Chapter Eight - Disconcerted Madness
The raging madness in her mind died down, returning stillness and peace to her surroundings. The images were still there, but no longer were there invisible forces tearing it apart. No longer did the jagged and mismatched images try to merge together. Each time that it did, a pounding headache ensued because Izumi could clearly see that they didn't belong together, yet was completely helpless to prevent it from happening.
The images still didn't make sense, but now they were floating tranquilly around her at a speed where Izumi's brain could actually process the image before it flitted away. For the first time, Izumi was able to make out faces with clarity, soak in the details of the settings, and actually understand what was going on. Her memories were still fragmented, but they were all there.
It was up to her to piece it back together.
Izumi pushed herself into a standing position for the first time in hours. Or had it been days? Or weeks? Izumi shook her head; she didn't have any concept of time when she laid on the floor of her mind landscape, curled up in a fetal position. All she had done was squeeze her eyes shut, placed her hands over her ears to drown out the commotion, and tried her best to fall unconscious. Yet each time that she did, she would be awakened when she felt a sudden jolt in her body.
Her body swayed. Her hand instinctively reached out to feel for something to restore her balance, yet her hand grasped only air. Izumi caught her footing in time, using a great deal of effort to keep herself from toppling over. A dull ache was still present on the back of her head, pounding relentlessly with each step that she took. Small steps because Izumi wasn't sure that she was capable of more.
How had she grown so weak? No longer did she feel like a formidable kunoichi, she felt like a fragile civilian wracked by some incurable disease that was eating away at her health.
Maybe she was dead. Death would explain her fragility, but Izumi still had her doubts. Was this what death really looked like? Why was she still here, trapped in her own mind? Maybe this was the infamous saying that people on the verge of death saw their life flash before their eyes. Yet this didn't seem like a flash, more like it was going to stretch on and on for an eternity.
Izumi finally stumbled over to the wall of images. Her hand shot outward, bracing herself as the strength flowed out of her legs. Much to her surprise, her hand didn't pass through the image. Instead, the palm of her hand rested next to a face.
The boy was young, probably in his mid-teens, yet the deep lines on his face, spanning from his eyes to the side of his nose, betrayed his actual age. Long, gray hair flowed behind him, bundled together by a hair tie. His black eyes were looking straight at her, the emotions dancing in those black orbs speaking volumes.
His lips were moving, but no sound came out of his mouth. If Izumi had to guess, the conversation must have been separated from the image, which left her trying to decipher what he was saying by reading his lips. Only the strain of concentrating for such a long period of time sent another wave of pain through her head. Izumi dropped down to the floor, clutching her head while squeezing her eyes tightly shut.
Oh why was this so hard? At this rate, Izumi would never be able to piece together her memories, much less regain her sanity. She would forever be stuck in the abyss with no way out, if her previous attempt was anything to go by.
No way in, no way out.
Izumi laid down on her side, bringing her legs up to her stomach. Curling her upper back, Izumi buried her face into her knees while her hands were still clutching both sides of her head, blocking out the silence.
No more images. No more seeing. No more thinking. It was all too much for her. Blocking out her surroundings made everything so much better. Now if Izumi could lose consciousness too, that would be even better. Then her brain didn't have to function at all, didn't have to register her surroundings.
Why did she even have to wake up in the first place? Didn't she say she never wanted to wake up again? Did that mean it wasn't her time yet? But why her? Izumi was far too weak to handle the stress and pressure and pain.
Everything would be so much easier if it all ended.
Yet among her self deprecating thoughts, there was one tiny thought niggling at the back of her mind. It was that boy from earlier. The same image kept replaying. Even with her eyes closed, she could still see every movement of his lips, but this time in slow motion. When it ended, it repeated itself again.
And again.
And again, until Izumi's lips began to move along with his, sounding out every single word.
And again, until Izumi could string the words together into a coherent sentence.
There's been some movement at the borders, so I fear that the Uchihas are planning something big. I've been hearing rumors floating around that another war might break out. Father expects me to take over in a little over a year and I'm scared that I'll be caught in the middle of another war…
The boy's statement ended there, yet Izumi's head filled in the rest of the conversation for her. Her chipper voice clearly sounded in her mind, a stark contrast to the boy's more solemn one.
