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towerofanimus2013-01-15 01:30 am
silentsacrifice) wrote in towerofanimus2013-01-15 01:30 am
Entry tags:
o3 [A Fool Could Tell You're Dying] Backdated to the 13th
Characters: Itachi Uchiha and you (First prompt closed to Sakura Haruno and Sasuke Uchiha [AU2])
Setting: Dorm room 4-14, floor 1 (the cafeteria), and floor 39 (the gymnasium)
Format: Starting with action, but I'll match you
Summary: Itachi, now 28 years old due to the event, is blind and dying. He receives one of his routine treatments from Sakura and has family time with Sasuke, but then, when neither of them are looking, he sneaks off to try and help himself for a change.
Warnings: Blindness, terminal illness, gratuitous coughing up of blood.
Room 4-14 - Closed to Loyalsuke and Sakura
[When Itachi wakes up on the morning of the 13th, he can no longer see. He's not frightened or confused. He just silently understands that he's waking up in the Tower after having been trapped for 7 long years. He's used to the blindness by now, relying on memory, sounds, and the descriptions given to him by others to make it around. The darkness no longer bothers him; he always knew he'd go blind, and it was easy enough to adjust.
The wild card that is his illness, however, is a bit harder to deal with. The first breath he takes upon waking leaves his lungs feeling like they're on fire. He tries to fight back a cough, but he can't, and so he turns on his side and lets the rasping coughs run their course. He weakly lifts his hand to hold it in front of his mouth, but by the time he does that, he can feel that the sheets under his fingers are already wet with splatters of blood.
Once he's finished, he takes in a few small, slow breaths, lying with his eyes half-open. All three tomoe have vanished from his eyes, and they're now glazed over and milky instead of red. He lays there, unseeing, trying not to make any sudden movements that might agitate his damaged lungs any further.
Sakura and Sasuke should arrive soon. Sakura, amazing ninja that she is, has made great leaps to cure him of his disease, but try as she might, nothing she did could get rid of it completely. Around four years into his stay at the Tower - long after he'd gone blind - it started to get more and more difficult for her to patch up the damage, so he knew he only had a certain amount of time left before it'd get too hard for her to make an impact.
Honestly, things would be easier if he'd just die for good already. He hated to put Sasuke through the hell of seeing him like this. An eternity of dying slowly in a torturous place like this over and over again wasn't a happy one for anybody.
Well. If they had any luck at all, perhaps Sakura had had some sort of medical breakthrough that would heal him for good this time. Then, as long as he kept himself alive (and he would keep himself alive, rest assured), none of them would have to worry about him.
He could only hope.]
Cafeteria
[Sometime after his treatment, feeling a little bit more energized (to use the word loosely), Itachi manages to sneak out. It's hard to do under Sasuke and Sakura's watchful gaze, but he does it. He has to use the elevator. As much as he hates to admit it even to himself, he shouldn't walk down the stairs in his condition, with how many of the floors are filled with monsters.
He exits in the cafeteria, where he doesn't bother trying to make any meals for himself. He silently accepts whatever it is the drones hand him and makes his way to a table, slow and careful. To anyone not under the effects of the event who saw him yesterday, the difference between then and now is immense. Itachi's face is pale and bony, and his arms are thinner than they were before, despite how hard he tries to keep himself in shape. He shuffles along slowly and carefully, his eyes blank and unseeing, and he has to stop to catch his breath a few times. He's certainly nothing like the strong, confident person he was just yesterday.
Despite this, it's worthy of note that he doesn't bump into a single person. He weaves around the other Tower residents like he knows exactly where they are.
He finally makes it to a table, where he takes a moment to cough into a napkin that quickly becomes stained with blood before he forces himself to eat. He hardly has an appetite, but he knows he has to get some food in his system, even when every swallow makes it feel as if he's tearing his throat up even worse. The coughing fits come here and there, but, try as he might to let them pass without incident, it eventually becomes too much.
Anyone walking by will notice the once-intimidating Itachi Uchiha sitting with his elbows on the table and his face in his hands, sucking in small, shallow breaths over a half-eaten meal that's surrounded by blood-soaked napkins.]
Gymnasium
[Once he's finished with his meal, Itachi slowly makes his way back up the Tower. After a long elevator ride up the Tower, Itachi gets off and begins the slow descent down a few floors to the workout room.
