Title: Long Live the Queen

Author: tsubaki-hana

Series: Naruto

Rating: M

Disclaimer: Naruto belongs to Kishimoto Masashi.

Summary: Sing a song of sixpence, a pocket full of rye. (The matriarch of the Uchiha clan has been around the bush before and is not as blind to her son's intentions as the others. Nothing her eyes see bring her joy. One-sided Itachi/Mikoto, Fugaku/Mikoto, Uchihacest.)

Warnings: They apply. oo

"Sing a song of sixpence

A pocket full of rye

Four and twenty blackbirds

Baked in a pie.

When the pie was opened,

They all began to sing

Now, wasn't that a dainty dish

To set before the king?"

The main house of the Uchiha clan makes no noise.

At first she thinks it strange, sitting in her furisode (you know the one, the one with the morning glories that strain and -pull- at your legs until you can't feel them), parents quiet and contemplative next to her, telling in hushed tones to the clan leaders that she was really a simple girl, hardly worth the effort they were putting into her (though they are still quite insistent that you are married, in a push and shove sort of way. They're afraid that you might be made to stay with -them-, and that will never do.) It should never be that quiet in a household of so many people, people that are so -alive-.

It is unnatural, and it suits her just fine.

She is honored among women, held higher than the others because her face is delicate and soft. She is worthy of the new head of the clan because she is silent (as the grave) and well-bred (to which you know what they really mean is you are a good bitch to breed with). She smiles absently, staring at a water stain beneath a potted plant in the corner; a daylily turns its head to the sun but falls apart petal by petal in its sterile heat.

"Such a lovely girl, and she has such dark eyes," says the Uchiha elder, and her hands are like crinkled paper on the rich varnish of the wood, some tossed thought from underneath the scholar. "A sharp mind to be certain."

She looks down demurely, and glancing from between picket fence lashes, sees Uchiha Fugaku, her would-be husband. He is not of the lithe build that his parents would suggest, and his arms are strong enough to likely lift her with one arm. He does not smile, nor does he look neutral. He simply frowns at her, seeking something out in her, some idiosyncracy that should not be there like a puzzle piece with one side that is incorrect.

"All I hear are good things . . . save a few," says the other Uchiha elder, a man with a head as smooth and pearlescent as an egg. He has the face of a Buddha, but his nose, unlike the deity, is prominent and jagged from many breaks in the past. The hawkishness of his gaze reminds her instantly of the guardian demons that stand before the Konoha temple, and she fears that she is seen through. (You were always transparent in thought, even if you put on your best neutral face to act the part of the Uchiha flower girl.)

"I hear rumor that you are not of pure blood."

(As if yours was somehow dirty.)

She moves to speak, lifting her head and turning very soft features in what could be taken as hostility, but her mother, a slight of a woman that wears grey-blue and cranes, waves her off with an errant hand. Both of her parents smile, as if expecting and indulging the family. Treating them like children. Only she will see it.

"That is so, Uchiha-sama," says her mother, "but it is not by much. My mother, may her soul be at peace, was a woman of the woods before coming to the clan under the rule of the second Uchiha clan head, Madara-dono's son. It is of little consequence, just a slight, and Mikoto-chan does not take after her grandmother at all."

Mikoto disagrees, but says nothing, chewing at the inside of her cheek. Eying the pattern of the morning glories, she wonders if the vines had not just twisted a bit tighter than before.

The Lady Uchiha snorts inelegantly, waving her fan before her lazily and everyone listens to its delicate bells chiming in the summer heat. "Sounds of the old witch in the woods to me. Mother did not speak of her kindly, but Grandmother thought she was harmless. A plain looking woman, an old medic, nothing more than a strange woman that lived by herself for years."

Lord Uchiha smokes at a pipe, looking almost disgusted before schooling his face into practiced chiseled stone. "I don't want any dirty blood coming into our clan. The strength of the Sharingan is dependent on the purity of the marriages."

Lady Uchiha is not listening, and continues with her own train of thought.

"Spoke madness, that's what she did. Rubbish about demons, and thunder, that's what. Completely insane, going on like she was." To this, Lady Uchiha eyes Mikoto, an uncertain look in her gaze, as if seeking out some mark of past ghosts in her face. (And you have them, don't you, lurking in your hemlock eyes and nightshade breath? You will outlive this woman. You wish that -you- would be there with poisonous baited words in that moment. While it gives you no pleasure, it does give you some sort of self-respect.)

Her traitorous thoughts make her cheeks flame with embarrassment. The red only spreads further when she sees Fugaku look at her, -look- at her with some measure of pity and science, weighing her worth with his lazy eyes.

Her unhappiness is tangible, a thing of humidity and itch that she only hopes the others feel in the same amount that she does. The collar of her kimono sticks to her with her own sweat, streaks of ebony hair making slats to which people look at her pale skin. She does not feel beautiful at all. She feels she is deceiving these people with promises of healthy children and housewarming talents that she does not possess. She is promising a happy marriage to someone she has only seen in person from across the heads of a crowd. (And you hope that this isn't really happening.)

All the same, both the Uchiha clan leaders and her parents sign for their children, distinctly and without hesitation, even if she can feel the eyes here.

(You bet your life it is.)

She doesn't care to remember the wedding, because all that she does properly recall are the rakish hands of her hair dresser, pulling at her thick black hair and chopping of a thick lock of it from a point on her neck.

"Burn it," the old woman says simply, looking every bit the part of the old okiya mistress or music teacher. "It's good luck to burn your hair when you are married. Makes you fertile, but takes a part of yourself away and puts it somewhere that your husband will never be able to find." To this she is given a toothy grin, and she ignores the black of it. She likes the idea of keeping something of herself or else destroying it where no one else will get it.

She wraps the long lock of hair in a piece of bamboo paper, wraps it in a red cord (an obijime from when you were a child, the one that your grandmother put wooden butterflies on, the one that you considered hanging yourself on when you killed your first man as a kunoichi) and tucks it safely into the arrow knot of her obi.

When she consummates her marriage that evening, she clutches the braid of hair in her hand, grinding the strands into the very marbling of her fingerprints. She is trying to leave a permanent brand of it in herself.

She will grudge having this man's heirs. She will not grudge him having everything that makes her uniquely herself.

(That will be taken forcibly by another.)

Mikoto is pregnant early in their marriage, just as autumn begins to wane into winter. She does not grow bitter, but very conflicted. She does not love Fugaku, or at least not yet, but it is not in her power to hate whatever it is that is inside her. It makes her warm, and that is something that no amount of hasty passion or meaningful kisses can give her alone.

"It is good that you are so calm about this, Mikoto-chan," says Lady Uchiha (though soon you will be that, because once your firstborn is here, Fugaku will be the clan head. Your more humble nature tells you not to lord it over the old woman, but your pride is giggling like a schoolgirl, and your vengeance and satisfaction laugh nastily as well.) "Most women are usually distressed to be pregnant so young in life."

She is 17, and already she is going to be a mother.

"This what I am wed for, so it is this that I will spend my time being. Is that not what is on the marriage contract?" she says, and smooths her new tomesode kimono with little hands. (Already Fugaku has made fun of your hands, because you must always come to him to open jars and really, Mikoto, are you that weak?)

