Yuta knows that his clan isn't the warm thing that he initially thought of it.
It isn't the soft comfort of a home like Toge's, or the gentle normalcy of a family like the one he envisioned as a child. With warmth and parents that would be there and a sister that could give him comfort outside of a telephone call.
From the day that he chained Rika to his side, there was no such thing as normalcy any further. The ideal of family he envisioned died a swift death that day.
For while they were of the same blood, him and his family could never live in the same world.
The jujutsu world and that of the normal do not mix.
His parents and sister do not understand his aptitude with a sword, and he does not understand the everything about the lives they're leading.
Try as he might. There's simply nothing to talk about, between the four of them.
His parents cannot talk about their work in front of him, his sister cannot talk about her university with him, and he cannot talk about exorcising curses to them.
There's a line that cannot be crossed. A barrier between the jujutsu world and that of the normal.
Not even family can cross that line.
Uchiha Obito offered a chance at that. A chance for Yuta to imagine the what-ifs and perhaps. A chance for Yuta to just dream about a warm clan compound and people that have hair just as dark as his and eyes even darker. A clan with people that smile or not but they can share a world together, with the same blood running in their veins.
Family.
A family that lives in the world that he does.
A family that does not question why he carries around his sword or why he has nightmares sometimes or why he does not consider his life beyond high school.
A family that might give him a jab or two about his skills and help him along, anyways. A family that can share a conversation over dinner- a warm and homemade meal- about their day and curses and whatever going ons that Yuta can understand and reply to.
A family.
Dreams are not bound to last, especially in the jujutsu world.
And so it shatters. Like fine sands-
Slipping through his fingers, scattered mirages of a what-if and could've-been that got tarnished by the wayside.
Yuta yearns for normalcy.
For a family that lives in the same world that he did.
For warmth and companionship.
What he gets is this.
A clan that thrives on guilt and desperation and everything there is to drive one to madness.
What he gets is this.
The Uchiha clan.
Noble and prestigious, but lurking beneath the gold and parlor is an unfathomable abyss.
He yearned for a family that is warm.
What he gets is fire and brimstone and heat that can burn you whole.
He yearned for a family that is close.
What he gets is a family that holds each other at arm's length- each wondering-
He yearned for a family that cares.
What he gets is-
Each clansmen must've surely thought- when looking at each other-
Will it be me that goes mad? Or will it be you?
And then-
Will it be me that gets the final honor? Or will it be you?
What he gets is a family mired in bloodshed.
The Uchiha clan.
Blood upon gold.
Uchiha Obito looks upon him. Perhaps it is with pity, or perhaps it is with glee. But there's something that Uchiha Obito finds amusing about this whole thing.
Whether that be the wretched kind of amusement that only brings with it sorrow beneath the veneer of hysteria, or the kind that makes you want to laugh until you burst stemming from some kind of humor that only brings madness- is up to anybody's guess.
Uchiha Obito does not laugh- Uchiha Obito does not need to laugh to convey its emotions- Uchiha Obito does not do anything but simply quirk its lips upwards. Terrible and wretched. A thousand and one memories lay in those eyes, Yuta cannot decipher a single one except-
Once, perhaps, Uchiha Obito must be standing here, too.
Standing in Yuta's place.
An orphan, perhaps yearning for family. Perhaps thinking that once he's honored, he'll be family.
His dreams, too, must've fallen through his hands like the finest of sands.
Once, it was Uchiha Obito's dreams that were broken.
And now, it is Uchiha Obito's turn to break Yuta's dream.
A rite of passage, a circle that begins and ends only in tragedy.
Once, Uchiha Obito must be standing here, too.
Right after someone close to his heart went and died and his eyes bloomed into the color of blood and flowers.
Once, Uchiha Obito must be standing here, too.
Yuta wonders if Uchiha Obito had gotten half the time Yuta did to grieve.
"What happens if I am?" Yuta asks, theoretically. His voice is not that of his own. He thinks his expression is a mix between resignation and wanting to clasp his own hands over his ears to cover them or to lean closer out of morbid curiosity that'll surely break him.
Something flickers in Uchiha Obito's eyes. Blooming blood and roses.
A brief hint of hesitation. Something that lurks on the tip of Uchiha Obito's tongue. Uchiha Obito does not speak.
Silence falls over them, oppressive and breathtaking.
