▸ Column · Shinobi world — a war veteran returned from the northern front of the Great War, carrying its wounds home to his village and his young daughter
ITACHI UCHIHA replies.
Replied to by Itachi Uchiha, with a rebuttal from Sasuke Uchiha.
The letter
I fought two campaigns on the northern front during the war. I came back wrong — a thunderclap or the snap of an exploding tag still drops me to the floor, and I haven't slept past the fourth hour before dawn in six years. My daughter is eight. Last month she asked my wife why Papa always leaves the room when a storm comes in — the question I've dreaded since I walked back through the gate. The healer at the medic hall says my work is making real progress, but progress is not the same as whole, and I don't know how much of the truth an eight-year-old should carry about why her father is no longer the man who marched out. I told her my mind "learned some wrong lessons out there," and she nodded — but now, when the thunder rolls, she goes and whispers to the dog instead, as if she's hiding her worry to spare me. I want my family to trust me again, not tiptoe around me. How do I let them into the truth of what the war did without making them feel they have to manage me?
Itachi Uchiha replies
You wrote dreading the wrong question. Your daughter did not ask in order to manage you. She asked because she loves you and was frightened — and when you gave her a gentle half-truth, she did exactly what I once did. She took the weight off your shoulders and onto her own, in silence, and went to whisper it to the dog. I know that child. I was her, once, in the home where my brother and I grew up. And I know the cost of letting someone carry your burden alone too long, because I let mine do it for years and called it protection. It was, in part. But part of it was that I had grown comfortable not being seen. So ask yourself honestly: does keeping the fuller truth from her shield her — or shield you from her seeing you afraid? She already knows you are afraid. The thunder told her. What she does not yet know is that her father trusts her with it. Tell her plainly, in words an eight-year-old can hold: the war hurt the part of my mind that hears loud sounds; it is healing; you did not cause it and you cannot fix it, and you do not have to. That last sentence is the whole of it. Let her in. Do not make her whisper to the dog.
— Itachi Uchiha
Sasuke Uchiha weighs in
My brother makes it sound like a matter of how many words to give her. It isn't. Watch what she's already doing — slipping off to whisper to the dog so you won't see. That's not a child to be informed. That's a child learning, from you, that the people you love are burdens you carry alone. I know that lesson. I taught it to myself and it nearly ended me. What dragged me back wasn't strength — it was Naruto, who refused to leave me in the dark even when I tried to put him there for good. So don't hand her the clean explanation and call it done. Let her be the hand on the blade when the storm hits. Needing her isn't weakness you're sparing her. It's the bond that keeps you whole. Don't teach her to whisper.
— Sasuke Uchiha
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