Disclaimer:I don't own anything!
Author's Note: This has been sitting around on my computer for a few weeks now. I kept fiddling with it and changing or adding and then I realized that I had to get it the hell of my computer or else I would never believe it finished. So here it is.
Happy New Year and good luck in 2012!
It's surprising how much memory is built around things unnoticed at the time.
~Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams
He hadn't been back in over ten years. Hadn't seen the walls with their pictures still hung just so and the hallways where familiar ghosts still lingered. It still smelled the same. Woodsmoke and ash, but with a layer of metallic bloodscent that he was sure would never go away.
He wasn't even sure why he was here. He'd been feeling restless, tired of seeing the walls of his apartment, of seeing the same view out of his window into the street, and his feet had led him here. He walked through each room with new eyes—literally, but that wasn't the point. He'd been a child the last time he'd walked through these halls. No longer—and saw things he hadn't before. The rooms were as they had been Before, as he tended to think about things. Before Itachi had killed everyone (The thought is no longer tinged with bitterness, but with the remains of a sad smile…this is it, Sasuke…). Some things, he was sure, had been taken for evidence, but much still remained.
He sat on his brother's bed, looked around the room. There, the desk that he remembered Itachi spending a lot of time at. He discovered a false bottom on one of the drawers and found a stack of letters, some in his brother's elegant, neat script and others in loose scrawl. There was talk of cousins and Mist and how's home and I miss you's and it wasn't until he reached the end of some of them that he fully realized who the letters had been written to.
Shisui Uchiha. The name was signed on the bottom with a careless grace. The things that he knew about this cousin would have trouble filling a matchbox, but he recognized the name, even if he didn't have a face.
He left the letters in their envelopes, replaced the false bottom and quietly shut the door to Itachi's room behind him. Some things weren't meant to be dug up. Not when—it seemed—the ghosts were finally at peace. (…This is it…)
It took him a moment of standing before the old double doors that he dared enter his parents' room. He avoided looking at the place where he imagined he could still see their corpses and Itachi the Assassin (Protector, his mind whispers. All he ever did, he did for you) stood above their bodies. They may have been traitors to their village—he was his father's son through and through apparently—but he didn't remember them that way. They were still his parents.
There were boxes in their closet. One contained receipts and loose change. Another one held birth certificates, report cards, baby photos—a mother's box. The other, when he managed to get it down from the top shelf, was full of photographs.
They were in no particular neatness—or, if they had been, the organization had been ruined over the years. The ones towards the top of the pile had some of him as a child, younger than he can ever really remember being, and more than a few of Itachi. Few of him as a young child, but most of them had another Uchiha—it had to be a relative. The resemblance was uncanny—with tousled curls and darkly mischievous eyes. There was writing on the back of one of the photos—the both of them sitting at a shoji board, sitting out in the sun on the porch. Itachi looked more content than he had ever seen him and the other cousin seemed to be contemplating his next move—that read Itachi and Shisui…they're young old men already, in his mother's tight, loopy script. It was addressed to a Kushina, but he didn't know who that was.
Further down in the pile were photos of a boy, grinning wide with orange goggles placed crookedly on his forehead that pushed spiky Uchiha-black hair up, his arm wrapped around a younger Itachi and Shisui. He'd seen this boy before, in Kakashi's team picture, but he'd never even heard his name. There were many photos of him and a girl who looked like his mother younger than he'd ever seen her; sitting at a table, dressed in kimono at a festival, some that looked like they were taken out of a photo booth. One of them—a team picture that he recognized because an identical one sat on the head of Kakashi's bed—had words written on the back. He mentioned you a few times. Well, more than a few. He loved you a lot and was always proud to say that you were his big sister. A few things hastily crossed out. I'm sorry. The date was over twenty years ago and the handwriting wasn't familiar and there was no name, but he could guess who had written this.