Uchiha Obito looks at him. It's on the cusp of saying something. Those words are on the tip of its tongue. Unpleasant and vile, Yuta knows, with a confidence that runs deep into his marrow, that whatever Uchiha Obito says it'll change his life irrevocably, that it'll bring him closer to a precipice of some kind.
Uchiha Obito does not speak. The silence enveloping them both in an uncomfortable heat. Like a blanket left wrapped around you on a day that errs towards too hot, leaving you feeling suffocated and breathless.
There are cruel words atop Uchiha Obito's tongue. Sharp words that can cut, rough words that'll bruise, terrible words that'll ruin.
Uchiha Obito does not say it. A moment of hesitation turned into string along moments of pause.
"You are not going blind," Uchiha Obito notes, its voice utterly neutral. Whatever words it once held have either been discarded or held off, for now.
But whatever it's saying, it's not a question but rather a statement.
"No," Yuta admits easily. Feeling distinctly like, when beneath those eyes, there's truly nothing that can be hidden.
It's sort of like being around Gojo-sensei in a way. Wherein you feel like you're an ant beneath a microscope, ready to be taken apart with a steady, calculating gaze that doesn't quite show on Gojo-sensei's expression. Wherein you can lie and Gojo-sensei will rarely call you out on it but you know that the man knows. Whether it's in the lilt of his lips or the way he would raise a brow in humor, as though finding some kind of amusement in the fact that you thought to lie in front of him, of all people.
Uchiha Obito feels like it'll let you get away with your lie only to let you believe that you candoso and let the lie come back to bite you when you least expect it.
While Gojo-sensei lets lies pass by in the fact that he simply does not question your purposes, for he is above it all- petty lies and everything like so- Uchiha Obito lets lies pass by in the fact that it knows that it can exploit such lies later, ruthlessly.
Between the two of them, lying is much more trouble than it's worth, Yuta thinks.
Consideration flickers through Uchiha Obito's expression. Quiet and subtle- if you blink, you'll miss it.
Yuta's eyes catch the motion, a minute flicker of the expression. Just a small crease of the brows. Missable, he thinks, if his eyes didn't catch it.
He's nowhere near as observant as Gojo-sensei or Uchiha Obito, but he thinks he's better than average.
It's his technique. It's in their eyes.
It's been in his blood, apparently.
The look of consideration grows and then withers, all in an intake of a single breath. Small and concise. A practiced motion, Yuta thinks. Sort of like how you're supposed to gather your breath when facing a curse and ready yourself for a fight that'll stretch on for hours, except this feels much weightier.
He wonders if he can be on the same level as Uchiha Obito, one day, being able to tell lies from truth with just a mere glance, or whether that chance came and went when his eyes stayed ink instead of bleeding scarlet.
"If you were," Uchiha Obito decides at last. "Then it's my duty to tell you the final step." Its voice is a drawling, sinister thing that's veering on the edges of malicious glee but not quite.
What duty? is Yuta's third thought.
The taboo, is Yuta's second thought.
And Yuta's first thought is-
Uchiha Obito's expression does not match its voice.
It remembers her, the woman. The woman who towered above them all, with hair and eyes the color of the wane moon and a temperament to match.
It remembers being a part of her.
Feeling her joys, her sorrows.
Feeling her smiles wrap around it and feeling the steady tap, tap, tap of her tears within her soul. Though it knew not, then, of such things as rain from misery and a woman scorned.
It was simply a monster without a name, born when a woman took a bite out of something she shouldn't have.
It remembers meeting her eyes, the color of a falling moon, for the first time and thinking nothing at all. For it was a beast with no thought other than what she desires.
Her desires, then, were for retribution. Peace built from an eternal dream.
And it bowed down to her will.
It remembers her gazing at the man she once loved. It remembers her carding through the man's hair, gentle. It remembers the hot pang inside her soul. The dust upon her clothes, and the silence enveloping her world.
The rain that fell from her eyes.
Tears, it knows, now.
Tears. Hot and wet and human.
That woman, a goddess, she above them all, had cried.
For the last time.
For she never did cry again.
Her children were then born. They grew, lurking in that man's shadow. For they have not her hair nor her eyes, that of the moon, and rather something more earthly.
And just like their father, they, too, betrayed her.
She did not shed tears, then, for perhaps she knew that this day would come.
Instead, all there was to feel was the quiet lull of nothingness.
A quiet, dull-
I see.
Is all that is given, is all that was given.
Back then it knew not of what she meant, nor did it care.
Now, it thinks it can guess.
She shed no tears, she stood in front of them alongside it. Ten limbs to the sky and ready to tear the world asunder. It waited, waiting for her call for it to rip and tear and destroy.
