Note: Each "chapter" should be self-contained, although this is more of a collection (or one-shot) of writings that take place in the same alternate universe. Ended up a lot glummer than I intended, proving that I can ruin everything, even (pseudo) zombies… granted, I didn't even get to anywhere interesting. Please don't let that stop you from reading. :P
**Postscript is DONE and will be updated tomorrow, so don't worry!
Disclaimer: Not even the title is mine ("Silver and Cold," AFI).
Warning: Kind of bizarre and dark, with implied uncomfortable issues.
...
"…Even if it was from a human body?"
"After it's dead, it's just meat. Tell me, what's the point of being squeamish?"
"The point is that it used to be human!"
"Starve, then. Be my guest."
"And what about them? What does that make them to you – walking, talking steaks?"
He is nothing but a shadow gliding through puddles of seeping darkness – but the intruder has made a terrible mistake in wandering into this forest. For the forest at night under a gibbous moon is nothing but shadows, and it belongs to the Nara Clan.
"What are you hoping to do?" drawls Shikamaru, his hands already clasped in a seal. "Your probation hasn't even ended and you're stirring up trouble."
The Uchiha lifts his head. In the darkness, Shikamaru catches sight of the bright crimson of his eyes. This is where it all begins.
"They don't need to eat, do they?"
"I'm sure they can. But I doubt they need to."
"There, that's your answer. They're not more selfless than us; they just don't feel hunger."
"That's not what I said at all."
"You ever catch one reminiscing about a great meal – something everyone alive has done at least once? There! I know you haven't."
"I'm not saying they'd miss food like we do. But they do look hungry sometimes."
Itachi does not wake with an appetite, which almost proves difficult for Sasuke. He's prepared for it, though. He knows how Edo Tensei works, and the resurrected went into battle with gusto and very few actual weaknesses, hunger not being one of them. He did originally plan to use that technique – with his genius at learning from observation, Sasuke is confident about success – but then realized that Edo Tensei would not be enough. After all, the last time, his brother was never defeated – he simply relinquished his hold on the body. His main worry is that Itachi's spirit has moved on, far past the reach of even the strongest forbidden jutsu.
His heart is in his throat when Itachi opens the eyes of his new, reconstructed body – and will he have the Mangekyou Sharingan? For now, his irises are a dense, dark grey – and stares up with an unfamiliar expression. Sasuke has never seen Itachi look without a care in the world, or so nakedly blank.
"Here, aniki," he mutters, "hurry and eat this." Otherwise, he isn't sure the jutsu will hold.
"I'm… not hungry."
"Just do it," he insists. "Please."
Docile, unknowing, the creature-who-looks-like-Itachi complies as Sasuke assists him into a sitting position on the dirt field scratched full of summoning prayers and exhortations. It's just a kind of powder mixed into water in a thin tube, some of the fragments perhaps slightly larger; Sasuke refuses to contemplate how the foul mixture might taste.
His brother coughs and chokes on the drink. Sasuke steels himself and encourages him to take another swallow. It's for his own good.
"If you could demand answers from the dead, what would you ask?"
"I wonder if the dead would have more questions to ask us."
The dead do dream.
He opens his eyes to see a boy standing before him with a curiously strained expression on his face. Why this is so (why here? Why are they there in a barren field with a green meadow on the horizon? Why does the air smell sweet and clean, like a forbidden memory bottled up?) - he couldn't have said. Just like someone trying too hard to decipher what he has to do immediately after waking, he's already forgotten whatever dream came before.
He knows, with a growing surety, that he loved this boy, with his hollow, searching eyes and all the trust that looked misplaced in them. As if sinking into a still pool of water, he is gradually remembering how it feels to be concerned for things external to him, beyond his shallow experience of mere images and sensations and movement – because he has those, too, the dirt under his fingertips, the cool steel handle of the small blade that leaps to his hand, with which he can deal a quick, sharp slash across the jugular and end the boy's quiet observation. He wouldn't do that, of course. But the details escape him at the moment, bits of lint and dust floating past on an air current that will soon carry them into irretrievable spaces.
