The Carbonari Exchange
Naruto fan fiction
Genre: gen, pre-series, horror/tragedy
Rating: PG (K+); violence
Characters: Ino's Dad, Fugaku, Itachi
Word Count: 300 exactly, after much prodding. XP
Summary: The morning after the Uchiha Massacre, Yamanaka Inoichi investigates. He is,after all, the only one who can see it through their eyes.
Notes: Written for Week 36, "seeing red," at Naruto_Contest on Livejournal.
The body is still warm the next morning, humming with the spill of chakra as too-much energy squeezes out of every pore.
It takes ninja so long to die.
--
Inoichi opens his eyes to Fugaku's last memories. An empty room separates him from Itachi (his son--it hits Inoichi-in-Fugaku with feral intensity, as though for the first time). Itachi wears the matte ANBU armor, but is unmasked. He breathes heavily. Sound like crows weeping.
Nothing comes easily, Fugaku meant to teach his son; tonight he learns the same. He raises his sword.
Itachi meets him heartbeat for heartbeat, all sideways blows and quick, unexpected wrist-flicks. A propensity never to dodge, to instead slip into too-close spaces, where no sword can reach. Too close in more ways than one, a sentiment he knows Itachi does not share.
Yet, Itachi burns as cinders do, with a raw wildness that is not his. Like he is fighting something that is not Fugaku, nor the clan—looking for something. His clansmen are silenced; mother, lovingly slaughtered. Still he searches.
Itachi twists inward, and Fugaku finds his son in his arms, but a blade at his throat. His son's eyes bleed with the power of sharingan. (What do you hope to uncover?) There are many things Itachi, like Fugaku, will never see. Father's last words:
"You will not find it here, Itachi."
Itachi's blade slides across his neck. Fugaku guides it deeper.
--
"Yamanaka-taichou, what should we tell him?" A faceless shinobi asks. When Inoichi does not answer, the Nondescript revises his inquiry: "How much should we tell him?"
Inoichi picks himself up from the floor, where the pressure of his boots has made the floorboards cough up dark spittle. He looks to Uchiha Sasuke's crumpled form. "Nothing. Tell him nothing."
A father protects his children.
.end
24 February 2009
Constructive criticism is much desired!