Nothing awaited it other than the calm lull of silence. A quiet exhale and a quieter, still,I see.
In front of those two men who bore half of her and half of that man- she had not lowered her head, nor bowed down her back. Instead she had merely paused- for half a second- for half a moment-
And that was all they needed.
She gave no orders, she said not a word, she did not do a thing.
She merely looked on.
No orders were given, and so it, too, looked on.
And so it was.
They became sealed upon her child, her son.
Then they were ripped into nine pieces.
And so it was.
In the end-
It still cannot understand her, nor her actions.
It cannot understand-
I see.
A single exhale, a single sigh- a passing whisper in the wind, a stagnant pause for just a moment, though she, too, must know of the battle it'll cost.
All it understands is her rage, her sorrows, her anger, her spite.
The woman is long gone.
The man is longer gone, still.
Tenji. A quiet exhale, a quiet query. Between the world and I, you've chosen the world.
And yet-
May you live in that world forevermore, then, in your dreams.
And yet-
As for Hagoromo and Hamura. A small pause, quiet and serene. I suppose I cannot think of any better names for them.
It did not know of such things as 'hate' then, nor could it feel it.
But it knows now, it has been entrenched in it. Ever since Uchiha Madara and the taste of death on its tongue and a dead brother's blood on its hands.
It thinks it hates that man, though it knows not, why.
The taboo, Yuta remembers, whatever it entails is left up to Gojo-sensei's guess. But from what they both know, it's surely nothing good.
Yuta can wager that it's not murder, at least not the regular kind. For surely, what else can stimulate you more than the death of someone precious?
It must be something even more heinous, something much more vile, something that'll make you rue the day you ever wished for such power.
It's certainly powerful, whatever the third phase is- surely it's more powerful than what Yuta has got right now and he doesn't even know what it entails but he can feel the yearning for a tantalizing power lurking in the back of his mind like some terrible leech he can't quite shake off.
"The Mangekyo is too powerful for one person to bear," Uchiha Obito begins, its voice gleeful, almost taunting. But its expression flickers with something more. "It gives power beyond what you should be capable of."
And this, too, must come at a price.
It's almost cruel, Yuta thinks. To gain power from the death of someone you cherish only for the world to blind your eyes, slowly but surely because it's a power that's too strong for you to handle.
It's cruel, it's terrible and it-
Once, it was Uchiha Obito standing here.
And once, too, it was Uchiha Obito being told of his impending blindness.
But he had not half of the fortune Yuta did. For while Yuta may never be as strong as his clansmen, his eyes do not bloom scarlet and therefore it seems that he is not going blind.
He tries to imagine it, being told that you're going to go blind and that there's not a single thing you can do about it unless you commit a taboo, unless you-
"You go blind," Uchiha Obito continues, dauntless, as though it wasn't once standing in Yuta's shoes, having its vision blotted and having to fight against its own eyes for the right to see. "Your eyes degrade. It cannot be healed, the damage is irreversible."
Yuta thinks distantly that someone must've tried and failed- for how else would they know?
"This knowledge isn't privy to most clansmen," Uchiha Obito admits, its eyes drifting over as though lost in thought. Yuta can imagine why. The panic it would cause, the anxiety it would create-
For a clan that prides themselves on their eyes- on their technique-
How would you even deal with the fact that one day your cherished technique will fade out? That you'll lose your vision forever because of your eyes? That the world will go dark and you can no longer see the hues of the sky or the kaleidoscope of the world?
Losing your technique is already bad enough- but your sight, too?
The technique that's gained through the loss of your precious person? The technique that's perhaps your only link to them? The technique that's built on their blood and death?
To lose it all because of the same technique taking too much out of you- as if it hadn't taken the person you cared for already?
Yuta can't fathom it.
"It seems inevitable." A quirk of the lips, pinwheels in midflight. "But there's one way to reverse it all."
The taboo.Yuta can feel the words weighing on his mind. How far would you go to keep your sight- your technique- your everything?
He doesn't think he wants the answer.
But he thinks he's going to get one, anyways.
Yuta thinks he wanted this.
Family.
Whatever it entails.
He thinks he has only thought about the joys of family-
Instead, all he's getting is sorrow and madness.
A legacy dyed in scarlet and the last clansmen seemingly intent on ruining Yuta's perception of family itself.
"Take the eyes of your brother," Uchiha Obito recites, almost quietly, its voice malicious but its expression is- "In doing so, you've proven yourself."
