloaks, ANBU and Akatsuki and why they were essentially exactly the same.
He wakes up in Kisame's rooms, the shark-man ready with the white tablets and a glass of water for when the dizziness settles enough for him to sit up and take the pills without falling over.
It only happens once before they get assigned to the task of bringing the Kyuubi Jinchuriki in, with the guidelines of keeping him alive and intact enough for the extraction procedure. He really doesn't want to know what the extraction procedure is, but he's got a bad feeling that he'll be an active participant if they manage to bring the kid in.
But it gets them out of the Akatsuki base, and back on the road, which is better than the base, even if the motels are worse than before, and the management charges them extra for at least one blood-stained pillow per stay.
The first time that Itachi really met Naruto was when he was seventeen, and the Kyuubi brat was thirteen and the most annoying person Itachi had ever met. Also the most unexpected person that he ever met, and that he could never predict anything that involved the blond was a large source of irritation.
He didn't know what to think of the kid at all, and just wondered whether that was what Kisame's first meeting with him had been like. (He still doesn't know what to think, and to be completely honest, Naruto is just too... Naruto to even be described or explained or understood.)
He was too much, and somehow he ended up climbing through the windows into Itachi's motel rooms at night, which was a little bit of weird and a lotof not knowing what to think about anything he did.
Kisame kind of, sort of, hated him, maybe a lot, but didn't make any murder attempts or kidnapping attempts when he was staying in Itachi's room, since it seemed to make him happier, and Kisame didn't want to compromise that, not when he was seventeen and still aging, getting closer and closer to twenty.
He'd keep quiet when he'd hear Naruto unsubtly sneak in, and wouldn't ever mention it to Itachi because it was just too weird, and Itachi was histrainee, his partner, his sort-of friend and he felt a lot like an older brother to him, which was where it got weird with the addition of Naruto, and the exposure of some long-buried over-protective instincts that might have been coming from the shark-y bit of him and wanted to chase the fox out, which he wouldn't do because the kid made Itachi happy.
But it still worked, weirdly, and he was always too much to be described, nothing that was ever simple, and nothing that was ever easy, but it stillworked.
Naruto kissed Itachi for the first time just before the Uchiha turned eighteen.
His climbing through the window had become a new part of his life on the road, and even as it became more of a usual thing, Itachi never could understand him anymore than before.
They talked, sometimes, had long conversations about everything and nothing. Other times they wouldn't, and Naruto would spend his time talking endlessly, while Itachi stayed quiet and listened until the voice became just a hum of background noise. Rarer times, Naruto wouldn't talk, and the motel room would be quiet and peaceful.
He learned to tune out Naruto's presence, and learned to expect the unexpected, although the latter was more difficult than the former. Let him worm his way into Itachi's life, because he was determined enough that if Itachi hadn't let him, the blond wouldn't have given up until he did. Easier to just let him have his way to start with, than it is to fight him on things and eventually give in to his persistance.
Then the blond kissed him, without giving any warning, and Itachi almost fell off the bed when he jerked back in surprise. But it wasn't so bad, not nearly as bad as the times when girls his age in the village would run up and kiss him on the cheek or the lips, then race away before he could react.
Definitely not as bad as the time a very drunken cross-dressing male hooker had kissed him and offered to give him a discount, which was when Itachibolted because the clown-makeup caked on the man's face was smudged and the skirt was riding up to show things that Itachi didn't want to see.
Naruto was a smiling, laughing, crazy ball of energy with a talent for wreaking all kinds of havoc. He kissed better than Itachi at first, and had warm, soft lips. Wasn't unwelcome, it was more welcome than not, and Itachi got so used to the boy's frequent visits that he found it disappointing on the nights when Naruto didn't tumble in through his window. He'd spend time in the dark and thought too much about how the blond made him feel, because he did make Itachi feel something.
Yes, when this flesh and heart shall fail,
And mortal life shall cease;
I shall possess, within the veil,
A life of joy and peace.
