They're standing in a field of white wheat that rolls and billows like an ocean, the setting sun bleeding red across the sky. The heat of the afternoon has cooked the mounds of bodies and made them bloat. It smells so strongly: viscous rot and rats' nests. How cruel of death to be so humiliating. Itachi tries not to breathe in but he can't hold his breath forever. He coughs on decomposition. Father's hand is heavy on his shoulder, a callous thumb digging into the shoal of skin beneath his collarbone.

"This is war," father says behind him, a somber, obsidian mountain with hands as wide as lakes. The field of white wheat bows under a sigh of wind toward them, stray hairs outside the tiny ribbon of Itachi's ponytail blown back from his temples. The bodies are eerily still. "This is what it is."

Itachi doesn't say anything, tongue suddenly made of lead. Father holds him still until he spins him around, hollow expression replaced with gnarled terror. Itachi's never seen him so scared and it frightens him much the same. A second hand—another wide, deep lake—swallows Itachi's other shoulder, grips him so the wind won't steal him away. The air filling up his lungs sews rot in their seams.

"Itachi," father forces out through a clenched underbite, caging something behind his teeth, "I never want to see you in a field like this."

There's a moment where all he hears is the wind through the wheat.

"But I am?" asks Itachi. "I'm already here."

The field of white wheat shivers and whispers.

Witnessing father hold back his tears is the most horrifying thing Itachi has ever seen.


The first time he kills someone father guides his hand.

The blade goes down and up. Itachi sees it enter, but the second it's over he can't remember anything.

"Your hands don't even shake," father says. His tone is neither proud nor ashamed. Itachi doesn't know how to swallow it so he lets it roll around behind his teeth for a week or two, keeps his mouth sealed so it doesn't fall out and he loses it. Father doesn't speak to him again until many nights later over dinner.

"Soon you will have a baby sister."

Itachi gapes his mouth, father's weeks-old comment tumbling out his memory and immediately being replaced.

"No!" exclaims Itachi. Father and mother both stare at him. "I'm having a baby brother."

Mother laughs at his assuredness, up until her belly starts to get big. She begins asking Itachi what he thinks his brother will look like instead. He enjoys her attention while it lasts. They discuss names while working in her garden and watch fireflies when the sun goes down.

Itachi comes home one day and finds her missing. When he asks father where she is, he receives a clipped, "Your mother is resting."

"From what?"

Father shakes his head and repeats himself, face screwed up in some unfamiliar expression. Itachi doesn't pry further. Without mother to talk to after school, he spends his evenings wandering the garden by himself. He realizes that catching fireflies is only fun when she's around.

Being in the garden starts to make him sick to his stomach.

Focusing on schoolwork eases the ache a little.


He isn't exactly what Itachi had described to her, but Sasuke comes out close enough.

The first time he sees him crying in their mother's arms, Itachi decides that he is helpless. He takes it upon himself to protect him because Sasuke can't protect himself—not with that sort of attitude. Father says as much: You're the elder. You're the lead.

It confuses him for a long time why the duty of raising Sasuke is left to him, but Itachi understands that's just the way things are. That's just how it is.

There is nothing else but attentive ears and subservient hands. Little kitten with his tail in his mouth, baby bird fallen out the nest; Sasuke is now his to adore. They spend many afternoons on the floor with Sasuke toddling about, Itachi guiding him by the hands, his index fingers clutched in chubby fists. His brother learns to squeal when he desires attention and Itachi does as he is told, gives Sasuke everything he needs because no one else seems willing. That's what shinobi are for: To do as they are told.

It would seem he is the only true shinobi in their house.

He loses more sleep over Sasuke's crying than every mission combined, but he loves his tired mother and he loves Sasuke just as much—loves the way his gums feel so defenseless around the tip of his finger. Loves the way his dark eyes don't turn red like father's. Loves the way his jaw cracks open and the screams plume out, still innocent enough to think anyone gives a fuck about what he wants

Itachi hits Sasuke one afternoon when the squealing gets too loud and the heat too much.

He learns soon after that bringing the mission home with him is forbidden. He forces his face to change the moment he steps foot over the threshold every night—the moment his knuckles met plush cheek, the second Sasuke's dark eyes clouded up with tears and spilled down his bruising temple.

