Monograph
Disclaimer: This is a purely non-profit story written for entertainment purposes only. All characters of Naruto belong to their respective owners.
Author's Notes: My own take on why Itachi massacred the clan; not quite your typical run-of-the-mill "Itachi wants to be special" thing. Quite honestly, I think this pairing is odd, yet I couldn't help but notice the similarities in their lives. I guess Kakashi's just getting a lot of lovin' lately. I'm trying out a different style – Timothy Findley, to be exact. Prepare for extraneous usage of hyphens and semi-colons.
Monograph
The one thing that Itachi relished above all others was history.
History was concrete, tangible, predictable – unlike the average people around him. The faded words written on dried scrolls, although sometimes illegible with age, did not change. In rustic dignity, they were ageless – faultless; the failures and mistakes of those they contained were not their own sins, simply those of whom they observed. They did not love or fear, or even hate. And never, never (a dangerous word to use otherwise – a word he would not use otherwise) were they wrong.
He supposed that, if his drive to succeed could be attributed to anything, it had to be attributed to his insatiable affair with history.
This thought had struck him rather mercilessly as he sat reading one day, curiously following the flow of text and pictures that lighted his world (he had been 4 at the time). Filled with glorious knights and raging villains, he suddenly realized with resounding conviction that he wanted to be a part of history. Surely, his 4-year-old mind reasoned, there had to be volumes and volumes of memoirs about little boys like him – even heroes were children once – and he had begun an exhaustive search through the village's library for such a scroll.
Poor naïve Itachi was heartbroken to find that the only thing history books wrote about was brave warriors. Brave warriors in all their adult glory – their conquests of towns and women and things he didn't know.
When he had asked his father about this one day, the clan leader had laughed heartily at his young son's innocence.
"History details only the greatest acts, Itachi," he had explained over dinner, while his mother had smiled. "One must work hard to be worthy of such an honour." Uchiha Fugaku had said this to motivate his son, seeing his obvious interest with written facts. He figured it was the best way to encourage Itachi to be greater – there was no greater motivation than the one from within.
He was both right and wrong.
After hearing this, Itachi had gone on a mini training rampage, working himself to the bone to achieve this elusive 'greatness' that was denied to little boys. He didn't know what it would take, what this supposed greatness was; he figured he'd just get as strong as he could and kill a monster or something. He would figure it out when the time came; either way, he needed to be strong before anything else.
When his fifth birthday rolled around, he was thrilled to be receiving the complete archive of Konoha's history – his father had pulled a lot of strings for that – and not so thrilled with the accompanying message that was attached like a hideous card to ruin his present.
"You're going to have a little brother," they had said to him, as if it were a magical thing. He hadn't known how to react to the news, but at least it explained why his mother was getting so fat; he had assumed she was just getting lazy, since all she did was sit around the house all day eating everything in sight.
With this unpredicted news, he had tried to train harder than ever – they had told him there would be no time once 'the baby' came. It irked him that a thing even littler than him would dare to interrupt the beginning of his quest, but when the screaming bundle had been placed in front of him – slimy and smelly and all – he found he couldn't hurt the thing.
They told him it was something called love.
He had tried to look on the bright side – at least now he'd have someone to train with. His older cousins were always busy doing things outside the clan building, and he wasn't allowed out on his own yet. All he had were his scrolls and the little annoyance they decided to call 'Sasuke' after the legendary ninja. He wondered why they hadn't named him that. When he had casually thrown a shuriken at the gurgling lump of fat, his mother had smacked him hard across the face and taken Sasuke into the other room.
Perhaps he shouldn't have felt as sore as he did, but it didn't matter. From that moment on, his days were devoted entirely to training (his parents were too busy with Sasuke to notice), and his nights were accompanied by moonlight dancing on ancient ink. He immersed himself fully in the past, so that by the time he was seven, he had graduated top of the academy. He figured they would write something about him then, something about how extraordinary he was (his parents had started noticing him again). He felt sure that he had to be the youngest one to do it – the youngest and the best and the brightest and they had to, just had to, etch his name carefully on one of those scrolls now.
