Title: faded on the blowing of the horn
Author: Dayadhvam
Rating/Pairings: PG. Gen.
Summary: Itachi was not strong enough. In this respect, at least, he knows he is a failure. Or, the Uchiha massacre goes differently. AU.
Notes: ‘Tis genfic, so no pairings. I based some of Itachi’s characterization off Meursault from Albert Camus’s The Stranger. Involves strange Uchiha history theories from a discussion. The help-with-shuriken-practice conversation between Itachi and Sasuke is from Ch. 220 of the Naruto manga (“Brothers”). The title comes from T.S. Eliot's "Four Quartets" (IV. Little Gidding). And Naruto belongs to Masashi Kishimoto, of course.

The day was breaking. In the disfigured street
He left me, with a kind of valediction,
And faded on the blowing of the horn.
—T.S. Eliot, “Four Quartets” (Little Gidding)

i.

The raindrops slide down his face, pitter patter against the ground. For the sake of convenience, his clan members are buried in groups, the coffins starkly displaying the painted red and white fan symbol as they are lowered into the ground.

(a ribbon of red slowly meanders across the floor; he follows it to its source, wondering with detachment who must be dead in this room—also, who killed everyone out there, because there are a ridiculous number of limp bodies lying around—

—flash of black hair that sticks up strangely, small figure made even smaller by the encompassing shadows around it—

“Sasuke?”—but there is no answer of aniki, aniki)

The Sandaime stands some distance away, the only other spectator to this, another funeral for the termination of the Uchiha Clan. He ignores the Sandaime. The rain is seeping into the bandages—they are wrapped around his arms, bound up and down his legs, covering the bridge of his nose and his cheekbones. His right forearm twinges. The shuriken had cut deep.

(and this, this is not Shisui as he knows him; but his friend-who-is-not-his-friend steps forward, eyes blank and dark, flickering with a terrible intensity—

—they whirl with red and black—

—he knows better than to look into those eyes, and twists away, reaching for his blade and kunai; knows better than to ask questions first, knows better than to stand there, even while something bitter rises up into his throat and mouth)

He no longer wants it, but—Mangekyou—he opens his eyes and sees the world in twisting, spinning red and black. He knows his ability.

Itachi is the pinnacle of the Uchiha clan.

He is the clan.

The clan stands and watches the burial of the not-alive-clan and thinks: No more requests for shuriken practice now.

ii.

This is how the Uchiha begins. A man; a goal.

Uchiha Madara has a clan with a kekkei genkai. Sharingan, with its knack for memorization and imitation and prediction and hypnosis. It can copy a person’s every movement; it can make a person think he’s dead.

Extremely useful, in fact, for Madara’s own purpose.

The Shodaime finds damning evidence of what Madara has been doing. He does not consult anyone else; the Hokage knows what must be done.

So the two friends fight at the Valley of the End. Madara lives, because he has no qualms about killing his best friend, not when it means his own death (his fear is greater than his love). Shodaime knows the same, but is still too slow in his final blow. Madara avoids it.

iii.

Sometimes he dreams.

He dreams of Sasuke—Sasuke with the too-bright-wide eyes and smile, with the look on his face he always reserved for Itachi (forgive me). He dreams of his mother’s bentos, onigiri and tomato and tempura (you’re special), and his father’s lectures on improving his speed and prediction capabilities (as expected from my child—). He dreams of people, people who are now interred within the earth, who once lived in the house, who could once break the present, never ending silence.

He dreams of Sasuke, Sasuke dead and gutted on the floor (mottled with discolored stains along the woodgrains). He dreams of the crescent (shining so brightly under the moonlight) of spattered blood which marked the blade’s path; of dark hair splayed out against the ground.

He dreams of Shisui. He dreams of the days when they sat by the bank of the river (watch the clouds go by) and said little to each other. He dreams of pressing a nerve in his friend’s neck and watching him go limp (dark eyes clouded) without time to pull a kunai. He dreams of watching Shisui float in the river, before he pulls him under the water (the ripples spread out softly).

