Age Six
My father changed after my mother died.
At first, it was small things. He stopped eating dinner with us. He stopped asking about my training. He stopped sitting on the roof at night, watching the stars.
Then it got worse.
He started wearing a bandage over his left eye. He said the light hurt, but I knew it was because the Mangekyo was consuming him. I'd heard the elders whisper about it. The Uchiha Mangekyo gives great power, but it exacts a terrible price. It drains your chakra, your sanity, your sight. Eventually, it leaves you blind and broken.
My father was already halfway there.
"Your Sharingan is still one tomoe," he said one day during training. I was six, and my eyes hadn't evolved at all since the night of my mother's death. "You need to push it further."
"How?"
"Through intense emotion. The Sharingan evolves when the user experiences strong feelings. Grief. Rage. Despair. You have felt these things, but not strongly enough. Not yet."
"What am I supposed to do? Make myself sad on purpose?"
He looked at me with his one uncovered eye. "If that's what it takes."
I stepped back. "I'm not going to torture myself just to make my eyes stronger."
"Then you will never reach your full potential."
"Maybe I don't want to reach my full potential. Maybe I just want to be left alone."
My father moved faster than I could track. His hand closed around my throat and slammed me against the wall. My feet dangled off the ground.
"You don't get to want things," he said, his voice low and cold. "You are the heir of Uzushio. You are the son of Akari Uzumaki and Daichi Uchiha. You carry two bloodlines that the world fears and desires. Your wants mean nothing. Your duty means everything."
I couldn't breathe. My Sharingan activated, and I saw the chakra boiling off him—dark, jagged, full of rage and grief and something else, something I didn't have a name for.
He let me go. I fell to the floor, gasping.
"Train harder," he said, and walked away.
That night, I moved my futon into Kushina's room.
She was two years old, small and warm and full of dreams. I lay beside her, watching her sleep, my Sharingan active, scanning the shadows for threats.
"Big brother?" she mumbled, half-awake. "What are you doing?"
"Protecting you."
"From what?"
"Everything."
She snuggled closer, her small hand gripping my sleeve. "Okay. But don't squish me."
"I won't squish you."
"Promise?"
"Promise."
I stayed awake all night, watching the door, watching the window, watching the darkness. My Sharingan never flickered.
No one came.
But I knew, somehow, that someone would.
The next morning, Elder Hana pulled me aside after my fuinjutsu lesson.
"You're drawing your circles too fast," she said. "You're rushing. What's wrong?"
"Nothing."
"Liar." She sat down on the dojo floor and patted the mat beside her. "Sit. Talk."
I sat. I didn't talk.
Hana waited. She was good at waiting. Older than the other elders, with gray hair that fell past her waist and eyes that had seen three wars. She had been my mother's teacher too. I think that was why she was patient with me.
"Your father," she said finally. "He's been different since your mother died."
"He's been different since she was alive. He just hides it better now."
Hana nodded slowly. "The Uchiha are not like us. They feel things differently. More intensely. When they love, they love with everything. When they lose, they lose themselves."
"I'm not going to lose myself."
"You're half Uchiha, Ren. You have his blood. You have his eyes." She reached out and touched my cheek, turning my face toward the light. "The Sharingan is already changing you. I can see it. The way you watch people. The way you calculate. The way you hold yourself back."
"I'm holding myself back because I have to protect Kushina."
"From your father?"
I didn't answer.
Hana sighed. "The elders have been talking. Some of them think you should be removed from your father's custody. Placed with a Uzumaki family. Away from his influence."
"And what do you think?"
"I think you love your father. And I think he loves you, in his own broken way. Taking you from him might destroy him completely." She squeezed my shoulder. "But destroying you is not an option either. So we watch. We wait. And we hope."
Hope. I had stopped hoping a long time ago.