33In the face of danger, there are three ways that the human can respond:
Fight.
Flight.
Freeze.
Well, at least, that is what Stella's therapist used to say when the older woman did not blabber and try to pry out her secrets to sell them to her mother. It was like trying to tear out fingernails, painful and gory. Her therapist didn't like Stella much.
Oh, at first she did - everyone likes Stella at first till they start to notice the cracks. The stench of something rotten within her. It's the smell of failure. Of being a burden.
As such, Stella liked to take whatever the therapist said with a grand of salt. Or two. It is hard to trust adults when they have thought you fear in the first place. It is hard to trust those who should have saved but damned her instead.
Yet, that thought echoes.
An echo from the past.
There are three ways in which humans can respond to fear.
Fight. Flight. Freeze.
She used to think it untrue.
You do not fight the ocean; it will drown you just as merrily. You do not flee from danger because your weakness is bared before all.
No, you smile.
Even in the face of fear.
At least, that's what she thought.
Yet, she cannot deny such thing now, not when she catches sight of silver hair and her breath catches into her throat, incapable of even drawing another one.
Ah.
She knows well of this feeling yet, it is somehow a bit unfamiliar. Like losing an old friend and seeing him years after but only catching glimpses of who he was before, a stranger in everything but a few.
Stella stopped being able to breathe once faced with her father's anger.
As soon as his voice would raise itself, as soon as its wrath turned him sharp and cruel, Stella would become marble.
And now, Akari echoes Stella.
She freezes in the face of Hatake Kakashi.
in the end, after all, they are the same.
a silly, little girl who thinks that one day, someone will stay.
But unlike other times, in which time had frozen with her blood too as her mind became marble and her eyes rivers of salt, there's a sharp prick in her chest instead of general numbness.
Burning pain instead of bone-wrenching coldness.
It is not a fair exchange, to go from a pain that never even the blade could soothe to a pain that makes you wish you could disappear, but at the very least, there are no tears this time. He smiles at her.
As if their little lie hasn't crumbled into ashes, as if they could still pretend they cared for one another, and perhaps, her teacher still does.
He's always been like this, his ghosts cruel measurements they could never hope to measure up to because death immortalizes the best parts of them. Akari wonders why she had ever thought she would be the one to tether him to the living. To them.
Of everyone, she should have known better.
Team Seven has been nothing but a placeholder for the dead that Kakashi wears in his heart.
And Akari is nothing more than an ill-suited doll that has long since stopped being her, Uchiha Akari, and instead became someone else.
Rin.
How can a single syllable sound so wretched?
The mere taught makes a sob stumble from her lips.
She wants to laugh - not the soft sound that conveys joy by any means - but rather a laugh that is bitter, more shattered glass than anything else.
The taste of copper lingers on her tongue.
A pit is stuck in the back of her throat.
It makes it hard to swallow.
To breathe.
Akari has always liked to think herself better. Better than Stella, who had her heart torn into shreds and without care by those who claimed her a friend and then would have eagerly pushed her to her death.
stupid little girl who never learns.
It is almost ironic.
Her mind is mad by half, whispers of those who drew her blood as if it was something to be enjoyed ever so present in her mind. Her thoughts are muddled till the lines between the past, the monsters, and reality start to feel and seem the same, till she does not know if she is still bleeding.
She thought she knew better.
That she had finally learned her lesson.
Don't trust people, the ghost of Stella begged pitifully. Do not make my mistake
I won't, Akari had reassured her.
foolish.
Perhaps that is a sin of hers, carved in too deep that even tearing herself apart and rebuilding her with whatever is left was not enough to make it disappear.
To think that being good, being kind would give her something.
That trust was something to be gifted. She had thought Hatake Kakashi had loved her. Perhaps not for who she truly is, no, her teacher would never love the girl with blood on her hands and no regrets in her heart, but perhaps for the mask she had worn.
A mask kind like Stella.
She had thought that her teacher had loved that kindness of hers. A kindness that had only earned her scorn in her past life.
And he did.
But he loved his ghost more.
Why love the living girl whose smile is kind and weak when you can love the ghost that she wears too, a ghost more valuable, more loveable than the one who lives?
Why love a pale imitation?
Don't you dare cry
It is her own fault.
She realizes that.
"Akari-"
His mere voice is enough to make her stiffen. She feels oddly vulnerable, a small girl in a cold and empty hospital bed.
she has never felt more her age
Hatake Kakashi's voice takes something soft, untrue as he steps closer. He wears his lies well, her teacher. In the same manner, he used to wear his love for his ghost and disguise it as love for Akari's mask, he almost sounds regretful.
But he isn't sorry.
they never are sorry
Akari does not answer. She does not know how her voice would sound. Wrecked and weak, like the sole flower that the wind so desperately tries to rip away? Angry like the anger that burns her chest because why couldn't someone stop lying?
He sees the flinch that curses through Akari's body like a jolt of electricity. There's a small hitch in his breath.
"I did not mean to hurt you," he says rather meekly. As if it is a miraculous cure, as if it erases the name he mistook her for.
don't
If he must break her heart, if he must shatter it in his adult hands that have seen more blood than most, then Hatake Kakashi owes her honesty.