She misses the long sleeves, if only for the pictures that they had on them. These new muted colors are more suiting, but not at all what she wants, because what she wants is something of a life that is not just preparing tea and cicadas on the back pavilion that hum in her thoughts long past the summer time. She wants the peonies and soft rain, the ocean waves, the shine of festival brass wheels and rampaging dragons.

Looking at the simple lilies of her own kimono, she feels irritatingly depressed, and suppresses what she can only guess is disappointment behind her picket fence eyelashes and eyelids that are now thick enough to not be able to see the outline of Fugaku at night. (Because you ask yourself all the time, if he fucks me does it mean that he loves me? It seemed an easy question just a few weeks ago, didn't it?)

When Fugaku finds her that night on the terrace between the kitchen and the sitting room, she is balanced on the balls of her feet along the railing, one hand on a beam and the other woven into her hair. Her stomach is turned over, her eyes are moist and above all else, she is -not- crying because well-bred women don't do that.

"Are you not feeling well?" he asks, tentatively putting a hand on her shoulder (and how careful he has been around you, not certain with his place in your mind. He is your husband, but he is a stranger to you outside of the bedroom, and you are determined by the length of that one braid to keep it that way.)

"I am fine, Fugaku. I'm just sick to my stomach," she says, and turns her head just so to look at him through weary eyes. His face is not the first she wishes to see, but it is there, already wrinkling at the bottoms of his eyes from stress. Fugaku is a talented shinobi, not a genius, but something of a reliable soldier and captain. Consistency is something that men that bear the risk of dying every day crave and cling to.

She recoils from it, hesitant to become a slave to a routine.

"Mother tells me you spent the day embroidering your kimono." He looks mildly uncomfortable for a second. "Did you not like the ones that I bought for you?" (No, you hate them, hate what they represent and you wish you could rip the sleeves off of all of them and make new ones, ones that catch the wind and blow like little kites, just like they're supposed to on Shichi-go-san and the priest gives you rice candy for good luck.)

"They were fine. I just needed a little change." A fake smile and hesitant kiss later, she toes herself off of the railing and next to him. "Don't worry about it. I just feel fat and undesirable is all."

She is not fine, she is not happy, and above all else, she hates that everything around her has to reflect that. Fugaku frowns, shakes his head, and immediately asks if she would like anything for her stomach or if there was a specific kind of kimono that she would like next time

She replies by asking for a mint sprig and a jade-patterned kimono with no family crest on it. If she can't be happy in earnest, she can at least pretend for other people's sake. (Oh you'll pretend all right, trying to make things right with your herbal remedies and little prayers that aren't being listened to. Somewhere out there, your grandmother laughs at you, not from the afterlife but in the hollows of the trees and across the streams.)

"Listen close, and this old woman will tell you something interesting," says her grandmother, and she is wearing a simple cotton kimono with no pattern save splashes of red that she more than half convinced came from painting torii red every spring after the thaw. They are faded spots, little smudges and circles that make it look timeless and precious in her eyes.

The two of them sit on the damp stairs that rise up the mountain to the fire temple, and they both have moss curled between their toes (you've long since cast away your zori, for what child really wants to wear shoes when there's wet earth and water to be had on their feet?) Her own toes are young and small, and next to her, her grandmother's toes are old and disfigured from years of work and standing.

With her stick legs before her and her own plain indigo and white yukata sticking to her like a second skin in the damp air, Mikoto feels freer than she will ever be as an adult.

"What do you want to tell me, obaa-san?" she asks flippantly, holding a stick of sugar cane in one hand which occasionally bites down on. Her grandmother smiles at her, and Mikoto memorizes the path of wrinkles that cross over the old face.

"You know about your family, don't you? About the Uchiha clan?" asks her grandmother, who looks very bitter. "You know how your old obaa-san is not part of the clan?"

"Is that why you live out here, near the temple?" she asks with the passiveness of a child. "Sarutobi-jii-san thinks you should just stay down in the village like you used to, before Grandfather died. Mother wants you too as well," she tacks on, as if somehow that will help persuade her grandmother. Adults could be so difficult to understand.

"Now don't you start trying to talk me into moving back with those people." Grandmother balks at her, and chews thoughtfully on the end of a pipe, very unladylike and very noisily clicking her teeth. "Be a respectful granddaughter, and listen to me, not those men and women with their heads so high in the air that they can't see the ground that their walking on. They'll fall, and you'll be able to laugh from the sidelines if you're careful."

You wonder how high your head is up now.

She frowns, picking a piece of bark from her matchbox legs as a distraction. She has been lectured more than she would care to hear any more of, and good advice always seemed like a waste of time to her. After all, none of the adults were listening to it, so why should she?

Grandmother clicks her teeth on her pipe again before turning to her. "Now what was I saying . . . Yes, the Uchiha clan. I'd bet they'll never tell you where it comes from. No one will talk about anything other than nice things when it comes to old Madara-sama."

"Uchiha Madara?" she asks. "The first Uchiha? Shodaime-sama's friend and comrade?"

Grandmother looks at her, torn between amusement and irritation. "When did you get to be so smart, eh? And here I thought they were teaching you nothing but rubbish in that ninja academy that everyone is so intent their children go to . . . but all the same, yes, Madara-sama. He's the one who allowed me to marry your grandfather. I was only fourteen when I met him. He called me a midget."

Mikoto giggles, but only because her grandmother really is very short.

"Now don't you get started too. It's bad enough when a powerful man feels the need to point it out, and I won't stand for a child doing it either. Madara-sama could get away with a lot more than you can, and do a lot more too. You see, Madara-sama is something of an enigma, but he smells of thunder and sorcery, something about him that just wasn't like a normal person. I think his mother was a Hyuuga, a slip of a woman with shaky hands but a kind disposition. She died a little bit after I met her."

They both hum thoughtfully.

"You still listening, little girl?" asks Grandmother, and she shakes her head vigorously, determined to hear all of it despite the ramblings that occasionally came with the stories, a habit that all older people seem to fall back on to fill the empty spaces (because they all know perfectly well that they won't get a chance to fill those spaces again, and if anyone's listening, they want every moment to be filled. You don't question it, just absorb.

"Well old Madara-sama, he told an old priestess such as me that he was the son of a god, a tengu of all things! And that this god was looking for a new body, a container per say. Madara-sama was very frightened that he would be it, and he made a pact with a demon to keep this from happening."

"What would happen if the tengu got him, Grandmother?"

"He would gain enormous power, a more perfect form! What old person, a god or not, doesn't dream of having a new body, you silly girl?" says Grandmother, putting her pipe hand over her knobby knees.

She frowns now, sucking on her sugar cane more thoughtfully. "Then why wouldn't he want to become a god? Why not become the container to be more powerful? It doesn't sound very smart of him at all!"

For a long time, Grandmother does little else other than stare out into the mists and green leaves, smoking heavily. "You . . . have too much Uchiha in you. Too little to not listen, but still enough to make you think like that."

She kicks her feet up a little bit, feeling ashamed without properly understanding why. "Well," she starts, "do you think anyone in the clan could become the container? I mean, if the main line is related to Madara-sama, doesn't that mean anyone from the main house could be the tengu's new body?"

Grandmother says nothing, though the shocked expression on her face is more than enough to stick out in Mikoto's mind. Before being sent home that night from the mountain, she is told to forget what she heard and to not tell her parents. "After all," says Grandmother, "if Madara-sama wanted anyone to know about that, I'm sure he would have written it somewhere for the main family. A branch family girl such as yourself has no business knowing these things." (Your gut clenches a bit at this, but with your eight-year-old mind, you will not understand.

