La Belle Dame Sans Merci: 52:
"With a Bang"
Happy camper (and curse the idiot who got that lame expression stuck on his brain) is not currently a befitting description of Uchiha Itachi, age twelve, presumably the last child of the Sharingan bloodline.
"Big Brother?"
He turns from his contemplation of the Hero Stone, the modest monument to all the lost ones, tries and fails to offer her a reassuring little smile. There's a smile, yes, but it is too darkly brooding, too obviously forced, to ever registered as reassuring.
"Rina-chan."
Hesitation is stark and reluctant in every curve of her face; he makes himself relax, joints aching like those of an elderly man from tension alone, and pats the ground close to him. Smiling brilliantly, concern evident but muted, she sits down beside him, leaning her head against his upper arm. Tall for her age, she's not all that much shorter anymore.
"Itachi-niisan…?"
"Morino Ibiki died today."
On a mission. I could not protect him.
I can't even protect myself!
He stepped into the afterlife in my place.
I will get over it, but not now, not quite yet.
"Oh," she says softly. "I'm sorry." He believes her, though is certain she is sorry he is sad rather than because of the man's untimely demise. After all, Ibiki-sensei was old and harsh, unknown and frightening to her.
He shrugs a little, one-shouldered so as not to disturb her. "Everyone dies. He'd lived long." Forcing his mind from the matter, his eyes from the stone, he turns towards her. "And what have you been up to, young lady? Something special you abandoned your friends to come tell me about?"
Her grin is simple and irrepressible. Did he look like that, ever? He rather thinks not.
"I made the Academy! I'll be attending the proper classes tomorrow!"
Ninja kindergarten is over, she is starting on the road towards becoming a real kunoichi. He remains uncertain as though whether that's actually a very good idea – regardless of everything else, she must learn enough to be able to defend herself against all those who will insist on fighting her, should she develop the Sharingan, but it's not a profession he can see giving her much satisfaction.
As for himself, he could not have lived with being powerless and forever protected (not like i'm not, anyway, and gods, it grates) but she thinks differently.
You human, I ninja.
Save he feels horribly human right now – it's humans alone who can mourn their lack of humanity, isn't it?
Besides, there is tenderness, a horrible gnawing guilt, and …something he does not want to acknowledge. Fuck being an adolescent. The gangly growth, the stupid hormones souring his mood and infesting his dreams.
Already before he turned four he had a rudimentary comprehension of the tangled relationships between adults, could act into them, but vainly he did not believe he would ever be caught in the web.
(when desire came it wore unsuitable faces)
He turns his mind from this, keeps his gaze decisively off the stone, slinging an arm over Rina-chan's shoulders. The appropriate expressions of pride and happiness are well received; he's never understood it, how he can be so cherished merely through existing. How the offer, I'm your brother, can be so naturally, glowingly answered: I'm your sister!
If only certain other things could be half a simple as she is.
He's a good responsible elder sibling and drops her off at Sakura-san's with a promise to look over her kunai-throwing tomorrow afternoon, ventures home very slowly.
To his dismayed surprise, he practically collides with Naruto in the doorway; a panicked blue glance his way, and the red-orange blur is gone.
The hell…?
He hurries inside carefully, spotting a familiar dark head in the kitchen. Realizing, as he comes closer, that Naruto must be off to fetch Sakura-san, and why that is necessary.
"Sasuke," he hisses.
"It's fine."
No it's not. It's not fine my parent, my safety, the one person I love absolutely, is bleeding into the sink.
Itachi catalogues the damage absently, moving through the room, his feet strangely heavy, his head strangely light: fat lip bleeding sluggishly, a huge bruise forming on his throat, arm cradled to his chest, a cut splitting fabric and skin down his left thigh. He's too pale, too unsteady.
Plainly Itachi's lack of belief is evident, as thick in the air as in his mouth; Sasuke adds dismissively, "It's nothing."
And it's true, in a sense – were it anyone else, where it himself, Itachi would consider the injuries light. But this is Sasuke, and Sasuke is not supposed to be able to get wounded, ever, especially not at home in our kitchen.