He went home, drunk on his own satisfaction, and carefully opened one of the last his scrolls that were yet unread. The night before, he had been fascinated with the retelling of the lives of the Legendary Sannin, whose every act was written so carefully, so precisely (even the handwriting was neater than it had been). He hadn't known what he'd been expecting from the next scroll – he felt certain nothing could top the Sannin. But little boys, even little prodigies, are still naïve.
He had unrolled the scroll to find a name that he would never forget.
-
All that night he swam in a shadow-less world. He could sense the presence of other things – buildings, trees, people – but their outlines were as transparent as water. In blaring light, all was invisible. His feet touched air and concrete and nothing, somehow knowing where to go even though he felt lost. He had been here before. There was murmuring all around, fleeting whispers and rustling leaves that caused a chill to crawl – uninvited – and settle itself comfortably on his aching spine. He could see yet couldn't see the world spinning – knew he was inside a box with no borders. He could see an outline start to form; something resembling a fuzzy ball that he later realized was a head. He could see the full form now, a man with broad shoulders and unruly hair, kneeling alone. He didn't know how he knew the man was alone, but he did; he also knew the man was facing him – the rigid kindness of his face blank as a doll's.
The murmuring died away. In the stark silence, the ringing friction of sliding metal echoed clearly in his ears, the curved blade arching as a ballerina does in the midst of the finale. There is no sound as the hero dies – the splatter of blood against the white screen morphs into the shape of a wolf and burns his eyes as he bolts upright to wake from the nightmare.
"Ooww!"
There was searing white. He couldn't open his eyes, afraid of what he'd see – afraid he'd be eaten by the fang.
"Itachi?" the childish voice is enough to reassure him. It's only Sasuke – it's only a dream.
"What is it?" he asks wearily, rubbing his eyes gently as he opens them. It's dark; such a contrast to his world.
The child does not speak. Instead he clings softly to his brother, his dark hair and eyes melting into the night. It comforts him.
"It's all right, Sasuke." He relishes in the safety of shadows.
He wishes he could do something about that skin, though; it glowed in the dark.
-
Hatake Sakumo.
For months he dreamed of Sakumo's adventures, and the haunting drove him to excel. Over and over he saw the white screen and the bloody wolf, the seppuku of honour and dishonour and pain. Sakumo had convinced him that he needed an ultimate weapon, something to be his trademark skill. He realized the frightening red eyes that had started to stare at him from the mirror all those years ago was not a demonic possession, but instead a gift. He found scrolls about the Sharingan; by the time he was eight, he had mastered the skill.
But he was still not in the history books.
He finally decided to ask someone if he wasn't the youngest kid to graduate from the academy. He decided on Shisui.
"Well, you're a heck of a strong kid, that's for sure," his older cousin answered thoughtfully. "But I think the youngest kid to graduate from the academy was six."
Itachi's eyebrows furrowed. "Six? What was his name?"
Shisui never hesitated. "Hatake Kakashi."
Hatake Kakashi.
-
Perhaps the Hatakes were sent to irk him – Sakumo with his early death, Kakashi with his talent. He had, by now, read all the history scrolls Konoha held; he knew when and why and how the village was created, everything surrounding its birth and rebirth, all its saviours and desperados. And although the Yondaime Hokage mesmerized him at first – the Kyuubi no Kitsune had caught his attention as well – everything lost its flavour. There was only the blind whiteness he yearned for, the dreams that refused to return.
He focussed his energies on Kakashi.
"Yeah, he's around," Shisui had answered vaguely to his inquisitions. "He's been a jounin since he was 13, so he's always out on missions and whatnot." He had been nine years old. He had four years to exceed the lone son of the lone wolf.
The first thing he did was to buy quality ink and an expensive fountain pen. On a blank scroll, he begins to write his own destiny – something he thinks of as more of a monograph than a diary.
-
Hatake Kakashi.
The name slips from him sometimes – the desperate fluttering of a firefly under the face of the moon. Sometimes it is drawn from his mind forcibly, a heavy pail tossed into the abyss of the well. When the four long years are over, when he has bled and screamed and clawed his way through the oppression of affection, he is crowned as one of the ANBU. It is at the outskirts of his dreams, this victory – and he accepts it in agony, unsure of how to proceed. In spite of all this, in spite of his turmoil through turbulent waters, the ink does not embrace him. The parchment of history remains free from his name. What else was there now? What other blindness was there to guide him?