But no adult has ever thought to treat a child fairly.
"You mean you didn't mean to be cruel," Akari corrects with a sardonic smile. Because hurt and cruelty are different. Like the dagger and the poison. They're both enough to kill you. But one can grant you a swift death while the other can only grant agony.
However, it is funny.
Because it still hurts.
Hatake startles at that. Almost as if seeing her for the first time, seeing the broken mess and thinking that, oh, she wasn't as strong as she pretended to be.
"I would never be cruel to you, you deserve so much more and-"
Akari cuts him off. Her whisper is soft, fragile in the hospital room, but it is obvious that her teacher hears it all the same. "I'm not Rin."
Her voice breaks on the name.
He grows quieter, more sullen. Like a naughty child caught red-handed in a lie and still trying to convince people they saw otherwise. "I know."
Akari scoffs. Her anger makes the sound sharper, but she cannot bring herself to care. It isn't as though Hatake Kakashi has promised her love.
Has promised her anything.
He did not.
But It was the first time that an adult had been so gentle with Akari. Sure, there were some expectations, as all things are, yet he had been kind.
The silver-haired man had not tried to take everything she was: every breath, every thought till there is but a hallowed shell.
She thought he had loved her. In his own way. He might now say it, had not promised it, but -
i thought I was worthy of your love
I thought that for once, love was not so contractual.
"Do you?" she asks, her answer quick, quicker than it used. He averts his eye.
look at me, she thinks with clenched fists.
It is as if he cannot stand the sight of her. Cannot stand the sight of whatever was shed behind the illusion, behind the name Rin, and now, he sees Uchiha Akari and finds her lacking.
LOOK AT ME, DAD
"I'm not Rin."
Kakashi wilts at the meekness in her voice, as if she is suddenly unsure of the way of the world because that would be ridiculous. Uchiha Akari knows how beloved she is.
"I know."
Something complicated flickers in Akari-chan's eyes.
"Do you?" Her answer is quick and sharp. There is no careful silence between her words, the ones that Kakashi is used to when Akari is gentle, careful to choose her words as if knowing their weight. She's always been a bit like this, mature and gentle.
Now, her tongue is a whip, unforgiving, and something inside Kakashi dies because he knows he did that.
"You're not Rin," he repeats.
The Copy ninja sees her almost flinch at how final he sound and he amends, growing softer and quieter. His hand lingers a bit closer to the Uchiha heiress, muscle memory acting on instinct, wanting to soothe her. It is his task as her teacher, as Obito's last thread on this Earth.
But she would not welcome his touch, and as such, he stops. "You're not Rin, and that's not a bad thing."
Silence is his answer, yet that very silence is heavy in accusations.
He can almost taste the salt that lingers in the air like a perfume, and his fists clench.
look at me, he thinks but the little girl has her eyes fixed on her fingers, clenched tightly around the hospital's blanket.
Uchiha Akari does not answer him.
But she does not need to.
He finds his answer in the curl of her shoulders, in the ebony curtain that cuts her off from the world yet not from him.
i might not be Rin -
but you want me to be.
And that Kakashi cannot truly deny because there is a part of him - the thirteen-year-old bound by his promise to a dead boy - who wishes for the girl back. Sometimes, it is as if he is still thirteen and finds in his little student the best parts of Rin.
Whenever Uchiha Akari laughs, the world pauses and softens because she is beloved by everyone and it is easy for him to catch a glimpse of Rin's ghost smiling as she lingers around his student.
He likes to think Rin, had she had the chance, would have grown similarly to Akari.
But if Rin was untouched by the worst of the shinobi world, the same cannot be said by Akari.
So yes.
Sometimes, Kakashi wishes Akari to be like Rin.
A bit more hopeful.
A bit less wary.
She deserves it.
But he does love Uchiha Akari too. Is it such a crime to love both, the girl and her ghost?
Yes
But even our idols - even those we want to love and trust more than anything - can let us down
"You're going to lose him."
These are damning words. Yet they echo with a weight so heavy, it dares her to doubt them.
But that voice.
Akari remembers it.
It is a familiar one, a voice a bit lower, carefully neutral, a voice that plagues her dreams - both nightmares and good ones alike. She turns around and her breath stutters.
Althea smiles at her, a simple curve of the lips Stella hadn't seen for a while – for Althea stopped smiling long before she left. The girl had always been happier with Coral. She continues. "Just like how you lost me."
Stella thinks that she will never truly heal from that loss.
She will never escape Althea's shadow.
Isn't it ironic how, for all of her flaws, Althea had taught her well?
That only utility begets love.
That the story always ends the same. Someone leaves. It is not like Akari is unfamiliar to loss yet
But losing Althea had been a bit different .
It is not the kind of loss that fades over time. It is not the kind of loss that gets mourned and then buried. No, it is the kind of loss that rotted and ruined everything it touched, like a wound that forever festers in its tragedy.
"I won't," Akari affirms. She tries to sound assured, but even to her, her answer is faltering, hesitating at best.
