and the tears fall
word count: 3420
warning: occasional expletives
“I’m going to die soon,” Itachi says nonchalantly, a languid smile painted across his features as he looks up at the clouds drifting amidst the hazy sky, and you startle as you realise that he’s not, in fact, talking about the state of the weather, but about losing his own life instead.
“I’m sorry.” You let out a loud exhale, pinning him with a raised-eyebrow stare. “What did you just say?”
Itachi turns his head to meet your gaze, and you find yourself hating how steady it is. You’re certain that it’s in stark contrast to your own. “I’m going to die soon,” he repeats, and he must have seen the consternation written in your eyes that you’ve been trying so hard to hide - because he’s always been so damn good at reading you - for his gaze softens and he reaches out to tug at your sleeve, coaxing you into remaining seated next to him.
You pull your cloak tighter around your body, watching idly as watery sunlight leaves faint flecks of dim gold across the dark red clouds printed across the black fabric. “I heard you the first time,” you mutter under your breath, but he hears you anyway; the corners of his eyes crinkle as the corners of his lips curve into the ghost of a smile, and he responds equally softly.
“It was bound to happen.”
(You hear him anyway.)
You scoff bitterly, squinting up at the sky instead. “It didn’t have to.”
He shrugs. You hate how easy it is for him to treat his death as though it were nothing, as though it meant nothing, as though he were nothing. “You knew it was my plan to die by my little brother’s hands all along.”
Your throat burns, and you force yourself to swallow down what tastes like a fat, ugly glob of saliva and bile mixed together, because shinobi don’t cry - or least that’s what was drilled into you when you spent your childhood, adolescence and adulthood as a shinobi rising up the ranks (and later out of the village) by Itachi’s side. That’s what was drilled into both of you; you wonder if he’s taken it to heart, or if he’s just pretending, like you, to be a good shinobi. And a part of you hopes he is, that some part of him is crying on the inside, that his nonchalance about his own death is just some cruel masquerade.
But you’ve spent your entire life growing up by him, measuring the slightest changes of his facial expressions with your eyes the same way he measures yours. You sneak a sideways glance at him, and you allow a disgruntled noise that’s a mix between a sneer and a sigh to flutter past your lips as you confirm what you already know.
Itachi is a good shinobi. Better than you. The best you’ve ever known, really. The type to be able to build a fortress, or several prisons maybe, around his emotions to keep them in check, to prevent them from affecting any decisions.
But this time, you can tell that he’s telling the truth. That he’s not covering up any of his emotions as he usually does. There is no masquerade, no covering up of the heart’s scars, nothing. The mask of cold stoicism that he slaps on twenty-four-seven is gone. Shattered. Crumbled into dust and faded into oblivion.
And you hate it. Hate the fact that it’s just him, unapologetically wearing his heart on his sleeve, unapologetically going forth to meet the death he planned out for himself, unapologetically leaving you here alone in a place without him. Being unapologetically happy to die by his little brother’s hands.
And you hate that you feel this way, because shinobi aren’t supposed to let emotions get in their way. That’s why you killed your mother with tears raining in your heart but frozen in your eyes and let your reddened sword drop from your father’s still body with his blood staining your clothes without shedding a single tear all those years ago. No hesitation. Because it was a mission. And you were a good shinobi who didn’t let your emotions get in the way of your duty.
And you hate that the back of your throat is aflame, almost as though Itachi had set alight Amaterasu inside of you; it renders you into frozen speechlessness, asphyxiating, and as you fight to bite back all the words you have to say, you’re unable to hold back the tears that spill in crooked droplets down your cheeks.
If he sees it, he doesn’t make any mention of it, instead averting his eyes back to the partially cloud-enveloped sunrays. You do the same, choking back everything you need to say and more, watching the way the dappled sunlight filters through the clouds and falls like crystal tears against the metal surface of Itachi’s scratched-out headband.
