dangodragon (dangodragon) wrote in strangergamesrp, @ 2012-12-02 08:19:00 |
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Entry tags: | garrett horsefeather, log, uchiha itachi |
[log] Digging up the Dead
Who: Uchiha Itachi and Garrett Horsefeather
When: November 13th
Where: The grounds
What: Itachi goes to find out what happened when Shisui died. Garrett comes off a little worse for the wear. After losing Shisui again.
Warnings: Death, drama, panic, crying. (General Itachi and Shisui warnings.)
Open or Closed: Open
Observable: No
The girl walked up with a predator’s bold stalk, complete unafraid even though Thunder grazed only a few feet off. Garrett knew this was one of the ones that had changed gender over the past month. He didn’t have a name to put with the face, but he had seen her on the MollyNet with a small child a few days ago. Garrett found this a good way to keep track of odd things. Amazing the things people would post...
“You’re the one who found Shisui’s body.” No introduction. No banter. Nothing but cold red eyes, much like the other boy’s had been--the body Garrett had “found.”
“I don’t know the name,” Garrett shrugged and kept his seat on the straw bale. He’d been sharpening a knife and continued.
“The boy you found dead in the woods--curly hair and eyes like mine,” The girl added with a twitch of irritation. Her eyes suddenly changed, twisting the pupils into another shape. Garrett felt a shiver go up his spine.
“Yes, I found him,” Garrett agreed. When he didn’t continue, the girl kept staring. Garrett looked down at his work, keeping her feet in sight at all times.
“I want you to tell me about it.” Now Garrett heard some softness in her voice, and, as he glanced up, there was something fragile in the wide eyes. It reminded him of the look Micah got before he broke and ran.
Garrett sighed and shifted. “It would give you no peace, and I made a promise not to tell.”
“I need to know.” The girl demanded, utterly hard again and slightly angry. Garrett wondered if the anger could be driven by fear. Guilt. Even with the gender change, the eyes and the facial structure looked similar enough Garrett could draw his own conclusions, and he’d always been adept at matching relations. Shisui had been younger than Itachi. You protected those who were younger, though why she had waited so long to confront him, Garrett didn’t know.
“No, you don’t, and I don’t break my word. Just know your friend can come back here. Be happy you haven’t lost him for eternity,” Garrett admonished. “He’s back, yes? Go see him. Ask him what happened.”
Garrett had no warning. He saw her feet shift, her hand tighten into a fist, then she grabbed him around the throat, throwing his head back as she thrust her face closer to his. Garrett moved to stab her, the blade barely sinking in before her iron grip fastened on his wrist and her red eyes exploded his mind. Garrett felt like a rabbit being shaken by a large, angry dog.
Daniel bleeding, shocked look on his face, pain, fear. The thought was shunted aside.
A boy he didn’t know, laying in a tree and dripping blood onto the forest floor from his mouth...
Itachi threw the shape of Shisui and death into the man’s mind, yanking up memories of a curly haired youth in pain. He tossed aside the memories of a boy with brown curly hair and a wide smile, then saw Shisui. Itachi grabbed onto that memory and shoved himself into it, regardless of damage done to the mind he was rooting around in.
Shisui, in a tree, gagging blood. Itachi viewed it through Garrett’s eyes, feeling the oddly detached sadness at images that tore him apart inside. All Garrett felt was the sadness of a life ended brutally and early. Itachi felt the world crumble beneath him all over again as he watched.
The images struck too close to old memories of another death. Shisui bleeding. Shisui struggling to be coherent. Shisui in pain, fighting for consciousness. Itachi remembered the swelling around Shisui’s eye. The smell of blood. Too much blood. I need you to do this. I need you to do this for me. Itachi heard the old echo in his head. Shisui’s final request as he ripped into the man’s memories.
Don’t tell...You can’t tell him because he’ll hate. That dug into Itachi’s chest, twisting in his chest so tight he almost couldn’t breathe. (he’ll hate me, and maybe it was true). The sensation almost yanked him out of Garrett’s mind, but Itachi plunged forward, feeling the damp, tackiness of Shisui’s skin as his pulse petered out.
Stopped.
Shisui died again under his hand.
Itachi ripped himself back, yanking himself from Garrett’s mind as he staggered physically back. His stomach dropped. His knees almost gave out and the sounds of his heart pounding almost deafened him to another pounding sound.
As Thunder charged, the girl’s head came around. Her hands blurred together before she burst into a dozen crows. Thunder shied, whirled, and kicked. Garrett leaned back against the shed, then dropped his head into his hands and gagged. The pain spiking through his head felt worse than the pain he’d received getting his skull almost bashed in. His body shook, and he wondered if he would fall down in a fit.
