（ he wants to be cruel. his eyes are the unusual black he takes pains not to show others, but he thinks he probably has enough chakra built up to use tsukuyomi on him — he could pull the memories from his mind (would he win that fight? he isn't certain) and drag him under an ocean.
the black flickers to red, but it's brief, and does not last.
he steps forward, gauging the size of the room by how the air feels close around him, and finally he comes to the edge of the moldering old mattress blue's been sleeping on. he sits down on it, which puts his back to the mu, shoulders rigid with the effort of doing so simple a thing. ）
It was a long time ago.
（ he is startled by the gentleness in his own voice. as if it is meant to comfort. ）
[the absence of that malice doesn't leave Blue wondering where it is, because sharing trauma and suffering is a very Mu thing indeed. it's how starkly different, bloody, and raw it is that the Mu struggles with: it's all been buried, untended, uncared for...roiling, boiling...
so while Itachi sits, Blue is wiping at his face and eyes, but tears won't stop. he won't try to - this is mostly maintenance, making sure he can still speak.
'a long time ago' he says, and Blue exhales in a weak scoff. long? not that long; Itachi is still a very young man indeed, and those memories were constructed from the mind and heart of a child.]
（ he exhales, and it trembles perhaps a little more than he would like. he laces his fingers together, turning the ring on his right hand, worrying at its kanji face. the chakra transmitters embedded in it are quiescent now, severed from their source, the wielder of the rinnegan.
he doesn't try to speak again. simply lets blue struggle and marshal himself. ）
Please don't ascribe justification to my actions. The choice was mine alone.
（ he was the one who lifted the sword. he could have run, instead. and has dwelt on that in intervening years — that he could have taken sasuke and left his family to their fate, and it would have changed very little in the end. ）
（ his throat is dry, save the taste of old blood. everything feels too close, too hot, too much. he closes his eyes and forces himself to breathe, old tricks to bring himself back to center. ）
Please. （ his voice cracks. shame crawls up his spine. ） Don't.
[too late - he already did: the burden of guilt and fear of weakness is already shifting in Blue's mind, reconciling with the frame of reference it was given in. it can't be changed by a simple ask, even one in such a feeble, pleading tone.
he draws in and lets out a slow, shaky breath, gradually uncurling from the tight shape he'd made of himself.]
Too much... [an echo of the strain he senses. quieter:] Yes...that's true...
[it is too much. to carry, to stifle, to peek at... to reconcile? he doesn't know. it's the sort of thing that pushes Mu minds to break, but...humans have a characteristically unpredictable penchant for strength - particularly the kinds he's found on Ximilia.]
（ however blue meant that statement, it cuts the sorrow and the shame away from the anger, leaving it the lone surviving emotion in a vast desert. it has never been too much to bear — even if his father's voice telling him that their pain would be over in an instant and his would persist the whole of his life rings unbidden in his mind.
his fingers curl in against his palms, nails leaving little half-moon indents, bisecting his lifeline. ）
I don't think you know me well enough to say that.
（ he had come here stripped bare, raw with old memories and grief like a pressure front. but he has always been skilled at putting things aside when his situation necessitates. ）
I apologize for disturbing your rest.
（ his voice is even, scoured of sentiment. ）
It goes without saying I do not wish any of this known to the others.
itachi is silent for a long while, coiled like a spring. if anything is perceptible of his mental state, it is the tension. his privacy is generally an inviolate thing — he has guarded it so fiercely for so long that he has no idea what to do with having something of himself seen. he had come here to — but even that thought is hazy and uncertain now. ）
Regardless.
（ he is still sorry. blue is a gentle person, and itachi knows too well the weight he's given him to carry. ）
[it gets a soft, acknowledging sound. there's a strong want in Blue to reach over, to lay a hand on him...to feel anything, to be able to make some better change for this young man...
but it's like sticking a hand out to a cornered animal. it's not about his choices, but Itachi's.
instead, Blue can only sit and be present. there's no taking back what was given, and despite the hurt, he won't resent it.
...he can still hate what had come to pass for that boy, though. both of those boys. Shisui, too...]
