untold warnings of remembrance
And she was falling.
Two eyes widened, one snapping open to reveal a whirring crimson state, and his body began to move through fear and horror—she had slipped underneath the lightning strike, an expression of quiet surprise on her face, and suddenly Hatake Kakashi could not bear to see another broken body—could not bear to see this child falling (though he had gone on missions and observed the most atrocious of horrors… this was his shatterpoint [but he was already shattered, had started to crack from the blade of his father's tanto—blood, he remembers blood—], where all of his grief turned to a standstill and desperation sealed his movements.)
And suddenly he was plunging down as well, mouth clenched shut with pain, faster, faster—
(He wouldn't make it in time, he never made it on time; wasn't that the truth that they all avoided? Nakamagoroshi no Kakashi—they called him Friend-Killer, cursed with a Shinigami's touch.)
Blood was flowing freely now, drawn from the painfully reopened wound, the pain a reproach against desperation. He was dizzy, had used up too much chakra for his mission (he had not thought of his own safety in months)—
He caught her, the impact driving his breath from his lungs, and a tenth of a second later, the ground rushed up to meet them. And he looked down…
The mismatched pair of eyes, one for a friend and the other to weep, met two spinning, spinning red. Her eyes widened in realization, and the moment was suspended, was stopped, because there was something that she had needed to tell him—needed to tell the man with one of her kinsman's eyes, because she had promised.
Their eyes met, and her magic surged, choking, battling with her chakra, becoming corroded by the energy of this world. So they continued falling, though they had landed near the roots of the tree.
*I*I*
Lightning flashed, a snapshot of a moment causing another moment—so sparks turned to fireflies, and they burned like so many constellations, signifying great and terrible stories and their characters (Luna remembers Orion, she remembers Cassiopeia and her daughter Andromeda, remembers a soft voice next to her ear and a warm hand encircling her and pointing up into a cosmos, before wars and castles and Ginny.)
Lightning flashed and red eyes opened—they did not tell her that she would remember, that the scene would rewind before frantic eyes, but perhaps this was only hers to bear.
Lightning flashed…
(Everything was brilliant, defined and separated and then that light was stolen, snatched up into the hands of an unseen god.)
(They did not tell her—)
—and the Fox was huge, rising into the heavens as if to brush the stars with its own flames—deathly terrifying, menacing, in a fatal, too real manifestation of a demon—there was a man with green eyes—a hurricane was slicing into her skin as she coughed up blood—blood dripping from lips which twitched up into a smile despite the scene—
—Tell him—
—A parallel of tragedies—what's the price?—his soul—I'm sorry—
—Tell him—
—They were never more beautiful, never more horrific, never more awe-inspiring, than in that moment. It was the height of the climax in the play and the actors were arrayed perfectly—blue eyes held steady as he struggled to get the words out, as he tried to quell the coughing—
—Tell him—
(You are loved.)
Slate grey and weeping red broke away, a noose curling around the ability to breathe, (a burning in the back of his throat, a burning in his chest where her magic had sparked; fire accentuated his movements.) He disappeared, running blindly, invisible—coward! and that was his voice mocking in its childishness, in its familiarity, and so he stumbled home and collapsed on the floor, tears drowning him though there was only rain on his skin.
And Luna lay in the rain and felt herself mold into the earth.
*I*I*
Itachi found her.
(Her brother would always find her.)
She was burning—her eyes were burning, backlash from the conflict of her magic and the chakra that was her lifeforce slicing through her lungs, her heart beating an irregular melody. Shallow breaths, steady, steady—Itachi held her, a flash of fear appearing in the red of his eyes, as he could only watch, helpless, as his sister's chakra clashed with another force, tearing apart her body.
(Instinctively he knew that he could not take her to the hospital [not with her redred eyes, not with the anomaly of the internal wounds without any external sign]—there would be too many questions, too much suspicion—his sister must not be allowed to stand out, must always stay in his shadow. There were those who would break them just to see how they worked…)
Her shivers subsided, the two energies inside her forcing an uneasy peace.
Itachi bent over her, arms sliding gently under her exhausted body, lifting her frail form. Her eyes fluttered shut after recognizing the one who carried her, and he took her home.
*I*I*
(Sometimes the clan was a dark miasma of hopelessness, of festering anger and resentment.)
Luna watched her brother (pride was the set of her father's shoulders; pride and a quiet despair that had begun to shroud him) as he walked to her. There were whispers, murmurs as he passed, but that moment narrowed to exclude the outside. Her father congratulated him, warmth seeping into his tone, and Luna met her brother's eyes solemnly.
She stood beside him, slipping her fingers into his, because in this at least she was confident—that she would always love him with a beautiful intensity that sometimes took her breath away. That they would forever be blood—but that they were linked by something deeper than the iron that lined their veins.
He squeezed her fingers carefully.
The metal gleamed too bright on his forehead and Luna wondered at it. What did it mean to be marked so? The Tirghres were spinning shining threads around the heads of those that stood there, a web of pride and protectiveness—Luna reached out a hand to brush the wings of one, and the bared needle teeth snarled, snapping.
"What do you see, hime?"
She turned to the voice, letting go of Itachi's hand, drifting as her brother spoke to her father. "It's a Tirghre—they've swarmed today."