He finds a towel, hands it over. "Should I?" Heal it?
Sasuke must have attempted to seal the Kyuubi: the apartment is in one piece, which rules out chakra-heavy attacks, and were his energies not strained, he'd have healed himself already. His fingertips would not be blue with straining chakra turning against his own cells.
"Sakura will be here in a minute."
And she's a trained professional, let her handle it.
Mr. Wife-Beating Asshole returns shortly, a panting and exasperated medic kunoichi in tow. There are a good deal of glances exchanged; Sasuke's eyes cold and slippery, cunning, Sakura-sans's hurt, Naruto's bewildered. Not guilty yet, not angry anymore.
There lingers a touch of red to them, and to Sasuke's.
Itachi swallow as unobtrusively as he can, hoping for and absolutely dreading a dismissal that doesn't come.
He's pretty certain Naruto would like for it to, but Itachi is an adult now, and if he's staying with them he deserves to know, and anyway Naruto is not in a position to tell anyone to do anything.
There is a dully worded explanation, directed at Sakura-san, who can demand things: the seal's slipping, it's been for some time, obviously. Seals do that, when containing nigh almighty demons. What's unexpected, in light of this one's history, is that it didn't happen with a bang, this time. Just this slight eroding, bit by inevitable, irreparable bit, until a playful bite became hard, and the taste of expensive Uchiha blood in his mouth turned things strange.
(i have to own you)
The sudden, utterly unexpected twist; and Sasuke stared straight ahead, skin splitting like the layers of reality. Neither one of them should have been caught off guard.
"Sealing?" Sakura inquires, healing the last bit of the cut along Sasuke's thigh under Naruto's shamefully reluctant look; he doesn't want the desire to have the flesh laid continually bare to him, can't shake it off.
"I tried." Sasuke says the words like they're the worst curse in existence.
It won't work. Kyuubi is too free now, has grown used to the seals, seeped deeply, deeply into Naruto's psyche.
Hopefully the process has been gradual enough this time that you can handle it, Sakura thinks. You'd better, because there's nothing we can do.
Itachi bites his lip and stares wary hatred at all of them.
xxxxx
Hanabi, Gaara, I…
Mother, Father, Temari, Gaara, Hanabi, I – am dying, at long last.
That much has been rather regrettably clear to him from the moment he saw his men being downed swiftly, like ripe grain falling for the farmer's glaive, and spotted the swirling red-black cloaks worn by their killers.
I am over.
I have had a full life. Much sun, much rain. He does not want to complain.
It hurts, almost more than anything. He's had some brief healer training and absently traces the searing agony inside him to busted internal organs leaking vile fluids into the rest of his body. He will not last; went down with little fight, because he is aging before his time, maimed and lost to much hope.
He's tried his best, and has loved much in his life; this desert that he knew from almost the start would ultimately destroy him, and the people that he met in it.
The awareness is with him that he is being carried; the rough, rocking motions beneath him. When his carriers' steps get faster, accompanied by the screaming of metal and flesh, he opens eyes whose closing he had not noticed.
His men are being killed, again. The sight has haunted him often enough, before and during and after the war, but he has only once before seen it happen inside the Kazekage Palace.
Oh, well, shit.
Anxiety has left him, departed along with his left arm: it is over, I am dead, and so are these Akatsuki, the moment the set foot in the presence of my loved ones. Gaara will snap, will destroy them utterly; so close to his end, Kankurou does not allow himself to doubt that Hanabi will stop him, after he is done.
Everything will turn out alright, in the end if not in the beginning.
I loved you. Love both of you. Live on for me, as happy as you can be.
A harsh request, perhaps, but he would have done it, has complied with it often enough.
Circle's end – and isn't that funny: there's no such thing. Circles are defined by their lack of endings.
Death claims him then, so swiftly he does not see the two pairs of eyes, white and green, widening as his body is dropped to the floor.
A peculiarity; a moment cut out of time.
Gaara watches his brother's dead body falling at his feet. Hanabi stares at her Genin team falling infinitely.
They knew this was under way, but they never could have thought… Distracted, she did not use the Byakugan until it was too late.