There is a light touch on his cheek, so ghostly that he reaches up to scratch it. It proves to be a stray hair that the faint breeze drew across his face, dark, black like the boy's (a man, corrected an internal voice, but he'll always be a boy to him, always younger, always to be protected, already broken), and his fingernails are a strange, ashy grey, cracked with black flakes. Old polish.
"Almost," blurts the boy in front of him. "I had to change some things, but it should…" His hands blurs as he forms different shapes with his fingers – seals – nearly too quickly to follow, but he knows those shapes, the same forms; his muscles remember them as he names them silently – Tiger – Snake – Dog – Dragon – Dragon – Hare – Ram – "It should work now."
Everything arrives too fast. It's the mental equivalent of taking a direct punch to the face. It drives him to his knees. His hands fly up to clutch his hair. His mouth has fallen open – he can feel the scream in his throat, dead (new) chords aching as they vibrate with the harsh sound. His throat ends up hurting almost as much as his head, so his cry of pain cuts off. Be still, he thinks. Assess your condition. What happened?
The memories flood his mind, filling every nook and sliver of space in a breathless torrent. His head bows under the onslaught. The worst of them jump out to sting him – the moonlight on the bloodstained tatami, reflected in his mother's tear-washed eyes; Kisame's laugh, sandpapery and rough on the ears, while the blood and tissue of his opponents rain back down from above; sorry, Sasuke, but this is the end.
It hurts like a bitch, but slowly, the deluge thins. They settle, like silt on the riverbed at the end of a rainstorm when the water stops churning. The pounding lessens; it's still painful, but dulling to a fine headache.
He braces a hand on the ground and gets to his feet before Sasuke can clasp his arm in a supportive grip. Sasuke's other hand is holding a small, opaque tube, a container one might use for liquid samples.
Itachi opens his mouth, but Sasuke is the one who takes a deep, shuddering breath. "I was the last," he says, his gaze thudding to the ground at Itachi's feet. "But I'm not anymore."
"You know as well as I do that I shouldn't be here," says Itachi. His voice comes out steady, although even now, his legs tremble under his weight. Perhaps he looks as frail as he feels, because Sasuke fixes his dark eyes on him again, and the hesitant smile on his face yields to a more subdued expression.
"Well, then… I'm your foolish little brother, and I need you. Is that good enough for you?"
Itachi stares at him long enough for the boy to look uncertain, but at last, he nods. He won't act before he understands everything about his situation. Sasuke takes that as compliance and leads the way out of the field. "They'll accept you," he says fiercely. "You never did anything wrong."
Itachi tastes ashes in his mouth.
"Now, what do you say when you take something without permission from someone else and cause a shitload of trouble for him?"
"'Sucks to be you'?"
The famine hits the Fire Country exactly six months later. At first, the drought seems no worse than the one that killed the harvest just before the outbreak of the Second Secret World War. It lingers, however, long past the summer. Winter comes without a storm. The daimyou trades desperately with Lightning Country and the lands east of the mainland. Prices rise steadily on grains and vegetables. Meat is a wistful dream.
Everyone makes do with what they have.
Tsunade flounders. The Hokage's job outside of wartime is to negotiate clients for the ninja chafing inside the village walls, but commissions through official channels are becoming too expensive. And if food can be stolen, why wouldn't the ninja mercenaries simply take whatever they want rather than protect the merchants? This, in fact, is what most of the hidden villages end up doing. With the memory of the fourth war still fresh in their minds, they do their best not to encroach on each other's area of operations. Scarcity, though, has a way of bringing people together.
The villagers of Konoha feel the first pinches of hunger.
The trained fighters – four to every ten civilians – struggle with their inactivity and resentment.
