Sneak Peek: Wrongs of Yesterday Ch2
Fic premise: After the Konoha Crush, Itachi got captured and is now sitting in one of Konoha's prisons, waiting for his eventual execution (whenever that may be).
Also, Fugaku survived the massacre somehow and just woke up from a coma. In this universe, he gets to see how his kids turn out!
The fear of darkness is not innate. For millennia, farmers and poets alike would teach their children to shun the dark, to fear the monsters hidden within. And all the while they did, shinobi taught their young to embrace and appreciate it instead. They knew that you could not summon monsters with the flick of the light switch — only give them way by closing your eyes. And that’s what shinobi kind wanted. Most of them, at least.
Fugaku’s eyes, for one, had been closed for the longest time, raising the most considerate monster he had ever met. Inadvertently? intentionally? — It didn’t matter. He didn’t know. And what became of that young monster, Fugaku didn’t know either. In the hospital room, even with the lights on, he was confined to a darkness of a different sort.
Confined to his bed, he watched the clock ticking by and helplessly trying to join a duet with the footsteps outside the door. One dawdled on, the others hurried past. Life carried on, faster than time. Had carried on in what Fugaku’s brain had distorted into a blink of an eye. Even now, life outside carried on, taking no heed of the people it left behind. Had Fugaku ever taken proper heed of them? He thought he had. He really did.
Now that they were gone, they could no longer reprimand him, support him, talk to him, or even visit him inside the cold sterility of his hospital room. Not that they could have, had they been alive. For all intents and purposes, Fugaku was trapped, the door to his room locked, the windows missing, and the walls covered in security seals. It was as though he had been brought to a prison complex instead of a health facility, and the former Uchiha head could only assume what had inspired such strict precautions. Of course, he had never expected to be treated with a whole lot of sympathy after what had technically amounted to treachery. But then again, hadn’t the Uchiha been betrayed first? And also betrayed last? So who was the true villain here, really?
However, the doctors and nurses who came and went seemed to carry no ill intent toward him, their eyes revealing none of the grudges or reservations you’d see an actual captive receive. It was as though they were oblivious — more oblivious than before — to the crimes they had borne witness to, committed at the hands of clan and village, and it made Fugaku feel physically ill to know that any and every curse on his lips was wasted on their blissfully ignorant ears, not to mention foolish. As much as he thirsted for justice, this was not the time. So he had kept quiet, let his soul burn in solitude, wept until the fires had been drowned out, and fallen asleep when all but ashes remained.
When he heard the turning of a key, Fugaku dragged an arm past his face, unknowing but certainly not uncaring whether there was anything to wipe away in the first place. Expecting another check-up or healing session with an iryo specialist, he was surprised to see what he considered yet another monster — a <i>heedless</i> one, this time, deserving of any curse he could fathom — flanked by the two ominous figures of cloaked Root agents.
“What a delight,” the wrinkly, old man said without so much as a trace of cheer underneath the wrappings in his face. “We feared you’d never return to the waking world.”
Muscles burning from the strain, he pushed himself up against the headrest, ever so slowly finding a sitting position. “Danzo Shimura…” Fugaku greeted, a little too quiet for his liking, a little too broken. “What an unexpected visit.” For all that it mattered, Fugaku hadn’t expected to wake up either. One way or another, his fate should’ve been sealed the moment his son had plunged a blade into his back at the behest of—
A cane clicked over the floor in an even rhythm. “I would’ve come sooner, but my presence was needed elsewhere, I’m afraid.” With a heavy sigh, the old man took a chair, dropping his aging body into its rattling frame. “I’m sure you understand. My apologies for the house arrest.”
Fugaku was not a masochist — nobody in their right mind was — but for his taste, the interaction was lacking animus on Danzo’s part. Instead, the other man let his posture slacken, cradling his cane inside his lap, and gestured for his bodyguards to step back, as though he cared not to crowd the former Uchiha head with the village’s attack dogs. If he wasn’t mistaken, then Danzo was trying to act casual with him, almost friendly, like one of them hadn’t co-signed the execution order for the other’s entire extended family.
It took a while, but Fugaku opted for feigning ignorance, quirking an eyebrow rather than doing something unwise. “That was you? The… ‘house arrest,’ I mean.”
Danzo nodded — Almost sympathetically, if not for the fact that Fugaku knew the elder couldn’t care less. “Just a little safety measure. You see, we've been having quite the turbulent week. You did notice, didn’t you?”
Ah, yes, except “turbulent” for whom? Fugaku had definitely taken note of the fast-paced back-and-forth happening just outside his hospital room, healers hurrying from patient to patient in what was reminiscent of previous wars, if that was what this so-called “turbulence” was. A shinobi Danzo’s age surely wouldn’t have an active role in the field anymore, however. Even during the Third Great Shinobi War, the elder had already been more of a desk murderer than a general. Curiously, Danzo barely looked a day older than before, but logically, his walking cane was disqualifying enough, making him decisively more decrepit than the Third.
“I see,” he nodded. Speaking of the hokage, “I take it that this is the reason I am being visited by you instead of Lord Third?”
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