（ the silence is, for once, excoriating. it is not always peaceable or pleasant, but it rarely cuts the way it does now, knifeblade hewing to the marrow.
worse than shikamaru's belief is blue trying to intimate that the fault did not lie solely with him. he can rationally pick apart the circumstances of his life and recognize the fact that he was simply a pawn in the hands of those older and more powerful than he had been back then. that he was pushed into an impossible situation, that there was no other choice. refusal would have meant death, and danzō would have moved onto sasuke. the idea of his brother in that man's hands is unconscionable. he would have done worse than orochimaru, who at the very least never pretended decency.
he rubs his left thumb across the opposite palm. he took a kunai through it, many years ago, when tenma was still alive, before he had ever woken his eyes to the red of grief and loss. ）
The death I spoke of. （ blue will recall it, no doubt. ） It was in answer to my crimes.
（ as much as he does not wish to elaborate any further, it is — he would prefer that blue, at the very least, know he did not evade consequence. he never had any intention of doing so — though he regrets using sasuke as he did to engineer it. he had thought it was the only way to bring him peace on the heels of a necessary evil. now... he is older and wiser than he was at thirteen, and he knows better. ）
[again, Blue doesn't reply. not right away, at least, and it's unclear what the Mu could be thinking: his breath has steadied, he's hardly moved at all.
eventually:] What of that man? [that awful, manipulating figure.]
（ he had told shikamaru, if he is able to amend his regret, the one thing he cannot guarantee of konoha's changed history will be danzō shimura's life. there was no point attempting to conceal it — he will rip every stolen sharingan out of the man's body barehanded if he must. ）
[but, as Itachi understands: he is this sort of man. and beyond that, the sorrow is more for Itachi himself - Itachi the boy, pigeonholed into such things, such choices. little stings quite the same as the suffering of children.]
（ he did not act alone. madara assisted — his cruel jape about preferring to kill the women because kamui made it easier for him still stings. but having an ally in the murder does not absolve him of half the guilt. if he had not known of madara, he would have done it alone just the same.
（ the worst part is that he's well aware it will hurt blue to know — but the only form of connection he has ever been able to make are forged through pain.
there were two hundred and seventy-four uchiha killed that night, and he knew them all. old men and women who had been veterans of the second ninja war, children younger than his brother. killing shisui's father had been so hard —
but the memories he gives to blue are the good ones. itachi, once upon a time, was the pride of his clan. his father was not the only one who felt like his achievements buoyed them up. his kinsmen used to smile at him in the streets, greet him warmly, sneak him sweets when no one else was around. they used to tell him good luck on his missions when he was still a genin, and many of them came by to offer their condolences when his teammate died protecting the daimyo.
his memory is without flaw — every face, every name. people who have now been forgotten, their memories degraded beneath the corrosive heel of time. his infamy has blotted out any accomplishment made by the rest of his clan. he lives alongside madara now, and the rest of the clan is dust.
but he does not give any of that to blue. not the horror, not the hurt. just the sunny days, the good times. the sense of family and camaraderie. they had always been isolated from the village, but it only made them close ranks against the world and turn more to each other. the uchiha are a clan of love so deep it's buried beneath the mantle of the world, and he does not flinch from it in his memory.
but perhaps the ghosts most lovingly crafted are of his parents.
he's tucked against his mother's side as she is visibly pregnant, the swell of her belly blocking him from seeing what she's cooking on the stove. it smells good, like home, and she says ah, i hope your baby brother likes my cooking too! and he, with all the diligent seriousness of a five year old says, of course he will.
his mother's presence is like the sun after a rainshower — gentle warmth, glimmering sun. oh, she was a fierce fighter in her own right, a jōnin who cut her teeth in the third war, but he never saw that side of her — just the woman who used to hum softly as she braided his hair, who made all his favourite foods whenever he returned from a mission, who used to hug him so closely and tell him everything would be all right.
his father, by contrast, was more like the sun in a desert. he could be difficult, and his presence overbearing. but you felt his absence more deeply when he was gone, the lack of warmth made clear by the chill of shifting sand. he was a man of few words, but so many of them were in praise of his boys.
he and his father are sitting on the same dock blue first met him on. they are talking about birds, and fugaku is saying, ah, crows? wise — they will be loyal all your life. they do not touch, nor are they near to one-another, but the love... the love is obvious. and the pride.
generally, he has a tendency to sever his connection with blue abruptly, cruel and cold. now, it's simply a withdrawal. he reclaims his hand, and laces it with his other between his knees. ）
[there have only been a scant few notions of mother for Blue to understand. they came from the cries of the very young he'd spirit away, whose memory of them faded fast in growth; the stronger ones were from Jomy, who was spared the erasure of his youth...
these are yet stronger still, and Blue undeniably covets them. the security in innocence as a child, unfailing in their faith in the parents and family who love them - a connection of lineage and heritage, a stable home... more's the grief in its horrible, horrible loss.
fresh tears well up and silently trail down the damp trail still on his face. he exhales that held breath in a gentle huff as the connection is dampened and pulled away, freeing his hand to go to his eyes.]