After all, if no one had stayed, why would Sasuke be any different? He has to.
Althea, like everyone else from their old school – born and raised to sense the slightest weakness – notices her hesitation. And like a shark drawn to blood, she pounces.
She had always been good at that. They all were.
"You sound awfully sure for someone who always ended up alone."
There's a sharpness to her words, factual and spot on, that makes Akari flinch away from them, away from the truth.
"Face it, Akari," the girl continues, "you could never truly hold someone's interest for too long. Be it as Stella or Akari, you're the same weak little girl who is so desperate for a happy ending. But you – we – don't get happy endings, you know that."
"Why not?" Akari almost sounds like a petulant child, but it is almost instinctual how defenseless she becomes – defanged and weak – next to her former best friend, a stranger still fluent in Stella's weaknesses and who Stella had truly cared for.
More than anyone else.
More than life.
"No one can love a mons- a failure."
And here is the thing.
Though Althea and Stella are both failures, there is a difference. One that may seem small yet makes all the difference.
"I tried to," Akari whispers.
There is no one around them, nothing around them really, simply a cliff on which they both stand at the edge and a bottomless dark background. The whisper almost echoes in the nothingness.
"I tried to love you," Akari repeats, her voice growing a bit louder, a bit more bitter. "But you wouldn't let me. I tried to keep our friendship alive for years, but YOU'RE THE ONE WHO CHOSE TO LEAVE."
Althea remains silent in face of Akari's accusation, her smile having long since died and withered away.
The Uchiha takes a small breath.
The air is cold and cuts at her lungs. Tears prick at her eyes despite her best efforts because damnit the girl's not real Stella's dead and Althea isn't here.
"I- I was going through pure hell," Akari breathes out, fists clenching as she remembers the pain, the constant darkness, and desperation that clung to Stella. Stop. Stop flaunting your heart. "And your solution was to leave. I gave everything to you, I would have done anything to make you stay. W-Why did you leave? Why did you stay for everyone but not me?"
Akari hates how vulnerable she sounds. Her, Uchiha Akari, the best kunoichi of her generation and Hatake Kakashi's student, weak? What a sick joke.
But wasn't that the story of her life?
Why did Althea leave when they were so great together?
Why would she leave when their friendship was something precious? Why did Althea give up on Stella?
"You just... You just weren't worth it."
Oh.
She has heard it before.
That answer, delivered in the same nonchalant, couldn't care less tone.
It still hurts.
Even a lifetime away, Althea manages to hurt her.
How pathetic.
And Akari wakes up, gasping for air as she shoots up from her hospital bed, tears rolling down her cheeks.
"Akari?"
She blinks.
Mother's corpse is still bleeding.
"Akari?" Sasuke's voice is hoarse, perhaps from screaming at the nurses for not dotting on her, as it is her right as the Uchiha Heiress, or perhaps from screaming at the world. She does not know. The thought is both startling and heartbreaking.
Her twin brother has always been pale with ivory for skin, yet she finds him even paler under the moonlight. Bruises linger beneath his eyes and his jaw is clenched, as if he is swallowing back his tongue, his anger.
He looks hesitant. As if waiting for something, for Akari.
But she cannot-cannot because Althea's words linger, crawls under her skin with spidery precision, raw salt rubbing on unseen wounds.
"Akari-" Sasuke approaches her as if he knows she will crumble into pieces at the slightest touch. As if he knows that she is about to be lost. But that cannot be right, that cannot be true because then he would have left like everyone else.
"Sasuke," she greets, her voice soft. She finds herself impossibly relaxing as her tongue caresses the syllable of his name, as it escapes her like oxygen.
He stops at the edge of her hospital bed. Waiting. She does not need to read his mind to understand - they love each other so much, are two halves of a soul and as such, understand each other in a way none will ever - and she shifts in the bed, raising the covers to welcome him in it.
He settles on it, and then drags her in his arms, her back to his chest, his cheek pressed on the crown of her head.
Something within her eases at his warmth.
"I should have killed those Sand shinobi when I had the chance."
There's self-loathing in his voice. Akari startles at that, flinches because filth teaches filth and she is so afraid that he has learned to draw the line as she does.
It is one thing to destroy yourself for the smallest mistake, to wear it as if it is your cross to bear, your sin alone, for which you must atone through self-slaughter.
It is another thing when someone you love learns of it, too.
"It's not your fault," Akari breathes. She breathes it softly, lovingly, trying to take that dagger that Sasuke so easily wields against himself, and wretch it away.
you always learn from the people you love
but she had promised herself never to give him the wounds she has inherited
not him
Sasuke's arms tighten. "Then whose fault is it?" his voice breaks as he threads his fingers with hers, as if he could take whatever pain she feels and take it for himself. "Who do I blame for your pain?"
Akari tries to chuckle, to brush off the pain that lingers at every breath, the pounding of her heart in her throat because how can she tell her beloved older brother that she is to blame for her own heartbreak?
That she thought - for the briefest second - that Hatake Kakashi was better than the rest of the monsters that nip at their heels, greedy to suck the soul right out of them and then feast on their bone marrow when there isn't anything left.