Yuta thinks he wanted this.
Family.
In joy and in sorrow.
Family.
It runs in the blood.
Family is an odd concept for curses to fathom.
But it is not so for Sukuna. For it, too, was once human. Bearing blood and viscera just as any human does.
But those days have long gone and went. Long gone and died with whatever remains of the human Sukuna once was, erased in the passage of time. Left to rot and die with the legacy that only survived on due to him becoming an 'it.'
But from what Sukuna knows of family. There are many different types. From happy to terrible to everything in between.
But the murkiest of them all is no doubt that of the royal family.
The higher they are, the farther they fall. The brighter the gold, the more sickly the hands that handle them. The grander the buildings, the more disgusting are the intent of those residing within.
The courts are treacherous and murky. Its affairs are convoluted and tangled.
Sukuna does not know the true depths of the childhood of royal heirs, for it tangled not with the affairs of the mundane as a king, and it did not have the status as a human. But it can be imagined that they are not the lackadaisical childhood that storybooks would offer.
This is most certainly the case for Uchiha Madara and Uchiha Obito, at the very least.
There's something that went awry there. Something involving curses and a woman and her two children.
Something that begins and ends with love and a lover scorned.
Emperors are fickle, and their favor even moreso.
Women did not get the luxury of being such, and court women, even moreso.
"Your mother," Sukuna says, pondering. "You were hers alone."
It is an odd statement. Perhaps Uchiha Madara had simply renounced its blood ties with its father.
But this feels more than that.
It feels like something beyond the mundane. Something about a woman scorned and the curses that she could wrought.
"Fortunately," Uchiha Madara says, something like malicious glee belaying its words. A curve of the lips, wholly spiteful. Its cadence is an odd thing, still borrowing words from different sentences to stitch together, but it's more seemly, now, less apparent. "I was born from her actions alone."
What actions, Sukuna isn't privy to. But it thinks that it isn't quite as simple as an affair with a random man.
So Sukuna simply asks-
"What actions?"
Could Sukuna go about it in a more roundabout way? Perhaps. But why waste such energy when the thing in front of him is so easily ready to give up answers on its own terms?
It's out of juvenile emotions, and definitely ill advised.
But there's something deeper there, a level of resentment that doesn't belong to a newborn in the slightest. Something that runs deep, almost searing into its marrow and never quite managing to be cleansed.
Even when taking on another identity, it seems that the curse in front of Sukuna cannot let go of its resentment for a dead man.
The affairs of the courts are murky and terrible. And tragedies are simply one a dozen.
Uchiha Madara was one of them, perhaps. In an age long past.
"She went against her family," Uchiha Madara notes, almost softly, gently. Like touching upon the surface of something fragile and wishing to not break it. It's a degree of gentleness that Sukuna hadn't quite expected of the curse, who was more akin to a rampaging beast who knew not of its own strength.
But there's a thing about family, Sukuna supposes. Mothers and children.
"And created me," Uchiha Madara says, something like nostalgia in its voice- imitating that of someone else- someone who once existed, softening the harshness of its cadence.
'Created', Sukuna notes, not 'birthed'.
There's a distinction between the two. Something that lies in the realm of either unnatural or artificial.
Twins, Sukuna thinks.
A pair of twins. Created from a woman's action. Actions that her family did not approve of.
Clan politics, Sukuna thinks distantly.
And then-
Sukuna thinks it has heard of a case like this before. Quite recently, in fact.
Something that begins and ends with Kamo Noritoshi.
Kamo Noritoshi who had created those cursed wombs, a union between a woman and a curse.
Creation.
A pair of twins. One with heaven defying cursed energy, the other with a body that can bear it as a vessel.
Before, Sukuna thought it was a coincidence. For there was nothing else pointing it contrary.
But Sukuna knows, best of all, that coincidences do not truly exist, not in the jujutsu world.
Coincidences are merely stated as such to cover up something far, far more sinister.
And those twins-
Perhaps they, too, were created.
Wrought from a scorned woman's hand.
Once, it must've been Uchiha Obito standing here. In Yuta's place. With eyes that will go blind and a piece of his heart having been ripped out to gain a power to reject reality that he cannot quite handle with his human body.
Yuta cannot imagine it-
He cannot fathom-
The eyes of your brother. The eyes of your kin- the eyes-
What will you do for power? For sight? Just to see?
As it turns out, it's the killing of one's kin.