The very bottom of the pile was all photos that seemed too bright to join these. Some were overexposed, making it difficult to make out individual details. Others were off-center, others with fingers in the lens. But people were always smiling in these. He recognized, faintly, his mother, beautiful as he remembered her, but her hair was loose and gently wavy, in a sundress with a floral pattern that seemed too young for the woman from his memories. There were others; a woman with long red hair who always seemed to have some kind of food in her hand and, in a few, had a grin that was achingly familiar. An Inuzuka woman with tattoos and a ferocity that was balanced out by the gentleness of a—was that Shizune?—whose hair was longer and a strawberry milkshake was in front of her in one of the photos. A woman who looked a little like Shikamaru. A blond man who he mistook for someone else at first glance, wearing a suit and the redhead woman in a lovely white dress, laughing as they kissed at an altar.
Sasuke didn't know these times, didn't even really know these people, for they were so different from the ones he had met (Those that managed to survive…) that they weren't the same at all. They might as well have had different identities. He didn't know this carefree young woman who was supposed to be his mother. Didn't know this Itachi, who fell asleep beneath trees, a cousin beside him, book open in his lap.
They were heirlooms of a past that wasn't his. Heirlooms of people who had been dead for so long that people had forgotten them; of people who had done things that made people forget about them. He wondered who still remembered that these things were still here, if anyone had ever known about them. After all, people had searched the house after the massacre. Someone must have found them. Had they recognized people in the photos? Lingered over smiles and tears and milkshakes and memories?
If anyone did, he had no way of knowing, so he slipped the dusty cover back on the box and put it back. Perhaps someone would remember, would want to remember. These memories belonged to them.
0-0-0-0
The letter had a green Post-It duct-taped to the envelope, like the person who put it there wanted to make sure that it would never be taken off. TO BE DELIVERED ON OCTOBER 10TH, 18 YEARS. The Post-It had folded corners and the ink was faded, but the envelope was mostly clean. It wouldn't say who delivered it. There wasn't even a clue, but whoever had had it was pretty punctual. He'd found it poked into the crack between his window and the sill the morning that he woke up eighteen after going to bed seventeen. The envelope had his name in the same big block letters.
Inside, there was a sheet and a half of legal paper with long, loose handwriting. At the very top, it read, Dear Naruto. He felt a fluttering of something in his stomach. He'd never gotten a real letter before.
I feel corny writing this. Actually, it feels like I'm one of those side characters in one of those books that your godfather likes to write. But I don't know how else to do this—maybe it's a sign that I should stop reading your godfather's books—so bear with me.
You're eighteen years old today—or, you should be, unless the messenger was too lazy or forgot to deliver this. It would be just like him. I wish I could see you. I've imagined it, of course. I hope you're happy. That you've got people you love and that love you. You'll be as handsome as your father, I can tell. I just hope you haven't gotten all of his and your godfather's perverted influence.
I want to hope that things have changed. That the world that you're in as you're reading this is a better one than the one I'm in now. I want to hope that you've smiled more than cried, that you know the way sunshine smells in the summer—I've clearly been cooped up too long. Being a pregnant woman with an overprotective husband does that to you—and the way the rain feels on your tongue.
Above all, I hope that you're not reading this and you've found this by accident. That I could show you the world myself, could (maybe) tell you all this in person.
All the love in the world,
Kushina (Your mother, in case they "forgot" to tell you)
He wasn't sure when the tears started. He only knows that they began dripping on to the paper, which he hastily moved aside. This was proof. His mother had existed. She'd loved him. Had wanted him to be happy. She wrote a little like he did, though hers was neater; her L's trailed away and the cross on the t's swept upwards in the same way. She didn't stay even on the lines when she wrote, like he did.
He could say that he knew things about her now. That she liked the feel of the rain and the smell of sunshine. That she was a little like he was—rambling sometimes and easily distracted. That she'd loved him. She loved him. He kept repeating it to himself, a murmuring litany. How wonderful those words were to hear to a boy—well, he wasn't a boy anymore—an orphan, then. He'd always be an orphan, but now, he was an orphan who had at least some knowledge of his parents and surely something was better than nothing.
