Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

You are shaking fists & trembling teeth.
I know:
you did not mean to be cruel.
That does not mean you were kind.

What is left here?
Only the quivering of the trees,
only the rippling of the lake.

Head in lap, check.
Sorry, check.
I won’t do it again, check,
check, check.

Sometimes, I think you forget.
I am not God.
I do not forgive.

Venetta Octavia, “The Burning”

Itachi is dead.

Sasuke stands with his back against the large stone wall, breathing heavily and staring straight ahead. Adrenaline is still coursing through his veins, along with icy terror, the certainty that Itachi’s fingers were about to plunge into his eye sockets and rip out his eyes. Instead Sasuke’s face is wet with a line of blood, and he can still feel the phantom sensation of two fingers dragging down his face.

Itachi is on his back on the ground, his eyes closed. Sasuke stares, shaking, and tries to force it to make sense.

Itachi is dead. Itachi is dead. Itachi is—

His brother is covered in blood, his left arm terribly burned, his clothes torn and slashed and stained with dirt. The lifeless, crumpled body in front of him doesn't even look like Itachi. His brother has always been immaculate and unstained, made from stone and looking as though he were porcelain. Even on the night of the massacre, his uniform was spotless. But now he has been dragged down from his pedestal in the sky, broken and ruined in the dirt; not a god after all, but a mere mortal.

Above them, the heavens open up. It begins to rain.

The cold water hits his face. Sasuke feels the sting of it against his battered body and open wounds, as the adrenaline blocking the pain slowly starts to fade. Exhaustion hits him like a tidal wave over his head, every inch of him suddenly alight with agony. Darkness claws at him, but he refuses to be swallowed by it. Not yet—he needs to be sure—

He has to be dead—

Sasuke's eyes, fighting against the force trying to close them, lock on Itachi's chest and look for any signs of breathing. He tries to move, to kneel down and check for a pulse, but his grasp on consciousness slips, just briefly. The darkness latches on immediately, dragging him under.

He doesn't even feel himself hit the ground. His body collapses next to his brother's, like some kind of divine tragedy.

And the rain pelts down upon the site of the battle, the clouds in the sky thundering and cracking with lightning, as if the Uchiha's gods themselves are crying and raging for their two remaining children. But even their tears cannot put out the smoldering black flames of Amaterasu; they burn without end, turning anything they touch to ash. At the center of it are the two unconscious bodies, utterly still and silent apart from the slight rattle of breath in both their lungs. The blood is washed from their skin, becomes a river and is carried away.

Among the debris, a white snake attempts to slither off. It is trapped by black flames and burnt up.

There has been a silent spectator for the entirety of the battle. They emerge from the ground now, half of their body white and the other half black. Leafy vines encase the sides of their head, opened up like a mouth full of sharp teeth.

"Oh dear," the white side of the face says. "Is Itachi really dead? That didn't go how I was expecting at all!"

"No." The black half of the creature has a voice much deeper, no hint of the lighthearted childishness of the other. The left side of their mouth twists, an eye squinting at the older Uchiha's body. "It looks like he's still alive. I can't be sure at this distance, but..."

A few feet away, a swirling black hole opens up in the air. A man appears from it, wearing a black-red cloak identical to the one Itachi lost in the battle. He has an orange mask on his face, and the falling rain seems to go through him rather than touching him. He settles on a large, broken-up rock—a piece of the hideout, destroyed in the two Uchiha's battle.

"He's alive," the man confirms. To some he's known as Tobi and to others as Madara. His real name is known only to himself, but it's irrelevant now as he has long ago cast it off. "But he's dying. He'll need medical attention immediately if he is to live. Collect them both and take them back to Headquarters. Before Konoha arrives."

"You want to take Itachi back?" the black half asks. There is a hint of disapproval in the tone, barely noticeable. "I thought you wanted rid of him."

"He's weak now," Madara says. "If he survives, he won't be a threat. Once we get Sasuke on our side, Itachi could be useful as a tool in controlling him. He's much more unpredictable and rasher than his brother—I'll need insurance to keep him in line."

There is a moment of hesitation. "Very well," the black half finally says, his tone devoid of emotion.

"It seems there's been no winner to this battle, then," says the other half. "What a shame. Itachi was so close to getting Sasuke's eyes, too..."

