Deity
Chapter 4: апócтол
apostol (a-poh-stohl) – apostle
Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
-Antoine
de Saint-Exupéry
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That Friday, Shisui avoided Itachi's eye as the passed by in the hall, making sure to walk on the opposite side with his friends. One of them waved at Itachi, who gave a simple nod back.
That Friday, Itachi noted quietly, Shisui was wearing long sleeves, despite the fierce climax of the Indian Summer.
But it probably meant nothing.
At lunch, Itachi saw Shisui on the front lawn with the same group of friends, a smouldering joint in hand. When none of them were seen for the rest of the afternoon, he knew they had gotten high and run off somewhere, probably in Shisui's car. It wasn't uncommon for someone at the school to do; everyone needed an escape now and then (and some more often than that). Even through the large multi-paned window that lit the staircase, it was obvious Shisui's laughter was fake. His eyes were red-rimmed, fingers jittery as he blew out smoke.
That is what humans all want – to be closer to perfection. To be closer to God. To reach an enlightened, a pure and blissful state…
No drug can give you God.
Itachi looked up through the dirty glass, and all he could see was sky.
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The house was quiet when Itachi came home Saturday evening from a quick jog, sweat stinging quietly at the sides of his eyes. As usual, Mikoto was in the dining room, setting the table for three.
"Is Dad not coming home from work tonight?"
She shook her head, laying down another fork beside the plate, meticulously, as if it were one of her paintings. (She used to paint a lot, Itachi knew, and she used to be rather good. But not so much any more. Nowadays, she cooked and cleaned, and did who knows what else while the rest of them were away. Nowadays, the arrangement of furniture and the fresh smell of laundry, that was her art.)
"No, Sasuke is at a friend's house for the weekend. It's good for him to see other kids, you know?" She smiled.
(It's good for him to see other people besides his brother, you know?
It's good for him to get away from this house, you know?)
The corners of Itachi mouth twitched slightly.
"It's that Kiba boy. He's a sweet boy, though a bit brash and mouthy. Inuzuka Kiba… I think you might know his sister. She's Shisui's age, I think… yes, we saw her at a track meet that one year. Do you remember? Itachi?"
It was only when she heard pounding chords of a piano leaking through the walls from the other room that she realized she was talking to herself.
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The house was quiet that night as well. So quiet that you could hear every little noise, magnified in the void of darkness and quiet to become loud, ear splitting. Itachi's room was covered in a complex labyrinth of shadow and soft light coming in the window, highlighting the edges and faces of some surface while shadow swallowed others completely to create an entirely new landscape.
He could hear himself inhale, feel his lungs expand with it and then shrink again. His half-lidded eyes stared at the ceiling but he saw something else in his mind, though flitting and moving quickly through the images. It was late, but he could not find sleep, and could not let himself find sleep. There were papers scattered across the floor, his neat writing filling every one of them. His thoughts. It did not do him good to keep them all up in his head. Sometimes it got too full, thoughts disorganized and sometimes contradictory or unclear, and he felt as if his he might just explode with it. Tiny curls of brain tissue all over the bedroom, saturated in blood; red puddles all over the floor. Staining the sheets. Dripping from the walls. Such lovely chaos!
And oh, his Father's face when he discovers it…
And oh, how his Mother would weep as she recounted it all to the psychiatrist, whose number Itachi knew she kept in her address book, "just in case".
And oh, the disappointment on Sasuke's face as he realized he had no one to protect him anymore. That his big brother had let him down.
It was always Itachi's job to protect his little brother. But sometimes protecting him meant a little bit of sacrifice, or letting him down once in a while.
Itachi himself was not all that sure when it started; the memory was hazy, blurred, and most likely altered by whim of his own mind. Convenient recollection, he thought briefly. It was a wonderfully human thing. If a memory did not suit an individual's ideal of life – that is to say if it were a bit too unrealistic or out there or emotionally damaging – their mind might alter it for them subconsciously, for defence or comfort. One would not be aware if it, of course. To them, their memory was the truth.
People are only made out of their memories after all – what they know, and remember, and believe.