0-0-0-0
The day that Neji moved out of the Hyuuga complex, he realized he had a lot more things than he thought he did. Lee and Tenten offered to help, but he'd just shaken his head at them. The help would've been much appreciated, but this felt like something he needed to do himself.
Halfway through the day, he found a box filled with jewelry carefully wrapped in squares of silk. He didn't recognize any of the jewelry, not right away, but he sat by the box and unwrapped each one, running a finger down smooth edges and along rows of pearls.
His cousin knocked before coming in with a sandwich and a cup of tea. (She's changed so much, his cousin. Where once there was a terrible fragility, now there is a quiet strength, like a spine of steel) "I thought you'd be hungry. You've been working so hard today."
"…Do you remember your mother?"
She blinked at him, setting the sandwich and cup on his dresser. "No…I-I suppose I don't. Sometimes, perhaps, but never very well. Why?" He tilted the box so that she could see its contents. "I didn't think you still had things like that."
"Neither did I." There was a comb in his hands, pale ivory with pearls and a single lily blossom on it. He tried to remember his mother ever wearing it, or, indeed, his mother at all, but he couldn't. Had she been a strong woman, his mother? Or the ideal Hyuuga wife, quiet, subdued and lovely? Had she liked books as he did? Did she like the crisp scent of autumn and the coolness of cloudy days? "I don't even have photographs."
"Well, I don't think that Hyuugas have ever been very good at that sort of thing." She knelt beside him, her dark hair over one shoulder. "Maybe that's something else that should change."
He had only really started believing that she could be clan head, had only realized that she was strong enough to take on the burden, recently and to hear her talk like that, it made him want to believe that things could change. That she could make them change.
"I think you're right." He said, not taking his eyes off of the comb.
-0-0-0-0-
There was a single poster on the walls of her room. She kept it above her headboard. Its bright colors were faded now, the edges peeling a little and the faces frozen in smiles. It's an advertisement for a circus, but her focus was always on the acrobat in the corner, swinging with such ease and the sword swallower in the forefront of the image.
She remembered never being old enough to be in the show, though her father promised her that one day, she would be. And yet now, that she was old enough, it didn't matter. Her parents were dead, the circus gone in the road dust. She would never again see her mother's gentle, round face, laughing as she practiced on the tightrope, small hips perfectly steady to keep her balance. Her father would never make a knife dance across his fingers again—roll roll flip, roll roll roll—as he read the paper.
She wondered if they would recognize her now. She taller than her mother had ever been, her eyes not almond-shaped like hers had been. She had their colors though—her father's chestnut hair, her mother's brown eyes. Her naturally pale skin had been long ago tanned from long hours training in the sun.
Her team had seen the poster once, when they'd helped her move into this new apartment. They knew her well enough not to say anything though. Lee had only smiled and kissed her cheek while Neji had simply nodded. They were all from lost families, all that was left of broken homes. Perhaps that made them their own patchwork version of family.
-/-/-
He didn't usually venture into his sister's room. They'd never been that kind of siblings. They gave each other their privacy and argued and wrestled everywhere else. But her door was always open—all of theirs were because of the dogs—so he leaned on the doorframe, curious as to why she hadn't come out for breakfast.
His sister and him looked a lot alike—or so he'd been frequently told. He'd never been able to see it. But he'd always thought his sister was too pretty. He'd told his mother that once and she'd laughed a little. It was only when he got older that he realized why she'd laughed. Hana wasn't pretty. At least, not in the conventional way. Her hair was too untamable, her skin too rough, her frame too muscular for most men. But his opinion hadn't changed. Her kind of pretty was the kind that would never show up in a photograph, the kind that needed movement.
Hana looked up at him, her dark brown hair still loose and tangled from sleep. She wore flannel pants, the drawstring tight against her smooth stomach. The T-shirt was old and holey and a size or two too big. She was sitting cross-legged on her bed, something in her hands.
"Mom's wondering if you wanted breakfast at all today." He said, still not crossing into her room.
Hana hesitated before shaking her head. "Nah. I'm good."