（ in the wake of that sharing he simply feels... hollowed out, empty. exhaustion creeps back in, catching at the edges of his mind like a child might tug at the hem of a parents' shirt to get their attention.
his eyes are dry. he has not cried since that night, and it is not a weakness he wishes to tear open anew. but — ）
I do not regret what I did.
（ he might have gone on to be a good person, once. but that possibility is well behind him. he would kill them all again to secure sasuke's future. he would do worse if necessary. ）
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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the black flickers to red, but it's brief, and does not last.
he steps forward, gauging the size of the room by how the air feels close around him, and finally he comes to the edge of the moldering old mattress blue's been sleeping on. he sits down on it, which puts his back to the mu, shoulders rigid with the effort of doing so simple a thing. ）
It was a long time ago.
（ he is startled by the gentleness in his own voice. as if it is meant to comfort. ）
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so while Itachi sits, Blue is wiping at his face and eyes, but tears won't stop. he won't try to - this is mostly maintenance, making sure he can still speak.
'a long time ago' he says, and Blue exhales in a weak scoff. long? not that long; Itachi is still a very young man indeed, and those memories were constructed from the mind and heart of a child.]
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he doesn't try to speak again. simply lets blue struggle and marshal himself. ）
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I hate it, too.
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Please don't ascribe justification to my actions. The choice was mine alone.
（ he was the one who lifted the sword. he could have run, instead. and has dwelt on that in intervening years — that he could have taken sasuke and left his family to their fate, and it would have changed very little in the end. ）
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[no it wasn't. you were a boy.]
Things like that... [Blue shakes his head before wiping at his eyes once again.] Such choices...aren't made in a vacuum.
[such destruction rarely is.]
It's...on your hands.
But not only yours.
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Please. （ his voice cracks. shame crawls up his spine. ） Don't.
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he draws in and lets out a slow, shaky breath, gradually uncurling from the tight shape he'd made of himself.]
Too much... [an echo of the strain he senses. quieter:] Yes...that's true...
[it is too much. to carry, to stifle, to peek at... to reconcile? he doesn't know. it's the sort of thing that pushes Mu minds to break, but...humans have a characteristically unpredictable penchant for strength - particularly the kinds he's found on Ximilia.]
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his fingers curl in against his palms, nails leaving little half-moon indents, bisecting his lifeline. ）
I don't think you know me well enough to say that.
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Whether I do...or don't... It doesn't matter.
[it's too much. water is wet, space is vast, and this is too much.]
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I apologize for disturbing your rest.
（ his voice is even, scoured of sentiment. ）
It goes without saying I do not wish any of this known to the others.
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It also...goes without saying... You didn't mean to share at all.
I don't need an apology.
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itachi is silent for a long while, coiled like a spring. if anything is perceptible of his mental state, it is the tension. his privacy is generally an inviolate thing — he has guarded it so fiercely for so long that he has no idea what to do with having something of himself seen. he had come here to — but even that thought is hazy and uncertain now. ）
Regardless.
（ he is still sorry. blue is a gentle person, and itachi knows too well the weight he's given him to carry. ）
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but it's like sticking a hand out to a cornered animal. it's not about his choices, but Itachi's.
instead, Blue can only sit and be present. there's no taking back what was given, and despite the hurt, he won't resent it.
...he can still hate what had come to pass for that boy, though. both of those boys. Shisui, too...]
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worse than shikamaru's belief is blue trying to intimate that the fault did not lie solely with him. he can rationally pick apart the circumstances of his life and recognize the fact that he was simply a pawn in the hands of those older and more powerful than he had been back then. that he was pushed into an impossible situation, that there was no other choice. refusal would have meant death, and danzō would have moved onto sasuke. the idea of his brother in that man's hands is unconscionable. he would have done worse than orochimaru, who at the very least never pretended decency.
he rubs his left thumb across the opposite palm. he took a kunai through it, many years ago, when tenma was still alive, before he had ever woken his eyes to the red of grief and loss. ）
The death I spoke of. （ blue will recall it, no doubt. ） It was in answer to my crimes.