Don't worry, Itachi kun! You'll have Shisui, Toshiro, Obito...and me! No matter what happens, we'll be here to support you!
Oh that's right. Uchihas. The war. Those names. It was already coming back to her. Izumi groaned as an onslaught of memories came to her, random flashes of the battlefield, of people that she was supposed to know. Yet despite the fragmented memories, Izumi found those that involved Itachi to be the clearest.
Two rows in front of her, a small boy sat in the seat closest to the window, staring longingly outside. What had captivated her that day wasn't the fact that he was the clan heir, but rather how he managed to exhibit a poised air about him while completely tuning out the class. Izumi giggled under her breath when the teacher called on Itachi, his head instantly snapping towards the front of the classroom. Without missing a beat, he answered the question like he had been paying attention all along.
From the swings, Izumi watched longingly as Itachi left with an older boy, Shisui? Izumi wasn't quite sure of the name, but that sounded about right. She always found herself watching, only because she wished that she could from a friendship just like the two of them, or better yet, be able to join them.
Ten year old Itachi turned down her request to train with him with an apologetic look in his eyes. Citing that he had training to attend to, Itachi parted ways with her, but not before poking her in the forehead. Izumi wondered why she had been so foolish to approach the elusive clan heir. Of course, he would turn her down. At least he was polite about it.
Two years later, Obito formally introduced the two of them. When his eyes fell onto her, Izumi could feel her heart temporarily halt as she awaited for his reaction. Would he find her annoying? When Itachi addressed her by name, Izumi's heart never felt fuller and lighter. He remembered her name! Not only did he remember, he committed it to memory for two years!
Izumi was hiding by the front door, peering in to see Itachi with his kid brother, Sasuke. A smile formed on her face while she watched Itachi interact with Sasuke. It was so adorable and precious and Izumi never thought she would see this side to the clan heir. Unfortunately for Sasuke, Itachi turned down his request to play with him, poking him in the forehead before he left. Izumi instinctively reached up to touch her own forehead.
Many more memories flashed by, most of them concerning Itachi's fears that war was approaching. A lot of what was said didn't make much sense to her, but at the very least, Izumi deduced that she was important enough to him for him to include her in the meetings.
Was he waiting for her to wake up?
That thought doused cold water on her, snapping her out of her helpless state. Her body jerked forward as her eyes opened. Izumi emitted a strangled noise from the back of her throat at the sudden movement which sent a sharp pain through her stomach.
Pain...in her stomach. For once, the pain wasn't in her head, but came from other parts of her body. Her panicked eyes took in her surroundings, soaking in the four gray walls and absolute nothingness.
This wasn't her mind landscape.
"You're awake," a weak voice murmured from her left side. Izumi's eyes swung over to the figure slumped against the wall next to her. Even though her mind only had jumbled recollections of what happened through the years, one look at the characteristic gray locks and the deep lines next to his nose, Izumi knew.
"Itachi!" Uncaring about what he thought, Izumi threw herself at him, wrapping her arms around his shoulders while she buried her face into his shoulder. She didn't know why she was sobbing, but a rush of emotions overcame her as she held onto him tightly.
All that Izumi knew was that this man was an important person in her life and seeing him in such a weakened state completely devastated her. In addition to the blindfold wrapped around his eyes, Izumi couldn't help but think something horrible had happened to him. It didn't matter though. Itachi was alive and warm and breathing.
Itachi's hands touched her side, like he was trying to figure out her position before his arms wrapped around her torso, returning her embrace.
"Izumi?" Itachi murmured into her ear. Izumi nodded, realizing seconds later that Itachi couldn't see her. With her face pressed against his shoulder, Itachi must have felt her answer because he let out a sigh.
"Here I was hoping that it wasn't anyone that I knew."
"What do you mean? What is this place?"
Itachi, being as perspective as he was, immediately sensed something was wrong. Releasing his arms from Izumi, he moved to feel for her shoulders, grasping it tightly. Never more than in that moment did Itachi wish that he could still see again because he wished to search in Izumi's eyes for answers.
It was already bad enough something happened to him, but why her too?
"Do you remember what happened before you got here?"
"Not really." Izumi paused. "I was in this dark place. No matter where I went, there was no way out. It felt like there was a barrier pushing me back when I tried to leave. And then all around me, my memories were scattered. Nothing makes sense. The chaos died down recently and the only thing I remember is you."
