Chapter 5
"One is the loneliest number. It's even lonelier when you're used to being one of at least two or three. Screw superstitions and bad luck, I'd happily take four over one."
Time seemed to both fly and drag slowly as the tension at the compound spiraled to new heights. After Shisui's death, the training sessions with Sasuke came to an abrupt end. He simply stopped showing up at their house, and the twins never asked him about it. They became virtual strangers once more, their interactions limited to the quiet walks to the academy every morning, and even that only because they lived in the same general area.
At home, their mother always acted cheery and helpful, plastering on a smile and asking about their days, but something about it felt strained. When they got home she'd often be somewhere else, and return anywhere from a few minutes to an hour after they arrived. Conversations at dinner, once loud and energetic, began to feel forced and unnatural, the three seeming to go through the motions as they made polite small talk. After dinner she would lock herself in her study for the rest of the night.
The nightmares had definitely returned. Sharp screams of pure horror would cut through the silence of the night and violently startle the twins awake, their eyes shooting open with gasps and hands instinctively reaching for kunai they had kept by their beds since starting at the academy. Sometimes though she'd just sob, and when creeping past her study to go to the bathroom Masaru and Akari both caught wisps of murmurs about Shisui and bad omens.
One particularly bad night, Akari had been engaged in her own nightmare when the scream woke her, and when she saw Masaru holding his kunai in her panicked still-groggy haze she moved. Cold steel sliced through his pajama sleeve and grazed his arm, drawing a thin line of blood in its wake before she realized her mistake. They automatically locked gazes and stared at each other in horror, their eyes saying everything. Eventually they silently got up and crept into the bathroom to wash the cut and bandage it. The next day he covered it under a long sleeved shirt, his torn pajama top buried in the bottom of the laundry hamper.
When they went to bed that night, they made a point to store their kunai in the drawers.
School provided a good distraction from the stress at home, and Masaru felt particularly grateful to Naruto. They had lunch together almost every day now, and while he still didn't speak much Masaru felt his silence now stemmed more from comfort than shyness. Their growing friendship provided a bright spot in his life, the blond a bright ray of sunshine in the bleak tension that dominated their home more and more. Listening to Naruto ramble about his pranks and his distaste for school allowed Masaru to push his worries out of his mind, even if for just a little bit.
With all of that going on, they focused on little else and thus they completely forgot about Akari's impending hospital visit until Ryoko mentioned it. Consulting with their teachers at the academy about the best time frame, Ryoko scheduled her visit on a week that the teachers insisted would be rather minor and easy to make up, starting on a Thursday morning and ending sometime Monday. Akari appeared and felt absolutely fine so the mysterious secret issue doctors wanted to study had slipped their minds.
"I can't believe we're still doing this," Akari grumbled as she packed the night before her stay, angrily flinging clothes into her bag. "I mean, is there even a point to this? They still won't even tell me what's wrong!"
"Well, maybe nothing's wrong," Masaru said slowly, speaking more to himself than her. Akari paused and slowly turned to face him, arching an eyebrow in a typical Uchiha-esque display of interest.
"What do you mean?" she asked, and Masaru shrugged, tilting his head to the ceiling as he fell into thought.
"Maybe they found out you have something, well, good. Like, I dunno, super-advanced chakra coils. Or maybe you have a secret Uchiha kekkei genkai that only appears once every hundred generations." As he rambled off possibilities Akari's dark eyes lit up, breaking into a giant grin. Hospitalization for some secret illness was highly undesirable, but if it was because of a genetic quirk that might give her an advantage as a kunoichi, Akari would gladly embrace it.
The next morning they bid each other farewell at breakfast and Masaru headed to the academy alone. Walking down the familiar streets of the compound and then the village without Akari at his side felt... weird. Next to him he noticed Sasuke shooting him inquisitive glances, obviously curious about Akari's absence, but his fellow Uchiha didn't ask so Masaru didn't bother to explain.
Class felt strangely empty without her. Even though they mixed with different crowds and didn't interact much, during class they sat at the same table, and his eyes continually darted to her empty seat throughout the day. Even at lunch as he ate with Naruto and listened to his friend describe his plans for his next big prank he found himself absently scanning their surroundings, looking for his sister among the crowd of boys she often spent time with.
The void left by her absence didn't really strike him until he got home, though.
Slipping off his sandals as he stepped inside, he called a traditional greeting and was answered with silence. Ryoko's absence hardly surprised him given increasing amount of time she'd spent outside the house lately, but even so the utter silence caught him off guard. As he started padding down the hall he felt conspicuously aware of his current solitude.
