For 7Letterdirt.
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Mama has the most wonderful green eyes.
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She cries a lot after you've gone to bed. She sits in her room and cries after the lights in house have been turned off. She closes her door gently and for a few moments there stretches a tenuous silence you pray will last until the morning.
But it seems the stronger you hope, the louder she is when she eventually breaks down.
It hurts to hear your Mama cry.
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When you get to the academy in the morning, you practice before anyone else arrives. When you are throwing knives, or kunai, or shuriken, you imagine that the target is your Mama.
You imagine you are the one that is hurting her.
Your aim is nearing perfect- the more that you hate yourself, the more precisely your weapon lands.
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In the evening Mama picks you up from school. You walk silently beside her while she tries to cajole a few words out of you.
"Ne, Suke-kun, you're just like your father," she says with a smile.
You push dark hair out of your face.
"Hn."
Today, Mama's body is made of tired lines and a lonely grace.
You have dark eyes that trace her form with thick strokes, much like the strokes you've seen Mama's friend Sai use in his artwork.
You imagine the brush strokes Sai would use to draw Mama (apparently, he has drawn your Mama, but no one has shown you the pictures).
That night when you get home, you sit on the floor of your room, pick up a pen and try to draw what observed on your way home.
Your hand is too heavy. You can't find the right lines. Her face looks nothing like your lonely, lovely Mama.
After some time, you give up.
Frustrated, you slam all the doors in the house on your way outside.
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When Mama makes you lunch she includes all your favorite foods: rice balls, chocolate chip cookies, ice tea, water, fish and a whole tomato, sliced thinly and packed with an ice pack to keep it cool.
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You examine your face in the mirror. If you look just like your father, then the surly face staring back at you is him.
Mama.
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You don't ask Mama where your father is. In a way, you don't want him to come home because it's you and your Mama now. You're getting along fine without him- you always have and you always will.
You lay in bed and listen to Mama crying. You think that this is the way things are meant to be, that any other way would be too strange.
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Years down the road, as the youngest boy to be made Jounin since a young man (supposedly your relative) named Itachi, you meet your father.
At the moment, the only thing that strikes you is that he looks so much like you.
He doesn't ask about your Mama.
He made her cry and he never asked about your Mama.
He sits on a throne of stone in an underground pit surrounded by serpents.
His eyes are oddly blank. Over his skin bleeds veins of ancient text- a curse seal.
Mama.
You do not hesitate to try to kill him. When you fail, you swear to come back.
Because now that you know that your father is alive, and now that you know who he is, and now that you know where he resides, you know that he could know the same about you and Mama.
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Weeks later, Mama is taken from the village.
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"There is... a man I have to kill," you tell a pretty girl with cornflower blue eyes and blonde hair. Uzumaki Ame.
She stares at you with adoring eyes.
She is nowhere near your skill level, but she is intelligent and driven. This is the only thing that gives you pause when she asks you to take her with you.
Then you make your decision.
She is annoying. You have a life-goal to achieve. She will only be in the way.
"I love you more than anything!"
Mama.
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Those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it.