Father beats him like a dog in front of their house where everyone can see with his eyes instead of his fists. Itachi swears he'll never hit Sasuke again. When he answers the endless crying again that night, Itachi fears he may have lied. Mother tells him that he can never shake babies. He still considers it—considers screaming in Sasuke's tiny, scrunched face, Why won't you stop crying?

The mission and its feeling is to remain outside the home.

Sasuke is the only mission Itachi lets inside because there's nowhere else to put him, really.


Father looms like a god over the rest of them, an impressive alp of stone-cold lethality, brooding his way through a sermon of shouting clansmen. Itachi spends most of their meetings staring in awe-stricken silence, hands folded over his thighs with his chin tucked close to his chest. Father tells him to sit up, so he sits up. His clansmen watch him as if awaiting something miraculous, something that isn't going to happen. Itachi doesn't know what they're looking for, but he knows it isn't him.

There are things about us only you may know, father tells him when they are alone. You won't speak of this to anyone. He does as he is told because he is a good son—good shinobi. It isn't like Sasuke can take up the mantle, what with all the crying he does—and being an infant. Itachi knows he never cried as a baby because mother brags about it.

He was such a quiet thing. He was so easy.

Further proof that the life of a weapon is what he was born for. It fills him with pride. Itachi promises mother that he will be the sharpest knife of all.

He begins partaking in clan meetings with renewed purpose before realizing father has done the opposite, Itachi confused by his lack of involvement. Even as their spearhead is father silent, reserved, far departed from everything and everyone—including him; a ghost at the head of their table. Something upsets him enough that he loses interest in speaking all together, something Itachi has yet to learn. It spurs him to try harder, do better, sharpen himself into a blade that father can be proud of. Perhaps he is only quiet because he is watching.

Nothing ever comes of it. In fact, father falls deeper into himself the more Itachi tries. The revelation sends him spiraling. Itachi stops him one night because he can't take the desperation anymore.

"I'll do whatever you tell me to," he pleads under a streetlamp. Father looks down on him, haloed with fluorescent light. "Just say it. Did I do something? Have I embarrassed you?"

Father shakes his head with a hum like thunder, takes Itachi's shoulders in his hands for the first time in years. Two great lakes swallow him whole. Father's eyes are red in all the wrong ways.

"You do as you're told. Nothing more."

Itachi continues his efforts to include himself in clan meetings because he doesn't see any other way.

Father continues to depart from him, only close when their shoulders bump in the hallway; two ships passing in the night.

If only he knew where he was going. Maybe then he could follow.


It's as if the entire world beneath his feet were caving in at that very moment, every shockwave rattling up his shin bones through his knees to his tinfoil teeth, a ball of instinctive panic molding in the pit of his stomach. The house is shaking under some unseen pressure. The air tastes hot on an inhale. Outside, beyond the safety of his bedroom wall, Itachi hears buzzing before the noise swells.

A symphony of a thousand voices screaming in unison is the most horrifying thing Itachi has ever heard.

His clansmen, the village—they're all screaming. The entire village is screaming; a thousand arrows whistling toward their skyward mark.

Are the gods coming down from heaven right now? Is this what war sounds like?

Sasuke is weeping in his arms and wrapped in swaddling cloth; little cocoon hungry for attention. Itachi does as he is told because father will hurt him again if he doesn't. They flee the house together, Itachi pinning Sasuke so close to his chest he worries he may suffocate—on the scalding air or the lung-shaking shockwaves or the fat tears rolling down his chubby cheeks.

Mother said not to shake babies so Itachi forces himself not to run.

Wide eyes aiming up, he sees the outline of a black creature a mile above the buildings' horizon: a god descending upon them, skull wide enough to block the moon. Whichever god it is, it has father's eyes inside its head; enraged, horrible, spiraling. Its mouth cracks open and Itachi watches black teeth encompass the moon behind, the noise flooding out bashing the cymbals of his lungs and shredding the air to static. It punches straight through him. Itachi stares in awe before someone's knee clubs him and his shoulder meets hard dirt.

Sasuke shrieks a decibel capable of deafening, somehow even louder than a god. Itachi holds him close because his arms are already around him.

The screaming has yet to stop rising. A blanketing wave of terror clutches his beating, evolved heart. Run, his heels command, calf muscles twitching. Every time his knees unfold the tendons retract faster than Itachi bids. Sasuke jostles against his chest like a rattle, his weeping voice bouncing with the movement.

