The four seasons of life on earth are consisted of the tilt and spin of a gravity determined pull which cannot be changed. Men who try to change what is considered unchangeable are brimming with death and idiocy, and there are many of them. Those who differ from majorities are only small in numbers, and small, changeable things make no difference to the stupidity of mankind.
Xxx-xxX
He opens his eyes.
Kisame's shoulders stretch out over the horizon, and he is farther away from Itachi than either of them have realized before. The days Itachi knew Shisui are over, and there is only this unfamiliar, frighteningly comforting face left before him- but the old days are over- and they travel through sun set and sun awakening and the depths of night that wash over him in the sweaty humidity that reminds him of tiny, plump baby fingers grabbing the sleeves of his coat.
Sasuke has followed him all the way out here.
This man of swords and supremacy sits before him and is never afraid to look at him through his eyes. Itachi is vulnerable- he has never hidden anything behind himself, and it is only that no one has dared look at him that makes him seem invincible. This man of his crooked, halved smiles that are more truthful than their whole can see Itachi's age and fragility like the flower encrusted in the frost of winter.
Perhaps that frost is Kisame, and not the blood of assassination beneath their nails- Kisame has water and frigidity and ice without it near, and Itachi has never touched him for that. There have been moments where he has reached out a hand, but if he had ever reached him fully Itachi would've been frozen forever.
And Sasuke is waiting for him as the wind blows- those infant fingers tearing at his sleeves and the steady mess of a heart beating above them.
He opens his eyes.
Xxx-xxX
The fists rain down more upon him than the door of their entrance hall.
Itachi sits still on his bed staring through the walls and into the facts that he will not be moving- not when it has only been a handful of days and he has still not had enough time to grieve for the gain of a step forward in his plans.
Sasuke tells him there are men at the door, and he gets up from the tussled sheets of sleeping through any chances of moments he will think (he has more loyalty to Sasuke than to Shisui, but he still wishes for the unsure hands sliding down his sides- if he had told Sasuke it would be okay, then he would have believed him).
The letter he wrote for Shisui's death might as well have been in his handwriting as the Uchiha elders push it towards him (there's more guilt stored in his eyes with that evidence, because he has more loyalty to Sasuke-but if he had told Sasuke death wouldn't hurt than he'd believe him even if Shisui never listened to a word of it), although even if they are far from idiocy they are gullible towards their own family line.
The lines drawn between it all are thin and breakable, and the matters of blood were drawn and broken with Shisui as Itachi pressed their lips together. Only next are the heart strings, insufferable bonds that pull and tug farther than he would like (and still, that is not the reason you are breaking them), and that will be accomplished more easily than the fold and slicing of Shisui, until they were both broken down into uncollected pieces scattered in Sasuke.
Itachi knows that that, above all reasons, is the meaning behind the delicate, tentative glances replacing where once they were strong- the definition of why a clan still brimming and bubbling with power at it's very finest level would refuse to meet it's other members' eyes—Because everything, from the tipsy grace of blood spill to the discarded apron strings tied around Mikoto (those wonderful, welcome joys that keep her close to her son), has ended in Sasuke, to the point where there is nothing else left to go to.
Once those things have narrowed, Itachi cannot, for all his wit and genius, expand them once again.
There will be no clan- just as there will be no lines and no Shisui and no hesitant glances (in those sorrowful faces of melancholy and deadliness the strength will rise again, straight from the grave and Shisui's death was as important as his life in that he was the beginning of the end of something beautiful in it's ugliness), and perhaps, one day, no longer any Itachi.
He will not fail Sasuke on that, and those promises haven't grown old with their age- never as dry and brittle as their souls or their happiness or Shisui.
Xxx-xxX
There is something unfamiliar bubbling beneath his skin, something unchangeable and distanced from what he has seen before, and nothing (besides this, this cutting of the apron strings in treaties within yourself and the creases of the floors in your old, ancient house creeping and crawling like an infant in it's foundation with the dizzied twists of something unstable- your house which has been built on the curved space of Konoha land that never ceases to flip and bubble and flow like the blood that binds you and it to this new lifestyle of dawn and daybreak, and such supreme, sharp-eyed sly men who see right through you) will be the same after the damns built to protect himself from this power are broken.
He has time to imagine that those bridges of sticks and stones and frigidity (blood bonds, whose brother's were broken with your lips, and the chilling, frozen icicles surrounding the petals of red drool from the arms and legs of your clan, and broken with them are the lines they thought were there) were broken when he killed Shisui.
So many things ended, blood bonds and broken with blood- that red drool from the dogs of the Uchihas, and only them, only Shisui and Itachi and Sasuke, those boys and men and monsters who knew they were nothing, were not like the rest of them. Mikoto is obliged to be so and Fugaku is carefully submerged where it is easiest for him to get out if things are taken too far, and whoever rules them has yet to. Itachi thinks that it might be him, with jeweled crowns of blood and sex and promise- or Sasuke, with that carefully made grass circlet that recognizes their similarity to Summer (brittle and dry and their promises are fulfilled, if only so Itachi can get what he wants for that carefully strung cycle of honor and tradition all of them follow, or because none of them want their obligations to be the same as their souls; Men are only worth as much as their promises, and if those fade they will have to face the truth of what they are).
But ultimately, the only time they will recognize themselves is when the now nonexistent lines are crossed, and the only time it occurs is as they watch their own blood drain away to rest endlessly in the floorboards where they were nurtured.
Itachi opens his eyes and they are dripping and oozing with fairness and memoirs of their mistakes, like Shisui or Itachi or Sasuke.
-A summer child-
One of them is suiting to comparison, and perhaps it is only sympathy and regret that makes Itachi choose Shisui over his little brother every time.
That is why he does not bother to consider how much Sasuke will cry as he murders their parents.
Xxx-xxX
There is no difference in between killing- It's just that there are no memories, and there is blood instead of water. -Dripping and oozing.-
Xxx-xxX
He opens his eyes.
Xxx-xxX
-And we wish, oh we wish, how we could wear the masks and diamond-cut patterns over all our wounds that bleed, as easily as the harlequin in pantomimes; jerky, dismal movements we watch with awe.-
Xxx-xxX
AN: I guess it's a good feat. Longer than SOME chapters (-eyes chapter five-) at least- I know there was a ton of mentions to the first few chapters, so you may want to reread all the chapters so you can really understand this one. All of the 'he opens his eyes' shit was purposefully there to confuse you and make you ask yourself 'Was he just dreaming all of that up this chapter?'. The 'Itachi's Journal' piece was something I wrote a few months ago, and since I STARTED Burn, I've been wanting to add it in somewhere. It seems a bit dumb now, but a while ago when I wrote it it seemed pretty kickass.
REVIEW PLEASE!!!
(Seriously. It helps get me off my ass to write more-)