Author's Note: If I haven't mentioned this enough, be sure to check out my DA to see Akina's character design. Deviantart MangekyoMarie
Citations: Itachi's Story: [Daylight] pg. 136-148
Chapter's Song: "Lavender" by A Million in Vermillion
Chapter 32
Comes Over Me Again
Akina's black sandal boot barely touched a rooftop as she catapulted off of it to the next rooftop, bouncing from a window shutter to the next rooftop. Glancing to her side as Itachi was keeping up with her.
She got serious, determined to win as she delved down into the forest. Itachi keeping up with her through the lower branches, she hopped up higher, bouncing through small branches, barely touching them.
Itachi's eyes widened, trying to keep up her pace as she got ahead of him. He could barely see her, as he turned on his Sharigan to watch. "She's as fast as Shisui now…"
Akina jumped out from the forest to the dock that led out to the gazebo they had often frequented since they were kids. She lightly smiled through her panting. "I won…"
Itachi then landed slightly behind her, bending over to place his hands on his knees. He looked up at her as she glanced back; mild frustration that he lost was visible in his expression.
"Aw! Don't be a sore loser, Itachi-kun." She teased.
He smirked, "I don't race often. Shisui and I mostly spar."
"As expected, you've atrophied." Akina assessed. "You should have just made up with Izumi. A Genin is more your speed."
Itachi stood upright, as he followed Akina as she began walking on the pathway around the lake in the center of the village. Itachi got serious. "I didn't want to hurt her, so I suppose I'll apologize, but I can't cater to her feelings…"
"That's both insensitive and honorable…" Akina closed her eyes in a cute grin.
"Huh?" Itachi asked, glancing down on her.
"For most people the quest for developing a secular personality takes precedence over building character. Unlike character, which is centered on personal moral integrity, advice manuals of the time taught that personality was synonymous with becoming liked by others. The self was conceived of as capable of personal change; impressing others and gaining their approval became an important aim in life, far outstripping the value of doing the morally correct act, which was dictated by one's character."
"What have you been reading?" He smiled wryly.
Silence. She climbed a rocky bank; that led into a lavender field, rows and rows of lavender, Itachi smelling the purple flower's relaxing scent.
"I'm not trying to be likeable or dislikable…" He continued their conversation, watching Akina sit down next to a lavender bush, taking out a scroll to summon a basket from the scroll. She just listened to him as he sat down with her. "I'm just trying to achieve my dream… My goal…"
"Which is loyalty to developing your character." Akina affirmed as she just picked lavender stems.
"I guess," Itachi thought out loud, lying down to his elbow. "What are you going to make?"
"Lavender essential oil, maybe some lavender tea." She explained as she tied off a small bouquet of lavender and placed it in her basket.
"Your clan makes poison for the village…"
"Indeed, and I do. I also make medicine."
"Clever," Itachi assessed blankly. "So you don't care if we're caught? An Uchiha in Mochizuki territory…"
"If my clan will accept me as their heir, then they need to not be shocked by the fact that I have no prejudice against the Uchiha."
"Honorable," He smirked.
She smirked back with teasing disapproval. "I'll bring you some lavender essential oil. It will help you sleep."
"Why do you think I need help sleeping?"
She poked his forehead with two fingers. Serious disapproval. "You'll be entering Anbu… I'll make you some food pills, as well."
"Okay." He nodded, taking her seriously as she pulled her fingers away. "This feeling… It comes over me again. The tone of her voice, serious, but the warmth in her eyes, worry."
"This fresh lavender will dry for a few weeks and then infuse it into oil. I have some at home though you can have."
"Thank you." He softly smiled, but then noticed Akina's posture tense as she glanced to her side, ducking her head a bit.
Itachi then noticed someone too, an Anbu in the field of purple. "Uchiha Itachi…" His raspy voice began. "Danzo-sama has requested to see you."
Akina straightened her posture. "I'll try to bring the oil by later."
"Okay." He nodded, standing to go towards the Anbu. "See you later."