Thunder lifted his head and nuzzled Garrett’s arm. Slowly, the feeling faded into a lesser, more manageable ache. Garrett breathed carefully through his nose and stared at the bloody knife that had dropped to the ground.
~
Itachi found the tree Shisui had died in. He stared at it, chest pounding and body tight. Shisui had died here. Pain, fear, guilt, panic. Shisui had used the Manegekyou and died. Itachi remembered the disjointed speech. The smell of blood and death. Shisui dying again.
Again as his pulse faded into nothing. As his skin grew clammy. As his glib tongue ceased to weave dreams and lies out of thin air and stumbled over the simplest truth. Itachi wrapped his hands in his ponytail and tugged. He yanked, repetitive as he looked at the tree, glanced to the ground. Shifted and stepped to the side as he swept the ground for remains. Surely surely they wouldn’t be so careless. Surely not. Surely never. Itachi took a gulping breath, feeling the same rising, mindless panic that had overtaken him at the Halloween festival. He suddenly couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t move.
Somewhere, a crow cawed. Itachi shot up into the tree, painfully snapping his muscles into movement and racing into the branches. He looked around, biting his own tongue as he scraped through the fading memories and crawled to the branch where Shisui had died. He put his hands on the rough bark, stroking the surface as trying not to lose the train of memory. The memory’s tried to warp and bend. Twist and distort to the tree being under water and both Garrett’s hands on Shisui’s throat.
Stupid. He’d known this was a bad idea. He’d known what kind reaction he’d have to this, and that was why he’d convinced himself he didn’t need to know. He’d known what submerging himself in someone else’s memories of Shisui’s death would bring into his mind. Between apathy and the little Shisui, Itachi had been able to resist the temptation. He’d told himself it didn’t matter. Shisui had died. Everyone died here. Everyone, and it didn’t matter. It did matter. It would always matter.
Itachi cupped his side and realized he was bleeding. The aching pain pushed in over the panic, and Itachi huddled against the tree as he realized the depth of the pain and that blood had run down his stomach. It wasn’t a bad cut, long and shallow, but it had bled because he’d run and torn it open jumping into the tree. As he leaned against the tree, Itachi saw it. Blood. Dried blood in the cracks of a branch. It could have been from anything. It could have just been discoloration of the bark. Itachi swallowed and touched the branch with his bloody fingers. He rubbed the bark, smearing bright red over the possibly imagined dried blood. Itachi swallowed bile and hugged the wound with his other hand. It had already stopped bleeding. It wasn’t deep. He wouldn’t die from it.
Slowly, Itachi leaned his head down to the already tacky blood. He rested his cheek on the branch and closed his eyes. His heart pounded in his ears. He pulled out the memories, running through the moments and the blood compulsively, trying to keep them from bleeding into the nightmare of Shisui’s first death.
He died. You weren’t there and he died. He used the mangekyou and went crazy. He died. If you hadn’t been selfish and pushed him away, you could have saved him. If you hadn’t been stupid. If you had handled him. Made him better. Why didn’t you fix him? Save him? Why weren’t you there when he needed you? What’s your excuse this time?
Now he’s dead, and it’s your fault again.
But, Shisui had come back. He’d come back as a child Itachi had spent all week with. He was alive now, but it wasn’t the same. It didn’t matter as much as Shisui’s death did, because Itachi was always just waiting for Shisui to die these days (because Shisui was dead. Every universe, every life, Shisui would die bloody and painfully).
Shisui was dead, and he had been dead for years. After Shisui’s death--the massacre, Itachi had been alone for the first time in his life and terrified of it. He’d been frightened of forgetting his purpose and Shisui’s creeds that would keep him on the right path, so he’d held tight to everything about Shisui, especially those last moment. He’d never let himself forget Shisui was dead, and what he had died for. Itachi had been dragging a corpse around with him for all those years, holding it so tightly the remains had grown into his flesh. Now, now that Shisui was here and alive, Itachi was too burdened by the death he’d made a part of himself to enjoy it. He’d allowed the corpse memories and thoughts to putrefy, rotting his mind into harsh pitfalls and toxic swamps that swallowed his reason and control when it came to Shisui. Love had rotted to hate. Compassion to apathy.
Shisui was dead, and he had been dead to Itachi for years. Shisui was dead, and no one could bring him back to life. Not in the way Itachi wanted. Not as the mentor and guiding hand Itachi craved. That he needed.
Itachi started crying. The tears came first, then the awkward tightness in his chest. His breath hitched. He started to suffocate, then he sobbed. A hard, painful motion that scrape his face into the bark. Another sob came, followed closely by a third.
Shisui was dead. Shisui was dead.
And he would keep dying again and again because Itachi could not let him live.
Could not let go of a corpse.
Loving a dead man was easy.
Itachi had grown too used to loving his moldering bones to love a body of flesh and blood.