You’re a good shinobi, you tell yourself. You’re a good shinobi who’s lost track of your mission. You’re a good shinobi, you try to convince yourself, so you’ll stop crying and pretend that everything’s all okay, because death is a frequent visitor in the life of a ninja and it’s something that you’ll take into stride, because it’s okay, because you’re a good shinobi.
The tears don’t stop.
Because you’re not a good shinobi, you relent bitterly, raising your arm and allowing your tears to bleed into the sleeve of your Akatsuki robe. Because Itachi is leaving to finish the final portion of his mission, leaving you alone without a mission because you’ll leave the Akatsuki after he dies, lost and confused with no one to follow, because that’s what you are, a lost shinobi, worthless without a mission to complete. Because you’re a bad shinobi, you think, your throat burning even more than you imagined possible, because the same person you’ve loved since you were old enough to understand the concept of love is leaving you behind to complete his mission - because he’s a good shinobi - in a place without him.
And it’s a scary notion, it really is, because the world for you, for as long back as your memories would allow you, has always been a place with him inside it. Training together. Competing to see who would be the first to unlock the Sharingan (he won). Seeing who could curry the most favour out of your sensei (you won). Growing up, donning the same white porcelain masks, saving and being saved by one another.
You’ve saved him many times before, just as he had saved you countless times in the past. It would be nice, you think, it would be so fucking nice if you could save him too this time.
The tears don’t stop, because you can’t save him even if you tried. And it’s frustrating, it really is. You can’t stop him from leaving you behind, and you can’t stop him from dying by the hands of the little brother who he loves the most.
And because you can’t save him from a place where he doesn’t want to be saved.
You’re not a good shinobi, you think, unintentionally letting a biting laugh slip into the thinly-held silence. He turns to you, eyebrows furrowing in thought, and you freeze as his darkened crimson gaze pierces into you. “You’re crying,” he states calmly.
You force a smile. It sits uncomfortably crooked on your features. “I am,” you respond, and you’re surprised that your voice doesn’t waver as much as you think it will.
You see the apology written in his gaze, and he sees the acceptance written in yours. You’re giving up, you realise, on clinging on to the stubborn wishfulness of him staying by your side; and with one look at the way he wears his facial expression, you can see it in him too - he’s seen it all in you, too, the way that you’re letting him go.
And the tears keep falling.
Because someone you couldn’t bring yourself to say goodbye to became someone you let go of; because time brought the two of you together like shattered pieces of the same whole, only to later break you apart more effortlessly than glass fragments crashing into smithereens against polished wood.
“You know,” you say, your voice too loud in the empty silence that hangs like a thick cloud between the two of you, “I didn’t fall in love with you only to have to say goodbye to you like this.”
He shifts, and you wonder if he’s ever been hit with the revelation that you’re in love with him - that you’ve been in love with him for almost all your life, even after seeing him buy food and presents for the girlfriend that wasn’t you, even after seeing the smile on his face knowing it wasn’t you that brought him that kind of happiness - emotions like love would get in the way of missions, anyway, and you were a good shinobi, good enough to know to avoid it - and even after watching as blood spilled like crimson rain the night that he killed his girlfriend with tears in his heart and ice in his eyes.
Even after he’s never felt the same.
“I’m sorry,” he responds quietly, and you know he is.
So you smile.
“That’s okay.”
You wonder if he hears the strain in your voice that you’re trying so hard to contain. You wonder if he knows that he’s breaking you apart, fragment by fragment and piece after piece, in the most beautiful and cruelly kind way.
You turn to him, and watch as golden flecks of sunlight shine into his crimson eyes and reveal the tears that he refuses to let spill.
You know he hears, and you know he knows.
He tilts his head and stares right back at you, and you know he sees it too, the tears that fall in continuous streaks down your cheek and refuse to halt their course.
And it’s like the two of you are standing at opposite ends of the same labyrinth, and you’re running from the entrance where you stood to the exit where he’s waiting for you, only that by the time you get there in search of him, you learn that he’s already gone.
