Bleeding Heart

“Not everyone can feel things as deeply as you. Most people, their feelings are ... bland, tasteless. They'll never understand what it's like to read a poem and feel almost like they're flying, or to see a bleeding fish and feel grief that shatters their heart.”

- Juliann Garey, Too Bright to Hear Too Loud to See

Maybe I lost control of my car on a rainy day. Maybe I slipped on an ice cube and brained myself on the kitchen island. Maybe the weight of the world and all it’s problems became too much for my squishy, human brain to handle. Choked on a grape, struck by lightning, mauled by a bear. Would it really matter?

There wasn’t much after it happened, just a lot of pain. Someone was sobbing, and it was a desperate, lonely sound. It almost made me want to stay. I wanted to stay. But it wasn’t my choice. 

It wasn’t a neat transition from life to death. It was like nodding off. Flickering like a light bulb. The sea lapping at the shoreline, a constant drag and pull eroding away at me until I was gone. Except it wasn’t falling asleep. There was no sensation of falling or floating, actually. No pearly gates or fiery pits. It was terrifying. It was being something and then suddenly being nothing but a wisp of consciousness, stripped of everything that made you, you. Hopes, dreams, regrets- identity. It was a contradiction of existence, feeling nothing but lack. Eternity in a single second. It was- best not to dwell on. 

As swiftly as it came, oblivion left. With my newfound lungs I screamed, sobbed, breathed. With my new body, I lived.

-

3 Months

“Daiki.”

The little boy looked up at his mother, smiled at her with the pure bubbling joy that only small children possessed. She smiled back at him, picking him up gently and cradling him close. Daiki felt a wave of warmth wash over his small form, a wave of cherish, protect, love. He echoed it back to his mother. Cherish. Protect. Lovelovelove. He could feel her surprise and then her joy as she snuggled him. “My little prodigy, playing with chakra before he can walk.” Daiki laughed brightly as she tickled him, peppering his face with kisses.

-

3 years

Life with his mother was warm and simple, yet full of lessons disguised as games. Daiki and his mother would often sit together before bed, with mugs of warm milk laced with honey, and echo . Mother would pulse beats of emotions and Daiki would repeat the patterns back at her. She introduced him to many feelings that most toddlers would not come to experience until later in life, acclimatizing him to them and naming them. Love that flowed like the softest silk, trust that was as unyielding as the face of a mountain, oilily disgust that squirmed like maggots and left him dry heaving, anger like raging fire that made his head ache and his nose bleed. Negative emotions were always laced with a niggling of regret. He noticed that after anger always came comfort. How his mother made sure to always leave him happy and loved.  

Daiki’s mother did what she had to. She taught, Daiki learned.

Daiki watched as his mother paced agitatedly back and forth. She had cleaned the kitchen, living room, and bathroom in an organized frenzy and then sat down on the couch, stood and walked past where he sat playing, unlocked the door and opened it, closed it and locked it, sat back down. She repeated this until Daiki lost interest in counting how many times she walked by. Her nervous, worried, scared made his tummy ache. 

Standing on wobbly legs, Daiki toddled over to where his mother sat on the couch, pulling himself up with great effort. The fact she didn’t help him up only gave him more reason to worry. He didn’t try to comfort her with words, he couldn’t. His grasp on language was too weak to be of any help in this situation. Daiki concentrated on every memory of love and safety he had, every soft hug, every lullaby, every forehead kiss that banished nightmares. He concentrated so hard he didn’t remember closing his eyes. When he opened them, he looked down to hands glowing a faint blue. Instinctively, he pressed them to the blue pulsing shroud he could faintly see around his mother. He watched with wide eyes as she tensed then relaxed, turning to him with a soft smile. She cradled him close.

The next morning she brought him to their elderly neighbor’s house. She said she was back on the “active duty roster” and had to go on a month-long “mission”. She still felt worried, scared but it was buried under fierce, determined. They did not need words to say goodbye. She pulsed love, regret and he echoed back love, understanding. She hugged him swiftly, planted a kiss on the top of his head, and turned on her heel, walking stiffly away without looking back. Daiki waved at her retreating back anyway, only going inside when Mrs. Yamada placed a weathered hand on his shoulder.

He never saw his mother again. 

In the weeks that came after, Daiki became acquainted with a new emotion, one his mother had never had the heart to teach him. 

Devastation.