She needs no Bloodline Limit to know what she is seeing now.
Activates it anyway, too look inside the flesh that was once Kankurou's, and so hers. "Mist and Rock ninja," she reports tonelessly. "Crowding the village. Our numbers are greater, but only when including the civilians."
The Akatsuki leer at them from across the room.
"I did learn to love, I think," Gaara says, preternaturally calm, a wounded child's tranquility.
(thank you for that, both of you. goodbye, hanabi. kankurou, wait up, alright)
She is not going to stop him this time.
Shukaku breaks through in a single violent rush, divine power made demonic.
None can stand before It.
Gaara drowns inside the maelstrom; knew when he let it spring forth that he'd sink long before he could learn to swim.
He smiles sardonically, in his mind: Goodbye, cruel world. We had quite some chemistry going there, you and I, in the end.
xxxxx
She lays Kankurou's body down gently. Pointless courtesy, as the laconic check she performed merely served to confirm his passing.
He might not be the only one in the family to leave this world behind today; the Akatsuki, once so cocky, are debris, scattered redness.
Past them, Byakugan deactivated, she meets the blood-shot golden eyes of a demon god and – realizes.
Gaara is gone already, gone as Kankurou and the shabby paradise they were building.
Alright, then. She is aware of what she was sent to the desert to accomplish.
The princess and the dragon she is to slay, except the princes have already been massacred.
Well. Revenge is something, at least. (necessary?)
Closure, perhaps, of a kind.
All that's left to her.
xxxxx
"Kakashi-sensei?"
"Ah?"
"It's nothing. Leave me alone. I mean, you don't have to stick around."
Teenagers! "I don't mind," he says, mildly, unruffled. Wishing this was no worse than normal teenage hormonal angst, but of course it cannot be that simple, not for Team Seven or its spawn.
"I…" Itachi says at last, a sharp, breathy sound. So narcissistically caught up in his own misery. "I can't talk about it."
"I know."
The child turns partially, offers a grim, sarcastic smirk.
You know what it is I cannot speak of, yes, I am aware of this.
"Jesus," Kakashi mutters, ruffling the black hair. "It might ease, with time."
"I don't think so," Itachi says, then obviously realizes he sounds a petulant adolescent, a defiant kid. He offers a sickly attempt at a smile. "I hope so."
It is apparent they are both well aware Kakashi will not breathe a word of this issue to the other parties concerned. Kakashi is ready to bet, though, that the kid doesn't realize the why of this, on Kakashi's part. Probably he attributes it to a kinder, more protective nature than Kakashi possesses, perhaps sprinkled with more realistic expectations of discretion and a certain possessiveness about his too-rare sources of amusement.
Itachi is convinced his home life would be destroyed if the secret leaked, that he'd – it does not bear pondering, and yet he cannot stop.
In reality Kakashi is quietly certain Sasuke wouldn't have any unsolvable problems with the issue, which is the worst of all and the safest insurance to keep him quiet. Naruto would be sickened and mad, but Kyuubi rages often and they've all learned to deal.
(when desire came to him it wore an unsuitable face)
"You know…" Itachi starts, gaze distant, out the window. Gradually he uncurls from his defensive, miserable position. "I'm sorry, but there's something I feel I need to – would like to try."
Letting him isn't a conscious decision. Itachi is quick as a snake, fast as the Chidori cutting through lightning, and not as easy as all that to predict; Kakashi is what he is, and Copy Ninja is a part of that identity, but so is 'very battered man fewer years than he'd like from his fortieth birthday'.
It is so very different and so very much like what Sasuke did, before the Chuunin Exam he failed so spectacularly.
Life works like that, it sometimes appears, in ironical motions trying and failing to be circles.
"This isn't what you want," he says, wishing he had his mask, when Itachi's face is a safe distance away again.
"It'd be easier if it were," Itachi claims, sounding a little less unhappy, soft lips flushed an ignored pink nuance.
"Really?" Kakashi asks laconically, letting his doubt shine through loud and clear. The kid can't honestly think Kakashi would let him, can he? Or worse, that Kakashi would ever actually be interested… can he?