There is a bit of a scramble to find alternate means of entertainment to kill the time. Genma's betting pool has always been a good diversion, though his game used to have lower stakes and subjects like guessing which ninja was former ANBU. Higher-ranking ninja weren't allowed to join in or give tips; they are diverted to other bets. As the days wear on, Genma's pool of participants expands. They speculate on who will disappear next; who won't return from their mission. Whose teammates will ensure that it happens.
Hana Inuzuka is the one who actually works as the bookie. Genma drives up interest in the betting pool in the break room and abroad; Hana takes the bets. They work so well together that they nearly decide to see if they'll work just as well together in other contexts, before common sense and greater interest in sustaining their joint business venture assert themselves. Hana's mother, Tsume, frowns on the betting at first, calling it a crime ring. Hana retorts that it's a gambling ring; it's only a crime ring if it's illegal, which it isn't.
She and Genma start taking more than money in the second spring since the famine began. Goods obtained from who knows where. A pound of lean jerky. Stale buns stuffed with minced meat and pickled vegetables. Nothing is growing, and everyone knows it. The trees in Konoha are withering.
"Someone should figure out how to revive them," goes the murmurs. Yamato pretends not to feel the accusing stares.
"There's a jutsu for that," goes the flippant reply.
"Any idea who's behind the Icha Icha sequel?"
"You look like you might have one."
"I'd like to place two-hundred ryo on the Fifth's apprentice… Haruno Sakura."
"An interesting choice. Would you also like to put money on her for being the first person to get close to the elder Uchiha?"
"Jeez, there's a pool for that? I don't even think they've ever talked to each other! But I suppose they'd look alright together… the whole corpse revival issue might be her kink… and who would you put your money on?"
"The house doesn't bet."
Sasuke keeps Itachi sequestered away for a long time, but the truth will out, and when it does, Naruto takes his part. It is rough going for a time, especially with the village council (dead-)set against them. Sasuke spits in their faces and dares them to ignite the civil war that his brother averted over a decade ago.
But soon, people find a reason to accept the Uchiha. It's because Konoha used to be relatively rich, but after the war and the ravages of famine on top of it, its village is rotting. People are starving, and at the end of it, they die. The poor go first.
When the rich start to fall off, that's when the first knock on the door arrives.
At the beginning, they beg, "Bring my child back! You know how to bring back the dead! Just bring him back! Please!"
"You're a monster," they say between pounding their fists on the door. "You're a monster if you can be this heartless!"
Sasuke ignores them.
Until they begin to harass Itachi, seeking him out atop the Hokage Monument or in the decaying streets where no one lives any longer. He obeys the summons of the council, who sneers that their medical staff need to perform an autopsy – no, biopsy, excuse the slip – on him. Even they have begun to look gaunt. Everyone does except Itachi. He looks strong and whole. No one has ever seen him eat.
And yet.
No one, however, dares to lay a hand on either Uchiha.
"I heard it's very simple. All you need is a piece of him – even a single hair. And after you eat it… you become immortal, too. Imagine. No more hunger. No more fear of dying…"
"If it were that simple…"
"Have you tried? Then don't knock it before you do."
They're wrong, of course. Itachi feels hunger. Perhaps not for material sustenance, but for company; human company, at that, though he would never confess it in the hearing of the cats and risk offending them.
When he first returns to Konoha, soon after they reluctantly decide that he should be considered a shinobi of the village, he is accosted by all manner of curious individuals and former colleagues. It takes an awkward period of dancing around the topic before the questions roll in relentlessly –
Is there life or existence beyond death? Does he see this as a second chance? Are he and Sasuke plotting to take over Konoha? How did his brother bring him back? Can he die again? What about feeling pain? Does he remember everything? Does he ever have urges? Does he feel hunger? Does he ever want sex? Is he capable of performing? If someone takes his eyes, will they regenerate this time around?
Perhaps – no – of course not – he cannot answer – he doubts it (has he ever tried to die again?) – all his sensory nerves are intact and fully functioning – he wouldn't experiment with his eyes, nor has he any desire to check if he has the Mangekyou – and oh, yes, he remembers plenty.