"I'm sorry," says Itachi. He prays to another god, one that isn't filled with derision and isn't executing their village at this very moment. Please, make him stop crying. The sky erupts orange and a resounding boom whips Itachi's hair back, the entire street bowing beneath a torrent of blistering, metallic wind. Sasuke falls deathly quiet, kitten-eyes wide and trained on him. Thank you.

It seems he prays too hard because father goes silent the following month. Sasuke isn't the same, either. Itachi finds him staring up at the ceiling in his crib one night and panics, only for those kitten-eyes to spot him and light up at the sound of Itachi's stifled inhale.

His crib is wide enough for the both of them.


Itachi finds a book in the library about babies. The moment his dark eyes find the silver-etched cherub on its spine Itachi snags it from the shelf and retreats to the back corner of the room. It's outside of his marked reading level, but that's never stopped him before. Everyone praises him when he goes beyond the boundaries of expectation. This should be no different. He has a baby brother, after all.

Crying is one of the first forms of communication used by infants to get their parents' attention. The infant's cognitive and emotional development is stimulated when a parent reacts to the child's signals appropriately.

Itachi spends a full hour decoding the first chapter of the book without getting past the seventh page. It's a wealth of words he's never read before and he's compelled to understand them. He takes the book home.

Reading at night is made easier due to Sasuke's enjoyment of lanterns. Belly-down across his futon, book propped up on his inner elbows, Itachi mulls over the first chapter while Sasuke sleeps along the curve of his back.

A baby's first breath results from hormonal reactions that help empty the fluid from the lungs so that they can breathe air. The effort of those first few breaths is tremendous, and some newborns need help.

Sasuke didn't need help.

Itachi didn't need help.

Born shinobi never need anything. A part of him aches for hitting Sasuke. That wasn't an appropriate response.

A baby's quiet arrival may mean they do not know how to cry.

Itachi thinks hard about why he never did. He comes to the conclusion that he didn't need to. Whenever Sasuke starts to warble at night and his dark eyes go glassy, Itachi leans over him and mimics his face through the pain: every agonized mouth gape, every choked whine, every wrinkle creasing the flat between his brows.

The tears, however, are impossible to produce.

Nevertheless, Sasuke seems soothed by this new approach, and that's all that matters.


"Your father speaks highly of you. I'm sure you know," Danzo tells him. "He says you're destined for clanhead."

He hates being reminded of his future every hour of every day. He would like to enjoy the past, if that were acceptable. It never seems to be yet everyone is constantly living in it. Father lives in war. Mother lives wherever Sasuke isn't. Itachi lives here, right now, in the present, in this office. It's very lonesome. If someone else would join him for once—if only for a few minutes. If it isn't too much to ask. Maybe he should just find somewhere else to live—the past, maybe, like everyone else.

There's always Sasuke. Not that Sasuke has much of a choice in the matter, but that's never diminished a relationship before. Companionship doesn't have to be sincere so long as it's reliable. When does anyone have a choice in anything, anyway?

If people could choose—

If people could choose—

Then 'people' wouldn't be shinobi.

"Thank you," Itachi lies because he has to. Danzo sets him with a calculating stare.

"You don't like it, do you?"

For a brief moment, Itachi's heart stammers. "Pardon?"

"Clanhead," repeats Danzo. "That isn't what you want, is it?" His pressurized silence seems to be more flagrant an answer than if he actually spoke. Danzo makes a low gurgling noise, scoffing. "I can read you better than your own father."

"I know my duties." It's the only way he can offer father some respect while he isn't around to defend himself.

"And whose duties are those?"

Itachi chews his proverbial cud in thought. "I don't understand."

Danzo has taken to lamely walking around the length of his desk, hobbling along with his cane for a third leg. "It's not a complicated question. Who gave you your duties?"

"The village."

There's a stretch of silence from Danzo before he urges Itachi with an open hand. "And? Who else."

"You."

"And?"

He can hear the field of wheat in his memory. "My father."

Danzo smacks the floor in front of Itachi's feet with his cane. "The Uchiha," he asserts. "The Uchiha have given you your duties."

"As they should."

"As they should," Danzo mocks. Itachi's dark eyes follow him as he makes another loop around his desk. "You're given tasks that belong to someone else, someone who decided that those tasks are beneath them. 'Oh, no. I won't do these. These belong to someone else.'" Danzo's gaze finds him with a beetling brow and he wordlessly holds it. "They found the first willing kid and dumped their duties onto him. On you. Is that all you aspire to be? Is that really how your clan sees you? How you see you?"