Madara disappears again, seemingly swallowed up by a rip in the world. Fifteen minutes later, the squad of Konoha-nin tasked with Itachi's capture arrives on the scene. The rain is beginning to slow, Amaterasu's flames still burning. They are too late, both of the brothers gone, the destruction wrought from their terrible fight surrounding them.

Neither Akamaru or Kakashi's ninken can pick up a scent. Everything but the flames is washed away by the rain. Naruto swears under his breath, water dripping down from his hair and hiding the frustrated tears in his eyes as he presses his forehead against the tall stone wall.

"Just how long... will I have to chase after you...?"

It’s been nearly three hours, and there’s still no sign of Sasuke. Karin was confident, when she watched him walk away from them, that there was no way he could lose. But now she isn’t so sure, and she finds herself growing more and more anxious the more time that passes.

What if Sasuke isn’t stronger than his brother? The man killed an entire clan, after all. Oh, what was Karin thinking, allowing Sasuke to walk into this battle alone? If he’s dead now, then it’s her fault. It’s all her fault.

Her thoughts are interrupted by the sound of Suigetsu’s loud, wild laughter. “Oh, come on! I came here wanting a real challenge!”

“You’re one to talk, brat! At least I’ve got a solid excuse for not being able to land a hit. What’s yours?”

Kisame and Suigetsu are still swinging their swords around, neither of them gaining the upper hand. The older Kiri-nin swings his gigantic blade at Suigetsu’s head, and Suigetsu dissolves into water. He grins as he reappears, showing off small rows of sharp teeth, and lunges forward with his much smaller weapon.

Karin feels a burst of rage at the entertainment on his face. She steps forward to scream at him, but a hand closes around her shoulder in a gentle but solid grip.

"Leave him be," Juugo says. "He'll tire himself out soon, anyway."

Karin's fury grows at her teammate's calm tone. She spins on him angrily. "Sasuke could be dying right now! And he's messing around like an idiot—"

"There's nothing we can do for now but wait."

"We can go after him to help! We never should have let him go alone!"

Juugo frowns. "Sasuke ordered us to stay here. He said this was his fight."

 "I don't care what he said!"

Karin understands Sasuke wanting his vengeance to be his own. She killed Zousui after Orochimaru found her, for what had been done to her and her mother—insisted on doing it with her own two hands. But he was just a man to her; she can't imagine how it must feel for Sasuke, whose monster is his own brother.

But if his need to mete out his vengeance himself gets him killed—it isn't worth it.

"Sasuke gave me an order," Juugo says firmly. "He is the reincarnation of Kimimaro. I won't disobey him."

Karin exhales loudly in frustration. "And if he dies? What then? He's the only one who can keep you under control!"

She knows it's a cruel thing to say—keep you under control, like Juugo is a rabid beast who needs to be muzzled. But it's the truth. Juugo would slaughter them both without Sasuke. They're lucky the curse mark's power hasn't activated in the time he's been gone.

Juugo is unfazed. "You're right. I need Sasuke. But I have faith in him. He won't lose."

Karin blinks at the certainty in his voice. She spins away from him, sputtering, crossing her arms over her chest. "Of course I—of course I have faith in Sasuke, too! That's not what I meant!"

There's a loud clamor and a sudden exclamation. "Oh shit!"

Suigetsu's sword has been knocked from his hands. He's sporting a deep cut on his pale skin, blood dripping heavily down his arm. That Kisame's sword actually managed to connect with him can only mean he's completely exhausted himself. He's used up all the water stored in his body.

"Well, well." Kisame grins, teeth larger and sharper than Suigetsu's. "Will you look at that. Looks like someone isn't so untouchable anymore."

Suigetsu swallows, hand pressed tight against his wound and gaze darting to his sword on the ground five feet away. "Now wait, man—"

A swirling vortex opens up in mid-air. Karin starts, and she sees Suigetsu do the same. A man in an orange mask steps out, the hole disappearing behind him. He's wearing the same black cloak with red clouds—another member of the Akatsuki.

Kisame doesn't look surprised. He turns to face the new arrival, the grin dropping from his face and his expression becoming something more serious. "Well? Is it over?"

"It's over," the man says, "but there was no winner. Both of them are down right now, but they've survived."

A look of surprise passes over Kisame's face. "Huh, really? Well, that's not how Itachi planned it."

"Wait." Karin steps forward and stares at the masked man, her heart leaping. "What do you mean? You mean Sasuke's alive?"