Even as young as he was, Daiki understood Mrs. Yamada was much too old to take care of a toddler full time, so when she brought him to the building that radiated lonely, he didn’t cry or throw a tantrum. He squeezed her hand in assurance when he felt her regret descend over the both of them like a funeral shroud as a matronly woman smiled at him before asking him to follow her. As his fingers slipped from hers, Daiki had a feeling he wouldn’t see Mrs. Yamada again. He gathered safe, happy, protected at his core, reveling in what little comfort he could provide himself. It almost kept away the cold abandoned.

Almost.

Konoha Orphanage was a large wooden building that curdled Daiki’s stomach. It was as though the building itself leeched warmth from its occupants, taking their hope, happy and replacing it with weak, sad. He could feel the lonely claw at his core. It was a vile feeling, and Daiki knew that if he didn’t, if he couldn’t, hold onto his memories of being safe and content, he would fall victim to it. 

Daiki took to his own company. It was not out of a sense of superiority or anything so foolish, but out of necessity. The other orphans’ emotions were too loud, grabby. He discovered and came to terms with this during the first dinner he spent with them. The other children, even the ones with large smiles and loud laughs, were cold at the core. Every last one had a harsh stroke of something across the emotions they felt. And bitter, angry, sad hurt Daiki… but not as much as lonely.Sad twisted Daiki’s stomach, but lonely…lonely latched itself onto him and drained him. It thrashed and clung to him like a drowning victim, attempting to leech off what little happy he managed to hide within himself and drag them both down.

So Daiki learned to live apart. He avoided mealtimes, running errands for the cooks in exchange for “extra” snacks. He slept during the day, when the other children were out playing, and escaped to the village at night. After being caught sneaking out the first few times, Daiki found that he could remain undetected if he hid his core under a mimicry of the simple, flighty cores of small animals like mice and birds. He discovered that certain places remained open throughout the night, one of such places being the library. 

The library became one of Daiki’s favorite places. The pages of books hummed with leftover curious, focused, content. Daiki enjoyed running his fingers over the spines of the adventure section, just to take in the remnant excited, gleeful. He found himself thumbing through dictionaries just to absorb the almost playful inquisitive, intent they exuded. The last pages of books were by far the best pages, in Daiki’s opinion. Daiki could tell a lot about a book from its last page. He loved to just sit and soak up the satisfaction, content that they gave off, just as much as (if not more than) their words. It was at the library Daiki first came across mention of ninjas, chakra, and the empaths who influenced them.

-

Itachi watched his charge creep through Konoha’s lamp-lit streets, faintly impressed as the five year old managed to slip past multiple Jonin and Chunin level ninja using his odd kekkei genkai. It seemed Daiki was en route once more to the library. The child had improved in stealth in leaps and bounds over the past few weeks, something Itachi would be mentioning to the Hokage in his monthly report. 

This mission had been curious at first. He would check in on the boy in between missions, reporting what he found directly to the Hokage by word of mouth only. Itachi had wondered why his Hokage would assign watching an orphan boy as Itachi’s first mission as an Anbu, much less make it long-standing. That was, however, before Itachi discovered Ueno Daiki was Orochimaru’s son.

The boy appeared to possess an intellect and emotional control superior to those of his age group. He maintained a heady desire to learn, that much was obvious. It was hard to gauge how well he was developed socially due to the fact he seemed to avoid other children; other people in general really. 

Itachi couldn’t help but compare Daiki to his younger brother, Sasuke. Compared to Sasuke, Daiki was much more… guarded. Even when he smiled, which was seldom in the presence of people but often in the presence of books, there was a certain edge to it. One that was cautious and fragile. He wasn’t a sullen child, far from it, it seemed. He was just… careful? As though he meticulously thought through each of his actions and reactions.  

Itachi had wondered if Daiki was ill, or perhaps dangerously lazy, the first time he watched the boy sleep through the day. He had been contemplating taking Daiki to the hospital when the boy finally stirred as the other children poured into the room to sleep. Daiki remained awake, and Itachi watched as the boy waited for the others to fall asleep before sneaking out of the room and then out of the Orphanage proper. It seemed routine for him, and over the past month, Itachi had fallen into the boy’s pattern. Like clockwork, the boy would sleep through the day, waking occasionally to take care of his needs, and take to the village at night. Daiki would then wander, sometimes to random training grounds, always to the library. 

There were times when the boy would look to where Itachi was concealed as if he knew Itachi was there. Itachi was not so dense as to believe these moments were mere flukes. If this boy, this boy that perhaps only the Hokage and Itachi saw for what he truly was, could find him, perhaps Itachi would let him.