Sometimes I sit and think about how isolated Itachi was from the stem of existence that pushes through turbulent life.. He didn't have a part of himself that belonged to him, that was solely his. His identity or sense of self was stripped from him when he was barely able to walk. His needs as a child which are basic for every newborn, love, value, patience, a voice, formulaic and necessary to grow into a functioning adult, were denied all rights by his mother and father on account of internal warfare. What about his extended family? Did he have aunts and uncles who bonded w/him? Did they root for him when he accomplished his first steps, did they bring him little gifts and take family picnics and defend him when his mother got fed up with him being a naughty kid? Was Itachi ever allowed to be a naughty kid? Was he ever allowed to visit his cousins for play time as a kid? Sleepovers and holiday outings?
Did he ever have anyone in his corner AT ALL?
No Itachi was thrust into the underbelly of war when he was 4 years old and his father brought him to a warzone, a valley of decomposing bodies, corpses that wreaked of blood and guts and bodily fluids. Out in the open. His father didn't do it to protect him from what was to come, to shield his formative sensibilities from the dangers of the ninja world, he did it to MANIPULATE and SECURE A WIN in the clan's favor. Here he had a son who exceeded every milestone a parent could pray for. Why not extort, manipulate, mansplain, manlight, and emotionally abuse my firstborn into becoming the ninja he was meant to be, through the flimsy front of a father who means well, all the while shaping his developing mental facilities into a tool for the future of the clan.
You can be sure Fugaku gloated and preened as he poetically unfolded the horrors of war to baby Itachi, ignoring that he was terrified to the point where he had nightmares every night of dead, blown up bodies or stray limbs, strewn discriminately with entrails and bones, swimming in a river of gore and blood. You can be sure it was those images Itachi saw every night when he closed his eyes, and when he woke up sweating and holding back screams no one was around to console him, hold his shaking and grieving lost soul until the convulsions calmed down, no one expected that of a prodigy.
No one expected a prodigy to be anything less than a killing machine, a well oiled infantry soldier, a perfectly honed stroke of luck for a clan who only knew abandonment and discrimination. Itachi was their shining light, their promising future, their only hope. No one expected a prodigy to distrust them, to turn against its own kin, to reshape the fate of all the ninja lands. No one expected a prodigy to betray them. No one expected a prodigy to fall. To fail.
Did Itachi have friends? Sasuke was the closest mirage he had to the living world. Sasuke was his constant. Shisui gave up. Shisui abandoned him. Every morsel of any shred of comfort Itachi longed for was slowly and deliberately removed from him, one by one, methodically by fate. The only last detail remaining was either to kill himself, or weild his hand and let fate steal the one last remaining bit of rationality, and that was choice. Itachi never had a choice from the moment he was conceived, to the moment his dying and crippled body failed him.
Itachi was never allowed a wife. Children of his own. A legacy. He didn't have a choice. He was never allowed to grow old. Grandchildren. He wasn't allowed the privilege of seeing Sasuke grow with his family. He wasn't allowed to love his nieces and nephews. He wasn't allowed the gift of settling down and pass on his genes to future prodigies. To thirst for the love of a woman. He wasn't to have connections that weren't of state and sanctioned by his superiors. Every single move he made was pre-planned and concerned with authority. Every single minutiae of his entire existence was woven with the fate of many others. Every aspect of life failed Itachi, from his family to his friends, to his superiors to his own body.
Sasuke was the only anomaly, the only piece of the puzzle that was whole, unmarred from the destructive forces commanding Itachi's fate.
(Sasuke discourse coming.)
- Written by my friend who is too lazy to post this on her blog and only wrote this to distract me from the fact that she hasn't started writing any of our fic
HATERS DO NOT CROSS THIS THRESHOLD.. Take your pathetic hate for a 2D drawing and whine on your own cringe blogs.