He rubs his thumb across his knuckles, hands clasped over the cantle of his back. "I should hope so," says Itachi.

"Well, be relieved." Danzo takes back his seat behind the desk and solemnly stares at the wall. "You don't have to hope."

Itachi stays up later than usual that night. He knows he shouldn't bring the mission home with him, but it's very hard to keep out of his head. When Sasuke seeks him out with the purpose of sharing a futon, he relents, accepting the avenue of escape his baby brother always offers.

Itachi lets himself think about Sasuke because Sasuke is already inside.


Shisui is eyeing him with a mischievous, lopsided grin, swirling a kunai by the ring with one finger. "What was that?" he pries with a snigger.

"What was what?" It's a stupid thing to hide, but it seems the natural way to go about this. He's supposed to be playful about these things. Mother is an expert at it. She always laughs at the best times, exactly when a laugh can disarm someone. Itachi doesn't laugh, but there must be other ways he can replicate the technique.

"You like her."

Itachi dismissively tosses his ponytail back over his shoulder. "So what?"

A hand finds his back and smacks him, Shisui bouncing up to flood his vision with curly, ink-black hair. "Oooh, boner alert," he teases. Itachi's attention snaps down to inspect himself. Two fingers jab his forehead, followed by laughter. He blinks away the ache. So that's how it feels. "You dork. I'll tell her for you."

The tips of his ears go hot. "No. Don't." He's already reaching out to grab Shisui by the sleeve. "Don't, Shisui."

"Relax!" Shisui assures, brushing off his hand. "I won't. That's your job." Something about the phrase makes the corners of Itachi's mouth spill down. "I wanna see you mess it up like the weird slug you are."

Itachi hums. "Like you?" Like himself, really. Shisui is right. What's someone like him supposed to say to someone like Izumi? Someone everyone likes, who makes everyone smile. Someone people want to be around. No one smiles at him like that—not the same way.

"Yeah, like me," Shisui beams. Well, maybe one person likes him—two. Warmth fills Itachi's stomach at Shisui's wiggly grin. "Then we'll both be weird slugs."

They playfully bicker, swinging their legs off the dock, teasing each other over romantic fantasies until it devolves into criticizing earlobes. Itachi smiles because he isn't lonesome right now, not here. Not with Shisui. The sun sets to a point where both of them have to stare at it for a moment. Crickets trill at the lake's edge.

"There's another meeting tonight," Itachi says.

Leaning forward, both hands gripping the edge of the dock, Shisui glares down into the water. "You have to bring that up?" The frustration surprises him and Itachi offers a contrite glance. Shisui doesn't see him, doesn't even look up from the lake.

"What's wrong?" he asks.

"Nothing," Shisui grunts. "Just—you know."

Chirping crickets fill the void between them, wider in thought than in space. Itachi mimics Shisui's posture and meets his reflection's uncertain eyes. Does he always look so clueless?

"If it makes you feel any better, they aren't fun," he placates.

Shisui grumbles, "I don't care if they're fun or not."

"Yeah . . ." Itachi admires the pink clouds stretched thin across the sky. Being ignored must hurt. Itachi still believes he could get used to it. It definitely has its upsides. "I know."

Itachi stays for a while longer until he has to leave, murmuring a quiet, "Bye," in search of Shisui's forgiveness, hoping to leave the dock with a clear head.

Shisui doesn't even look at him.

The entire duration of the meeting is spent replaying and overanalyzing their interaction, Itachi a silent passenger in a rage-filled room. The only thing he sees is the inside of his own head. He shouldn't have said that to Shisui. He wouldn't be mad if he hadn't. When he lies down to sleep later that night, Itachi stares at the ceiling for a long time.

Guilt is a very painful emotion to suffer.

It would be nice if he could do away with it.


He rarely dreams. Sleep is but an endless field of black, rolling wheat he walks into every night and disappears for a few hours. It's a place filled with winds and shivers and whistles. It's peaceful. He smells nothing.

Sasuke wakes him up often, but not nearly as often as in his baby-years. Itachi finds he's less annoying now that he doesn't squeal as much. He wriggles in his sleep like a worm, though. He's small enough to sleep beside Itachi without touching his side

Sasuke still does sometimes.

Itachi allows it sometimes.