"But what about you?"

Grandmother smiles in the evening light, a dull grey tone, and puts her pipe out before beginning to climb the stairs back up to the temple. "I'm not an Uchiha."

You will not be envious of this until much later.

The night that Itachi is born, she is exultant in the wind of the storm.

Next to her, her own mother stands gripping her hand with all the strength she can. Mikoto does feel pain, but it is more from her mother than any actual labor pains (Itachi was always a stress free child, wasn't he? Look how even now he makes things easier for you.) She hisses a small sound from between her teeth, feeling her mother's joints click against her own.

They are a corpse's hands next to her own warm ones.

"It's bad luck, giving birth to a son in a rainstorm," says the soon-to-not-be Lady Uchiha, and taps her pipe tentatively against the brass handled drawers, scattering little opiate ashes over a clean white bowl that she uses to wash her face with. "I'm sure crazy old Tsukiko would be absolutely thrilled, always rambling about thunder and demons as she was . . . "

Her mother tightens her lips, and she is positive no one but her notices the change."While it may not be good luck to birth a child in a storm, it most certainly is lucky to birth in the year of the dragon. Maybe it is the water-god simply greeting a new leader."

Lady Uchiha frowns a bit. "All Uchiha are destined for greater things. There is no need for a dragon to prove that to us."

She lets a smile slip at this. (Because you know, you know that -your- child, not theirs, will be nothing like they've ever seen before, and the wind at your window tells you so.) The afternoon is long, and she is tiring quickly, bearing down with desperation. The pain may be minimal, but she is anxious to meet the only person she has felt safe talking to for the past nine months.

He does not cry when he is loosed from her, and for one terrifying moment she fears that he may be still born. (You had never considered the possibility because quite frankly, it always happens to them and never you.) Looking down to the midwife, she waits in quaking silence.

"It's a boy," says the midwife, a widow of her middle years and already yellowing from the make-up she wears. "So strange, for a child to be this quiet." But she pays her no mind, reaching for her child with weak arms and a bright disposition. In her arms, he fits perfectly, as though carved from her body and placed again where it matters most, a place where she can feel his heartbeat the way he heard hers. (For every chemical, you trade a piece of your soul, but it's worth it, right?)

He looks at her with dark eyes, not sharp ones like his father's, but all-encompassing. She feels swallowed in the ink of them, and she is forced to close her eyes and hold him to her chest, where she won't have to look anymore.

Behind them, the lightning cuts the sky in half.

(...Right?)

At a little more than one year old, Itachi is a politely inquisitive child, always looking to her before moving to take something from the counters or tables. However, he is forceful, as though he will take what he wants nonetheless, but at least puts up a farce of complacence.

She indulges it, and has never had to say no.

With him before her now, wearing his formal wear for Oshogatsu, chewing on a piece of sugared mochi, he is silent, looking at her with lazy doe eyes, something she knows heralds his sleeping later on. His fist is curled in a lock of her black hair, and she lets him stay that way, even if he is pulling the roots straight from her scalp. (He'll tear more than that from you, but you don't know that yet, so hush and go on with what you're doing, darling.)

The snow is in droves around them, catching their matching picket fence eyelashes while they wait in line to ring the temple bell (you do not bring Fugaku with you; you will wait in line like everyone else, not use position and power to get to the front.) She feels the need for a bit of good luck, even if Itachi is sleepy and clinging to her already tired arms. She will always hold him when he asks, because he is the only one that feels like they belong there.

In her arms, Itachi fidgets, curling his now empty hand into her woolen shawl, and she ignores the sticky fingerprints that he is probably leaving there.

"Is Itachi tired?" she asks, knowing that he will deny it vehemently. Already he is shaking his head, trying to sit up straight. "Does Itachi want to hear a story?"

He nods, looking up at her, and she wipes the mochi powder from around his nose and mouth with the edge of her sleeve. It leaves little snowy streaks on the formal black, and she leaves it there, because the kimono looks so much better with a piece of herself somehow woven into the fabric.

"There once was a boy that would become a man, and he liked to play in the forests with his 'kaa-san at night," she begins, not sure where she's going at all. (You will not talk of thunder and gods, because you are determined to prove to all of these people that you are -not- your grandmother and that you are perfectly sane and simple, just what they want.)

Itachi looks at her with curious dark eyes, absorbing what she is saying despite his sleepiness. His intentness unnerves her.

"They would run past the holly and the pine until they would reach a hill, and atop this hill was one lone tree, and when the villagers would pass it by, its branches would always empty. But not when the mother and son came to it," she says, lilting her voice a bit. "When they would come to the tree, it would spring up flowers, very small white ones like a plum tree."

Before them, the bell is much closer than before, and an elderly couple looks at her, the Lady Uchiha (and will you ever get used to such a prestigious, or rather, pretentious title?) And her son with something that could be described as fondness. For a moment she fumbles in the pouch in her sleeve, drawing out their money. Itachi irritably mumbles a sleepy 'haha-ue' at her.

"Just a moment, Itachi, 'haha-ue just needs to get ready. This is your first year ringing the bell on New Year's and it's important."

"Finish," he says with all the resolution a child of one and a half year can muster.

"Yes, yes, Itachi. Now where was I?"

"Flowers."

She smiles that secretive smile again, proud of how smart her child is without fully understanding how true the statement was. "Do you know why flowers would spring up every time the mother and son came to the hill and the tree?"

Itachi shakes his head, still watching her every move, seemingly counting the money in her hand and the number of times she rolls it between her thumb and forefinger.

"There's a magic in mothers that most people don't have. Mothers love their children," she grasps him a little tighter to her, "and when they are with them, everything around them seems so much more alive. The tree blooms because of the magic in those two's feet."

For a moment it looks as if Itachi is looking away with disinterest, and she is disappointed, but then he points to a nearby wall of holly bushes, filled with round red berries. He looks to her, a question in his eyes.

"Yes, Itachi," she says, "they are there for you and me."

Itachi's smiles are always sly, barely there, but she feels it in the flesh of her neck where he buries his face, icy cheeks warming up against her. Standing before the bell herself, she clumsily claps her hands, and Itachi does it lazily from behind a veil of her shawl. The money sounds very flat and dead to her when she drops it.

When she passes by the holly bushes on her way back to the main house, she snags a piece of it and shows Itachi. He does not understand what the holly means, that holly is a symbol of sorrows, bitterness of winter. He only sees the story that she has told him.

(You will not mention that holly is also very poisonous.)

She does not see why they feel the need to begin her son's training as a shinobi so early, and looking at him from across the expanse of the breakfast table, his still small hands curled around his chopsticks, she does not think she will -ever- understand it. Even as a previous kunoichi herself, there is something deeply perverse about turning children into weapons, and the barbs of kunai that lie under tender fingers cut her more than him.

As a mother, she feels a deep sense of guilt watching him struggle to eat his rice because the cuts on his hands keep him from holding his utensils. (And what kind of monster are you, to watch while he does so?)

"Do you want some salve for your hands, Itachi?" she asks, and puts her own hand over his, correcting the way he holds the chopsticks. "You won't be able to eat much, going on the way you are."

At four, Itachi shakes his head, looking as nonchalant about his mother fixing his hands as a full-grown man. "No thank you, haha-ue. But I would like umeboshi in my bento."