In the gym, he puts himself through a workout routine that seems absolutely merciless, all things considered. He runs around the track, attacks punching bags with flurries of punches and kicks, and even tries to walk up the wall a few feet as an exercise in controlling his chakra (it's an entry-level ninja training technique, but it's the best he can manage without putting himself through too much undue stress).
Of course, he has to take frequent breaks to cough up some blood, or to sit and catch his breath against a wall. Against his better judgment, he actually dozes off a few times as his overworked body tries to patch itself up.]
Setting: Dorm room 4-14, floor 1 (the cafeteria), and floor 39 (the gymnasium)
Format: Starting with action, but I'll match you
Summary: Itachi, now 28 years old due to the event, is blind and dying. He receives one of his routine treatments from Sakura and has family time with Sasuke, but then, when neither of them are looking, he sneaks off to try and help himself for a change.
Warnings: Blindness, terminal illness, gratuitous coughing up of blood.
Room 4-14 - Closed to Loyalsuke and Sakura
[When Itachi wakes up on the morning of the 13th, he can no longer see. He's not frightened or confused. He just silently understands that he's waking up in the Tower after having been trapped for 7 long years. He's used to the blindness by now, relying on memory, sounds, and the descriptions given to him by others to make it around. The darkness no longer bothers him; he always knew he'd go blind, and it was easy enough to adjust.
The wild card that is his illness, however, is a bit harder to deal with. The first breath he takes upon waking leaves his lungs feeling like they're on fire. He tries to fight back a cough, but he can't, and so he turns on his side and lets the rasping coughs run their course. He weakly lifts his hand to hold it in front of his mouth, but by the time he does that, he can feel that the sheets under his fingers are already wet with splatters of blood.
Once he's finished, he takes in a few small, slow breaths, lying with his eyes half-open. All three tomoe have vanished from his eyes, and they're now glazed over and milky instead of red. He lays there, unseeing, trying not to make any sudden movements that might agitate his damaged lungs any further.
Sakura and Sasuke should arrive soon. Sakura, amazing ninja that she is, has made great leaps to cure him of his disease, but try as she might, nothing she did could get rid of it completely. Around four years into his stay at the Tower - long after he'd gone blind - it started to get more and more difficult for her to patch up the damage, so he knew he only had a certain amount of time left before it'd get too hard for her to make an impact.
Honestly, things would be easier if he'd just die for good already. He hated to put Sasuke through the hell of seeing him like this. An eternity of dying slowly in a torturous place like this over and over again wasn't a happy one for anybody.
Well. If they had any luck at all, perhaps Sakura had had some sort of medical breakthrough that would heal him for good this time. Then, as long as he kept himself alive (and he would keep himself alive, rest assured), none of them would have to worry about him.
He could only hope.]
Cafeteria
[Sometime after his treatment, feeling a little bit more energized (to use the word loosely), Itachi manages to sneak out. It's hard to do under Sasuke and Sakura's watchful gaze, but he does it. He has to use the elevator. As much as he hates to admit it even to himself, he shouldn't walk down the stairs in his condition, with how many of the floors are filled with monsters.
He exits in the cafeteria, where he doesn't bother trying to make any meals for himself. He silently accepts whatever it is the drones hand him and makes his way to a table, slow and careful. To anyone not under the effects of the event who saw him yesterday, the difference between then and now is immense. Itachi's face is pale and bony, and his arms are thinner than they were before, despite how hard he tries to keep himself in shape. He shuffles along slowly and carefully, his eyes blank and unseeing, and he has to stop to catch his breath a few times. He's certainly nothing like the strong, confident person he was just yesterday.
Despite this, it's worthy of note that he doesn't bump into a single person. He weaves around the other Tower residents like he knows exactly where they are.
He finally makes it to a table, where he takes a moment to cough into a napkin that quickly becomes stained with blood before he forces himself to eat. He hardly has an appetite, but he knows he has to get some food in his system, even when every swallow makes it feel as if he's tearing his throat up even worse. The coughing fits come here and there, but, try as he might to let them pass without incident, it eventually becomes too much.
Anyone walking by will notice the once-intimidating Itachi Uchiha sitting with his elbows on the table and his face in his hands, sucking in small, shallow breaths over a half-eaten meal that's surrounded by blood-soaked napkins.]
Gymnasium
[Once he's finished with his meal, Itachi slowly makes his way back up the Tower. After a long elevator ride up the Tower, Itachi gets off and begins the slow descent down a few floors to the workout room.