"You feelin' okay?"
She chuckled slightly, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear. "It's been eight years."
He frowned and finally walked in, his curiosity getting the better of him. He sat beside her and she tilted what was in her hands to show him. It was a strip of the pictures from a photo booth. The bottom photos were ripped off neatly. There were four people in the photo. A girl who could only be his sister, cheeks freshly tattooed if the reddened area around the triangles were any indication, grinning with her arms around two boys. The boys looked a lot alike, all pale skin and dark eyes and darker hair. One's hair was curlier and he looked like he was blowing kisses to Hana. The other boy wasn't laughing, but his eyes were. There was another boy that must have been sitting on the floor because only his head was visible. Brown hair was pulled into a spiky ponytail, an angry red slash across his nose and cheeks, but he'd been caught in the middle of laughing.
"Eight years since what?" He asked. Other than Hana, he could only recognize a younger Iruka.
She pointed to the eye-laughing boy. "You've never met him, but I know you've heard of him. That's Sasuke's brother, Itachi."
He studied the photo closer. That was the infamous mass murderer? The boy who looked a little too skinny and who reminded him a little of Shino or Hinata—just oozing 'upright-clan-breeding'—despite being clearly related to Sasuke? He didn't look capable of something so terrible. "And the other one?"
"You definitely won't have heard of him." Hana smiled sadly. "That was Itachi's cousin, Shisui. We, along with Iruka, were all real good friends as kids. But…Shisui drowned and Itachi…well. It's been eight years since then. Sometimes, it feels a lot longer."
(It had only been some flowers that they'd had picked up from the Yamanakas. The flowers were vibrant reds and warm oranges, with white tossed in almost like an afterthought. Shisui held it out to her, his familiar wild-shy smile on his lips.
No one had ever thought to give her flowers until then. Or since. They thought she was too tough for it.
"It was Itachi's idea." Shisui told her. "And when I thought about it, he's right. Every girl should get flowers for her birthday at least once."
She'd taken the flowers, not entirely sure what to do with them or how to react. She'd called them cliché and unoriginal, but she'd hugged them both and kissed their cheeks.)
"You miss them?" He wanted to be able to feel a little disgust at her, for missing a mass murderer, but the boy in the photo wasn't a murderer of any sort and he knew that that was the one she missed.
"A lot less these days, but, sometimes, like today, I miss them a lot." Hana looked at him and ruffled his hair in the way he'd been too old for since he was nine years old. "Don't undervalue those friends of yours, you got it?"
"Yeah…" He felt the urge to go to Shino's house and convince him to come with him to run to Hinata's house and pick her up so they can walk through the village, just enjoying the day, like they used to. "I won't."
0-0-0-0
He saw them sometimes. Sometimes, he'd see Obito or Minato lounging on his sofa, grinning at him. Kushina would be in his kitchen some mornings, smiling at him with a bowl of Cheerios in her hands.
He never saw Rin. He thought of that as a good sign. Perhaps she was still alive somewhere, leading a life that didn't involve war.
He doubted it.
Every few months, he took a book from his shelf and ran a hand along its worn edges. The ink was faded, the corners of the yellowed pages well dog-eared. On one of the blank pages towards the front, the one opposite the title page, there was writing. It was loose and vaguely loopy, or, some of it was. After a certain point, the handwriting became much more masculine and smooth. At the bottom, two names were signed.
He read this book several times a year, even if, sometimes, he felt too old for the book. It had been a birthday present, he remembered. For when he turned ten.
"Every ten-year-old needs to read this." Minato had claimed when he'd opened it.
Kushina had laughed at his expression. "Don't be so skeptical. Give it a shot."
He had. And now, he could honestly say that it was his favorite book. He would read it more often than Jiraiya's, but it hurt to read it, hurt to see that familiar handwriting as though he expected them to show up again, smiling, at his door.
What we remember from childhood we remember forever - permanent ghosts, stamped, inked, imprinted, eternally seen.
~Cynthia Ozick