elementalhero | Part two, because this is epic huge. (Reply)

This next scene is my favorite. My favorite in the entire one-shot. Possibly my favorite fanfiction scene I’ve ever written, despite the fact that it is mostly derived right out of the book (the chemical burn scene, one of the most powerful scenes in the book also). I just vomited up this whole thing, my heart literally pounding the whole time, finished it, saved it, closed the laptop, and passed out asleep. It was two-thirty in the morning.

“This is the greatest moment of your life,” Madara says, “and you’re missing it.”

Breathe.

My arm is aching and my feet are frozen and the river is fighting and fighting and Shisui is fighting and fighting and I’m not here, I’m not, I’m with Sasuke no that won’t work because Shisui has the same Uchiha baby face and I can’t look at his face right now because he’s drowning I’m drowning him I’m drowning I’m with Anko I’m under the night sky I’m anywhere but here.

I have no words for how much I love that run-on. The fact that his initial escape mechanism is to imagine himself with Sasuke kills me. And then the repetition of “drowning” as the verb, but with different subjects and objects was also awesome. This also sets up the very important (and all mine, I’d like to add with pride) motif of “I’m not here.” I think that Itachi must be very good at distancing himself from himself when he has to perform violent acts like this. I think he must just shut the world out. That might just be me, but it was so much fun to explore. Shutting up.

“Because everything up to now is a story,” Madara says, “and everything after now is a story.”

I’m not here.

I’m not holding my best friend underwater until he stops struggling and his face is turning blue and slackening and his eyes flicker redblackredblack and I can’t even see the betrayal in them anymore.

Betrayal, used properly, is such a powerful word.

Breathe.

He can’t breathe.

Breathe.

I love that little interjection of “he can’t breathe” into Itachi’s self-guided detachment.

Don’t look.

Breathe and don’t think.

Close your eyes.

“Don’t shut this out,” Madara says. “Open your eyes. Listen to me.”

I’m not here.

“Someday,” Madara says, “you will die, and until you know that, you’re useless to me.”

A line straight from Tyler Durden, and yet, it seems so perfectly Madara.

Every tear that falls from my eyes falls into the Nakano River. I wonder if Shisui is crying and his tears are mixing with the river water don’t think about it breathe breathe you aren’t here.

Psyched you out, didn’t I? You thought it was going to be a coherent sentence.

First you have to hit bottom.

This is the greatest moment of our life.

Notice “our” rather than “your.”

“Come back to the pain.”

I’m not here.

“There is no difference between love and ownership. Every bond you make is a possession. You own every person you have ever loved and everything you own will one day own you. It is vital that you understand this,” Madara says.

The second half of that is Tyler (from “and everything...”), but I came up with there being no difference between love and ownership. I’m proud.

I’m not here. I’m four years old and I’m lost and I’m wandering the battlefield and that man has his guts spewed all over the ground and he’s still alive and that kunoichi’s head is wrenched around the wrong way and the eyes are boiled and black and staring at me staring staring and the crows are eating the swollen black tongue out of a dead child’s head and I am painting the ground with the contents of my stomach and mommy daddy tou-san kaa-san someone anyone no one korosu naide why why why why doshite blood blood is everywhere

This is the most graphic violent imagery I have ever used. I also usually don’t use straight Japanese in prose (I prefer to stick it in dialogue), but it seemed so perfect to underline the incoherency and almost quasi-religious (i.e. speaking in tongues) shock of the experience. All of the words I used were right next to their translations, except “korosu naide,” which I believe translates to “Don’t kill me.” (Mini-Sasuke screams it at Itachi during the massacre, and I thought it fitting.)

Stop.

No.

Please.

Oh.

Why.

Please.

Why.

“You have to let go. You have to give up first.”

May I never be content.

May I never be complete.

May I never be perfect.

Deliver me, Madara, from being perfect and complete.

Derived, but I love how it also is his way of spiritually rejecting Anko, his source of happiness, because he feels like he can never deserve happiness again.

“You can cry,” Madara says, “and it will not matter, but first you have to know that you’re stupid and you will die. Look at me.”

I’m crying. My eyes sear and my head hurts like white fire no black fire, black fire and black sun and black moon and the tears dripping from my right eye are not tears, they are drops of my blood. Uchiha blood. Shisui’s blood.

I am crying Shisui’s blood.