"Be my eyes?" he grinned, as sharp as the creatures that only she could see.
"They have wings, gossamer-fine and catching the sunlight and spinning it into threads. A smile like yours, senbon teeth, all pointy. Scales like dragons and very protective—you have your own, Shisui-san."
"Aww, hime, didn't I tell you to drop the -san?"
She beamed at him. "You did."
"Aah well," he sighed in defeat. "Perhaps someday…"
Itachi finished talking to their father and walked to Luna and Shisui. Shisui brightened out of his slump.
"Itachi! Congratulations!"
He inclined his head. "Thank you, Shisui."
"Let me treat you to dango! And of course, hime as well." He bowed low before her, and she giggled.
(They ignored the whispers of the villagers, the stares and murmurs—they were more absorbed in each other [forced themselves to narrow their focus to their small group]. They ignored the vender's searching look and the customers that minutely drew away [but they were Uchiha, famed for their eyes, how could they not notice?] They still smiled easily, still laughed, but their dismissal of the attention of those outside their group fluttered in the cage shoved to the back of their minds.)
"So, what does my favorite cousin feel about graduating?"
Itachi chewed slowly, thinking over his answer. "Mmmm."
Luna giggled, and Shisui threw his hands up into the air. "That's all? Aren't you glad that there's a chance that you'll be taking missions with me?"
"No."
Shisui despaired.
Itachi finished off his dango and swiped some from his cousin, who made a noise of outrage.
The evening dissolved in laughter and a hide-and-seek-and-chase game across Konoha.
A/N: Not sure when the next update will be up—real life is an octopus dragging me under seawater and finding time to write that isn't ridiculously late at night is absurdly hard.
This tidbit is from Fugaku's perspective (thusly unreliable narrator) and was inspired from the quote below.
betrayal and a rejection
"Some left in disgust—Uchiha Fugaku, in angered grief, secluded himself, driven further by the village's suspicions."—Yamanaka Inoichi and fireflies (ch. 4 - palaces in clouds)
Uchiha Fugaku had hoped.
Minato had been a great leader; he acknowledged that, and he acknowledged the potential that the Yellow Flash had. He hadn't been a close friend of his, but their wives had been best friends, and he'd enjoyed Minato's company better than most (even after the Kannabi Bridge incident—the Elders had been furious when he had reluctantly allowed the Hatake boy to keep his Obito's Sharingan.)
Yet even beyond that, Minato had listened.
And Fugaku had been willing to give himself in service to the young Hokage; he had believed that his clan could finally be content.
But then Minato had gone and killed himself.
(It should have been the Third—his time had passed—but it was the young, brilliant Fourth that left.)
And what had that gotten him? His son was a pariah, his beloved village was slowly crumbling from within, and the clan heads had lost cohesion.
Oh, Fugaku was angry.
The Third had been reinstated, but he shouldn't have been. He had grown old and softer than he had been when he had first taken the hat. He grown old and crueler than he had already been. (It was a strange dichotomy; his kindness made him cruel, his delusional belief and hope wounded instead of inspired.)
The Council was back into his and his teammate's hands.
(Who had taught them? Senju Tobirama. Senju Tobirama, who had loathed the Uchiha for Madara's betrayal, who had caged them with the Military Police—allowing precious few of the Uchiha to rise in rank and position. His students had inherited his hate, and it was a disease.)
With Madara remembered by the oldest generation—by the Third, by Danzo and Hotaru and Koharu—and the confusion of the Kyuubi attack, suspicion had fallen on them, the Uchiha. But it had been Danzo to order them back, as support instead of the front lines, and Fugaku was angry and tired of the injustice of it all.
It was a weary bitterness, a defeated one, and he was left standing with nothing but his anger and his loathing of the Council and Sarutobi Hiruzen. If he hadn't had that anger, his children would be fatherless and his clan in chaos; but his anger (created by love, because he cannot bear to see his clan suffering, to see his firstborn be regarded as unnatural, because the villager's hate affects him more than he shows) is iron in his blood, and so he is driven by a corrosive. He knows his time is short, because he will burn out, because he cannot subsist on anger, but it is enough (for now).
They had taken away their place in Konoha, secluding them away, away to the edges. They had taken away their pride as shinobi, restraining them to the Military Police. They had been suspicious, shown their suspicion openly and infected the village. Fugaku knew how the village could hate—hadn't he investigated Sakumo's suicide? Hadn't he seen Orochimaru, one of the Sannin, be shunned by the village (later justified, but they hadn't know then; perhaps they had driven him to the labs)?
Hadn't he seen the abuse of Minato's son, and the Third's inaction?
Oh, Uchiha Fugaku nursed a deep wound in his heart that they kept forcing open.
So when treasonous thoughts ran through the Compound, he couldn't bring himself to suppress them, to deny them, when he felt the same, when injustice pressed against them from all sides. He wanted to scream like they did, wanted to burn and burn and burn.
And in some ways it was a relief, let the wounds bleed and let us cauterize them with fire.
But Fugaku lost his happiness the day his Hokage died.
Fugaku lost his hope the day Minato sacrificed himself.
(Fugaku found his hatred the day the Third took back the seat he should never have reclaimed.)