It was just as Itachi feared. The multiple layers of genjutsu had thoroughly fucked up her mind that Itachi was surprised that Izumi hadn't gone mentally insane from it. Itachi cursed himself for being too slow to help her.
"And your head? Are you feeling alright?"
"It still hurts," Izumi confessed. "I wasn't supposed to wake up. I was ready to give up, then I saw your face. You were telling me about the war and then for the first time, something made sense to me. And then I saw more and more fragments of our memories even if they don't make much sense to me. All I know was that you're important to me and I just wondered if you were waiting for me to wake up…"
Itachi wrapped his arm around her shoulders, pulling her closer to him. His lips curled up into a smile as he heard Izumi burst into tears as she recounted how happy she was when she realized that he was waiting for her to wake up. He was, only he wished that she didn't have to see him like this.
His hand moved up to cup her cheek, the pad of his thumb moving to wipe away the tears.
"Don't push yourself too hard to remember," Itachi told her after Izumi began to fret that she would never be able to make sense of her memories again. "Take it one step at a time. You'll be able to make sense of it in time."
"But why are we here? Where is this place? What happened to your eyes?"
"It's a long story. I'll tell you some other time." If Itachi could see, he most certainly would have poked her in the forehead. "You should rest for now."
Izumi shifted, snuggling closer into his side. "Can you tell me a story then? About us and that other boy...Shisui?"
Itachi nodded, smiling as he recounted the story of a girl following him around in their childhood. Although he acted like he never noticed her, Itachi was very much hyper aware of her presence. And she kept following him around, until the day she gathered the courage to speak to him for the first time...
Obito tumbled to the ground, huffing in exertion. Once again, he had ripped off the arm of the practice dummy. The times before had been the head, or the leg, or a portion of the torso. It seemed that Obito couldn't get it right.
He flopped onto his back, spreading his arms and legs out as he stared up at the cloudy sky. With only less than twenty four hours looming over his head, Obito felt the pressure pushing him, oftentimes, the cause of making him lose focus. Despite knowing the culprit behind his terrible aim, the stress still got to him every time. The harder that Obito tried to clear his mind, the more swirling thoughts that seemed to wrack his mind.
Obito's ears perked up when he heard footsteps approaching his way. Without bothering to crane his head to check on the identity of the person, Obito automatically assumed it was Shisui who came to check up on his miniscule progress. Pushing himself into a sitting position by the elbow, his mouth opened, ready to deliver the disappointing news when his eyes registered a mop of silver.
Kakashi.
Kakashi settled by one of the dummies, back leaning against the wooden straw man with his legs crossed in front of him. He didn't say anything, simply stared at Obito as if he was expecting him to start the conversation.
Obito huffed. How typical of him.
"I don't have time to speak to you. I have to practice."
"Your chakra levels are extremely low," Kakashi pointed out. "You need to rest."
"And why do you even care?"
"Because you were my first friend," Kakashi responded without missing a beat. His candid response shocked Obito, whose anger dimmed down upon hearing those words come out of his mouth. "At the point in my life when everyone else shunned me, you were the only one who accepted me."
And that meant a lot to me, were the words left unsaid, but mutual understanding passed between them.
"Remember you once asked me why I left the Senju village?" Obito nodded, recalling the question that he asked a dozen of times over the last decade, yet he never successfully pried anything from Kakashi's lips. "I didn't leave because I was working as a spy. I left because I wasn't wanted."
"The Uchihas weren't welcoming either," Obito pointed out.
"At least they saw me for me and not for my father's mistakes. The village betrayed my trust, so I figured that they didn't deserve my loyalty. My child self decided it would be a good idea to betray them by siding with their greatest enemy, as if that would do anything. I was just a child, with no valuable intel and average skills. Even when I actually did it, it didn't make me feel any better, didn't ease away any of the pain and heartbreak."
"So you weren't always working for the Senjus. Then when?"
"Sometime after the fourth war started," Kakashi answered. "All along, I've been working towards obtaining peace, just like you have. The only difference was that we were pitted on opposite sides. Truth to be told, I never thought I would even have this conversation with you because I thought for sure that I would be dead before then."
"What, why?"