Normally, he or Akari would do something silly by now. Sometimes she'd pounce on him from behind, latching onto his back and forcing him to give her piggyback rides if the sudden weight didn't make him fall down. Other times he'd sneak up on her and quickly tap her neck on either side with his hands, his comparatively cold fingers sending a small shock through her and making her jump with a loud yelp. Usually within five minutes of returning home they'd be rolling around the floor wrestling and Ryoko would have to pull them apart with an exasperated smile.
Walking to his bedroom out of habit, he dropped his bag by the door and turned to leave to train in the backyard, only to pause. On a whim Masaru slowly turned back and approached Akari's futon, bending over it and running his fingers over the neatly folded comforter patterned with plum blossoms. Closing his eyes shut, he leaned over and inhaled through his nose, savoring the lingering traces of her scent. He wasn't an Inuzuka, he couldn't break down every component of a scent, but after spending his entire life with her he'd grown used to the natural scent Akari exuded and could identify it by heart.
A sudden pang filled his chest, making him sag slightly as he leaned his head atop the blanket. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he remembered his mom talking about the Uchiha's penchant for love. She said that the Uchiha loved more strongly than anyone else, so when they lost someone precious, it took a piece of their heart with them.
Right now, curled next to his sister's futon clinging to what little traces of her presence he could find, Masaru thought maybe he could understand what she meant.
School the next day proved just as empty and lonely as the previous one, perhaps even moreso because Naruto skipped that day. The Uzumaki boy had a penchant for skipping school entirely, and while he'd started hanging around a bit more after becoming friends with Masaru he still missed a fair amount of days. After classes ended Sasuke, as usual, chose to stay behind and train in the training field, leaving Masaru to return home all alone.
As he silently walked through the busy streets of Konoha he felt strangely detached from reality, his surroundings becoming dull and unfocused as his legs moved on their own. When he finally stopped, instead of the Uchiha clan compound he found himself standing before Obito's grave. His bag slid from his fingers and landed in the grass with a dull thump and after a moment he followed suit, tucking his knees to his chest as he faced the tombstone.
For a while he just sat there in silence, letting his mind roam as he leaned his head on his arms. Their mother described Uchiha Obito as a sunny boy whose smile could penetrate the bleakest darkness, a child with a rare heart of gold that remained untarnished even after seeing war for himself. More often than not his peers treated him as a joke, mocking him for his chronic tardiness and never realizing his weak-sounding excuses were almost always true, starting from the very first day when he arrived late to his own entrance ceremony at the academy because he stopped to help an old lady.
His bright personality and boisterous enthusiasm never truly fit in with the rest of their stoic Uchiha relatives. He found himself distant from everyone but his grandmother and Ryoko, who had assumed a sister-like role in his life as she helped care for her baby cousin and watched him grow. Ryoko's eyes would grow misty as she recounted how he struggled to get acknowledged, and his various declarations that he would become Hokage. He had a strong potential, she claimed, one which far outshone any of the other Uchiha in his generation, but no one else could see it. As he grew older all they saw was a failure of an Uchiha who had yet to even activate his Sharingan, and their taunting fostered a sense of self doubt which rendered Obito blind to his own potential as well.
In the end, on the day Obito finally activated his Sharingan, his pure and selfless heart also led to his demise as he sacrificed himself to save his teammates.
He had been only thirteen.
Masaru opened his eyes slightly as he recalled the one time Ryoko told them about Obito's death, his gaze gliding to the slab of stone bearing the fallen boy's name. The ground beneath it held only solid dirt, his corpse never retrieved and left to rot crushed beneath a slew of boulders far away.
"Mom once said," he began quietly, "that the Uchiha love too strongly. That it leads us to our own self destruction when we lose our precious people. But, when she told us about how you died, she said you did it right." A faint smile touched his lips, a mirthless gesture that filled with more sadness than joy. "She said you did it before you lost your precious ones, and you self-destructed in a way that saved them. You helped stop the war."
A soft breeze trickled past him, fingers of wind tracing through his unruly locks in an attempt to move it as the tangled mass stubbornly remained still. Masaru sighed softly, resting his head on his arms once more with his face turned to look to his side. Row after row of graves extended before him towards the expanse of trees surrounding the cemetery, dark slabs of stone towering above the ground to mark the final resting places of many who fell to war.