"Fugaku already told you, then." Itachi listened expressionlessly as Danzo spoke, taking sidelong glances at the boy. They were in the living room of the man, the leader of an organization separate from the Hokage's Anbu. The Foundation.
The organization Danzo ruled over was, at least in name, affiliated with the
Anbu, but it had a different command structure. The Foundation was an elite squad that recruited the finest in the village when they were still children, and faithfully carried out its work in the shadows, to maintain the peace from the darkness in the village.
Itachi himself had only learned all this after Danzo summoned him here. The majority of people in the village weren't even aware of the existence of The Foundation. Danzo had been Hiruzen's right-hand man since they were young, and most people thought of him as something like an administrative official, who managed the surface Anbu.
Danzo's rooms were in the depths of the building at the foot of the mountain with the Hokage Monument— Located due north of the village. On the surface, the building was for the storage of documents and materials related to administration.
Most people normally never went anywhere near it. The back gates, where the members of the Anbu slipped out of the village on missions, were nearby. It was a shadowed place, no light hitting it, even at midday. And this particular room was in the center of this dark place, so dark that although it was past noon, large candles burned in the four corners.
In the flickering flames, Danzo appeared bewitchingly otherworldly, a statue of the Buddha in the middle of the night. A more cowardly person would no doubt cry and cower at just standing here like this. "So I assume you have also agreed to join the Anbu."
"Yes," Itachi replied, briefly.
The corners of Danzo's mouth turned up the slightest bit. His eye, so narrow it was nothing more than a line in his face, was focused intently on Itachi. His gaze seemed to catch every breath, every tremor of every hair; it was so sharp, it filled Itachi with horror. The boy almost felt like he was on the battlefield with an enemy. "There's resistance from above at having an Uchiha in the Anbu."
Even here, that black darkness twisted up around Itachi, the enmity of his father and the others at the clan meeting, the prejudice and discrimination of the village ninja toward the Uchiha. As long as he stayed in Konoha, he would be shrouded in darkness.
Which is exactly why… It had to be the Anbu. Not because of his father's order. This was what Itachi himself wanted. The Anbu was an elite squad that only accepted select ninja from the village. If he distinguished himself there, the idea of building an unshakeable position for himself as a pillar of the village moved out of the realm of dreams, and into reality.
To change this village, he would have to become important. If he became Hokage, he would be able to change everything. "The first Hokage of the Uchiha Clan…"
Bit by bit, he was starting to see clear signposts on the path he must walk in order to remove war from this world. First, he would join the Anbu. He would distinguish himself there, and establish himself as a central figure in the village. After that, Hokage.
He would become Hokage, and get rid the village's prejudice toward the Uchiha. And Itachi's dreams didn't stop there. Once he was Hokage, he would be able to meet regularly with people of influence from other places.
If he worked together with ninja from other villages, he should be able to eliminate ninja rivalry. Ninja would disappear from the world. Once there were no more ninja, the daimyos would lose their means of making war. What lay beyond that was a world without war or fighting.
For Itachi's dreams, the Anbu, and becoming Hokage, were nothing more than checkpoints. First, step number one: Join the Anbu. He had no time for the opposition of the village officials or the members of the Anbu. He intended to overcome all resistance.
"An achievement is required to show us whether or not you are suitable for the Anbu." Danzo snapped Itachi from his thoughts.
"Do you mean a mission?" Itachi asked.
"Precisely." Danzo didn't move a muscle, frozen like a strange doll.
Itachi had also not moved. He felt like if he so much as twitched, Danzo would see right through to his true intentions. A silent battle was unfolding between them.
"I have been put in charge of giving you that mission." Danzo's being in charge meant that it would be a dark mission, where the light of the sun did not reach.
Itachi had long been long prepared for just such an eventuality, and simply stared resolutely at Danzo.
Danzo cut to the heart of the matter. "There is a man in the Anbu, age thirty-four.
From your perspective, he is already an old ninja, I suppose," Danzo said, in a monotone, perhaps sarcastic or joking.
Itachi didn't bother to react.
