A Measure of Darkness - indefinite hiatus -

NEGATIVE FIFTEEN

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Orientation | Opening
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The first week of Itachi Uchiha's birth is a nervous affair. Not as bad as the first week of my life, as I'm told, but still not good. As a toddler, anything I suggest or do is ignored. Instead, I get front row seats to two neurotic parents.

Papa bounces from helping Mama, playing with Itachi, and working. Before I took control, Takenaka had a vague idea that the world outside wasn't so pleasant as home. Obviously, we're on the cusp of another war.

Mama is visited by so many nurses who heal for hours and give her concoctions to speed up recovery. It's startling to see Mama—as young as she is—up and working hard as the wife of the Uchiha Leader in as little as three days.

She plays with Itachi still, but the burden of feeding the glutton belongs to the wet nurse I saw help Mama give birth: an old lady that goes by the name of Kanka.

Old is subjective. Her hair wound in a tight bun sealed by a lavender hairpiece is snow colored. Her skin has so many blemishes and scars I'm wary to touch her, even knowing they don't hurt at all.

And her surprisingly loud and masculine voice always throws me off-guard.

But I hang around her only because of Itachi.

"Annoying little bother, aren't you?" she comments while feeding Itachi, Mama elsewhere in the village. "All you do is stare at me once your studies are complete. I have no intention of hurting Mikoto-sama's boy."

Yeah, well, logically thinking I am being a big dummy, and just thinking in general, I really don't want her anywhere near Itachi.

Naturally, I drill her with questions, questions like: Who are you? Why are you so helpful, is it money or selflessness? What's your motive? and many more.

I pulled out the answers: "Kanka, and twenty years too old to be taking any smart from little toddlers like you" and "I get paid to do so", but it's still not enough. She's an enigma of questions that have some kind fallacy in them. I just know it.

I have to pull out the stops and use my child charms to get some answers.

"Wow, you're really good!" I gush to her as she changes Itachi's cloth diaper in ten seconds flat. "You must have been an amazing mother!"

I see her chin tighten from my angle. She pats Itachi's stomach that still has a piece of drying umbilical cord. "I'm a wet nurse. Never been a mother."

"Eh?" My heart soars. "How come? Your experience has to come from somewhere!" To sweeten the deal: "I bet you're a high ranking nurse, right? I believe in you!"

Oh, that does it. For the first time, she chuckles, a little, more like a shaky exhale. "I'm the highest ranking neonatal nurse. You're a bright one—not just because your words are far more articulate than any child I've nursed."

The feeling leaves my face. I try to cover it up by rubbing my nose and looking down. "Then are you bright, too? Born to become the best nurse in the Leaf?"

With her head lowered, a bang shields half her face with white and black from shadows. "...I was an average girl," she begins with a soft voice. "I had none of the fancy things you have. I did have eight sisters who had babies at twelve because where I lived, nothing young survived long. By the time I was a teen, I had two sisters and a nephew left."

I'm silent as she goes to sit in the bed to feed my brother again. I sprawl on the bed, mouth locked close.

"I loved no man. I could not wait to escape home and become someone better than a mother—only to realize that there was nothing wrong with being a mother. Somehow I found myself stuck as a nurse."