The man looks down at her—at the three of them—and Karin gets the feeling of being sized-up and judged. "He's in bad shape," he says. "Though Itachi is much worse off. They've both been moved to a safe location." He turns toward his fellow Akatsuki member. "And what will you do now, Kisame?"

Kisame sighs, heaving his large sword over his shoulder. "Itachi is my partner. If he really hasn't managed to bite it like he planned, then I guess I'll stick with him for now."

"What does that mean?" Suigetsu demands. "You mean he planned on dying? He wanted to lose?"

Kisame ignores him. He seemingly disregarded his presence the moment they stopped fighting.

Karin's eyes are still locked on the masked man. It didn't escape her notice the authority he spoke to Kisame with. Is he the organization's leader?

"Why have you taken Sasuke? What do you want from him? If he's hurt, then just bring him to me! I can heal him myself!"

"Konoha is still lurking around," the masked man says. "It's unwise to stay in this area. I can take you with me to Sasuke."

Karin trades an uncertain glance with Suigetsu and Juugo. She doesn't like this. She can't imagine the Akatsuki can want anything good from Sasuke—not when he made enemies of them by killing one of their members and attempting to kill another.

Suigetsu shrugs, walking over to grab his blade from the ground. "I still need to get Samehada. I'm going with them, whether you come or not."

Karin turns to him accusingly, to ask him if that's really all he cares about, his stupid swords? But she stops when she sees the look in his eyes, hidden beneath the facade of carelessness. He's worried about Sasuke, too.

It's Juugo who makes the decision for the three of them, stepping forward and saying, "We will follow you to him."

Sasuke returns to consciousness slowly, his entire body aching like one gigantic bruise.

There’s a thin blanket beneath him that does nothing to soften the hardness of the stone floor beneath it. Another one is draped over him. The dark room he’s in is lit by a single candle, the light reflecting off the walls and making them appear the color of blood. On the low table next to the candle is a familiar scratched hitai-ate and a ring with a crimson stone.

He pushes his aching body up, and slowly memory returns to him. Smoke in his mouth and lightning at his fingertips—then nothing, nothing left, helpless and shaking and terrified—an arm reaching and lips curving up—Forgive me, Sasuke—

Itachi. Collapsing to the ground—

Sasuke straightens, surging to awareness. Some type of explosion happens in his chest. Itachi. Where is he? Sasuke needs to be sure that he's dead. He collapsed to the ground, he was hacking up blood, he has to be dead. But where is he? Where is the body? Sasuke needs to—

He's dead. Sasuke's sure of it. He needs to see that he's dead.

The sound of footsteps on the other side of the room causes Sasuke to tense, turning his head. They echo loudly against the stone floor, bouncing off the walls. The man that emerges from the shadows is wearing an Akatsuki cloak, an orange mask covering his face.

"Careful not to move too much," he says. "I brought you here to patch you up. You were in bad shape—though your brother was far worse."

A sickness surges up Sasuke's throat. "Itachi? He's alive? Where is he?!"

The man holds up a hand. "Easy. You're injured, and your chakra is currently as close to zero as it's possible to be without dying." He lowers his hand and walks forward a few more steps. "We've met once before. Do you remember?"

"Yes," Sasuke says. He recalls Deidara's idiotic partner, who he assumed had either escaped or died with him. This man sounds nothing like him. "Where am I? Why did you bring me here?" Where's Itachi?

"I told you. I brought you here to patch you up."

Sasuke scoffs. He doesn't know what this man wants from him, and at the moment, he doesn't care. Itachi is here somewhere—alive, despite all Sasuke's efforts. Sasuke finally had his brother. He had the man at his feet, broken and vulnerable and lifeless. He was so close. When is he ever going to get that chance again?

No. He won't let Itachi slip through his fingers. He won't let him live another day. If he was in worse shape than Sasuke, then that means he's weak now. Sasuke needs to find him and finish the job, before he recovers his strength. Then all of this will be finished—

I promised you death, Sasuke thinks darkly, and that's exactly what I'm going to give you.

It's the only way he'll ever be able to rest.

He'll burn Itachi's body afterwards, the way he did with the rest of them. He doesn't deserve it—doesn't deserve the honor of an Uchiha funeral. But Sasuke will do it anyway, so Itachi can be granted a place in the afterlife. Not so he can find peace, but so he can look their parents in the eyes with his stained soul and bloody hands. So he can be forced to kneel down in front of them with the weight of everything he's done on his shoulders.