She smiles as softly as she can, pulling a little at his hair that is already growing past his ears to get in the way of his eyes. (You'll trim it later, because you don't want him hurting himself any more than he already is.) "Then you'll have some umeboshi. I'll pack a little salve while I'm at it anyway."

He'll be brilliant, or so Fugaku says, and looking at him through her maternal eyes, she can see the streak of intelligence there as well. He is a serious child, and a fast learner, but despite all that, she sees the shy smiles and tentative hesitance of a little boy underneath all of that, and wants to do nothing more than hold him to her and tell him nonsense stories like she always does.

This clan is killing everything that she wants her child to keep, and she doesn't know what to do to stop it.

When Fugaku walks into the kitchen to get Itachi and take him outside, you cut into your hand with a knife, splitting candied plums. (It's all you can do to keep from turning around and screaming 'MURDERER' at the man that you are supposed to love.) She bleeds only a little bit, sucking at her palm angrily.

"Mikoto, don't be so hasty," says Fugaku, and she almost throws a hateful look at him. She stops herself for Itachi's sake, who is wandering up to her side with careful steps.

"Haha-ue should not be so hasty," says Itachi, and with one hand, pulls her bleeding hand from her face and down to his own. "Wounds heal better when someone else takes care of them, isn't that right, haha-ue?" And with a quick glance up to her, he kisses her cut lightly, and she knows that he is only thinking of all the times she has taken care of his burns and cuts with her own light kisses. She smiles, secure in the knowledge that he loves and listens to her, no matter what weapon his teachers put in his hands.

(Those kisses don't mean anything now, but they will later, no matter what you'd like to think.)

Before letting her son go outside, she jealously hugs him, and feels a twinge of happiness when he does the same, glaring at his father's show of impatience. Sometimes, it seems like Itachi deals out all the hateful glances that she herself would like to send to her husband.

When they go outside, Itachi's lips are still ripe with the red of her blood.

It is raining when he next pulls another string from the tapestry that makes her what she is (and isn't it a bit threadbare, Mikoto?), and the sulfur and tang of lightning are just at the tip of her tongue.

"Why do you always have to go out into the kimono storeroom?" asks Itachi, sitting very still in the corner of the room, trying very hard to look bored (or so you think) while holding a kimono box in his heavily bandaged hands. (Not much time has passed since that day, and you can still see the difficulty he has in holding his throwing knives and toothbrush almost equally.) Inside it, he fingers an amber colored obi, patterned with gingko leaves and rayed suns; his infant's hands looked mummified against its bright colors.

She always tucks her brightest expressions away for him, nursing them in a pocket that she would like to believe is just below her heart. Everyone else is stern and unpleasant with her child but she, never will she frown at her child(ren) if she can help it. Even now, she beams just for him, pushing tissue paper away from another summer yukata.

"Kimono are seasonal clothes, and there are kinds you are supposed to wear during special times. I wouldn't want to be wearing a heavy black outfit in the middle of a humid summer, would I?" she asks, chatting along merrily, and trying to ignore the twinge she feels as she puts another outfit that Fugaku has deemed 'unsuitable' for her station into boxes she will probably never get into again. The hiss of the sheer paper against her palms is ambient in the room (and you think of anything other than tombs closing), and with his new shinobi talents, Itachi quickly looks to her, eying the bandage over her cut hand.

"If you want to wear one, I don't see why you wouldn't," he says with all the petulance of a child, pulling at the corner of the obi. "Haha-ue can wear whatever she wants. I don't care if it's out of season."

Above their heads, another long rumble of thunder shakes the shelves and makes the lamplight waver.

She folds another long sleeved furisode, placing it in the paper while trying very hard not to cry.

(And why wouldn't you, when the only thing you really want to do is feel beautiful again, somehow necessary to someone other than the creaks of the house. It's as if you are melding into the woodgrain, and your sleek hair is a stain in the varnish.)

With one idle hand, she motions Itachi to come closer. Despite how serious his face is, he looks very small, sliding off his corner chair, and his feet (that not so long ago were small enough to fit in the center of your palm) shuffle noisily across the creaky floorboards. In his hand, he keeps the kimono box, offering it to her. She takes it, but pulls her son by his arm to sit next to her.

"We can't always do what we want to, you know," and she says it knowing that Itachi has heard this lecture from different people, but with different meaning. He stiffens beside her, comically pouting at the thought of being told what to do. She laughs, but it is faint and beating softly to death. "Haha-ue can't do anything that your father would disapprove of. I have to present myself in front of other people, not just you. Clothes mean a lot to people that don't see me as often as you."

"But why?" he asks, pulling another box toward him and inside is a soft lavender furisode, the deadly looking splashes of chrysanthemums and dark waterfalls flowing over him in liquid textile grace. "I think you are pretty."

Another pitiful laugh (while you hide grateful tears).

"Well thank you! You say that more often than your father does!" She turns to see him looking mildly pleased with himself. "But you know how the phrase goes, that clothing makes the man. Some people believe that, especially if you are an important person in a clan."

Itachi nods in understanding, without really understanding.

They sit in silence for a long time, her quietly packaging her childhood like it should be easily removed from her, and him sitting with one hand passing packaging paper and the other one fisted in her apron. She will not move him and he will not be moved, content to spend a rainy afternoon against his mother's shoulder.

When she comes to the last of her old clothes, she holds it softly over her fingers, treating it like a spider web that at any moment with break against her fingertips (but also it bites, because don't you see, don't you see how the familiar linen tears at something inside you with piercing teeth?) Painted on with extreme care are a thousand pinwheels against a black sky, bright orange and yellow ochre ones that she can imagine even now spinning and whirling, sounding every bit like the swell of the ocean. Next to her, Itachi pulls at a frayed end.

"This is a pretty kimono, haha-ue," says Itachi, and he pulls at the red collar of it impatiently. "Why do you never wear this one?"

She brushes her fingers along it. "The sleeves. Long sleeves mean that a girl is not married."

"Do you have to be married at all times of the day?"

"What a silly question!" she says, tugging at his hair affectionately. "I am married all the time, sort of like I am always a woman. You couldn't stop being a boy just for a minute, now could you?" she asks, not really expecting him to answer it.

"Well, you don't always have to be a woman. You could be a plain girl for a minute." And with that, with thin arms, he hands her the box with the gingko obi. (Because that is exactly what you want, isn't it? To just be a girl again? With his worn old eyes, your son makes you feel young despite whatever your husband might say to you.)

"Oh? And are you going to dress like a man for a minute?" she asks, grabbing the box with hands that shake despite her better sense. He nods, and begins looking at the labels of the shelves, pulling out a box of his own.

At dinner that night, much to Fugaku's irritation and the embarrassment of his parents, Mikoto and Itachi stand defiantly dressed in their festival best. She wears her favorite furisode, and rice candy tucked into the slats of her sleeves, and Itachi, in striped hakama and a crested haori, looks with commanding eyes at their dinner guests.

When asked why they were dressed so strangely, Itachi responds very simply.

"If clothes make a man, and sleeves the woman, then I am in charge and haha-ue is young again."

Fugaku's parents are appropriately angry with her, never the child which is likely how things are meant to be anyway, and she pretends that she does not hear Fugaku and his father talking about the madness of her grandmother over the smoke of pipes and a dish of sake. The previous Lady Uchiha simply glares while telling Itachi he looks ridiculous. She is proud to look ridiculous as well.