"It was necessary."
It was necessary for that little girl's dream to be broken, shattered into thousands of pieces until one could never hope to rebuild it. Ashes dust the corpse of someone who thought herself worthy of love, who thought that perhaps love could be free and not conditional to whatever more she could give.
"Necessary?" Sasuke asks, a spiteful laugh hidden in his scoff. "Necessary?!" He's always been like that. Her fiercest protector, the only one to see the world and bare his teeth at its cruelty.
Maybe, in another life, Sasuke would have been good.
Blind to the world's wretchedness, a child in every sense of the word.
"We now know who our allies are," Akari brushes her thumb on his hand, drawing circles and hearts on his ivory skin. "We know who to trust."
"No one, then?" Sasuke asks sardonically. There's something bitter in his voice, angry almost.
Biting.
Like a child who played with the fire and though he has done it a million times, he is now hurt.
Akari feels herself frown. "You have Naruto," she objects because though she hates it, though she tries not to flinch as Sasuke and her sunshine continue their friendship, her twin brother likes Naruto.
More than he has liked any others, and who is she - wretched corpse of a girl so unlovable she has to destroy the sole good thing in the world not to lose it - to take it away from him when the world already took so much?
"No," Sasuke's grip tightens. "You wouldn't have gotten injured if Naruto just did his job. If he wasn't such a blind idiot."
Akari blinks.
"He's Naruto."
She says that as if it absolves the blonde from all sins. Like he is a cure and a remedy. Only, it looks like Sasuke disagrees.
"He abandoned you."
Akari turns and kisses his cheek. His jaw. Sasuke softens under her lips, eyelashes fluttering. He does not notice Akari's tight smile, self-loathing coating her lips till they bleed a cherry red.
You say that as if it is something new.
It is ironic to say that the world will not stop even if you are hurt.
Things linger between Kakashi and Akari. The older man suddenly becomes hesitant and unsure about his only female student. Too afraid to shatter her once more, to be faced with the destruction of a lie they had both been so careful to keep alive.
Naruto, ever so oblivious, does not notice, does not comment on the silent fury that burns Sasuke's every interaction with their teacher.
"I do not want to push you, Akari-chan," Hatake Kakashi starts, fretfully pulling out sealing scrolls from his pouch.
Akari had asked him to work on her seals and ninjutsu rather than train her medical skills as her teacher had been previously so fond of asking. The silver-haired man can only agree, dutifully ignoring the ghost in the clearing.
And if her training mainly consists of receiving gifts, her teacher showering her with the rarest books and best-quality kunais, Akari only accepts them with a graceful smile and none of the forgiveness her teacher surely expects from her.
After all, that - the dotting and the gifts - is not love.
It is pity.
It is trying to pretend there are no wounds, no crumbling of a fragile sand castle.
Stella's mother, too, used to do that.
Words never did come so easily to her mother when they weren't meant to harm.
Her mom had a lot of things she bore like a guilty cross throughout the years - a dichotomy of love and hate, not knowing that a mother's love is a mother's hate all the same. One could say that how she treated her daughter was a consequence of that.
It isn't that her mom was horrible. Far from it.
But she could have been kinder.
More accepting of whatever flaw Stella had that was so unforgivable. Mom could have been there, not fleeing in the face of her husband's rage and suffocating hand, not left her daughter as collateral. But she did, and when the guilt threatened to eat her alive, Stella's mother would try to prove her love.
Replace its absence with jewels.
Patched and stitched wounds closed with abundance.
but Stella did not want the world, material and fleeting.
She wanted to be protected.
She wanted to be loved.
"It's alright, sensei." Akari smiles gently. She grabs her teacher's gloved hand and pretends that it was not by those same hands that her heart had shattered once more. She pretends that it is not stained red like hers, that it is not stained with her own blood. "We're alright."
He relaxes at her words. Loosens as if the lies that she so sweetly sings mean his absolution. Gifts him with a pardon he so wished for.
The Uchiha heiress cannot blame him for believing them. After all, they are well practiced, so much so that it does not sound untrue. Maybe Akari could even begin to believe it as well —that he is sorry to have loved a corpse better than a living girl—but then, they would be both lying.
And maybe they are.
The shadow of Rin still looms. She sees it in the tightness of her teacher's arms when he gives her a hug, in the eye that refuses to linger in her gaze.
Forgiveness is easy to gift.
It is but one word.
A lie.
"I'm proud of you, Aka-chan."
She hears her name instead of Aka-chan.
Breathe.
Her chest tightens itself, suffocating her. Her body begs her to get away from the silver haired man, to get to safety where she cannot be hurt.
"Maaa, Aka-chan you still have to stay with us till you are a jounin"
"Stay awake."
"Don't die, I swear I'll never be late to training again."
"I can't lose you Aka-chan"
Liar. That is all Hatake Kakashi is. A filthy little liar.
Akari wants to gouge out his last eye. Pour acid over it. Just make him hurt the way he did me.