"Not quite so fast," the masked man says. "I'll take you to Itachi soon, if that's what you want. Trust me, he isn't going anywhere. First, hear me out. I brought you here in order to tell you something."

"I don't care," Sasuke snaps. He shoves the blanket off his body, ignoring the overwhelming weakness in his limbs. "Just tell me where—"

"It's about your brother. The truth about him."

Sasuke freezes, his eyes narrowing. "What do you mean?"

"Let's start with this," the man says. "My real name is Madara Uchiha—yes, that Madara. I believe Itachi mentioned me to you?"

Ice shoots down Sasuke's spine. Madara Uchiha—the co-founder of Konoha, whose name was only a footnote in the history books compared to Hashirama Senju's, and who his clan only ever mentioned in hushed voices among themselves. And the man who, according to Itachi, was the one who helped him slaughter everyone that night.

How did Sasuke forget? This won't be finished when Itachi is dead. Not until he kills Madara, too. Until he kills everyone who had a hand in his clan's death.

But he will not take this declaration at face value. He would be stupid to believe the words of a stranger—and even stupider to believe Itachi.

"Prove it," Sasuke demands, eyes narrowed and jaw clenched.

"Very well." The man reaches up and grabs his mask, pulling it back partially to expose a fraction of his face. His Sharingan shines in the dimly-lit room, bright red with three tomoe—

Sasuke feels power surge suddenly behind his left eye. A sharp pain spikes through his eye socket, blood dripping down his cheek, and black flames suddenly erupt—the same as Itachi's.

The masked man cries out in surprise, his mask dropping to the floor and falling back into the shadows where his face can't be seen. There's a heavy silence, and Sasuke can hear his own shaking breaths. He can already feel the power in his eye fading, and he raises his hand to his face to touch the blood there.

What the hell?

A few drops of blood drip from his chin, falling onto the beige blanket. He stares down at it, dumbfounded.

"Well." Sasuke snaps his head around when he hears the masked man's voice. "That was unexpected."

The man who is possibly Madara Uchiha is emerging from the shadows of the room, his mask once again in place. The black flames are gone, and he seems to have been unaffected by them apart the end of his cloak sleeve that has been burnt off.

"I should have expected something like that from Itachi," he says. "Even after what he meant to be his own death, he plays one last hand."

Sasuke's teeth clench. "What the hell are you talking about?" Meant to be his death?

"Itachi implanted Amaterasu into your eye the moment before he thought he was going to die. He predicted I would try to speak to you, and he was hoping his little trick would kill me. He wanted to protect you from me."

Sasuke blinks, a look of pure shock flickering over his face. Protect... me?

"Bullshit," Sasuke spits, his heart hammering in his chest.

"It's the truth."

"Why the hell would he do something like that?!"

And Madara tells him. He tells him everything.

He tells him of two clans joined together to create a village—of the slow dissolution of one, ostracized and pushed into a box by the very people they protected. He tells of the Nine-Tails' attack, and of the suspicion and distrust and persecution. He tells of a clan finally forced to push back and of a thirteen-year-old child trapped between two opposing forces, peace in his heart and a war in his head.

Madara says he couldn't bring himself to kill his younger brother, and Sasuke grips his hair and digs his nails into his skin, struggling to breathe. Liar, he yells. Liar, liar, liar, but too much of it makes sense. It connects too many threads Sasuke was never able to follow to the end, places where the narrative Itachi tried to spin never quite fit, where he tried too hard to make it fit.

He doesn't know what he's feeling. All he knows is that his entire world has turned upside down, is falling to pieces around him, and there's no solid place he can grip to hold on.

"I'll leave you alone for a while," Madara says. "Clearly this is a lot to process."

Sasuke bites through his tongue, nails digging into his skin. "Itachi," he demands, fighting to get the words out with the steel vice clamped around his lungs. "Take me to Itachi! Now."

Madara looks at him for a long moment, watching him struggle with the storm in his head, in his heart. "I'll take you to him, but you won't be able to speak to him. He's fallen into a coma."

He feels sick. Blood fills his mouth. "I don't care. Take me to him."

Madara leads him out of the room with the single flickering candleflame, into the corridor of whatever hideout they're in. Sasuke's entire body is weak and helpless, drained of all his chakra and bruised all over. His legs threaten to buckle beneath him, but he forces them to hold his weight. His head is so loud, screaming and whirling and raging, that he can barely feel the pain over it.