After a period of flowing silence, Danzo started speaking once more. "Although not as great as your own, many have seen great talent in him, from the time he was a child. This man came up the ranks through Genin and Chunin without incident, and joined the Anbu at the same time as he was promoted to Jonin. But—" He cut himself off, and the flames in the four corners flickered together. "Recently, we learned he has been colluding with Kirigakure."
"A traitor…" The general framework of the mission coalesced in Itachi's mind.
"Only a very few people in the village know of the man's collusion."
"So the one to take care of him is me—"
"I'm not finished." The cold voice shot through Itachi. "Those who belong to the Anbu do their utmost to keep the people of the village from learning of their affiliation. On the surface, this man lives an average life as a Jonin. He has a wife and two children, ages three and one."
"What is Danzo trying to plant inside me?" Itachi asked in his heart. Was he trying to test the boy somehow, by telling him that he had to kill someone with a family? If this speech was motivated by a suspicion that Itachi would be carried away by emotion, and hesitate to fulfill his mission, Danzo was seriously mistaken.
"Other than the fact that he was linked to Kirigakure, this man is capable, a great ninja," Danzo spat out the words too theatrically, being sarcastic. "Trusted by the Hokage himself. But if we permit a traitor, the village will never be strong,"
"I understand," Itachi said, with a hint of irritation at Danzo's circuitous way of speaking. And then, as soon as the words were out, he regretted his own imprudence.
Danzo had probably noticed that Itachi was annoyed, and also that he regretted it. Despite knowing the man had seen through him like this, Itachi didn't let it show on his face. He felt, to an unpleasant degree, the unfathomable darkness of this man who walked in the shadows of Konoha.
"For someone as insightful as you, this tale is quite roundabout. Forgive me."
"Not at all."
"But it is all for the singular purpose of having you know this man."
Itachi swallowed the question of why he had to know the man.
"Kill this man," Danzo instructed.
"Understood," Itachi replied, immediately. Family or not, gifted ninja or not, a traitor was a traitor. This was his mission, whether he wanted it or not.
Danzo stood up. "It is likely obvious at this point, but I am convinced that the place you belong is the Anbu. You are permitted one comrade on this mission. I leave the selection of that person to you. Take whoever you trust the most." He went around the desk in front of him, and leisurely approached Itachi. "Peace is actually a troublesome beast," He remarked, looking down at the boy's mature face and holding Itachi's gaze. "It is hard to produce, but maintaining it is next to impossible."
Itachi felt like Danzo was a tiny bit pleased with himself.
"People eat food. While one person is finishing that day's supper, another is suffering somewhere, with nothing to eat. When one person gets something, someone somewhere loses something. Bit by bit, these trivial inequalities warp the days of rest."
The faces of the Uchiha Clan gathered at Nakano Shrine popped up in the back of Itachi's mind. He clenched his teeth behind closed lips, unwilling to have the slightest change in his heart be noticed.
"There are always people suffering in the shadows of this fiction called peace. People burdened with darkness. Don't you think we should actually hold in contempt those who forget this fact, and simply gorge themselves on peace?"
A smell that made him want to vomit penetrated his nostrils. When he realized that it was Danzo's breath, Itachi silently endured it.
"Unless there is someone, someone totally free of emotion, to cut away the fraying bits on the edges of peace, this world will not see even a moment of tranquility."
"In other words, in this village, the someone shouldering this responsibility were the Anbu and The Foundation." Itachi concluded in his thoughts.
"Previously, I said you were the bearer of bad luck." Danzo said, and Itachi remembered, the day of his graduation from The Academy.
"Your life will be ever shadowed by chaos. That's why you need to become strong enough to cut out the root of that chaos yourself."
"And you're saying the place where I can obtain that strength is the Anbu?"
The face covered in bandages on the right side nodded firmly. "They say a wise man only needs a word, but you only need half a word— No, the first letter. But that cleverness will make you suffer."
"I'll suffer…" He blankly and briefly repeated.