Kakashi shot him a deadpanned look, almost as if to shame him for not figuring out the reason when it was so obvious. "Why else? Spies are executed when they are compromised. You do remember that Itachi was suspicious of me, right? He even used your mouth to pass along his message, knowing that you would certainly tell me."
Obito's mouth parted, widening into a shape of an 'o.' "That time?"
"That time I knew Itachi was already onto me, so I didn't expect that I would live any longer, but Itachi let me go. And that's the reason why you can trust me to help save Itachi. A life for a life and my debt will be repaid."
"Wait, that doesn't make any sense. Why did you go back to the Senjus if they shunned you? Why did you agree to work for them?"
"Maybe I had been jaded for far too long and wanted to believe that there was hope. You were the one who showed me that I wasn't alone, that there were still people in the world that cared about me, so it made me believe that there were people in the village who cared about me. Even if they were the silent minority."
"And?" Obito prodded, more curious than interrogative at this point. "Were there?"
A wistful smile appeared on Kakashi's face, even if his mask hid it. "Yeah, there were. And for me, that was enough to make these twelve years worth it."
Obito crossed his arms over his chest. "Still trashy of you to not say anything to me before you left." The playful smile that tugged on his lips betrayed the seriousness in his tone.
"Yeah, I know." Kakashi returned the smile.
"You better show me around your village one day."
"Definitely."
The light hearted atmosphere was traded for a more solemn one when Obito broached a topic that he had been wondering about all along, yet never seemed to gather the courage to find the answer.
"Rin, is she-?"
Kakashi shook his head, inciting a sigh of relief from Obito. "She's living in the Senju village now, working as a medic."
"What even happened anyways?"
"During the war, I brought her to the Senjus as a prisoner of war," Kakashi explained, purposely omitting the part where he was assigned a mission to kill her. Although Obito forgave him, Kakashi wasn't willing to push his limits quite yet, especially knowing how much he cared about Rin. "After the war, they let her go and Rin left the village. She told me that she visited her old hometown and then went back to the town where the Uchihas took her again." At this point, Kakashi shot Obito a pointed look. "And then she came back."
"So she remembers?"
Kakashi nodded. "When we were trying to extract information out of her, we noticed the genjutsu and broke her out of her. All of her memories have been restored."
"Ah figures why Rin chose to go to the Senjus instead. I always thought that if she knew, she would never forgive me."
"Forgive you?" Kakashi raised an eyebrow. "You weren't the one who did that to her. And she doesn't hate all the Uchihas, as far as I'm aware."
"Yeah, but I was the one who watched while they did it," Obito countered. "And all those years after it happened, I never bothered to break her out of the genjutsu."
The words "I'm sure that she'll forgive you" were at the tip of Kakashi's tongue, but he forced himself to swallow the words. Once those words came out of his mouth, then he surely would have to explain how he knew that and that would entail telling Obito about the mission to kill Rin.
In the end, Kakashi settled for, "I see. I don't know exactly what happened, but maybe she'll be able to see past it, on the account that you were her best friend for so many years." It was interesting that this was the first time that Kakashi was hearing this; Rin told him practically everything else about her childhood, so why not this? Did she not want to place Obito in a bad light?
"Yeah some best friend I am," Obito stated, rolling his eyes. "Keeping lies from her."
"Maybe it was better that way," Kakashi tried to console. "If Rin knew and tried to leave, wouldn't they hunt her down? Maybe that time, they wouldn't have been so lenient."
"I suppose," Obito remarked, but it was a half hearted agreement at best. "Anyways, I'm glad to hear that she's safe. I wasn't sure since she disappeared after the war and no one heard from her…"
"Yeah." Kakashi swallowed thickly before he ventured to voice his next question. "Do you...do you still love her?" Maybe it was the guilt that gnawed at him that propelled him to find out the answer to that; since Rin came back to the village, Kakashi couldn't help but feel that he had taken Obito's position. Obito was supposed to be her best friend, not him. Obito was supposed to receive her forgiveness, not him.
Or perhaps it all started the moment he began getting close to her.
Obito snorted. "Does it even matter? I knew from the beginning that she would never reciprocate my feelings. Once she told me the thing that she hated the most was deceit and I did exactly just that."
Kakashi felt the compelling urge to confess everything to Obito. To confess that he had lied to her too, yet she forgave him so there had to be room in her heart to forgive Obito too. His teeth bit his lower lip, restraining the words from coming out.