In the gym, he puts himself through a workout routine that seems absolutely merciless, all things considered. He runs around the track, attacks punching bags with flurries of punches and kicks, and even tries to walk up the wall a few feet as an exercise in controlling his chakra (it's an entry-level ninja training technique, but it's the best he can manage without putting himself through too much undue stress).
Of course, he has to take frequent breaks to cough up some blood, or to sit and catch his breath against a wall. Against his better judgment, he actually dozes off a few times as his overworked body tries to patch itself up.]
Room 4-14
[After all, who would think that her permanent first appointment of the day would be Uchiha Itachi, of all people? But he is, after Sasuke's (and that's a whole other topic in itself) careful cajoling and convincing, and she's starting to realize just how deep this whole Uchiha Situation might have been. Sasuke might be from a different world, a world where things went so much better, but Itachi isn't.]
[And yet, he's not nearly the monster she expected.]
[She taps lightly on the door, knowing he'll be awake but maintaining her manners.]
Itachi-san?
no subject
[Ten years. Ten years of watching his brother deteriorate. And because of the Tower, neither of them could even decide it was enough and end his suffering. Hell, Itachi had died many times already, and still he's here in this hell, rattling holes in his lungs that Sakura can't always fix.]
[He looks sidelong at her, speaking of, frown on his face. It had been a shock, meeting her on the way here, to see her so young. The Tower is fucking with things again, and he's indescribably bitter to have had her lose so many years of memories. Does she even remember how far his brother has fallen into disrepair?]
no subject
Come in.
[He swipes the pad of his thumb over his lips, wiping away the last of the blood. His palm and his sheets are still stained with it, but he attempts to keep his hand covering the bloodstain. The last thing he wants to do is to alarm Sasuke the second he walks in.]
no subject
[When Itachi anwers them, the sound of his voice makes her frown slightly. She knows what patients at every stage of disease sound like, and every stage of concealing disease as well. There's strain there that's trying to cover damage. But it's an invitation, so she opens the door and looks to Itachi.]
[And maybe Sasuke's right that she's missing years of Tower life, because Itachi did not look like that yesterday! So sickly, so wasted, she's seen healthier corpses. But you never let a patient know that you're shocked at their appearance, so she schools herself to a firm expression, moving over to approach him.]
Good morning. [He's entirely blind, she realizes as she gets closer. The way he holds himself, his eyes, everything. So she adjusts herself, makes sure she's making at least a little noise when she moves. It's counter to trained instinct, but he's not an enemy -- he's a patient. Consideration is important.]
How are you feeling?
no subject
[But he can't help the twist of his insides to see the edges of blood on Itachi's fingers. He wills himself to back his Sharingan down (they tend to slip into activity automatically when he first sees his brother in the morning, looking for damage), not wanting to see with such clarity. Even he can tell that Itachi's chakra system is a mess, and he doesn't want to look at that.]
[He doesn't say a word - doesn't talk over Sakura - but clears his throat very softly, less a request for interruption and more a soft voicing to let his brother know with certainty that he's here.]
no subject
Good morning, Sakura. Sasuke. [Though he can't see either of them, he flicks his eyes up to both of their faces in turn.] I'm well.
[He's no idiot. He knows Sakura will be able to tell just how bad off he is, but he hopes that by pretending it's not a big deal, the other two will follow suit.]
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I'm glad to hear it. [And I'll be giving you a thorough check anyway, she thinks. Given his current state, and given the discussion she's already had this morning with Sasuke about how long they've all been in this place, she'll have some catch-up to do on the current state of his illness -- beyond really bad -- and hopefully she can do it without alarming him regarding her ability to aid him.]
May I examine you? [Always asking for permission -- especially from a blind shinobi -- before laying hands on him.]
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[He's quiet, if not as silent as any shinobi can be, turning away to wander the edges of the room, restless. Arms crossing and uncrossing. Itachi's claim is shit, and he knows it. And he almost chides Sakura for playing along. Almost, in his bitterness. But Itachi needs all the comfort he can get, so Sasuke keeps his silence.]
[How bad is Itachi going to be today? And does Sakura have the experience at her young age to help him?]
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He smiled sadly and went over to where Itachi sat.] Does Sasuke know you are down here?
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No. [His eyelids fluttered shut as he was hit with a particularly painful pang in his head.] And I intend... [He drew in a breath, then let it out slowly.] ...to keep it that way.
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[He hesitated, softening his tone.]
...But thank you. [He took another breath, then clarified:] For your concern.