She puts Itachi to bed with a smile, both smiling conspiratorially from behind their sleeves as if they have a secret, something just between the two of them. While Fugaku will likely give her a hard time about being foolish in front of his parents and pulling Itachi into it, she knows that it was worth it.

Even if it was pretend (and almost realistic), Itachi playing at being an adult is exactly what she needed. Somewhere in there, there is still a boy.

Inside of her, there is still a girl, and she giggles with all the devilry of youth and softness of a playful breeze, pulling at the tails of bells in the Konoha Temple. As a little girl, she is not Lady Uchiha. She is still a human being.

(You will keep the memory of Fugaku's shocked expression somewhere near the place you keep that one braid of hair, and this kimono you will keep the back of your closet, defiantly free of the storehouse.

Itachi's quiet rivalry is something you will try to forget, which sounds strangely similar to regret.)

She conceives again in the autumn, and it is as if Fugaku is seeking fo ways to keep her from her son. A strange covetousness can be heard in his conversations with her now, greedily taking up every word that she might speak and muffling all the ones he might not want to hear. She doesn't argue with him about it, but clenches her teeth lightly from the counter.

"You're going to have a little brother or sister, Itachi. So you might want to leave your mother alone for a little while," says Fugaku, looking his only son in the eyes like the chief of police, not a father. "Your mother gets sick easily while she's pregnant."

Itachi looks scandalized, giving her the briefest of glances from between eyelashes that match hers. But all the same, he nods slowly, too old looking for a boy of a little over five years. Without knowing why, she wants to apologize to him, tell him that he is still first in her heart. (And he is, because that man that tries to speak for you and tells you to be respectful will never have all of you, not even if you have to die to keep it that way.)

When Fugaku leaves the room, she tries to tell him just that.

"Your sibling won't replace you, Itachi," she says, brushing the back of his head with her cracking hands, already looking drawn and pained from washing floorboards (doesn't housework make such a nice distraction?). "I love you, and you'll always be my first born."

He must not believe her.

The look in his eyes tells her that he doesn't.

"You like mint, don't you?"

They are all outside, sitting on the veranda, save for Itachi who is throwing shuriken at a target in the yard with a fervor unmatched. Next to them, a tea service sits untouched, although the water still steams warmly against her arm and leaving little drops of condensation.

From the vision of sunset on the courtyard, she turns to look at her husband, dark eyes like inkwells in the evening light. She would swallow him up with them if she could, and write him away like some bad thought on paper. But just the same, she nods to the question, pausing to brush a hand past her rounding belly.

It's a scar on her consciousness, a visual reminder that she has given up possession of her body for a name.

"I thought you would like some. You didn't seem very interested in dinner, so I was concerned that you might be sick to your stomach," he says, holding a sprig of spearmint in front of him like a peace offering, looking for all the world like someone who cares. "You...always asked for it when you were pregnant with Itachi."

Itachi listens, she can tell by the way his throwing slows just the tiniest bit.

After six years of trying to hate this man, trying to convince herself that he had no significance whatsoever to her save as the keeper of her wooden house of a prison, she sometimes isn't sure if she'll be able to keep the mask up. (It's a hard facade for you to keep up, because hating people is hard work. It bleaches your imagination bone white.)

She accepts the proffered piece of mint, breaking it into little pieces and putting it into one of the cups of tea.

"Thank you, Fugaku," she says, and eases one dove white hand over his, squeezing the scarred fingers between her own rough ones. Her hand is a bit too small for his own, and his is awkward in its grasp around her, but despite that, she'd like to think that maybe in a few years, they'll have worn their hands down enough to fit into each others.

But for now, she'll cooly accept the unspoken truce between them and watch Itachi.

If Itachi sees the exchange, he says nothing, but throws his shuriken faster and more viciously. Watching the wood chip away, Mikoto sees bloodletting claws in each point of the throwing stars. (And do you think he'll throw them at you or Fugaku first?)

Sasuke, unlike his brother, is born on a clear July morning, kicking and screaming his way into the world (although you'd much rather tell him it isn't worth it). She is not without pain this time, but instead feels as if her child were pulling her heart out from the bottom and squeezing it between small fingers.

"What a lively child," says her mother, delighted with the bawling child who waved his fists weakly in front of their eyes. "He'll be rather energetic, a real hand full for you, Mikoto. Itachi spoiled you with his quietness."

She doesn't doubt that at all.

"He'll probably have Mikoto's looks as well," says her mother-in-law, already scowling at the prospect. "Just don't turn this one into a defiant child, too. The nail that sticks out gets hammered, or so the saying goes." The previous Lady Uchiha blows smoke from between her lips to hover over her head, some sickly halo.

She doesn't particularly care what either of her mothers think she will do or what Sasuke will do. She doesn't particularly care what Fugaku ought to do either. She loves her children, no matter what name has been affixed to their own ("I'm not an Uchiha," says her grandmother in the dull evening light.) What really matters in this moment is that she feels very alive because of the pain and anxiousness of being a mother again (you never really stopped being one, but somewhere along the line, Itachi stopped thinking of you as one.)

Despite all that she feels like crying.

In her arms, Sasuke looks up with sleepy eyes.

From the doorway, both Fugaku and Itachi watch with severing eyes.

"How are you doing, Mikoto?" asks Fugaku, at least trying to put up a front of being pleased with her. "It's been a long night, and you seemed to be having a more difficult time than before."

"I'm fine." A nervous laugh and a blase answer.

Itachi, finally convinced to stand by her, carefully puts his own bandaged hand over her sweaty one, holding her by two fingers. His eyes are very wide, looking at Sasuke, as if trying to measure his value, determine his worth as a sibling and as a rival, a brother. But then he looks at her, measuring and counting as well in that mathematical way he always does. "You don't look very happy," he says, ignoring the looks her gets from his grandmothers and father. "Why are you not happy?"

She stops for a moment, squeezing his hand in her own. Her heart is a bird and it flies, hits, and breaks its wings on the ribs-that-would-be-a-cage.

(Why aren't you happy?)

"Why, haha-ue?"

(WHY AREN'T YOU HAPPY?)

She doesn't know, so she just cries. Angry, Fugaku grabs Itachi by his other arm and pulls him out of the room, but even through a haze of tears, Mikoto is willing to swear that his secretive fox smile is written on his face.

At least someone else is happy about this. (Because you sure as hell aren't, honey, and you'll never be anything but just that.)

Itachi starts at the ninja academy that autumn, and never scores anything less than perfect. Sasuke learns to crawl by himself, and is able to sleep the night through. Fugaku learns that running the Uchiha clan has its downfalls when ANBU slowly starts replacing the military police's duties. She learns that having a husband and two children is stressful, and idly wonders if her hair will be as white and wispy as her grandmother's by the end of it all.

Most frustrating perhaps is the growing rumbles between family members that she is unfit to continue on as Lady Uchiha, and most certainly unfit to have more children if she was going to cry at the thought of them. (And you did cry, you cried like a child while your in-laws and own mother watched, and there was -nothing- you could say to make that moment right.)

"It's like she's becoming her grandmother. Old Tsukiko only had two children as well, left them to her husband and went to live at the temple," said Fugaku's father, smoothing his bald head in her mind's eye. "That's why we didn't want any outsiders in the main house."

She will not become the wild witch in the woods. She cannot let them make her fit their cookie-cutter impression of her. She won't, she won't-she-won't...