"We can catch up when this is all over," Obito said. "I need to practice."
Kakashi was grateful for the change in subject. "Sit down."
Obito shot him a wry look.
"Sit down," Kakashi ordered again. This time, Obito did as he asked, legs folding underneath him so that he sat in a cross legged position, mirroring Kakashi's current stance. He stared at Kakashi expectantly, in a manner that suggested Obito was only entertaining Kakashi's antics.
But Kakashi was being completely serious.
"Your aim is off because you aren't focused," Kakashi began, raising his hand to stop Obito from interjecting. "If I had to wager, it's from the stress and pressure. You need to calm yourself; otherwise, no matter how many times you practice, you are just wasting your chakra."
"Then what do you suggest?"
"Meditate."
"Meditate?"
Kakashi nodded. "The purpose of meditating is not only to help chakra control, but at the same time, it's supposed to help you clear your mind. In the beginning, you won't have time to think about other things because your focus is mostly on your chakra flow, but once you get used to it, you get to the point where you sit there and learn to think about nothing."
Obito shot him a skeptical look. "How can you sit there and think about nothing? I would get bored and start thinking about other things."
"You'll see. Start moving your chakra through your chakra network. Think of it as water languidly floating through a stream. Keep the same amount of chakra moving through."
Obito nodded, eager to try it if it was going to aid his aim. Closing his eyes, he immediately reached to feel for his chakra core, where chakra was slowly building back up after he depleted it earlier after all his failed attempts. Picturing the stream just like Kakashi described, Obito latched onto a tendril of chakra and began to guide it towards one of his chakra networks that led to his arm.
The chakra moved smoothly. Obito repeated the process, guiding the chakra to the other networks, but he found that the more that he did so, the harder that it was to maintain control. When Obito felt a chakra spike in one of his networks, he dropped what he was doing to place his focus to smoothen his chakra.
And from that point, it was like a domino effect. From the moment his attention wavered, everything started falling apart and Obito was left scrambling to fix all of it until he gave up and allowed all of his chakra to return to his chakra core.
Then, Obito started again. He could vaguely feel that Kakashi was watching him and under normal circumstances, Obito might have felt a bit self conscious about being judged, but just like Kakashi said, once he started to focus on his chakra flow, everything else was blocked out. One by one, Obito began to stream the chakra through his system. This time, he took it a bit slower, with a bit more caution.
It took a few more tries for Obito to get the process down, but each failure only led him to improvement. At some point in the exercise, it finally hit Obito that Kakashi's purpose was to teach him patience and caution. Smiling to himself, Obito felt pleased to know that despite everything, Kakashi was still one of the few people who knew him well.
Once Obito had gotten the hang of it, he slowly allowed his directed focus to dissipate a little, letting the chakra flow through his system on its own. The buzzing sensation felt soothing, almost like he was getting a massage. Contrary to what he first believed, even when his focus wasn't riveted on controlling his chakra control, Obito was capable of letting loose and thinking about nothing. It was hard not to, especially since he wanted to bask in this soothing sensation forever. He wanted nothing to disrupt it.
Yet he knew at one point that he needed to get back to the real world. Slowly, Obito's eyes snapped open, breaking the constant stream of chakra flow.
Kakashi was still sitting across from him, eyeing him curiously. An eyebrow was raised, the unspoken question lingering between the two of them. Obito didn't bother to respond; instead, his eyes immediately swung to the practice dummy. Completely focused on channeling chakra to his eyes, he saw the immediate change in clarity in his vision. Continuing through the motion of activating his Mangekyo, Obito kept his mind blank.
The only thing that his mind registered was the practice dummy.
When he spotted the first signs of the space being warped, Obito kept a level head. Unlike the previous times, he didn't push himself to pour more chakra in or concentrate even harder. The space whirled, the signs of a black hole appearing becoming more obvious.
Then in an instance, his chakra snapped. The black hole quickly disappeared. Obito fell backwards from the exertion, but Kakashi was there to catch him, propping him up against his shoulder. His hand instinctively reached up to clutch his throbbing eye, no doubt having already returned to its natural state as the clarity in his vision diminished.
His vision wasn't as clear anymore, but Obito was sure that his eyes weren't playing tricks on him. Was the dummy...gone?
"Where's the dummy?"