Oh my god. I’m sorry. I’m so proud of this. The run-on sentence depicting the feeling of getting the Mangekyou (black fire = Amaterasu, black moon and black sun = Tsukuyomi, I guess I had nothing for Susanoo), and I love love love how he makes the jumps from his eyes bleeding to crying Shisui’s blood. It’s so powerful.

Shisui’s body is lying at the bottom of the river and I lean over and retch into the water. Damn. Damn it. Madara takes my face in his hands. Liar. Faker. Faker.

I never established that Itachi is standing on the river. Oops. My mental image, though, of his standing on the water, literally over the body, then dropping to his knees and retching into the river itself. Then Madara takes his face, almost gently, smearing the blood and tears on his cheeks, and speaks to him while Itachi is still sobbing and incoherent. There’s “liar” and “faker” as failed motifs again, by the way.

“You are breaking your attachments,” he tells me. “Only by destroying yourself can you find the greatest power of your spirit. Every man kills the thing he loves.”

Strangely enough, “breaking attachments” is not only a theme in Fight Club, but in Naruto as well (via Sasuke). INTERESTING.

I’m not here.

Madara’s with me for once, and I’m back from a mission. I haven’t seen Anko in a while; missions and Madara and the memory of Shisui have been keeping me away from happiness and completion and perfection. I can taste dango and I can’t do this right now.

I haven’t slept in weeks.

I just realized; Anko really doesn’t equal Marla, but the support groups. Wow. That’s not what I originally intended, but it worked out. Cool.

Anko says hi and I say hi and Madara’s telling me I’m busy.

She asks what I’m doing.

I’m busy.

Anko asks if something’s wrong.

Madara’s whispering, nothing’s wrong.

Nothing’s wrong.

Once again, no dialogue tags, to help with the meldy feel of Madara being Tyler whispering in his ear and speaking for him.

Anko looks at my uniform. She asks if that’s my blood.

I look down.

Some of it, yeah.

What is Fight Club without that line?

It’s the night.

Blood is everywhere and for once I’m here for it, I’m here and I’m not here.

When you have insomnia, you can touch nothing and nothing touches you.

A copy of a copy of a copy.

This scene, the massacre scene, could have been a lot better. I think I wasted all my brain on the Shisui scene.

Someone falls off the end of my kunai and I tell myself, I am part of the amazing miracle of death. One minute someone is a person, the next they are cooling, an object.

Only in death do we have names.

I like “only in death...” but the other motifs out of Fight Club come off as me trying to throw as many in as possible. Fail.

Fugaku is last to fall and he snarls and booms and begs at the end and wants to know why and I tell him that we are not beautiful and unique snowflakes and he bleeds out before I can tell him about the man with his guts out and the woman with her head on the wrong way and the child being eaten by carrion birds and how asinine this all really is.

Itachi, I think, has so much contempt for war, and by extension, himself, since he is an instrument of war.

This is what Madara wants me to do.

Sasuke comes in oh god Sasuke don’t look and I can see in his eyes the same look that must have been in mine when I was lost on the battlefield and it’s the look when we realize that we are stupid and one day we are going to die.

D: I love “oh god Sasuke don’t look.”

We are the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world.

We are God’s middle children.

These are Madara’s words coming out of my mouth.

The shuriken slices his arm and I’m not here and my fist is in his gut and I’m not here and black sun black moon rips into his eyes and his mind and I’m not here and and and

I’m here.

I can’t do this.

I love love love that. He tries to detach himself and can’t, because it’s Sasuke, and he can’t go to his other place because Sasuke’s there and he’s already emotionally run away from Anko. I’d also like to point out that I, uh, got the order of events wrong (it goes, shuriken, Tsukuyomi, gut punch), but it was kind of on purpose. So, sorry.

Deliver me from being perfect and complete and I can’t do this, Madara.

Hate me for doing this and despise me for living and live your unsightly life because we are not beautiful and unique snowflakes and cling to life without honor because there is no honor in our lives, Sasuke.

This works so much better if you read it aloud, with feeling.

I am Madara’s mouth.

I am Madara’s hands.

Everything here is part of Madara, and vice versa.

And I tie the hitai-ate back on and one tear comes but no more. My tears are gone. My tears are spent. The wheels of war go right on spinning.

You don’t understand any of it, and then you die.

<33333 I think that’s my best use of a motif ever, right there. I don’t know, it just...fits. The whole space monkeys thing, being a tool but not understanding why or for what purpose, right there, after he murdered his family and doesn’t really know why...

“I was under the impression your mission parameters specified every Uchiha.”

Shut up.