Cemeteries always appeared lonely and desolate in books and TV shows. Films gave those scenes a muted gray tint that desaturated every color, from the dull, lifeless green grass to the actors' pale and clammy skin. When he was little, the somber atmosphere of those scenes had confused him. His family's visits to the graves had always been more cheerful and light, all of them smiling and laughing whether they were telling Obito about their week or listening to stories about their dad, so it didn't make much sense.
Right now, though, Masaru could understand why media usually portrayed cemeteries as such a bleak and grim setting.
Death permeated the air, the stone markers long-lasting reminders of lives snuffed short. Corpses and skeletons rested only a few feet below the surface inside wooden coffins, the dirt above them already sprouting grass so only the tombstones marked their final resting place. Perhaps more tragic though were the empty graves, the markers only representing the people whose names they bore in spirit as their bodies rotted away far from home, never to return.
"I wonder," he murmured quietly, his breath barely louder than a whisper, "if maybe one day, when I'm a ninja, I could go find you, and bring you home. It must be lonely, wherever you are."
Movement flickered within the trees in the corner of his vision, and he lazily shifted his head slightly to try to get a better look. For a moment he thought he saw the silhouette of a person hidden in the shadows, but as he stared at it longer he eventually realized it was simply a tree. Despite it being nothing he smiled faintly at the realization. Looks like he was on the right track to developing ninja instincts. Never let your guard down, for even a few second.
After that, Masaru just sat there in silence for a long while, not feeling like saying anything else. Eventually though he hauled himself to his feet, brushing off the dirt and clumps of grass sticking to his shorts. By this point the sky had started to dim slightly, and he noted the telltale sign of dusk approaching with mild surprise. Had that much time really passed? He'd never stayed that late before, his mother must be getting worried, so he resolved to hurry home as he picked up his bag.
"Bye, Uncle Obito," he told the grave marker, offering it a small smile and raising his hand in a motionless wave. "See you tomorrow." He hitched his bag over his shoulder and headed off, his head bowed.
Thick silence hung over the woods as he slowly made his way to the Uchiha compound, the animals unusually quiet. Something about it prickled at his nerves, making him pick up his pace slightly as he glanced around his surroundings warily. Maybe it was just because he'd never walked through it so close to night, but something about it left him strangely unsettled and on edge. He gradually moved faster and faster until he was full-out running, his bag bouncing against his back with each step.
When the familiar walls of the compound came into sight relief flooded him and he slowed to a walk, his pace still brisk but considerably more casual than before. He glanced back at the woods as he moved towards the entrance, keeping his gaze firmly rooted on it for any signs of movement. Nothing happened though, and when it disappeared from his line of sight behind the walls he breathed a small sigh. He then smirked, a bit amused. Now that he was home, he felt a bit silly about how paranoid he'd been—
Squelch.
Masaru froze when he felt liquid splash beneath his sandal, drops of something warm and wet splashing against his ankles. Warm and wet, his mind re-emphasized. Rainwater would feel cold, not lukewarm, and even then it hadn't rained in the past few days. As the implications of that settled in Masaru subconsciously tightened his grip on the straps of his bag, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath through his nose to calm himself.
He instantly regretted it because the air he inhaled had a sharp copper tang to it.
Eyes snapping open, Masaru felt his body stiffen, a sudden chill washing down his spine and spreading to his limbs that made him want to shiver despite the heat. Heart hammering in his ears, he slowly lowered his gaze. Dark red liquid pooled around his sandals, several flecks staining his ankles from the earlier splash. As he lowered his head further to take in the full sight, he noticed something pale in the corner of his peripheral vision, and reflexively turned to look at it.
He turned his head barely a centimeter before freezing when he recognized it as a finger attached to a blood-stained hand.
Bile instantly rose in his throat when he realized what he was looking at and he squeezed his eyes shut, unwilling to let his gaze follow the hand any further to the arm. His breath hitched in his throat painfully, the stop so abrupt it made him want to cough, but he kept his mouth firmly clamped shut. If he opened his mouth he would scream, and then he would vomit, and then he would be vulnerable and expose his location to whoever caused that.
It's not real, he told himself desperately. It's gotta be a dream, or—or genjutsu. There is not a body nearby, there is not-
A sharp scream in the distance cut off his thoughts and Masaru's eyes reflexively snapped open—
—and he found himself staring right at a pair of lifeless Sharingan eyes set against a pallid face.
(A/N: The Massacre is in the next chapter. You are warned now.)