He remembers even the useless details, an echo of his old preferences as Hana asks him one day if he would like to go with a group of them to a yakiniku restaurant. "I'm not overly fond of steak," he says evenly, to which Hana laughs: We're not going to get along, are we? He would have gone with them had she expressed interest in the teahouse next door.
Itachi is no fool; he has heard of the gambling ring that she runs with Genma, and he is quite aware that the Inuzuka Clan is in a desperate position these days. Their dogs have begun to volunteer for fights, at first against their masters' will, and now of necessity, it seems. The weak will feed the strong. Bets are taken on these fights, too. Genma divulges the secret to winning one evening over too much shochu.
"You see, you don't come out on top by betting on the winner by instinct. You come out on top because you rig every fight. And the house…"
"Yes?" Itachi prompts quietly.
"The house always wins."
Hana, he knows, does not talk to him or ask him questions out of idle curiosity – perhaps not even out of a desire for profit. He sees the reason quite clearly in her unwavering stare.
She, like him, like everyone else, is hungry.
It's the one topic they don't broach in their disjointed interactions, not even in the nights and mornings that slither in through the window after Sasuke has made himself scarce; Itachi will only bury his face in the long, dark hair (not his) swirling on his pillow and inhale, letting cruelly gentle fingers rake through his own black strands. They will discuss anything else.
"And what would you have done if I did have … difficulty?" he asks as he tastes her shoulder.
"Well," says Hana, "I'm sure there's a jutsu for that, too."
He snorts, nearly succeeding in disguising the sound but for the fact that Hana drags his face around so that she can see his eyes.
"You haven't used the Sharingan once since."
He pulls her hands away. "No."
Her fingers return to his scalp, tugging on his hair. The first time that Hana nips at his wrist, Itachi distracts her, but whenever she gets too rough, he pushes her from him. Always, she lets him go without protest. It's the only reason he allows this to continue.
"Do you ever wonder if the world has gone a little mad?"
"There isn't much room left for wonder when you have certainty."
"And how did we get here? I wonder what it would have been like if your psychotic relative had won and we all lived in his dream world."
"Who can say that we aren't?"
Three years ago, Shikamaru and Sasuke arrange for a game of shogi. Shikamaru receives the notice two days prior; like several others, he is forced to participate in the rehabilitation of the last living, breathing Uchiha. The famine hasn't hit yet, there are still deer in the Nara Forest, and it is still occasionally Shikamaru's responsibility to feed them.
Sasuke meets him at the edge of the forest, his black gaze closed and reserved as Shikamaru emerges from the mottled shadows. This man wanted to be the next Hokage, and Shikamaru almost sniggers, not unkindly but at the impossibility.
The Uchiha's eyes flit past him briefly to the forest, and it is only natural that Shikamaru's narrows in response. He thinks of family secrets and territories, and what else is hidden in the darkness of a deep pit beneath the watchful trees.
"Is he still there?" says Sasuke, as if he is talking about the weather over a boring D-class mission.
Shikamaru knows, at once, the subject under discussion. It's the one unfriendly creature in the Nara Forest, though he also knows with cool, calm rationality that the largest piece of Hidan left intact is likely the size of a fingernail. If he somehow reassembles himself, it'll be to an eternity trapped in a net of shadows. Sometimes, Shikamaru wonders if it would have been better to boil the remnants in a vat of acid, or feed him to wild dogs …or ninken, but he wouldn't do that to the Inuzuka.
And what would happen to whoever ate that evil, immortal corpse?
He sighs, hands in his pockets. "None of your business, Uchiha. Don't be more troublesome than you already are."
Sasuke smiles slightly. He looks like he is out of practice. "So, he's still there."
Shikamaru feels the hairs on the back of his neck stand straight up.
He rolls his shoulders. "Let's just get this over with."
"It's only right that the dead should help the living survive."
...