TRAUMA BOUND | itachi centric

i. the prodigy

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The first time he saw her, she was teary eyed, plucking the strings on a harp like she feared it would shatter.

The world around him had fizzled away as if it had all been unreal, and the chatter drowned out, revealing a dark skinned girl behind the white fog.

Chords were strung into existence, filling the space between them and reaching a part of him he had never known. He watched, unmoving, as she played what Itachi thought was the saddest ballad ever, with the notes sounding like an ode to a dead mother. Her hair spayed out all around her, defying nature's pull—as though it wanted to touch the marble ceiling above it. She was draped in linen cloth, bearing an expression he was all too familiar with...pain.

Albeit unsure why, he wanted to run his hand across her forehead to smooth those wrinkles; catch the tears cascading down her eyes; and thread his hands lightly through her hair. 

He wished he could speak.

please save me

there is still hope

He didn't know who had said that, but he let himself think it was her, begging for someone to set her free.

He closed his eyes.

And when he opened them, she was gone.

"Itachi. Did you hear a word I said?" He was back to reality, where his father wore his never-changing, stony expression.

Itachi shook his head slowly, still a bit dazed from whatever he had just come back from. Was it a genjutsu? Or was he finally going crazy?

(Whatever it was, he wanted to go back.)

"I said repeat the standard Fire Style training ten times, then kunai, and afterwards meet me at my study so I can teach you Advanced Elemental theory."

With those instructions, he briskly walked off, and Itachi was left alone in the training grounds, staring at the blank space he left for a few moments before he got to work.

At the age of five, Itachi was tagged as an Uchiha prodigy.

(At the age of five, Itachi was no longer a person.)

He graduated at six, became a genin at seven, and passed his chuunin exams at eight. While his peers were still learning the Will Of Fire and how to make one shadow clone, Itachi could recite every bingo book edition by heart and took down his enemies with four shadow clones.

The people called him a prodigy, a genius, a monster...whatever they thought could rationalise sending a child into the battlefield. But truth was, he was just a boy, a boy who spent every moment since he could walk, training.

His father had once told him that nothing in a shinobi's life was constant, but Itachi didn't agree. Because everyday he would train till his bones screamed stop and his eyes bled out, then he'd head over to the hospital to heal everything he'd destroyed just to repeat it again the next day.

Training was his constant, and somehow, it was what kept him going.

At least at first it was.

Until the weeping musician appeared once again, and the next day, and the next, until every night he would stay awake seated near the moonlight just so he could be enveloped into her world without distraction.