He was ordered to do so by the Hidden Leaf Village...

...acted like the older brother you desired for one purpose...

I'm always going to be here for you...

...but one's reality can be another's illusion. We all live inside our own fantasies.

...not even worth killing.

...worried about you above all else...

...that's what big brothers are for.

Forgive me, Sasuke. But this is it...

Sasuke digs his fingers into his arms, the memories flashing in front of his eyes.

Itachi is laid out on a frail cot similar to the type seen in hospitals. His chest is bare, wrapped in bandages just like Sasuke's. Sasuke's heart stutters when he sees him, then pounds so loudly he's certain Madara can hear it. He takes a shaky step forward, eyes locked on his brother's face.

His forehead is bare, no scratched hitai-ate. It's been so long since Sasuke's seen him without it—almost a decade—that for a moment his face looks like a stranger's. He stares at the rise of his chest, the small puffs of breath escaping his lips.

"Leave," Sasuke says, not turning to look at Madara. "I want to be alone with him."

A moment of pause. "Very well," Madara says. Footsteps sound against the stone floor as he leaves the room. Sasuke waits until he can no longer hear them.

He steps up to the bed so he's standing right next to Itachi's still body, staring down at him. His pulse races with fear at the close proximity—expecting his brother's hand to snap up and rip out his eyes, or for his body to turn into a flock of crows and prove this a genjutsu.

None of that happens. Itachi is pale and dead-looking against the white sheets.

Sasuke's chest churns with dozens of emotions. Rage, hatred, disgust, betrayal—those he's familiar with. They poison the blood in his veins, burning hot like fire and fighting to burst out from behind his ribcage. But also others now—confusion, worry, grief, and a desperate, clawing need to understand.

I hate you, Sasuke thinks, teeth gritted and fury surging.

It's true. But it's also not.

“Is it the truth?” Sasuke says quietly. His voice echoes in the empty room, makes it sound louder than it is. “Everything he said… is that what really happened? You didn’t want to kill them? Why wouldn't you tell me, you bastard?"

He burns, trapped in his own inferno. His jaw is clenched hard enough to send pain through his teeth. He needs to know. He needs to know if it's the truth—needs to know where this rageful fire in his chest should be directed. Who are the ones at fault? Who ripped his family from him? Who are the ones he should be making sure pay?

Itachi? Or Konoha?

His eyes sting with tears. He kneels down on the floor next to the bed, gripping his brother's bandaged hand tightly.

"Wake up. Itachi, you have to wake up. You have to explain. You have to—"

Sasuke chokes on his words. Crushed under the weight of everything he's heard, every foundation he's built his life upon falling away, he bows his head and sobs.

Sasuke spends an entire week glued to Itachi’s side. His teammates attempt to check up on him several times, one after the other, but he always sends them away. When he finally emerges, the lost and trembling boy who entered the room is gone. There’s a steel in his eyes and in the line of his shoulders—a determination and resolve identical to the kind he held when he approached the members of Team Hebi and declared his intent to kill his brother.

This time, he declares: “I’m going to destroy Konoha.”

Behind his mask, the man known as Madara smiles.

Suigetsu, Karin, and Juugo are sitting around a table, with Sasuke standing at the head. In the seven days that Sasuke's been tucked away from them, they've all heard the story of the truth behind the Uchiha Clan's demise. They understand the new fire burning in Sasuke's eyes, the righteous fury that has melded steel into his bones.

"I will not force you to join me," Sasuke says, calm and steady voice at odds with the intensity held in his eyes. "I offer you the same choice as before. You're free to leave if that's what you wish."

There's a moment of silence. The three members of Team Hebi exchange glances.

Karin thinks of the elders of Kusagakure, treating her and her mother like slaves instead of citizens. She remembers her mother's body covered in bite marks, her eye sockets sunken and her skin stretched over her bones, her lifeforce drained. She remembers after her death, the job passed onto her: hands pushing her, holding her in place, teeth clamping down and pulling the life from her.

Juugo thinks of his parents, who he slaughtered in the midst of one of his rages. He thinks of his home, that locked him up and called him a monster, that tried to have him killed. He thinks of Kimimaro, who was the first person in his life to ever show him kindness. Kimimaro who, like Sasuke, was the last survivor of his clan.