Let his own dream of a redeemed love be shatter at Akari's feet the same way hers - naive and blind - had been.
Instead, she smiles. "Thank you, sensei."
Some would call it maturity. To ignore the whispers. To not shed a traitor's blood, to not bare her teeth. That is if they knew of what Akari did, the lenghts Akari would go through when the other half of her soul is threatened.
And that's the thing, isn't it?
It is always Akari who is hurt in the end.
Here I was - a girl gulping a woman's grief.
Knowing it was the only thing I could do because, at least, suffering meant I was still worth something.
Hiroto-sama has a saying of his that he is most fond of: "There are two types of sacrifices: correct ones, and mine."
Akari has never quite understood it.
Hiroto-sama chuckled when she tilted her head in questioning as he dropped his saying while talking politics, "All in good times, my dear," he waved her question away. "All in good times.
The old man has always been a bit like this, eccentric, prone to fondness that Akari finds most odd, but also capable of such frightening cunning and cutthroat moves, that Akari finds in him an almost kindred spirit.
Almost is the keyword.
She has heard whispers of the Chess Master.
The only true and blue-blooded Noble Clan left in Konoha. Such title comes with a toll, a blood price, and the Chess Master, as whispers say, has sacrificed kin and allies alike to make it so.
Akari, as much as she admires the older man who likes to guide her in a way that a grandfather perhaps would, holds a certain wariness because of it. She cannot imagine it: sacrificing Sasuke, her beloved twin brother, or even Shikamaru and Naruto, to the cruel village of the Leaf.
"We have discovered that an ANBU team has allowed Sand to slip between cracks of their own making in order to start the invasion," Hiroto-sama confides in a whisper as he places another rook forward, threatening Akari's bishop in the same move.
Akari puffs out a small, exasperated breath as she moves her piece out of harm's way. "And how did you come across such information, Hiroto-sama?" she asks, wiggling her brows.
The older man smiles. It is gentle. Loving.
Chess master, indeed.
"Do allow this old man to keep some secrets, my dear girl," he says, his voice low.
Akari smiles sweetly, gifting with a nod of acknowledgment before swiftly changing the subject, more enthralled by Hiroto's Clan's newest acquisition of iron mines than a rapport. After all, Hiroto-sama does not see Uchiha Akari as a girl needing such information, the names of those who allowed Gaara of Suna to run around like a savage beast.
Regardless, she is grateful for the information that the older man did not need to tell her. He did not need to let her know of the news of Sand's downfall -well its beginning of an end - when it also lets her know of his spies among shinobi ranks.
Danzo-sama, of course, has much to say about it.
"Your brother has gifted the Leaf valuable hostages at the end of the invasion," Danzo-sama notes, raffling through endless reports of ROOT's members. "We shall be greatly recompensated for Sand's misstep."
Akari sips her tea. She does not speak, only offers deference at her teacher's request. "You have made quite the impact on the one-tailed jinchuuriki," the old man then remarks, fixing her with a heavy stare through his sole eye. There is something almost pleased in his voice, smug as if thinking that whatever weapon Akari wields, it is his by extension. "Though Uzumaki is the one he speaks of most fondly."
Akari's lips tighten at the reminder of her teammate's continuous selfish mercy, which he likes to bestow on enemies, on those who have repeatedly proven themselves continuing the world's wretchedness through their actions.
Then, there is a pause.
"Akari-hime," Danzo-sama calls. His voice whips out in the clearing room, cuts through her air and at the same time, draws blood.
She has to stop herself from flinching.
To remember Danzo is not her Father, though sometimes, he injures her as if he was, always quick to tear down at any mistake in her sealing.
Yet she cannot show it. Cannot show the ache in her chest, that weight that silences even the most vicious whispers. Instead, Akari lifts her eyes demurely. "Danzo-sama," she responds with a respectful dip of the head. Her eyes catch the ugly bruise that lingers on her collarbone from having been thrown into the wall by Boar. A reminder, she thinks, of what the old man gifts her.
Strength in the only language she knows: violence.
"What would you do if someone plans to betray the Leaf?" The old war hawk asks, calm and calculating as always as she stares at her from the brim of his teacup.
"As a kunoichi who serves her Hokage, it is not my place to say."
It is a waltz of deception, of threading the line between servitude to a teacher who hides not his cruelty and the economical exchange of individuals seeing worth in helping each other.
But Akari must remain careful.
Give too much, and she has gifted the war hawk the noose to hang her from.
Give too little and all of the sacrifices, all of the careful planning and manipulation to make her beloved brother a staple, a pillar in Konoha crumbles into ashes.
"And as the future Nara matriarch and a noble lady of pure blood, I ask you, what is a traitor's fate?"
The answer comes to the Uchiha heiress swiftly.
The whispers purr in agreement.
Death.
Akari silently puts her teacup on the table, besides her blank ROOT mask, folding her hands neatly.
"There is only one fate for traitors," she starts, thinking of Coral that betrayed the blood that linked them both in the name of envy. She thinks of Ella, who betrayed years of friendship, and Marie, who broke her trust again and again. Of Althea, whose lies tasted the sweetest but had caused the most harm. Who had chosen Coral over Stella and sold her deepest insecurities. The familiar rage and loathing that has bled into another life boils in her veins. She feels its bitterness on the tip of her tongue. "Death."
