Contravention Butterfly
Her blood looks black in the dark.
There is dirt in the street, dry like sand, and when she closes her eyes she imagines that she is somewhere in a desert oasis.
Her eyes flutter open (like a butterfly flutters its wings, but not as pretty, you're not as pretty), but all she sees are boxed buildings and cheap bars.
The breeze is crisp and chilling, insistent on whipping through her loose hair and baggy clothing as she clings to a sweater that doesn't belong to her. As the breeze blows past, she breathes in the scent it carries: earthy and metallic and opulent, like her eldest son.
She should be bothered that the air smells of blood as well, but she isn't. She ignores the sound of practiced footsteps against the pavement behind her, and she steps on another shard of glass. This piece pierces her skin and lodges itself in her foot, joining a cluster of so many others. (If only you could fly, Mikoto. You wouldn't step on anything ever.)
Someone calls after her in cool and level words, and she stops in the center of her path to nowhere. A sleeve of the oversize sweater slips off of her shoulder, revealing pallid skin and a patch of raw pink; a scar from years of carelessness.
When the wind blows by again, her sweater falls off completely (fluttering like a butterfly, don't you wish you were a butterfly?) and the earth and metal is easier to find, because it mingles with the distinct smell of blood. Someone was killed in the street.
The killer stands a few feet away, his arm still outstretched, his fingers still curled in the shape of a shuriken.
Her bloodied feet stay rooted to the ground.
"Walk with me," She tells the killer tersely, because he is not a killer at all, not in the same sense that he is her son.
Itachi's arm falls slowly and deliberately to his side, and then he bends to scoop up the forgotten article of clothing, draping the sweater over her arms with a whisper-like touch.
Both of them ignore the stench of a dead body.
A moment passes easily, before he steps in front of her and his lips part and he finally speaks, his dark eyes boring into hers.
"You." He observes softly, "Why are you out at this hour, I wonder?"
There is a certain assertiveness in the tone he takes that scares her, but lures her all the same. Perhaps he thinks she cares that he has murdered someone, but she does not, since he is a shinobi and shinobi are taught to murder from early childhood.
His smoldering gaze almost makes her shiver, because his eyes are red and colder than the spring air.
She looked down, her midnight eyes glazed over and moving lazily down her front. As her gaze trailed back up, returning to his face, she felt an overwhelming sense of emptiness.
"I don't know," She says, shaking her head at him swiftly.
His mouth twitched into something of a frown.
"…You should be in bed right now." She says offhandedly, attempting to draw the attention and the reprimanding away from herself. In this instance, she was the mother. She could roam the streets if she so chose, but he…he was only a child.
"You should really be in bed."
(As should you, you terrible hypocrite, you! No wonder you are nothing like a butterfly. Butterflies are pure and fragile things. Your soul is tainted with horrible intentions, and even glass could not break you.)
Before she knows it, he is gripping her by the wrist and leading her in the direction of the Uchiha compound.
"You should not have been drinking tonight, mother." He says flatly.
Her features contorted into a twisted, bitter smile, before she latched onto his arm and rested her head against his.
They are roughly the same height at this point in time, though she likes to think that he is still a toddler she can lead by the hand, a toddler that would will blindly follow her into anything.
…Ah, but that had been Sasuke, and still is. Itachi is not so trusting; never was.
"I'm surprised you could tell," She mumbled against his ear, laying a hand across his chest. His skin felt cold beneath her touch, though hidden behind a layer of fabric.
His entire body stiffened, as if only now realizing their proximity. The fleeting amount of shock that gripped his features surprised her, to say the least. Especially since he had been the one to initiate contact in the first place. (Don't you want to fly with me?)
If she was attracted to him at all in her state of inebriation, it was entirely his fault. –His fault, and the sake's fault, because Mikoto was indeed like a butterfly and the blame was never her own.
Mikoto was a butterfly, and that made loving Itachi all right.
She held him tightly and closed her eyes, seeing a world where the breeze whisked them away. They flushed through a river of alcohol, and she saw Itachi drowning someone there.
...But that last part she was probably only imagining.
Mikoto is a butterfly, but also a realist. Sometimes these two concepts conflict.
Author's Notes: This was written while I was in a half-asleep, caffiene-deprived state about...three months ago, I think? It's been quite a while. Anyway, I didn't want to see it go to waste, though it's just a mass of jumbled silliness.
Ack. Forgive me! It's been sitting around on my computer for an eternity, and I seriously debated deleting it.
Even the title makes no sense, meaning something along the lines of "violating butterfly". ...Hm. Well, I won't question my own...motives, I guess. Maybe you can figure it out for me.
Fin.