"Stop trying to hide yourself in front of me," Danzo said, placing a hand on Itachi's shoulder. "The desire for true peace, wanting a world without war, is making you suffer."
"How did you—"
"I know everything about you." Danzo opened his eye wide, revealing a darkness so deep it threatened to suck Itachi in. "The one who can bring about true peace is one who has the deepest darkness inside him. I believe you can become that person." His wicked lips stretched out in a smile. "Come to me, Uchiha Itachi."
Before Itachi had the time to even think, his instincts were turning his face away, as if trying to whisk him away from the darkness and its mysterious appeal.
"Assassination, huh," Shisui murmured, as if to confirm the story Itachi had just told him. They were facing each other on top of the cliff that only they knew about, but
Shisui made no move to look Itachi in the eye. He kept his gaze focused on the ground to one side, as he quietly thought the situation over.
"When he told me to take someone I trusted, I thought of you," Itachi said.
"Kohinata Mukai, he's a pretty decent ninja," Shisui of the Body Flicker noted, having himself grown up into a leading ninja in Konoha, before falling into thought again.
"I don't have any right to ask this of you, given that you're not connected with the Anbu in any way. But I don't know anyone in the Anbu, and there's no one else I can trust with a mission like this."
"That's 'cause you're bad with people," Shisui said, with a grin. "Akina?"
"…I don't want her going on this mission." He refused swiftly.
Kohinata Mukai was the name of the man Danzo had ordered assassinated. His family was distantly related to the Hyuga Clan, but they had branched off several generations earlier, so they didn't have the Byakugan kekkei genkai.
"I can't believe he's secretly connected with Kirigakure."
"What's he like?" Itachi asked.
"He might be Anbu, but he's also a sharp Jonin. He does regular missions, and the Hokage really trusts him. He was definitely following his orders as an Anbu when you were guarding the daimyo."
So that meant Mukai had been there when they were attacked by the man in the mask. Itachi knew that other than Hatake Kakashi, the Anbu had been caught in the masked man's Genjutsu. And Mukai had been one of them.
"Do you know anything about him being susceptible to Genjutsu?"
"It's not like we go around telling each other our weaknesses, you know."
Naturally. Itachi regretted asking such a stupid question.
"But I do know what he's good at." Shisui lifted his face and looked at Itachi. The light in his friend's eyes dispelled the shadow of unrest. From long years of opening up to each other, Itachi knew that this was proof of his friend's resolve. "Mukai's good at physical techniques."
Itachi felt like that basically made sense. If you followed Mukai's bloodline back, you reached the Hyuga Clan, one of the most distinguished families in Konohagakure. If you traced the origins of the Hyuga, you arrived at the founder of the ninja, the Sage of the Six Paths. And the Byakugan Kekkei Genkai was a visual jutsu on par with the Uchiha Sharingan.
The Hyuga could see the path of chakra circulating in the body and seal chakra by severing the pathway in someone who had become an enemy. Their vision was also said to reach out in all directions, with no blind spots. Once the pathway was sealed, the Hyuga Clan used physical techniques.
Their physical jutsu, known as Gentle Fist, aligned the flow of the user's chakra with the chakra extant in all living creatures, allowing the user to deliver a series of blows based on circular defensive movements, destroying anything inside their opponent's body, such as internal organs. Gentle Fist was a secret of the Hyuga Clan, but given that they were a branch family, it was no stretch to imagine that at least some knowledge of it had been passed down to the Kohinata family.
"He uses Gentle Fist?" Itachi asked.
Shisui nodded.
"So as long as we don't get close, we have the advantage." Itachi planned.
"Mukai's pretty skilled. I can't imagine he'd let you fight him from a distance."
It seemed that the hypothetical battle with Mukai was already happening inside Shisui's head.
"Will you come with me?" Itachi asked uncertain.
"Of course." Shisui bumped his fist up against Itachi's chest. "You got no one else you can trust, right?"
"Yeah."
"You join the Anbu, and you'll be closer to the center of the village. And if you do that, you'll be invaluable for our clan."