Suigetsu thinks of his older brother, Mangetsu, who would be the same age as Sasuke's older brother were he alive today. He remembers his brother's body on the icy ground, and he remembers the blood that stained his hands as he tried desperately to save him—then sobbing over Mangetsu's sword, swearing vengeance with hatred in his heart. Swearing to avenge him and carry on his brother's dream.

The three of them think of all the ways this cruel world has caused them to suffer, has treated them like disposable objects to be thrown away, and they think of how Sasuke Uchiha saved each of them. How he showed them kindness—not in his words, but in his actions—and demanded nothing in return, only asked.

Unanimously, without speaking, the three of them make their choice.

“What’s wrong with him?” Sasuke asks. “Why won’t he wake up?”

The two of them are standing in the room with Itachi, so eerily fragile and vulnerable on the bed. Sasuke is staring down at him, still trying to find some trace of the cruel man he came to know since that night, but now all he can see is the brother who lifted up his covers and let Sasuke slip into his bed after a nightmare.

He remembers now: He remembers Itachi turning to look back at him one last time, tears glinting silver in the moonlight as they slid down his cheeks. How could he have ever forgotten?

“I told you,” Madara says. “He’s ill. It’s only the medication that’s being pumped through his blood right now that’s keeping him alive. His organs are shutting down. His chakra network is corroding. At this point, we’re only prolonging the inevitable.”

Sasuke’s nails dig into his palms. He tastes blood in his mouth. “No. He isn’t going to die.”

Not until he wakes up to explain himself. Not until he gives Sasuke the truth. Sasuke refuses to let him die before then.

(Oh, how everything has turned so upside down.)

“There’s nothing that can be done,” Madara says.

“There has to be something,” Sasuke snaps. “What’s even wrong with him? Why is he sick?”

“The Mangekyou,” the older Uchiha explains. “He’s overused it so much, the chakra pathways in his eyes have become infected and have corroded.”

Sasuke frowns. He knows that overuse of the Mangekyou Sharingan leads to blindness. “You said his organs are shutting down. He was coughing up blood during our fight. How can overusing his eyes cause that?”

“All chakra pathways in the body are connected. Once the pathways in your brother’s eyes were damaged, it didn’t stop there. The infection spread throughout his entire body, eating away at his chakra network. Normally the immune system would fight it off and his chakra network would heal naturally, but Itachi’s eyes remained irreversibly damaged. And he kept using the Mangekyou, worsening the damage even further each time he did. Eventually his body was weakened to the point where it could no longer fight the infection off. His chakra network stopped healing itself.”

Sasuke bites the inside of his mouth, considering the explanation. “So then, it’s his eyes that are the problem.” He looks down at Itachi’s still face, his closed eyelids. “Then—can’t you switch them with mine?”

Madara pulls his gaze from Itachi to look at Sasuke. “What?”

“Itachi said he was going to steal my eyes. To cure his blindness. If we switched eyes, then wouldn’t that fix it?”

Madara considers it. “It wouldn’t fix any of the damage already done to his chakra network.”

“But it would stop it from getting any worse.”

“Yes,” Madara says after a pause. “It would. But you don’t have the Mangekyou. I’m unsure what would happen if I transplanted his eyes into you. I don’t know if you’d gain the Eternal Mangekyou, or if his eyes would just remain damaged in your head.”

Sasuke looks down at his brother. The man who haunts his nightmares and ripped everything away from him. The man who, allegedly, sacrificed everything for him to live.

“Do it,” he says. “If it will help him.”

Madara performs the eye transplant only a couple days later. Juugo supervises the procedure—Sasuke doesn’t trust the older Uchiha to be alone with him when he’s passed out and vulnerable. Three years with Orochimaru were successful in ramming that lesson into his brain. Sasuke is terrified of the black spots in his own memory, is always skirting around them.

It hurts. The pain is excruciating. Madara theorizes it’s because Sasuke only has a regular Sharingan, not the Mangekyou. The chakra from Itachi’s eyes is trying to force itself in where it doesn’t belong, is prying open a door in his chakra network that is soldered shut, rather than having it open naturally upon the awakening of the Mangekyou. This is good news, he says—it means that Itachi’s eyes are being healed, that Sasuke will have full use of his sight.

It takes a few weeks for him to fully recover from the surgery. He is perpetually blind during this time, bandages placed around his eyes to protect them while they heal. One of the members of Team Hebi—now Taka—is always by him during this period of time. It frustrates him that they need to be with him, but he won’t allow himself to be taken advantage of while in such a helpless state purely out of pride.