Feverish, he consults the scrolls. He had spent too much time with the little squirt, most likely. He had missed something somewhere – distracted, like Sakumo, by a connection. More and more he starts to see the foolishness of the wolf's ways; what were lives in comparison to success? He gropes frantically for the answer.
"Itachi? You said you'd train with me today…"
He didn't have time for it; he didn't have time for anything.
"I'm sorry, Sasuke. Perhaps another time." A simple flick of the forehead, and the world was right again.
There is a pattern he cannot see. He doesn't simply want to be part of history – he wants to shape it.
-
He realizes that his realization is too late. He realizes, after reaching his greatness, that it would be his downfall. He watches his father struggle, and winces at his incompetence. He watches the clan members train, and sighs at their normality. He sees, with growing alarm, that history is about to repeat.
He couldn't let that happen; he would shape history before it could shape itself.
He dipped the pen and rested it gently on the neck of the inkbottle, smiling at his own foolishness. He lets the dark liquid drip languidly, knowing it will be the last sentence he writes. It is ridiculous to keep track of the past – the past is a thing of imagination.
Carefully, he lifts the pen and places the tip onto the naked blankness of the paper. His wrist moves through the letters like a jutsu, concise and full of purpose.
'I had to kill them, you see. Had to… because otherwise I would've ended up just like you.'
-
As he moves – marvelling at the beauty of the blade – he wonders if Sakumo felt this comfortable killing. He wonders how many Kakashi has killed. He had hesitated slightly in front of his mother, whose face had contorted in something he could not explain. Perhaps it was that thing they had told him was love. His plan is methodical, meticulous – he makes sure that not a single drop of blood touches a door screen.
He can't quite explain why he doesn't kill the child; even in the half-light, his skin still glowed. Perhaps the child is the only thing that separates him from Kakashi, since even the Sharingan is not his alone. He wants no affiliation; his shame would not be born of blood.
The scent is suffocating him.
-
He had secretly been watching the so-called "Copy Ninja" for years. Surprisingly (this was a shock even to himself), he didn't try to approach him. He watched him struggle through life, hiding behind the mask of anonymity. He watched in amusement as the child was placed in Kakashi's care, as the child grew. Sasuke had not discovered his shortcut to enlightenment, and he saw the pain flash in Kakashi's eyes every time the boy spoke of revenge.
He rarely had any dreams. In his mind, he can conjure up a clear image of the last wolf, the wild hair and kind face – maskless – features contorted in pleasure and pain. He runs his hands down the lean chest and torso, kissing his way down the lithe body until his lips close around the hard flesh that he is being urged to touch. He can hear Kakashi's voice, moaning his name softly as he starts to lose control. He likes Kakashi this way – easy to manipulate, manageable. The swirls of colours in his dreams blend into one illusion, breaking through the prism in a beam of white as hot liquid oozes its way down his hand.
He couldn't wait to meet him.
But on nostalgic nights, Sakumo would visit him in his prison of ideals. He witnesses the dance of the blade and the love of the man, and wakes up to a world of darkness.
"Anything wrong?" Kisame regarded him strangely. He had to turn from the warmth of the fire.
"No."
-
It is a revelation to him that he did not choose infamy from the beginning. Through his extensive studies, why did he not see that rogues – only the greatest, of course, but rogues the same – were just as important as heroes? Why did he only want to be the warrior?
In his fear, he chose an utterly unique path for himself – purely by accident. He had only meant to kill his father, to save himself from the oncoming shame, but then it dawned on him that anyone bearing the name of "Uchiha" could be the weak link. In pure sadistic irony, he had left the weakest one at the time alive. He chuckles to himself; the next morning they would retrieve the Kyuubi.
As he closes his eyes, he dreams of a wolf and a weasel in a circle of fire. He doesn't get his hopes up – but he can't describe the sheer joy he experiences when Kakashi is the one to greet them.
The white light is just as blinding as he remembers.
ENDAN: Turned out differently than I expected, and it's a rather strange piece (I don't quite like the ending, either). Still, I'm pretty happy with this overall – I wrote it the way I wanted (I was just testing out the style), and for the most part, the ideas I had originally were there.