The dark-haired girl earns herself a thoughtful hum as Danzo sips his teacup, gesturing for her to elaborate. It is rare for him to do so, the elder preferring her to do her duty and not be heard. A weapon does not need a voice, after all.
Yet Akari cannot help the viciousness that swells into her mouth, the drip of poison as she continues. "Traitors should never be given a second chance; they don't deserve it." Flashes of trampled girls linger before her eyes, snakes slayed by the might of a crowd they had always loved to be a part of. Unbeknown to her, Akari's eyes glint. "If they were ready to betray someone once, nothing stops them from doing it twice."
And what do you do with those who would sooner harm you than lend a hand?
What do you do with monsters?
You kill them.
Danzo's sole eye flashes with something too quick for her to decipher. "How interesting," he muses after a sip of tea. "Blood truly runs true."
Isn't it ironic how the people who should have protected us, those we were taught to strive to please, do us the worst injuries?
Look at us.
How did we get here?
Duty is the first word that Uchiha Itachi is taught.
It follows him everywhere in his short life.
Duty to the clan as his Father tells him sternly, slipping a kunai in his toddler hands before he reaches two of age. Duty to the village the Hokage reminds him as an Academy student and it seems that the genius will never be loved for it.
It is not that he likes the word nor does he dislikes it. Itachi, he finds, is awfully neutral towards such a word that shapes his world with callous hands.
Life is a bit like that too, he thinks.
Something to be acknowledged, listened to. To be endured.
A familiar song. Languid, tasteless, colorless. Till his beloved siblings are born.
Suddenly, the word duty becomes pressing. A shield to be brandished like a blade against those who would seek to use his precious siblings, the two of them left unprotected without the title of clan heir.
Sasuke is an adorable boy, quick to smile and quicker to love his eldest brother though Itachi, at that time, has already started to kill.
Akari is a sweetheart with kind eyes and a kinder heart. She is the kind of little girl who would insist on giving Itachi a hug even if he is still wearing the blood of his enemies.
Twins.
An omen, good or bad, that the clan knows not yet.
Good, Itachi cannot help but think with the kind of certainty that only an elder brother holds, as the two toddlers cuddle into his arms, little children who are so frail and Itachi wouldn't even need to try before snapping their necks.
It is a peaceful existence.
Itachi serves the Leaf and his Clan as it is his duty while his beloved and precious siblings play at being children in the way they deserve though Sasuke chases after the shinobi world as if not knowing of the nightmare it truly is.
"So, when am I meeting your siblings?" Shisui, an older Uchiha who Itachi, dare he say, looks up almost like an elder brother.
Itachi's brow twitches in a masquerade of a frown. "You don't need to meet them."
Shisui gives an exaggerated sigh. "And here I was, excited to meet my betrothed."
Itachi's little finger twitches but the smallest inch closer to his kunai pouch, and Shisui, too good of a shinobi not to notice, chuckles at that. "You're so possessive, Tachi," he says.
Itachi thinks there is a scolding in his voice, but he cannot say. It lacks the oppressive scorn that Father uses when either of the Uchiha children displease him, thus, an unknown territory in he has no interest to thread.
"She's my sister," Itachi grumbles. "You will have her for the rest of your life, let me keep her for now."
It is Akari's fate as a Uchiha princess, the sole daughter of the clan head.
Shisui is, in all retrospect, the best fit for her groom, though Sasuke would whine otherwise. Not that his little brother could truly understand, but it is an amusing thought to entertain once in a while.
There is so little joy to be seen, so little softness in their Clan that Itachi has taken a hold of the twin's light and never wanted to let go.
"I do not care how red the world runs," the Uchiha prodigious heir thinks as he tucks in his siblings who had fallen asleep by the entrance, waiting and willing for him to get home. "So long it does not taint them."
But it is a useless wish, naive at best.
Itachi realizes it when the life of a shinobi swallows both Shisui and Itachi whole, taking and taking till there is almost nothing left of the boys who could marvel at the youngest Uchiha without fearing of breaking their small necks.
Nothing left of those children dreaming of peace.
Itachi no longer touches his siblings, too afraid to break and taint them.
Shisui flees Akari's smile like the shadow flees the sun.
And then, Shisui dies, leaving Itachi with only an eye to be remembered.
And then Father doesn't, cannot listen.
A line is drawn: Uchiha and Konoha.
Itachi is thirteen and the sole wielder of an entire clan's bitterness.
A choice is shown: the Clan or Konoha.
Itachi is thirteen and the one who must decide who will live and who will die.
(itachi is a thirteen years old child made to choose between peace and war, between something he has never known, only dreamed of and the painful depravity of humanity)
A choice is made. The curtain has settled, heavy velvet ready to open the stage for the final act.
A choice is made.
a thirteen years old's heart shatters.
And Konoha survives.