He dreams of watching Shisui die. He dreams of killing him.

The last should not be a dream. Outside his dreams, he remembers killing Shisui-who-was-not-Shisui; Itachi’s blade shimmered dark crimson as his eyes stung with black fire and the gleam of a blood-red moon.

But he dreams, anyway, of being strong enough (at the height of his capacity), strong enough to decide to kill Shisui when he changed and became unlike himself, before he had rid them both of the clan. Before he killed Sasuke.

Itachi was not strong enough. In this respect, at least, he knows he is a failure.

iv.

This is how the Mangekyou begins. A friend; a death.

No one else knows why Madara leaves Konoha, although if they looked hard enough they could figure it out.

Madara had no intention of having his objectives discovered, but he overlooks the notes of his research he left behind in Konoha. There are two sets: one is the original at the main temple of the Nakano shrine, on the far right side under the seventh tatami mat, guarded by his own special genjutsu; the other is the copy that the increasingly suspicious Shodaime finds, and puts away in his library.

(Because he doesn’t want to think that the jutsu’s purpose is completely criminal; he wants to think that maybe it can be adapted for the good of Konoha in some way, wants to think that what his friend has done is not utterly twisted—does not want to think that he completely missed the signs of Madara’s original intentions in the first place—and so he does not destroy the notes.)

But the Shodaime didn’t tell anyone else before chasing after Madara (he thought, no time to lose, not now); and the fight and death and Madara’s research are left as mysteries.

v.

The Sandaime does not give Itachi a choice. “You will be relieved from ANBU missions for an indefinite period of time,” he says. “It is common procedure if something like this—“ this goes unelaborated, unspoken, but the words yourentireclandyingandyeahthat hang in the air “—happens. Considering the effect it can have on one’s judgment in certain situations, it was the medic’s opinion that you be discharged from ANBU duty. I’m sure you understand.”

“Hai, Hokage-sama.” Itachi looks levelly at Sarutobi, then slowly pulls his ANBU mask a little forward and up, shedding the face of the animal. He places the mask on the Hokage’s desk; he bows, though the sign of respect means nothing to Itachi.

It is what is expected of him; there is no reason for him not to do so.

He straightens up, glancing down at the smooth sheen of the mask; ignores the way it reflects the Sharingan in his eyes. The painted animal grins back at him in a rictus of a smile (he had smiled that way too, looking at Itachi as they stood apart from each other—“Not bad,” he said, “truly the Uchiha genius that they say you are—“).

He leaves the Hokage to his paperwork in his office and goes down the corridor. There are some shinobi chatting amongst themselves; a carrier-nin rushes past with a package.

“—him, over there—entire clan murdered—“

Itachi walks past the two chuunin without looking at them, but he feels them draw back a bit—senses a touch of their shame from being overheard, from sounding too gossipy. It is best to keep up appearances of sympathy and sorrow, his mind muses, even when they do not really feel much about the massacre at all besides the usual vague horror. Is that not how people work?

He doesn’t know. He doesn’t care.

(“You told me that you’d teach me some new shuriken moves!”

“I have a crucial mission tomorrow, and I have to prepare for it.”

“Aniki, you liar!”)

He returns to the Uchiha compound, which opens wide before him, a gaping mouth of silence. His stomach twists with a hollow hunger, so he looks for food. There are some left-over crackers, a frozen fish, and a large bowl of soup, and some vegetables in the refrigerator.

Itachi knows he is not good at cooking. It was Uchiha Mikoto who prepared his meals.

He sits at the bare table and reads the scroll for his next mission (no more ANBU for now, just ordinary missions, the Hokage had said). The food goes untouched.

vi.

This is how his immortality begins. A Sharingan eye; a body.