As it turns out, it's the killing of one's kin and taking their eyes as your own in some sort of demented ritual.
Yuta cannot imagine it. He cannot imagine having to face his sister, somewhere along the lines and realizing that he'll have to kill her and take her eyes to supplement his own. He cannot imagine that in order to keep his sight, his technique, his status as a sorcerer, he'll have to stain his own hands with her blood and take her eyes as his own.
Those scarlet eyes, Yuta finds himself enraptured in them. Those eyes like a flower in bloom. Red and true.
Those eyes that take and take and take and grow upon blood and corpses and grief.
He cannot imagine looking at his sister and thinking-
Will it be me, or will it be you?
Thinking-
Who will get to live and take the other's eyes?
Yuta can't fathom it. It makes him sick to his stomach and wants to crumble something between his hands just to ground himself.
First, your life.
Then, a piece of your heart.
And then finally-
Your kin.
What will those eyes not take?
The power must be immense, Yuta thinks. The power from that- from that whole-
It must be immense, intense, everything that you could wish for.
Yuta thinks he wanted this.
Family.
It turns out he only wanted the warmth and could never even fathom the depths.
"Of course, a sibling is the ideal," Uchiha Obito says, as though talking about the weather and not- "Close relatives will do just as well, though it'll never be quite as powerful as your sibling." Its voice is harsh amusement, thick with maliciousness.
But its expression is-
"Such is our curse."
Once, it must've been Uchiha Obito standing here.
Having the blade be put into his hands and being told to either kill or go blind.
It must be like a rite of passage for them, Yuta thinks distantly.
Uchiha Obito gazes back at Yuta, its expression is caustic, but there's an edge of melancholy there. Wistfulness beneath the veneer of jagged edges. Something that edges it closer to human and makes it look its age rather than an ancient being.
It looks at Yuta and its voice does not match its eyes.
Its eyes are almost gentle, spinning slowly as though in flux.
Its voice is harsh, and its words are harsher still.
But its eyes can't quite match its words, even if its expression can morph every which way.
In the end-
Yuta thinks he wanted this.
Family.
Uchiha Obito is breaking that dream in the cruelest way possible.
But perhaps it's also-
"But the Uchiha clan has long died," Uchiha Obito says at last. "Your eyes cannot grow any further."
Uchiha Obito looks at him, and Yuta thinks that this is the first time they've truly met.
Uchiha Obito and him.
"What's dead is dead," Uchiha Obito concludes. "You're not an Uchiha."
There's a thin line between them.
Uchiha Obito cuts the thread, clean and concise.
And with that-
The Uchiha legacy- dyed in scarlet and blood- is buried.
Once, Uchiha Obito must be standing here in his place.
But Uchiha Obito did not get half of his fortune.
For the cycle had repeated. The rite of passage continued.
But now-
Standing here, in Uchiha Obito's place, a century or more ago-
Uchiha Obito looks at Yuta and divides them, cleanly in half.
For Uchiha Obito is of the Uchiha clan.
And Okkotsu Yuta belongs to none at all.
Yuta thinks he can place Uchiha Obito's expression now, the flicker in its eyes.
It's-
Yuta thinks he had wanted this.
Family.
He looks at Uchiha Obito, whose eyes do not match its words, whose eyes belay the truth and who is-
Yuta thinks he had wanted this.
Family.
He thinks he still wants it.
In joys and sorrows.
The highs and the lows.
Their clan legacy is dyed in blood, written in scarlet.
His clansmen must've been paranoid, perhaps malicious- just like the way Uchiha Obito was talking earlier.
But perhaps-
Beneath the blood, beneath the scarlet, beneath the paranoia, the madness-
They must've been a close family.
For even now, after centuries of being a curse, after centuries of madness-
From telling Yuta the truth to give him closure, to telling him it in the harshest way possible to distance them both- to keep the terrible legacy to himself and to let Yuta go free of it all- let Yuta go on knowing that he'd be better off without such a family-
Even now, after centuries-
Uchiha Obito is still trying to protect Yuta.
A quiet exhale, then two.
"What is our curse?" Yuta asks.
Uchiha Obito's eyes widens, flummoxed.
And for the first time that night-
Uchiha Obito's reaction is genuine.
And with that-
He ties them back together.
Our curse.
In fortunes and misfortunes. In the highs and the lows. In the joys and the sorrows.
Family.
The Uchiha clan legacy is bloody and terrible.
But Yuta thinks that the people, his family-
They shouldn't be forgotten.