He's cute with his big kitten-eyes, still wholly incapable of protecting himself. Itachi wonders at what age children learn to defend themselves. Was he ever incapable? Maybe as an infant—but Sasuke isn't an infant anymore. He's able to walk around and reach things and babble to himself more coherently. Maybe in a year or two. Then he'll be alright.

"Ichi?" Sasuke whispers in the darkness of his room. "Ita?"

"Hm?" His response is received with a flurry of spitty giggles. "Just wanted to make sure I was still here?" Sasuke nibbles the end of his thumb and stares with those big, bright eyes. Fawning over him. Itachi hates it but yields. Rolling closer, he blows a loud raspberry into Sasuke's stomach and hears him squeal.

"Mama!"

"No," mumbles Itachi. "Mama is asleep."

Sasuke reaches out for a fistful of Itachi's lower lip, drawing it down and exposing his bottom teeth. "Mama!" he shrieks with a gummy grin.

Itachi almost corrects him, but thinks better of it. "Yeah," he exhales against Sasuke's knuckles. "I guess."


This night is another sea of silent wheat wherein he fades. His sword whistles like wind through stalks, moonlight glinting off a red groove. He smells nothing. There are no screams. An hour was spent beforehand staring at himself in the mirror, experimenting with his reflection by turning the lights on and off, watching the way his tears gleamed red even in the dark. There would be no way of hiding them, he'd excitedly realized. No way for him to hide.

It amounts to nothing.

Not a single one utters his name.

It's as if he never existed at all—only as some invisible blight to rob the last breath under a cover of silence. Born unseen, tucked away behind a kidney and fat; a tumor too long ignored. His sword scours their insides for wherever his corporeal form may be hiding and turns up nothing, but that may very well be it. Nobody fights back.

Nobody but Sasuke.

He sees him peeking his head through the sliding doors and the jealousy overwhelms him, stifles him out, unleashes a maelstrom of fresh vengeance from his pupils right into those glassy kitten-eyes. He shows him everything. All of it. And it's horrible, and it's barbaric, the most selfish thing he's ever done—and Itachi's never felt so validated as when Sasuke's jaw cracks open and the screams come pluming out. The way he can't look anywhere else but at him. How Tsukuyomi punches through his body and Itachi sees every ripple. When he comes to and the reality of it all still hasn't set in and the hurt starts all over, right at the crescendo. A physical manifestation of Itachi's temporal existence. Someone who can act out every feeling he's ever held back.

Itachi beats him like a dog with his eyes instead of his fists out in the alleyway where all the bodies are, where Sasuke fled himself. Beats him as hard and as terrifyingly as father went at him. Descends like the vengeful god with sharingan stuck in its head; out of control and at another's mercy.

Sasuke's on his knees looking up with tearful kitten-eyes. "Please don't kill me," he begs in a small voice. "I love you."

It's the saddest thing Itachi has ever heard.

This time, he cries.


"You made the right choice." Tobi's voice enters his ear. The words roll around the canal before tumbling back out. I had no choice, Itachi almost spits, nearly bites. Because there are no choices, only different swords to fall on, all as long and sharp and unpleasant as the rest. All things he would never choose if given the opportunity. And opportunity—he doesn't even know what that looks like. He's never seen it before.

Unless opportunity is a house with the lights off and an unlocked door, or parents who refused to kill their own child, or a plush cheek revealed to him in a moment's frustration.

A friend who decided he didn't need eyes where he was going.

A god descending upon the village that first forced his hand.

A little boy in the middle of their street with kitten-eyes that can't turn red.

So many opportunities that seem more like the disadvantages of someone else. So many people falling on his swords; another choice robbed from him. You're too important to fall like the others.

His silence seems to disturb Tobi, who flanks his left in shrouded gloom. "You're a shinobi," his thick voice rumbles behind a mask. "You did as you must." Itachi turns to stare at him. Is this acknowledgement? It certainly isn't enough. "You obeyed your orders flawlessly."

The universe turns its face away.

His body like a shipwreck on the starry berm of some lonesome galaxy, Itachi drags himself in the same direction his father sailed all those years ago, soothed by the fact that there is nothing waiting on the other side. Disappear into the vanishing point. Fade out of this world as silently as he entered.

A beacon goes dim after years of fruitless searching because there is nothing here willing to answer him.


AN: This has been rotting in my google docs for a few months. Had planned for a lot more, but after a revisit I like it just the way it is.