A faint smirk, too melancholic to be mean, and Itachi explains, in a calm, serious tone, like someone who's thought the matter through both once and twice, "Well, you are older, but not by that much. Age doesn't matter very much. Besides, you can't mind your partners being younger, or you wouldn't be interested in Sasuke, particularly when he was younger. I know that you – what you feel about him, but you're sort of the other woman, you both have other affairs." He tilts his head, with a dangerous, self-satisfied smirk that Kakashi is too old not to internally laugh at. "Besides, I'm told I look just like my parents. I should have had a good chance."
"Don't do that again," Kakashi tells him with a distracted air. A denial wouldn't be believed, huh? No point voicing it, then.
Itachi doesn't answer, but then he doesn't have to. Kakashi's been a child-man for far too long not to read him as easily and familiarly as he does his first Icha Icha Paradise volume.
It'd be easier if it were.
Yes and no, because Kakashi would never, and the one Itachi wants could probably be persuaded.
"Good thing you've seen the Oiroke no Jutsu," Kakashi remarks lightly. "Sasuke would have kittens if you didn't make sure the clan survived into further generations."
"I don't think I want children."
"You're thirteen."
"Yes, well. It's duty. But maybe I… Anyway, that's not a problem, I think. Girls are nice. I mean. Comparatively. Some of them."
Ah, Kakashi thinks. So it was the female version that made you realize. Unsurprising, really, though no less of a mess.
(so very few people itachi can relate to, at all. makes for a damn poor selection, in these pursuits)
He'll mop it up afterwards, if he needs to, if he can.
Will have to, if he can't prevent the shit from hitting the fan with a big fat stinking smack, but Itachi is a shy kid, in his way, and observant as other concerned parties may be, they ought to be very reluctant indeed to have this particular epiphany.
"It'll be easier," he offers. "Sometime. It usually is. You grow through it, learn to deal."
It's the best there is on offer, for these sorts of things.
xxxxx
"Hokage-sama?" Temari inquires politely, rubbing uselessly at a wet spot on her dress: she was summoned in a hurry far too desperate to allow her to change from the clothing she wore during the water fight with Sara.
"A moment, please," the Hokage says, and the politeness chills Temari to the bones, lies there inside like a leaden untouchable heaviness. "We're waiting for someone."
Seconds trickle past, erratic as her heartbeat, before the door is pushed open, admitting a carefully blank Hyuuga Neji.
"Right then," the Slug Master intones weightily. "I regret to say I have received some unfortunate tidings from Sand."
The world whites out around Temari as the Sannin continues speaking, listing disasters in a strained, bland voice. Whites out, and pulses around her until she does not know up from down and feels like gagging.
My home destroyed, overrun and sacked, beyond any conceivable hope of true restoration. Both my brothers slain.
"With your permission," Neji says, absolutely expressionless, "we will depart at once."
Temari comes back to herself to realize that her hands are sweaty, fisted painfully around her arms.
Yes, of course they must go, investigate the rumor Hanabi is still alive.
"Of course," Tsunade-sama replies. "You have leave to bring whomever you see fit."
The Kazekage widow is an exceptionally valuable asset, after all.
Neji bows stiffly; Temari does not even manage that, stumbling after him with an apologetic look at the elder woman, wordlessly admitting that she will vomit if she leans over.
"You know the desert," Neji says, outside, when they are running. "Between that and my Byakugan, I believe we will manage."
"Yes," she agrees, weakly, trying to outrun shock and grief. "Others will only slow us down."
They'd need good trackers, good fighters, and most of those are hard to come by: working, or needing persuasion, or bringing complications, or all of the above.
They bring nothing at all; steal water from a farmhouse and split Neji's larger arsenal between them before they enter the desert.
The desert, which is vast and cold/hot/cold, her birthplace. She will know it until the day she dies and probably beyond that final gate as well; the smell of cooling sand, the sound and rough sensation of your feet sinking into the dunes, when you're tired and your chakra manipulation grows sloppy. When you just need to feel it, be anchored to the earth.
