So... yeah. This is something I'm not sure I'll ever finish, but I'm hoping I'll get some response that inspires me. It was supposed to go all the way from Sasuke's birth to the clan massacre, from Itachi's point of view. But... somewhere along the way, I've lost the inspiration I had when I started, so... blah. I thought I'd at least post what I have somewhere, though I'm not putting it on a fanfiction site until I've finished it, if that ever happens.
And yes, I had planned for this to eventually be ItaSasu. There's none at this point in the story, though, because Sasuke's still pretty young.
Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto, blah blah, etc, etc.
No one is born a monster.
Insanity is usually described as something one descends into. ‘His descent into insanity was swift.’ I did not descend into anything. I was built up into what I became. By friends, family… even Sasuke gave his own little, unconscious contributions. Perhaps I should call it my ascent into insanity.
I like that.
***
Itachi remembered, as a little boy, feeling rather out of place in his body. He had the capacity to do things that were not yet within his reach. He could feel this strength inside of himself, this knowledge. Part of that knowledge was that his body needed to grow before he could put it to use. It was frustrating in a way that nothing else could be. Potential limited by nothing more than his own container, growing too slowly for his tastes.
He remembered waiting in the hospital, in a small, white room lined with chairs as nurses and medic nin passed him by, brushing his questions off with smiles and pats on the head. “She’ll be fine, Itachi-kun,” they said. And that was all they would say, because he was still too small. At five years old, to their eyes, he was too young to understand.
Five years was more than old enough to be frustrated by their condescension.
When he was finally allowed into the room, his mother lay in a bed, looking far too frail to really be Uchiha Mikoto. Itachi’s father stood beside the bed, arms crossed and eyes not on the squirming bundle in his wife’s arms, but on his oldest son.
Itachi remained in the doorway, standing still, impassive gaze regarding his new brother from a distance. “Come, Itachi,” Mikoto said, smiling wearily. “Don’t you want to see him?”
He didn’t, really. But Fugaku’s eyes narrowed subtly and Itachi knew that he was to obey. He walked over to the bed and stood beside it, having to stand on his tiptoes to see the child. Black eyes so similar to his own drew his attention, and he tilted his head. Had he once been so helpless?
Itachi lifted one hand, moving it toward the child. Could this thing defend itself? Would it stop him? The pads of his fingers landed, uninhibited, on a smooth forehead, and he snorted softly.
Surely he had never been so weak.
Tiny fingers moved towards his own once, twice, three times before getting it right. That little, pale hand was small enough that it took all of it just to hold onto two of his fingers. But it--he--managed it.
Itachi looked into those dark eyes, brows drawing together slowly.
“His name is Sasuke,” Mikoto supplied, smiling at the interaction between her sons.
Sasuke. Itachi thought to himself, watching as those tiny fingers tightened minutely around his own. In that moment, he had decided. This Sasuke was the son of Fugaku and Mikoto, a clansman of the Uchiha, a citizen of Konoha, and a future shinobi.
But he belonged to Itachi.
As time passed, Mikoto took to calling Itachi ‘Sasuke’s little guardian,’ a rather fitting title despite the annoyance it evoked in its bearer. Anytime Mikoto did anything concerning Sasuke, there was Itachi, hovering in the doorway, watching with those unblinking eyes. Was she doing it correctly? Could she be trusted with this thing which he had claimed? He had entrusted its safekeeping to her, but it--he, Itachi had to keep reminding himself; the child still had no outward indication of gender while clothed--was so very fragile.
“You’re too protective,” Shisui told him one day while they were training. “She’s his mother. She knows what she’s doing.”
Itachi had long ago come to the conclusion that Shisui really didn’t understand anything at all.
“Your rotation is off when you release,” was all Itachi said in response, dark gaze on the shuriken tucked between his cousin’s fingers.
Sometimes Shisui thought that Itachi understood even less than he did.
When Sasuke took his first steps, they were towards his older brother. Everyone was astonished at how young he was, and already able to walk. “Talented already,” they said. “But what can you expect, from the son of Fugaku and Mikoto? Didn’t Itachi progress even more quickly?”
But as Sasuke took those first, faltering steps towards his brother, and Itachi lifted his dark gaze from his scroll to impassively watch this new development, all he could see were errors. Leaning too far to one side, he’d tip over that way and hurt himself. His foot was turned inward on that step, it was bad for balance. Itachi thought that if he could go over there and show the child, coordinate his movements for him, he’d do better. If Itachi could only show him the proper way.
Mikoto stopped him before he could, though, and smiled as if he’d done something terribly amusing. “No, Itachi. Sometimes falling is the best way to learn.”
Itachi thought that might just be the most foolish thing he’d ever heard.
It took Sasuke longer than Itachi thought it rightfully should have, to reasonably perfect walking. It involved lots of trial and error, lots of falling and bumping into furniture and crying.
It all served to strengthen Itachi’s opinion that Sasuke would progress faster with guidance.