I am Taro’s Grinding Back Molars.

“And okay, I don’t really count because I’m dead or whatever and you don’t count because this wasn’t a suicide mission, but...”

I am Taro’s Raging Bile Duct.

“I count one left.”

Shut the hell up.

Madara folds his arms. “I’m disappointed. We were making such progress with your attachments and then you go and pull this on me—”

I am Taro’s Clenched Fists.

Do you think it was kind of me, to leave him alive? Do you think living alone for the rest of his life is better than death? Do you think a child survives that without scars? That wasn’t kindness, you shit, that was the cruelest thing I’ve ever done in my life because I am a heartless soulless selfish sick bastard.

“Exactly! Why would you go and do that?”

It’s a shame, I say. I used to be such a nice guy.

Notice that Madara’s dialogue is in quotes, whereas Itachi’s is not.

Anko finds me before I make my escape.

Her eyes are wide with horror and I realize I’m still covered in blood. For the record, none of this is mine.

“What kind of sick game are you playing?” she whispers, eyes horror-struck and her kunai at my throat.

And I try to tell her how it’s all self-destruction, like she said, I’m destroying myself to rebuild my spirit, and it’s Madara’s fault and she’s looking at me like I’m insane.

“Madara? Who?”

Uchiha Madara.

Itachi, Uchiha Madara has been dead for sixty years and you just murdered your entire family.

I know, but you’ve seen him.

What.

He’s been with me on some missions. He helped paint Hokage Mountain that one time, you know, with the yellows, you said it was inventive. He follows me around sometimes in ANBU. He has the mask with the one eye hole and the swirl pattern, I know you’ve seen him.

Anko is looking at me with creeping horror. “Itachi, no one’s been following you. No one but us went out on the mountain that day. No one in ANBU has such a mask and you’ve been alone for the past three weeks talking to yourself. Your family is—was worried and my God, what have you done?”

I think that quotes represent Itachi being mostly cognizant of reality, and no quotes or dialogue tags represent his disjointed awareness or general understanding of what is being said, but not really being there. Goes with the insomnia idea.

Alone?

Alone.

To myself?

To yourself.

I am Taro’s Acidic Stomach Sensation.

Because Madara’s been hanging around me, yet has never introduced himself to or been noticed by anyone.

Because Madara never went on that self-destruction soapbox until I’d heard it from Anko.

Because I am Madara’s mouth and hands and words and Anko is carrying me I didn’t even realize my legs had gone out and

I’m not here.

I tell Madara he’s not real and he cracks up.

No, really, I insist. “I insist” is a dialogue tag, not what he’s saying. You’re a figment of my sleep-deprived imagination and I’m batshit insane and I made you up because people who have been dead for sixty years do not suddenly turn up and hang out with their batshit crazy descendants.

Or maybe I made you up. Maybe you’re my schizophrenic hallucination.

That’s Madara. This scene is hard to follow. Well, I suppose it’s supposed to be.

I laugh at him and laugh because it’s all so funny, really, we are not beautiful and unique snowflakes, and it’s really uncomfortable in here.

They come in and ask me why I killed Shisui and I told them I wanted to destroy something beautiful. There’s that opening line motif again, the one I never used and was supposed to. Oops. There was supposed to be more Shisui interaction and many comments on how beautiful he is, and I don’t remember what I was going for with it, but I remember it being hard to set up, so I took it out and forgot about it. They ask me why I killed everyone and I told them about the snowflakes and the self-destruction and bonds and they look at each other and write something down and I add that I’m batshit crazy and made up Madara in my head, and they look at each other some more and they leave and I’m getting bored in here and maybe I can finally get some sleep.

I wonder how Sasuke’s holding up.

That last line kills me. In the middle of him having a mental breakdown, he thinks of Sasuke.

Anko walked towards the insane ward, wiping tears as she walked, and almost ran over one ANBU. She apologized and excused herself, and it was kind of funny later because she couldn’t remember what his mask looked like and it felt important, but she couldn’t remember and soon forgot all about it.

And the ANBU kept walking and the mask kept anyone from seeing the smile he wore.

Someone asked, and apparently it wasn’t clear, which ticked me off, but that’s Madara. Whether you think it’s a contagious-crazy illusion or that he really was real and fracking with Itachi’s head the whole time is your call. (My opinion? It’s the second.)

.owari.

Also, she requested that I have a look at Anko's character in this, so I will. *glances up as parents walk in* Uh. Later. Remind me.