Madara lasts for some time. When his body is beginning to fail him—not that he is old, but it’s somewhat creaky around the joints in his middle age—he returns to Konoha and goes to the family compound. He does his usual observations before finding one of the strongest Uchiha there. Three tomoe and particularly talented in taijutsu.

During the Shinobi Wars, the leaders of Konohagakure are just a little, just a little disgruntled with the Uchiha. Not that the clan itself is disloyal to the village; still, in every generation there’s always one good Uchiha shinobi who goes missing-nin. When the village needs all the fighters it can get, this proves rather irking.

Later, a pale-skinned man, student of the Hokage, is in the library and finds the notes. The soul-transfer jutsu is perfect for his goal to keep on living. Only he does not have the Sharingan; but he changes and tweaks the jutsu to his own not-quite-satisfaction. He still has to change bodies rather often. What would be best, he decides, is to get a body with the Sharingan. No more of these silly complications.

Once you can persuade someone else to believe in their death, taking the body is no longer a problem.

vii.

Itachi knows why he lived.

Shisui of the Mirage had a reputation for being brutally ruthless in severe circumstances.

(when he first steps out of the shadows and draws Itachi’s attention, they look at each other, and Itachi sees that Shisui’s eyes are cold with the look of someone who has done his duty; someone past the edge of reason—

—then something undefinable shifts in his friend’s eyes and Shisui fades, and he says, “Let’s compare how strong you are—“)

When they fought, Itachi fought to kill; the other fought with the carefulness of not-kill and sureness of victory. They did talk, a little; Itachi did not let in any distractions, not the other’s words, not the cold pressure bearing down upon his chest, not the sight of Sasuke lying sprawled to the side and not breathing.

Itachi lived, because he had no qualms about killing his best friend, not when it meant his own obliteration (and anyway, his friend is dead already, even if his body is still moving).

viii.

This is how his end begins. A breakout; a massacre.

His transfers have always been smooth, and there is no reason to think this one any different. It’s been a few months since he moved himself, looking over the clan to find the strongest and decide for a more permanent transfer. Madara likes to be careful. He is rather pleased to have encountered Uchiha Shisui during his last mission. He is undoubtedly one of the Uchiha’s best.

Madara likes to have the best, however. And the best, everyone says, is that genius, Itachi. It’s his luck that Shisui is friends with the otherwise unapproachable boy.

He works on deciding how and when he’ll take that one instead of this one, and thinks, Everything is going well.

But then the brat breaks out of Madara’s hypnosis. I am not dead, he snarls, desperation in his voice, and Madara loses control of the body in his surprise, because this—hasn’t—happened—before.

The boy clings to his body with a will of iron.

Shisui has spent several months drifting between alive-ness and dead-ness in his mind, tattered remnants of his sanity fading like stones falling through water. There is only that unrelenting mantra for him now: I will ruin you, I will stop you, I will bring you down—

Shisui of the Mirage had a reputation for being brutally ruthless in severe circumstances.

I will bring you down.

Disjointed thoughts in a disjointed mind, and Shisui seizes upon a passing plan.

Madara lives because of the Uchiha and their Sharingan—

Shisui draws his ninjato in the middle of the street and kills a Uchiha who has just walked past. He does not let himself stop.

ix.

Smoke drifts up, spiraling lazily around Itachi’s head like a yawning dragon. The papers burn on a small fire that he’s lit at the Nakano shrine. Within the flickering golden flames, the paper blackens and crumbles.

Itachi has been going to all of the Uchiha places and cleaning up, putting away little things, locking them, closing off places in which he is unlikely to set foot again. There probably won’t be a Uchiha who enters them again, because he is the last one.

And at the Nakano shrine—

(eyes drawn to something that wasn’t there before—funny, unless there had been some genjutsu over it?—

—he examines the revealed seal under the tatami mat in the ground that has appeared and, after making sure that if he unseals it, nothing will explode and he won’t be poisoned, he draws from his knowledge of fuuinjutsu and the seal comes off—)

Itachi glances about the shrine. Sasuke had rarely been here; the last time he’d come, his face had worn the look of one who is extremely bored, and finally he’d tugged on Itachi’s sleeve and said, “Nii-san, can we go now?”