Verse V
His twentieth year was spent waiting and running. The first several weeks, he planned to try to just wait for the deadline to sneak up. (He realised after the first week, that he wasn't any good at just waiting.)
He spent his time after that running as fast and as far as he could. Kisame (and Naruto, whenever he could), followed after (always) and the shark-man's constant presence was comforting and solid, something that had been there for long years. (And when Naruto managed to push enough drinks onto Jiraya to make the sannin pass out, Kisame would pretend that he didn't hear the Kyuubi jinchuuriki climb (loudly, Kisame might add) through the window of the motel Itachi was staying in that night.)
When the months started dwindling down, and days started passing in what felt to Itachi like a blink of an eye, he forced himself to stop running andwait. And he waited impatiently for death to catch him. As he approached twenty-one and his health continued to deteriorate, he'd stay up late and get barely an hour of sleep, waiting for the sun to rise so he could strike off another day on the calendar. (The new habit irritated Kisame to no end. Although he was not annoyed enough to rouse Itachi from the much-needed death-like slumber he'd fall into, and was still worried enough that he'd keep guard just outside the room until Itachi woke up on his own.)
The day that Itachi turned twenty, he went out to a bar and spent too much money on too much of the most potent saké the bartender offered. (Naruto found him slumped over in the doorway, and hauled him up to the motel room bed. He watched Itachi's eyes as they stared at the ceiling, Sharingan spinning lazily. Neither of them slept a wink, and the sun rose on the small room in the dingy little room over the bar. Naruto didn't understand why when the sun rose high enough to cast a golden slow over both of their forms on the bed, Itachi started laughing near-hysterically and didn't stop until the inn's housekeeping knocked on the door to ask if anything was wrong.
(Twenty. I'm twenty and I'm still alive. They were wrong, and I'm still alive, Itachi first wondered whether the old man had been just a little off on his guess, and the deadline was wrong by maybe a month or two, that his death was still quickly approaching.)
Each time he waited by the window and watched the sky get brighter, it felt like a victory. Another day, another chance, and Itachi would stand in the new, fresh sunlight until Naruto inevitably woke up with an aggravated howl at the too-bright sun, and inevitably demanded that Itachi please close the curtains and, "come back to bed and sleep, and - Aggh! - there's still a crack and light's getting in! Itachi!"
The days passed slowly, and sometimes in the mornings Naruto had to drag him away from the window where he waited patiently to see the sky lighten as the sun rose again. (It was proof for him, to see it. Proof that he was alive, and they were wrong, and he didn't have an expiry date.)
As the days melted into weeks, and the weeks into months, the rising sun lost some of it's appeal, and Itachi grew more and more sure that he'd escaped the deadline that the healer had given him. (Naruto was glad when Itachi stopped acting like the apocalypse was sneaking up on them.)
"Are you done?" Naruto asks on the morning he wakes up to the curtains closed, and Itachi laying in the bed beside him. "Done... doing whatever-it-was you were doing?" he asks, and turns his head to see Itachi's face.
Itachi doesn't answer for some long moments. Then he takes a breath, feels a brief rush of satisfaction that he still can breathe, and smiles, smiles at Naruto who's waiting patiently for an answer. "I was waiting."
It's not a proper answer, it doesn't make sense, and he can see the confusion in the blue eyes, knows that Naruto must have a thousand questions that he doesn't, and won't, ask because he's letting Itachi have this moment, have this silence and this calmness, that has lost all of the fear and tenseness that his days and weeks of waiting were filled with.
Naruto watches him with steady, peaceful blue eyes as Itachi stands to throw open the raggedy, faded curtains. The rising sun that shines in is no longer another day ending for him to mark off the calendar, now it's the beginning of a new one full of hope.
"I'm done waiting," he murmurs, a dark silhouette against the light, and reaches for Naruto's hand to pull him onto his feet with him.
"You're done?" Naruto mumbles, and takes the hand of Itachi's that doesn't already have its fingers laced through his own.
Itachi nods an affirmative, and gazes out the window once more, and then looks away, to meet Naruto's eyes which shine even brighter than any sunrise ever could.