Coming upon their target, she knows before Neji, miraculously. It's all about how the desert sunset tightens, how the shapes of the dunes seem suddenly sinister, promising, taunting you with the fact you can't know what lies beyond your field of vision. Her stomach curls inward in desperate anticipation.
Then Neji's eyes focus the right way, and he can see. Can see almost everything.
"This way."
They run again, but not for long.
Find a girl, with white hair and reddish clothing, who does not move from where she lies curled on the ground. At first Temari thinks it's the Byakugan; why should Hanabi need to turn towards them?
But beside her Neji draws a sudden sharp breath and steps unexpectedly forward, kneeling over the – really, Temari thinks with an ashen sort of distance, I shouldn't call her a girl, she's past twenty.
Hanabi does not speak but offers no resistance as her brother-in-law coaxes her into a sitting position; only now does it register on Temari that the younger Hyuuga's Bloodline Limit isn't activated, hasn't been, at all.
And while Hanabi's eyes can see simply astonishingly far and she might have spotted them long since and deactivated her gift, there is still something about that that doesn't fit.
Temari too hastens over to them, stops very close to the two Hyuuga. She's happy to find her voice steady as she asks, "How is she?"
"Moveable," Neji says.
Hanabi interjects, sharply, "I'm blind."
Her eyes look fine, but there are other ways through which one might lose one's sight, and Neji, who must be able to perceive that kind of damage, is not refuting her.
Hanabi slaps his hand away, sits up by herself, so poised it breaks the heart. Blood, of course – the red color of her clothing is blood, turned dark by age and the sun's descent.
"Two of my ANBU are in the vicinity, searching for food."
After a moment Neji nods, then clearly remembers the current situation and gives audible confirmation. "Ah. I see them."
"Why'd they leave you?" Temari interjects. More mutiny? Oh my country, have you not fallen far enough…!
"I instructed them to," Hanabi tells her crisply. "I am not helpless, Temari-san."
And Temari can believe that, actually, without any difficulty.
"Mind filling us in on the details?" she asks, light, masking the weight of the words, how they want to paralyze her tongue. "We've only sketchy information."
"Of course," Hanabi says sweetly. The way she spoke when Temari visited with her family, in official situations dealing with idiots. Reporting necessary casualties. "We were caught foolishly unprepared by an Akatsuki-led assault force compromised of roughly a hundred and fifty ninja of chiefly Mist and Rock origin. There had been indications that ought to have been taken more seriously, especially with our village still in such a brittle state. We made a mistake. We paid for it."
Temari has never been able to properly decipher Byakugan eyes, and as she stares now into Hanabi's face, she's glad for it.
"Eventually," Hanabi says, stiltedly, "all things must end. They killed… Kankurou was slain. His body was thrown at our feet." She's on a roll now, forcing the crippled words out. "Gaara lost himself to the Ichibi, didn't fight it. He killed the four Akatsuki, taking some heavy damage. He – could not come back to himself, afterwards." Her fingers twitch around a memory, Gaara's blood as tactile on them as Kankurou's, as her teammates', all those long years ago. "He took my sight before I slew him."
My brothers are gone.
She has enough distance, enough kindness still, to recognize somewhere beyond the stunning blow that she is not the one worst afflicted. She does not have the distance nor the kindness to attribute much importance to this insight.
She knows how Gaara's seal was constructed, particularly after the unexpected Akatsuki sealing during the Civil War. So utterly unlike Naruto's – Gaara's demon given so incomparably greater leeway, and yet less. Her littlest brother could never stop at drawing on the entity's chakra, but must yield himself completely, be overrun, taken by force if need be.
There was only ever one condition: when Gaara dies, so does the Ichibi.
Her childhood has disappeared. Not just the people in it, and the place, but the very idea, the fundament on which her life has been built. Sand has fallen.
Perhaps Hanabi could have held it together, struggling and maimed though she is, the Leaf Princess sent to save them, and having saved them, in so many damning ways, but it is quite clear to Temari that Hanabi has been destroyed.
"I'll wait for the ANBU," Temari says. "You take her home."
xxxxx