Itachi wandered through the pieces of memory he had saved, most involuntarily, wondering how many of them were real. It was possible none of them were, though he doubted it. Some of his memories were so macabre compared to the rest; he wondered how they could have been altered into such a state. Was he just morbid – a sadist? Or were they only a censored version of something worse…
Glancing at the clock, he discovered an hour had passed him by. This was not surprising. It was rather often Itachi had trouble sleeping. His mind just could not calm itself down. But he tried, closing his eyes tiredly and sweeping all thoughts from his skull as he drew in quiet, shifting a little to the left to be more comfortable. Eyes closed tight…
It came then, as he knew it would; those memories mixed with nightmarish additions of his own, vivid on his eyelids. There were whimpers, tears rolling down pale cheeks and a throat too sore to protest. A hand in dark dark hair, fingers knotting, and the slightly curving length of the slender neck as the head was jerked upwards. Movements like a rag doll. Helpless.
Tiny rivulets of blood down his shoulder, wetting the fabric. Making such a mess.
"…slipped and fell into the piano…"
The more times Itachi went over the memory, the more certain parts of the faces blurred and distorted, until he wasn't quite sure who they were anymore.
If it was himself, or Sasuke.
Or if it had even happened at all.
Both elated and frightened by the thought, Itachi tried to lull himself into sleep with a blank mind.
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Two weeks and four days had passed since that Friday, and only then did Shisui manage to gather enough of himself to confront Itachi with. They sat on the stairs; Itachi perched on the sill of the large window while Shisui took the nearest step. Hardly anyone ever used that staircase, they knew, especially not now that the weather had turned cold again and chilled the area near the window. The Indian summer had passed them by all too quickly, and one morning Itachi woke to find his toes frozen, all the warmth gone (Mikoto had been lucky, though, and managed to get all her plants inside in time).
"I'm sorry," was the first thing Shisui had said then.
"It's fine," Itachi replied quietly.
"Don't lie to me. It's not fine at all." Shisui muttered. "Don't play stupid."
Somewhere down the road, a car alarm went off. Itachi leaned against the glass, all too trusting in its support of him as his eyes scanned the street outside. Where there had before been brightly coloured leaves scattered about the tree tops there were now only naked branches reaching for the sky, the entire world discoloured. Soon, he thought, soon it's going to start snowing…
"Come over this Friday," Shisui was saying then. "I could use some company."
After Itachi's silence, he added, "Please. My parents are out. I just don't want to be on my own then… I'm not doing too well lately. You know."
Itachi knew.
"Alright," he agreed though he had his doubts, stealing a look at Shisui. The boy was grinning sullenly at his beaten-up running shoes, hands clenching his knees in a desperate sort of frustration. Struggling. Itachi wanted to keep watching, fascinated by such behaviour (so human) on a level he knew he really should not be, but averted his eyes as Shisui looked up.
"How'd you do on your report card?" he asked finally, and Itachi shrugged.
"Good."
"Oh come on."
Itachi pressed his forehead to the cold glass and stared at his transparent reflection. "Alright, I did great. Do you believe me now?"
"You amaze me, Itachi…."
The Uchiha winced. It wasn't that simple, but he chose not to say, picking up his bag and accompanying Shisui back to the crowded and blissfully loud cafeteria.
Shisui drove Itachi and Sasuke home from school that night, for the first time in those two weeks and four days; though it was only a short time, it had felt unbelievably long. Sasuke didn't ask why it was like that. He knew very well by then that people, even the ones who cared about each other, fought sometimes.
But even so, the times when people didn't fight – the times when they barely talked, save a few icy words and forced dialogue that had a bitterness all its own as they slowly drifted apart and to a certain point of away after which it was difficult to come back – could be even scarier when the times when they fought.
Sasuke knew that, too, remembering the days when Itachi would seem distant and intangible (a phantom, a dream, a myth he could only believe in), locking himself in his room and always declining should Sasuke ask to come in. Each time he slipped off, it took a little longer to bring him back, (and Dad would get a little angrier, and Mom would spend another night out with her friends, and there would be another thin layer of dust on the piano when he touched it, and there would be another bruise…). Sasuke hated it, refused to believe it, and always felt that somehow it was his fault anyways. Sitting there in the backseat of Shisui's car, listening to the two in the front talking about a certain teacher they both disliked with the radio turned up just loud enough to keep the silence away, Sasuke almost felt sick with it.
Maybe that's all it was, he thought. Maybe Itachi was just sick.
Everyone gets sick sometimes.
"Goddamn," said Shisui, slowing the car and peering out the window. "It's snowing already…"