Itachi remembered graduating from the academy at the tender age of seven. He remembered the envious, sometimes angry looks from his peers in the audience gathered for the ceremony, still practicing with dull shuriken in their own classes. He remembered his father, at the edge of the crowd, arms crossed over his chest as he watched silently. His expression held pride, but not in Itachi. Not really. Selfish pride. ’This is good for the clan.’ instead of ’This is good for my son.’
Itachi wondered, sometimes, if Uchiha Fugaku could even separate Itachi and the clan in his mind, or if they existed as one entity, each depending on the other for survival and progress. Itachi decided that he didn’t like that thought.
He decided that, one day, he would exist for something worthy.
Not the clan or his father or even himself. A legacy, something that would live on, pure, perfect, a little bit of what Itachi was not quite allowed to be. All of his dreams and aspirations and hope pressed into one being that Itachi could live to perfect, and die content knowing that his perfection would live on after him.
Yes. That would be something worthy of his existence.
Sasuke’s newly learned steps inevitably led him in Itachi’s direction. Every morning, before his newest genin mission, Itachi would sit down on the porch to put on his sandals, and he’d hear the soft padding of unsteady footsteps behind him. He would continue with what he was doing, eerily aware of the innocent eyes on his back. Once his shoes were on, he’d straighten, then stand.
“Sasuke.”
He wasn’t sure what possessed him to do it, the first time. To turn and kneel again. Was it those endless black eyes, so full of promise, of potential, looking at him, really at him? Was that what made him lift one hand and press his fingers against an unblemished forehead, remembering having done so only a few years ago when he had first looked into those same eyes?
Itachi remembered, with startling clarity, how Sasuke had not made any move to protect himself. He’d had an innate trust in Itachi, a trust that no one else could really put in a young but genius ninja who was raising his hand against them. Was it, as it had been years before, simple foolishness? Looking back, maybe it was.
But at the time, in that moment, Itachi’s baby brother had been the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.
Itachi remembered regarding his genin team as little more than a nuisance. No matter how far he reached back, in his memories they were nothing but faceless children accompanying him on his first missions. That was how little significance they had held, in his mind. He used them on their steadily progressing missions, nudging them in the right directions to accomplish the mission in the most efficient way possible. This was the only point that he could see in teamwork.
Itachi’s teammates were tools that he quickly learned could be used, in certain circumstances, to accomplish his goals.
It felt… interesting. To be the one doing the using, for once.
He tried to explain this feeling to Shisui, once, as they stood knee-deep in a river looking for round, flat pebbles. Shisui had straightened, running one thumb over a glistening rock in his palm, and had promptly informed Itachi that he was weird. And not just a little weird, but really weird. Then he’d tossed the rock with a flick of his wrist, and Itachi’s eyes had followed it as it skipped gracefully over the water.
Itachi’s sharingan awoke on his team’s first C-Class mission. At eight years old, he watched one of his teammates die through spinning red eyes.
Mikoto had heard the news by the time he got home, and was pacing in the kitchen and worrying her lower lip between her teeth. “What kind of missions are they giving genin, these days?” she asked, both angry at the loss and relieved that it wasn’t one of her own. His father didn’t answer.
When Itachi stepped into the kitchen, his eyes still as red as the drying blood splashed across his dark blue shirt, Mikoto hurried over to him and pulled him into her arms. He remained still as she offered soft words of comfort, his eyes drifting past her to where his father watched him proudly. There would be no words of comfort from him, nor congratulations for the awakening of the sharingan. The look of pride was meant to convey everything that should have been said.
After cleaning up, Itachi intended to go straight to his room, but his steps found him standing outside of his younger brother’s. He slid the door open and the soft light from the hallway illuminated the small boy sleeping in the bed. Still so very, very small, barely four years old.
Itachi remembered watching his teammate fall, and he wondered if this was the fate of every incompetent shinobi. If Sasuke was not perfectly trained, would he be just one more name on a monument? Where was the purpose in that? No, Sasuke belonged to Itachi. There would be something more for him, something…
In a flood of sudden possessiveness, Itachi moved to the bed and knelt beside it, pale fingers brushing contrastingly dark bangs back from Sasuke’s forehead. The boy shifted a little, a soft sound escaping his lips, then stilled again. Itachi watched him for a few moments, until he was certain that he wasn’t about to awaken, then closed his eyes and pressed his lips to that smooth forehead, the skin just as soft as his fingers remembered.
Sasuke would be better than a meaningless, broken tool. Sasuke would be more than the pawn of their clan.
Sasuke would be what Itachi couldn’t.
Sometimes, Itachi could see the future.
He would nod to his dear aunt as he passed her, but behind her kind smile she was lying broken on the ground in a pool of her own blood. One of his older cousins would walk out of the main Uchiha compound, and Itachi’s following eyes could see the hazy, jagged line where his throat had been slit, both there and not at the same time.
This was where their path would lead him. Even then, he had known.
Looking back on those vague visions, he wondered if he’d really been seeing the future, or if, even then, insanity had been creeping up on him, the first tendrils of its influence making themselves known through the imagined deaths of those around him. His impassive response to the ghastly images was probably answer enough to that question.
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