(only for a few more years. because if Itachi had truly wanted to save Konoha, he should have killed them all. )
Itachi does not know what to expect when he catches a glimpse of his little brother.
He had thought - in the privacy of his own chambers - that a single glimpse of his beloved siblings would be enough to quench the longing that tears at his chest. Yet it does not, instead, leave him starving for more, for more than simply a look, for more than just knowing they are alive.
Sasuke has grown well.
That is the first thought that comes to his mind.
Little Sasuke has always favored their Mother's elegance, and it bleeds into the curve of his cheekbones and the slope of his nose. Though he has Father's height. He walks through the streets as if he knows the world will bow as he does so, assured in his prowess and the love that the Leaf bears for their last Uchiha.
It is a far cry from the disdain and almost wrathful sentiment the village had born to their Clan not so long ago, and for that, Itachi is glad.
He is glad that his beloved brother has made a home in the village, glad that Danzo and the Hokage have not been remiss in their promises to see his younger siblings thrive - a tree watered with the blood of their traitorous kin so they can only rise higher.
And, of course, wherever Sasuke is, bright little Akari is there too.
They are both his siblings and echoes of hundreds of Uchihas, walking streets that no longer recognize their footsteps, no longer search out of habit for their Clan's crest.
Akari laughs.
The memory splinters at the sound of it because laughs have never come easily to their blood, the sound so unrestrained and unpolished that already Itachi searches for Mother's purse of her lips, displeased in having their image of immortal perfection so tainted.
But Mother is not there, not her pinched lips, not her fingers that dug into soft, childish skin till she draws blood and crescents of moon linger for a day or two.
Ah.
That's right.
Mother is dead.
Itachi has killed her.
Gifted her with the execution of a criminal instead of a Martriarch, of a mother because that is what Uchiha Mikoto chose when push came to shove and the moon glowed red.
itachi can still feel Akari's frail and brittle neck in his hands, her rattled breaths as a sword falls to the floor, the steel ringing and already splattered with crimson.
Akari had smiled so sweetly.
His sister's smile, Itachi finds, has not changed.
Perhaps it has even gotten brighter, and Itachi can breathe at the mere thought, knowing that his siblings will shed the image of the past Uchiha like an used skin, unbothered by the shackles of their past bloodline and the curse of hatred that so many - weak and desperate Uchihas - have fallen into.
And her laugh.
Her laugh is the past and future melted into euphoria, a bright sound that has Itachi blinking as if willing to bat away the ghost of seven years old Akari chasing after her eldest brother.
"Who's that?" Kisame asks, eyes glinting from beneath his rimmed and beaded hat. The beads sway and follow the small tilt of his chin. Itachi narrows his eyes at the interest, but it does not deter the missing-nin to continue, following the dark-haired siblings as they reach their teacher. "She looks a bit young for you, Itachi, but she is pretty-"
"Kisame."
The bigger man quietens, bites down whatever vulgar and crude remark that would have Itachi reaching for his kunais.
The blue-skinned man chuckles, raising his weaponless hands in mockery. "Awfully touchy today, aren't you?" he says lightly with a sharp grin that has some civilians shrink away from the mere sight.
Itachi does not respond, does not deign to offer him anything but a glance, before returning to his observation.
Though he knows it is true, it is odd for the shinobi to even notice whatever Kisame teases, all too used to his vulgarness and crude ways. The missing-nin acts often like it, acts as if the trail of corpses he leaves behind are mere footnotes.
Yet, despite his bloody hands, despite the traitor in that blue-like man, Itachi finds a better partner he could have hoped, and if he must listen to his remarks and rather crude jokes, well, it is a bearable price.
"Kakashi," Sasuke calls out and a tall, silver-haired man turns to the twins.
Captain Hound.
Hatake Kakashi.
A man that has Uchihas usually sneer at for the sole crime of surviving when one of theirs has died.
More so has taken their bloodline limit for his own, but Itachi sometimes likes to picture his kin best than they could become. Of course, nothing - that even he can come up with - would reach the goodness that his siblings possess, all having already embraced the rot in their blood that had them turn their backs on Konoha, but it makes it more bearable to wear the Uchiha features.
Though to be frank, Itachi does not know if he is pleased or wary of Kakashi taking the lead of Team Seven. If anything, Hatake Kakashi is a strong shinobi, loyal without a fault to the Leaf, a fitting teacher for the legacy of a traitorous clan.
Obito had liked Kakashi. Called him his in the Uchiha way, trusted him with his back and died for it.
Itachi doesn't know what he'd do if his siblings were to die. If they were to fall to Madara, to the enemies who would seek their death for the name they carry.
In fact, he never thinks of it, but if there is anyone who will shield the twins till they grow strong enough to stand as the last Uchiha in their own rights, it will be Kakashi.
It has to.
And he will teach Sasuke how to wield his anger like a finely tuned dagger, will teach him all that Itachi had desperately tried to keep him away from when he was a child.
It is not the fate that Itachi had wanted for his little brother. But it is one he needs if he will become the Head of the Uchiha clan.