"You sucked it away in one piece." Kakashi's confirmation set everything in place for him. Obito felt a happy feeling bubbling from within him; he had finally done it. Yet deep down, he knew that the hard part wasn't over just yet.
Tomorrow was the big day.
Twenty branch members. She freed twenty branch members from their eternal curse. Yui had started with Akiara, her childhood friend, the branch member who was assigned to protect her from birth simply for being born into the wrong family before moving on to help Akiara's friends. Before Yui knew it, the entire situation had spiraled out of control. Rather than seeking out the person herself, the people came to her, citing that they heard from whoever about it.
In just a short amount of time, the news had spread like wildfire and Yui knew it was only a matter of time before someone let it slip to the main family. From that point forward, it wouldn't be too hard for the main family to trace the source back to her.
Third in line or not, Yui would be good as dead for treason. But to her, none of that mattered. From the day she agreed to join Itachi's revolution, Yui knew that it was only a matter of time. While Akiara still harbored the naive mindset that all of them would make it out alive, Yui knew better.
But if she was going to die for her cause, then so be it.
With that in mind, Yui left to go to Akiara's apartment, where there was a line of people whose freedom depended solely on her.
By the time Yui returned, the sky had darkened considerably. With only a sliver of moonlight in the sky, the entire compound was eerily dark. The streetlight by the entrance had conveniently flickered out of existence, dousing her in complete darkness.
Even in the dark, Yui could feel three pairs of eyes on her. Three guards, hiding somewhere in the trees or on the roof. Her late return might have warranted cause for suspicion, but Yui knew that her status would protect her from questioning. So Yui leisurely strolled through the open courtyard, veering off to the left side where her quarters resided.
While the guards wouldn't dare to stop her, someone else didn't harbor the same qualms. He hid himself in the shadows by one of the pillars and at the first sign of movement, all of Yui's instincts flared up. Whirling around at an insane speed, both of their palms brushed against each other, sending a burst of chakra into the air. The move garnered the attention of the guards, but Yui held up a hand in the air, signalling them to remain in their positions.
Her pale eyes stared right at him. "Uncle. What are you doing here?" Not the Uncle that Yui feared it was; it was Hizashi that stopped her. To her, the two of them had an amicable relationship despite their status separation. Yui would even go as far to say that she preferred Hizashi's company over Hiashi's, but still, she was wary as to what Hizashi wanted with her at one in the morning.
What couldn't wait until tomorrow morning?
"You came back quite late. I've been looking for you all afternoon. Where have you been?"
It shouldn't have been a branch member's place to question her whereabouts, but Yui still respected Hizashi as her elder so she bit the retort that had threatened to come out of her mouth.
"I had a long day and I'm tired. Can't this wait until the morning?" With that dismissal, Yui turned to leave until she felt a cold hand wrap around her arm, halting her movements completely.
"I know what you've been doing." Those words sent chills down her spine; goosebumps appeared all over her arms. Plastering a forced smile onto her face, Yui slowly turned back around to face Hizashi. Looking him straight in the eye, Yui lied straight through her teeth.
"I don't know what you are talking about."
If Hizashi had been none the wiser and merely bluffing, Yui's nonchalance would have fooled him. Yet when she saw the steeled look in his eyes remain, Yui knew for certain that he had heard.
Like she said, it was only a matter of time. Yui only wished that it wasn't so soon. There were still so many people waiting for her help.
"You know very well what you are doing," Hizashi responded. "Why?"
The charade was up. "Why not? Don't tell me you believe in the family's system. Think about your son. Is it right that someone as exceptional as him will grow up to be nothing more than a bodyguard?"
Hizashi's expression didn't change, but Yui noted that his fists were clenched by his side.
"What justifies the fact that you were born a minute later, you are reduced to the branch family? Even the Uchihas haven't stooped so low as to brand their own members. Resentment has been building up in the clan for a long time and I fear that it will implode one day. And what then? Will we be pitted against each other? How are we supposed to fight off the Uchiha's tyranny over this village if we can't even be sent to the battlefield as equals?
"We all agreed in the last meeting that the Uchihas have gone too far with Oto's occupation. What I'm doing is giving those who want to fight a chance."
"And we will seem scattered because of it," Hizashi replied lowly. "Either we fight as one or we don't."