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And Angeletta, how it must have been for her to never be able to leave her room.] Well I guess as long as you are with someone in case things get worse it will be alright.
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That's- [He wanted to argue and say that he was certain he wasn't worthy of being liked, but he didn't have the energy.] That's true, I suppose...
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Imagining that smile brightened up the darkness that Itachi had to live with every day, if only by a little bit.]
...Well. [He forced himself to stretch his arms over his head, though he stopped when the burning in his lungs squeezed another few coughs out of him. Every so often, he stopped talking to catch his breath.] If you're content to... to watch over me, I... wouldn't object to some company...
[He smiled and gave Romeo a wink.]
Just don't tell Sasuke, okay?
no subject
Cafeteria, if you don't mind my lateness
... well none of this food was anything like court, but that had been explained clearly. Not that she liked it very much. She rather hated it, point of fact. The people at least, were different to court and she counted that as a blessing where it was concerned, it meant less looking over her shoulder without guards. More time to learn and adjust to... the general strangeness of most she met. Hated the manners on half of them at least.
And manners dictated when she saw someone coughing up blood, hardly able to eat the awful food. She had to stop. Even if in the end she served no real use.]
Sir? [Hesitant still, she so very gently touched his shoulder.] Sir, is there a physician I can fetch you? [The blood didn't bother her so much as helping did. Blood she saw on the children she'd sent as soldiers, on her dead guards, on her, on her ladies that died.]
Not at all!
That won't be necessary.
[He faced forward as he spoke, his glazed-over eyes unfocused and half-lidded. He reached out to start gathering up the blood-stained napkins strewn around his tray, and, while he was able to locate them and gather them up fairly quickly, there was a slight tremble in his hands.]
This is an isolated incident, I'm sure.
[That was a complete lie, but he saw no use in giving the whole truth to a stranger. He was barely honest with the people he was closest to.]
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I have seen consumption before. It's a common enough illness. [but she watched, nudging a napkin closer when it seemed out of his reach.] No incident is isolated when you are coughing up blood like that. You either have a sickness in the lungs, or have fought a very great battle. Either way your troubles are beginning if it is the first incident. [And very close to ending if it is so much. A maid she had be just a girl had died of it, and she had coughed up blood like that, before they sent her aware since she could not be near a child.
But if his pride was such, then she'd play it another way.] Would you show me where the physicians are then? I don't know myself.
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Thank you for your concern.
[The corners of his lips quirked upward in a smile, though it was a tired gesture. He balled up all of the napkins in his hands, then set them on his tray. He didn't foresee himself eating the rest of his food any time soon, so he may as well stop trying and just make up for it at his next meal.]
There are physicians on the next floor up. [He had a feeling he knew what the woman was doing, but he'd humor her anyway. He got to his feet, steadying himself by gripping the edge of the table until he was sure he wouldn't fall right back down.] Follow me.
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[Elizabeth eyed him warily, he didn't look any better standing than he did sitting. Nor did she know how servants worked in this place. Were there servants? For surely this place teemed as any palace did with life, but it was not in the way court did. Not with the brightness and eagerness, with no grandeur and deceit, just coldness and detachment.
Far be it from her to know which was better. She was just trying to do what she always had, survive.]
Are they? Well. Isn't it good they're close by, so I shall not bother you long at all. [she hovered beside him, trying to find a new way to tactfully give him help, since he didn't seem inclined to ask. When he paused to steady himself, however hesitantly, her hand went to his arm.] I am right behind you.
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...No, they aren't. [There was a hint of something unreadable in his voice, something almost melancholy, and he paused there for a moment. Then he picked up his tray and turned on his heel, starting to walk.
He counted the steps until he reached the nearest trash can, and he dumped the half-eaten contents of his tray along with the bloody napkins into it. He steadied the empty tray on top of the can with surprising ease, then made his way to the steps.
He remained silent, looking almost contemplative. In reality, he was focusing all his attention on keeping himself upright and stable, in addition to listening intently to all the sounds of the cafeteria. Footsteps, voices, the scrape of a chair here and there - all of them painted an intricate picture in his mind, which he used to navigate the place despite his handicap. If he was in good health otherwise, it would be second nature to him, but in his current state...
He seemed to snap out of his haze all of a sudden, and he turned his head halfway back toward his companion.]
Should I assume you haven't been here for very long? If you haven't found the infirmary yet, then you must be new.
[And his heart ached for all the newcomers to the Tower no matter how many years had passed, it truly did.]