(But you will.)

It is evening, and she is leaning over Sasuke's crib, playing with the soft down of his hair, just allowing herself to feel the feather softness of his head. From the hallway she can hear the other two, choosing to leave her alone for the time being.

"They think I'm melancholy, that I'm inconsistent," she tells her son, who is not only not listening and unable to understand, but asleep. "They think that I'll leave your father and you boys to follow my grandmother. They -always- think the wrong things, you know," and she closes her eyes and leans against the wooden frame of the crib.

"They just don't like my grandmother's stories, say they're all shudders and lace, thunder and nonsense."

Sasuke, waking from his nap, winks at her with one dark eye before smiling at his mother. She watches and rubs his stomach with one careful hand. "At least one of my boys still wants me around," she says warmly, and leans over to kiss one tiny hand.

She doesn't notice the discontent shuffle of feet from outside the door.

"Well they wouldn't let me tell Itachi it, but how about you? Do you want to hear an old story?" she asks and rubs his stomach again, getting him to coo at her between his few teeth. "Sasuke-chan is so much easier to please than the rest of the Uchiha."

And with that, she leans back, putting Sasuke in the crook of her neck, and begins to tell him about Uchiha Madara and the monsters in his closet.

Outside the door, Itachi listens intently, not knowing just yet that there's more fact in fiction and that this moment will have relevance later on. (You almost wish that you didn't tell it, didn't put the seed of thought in a creative mind. Myths have to start from something, and some are closer in their telling than others.)

There's a certain terror in knowing that real monsters are lurking just outside her window, but she does not hide under the covers, instead ripping sheets to use as unofficial bandages during the onslaught of the nine-tailed fox. She is a nurse to her clan's warriors with both her sons next to her. Itachi is holding Sasuke, trying his best to look like he knows exactly what he is doing and that nothing frightens him.

"You'll have to be good, just for a little while longer, okay?" she tells Itachi, pulling his hair and smiling even though her fingers are covered in gore and blood. She isn't afraid, she chants over and over until something finally sticks (though it certainly isn't courage so much as a stubbornness; you want to outlive the fox more than anything, at any expense. You are selfish, and hold your children close to you.)

Outside, the fox beats his tails against the ground, and again, the roof gives a sickening shudder, dropping pieces of plaster on their heads.

"Then monsters really do exist," says Itachi, his arms tight around his baby brother, and though he tries to hide it, she sees his fingers tremble. She is only too happy that he is too young to be fighting on the field of battle.

"They do. And they always show up when you least expect them, and from the most unlikely of sources."

(You must be as mad as your grandmother. You know the future too well.)

Time moves a lot faster when she's worried about it doing so, and because of it, before she even realizes it has passed, Sasuke is walking and talking, chasing the mourning doves from around her bedroom window while she cleans for the new year. He is three, and Itachi is nine, a genius of the Uchiha clan with his Sharingan awoken and rising career.

Really, she doesn't know where the time goes, but she suspects that it is running out.

"Sasuke, stop flapping around like that and come inside to help your okaa-san."

One dark headed face appears in the window, precariously balanced on the sill but animated and smiling at the same time. Unlike Itachi's all-encompassing eyes, Sasuke's are focused on one thing at a time, but unspeakable warm and comforting. While she loves her first son, she finds her second son a lot easier to be around now (especially since you do not want to look into the Sharingan for any reason. There are dragons and devils there.)

"But I'm having fun," he says poutily.

"Yes, I know, but your brother is having company over this afternoon, and I don't want to cause any sort of disturbance for him." It is disturbance enough to her that he is having company over at all. "Besides, haven't you tortured those poor birds quite enough? You needn't be unnecessarily cruel."

(He'll be that later anyway, even if you'll never see it. There's a boy with blonde hair, and it is -your- son that will try to bring ruinous pain that brings images of wastelands and empty glares from gods...but what am I saying, you don't need to know that.)

Itachi had made friends with one Uchiha Shisui, a boy about four years older than her own son, and as serious as a man in his forties already. She wonders if all ninja end up like that, or if it is just some built-in mechanism in the Uchiha clan. Shisui's eyes speak in volumes, and are filled with some kind of impending pain that she will not name.

Of course Sasuke comes inside, sits next to her, and chats along happily about absolutely nothing, and she is glad that someone fills the silence. He other son is so quiet when he comes home that she does not even realize he is home until she goes outside looking for him only to find him staring at her from his bedroom window.

Next to him, in shady values, stands Shisui, and Itachi watches her face for some sort of reaction. Sometimes he wonders if he wants her to somehow be jealous that he talks to people other than her. But as always, his face is unreadable, and she is positive she has made up another piece of nonsense to join Sasuke's own growing pile of it.

(You're a poor shinobi anyway. You'd never understand what's written in his glances.)

It is always her that goes back after a lecture to tell her sons that they are doing fine, no matter what their father says. Fugaku calls it belittling his authority, but she thinks of it as damage control. She doesn't want perfect children that become perfect machines of war. She'll settle for the kind that she can look at while they sleep, or bandage their cuts.

This time it is for Itachi, who is never a disappointment, yet somehow always manages to get into Fugaku's bad graces. He is self-sufficient, perhaps a little curt with his father, but an obedient child most of the time. At eleven years old, she feels that he is just on the precipice of greatness, and some kind of infamy that has no face to her just yet,

She never doubts her intuition. She simply fails to listen to it.

She'll stand by the door until Itachi tells her it's alright for her to come in, and so it has been since Sasuke was born and he grew angry with her (you still remember the one time he showed his temper and asked you if he had done something wrong, if he wasn't enough for you. You'll never tell him that he wasn't enough for Fugaku.)

"Come in," he says muffled by the doorframe.

She hesitates only for a minute, digging her nails into the shoji door (and your fingernail marks are still there, decaying with the curtains you took so long to make), but pulls it while kneeling. Itachi, comfortable as a cat, lays stretched over his desk, filling out mission logs. The only sign he gives to let you know that you are here is a quick glance over his shoulder.

"Itachi, do you have a moment to speak with me?" she asks, almost expecting by the terseness of his glance to say no. He doesn't want to be lectured again, and she does not blame him. "I...I just wanted a moment with you. Nothing more."

He looks down at his report, as if trying to tell how much longer it will take him to finish, and closes it with a soft press of air. He then turns to look at her with tired eyes. "If this is about father's lecture this evening, then I already understand what is required of me and I don't need you telling me that all of us are expected to do things we don't want."

For a moment, she allows herself to look hurt.

"That's not what I came to say at all."

"But it's what you usually come to say after you and father have argued. If nothing else, you are fairly predictable."

(You are, and he knows it. Feel betrayed? Angry? What DO you feel?)

She bites her lip, tearing at the bottom of her apron methodically, watching the little scraps gather in her hands (looks like your heart, don't it darling?). It feels good to destroy something every once in a while, and Itachi's eyes are intent on her hands, as though memorizing each and every tear.

"I wanted to tell you that no matter...what your father says, I'm proud of you. And I know that probably doesn't mean very much to you, and that my opinion doesn't amount to much for your career, but I just want you to know that."

Itachi sits very still, looking at her hands, but never her face.

"I'll go," she says very quietly.

"I have a question for you," says Itachi, and pins her gaze with his own, his hand underneath his chin and his other hand pulling at a lock of his steel black hair (it's never been as dark as yours, just barely off as though he was always a lot older than you). "you told Sasuke a story when he was a baby, and again when he was only a year older. You said that they wouldn't let you tell me it."

