✲Through the Blinds✲{Itachi Uchiha}

✦06✧

Itachi slowly raised his head, cringing in pain. His heavy eyes managed to flutter open, only to suddenly widen them. Surrounding him was pitch darkness and a silence so concrete that his own pulse and the ringing in his ears were audible.

“Where… am I?” he asked the darkness as he tried to move, wincing at the sound of clinking. ‘I feel heavy’, he noted as fatigue began spreading in his arms, before another sound startled him: a low, distant sobbing.

As it got louder, his paternal intuition immediately deciphered it to be a child’s cries. It sounded like a girl and seemed like there she was right in front of him—and on cue, a sudden luminous light strains his eyes. Seconds of adjusting to the light, he was squinting at a spotlight where a small figure was curled up against a corner of patchy brick wall.

‘Is that…?’ Itachi gasped; it didn’t take him long to recognize his own child.

“Mia!” He instinctively lunged forward but ends up falling on his knees, hissing in pain. He brings up both hands and realized there was heavy duty chains tied around his wrists, marking deep, red lines as if he’d been chained for days.

Alarmed, Itachi began to shake. “Wh-what—What’s going on?!”

“Daddy…” He looked up at the sound of Mia’s whimpering voice, and scowled, broken-hearted at Mia’s weeping face buried into her tiny hands (one hand clinging onto her ripped and stained plushy). She looked terrified, helpless, and Itachi just couldn’t bear to see her suffering any longer when he could do nothing but watch. Gritting his teeth, he desperately jerked forward; his eyes pooled in tears.

“Mia, I’m here! Look at me!” he shouted, ignoring the sting in his wrists. As she kept on calling out to him, Itachi kept on pulling forward. “MIA!” The yelling echoed around him, but no matter how loud his voice scratched at his throat, Mia wouldn’t raise her head. She just kept hiding her face, trembling as she pleaded, “Daddy, please save Mama!”

Itachi froze, lips quivering her name. [Name]?

Suddenly, Mia’s spotlight disappeared (though her cries could still be heard) as another spotlight strikes before him: a woman cozied in a king-sized bed, unharmed and untouched in her sleeping wear.

“[N-Name]?”  Itachi’s brows furrowed to see his sleeping wife crowded by many sheets and pillows as she comfortably slept. However, what really disturbed him was the fact that the bed she slept on wasn’t theirs, but someone else’s.

“Wake up, [Name]! Mia is—!” Again, no matter how much Itachi shouted, she wouldn’t hear.

‘Damn it!’ He silently cursed, dropping his head in submission as he began to pant. ‘This can’t be happening, this isn’t real,’ he told himself whilst flinching to Mia’s sobbing and the throbbing of his wrists.

“Hmm…” Itachi shot up at [Name]’s low moan—and jolts up on his knees. What he first saw switched to a frightening scene: her wrists, decorated with luxurious bracelets, were now cuffed together above her head; the casual sleeping wear faded into royal blue lingerie that exposed her bruised flesh and silver duct tape was tightly spread across her lips.

‘No…’ Itachi gaped, though overwhelmed by fuming anger. ‘No, no’—“[NAME]!!”

“Hush, please,” said a man’s dark voice. Itachi’s eyes pierced, his chest tightened when a hand entered the spotlight. Gently, the hand lifted [Name]’s head to rest her on a suited lap and run its’ fingers through her [H/C] hair.