Ikigai

Chapter 30: My Violet + My Blue

It didn't come as a surprise, not really. 

But Itachi would be lying if he said it didn't hurt to hear the news. He'd be lying if he said he didn't feel a momentary sense of panic in his chest when he heard what had happened. 

Even more so when he couldn't do anything about it from where he was currently sitting.  

Bark!

The old cookbook in his lap had fallen and the once-sleeping Yami that had lain beneath his feet had now jumped onto his stomach sensing the slight shift in his emotions, sniffing his face as if to ask what was wrong. 

"That's what I had overheard, but I thought you should know," Kisame finished, pausing for a moment before walking back into the house.  

His brother was gone, and though Kisame had said Sasuke had gone willingly, he couldn't stop himself from thinking that maybe hearing he had been kidnapped instead would have made the sinking feeling in his chest just a little bit better. 

It wasn't that he wanted Sasuke to have been kidnapped, not necessarily, but knowing Sasuke had walked off into Orochimaru's hands willingly left a bitter taste in his mouth. 

Didn't Sasuke hate him enough to detest appearing anything like him, hate anyone Itachi would be associated with, much more with the very man who had killed the Hokage? 

Didn't Sasuke know that following in his older brother's footsteps would only bring him more pain? This wasn't a competition to see who could be the better villain. Not to Itachi.

Meaningless. 

What had Itachi done exactly? It was as if everything he had done up to that point was now rendered meaningless and every murder he had committed only seemed to blink through his mind as their eyes stared back at him,  their bodies drained of their life and of their blood. 

Death and suffering.

It was almost comical. It was as if history was repeating itself and Itachi was once again that young boy standing beside Orochimaru at Obito's funeral as he had asked him what the meaning of life was. 

"There is none," the older man had told him. 

The life Itachi had seen the moment Sasuke was born, the life he had worked to protect in the background had proven otherwise, but it was now becoming full of death and suffering. Just like him, just like Itachi, his deadbeat brother.

Itachi's breath faltered as his fingers absent-mindedly stroked Yami's fur, his eyes glazing over as he fell further into his own hopeless dismay.

"Hey, what color is this?"

Silence.

Kintsugi didn't need sight to be able to tell something was wrong with Itachi. 

If she were honest with herself, it bothered her, because not only had he not spoken to her as much as he used to ever since she had left the hospital a few weeks ago, he seemed more guarded, more cold.

And if Kintsugi didn't know herself better, she would say the emotion she felt about the whole thing was anger and a lot of hurt.

Had she done something wrong? Was she getting too close? Is that why she felt this way?

Even when they had all returned from a mission the other day, Itachi had kept his promise to get dango and mochi with her, but he had acted indifferent as if it were just another task he had to complete.

She couldn't help but think of Rashaan. That maybe he was right. She was a tool and would always be a tool. A means to an end. But here she was determined to push through.