Fandom: Naruto
Title: Assigning Blame
Author: hana-akira AKA rurichi
Character: Uchiha Madara, Uchiha Izuna
Genre: Tragedy, Angst
Rating: 17+
Warning: OOC, doesn't-follow-Canon
Prompt: Who is to blame for Uchiha Izuna's death?
Summary: The Uchiha Clan blamed Madara. Izuna blamed himself. And Madara? Well… he blamed everyone else. [A tragedy told in three parts.]

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1: According to the Uchiha Clan, Uchiha Madara was the one responsible for Uchiha Izuna's death.

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This is how adults assign blame: they blame it on the children. Or, rather, the child that's left behind in the end.

"Kids will be kids," is the most famous excuse for adults to write off a child's behavior, and ultimately, their deeds when in truth a child needs a role-model in order to do anything remotely intelligent (It's how they learn how to say words, after all, how they suddenly know how to string sentences together like a rope. They learn from observation and listening, from experimenting and warnings like knowing how to tie your shoes and knowing to not put your hands on the stove because it's hot.)

When a child beats another child, the adults blame it on the one who started it (They don't know that at home, the child's parents fight—slaps and punches, broken glass and overturned tables, alcohol everywhere. This is where the child learns that it's okay to hurt someone else as long as they don't 'die'.)

This is how the Uchiha Clan assigns blame for the reason why Izuna dies: they point their fingers at Madara.

They didn't, at first—not all of them, anyway, though some of them did (It's very hard to ignore after all when there's a dead body in the room with no eyes in their sockets while the other has bloody red tears coming down their cheeks and their throat is screaming bloody murder.) Desperate times calls for desperate measures, so the saying goes, and the time of the Clan Wars were very desperate indeed. They needed every trump card they could get so the clan didn't do anything at first (They gave Izuna the traditional funeral ritual—burning of the body and the ashes put into a pot. A cremation, if you would.)

That all changes when wartime suddenly becomes 'peacetime'.

"How can you forget what they have done to us?" Madara shouts.

"How can we forget what you have done to Izuna?" The clan sneers back (And Madara is left in the aftermath alone, scandalized and horrified at their rather selective memory.)

The clan will never admit that if they hadn't pressured Madara so much, Izuna would have never decided that he himself needed die.

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2: Izuna's personal opinion, though, is that it's only his fault.

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This is how Uchiha Izuna assigns blame: he blames it on himself.

War is a difficult thing to swallow, a difficult thing to endure, and he doesn't think he'll ever get used to it in this life or the next. This is what Izuna knows best, knows better than anything else he knows.

His big brother says fanciful things that he wanted to believe. He really did. Wanted to believe that things would get better, that tomorrow would be a sunny day without rain, that there's such a thing as peace. But he knows better. Life was an endless struggle—from struggling for your first breath to struggling for your last—it's a fight to the end, a battle to your death. And he knew that he wasn't strong enough. He knew that.

Because in the end, it's his fault and he could only blame himself for being the cause of his own death (Because he's too weak, too slow, too sympathetic, too optimistic.) He's not enough, he knows, not how Madara is in all his brilliance and his glory—his confidence and beauty. So when there's a chance to help the clan, help his family, he takes it without looking back (He will never know of the brother he willingly left behind in the dust.)

Izuna will never admit that if he didn't have such a bleeding, golden heart, he wouldn't have needed to die, either.

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3: But if you asked Madara, he would blame everyone else.

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This is how Uchiha Madara assigns blame: he blames everyone else.

It's all their fault, Madara thinks, just like how it's all their fault that this joke of a war is still going on. Because if it weren't for them, Izuna wouldn't have died—wouldn't have gotten it to his head that he was better off dead than alive if he did it for sacrifice.

All the fighting, all the battles—it's not a war. It's showing off, arrogance and pride at its worst, and it's all about flexing their muscles to see who's supposedly the best. It's a joke, a gag, and he blames them more than anything else just as much as he blames them clan because if they got off their stupid pedestal once in awhile, no one would have been killed at all.

He blames the Senju, the Uzumaki, anyone with a clan and a name and even the civilians because if they didn't keep egging each other on, keep fighting on other people's territory, keep disregarding the lives of others, the Uchiha Clan wouldn't have gotten involved in their scuffles at all (Did they think the Uchiha Clan was going to turn a blind eye and the other way when their children were suddenly drowned by a tidal wave or have a tree out of nowhere suddenly fall on them? Did they honestly think that?)

And so what if he was going blind? Who needed power? Who needed strength? All Madara and Izuna needed were each other and that was enough. It wasn't like he was going to go past his forties, anyway.

Madara will never admit that if he could have said no to his little brother's face just once, Izuna wouldn't have needed to die at all.

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A/N: Here's who each one should have blamed: The Uchiha Clan should have blamed themselves, Izuna should have blamed the clan, and Madara should have blamed Izuna. Because the clan exploited Izuna's love for the clan, Izuna then exploited Madara's love for him while Madara exploited no one because he was too preoccupied with just making sure that everyone in their clan survives.