She nods, and tries not to think of shudders and thunder.

"Why, why would you go against them to tell Sasuke and not tell me? You knew I was by the door, so why the special treatment?"Itachi almost looks sincerely frustrated by the declaration, and watches her with searing intent.

"...My grandmother is not from the Uchiha clan, and she used to say strange things about Madara-sama while she was alive, stories she heard while living at the temple. It was...in her right to say, I believe. She knew both Madara-sama and Shodaime-sama, you know, like the statues on the river border."

"And she was ridiculed and ostracized for telling stories about thunder gods."

"Yes," she says, and smooths out the non-existent wrinkles in her apron, watching the hem unravel. "Your grandparents were opposed to my marriage into the family on the grounds that madness ran through my grandmother's line. I was allowed in the clan on the grounds that I acted like a main family member and did not speak of my grandmother's stories. Sasuke only heard it because I was angry with the way the family was treating me after he was born, and wanted someone to hear it."

"You cried that day."

She looks up, shocked, but her lips firmly closed. "..Yes I did." (And it hurts to admit doesn't it, to tell the person who caused it that it actually happened. The best part, you decided, is the part where he doesn't care.)

"I didn't want to share you," he says plainly, "and I still don't. So regrettably I am not apologizing for it." He is polite to a fault, and she is almost happy to hear that he won't say that he's sorry (and won't mean a word of it.)

She laughs, deep in her throat, and pulls a lock of his hair around her index finger, twisting it like she used to. "Then I am glad...I am glad that my Itachi does not hate his mother the way that everyone else does."

"I couldn't hate someone for telling the truth. And I couldn't hate you, not as you are now."

"Lot's of people do, but I hardly think my grandmother's stories count as truth," she says with a bark of clipped laughter, and a little pull on the hair strand.

He says nothing.

She tries to pull him closer, and he allows himself to be shifted to her side, where she presses his head again her shoulder and plays with his hair. He, always patient, let's the mission report slide for the night, and let's himself breathe softly into her neck, content to be held if only for a moment.

(What a disappointment you must have been to him later on. And you never did answer his question.)

The year that Itachi turns 12, he is given the position of jounin, much to everyone's shock and elation. They hail him as the greatest mind since Hatake Kakashi, the boy that she remembers as having one Uchiha Sharingan that bled every so often. She had felt badly for him, and could still remember the face that the one eye had belonged to.

Itachi, in his newfound popularity, did his best to avoid it, training for hours on end, not coming home until late at night with Sasuke in tow. She worries for him, always makes sure that his favorite foods are in order, and stays up until he is home.

Tonight, when Itachi comes home, she sits at the small table in their kitchen with a bowl of rice and a covered plate of tempura vegetables waiting for him. He did not take Sasuke with him this time, but instead trained with Shisui. The smell of old wounds is on him before he ever walks into the kitchen.

"Welcome home," she says, "would you like me to heat up your dinner?"

"That would be nice," says Itachi, and sits down without so much as rustling the tatami. She admires that silence in her son, and is especially grateful for it. Sasuke would not lay down until his brother got home and ended up falling asleep next to her while watching TV. At six, Sasuke is the poster child for brotherly affection, and she often wonders if that will get him into some sort of trouble in the future. (It will, you know it, you -knew- it, and do nothing about it.)

"You don't have any injuries that I ought to know about, do you? You smelled like blood when you came through the door." She turns the stove on, hoping not to burn herself like earlier, where already she can see the white of blisters and scar tissue on her wrist. Sasuke had been upset on her behalf when she wouldn't complain out loud about it.

Itachi smiles, but says nothing, just waving his already bandaged arms for her to see.

"You smell of burnt flesh. Does that mean you have an injury that I should know about?" he retorts, walking over to where she stands, waiting for the oven to warm enough. "You have a new bandage around your wrist."

"Nothing but your mother not being careful around the oven. Sasuke was more than happy to take care of it. It gave him something to fret over while you were away."

(-He- wouldn't have fretted over it, and that makes you feel a little hollowed out inside.)

He eats in silence, just like he does everything else, but this time after he finishes his rice (holding the sticks correctly, you add to yourself), he reaches for your burnt wrist and places a chaste kiss on it.

"Even if I don't believe it will do any good, you and Sasuke believe it will, and I did at one point too, I'm sure," he says by way of explanation. She smiles at him, and goes around to kiss his forehead, but he pulls her down to sit with him. "Sit with me. I'd rather you be here with me than with father."

"I can't ignore your father just for you, Itachi," she says without meaning it. He frowns a little bit and eats another bite of rice, one gangly arm around her waist. His entire countenance seems to ask her why not.

"You don't love him."

"I do."

"You -don't-."

The arm around her waist squeezes a little tighter, and she looks to her son, confused. "And my son who makes me cry would know? You've barely spoken to me since Sasuke was born, and only recently because I thought we had mended that particular grievance."

"You don't love him the way you love me. You love Sasuke and me more than you will ever love him."

(Don't deny it just yet, no matter how much it hurts to hear it from your oldest child. There is a ring of truth in it, and it constricts, -squeezes- the air out of your lungs, and that place you keep all your happiness for Itachi is strangely dry.)

"It's not th same kind of love, Itachi. There's a difference between the way a lady feels for her husband and how she feels for her sons. You remember that story, the one about dancing underneath a barren tree? I used to tell you it all the time when you were little."

Itachi looks hateful for a minute, arresting her gaze with his own red one. He is on the defensive now, and she isn't sure how to enter a fight that she has already lost. "There is no holly for father, just empty branches. Funny, how you didn't tell me what holly meant."

"You were a little over a year old when you decided holly was going to be our plant. I couldn't have explained to you then the significance of a holly branch. You would have been absolutely crushed if I had told you that holly was a symbol of unhappiness and unfulfillment."

"As well as poisonous," he adds in his own venomous voice.

"You should be able to laugh at it, as old as you are now." (You don't laugh either, because that little sprig of holly you kept with your braid of hair meant a lot to you, no matter what it might mean for your future. You hate parallelism, since it never seems to be happy.)

Itachi looks away, arm slipping off of her waist, but he still leans a tired head against her shoulder. "You said so yourself, that this clan hated you, so why won't you let me love you instead? It's only a name, and I'm more interested in the kekkai genkai legacy than anything a group of conceited policemen could possibly think of me," he frowns a little bit. "You aren't happy with the way things are."

She shakes her head, slowly, and thinks of the priests that swing the rope of the brass bells back and forth, drumming the prayers to the mountains. "I know you hate it when I say it, but I have to. We don't always get what we want out of life."

When he stands to leave, finished with his meal and looking twice as tired as when he came in, she does not look at him, and pretends to not hear him in her memory, excitedly telling his father that his mother was the prettiest girl he knew, and that he was going to protect her. (His hands had been bandaged then too, and his heart was still untouched by jealousy of his father and Sasuke. Don't you wish it was like that again?)

"Good night," he says roughly, and walks down the hallway.

(Don't you?)

He distances himself from all of them, making ANBU at 13 and becoming the most brilliant mind to grace his generation. He throws himself into his work, and she sees the avoidance in his gaze, as if he is shutting down all recognition of them, building himself into some unfeeling creature that would tie their bodies to the earth (come down into the soil, isn't it warm, unlike what you'll be?).