"But Hiashi isn't planning to fight, is he?" Hizashi's silence told her everything that she needed to know. "All of those words were just to pacify us into submission. The truth is that Hiashi has struck a deal with the Uchihas which will benefit the main family, while the rest of the Hyugas suffer from his selfishness, am I right?"
Again, Hizashi remained silent. Yui shook her head in disappointment. As much as she didn't want to believe Toshiro when he told her about his suspicions, Yui couldn't deny that Hiashi's actions seemed to go against the majority opinion of the clan. Of course, Yui shouldn't have been surprised. The majority of the council was corrupt. It was a miracle that there was still someone untainted like Itachi left.
"I didn't expect you to be the one to fight against this," Hizashi confessed. "You would have been one of those that would benefit."
"I'm not a coward," Yui stated. "I'm not going to live the rest of my life wallowing in guilt because I didn't gather the courage to fight for what I believe in. You can either stand with me or stay out of this. Your choice."
SIlence hung between them as Yui gave her uncle a pointed look. She could tell that Hizashi's resolve was wavering, but she never had any expectations that he would agree with her. After all, he could never truly resent his brother.
The silence was broken, but not by Hizashi.
"I'm afraid that's not his choice."
Yui craned her head over her shoulder to see Hiashi's hands were already poised in the seal sequence to activate the cursed seal, ready to threaten his brother into his submission.
"So it was you who stole the scroll. I didn't expect that at all."
Yui scoffed. "If you expected it, then you wouldn't have let me successfully steal it in the first place."
She wasn't normally this brave. Yet the thought of her comrades putting their lives on the line for the cause fueled her adrenaline. Itachi and Izumi might die tomorrow. Shisui was still on the run. Toshiro was waist deep in the snake pit, trying to pretend he was on their side. If they found out that Akiara aided her, she would be good as dead too.
Yui resolved to keep her out of this.
"You think you are their savior, but you just sentenced them all to death." With a snap of his fingers, two men emerged from the shadows, with a third figure hunched over in between them. Without even having to see the third figure's face, Yui knew that he was one of the people who she freed from the cursed seal today.
Her courageous facade wavered for a moment, but Yui quickly pulled herself together. She didn't come this far for it all to end now.
"And what will you do? Kill off the entire branch family? Don't forget that they are our clansmen too."
"Those who do not abide by the rules of the clan are traitors," Hiashi responded evenly. "This is always how the clan has done things. If they sought you to rid them of the binding, then they are going against the well being of the clan."
"Have you ever thought that just because we have always done it this way that it doesn't mean it's right?" Yui fired back. Clinging onto outdated beliefs...the Hyugas were more like the Uchihas than they cared to admit. "The well being of the clan should be to treat everyone as equals and not to tear siblings apart by their status. What we are doing is enslaving our own."
"Is that really for the well being of the clan?" Yui pressed on. "We claim that we are protecting the Hyuga secrets and clan line, but from what I see, we're the ones destroying the clan."
Stunned silence. For a brief moment, Yui thought maybe she had finally gotten through her uncle's head. Maybe finally the two of them could agree on something for once. But when Hiashi shook his head slowly, bile rose up in Yui's throat.
Moments later, the signal was given and Hizashi was the first to lunge towards her. Deep down inside, Yui wanted to believe his hand was forced, that he had no choice to attack her lest Hiashi activated the curse seal, but when she finally got a glimpse of his eyes, there was nothing but apathy. No remorse, no apologeticness.
It had taken three of them to restrain her. As her knees collided against the wooden floorboard, black hair falling on either side of her face to shield her view of people she once called family, Yui couldn't help but lament the fact that she had failed.
Perhaps all of their efforts were wasted.
They would never change.
A/N: Hi again!
Next chapter will mark the end of part 1 of this story. :) This is the halfway point in the story so before you know it, the story is ending! Part 2 will feature the Senju crew again, so that will exciting for those that don't like the Uchihas haha.
The Quincy: I'm glad you got the enjoyment of reading all the chapters at once! No worries about Itachi's eyes because Danzo is dead in this story (implied it at the end of first book). Thank you for your kind words; you really made my day! For a while I was wondering if there was anyone reading this story because maybe I villainized the clan so much in book 1 that no one cares about them hahah, so I'm glad to hear from you. :) Stay safe and Happy New Year!
Thank you for reading! Until next time.
-MM