As for Akari - small, lovely Akari with her bright laugh and unguarded, easy smile - fates are kinder in that regard. She does not need the cruelty of the shinobi life, does not need to drown in crimson.
Let Sasuke redeem the Uchiha name and slay Itachi.
Let his beloved little brother be crowned with glory.
Akari needs not to do that.
She has always been the softer one of the three Uchiha siblings.
The one who would cry easily though Father disliked it, he had never had the time to truly discipline his only daughter, no, that fell in Mother's duties. The one who would love and be loved in return, perfect in her courtesies as the heiress to the Uchiha, the pride of their Mother. A child. Akari is a child. Untested by the harshness of life, still blind when it comes to her love, a canva that Itachi dares not to touch, dares not to sully.
"Tachi-" He still hears her voice amidts the sceams of their dying kin.
Small.
When her small, little hands have gripped the sword hilt, soft skin uncallous yet determined as she buries the sword in their Uncle's back.
Akari looks just like their mother.
She carries her tenderness.
"Why?" That is all Itachi can say, can ask as he stares at his little sister.
sister, killer, protector
Their Uncle's dying, raspy breath echoes the same question.
Why.
She smiles. So simple, so sweet even as blood drips on her cheek, like a tear trail, almost like she is crying blood. "He was attacking you. That means he's a bad guy."
Even now, Itachi can still see it. Among dying man and woman, all traitors, all more selfish and hateful than the other, Akari stands out among them like a beacon though she is as red as the rest of them.
Her innocence, so casually wielded in the name of her family.
The simpleness of principales, yet corrupted by straying loyalties, of being told kill but do not betray, serve but serve us first, bring us glory but never overshadow the clan.
"Tachi?"
Akari's voice trembles and she lets go of the sword as if it burned her. He wonders if she knows she has killed, has taken the life of a clanman. It does not matter.
he was attacking you
That is all that it took for his sister to act.
Wherea most would seek recompense, would have long since spun their web around the Uchiha heir, slipped a nose to his neck in an effort to leash him, his sister only smiles.
Itachi takes a step forward as he raises a hand. He does not know if he wants to hold her, to grab at her and demand she leaves because Akari is good and she is supposed to live. Akari flinches.
"Itachi."
The two Uchiha children turn, eyes widening at the sight of their father. He's a tall shadow in the graveyard that surrounds them, the shadow that Itachi has learned to fear and love in equal measure.
Itachi does not flinch as their Sharingan meet.
"Father-" Akari breathes, rushing from Itachi, hands reaching for their father, unknowing the wrath and fury that lingers in the Uchiha Head's eyes. She is a daughter, the third child and has never known the speed of Father's hand, the sting as flesh meets flesh.
Itachi grabs her by the neck before she can rush into harm's way.
Father has always liked the Clan best.
Has only seen their blood. Does it matter he is their Father when he is their Clan Leader first?
Father's eyes flicker towards Akari. Itachi's grip tightens even as Akari chokes out a battered plea almost ressembling the word father.
do not look at her, he thinks with something almost wrathful throbbing in his chest. do not shatter her the way you shattered our clan. do not stain her with your unworthy ways
It almost seems as though Father understands. He pinches his lips, shoulders rolling back as his eyes turn ebony. Is it from arrogance or the contempt of a father to his child, Itachi does not know.
"Finish this quickly," Father says before nodding, allowing Itachi to save his youngest sister, accepting that Akari is not his to destroy and mold anymore.
Akari shakes in his grip, shatters and crumbles.
It is only because Itachi is holding her that she does not fall, does not soil her knees with traitor's blood.
"Father?" she asks to the turning back of their father, the sound of heartbreak in her voice though he does not understand the sorrow that coats her tongue so heavily that silent tears trail down her cheeks, cutting through the red that had splattered earlier.
Father stops walking.
Itachi hisses. In warning.
for the smallest love you bear us, walk away.
It is as though Father hears his thought for he takes another step forward, again and again till shadows swallow him whole.
"Everything I do," Itachi breathes as he turns Akari around and their eyes meet. She looks at him eyes wide, little mouth parted in a silent whimper. His eyes spin, bleed scarlet. Do not look so scared, he wants to tell her. She has nothing to fear of him, of Itachi who would make the river bleed red before the world can harm her. Who will take the monsters that call themselves kin and slay them before they can sink their claws in her. Little Akari. Gentle. Everything good in this world. "Everything I do is to protect you."
And Akari shatters in her eldest brother's hands, her mouth opened in a silent scream as she falls apart.
I have made the obscene decision to do something unforgivable for the sake of their survival
Listen to me:
I was a child
who only wanted
to heal things
AUTHOR NOTE: And that's it for today! I hope you enjoyed this chapter, we're finally diverging from canon in the next one and hopefully, the updates will be quicker. I'm not that proud of this chapter, I won't lie, but it's been a while since I updated. Please do not be shy and let me know your thoughts! Your comments and followings are always adored.
PS: another piece of the puzzle is revealed! Itachi's POV of the Uchiha Massacre. They really are giving each other trauma, aren't they? But as they say, the road leading to hell is paved with good intentions. Poor babies just can't seem to get it right.