“Not yet,” Itachi had said. “We have to pay respects to our ancestors.”

(—he’s reading the papers that were hidden by the seal, unsealable only by Uchiha blood, and somewhere in his brain something explodes, bright and sharp—to desecrate the mind and soul, Itachi thinks, and to cling to the strength of others’ bodies to survive—

—disgust breaks into his thoughts; Itachi knows that he would never stoop to that level, he knows his capacity, and just because his capacity is lessened over time means nothing—he will still know what his own heights were, he will never depend on another’s limits to define his own, not like Madara who relied on the bodies of others and was constrained by their limits—

“Katon: Goukakyuu no Jutsu!”—the papers flare with the light of the fire—)

He almost thinks he can absolve Shisui. What Shisui did was rational in his mind, and Itachi thinks that if he were in Shisui’s place, he might have done the same. To destroy Uchiha Madara, destroy the clan—as if the clan were simply the founder’s own collection of containers.

(What about Sasuke? He probably couldn’t kill him, and Madara would seize at the chance to leave another Uchiha alive as insurance, to motivate him and make sure he lives. Who knows?

Itachi doesn’t, at any rate.)

The last Uchiha killed the first one: he finds this scathingly ironic.

Itachi brings his hand up to his heart and bows lightly to the shadows. “Shisui,” he says. “I should have killed you earlier, then. So that you would not have to suffer. I was too weak for that.” A pause. “I will grow stronger.”

The shadows the fire casts dance along the walls, dance around Itachi, and they bend briefly, as if in recognition of him and his words.

“Sasuke,” Itachi says. “I’m sorry.”

The fire is dying down now, and the shadows fade in their last nod. He stares at the cool darkness, barely broken by the slivers of pale light that slide past the shrine entrance.

Itachi turns and leaves, stepping quietly. Behind him, the fire and shadows blend into the night.

x.

This is how the aftermath begins. A fire; an apology.

He buys some dango at a nearby stand and nibbles at the food as he walks toward the training field. The sun peeks barely above the horizon, and the sky is awash in grayredorangeyellow. It is a strange sort of peace.

(and)

“Itachi-san!” someone calls, and he turns to see Hatake Kakashi waving to him. “Genma’s having a get-together at his place now, come along!”

He blinks, but that is the extent of his expression. “It’s late,” he begins—

But Kakashi is already pulling him down the street. “I am going to get you drunk,” the shinobi announces, “since you haven’t been through the initiation of drunkenness yet. Let’s see your holding capacity!” And then the ninja grins, a smirk working its way across his face.

He thinks, at least, that Kakashi means well.

He does not think this when his head is spinning in the morning.

(and)

He passes the Academy on his way home and stops to watch the children running around, their teacher urging them on. This is the class Sasuke was in, he realizes slowly, and pictures a little boy with the Uchiha fan on his back, running at the front of them all.

His mouth twitches slightly, into something that almost approaches a smile, and he moves on.

(and)

He stands in the training ground. Eight kunai. Eight targets. He crouches low; shoots into the air—shifts so that his feet point towards the sky, and he can feel the air flying at him—spins, with six kunai fanned out in his hands—throws—two more, and they strike the other, and now—

He lands, knees bent and arms flung out slightly to keep his balance.

Eight kunai. Eight targets.

He looks up at the clear, cloudless sky.

(“You told me that you’d teach me some new shuriken moves!”

He glances back. “I have a crucial mission tomorrow, and I have to prepare for it.”

“Aniki, you liar!” The little boy is sulking rather ferociously.

He stops, looking at his brother, and smiles. “…Come here, Sasuke. I’ll help you with your shuriken throwing.”)

-fin-

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