（ as much as he does not wish to elaborate any further, it is — he would prefer that blue, at the very least, know he did not evade consequence. he never had any intention of doing so — though he regrets using sasuke as he did to engineer it. he had thought it was the only way to bring him peace on the heels of a necessary evil. now... he is older and wiser than he was at thirteen, and he knows better. ）
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[again, Blue doesn't reply. not right away, at least, and it's unclear what the Mu could be thinking: his breath has steadied, he's hardly moved at all.
eventually:] What of that man? [that awful, manipulating figure.]
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（ he had told shikamaru, if he is able to amend his regret, the one thing he cannot guarantee of konoha's changed history will be danzō shimura's life. there was no point attempting to conceal it — he will rip every stolen sharingan out of the man's body barehanded if he must. ）
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no wonder the ancestors gave up their freedoms to a machine. the burden of suffering...]
It will change little, but... [...] I will still grieve. [because there's no way he couldn't. because he must.]
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（ but it does not surprise him that blue would insist upon it anyway — he is that sort of man. ）
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[but, as Itachi understands: he is this sort of man. and beyond that, the sorrow is more for Itachi himself - Itachi the boy, pigeonholed into such things, such choices. little stings quite the same as the suffering of children.]
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after a long moment, he holds out a hand. ）
Do you wish to?
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does he want to? not...not really. but also absolutely. painful connections are like that. but what do Mu crave most of all but connection?
after a long beat, he sits up a little, reaching over and gingerly setting his hand in Itachi's, holding his next breath.]
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there were two hundred and seventy-four uchiha killed that night, and he knew them all. old men and women who had been veterans of the second ninja war, children younger than his brother. killing shisui's father had been so hard —
but the memories he gives to blue are the good ones. itachi, once upon a time, was the pride of his clan. his father was not the only one who felt like his achievements buoyed them up. his kinsmen used to smile at him in the streets, greet him warmly, sneak him sweets when no one else was around. they used to tell him good luck on his missions when he was still a genin, and many of them came by to offer their condolences when his teammate died protecting the daimyo.
his memory is without flaw — every face, every name. people who have now been forgotten, their memories degraded beneath the corrosive heel of time. his infamy has blotted out any accomplishment made by the rest of his clan. he lives alongside madara now, and the rest of the clan is dust.
but he does not give any of that to blue. not the horror, not the hurt. just the sunny days, the good times. the sense of family and camaraderie. they had always been isolated from the village, but it only made them close ranks against the world and turn more to each other. the uchiha are a clan of love so deep it's buried beneath the mantle of the world, and he does not flinch from it in his memory.
but perhaps the ghosts most lovingly crafted are of his parents.
he's tucked against his mother's side as she is visibly pregnant, the swell of her belly blocking him from seeing what she's cooking on the stove. it smells good, like home, and she says ah, i hope your baby brother likes my cooking too! and he, with all the diligent seriousness of a five year old says, of course he will.
his mother's presence is like the sun after a rainshower — gentle warmth, glimmering sun. oh, she was a fierce fighter in her own right, a jōnin who cut her teeth in the third war, but he never saw that side of her — just the woman who used to hum softly as she braided his hair, who made all his favourite foods whenever he returned from a mission, who used to hug him so closely and tell him everything would be all right.
his father, by contrast, was more like the sun in a desert. he could be difficult, and his presence overbearing. but you felt his absence more deeply when he was gone, the lack of warmth made clear by the chill of shifting sand. he was a man of few words, but so many of them were in praise of his boys.
he and his father are sitting on the same dock blue first met him on. they are talking about birds, and fugaku is saying, ah, crows? wise — they will be loyal all your life. they do not touch, nor are they near to one-another, but the love... the love is obvious. and the pride.
generally, he has a tendency to sever his connection with blue abruptly, cruel and cold. now, it's simply a withdrawal. he reclaims his hand, and laces it with his other between his knees. ）
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these are yet stronger still, and Blue undeniably covets them. the security in innocence as a child, unfailing in their faith in the parents and family who love them - a connection of lineage and heritage, a stable home... more's the grief in its horrible, horrible loss.
fresh tears well up and silently trail down the damp trail still on his face. he exhales that held breath in a gentle huff as the connection is dampened and pulled away, freeing his hand to go to his eyes.]
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his eyes are dry. he has not cried since that night, and it is not a weakness he wishes to tear open anew. but — ）
I do not regret what I did.
（ he might have gone on to be a good person, once. but that possibility is well behind him. he would kill them all again to secure sasuke's future. he would do worse if necessary. ）
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