Clay
One
When Itachi was younger (and probably more innocent, much like his otouto, so sweet and untainted), his parents tried to mold him, like clay. Once he turned thirteen and opened his eyes wide enough to realize what they were doing, he killed them with their own tools.
His father, who'd teased him with tales of greater shinobi and empty promises of higher powers, was the first to go. Itachi plunged a katana straight through his chest and couldn't help but feel slightly pleased with the fact that a weapon suited for ANBU (Fugaku's faith in the organization was almost laughable) also did quite a fine job of silencing the man as he took his last breath.
It was…unfortunate that his mother had heard the body hitting the floor, though. He remembers how loud her footsteps were as her feet came crashing down on the wood. She slipped several times, in her hurry; yet even as he listened to her, his heartbeat remained calm and steady. He could not bring himself to be afraid.
Itachi stood completely still as he heard her pause outside the room. His katana rose slowly as she slid the door open and came running inside, and when she stopped before him, he brought the sword down in a clean arc, slitting her throat.
For a split second he wondered whether it was really necessary to kill the only woman that had never regarded him with less than warmth and love, but then he tossed such thoughts aside, into the depths of the Nakano River for safekeeping with his memories of Shisui.
In a quick spurt of scarlet, his ANBU vest was peppered with her blood. It ran down the gleaming metallic surface of his katana in thick, dark streams and pooled around the hilt until it nearly coated his knuckles.
He raised his fist to his mouth to taste it and let the mixture of iron and salt wash over his senses, half-wishing it would cleanse him of his sins and the wrongs that his clan had wrought upon him.
It was their fault, he assured himself. They had envisioned a super assassin and shaped a child into him as best as they could, but their plan was filled with holes that he had slipped through like quicksilver, eager to break free from their feeble dreams of silly things like fate and names. They had ambition but lacked imagination and the vision to pursue or build upon their own ideas.
He was ashamed to say that, as an Uchiha, his roots were rotted and twisted by fools. The clay that he'd been shaped from was faulty. Disgusting. Mottled.
When Sasuke wandered into the Uchiha compound to find bodies strewn carelessly throughout the streets, resting eternally in pools of their own blood, he screamed as loudly as his tiny little seven-year-old voice box would allow.
Itachi heard the shrill noise pierce through the night air, and he smiled, clutching his sword tighter. He withdrew two shuriken from his weapons pouch, and, when he flung them at his otouto, watching how easily they embedded themselves in his shoulder, he thought about how easily, too, they would scar later.
He, himself, was already ruined, and so it was only fitting that he should destroy another. With the two marks he left upon his little brother, he also left the stinging first symptoms of an illness that he expected would eat away at them both.
-0-
Two
It was, befittingly enough, his own ANBU squad that hindered his departure from Konoha. They were all at least a decade older than him and had worked enough with him in the past to know whom they were dealing with – but perhaps not how best to handle him. He doubted half of them deserved their places on the team but had never voiced his opinion. …Nor had he ever stepped in to rescue them from traps he was sure they weren't equipped to escape. It was not his job to coddle them.
No one had ever done the same for him.
In his academy days, he'd been revered for the minimal amount of time he actually spent there. The course work was, to him, glaringly insulting in its simplicity. As he began to rise in the ranks, the open compliments he'd grown accustomed to receiving were sheathed and hidden, and the fear he'd suspected was always there began to grow and grow. People that had once chased after him (idolized him, as Sasuke had - something which never did sit well with him) learned to avoid him.
If he were a lesser man, he would have liked to think that they'd been admiring him purely for admiration's sake, but he was not blind. When they said, "Good job, Itachi-kun! You're so cool!", they meant, "What else can you do?", and he had known this. Even in their compliments, they had been pushing him, fueling him to become something greater.
…And he had, indeed, become something far greater than he imagined they could have seen him—or any other shinobi, for that matter—maturing into.
As his team stood before him, he realized with a strange, satisfied tilt to his lips that Hatake Kakashi was the only one not shaking in his boots. He also realized that the very same man was staring back at him with a borrowed Sharingan, mocking life and death, rebirth.
This was all too funny.
He captured Hatake in the Tsukiyomi and stabbed his katana through his stomach, scarring him, marking another for illness.
When he withdrew the sword and heard the delicious puncture of flesh, felt the warm rush of blood as it spilled onto his arms, he stopped to ponder the fact that he'd never felt more like a god.
-0-
Three
He finds in the Akatsuki others of his talent, his curse, and is surprised to discover that others like him exist. He is amazed that there are other creatures bearing the weight of his illness when he has not (personally) thrown it on top of them.
He also finds that, in their own way, each of the members is interested in art. Kisame likes to slice his Samehada through bodies and watch the rolling of heads that follows. To him, it's all about dismemberment and decapitation. Numbers and figures.
Konan and Sasori regard their own bodies as pieces of art. Konan is paper; she is anything she wants to be. (A butterfly, an angel.) And Sasori can change hosts at will, so in the same sense, he can also be anything. Anyone.
Deidara couldn't live without the use of his explosives. He prefers magnificent shows of art. Subtlety is completely and utterly—hopelessly—lost on him.
Tobi's art has to do with illusions, and the leader's art exists within his own eyes: the deep rings of the Rinnegan that draw Itachi in, in, in, and almost, almost make him want to give in to helplessness.
But Itachi…Itachi views art as something else entirely. Art is not about appearances. Art is about being in control. It's about crushing dreams and killing hope, forcing others to follow in his footsteps.
Art is being himself.
Fin.
(Note: the 'illness' mentioned was the gift of being a genius / the curse of being hurt by one.
The change in tense at the third section was intentional.
Itachi is a sick bastard and I love him.)