"I ran until I couldn't anymore, and then I waited. Now I'm done waiting." He glances toward the horizon, and the sun rising in the East, where he needs to go, and will go.
"Now I'll start chasing."
It's still not an answer that answers any of the questions he was asked, which probably completely annoys Naruto as he only finds more questions and no answers, but he doesn't show it, just grins wide enough to show all his teeth, and tightens his hands around Itachi's.
(There is something impossibly freeing in making the choice to go looking for death instead of waiting for it to come to you. It's like a weight released, the loss of all the fear, all the dread, and he's left with enlightening acceptance. It's imminent, it always has been, now it still is, and Itachi always tried his hardest to change that. He's not anymore, not trying. But he's not giving up either, he's changing the objective and getting it overfaster. There's something about choosing your own death that sets a person free, and Itachi wonders why he spent so long dedicating his life torunning, and then waiting, and always, always fighting.)
They'll go back to bed and watch the sun rise to the highest spot in the sky, and then they'll nap together until Naruto's awoken by all the questions he has to ask Itachi.
He won't tell Naruto what he means by chasing, will only smile secretively and distract him with butterfly kisses when he starts getting annoyed. He won't break the boy's heart, because it might break the boy as well, and that's not what Itachi wants.
He'll take him out later, let him drag him to a ramen stand because that's the only place that Naruto will eat at today, and watch him eat bowl after bowl, then he'll pay for the meal, of which he only ate one bowl of the fifteen he pays for.
They'll go back to the room and the bed and the windows on either side, one that shows sunrise in the east in the morning, and one that frames the sunset in the west in the evening. They'll lay there together, and despite having napped until noon, Naruto will fall asleep early after the previous morning when he woke up in the darkness before sunrise, felt Itachi shifting and woke up to be there for the sunrise with him.
Then Itachi will extract his arms from around Naruto, and make the slumbering boy release his neck so he can find his bag under the bed, and pack up all his belongings, all of the evidence that he'd ever been there. He'll give Naruto a final kiss on the forehead just before the moon rises, just before he'll leave under the cover of black, velvet night.
Naruto will awake the next morning, and stretch like a fox, hands reaching and failing to find a familiar warm body. He'll look to the window, and not find the person who should be there. He'll call the man's name cautiously, unsurely, and receive only echoing silence in response. Then he'll pack up his own things, and get ready to leave, since there's not much point in staying alone.
(Itachi will be out of the country when Naruto realises that he's really not coming back to the town to say goodbye. That there isn't a note to find, and that maybe there's nothing else to it, and maybe he just left.)
Naruto'll keep the memory of the confusing words Itachi had given as answer in the forefront of his mind, and puzzle over them as he asks around for information about the ironically, now-missing missing-nin. And it'll click suddenly, shockingly, and he'll be on his feet running as fast as he can before it even really registers what he's figured out. (East, he was always looking East, that's where he'll go, I have to follow him, I have to find him.)
(When the answers finally start making sense and being an actual answer, Itachi will already have reached the Uchiha Hideout, and will be taking his place on the throne with a calm smile on his face.)
By the time Naruto finally unravels exactly what Itachi had meant with all his riddles, it'll be too late to stop it. (Which he knew before he even started running, because he could never stop Itachi, couldn't, because Itachi wasn't something to control, he was something to let go.)
When Naruto reaches the place, he'll know immediately that he can't make a difference, can't stop it, can't stop Itachi because he's too late, too slow, and it's done.
(It's too late, there's nothing left. He can't change it or stop it or do anything, and maybe he never could because it always ends up that what he does is too little or too late, or both.)
The throne will be empty by the time he arrives, and Itachi will be gone, Sasuke gone, the body gone. Nothing left.
When he gets there, it'll be too late for him to change anything at all.
(And Itachi will be long dead.)
The earth shall soon dissolve like snow,
The sun forbear to shine;
But God, who call'd me here below,
Will be forever mine.
Verse END