Itachi thought about just what those words meant. He and Shisui were driven by the same thing, and they didn't begrudge their own lives if it meant the peace of the clan. With each of the secret monthly meetings at Nakano Shrine, the atmosphere grew progressively worse.
Both boys believed that resentment toward the village was already approaching the limit. They had to avoid an explosion, no matter what. This was their shared understanding.
If the clan rose up, the village would be dragged into battle. The last Great
War, the attack of the Nine-Tails, the village had overcome both crises, and was finally starting to build a real peace. If the Uchiha Clan were to start something now, the village would once more be shrouded in sadness and death.
The lone Anbu among the Uchiha Clan, it was just as Shisui said: Itachi would become invaluable to the clan.
"You becoming Anbu's actually a dream for me, too."
"A dream?"
"That the Uchiha and the village would become brethren in the true sense. And for that, I think we need a ninja in the clan who has a deep connection with the central figures of the village. Someone who can tell it like it is, talk about the clan's suffering and hopes. If you join the Anbu, you'll be able to do that. And since you want peace for the clan more than anyone, I know you'll actually do it for us."
Itachi lifted his chin up and down slightly.
Shisui brightened abruptly. "I'll be a Jonin of the village, you'll be Anbu, neither of us'll be in the Military Police. We'll be able to look at the clan objectively."
"My father and the others are closed up in their own shell. They can't see the world outside anymore."
"Itachi," Shisui said his friend's name like he was spitting out the suffering in his own heart. "The people in our clan are locked away in their own little world. They don't even try to take a look outside. They say it's the village's fault that our fate doesn't change, and their grudge just grows. They just blame everything on the village, the Hokage, the Senju Clan. They never look at their weak spots. But…" He opened his eyes and looked at Itachi. "You're different."
Itachi held his breath.
"You've always opened up your own road with your own power. You graduated from The Academy in a year, you made it through the Chunin Exams all by yourself, and now you're poised to join the Anbu. You've never blamed your fate on your clan, and given up."
Was that really how it was? Itachi didn't know. He felt like he had simply been racing intently down the path he should be on. And that feeling wasn't going to change.
"I mean, you could even be the Hokage." Shisui grinned. "I believe that you'll be the one to break through the hostilities between the village and the clan, as the first Uchiha Hokage."
Itachi's heart beat faster. That dream became words in Shisui's mouth, and reached his own ears. Surprise and joy surged through him.
"I'll always be your best friend."
"Shisui…"
"I can hardly wait to see how big you get from now on."
Itachi desperately tried to hold back the hot thing that welled up from the depths of his heart. He had never once cried before someone else in his life. He believed a ninja should never expose their own emotions.
Fighting was something to be avoided at all costs. War must never happen again. That moment when he was four, he had decided this in his heart, as he cried in the pounding rain. To that end, the Anbu. To that end, Hokage.
"Let's do it, Itachi." His faithful friend grinned.
Itachi nodded firmly, full of gratitude.
"Oh," Shisui pulled out an amber bottle from his pouch. "Akina told me to give this to you, and meet her at the library tomorrow."
"Okay," He smiled, gripping the amber bottle lovingly with determination.
"She's amazing, huh?" Shisui crossed his arms. "Did you tell her?"
"Tell her what?" Itachi looked blankly at Shisui.
"If you're not interested in her, do you mind if I ask her out?"
"Akina?!" Itachi's voice cracked.
"Out of respect, I'm asking you. If you don't want to date her, I will."
"You like Akina?"
"Well, she's already living with me and my mom… She's practically family." Shisui explained. "You're interested in Izumi, right?"
"W-well…"
"You obviously don't like the thought of me and Akina together…"
"Well, no…" Itachi confessed. "…You don't have feelings for Akina, do you?"
"None," Shisui smiled. "Benjiro would kill me."
Itachi hung his head in defeat to Shisui's mind games, Shisui fluffing his ponytail to get Itachi's attention. "So when you going to tell her?"
"This feeling comes over me again…" Itachi thought. "Can't find the words to say."
