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You're fifteen years old when your brother dies. You thought it would feel good. You thought it would feel relieving. You thought it would feel like redemption.
All you feel is empty.
Fifteen years old, and you've abandoned all your closest friends – spent years with a monster, done the things he's asked of you, watched as he'd tortured and experimented and bent the laws of nature and dignity for his own search for knowledge. You'd thought killing him would make up for it, for standing by, for never trying to stop him – but Karin still has nightmares. Suigetsu still can't go in places that are too tight. Juugo – Juugo's deal with Orochimaru was very different from the others', but he still looks at the curse mark on your neck with something like guilt.
The curse mark's gone now. Orochimaru is gone. Itachi is gone. You stand, empty and hollow and exhausted, and wonder why you thought killing your brother would have ever lead you to peace.
-
There is an idea of deserving. In Orochimaru's labs, you'd watched children younger than you had been when your brother had murdered your clan go through and come out shaking and hollow-eyed. You've never know peace since before your brother had destroyed your world. How could you, now, having stood aside, having helped, having killed your only brother, your only living relative, having almost killed your best friend, know peace? Sasuke at seven years old had been happy, had been innocent, had been clean of blood and horror. Sasuke at fifteen years old knows nothing but. Perhaps, even, you deserve this emptiness. Perhaps when Konoha comes and kills you for running away or Akatsuki does for killing Itachi it will be righteous. It will be the end of the Uchiha and it will, like all things in your life since it ended at seven years old, be your fault.
-
The rain comes, and washes Itachi's blood from your face.
This is the last time, he'd said. Why had he said that? When you were a kid Itachi had done nothing but apologise to you. When you were seven years old and alone you thought that might have been a sign. You are fifteen and your brother had apologised to you and then let you win and he's dead now, like you planned – and you can never ask him what he meant. You want more than anything to know what he meant.
Forgive me, Sasuke. This is the last time.
Unconciousness, when it comes, is a relief. If Naruto comes and finds you here – and he very well might, you'd seen his shadow clone in the forest – you won't have to face him with your dead brother and your emptiness and Itachi's last, familiar apology dragged down your cheek by your brother's own hand.
-
You are not dead by Konoha's hand. You are not dead by Akatsuki's. You wake and Itachi's flames set a man on fire and the man burns, but not enough. He laughs at Itachi, dead and still keeping secrets and still scheming for some unknowable, unexplainable goal, and shows you his sharingan, spinning and red and familiar.
Akatsuki will not kill you and end the Uchiha because you are not the last Uchiha, and because they do not want you dead. Itachi killed your clan and left you alive because you and he were not the last Uchiha and he did not want you dead. Konoha itself orders the death of the Uchiha, and Itachi obeys because he does not want you dead. The Sandaime congratulates Itachi on his successful mission and then goes to console you about your clan being dead.
It doesn't register.
It doesn't make sense.
It doesn't–
-
Love, you think, tied up underground with Uchiha Madara leaning over you and telling you horrible, horrible truths, is nothing more than a horrible, awful curse.
A boy loves his baby brother so much that he kills his clan to keep him safe. A boy loves his older brother so much that his brother's betrayal will never, ever heal.
How awful, you think, distantly – how awful to have a massacre in your name. How terrible that your brother would murder your people to keep you safe. How horrible that the village would order your clan's genocide and let you believe their hands were clean of it.
Taka finds you. Madara unties you, brings you outside to the ocean, waves crashing against the rocks and spraying foam up high into the sky.
Your brother died for you, you think, and your eyes burn. You cry, salty tears into a salty ocean, salt-spray on the wind turning the air sharp and savory. You haven't cried for your brother since you were a child. You haven't cried for your clan in years. You think, You killed your brother. You think, this is the last time. You think, forgive me, Sasuke. You think, forgive me, Sasuke. You think, how terrible.
Itachi meant for it to feel like victory. Itachi meant for it to be something righteous. Itachi meant to die and meant for you to kill him and meant for it to be absolution.
How awful. You loved your brother as you hated him, and you killed him, and he thanked you as he died.
What happens now? Suigetsu asks, or maybe Karin, or Juugo – you can't hear anything clearly other than Itachi's last apology over the crashing of the ocean.
The answer, of course, is simple. Familiar, even. You have done it before. You have nothing else to lose. You have nothing else to live for, and you haven't since you were a kid alone in an empty compound.
You open your eyes, and the six pointed star of the mangekyou unfurls. We will avenge Itachi, you say. We will destroy Konoha.
You have been an avenger all your life. You don't have to think about Itachi, and his apologies, and his atrocities, and his sacrifice. All you have to do is avenge him.