She doesn't fear him so much as she feels a growing dread, that she is irreversibly moving forward into something that might have been prevented somewhere along the line. It is perpetual motion, but she would very much like to trip up on her feet and stop for a moment.

She does want to take a deep breath before the plunge after all, and she feels she needs one.

She talks with Sasuke more than anyone now, and how insecure he is, listening to his father talk about Itachi being a great shinobi. Her heart grieves a little for him, but knows that he is better off the way he is.

There's something so hateful about Itachi now, especially now that Shisui is dead.

She stays up with his dinner ready anyway. She never knows if he'll need medical attention, and no matter how much she doesn't trust him the way she once did, she is his mother, and that should count for something in the end. (Even if it's only for you, some peace of mind that you can't seem to find knowing perfectly well that your son loves you in every sense of the word, and that you are not only unhappy but making -him- unhappy as well.)

"Welcome home," she says, watching him pass through the kitchen noiselessly.

(You are a witch, you are insane, and this time, you're taking everyone down with you, something your grandmother had grace enough to back away from.)

His eyes are arctic, and her skin prickles with a thousand sharp frost flakes.

Beneath her is the grain of the wood floors, something she has scrubbed almost every day of her life in the Uchiha household, something that she is intimately familiar with and knows what every stain is from. She knows that down the hall that the brown spot comes from a broken bottle of almond oil that spilled there, and in the corner, underneath the tatami, there is a bloodstain from the last time that Fugaku decided to spar with Itachi and ended up getting his arm sliced open by a rogue shuriken.

There's a new one beneath her now, only this time Fugaku didn't get his arm sliced open. He had his entire body sliced open with a katana, and that it was far from accidental. (If it was an accident, you think sickly, then Itachi's aim is in serious need of correction.)

She has acquired a few new marks on her body as well, but she is not dying, not quite yet because Itachi has been careful to only stab her in the chest below the heart and at the bottom of her lung. She has at least five minutes to wait for some sort of absolution, a great explanation to why this is happening at all. After all, that's what all the villains do in all the stories, isn't it?

The thought of her son as the enemy brings something she would like to call tears to her eyes. They're much too bitter and acrid to possibly be real tears, perhaps sugar-laced acid. (Can't you feel them peeling your skin away, layer by layer until you see what must be your cheekbones, something your mother told you were delicate, your best feature. Not so pretty when they're covered in alkaline and cartilage, huh?)

The shallow slash across her throat keeps her from saying anything.

Itachi, with his hands still covered in gore, not unlike what hers were like during the Kyuubi's attack, brush through her hair softly, pulling teasingly every once in a while. She feels the mockery in each movement, and forces herself not to think too much about it. (Traitorous child, isn't he, standing there while making fun of every tender motion you ever showed him?)

"You aren't happy here?" he asks, and it is a hiss in her ear, barely discernable above the beating of her bleeding heart, and she thinks of grit of the wood underneath her face, rough from being worn down by bare feet, and especially how the splinters tear her apart, one blood vessel at a time. Her chest is blooming on the floor, and it's petals are a garish black in the lighting."But that's okay, isn't it, since we can't all get what we want out of life."

Her only response is a hitched breath that is weak and rank with the stench of blood and vomit in the back of her throat.

"I believe in real monsters, haha-ue. I believe in shudders and lace, in thunder and demons, and I believe all the mutterings and stories of an old woman disbelieved by her clan. But you have to understand," he says, sounding very tender next to her ear, "that to make the monsters come to life, you all have to die. You especially have to die so that Sasuke will do what I need."

When he tilts her back to lie on her back, Fugaku thrown over her legs, he begins the bleeding in her neck again, and she wishes she could be ill when she hears her own breath gurgle in her throat from a hole between her collar bone and chin.

"But you should be happier this way, as you couldn't be happy the way you were before. There won't be anything left for you to love here, I'm destroying it all, one second at a time. You always looked at this house so hatefully...you should be happy that your son is tearing it down for you."

Itachi paces into the shadows, listening for Sasuke's feet on the eaves of the house, coming toward the dojo. For but a moment, he looks thoughtful, smiling his slow shy smile. (How beautiful he is, a creature of black and white that comes with ropes to tie you down to the ground, a life consumed by slow decay. You would kiss him, but you get the feeling he wouldn't appreciate the blood on his lips. He most certainly isn't going to kiss this injury better.)

"I do hope they burn you in your kimono. You know, the one with the pinwheels. I really liked that one. You looked like a little girl in it."

(You felt like one too.)

The last thing she sees is Itachi, standing silently in the ruins of her body's blood, tracing the patterns of the streams in the woodgrain. (And see, now you can be a part of the house too, another story in a stain, and how wonderful it will be! Here children is where crazy old Mikoto was killed by her son for telling tales that were all too true.)

Her last thought is of course of him.

Whatever that is, no one knows.

(The castle has crumbled, the flag is down, god save the queen and her country.)

(Don't you wish that was so?)

(Do you?)

(Don't you?)

(DO YOU?)

"The King was in the counting house,

Counting out his money;

The Queen was in the parlor

Eating bread and honey.

The maid was in the garden,

Hanging out the clothes.

Along there came a black bird

And he snipped off her nose."

End.

A/N: This is a 20 page whore of a fic, as it took my writing capacity away for awhile. I am literally out of things to say about it. It is longer than my thesis paper, which is really saying something. The things I do for this crazy family...

Actual Notes: Itachi calls Mikoto "haha-ue" as a childish endearment, something that wouldn't fit with the English equivalent of "mom" or "mommy". In general, I avoided the Japanese family names, as "mother and father" were adequate for me. Kekkai genkai of course is the bloodline limit and Uchiha Madara is the first Mangekyou Sharingan user according to Kyuubi, circa chapter 308 or something.

Another note is the Oedipus Complex. I was going off of the "boy is jealous of the father's significance to the mother", and the "boy desires the same significance" details of the complex, since not everything is extremely specifically about sex, even if it all comes down to that in the end. (Silly Freud, a pervert to the very end. He and Jiraiya-sensei FTW.)

And why "Sing a Song of Sixpence"? It scared the hell out of me when I was a kid, that's why.

The Tengu Theory: A brilliant piece on the origins of the Uchiha Clan should be credited to Yasha at the NarutoFan forums and I encourage you to look it up. It is completely and utterly brilliant, save for a few details that can't be negotiated with the information given at present. Great visuals, great background, just a generally great thing. I would put "fangirls" between asterisks, but hates my formats already.

Music list includes but is not exclusive to Hamasaki Ayumi's "Happy Ending, classical version", A Perfect Circle's "Peace, Love, and Understanding", Pink Floyd's "High Hopes", Athlete's "Chances", Kagrra,'s "Meguru", and Dir en Grey's "Obscure".

Literary inspirations include but are not limited to Sophocles' "Oedipus Rex", Sigmund Freud's various and sundry essays, Friedrich Nietzsche, Meredith Bronwen Mallory's "Empty Movement", and Zora Neale Hurston's "Their Eyes Were Watching God."

Again, I will mention that I am taking requests as a celebration of my 25th fic, so go ahead and ask for anything. I will choose two out of my options and write those within the next few weeks. Thank you for sticking with this crazy girl for 25 stories!

Oh, and Happy Birthday, Sasuke-kun! Are you done being jailbait for your admirers yet?