Weeping Samurai | Uchiha Itachi [Editing]

Chapter 17: Roots

The Land of Grass flew by within a day, the trio entering the Land of Fire but refusing to slow down on their pace to get to the Rice Paddies.  Shiro’s life was on the line, and Itachi was indeed sincerely worried about her survival.  Kisame however was more grim and passive, just wanting to finish the mission Leader-sama had given them and bring the samurai back to the Land of Rain.

This, of course, was impossible.

Shiro was going to die; there was no doubt about that.  Even with her skin turning white as paper and cold as snow, Itachi trudged on with the limp girl dangling in his arms like a skeleton.  Her kimono, which had been soiled with streaks of dark blood and smears of mud, had been switched out to another white dress.  Her feet were still covered in her black flats, still caked in the dirt and blood that it had trodden on back in the last Earth village.

The Land of Fire was lush and green, the summer air warm with sunshine and cooled with wisps of occasional wind.  Shiro could feel her skin, frosting from the yang Chakra that pulsed through her veins like ice, tingling from the sun’s rays as she lay there in Itachi’s arms, her eyes cracked open and glued onto the cerulean sky above, clear save for the few streaks of white clouds that drifted by.

Day by day, Shiro felt her infamous strength drain from her body; the only feeling within her was the beating of her frail heart and burning iciness of white Chakra.  She felt like she was back in the Iron, struggling for warmth within her small hut of a house with her family…

Her family…

She thought of her mother, gentle and kind with her soothing voice and her soft touch.  She remembered of the times she would fall ill, and her sickly mother would be forced to take care of her; not that the woman minded, of course.  Her daughter was precious to her, and she worried about Shiro constantly.  The similarity between the two of them frightened her, and made her heart sink when she thought of the possibility Shiro would share the same fate as her.

When Shiro was born, Misaki cried when she saw the tuft of white hair upon her pale head.  She hugged the newborn baby close to her chest, Ichiro standing close to his heartbroken wife, and wept while murmuring frequent apologies to the baby.  She blamed herself for giving Shiro the instability of only possessing yang Chakra, dooming the baby girl for the rest of her life; the only physical evidence that the child wasn’t overwhelmed with yang Chakra were her midnight-black eyes.

Her wailing filled the nearly empty house, the parents of the new daughter clutching her tightly in her shaking arms.

Shiro was the first tragedy of the Musei family.

Four years later, another baby girl was born, with similar characteristics to her father.  With jet-black hair and silver eyes, she was the exact opposite of Shiro; and this scared the girls’ parents to the core.

A child with yin Chakra, succumbed to the flaring darkness of the black essence, was the last thing the couple expected.  It made sense in a way however, as the yin Chakra that was supposed to be Shiro’s would be deposited into her younger sister.

Ichiro and Misaki dared not have another child, as they feared something worse would enter this world.

Raising one energetically unstable daughter was tough; the first four years of parenting were haunted with the fear their snowy daughter would snap, her white Chakra overflowing from her pores.  She was unbalanced and very delicate, threatening to drop dead at any given moment.

When the second daughter came into the picture, some stability was provided to the family; Yoru’s black Chakra that surrounded her being offered some extra yin Chakra for Shiro, the elder sister offering Yoru her own yang Chakra.