When he removes the bandages, his vision is as clear and vivid as it has always been. And as he stares at Itachi’s eyes in the mirror, chakra surging behind them, Sasuke watches in astonishment as the three tomoe in his Sharingan transform into an intricate pattern: his iris becoming black instead of red, with a red, six-pointed star where his pupil should be. And within the star—a black shuriken, similar to his brother’s Mangekyou pattern, only its edges straight instead of curved.

The Eternal Mangekyou. Sasuke stares at it, gently touching the skin beneath his eye, and doesn’t know how to feel.

With Itachi still trapped in his coma, weakened and feeble, there is no longer any reason for Madara to adhere to his promise to leave Konoha alone. Pain is sent into the village tasked with retrieving the Nine-Tails, leaving death and destruction in his wake.

The operation is a failure. Nagato betrays the organization, along with Konan, using his last breaths to resurrect every dead shinobi in the village. Konoha is in shambles, but it suffers no losses. The Akatsuki has lost two of its most powerful members and is left barely standing on one leg; Naruto Uzumaki, the demon child once hated and shunned by everyone, is now hailed as a hero.

This, the man known as Madara thinks, is why I have trust issues.

Sasuke isn’t aware of any of this until after it has already happened. He and the rest of Team Taka are still recovering from their fight with the Eight-Tails, laid up with grievous injuries. There’s no doubt that they’ve been purposely kept in the dark, and Sasuke seethes when he learns of this. Konoha’s destruction is meant to be his—how dare Madara try to take it from him.

“Do you think he did it on purpose?” Suigetsu asks. Lightning burns splinter across his pale skin, healing slowly enough that they’ll likely scar. Sasuke feels a flash of guilt whenever he looks at them. “Sent us after the Eight-Tails because he knew we’d need time to recover afterwards?”

Sasuke scowls. “Most likely.”

“I don’t trust him,” Karin says. “Sasuke, I know you said we’re just using him to accomplish what we need. But how much longer do we have to do as he says?”

“Not too much longer,” he assures her. He picks at some dried blood that’s caked under his nail. He doesn’t know whose it is. “The five Kage have declared a summit. It’s a few weeks from now. We’re going after Danzo then.” And then the elders, and then Madara.

Everyone who had a hand in the Uchiha Clan’s demise, who now prospers under the peace paid for in their blood—Sasuke will make certain they suffer for it.

Itachi is, as always, still and silent on the bed. Two months, and Sasuke still can’t shake the impression that he’s staring down at a stranger.

You should be waking up now, Sasuke thinks. Why aren’t you? Your eyes are fixed. Will you really continue to refuse me answers?

He stares down at his brother, his chest rising and falling slowly, small puffs of breath escaping his lips. Being this close to him every day for the past two months, staring down at him, has allowed Sasuke to notice things about him he didn’t before. Like the small scar under his chin, a white line across his jawbone that is barely noticeable; the chipped nail polish that was applied just shy of perfect, purple smeared slightly where the skin meets the nail on the thumb and index finger. Small, miniscule flaws—but proof that his brother is a human being, and not something sculpted from marble.

Sasuke’s mind twists itself in knots each time he looks at him. A war is waged in his chest.

Because still, he doesn't know who to believe. His whole life has been other people twisting him up.

He thinks he believes Madara about Itachi. He gets closer each day that he comes here and looks down at him, seeing echoes of the kind brother he used to know in his face and nothing of the cruel man who replaced him. But he still can't be sure. How can he ever be sure?

Itachi is a liar. This is the only truth Sasuke can ever be sure of. Whichever story is the real one, this will always be fact. The question is, which one was the lie—the brother who cared for him above all else, or the one who only pretended to?

Sasuke closes his eyes—his brother’s eyes. He feels the urge to rip them out sometimes, when he remembers Itachi standing over his parents’ bodies. Remembers him tearing mercilessly into his mind.

His jaw clenches. “I don’t know what to think about you,” he admits. “I don’t know how to feel about you. I don’t know if I ever will, even if everything is proved to be true. But I’m going after Danzo tomorrow. I’ll make him admit it to me, if it is. I’ll kill him, and I’ll kill the elders. I won’t let them get away with what they did to you. I don’t care if you agree with me or not.”

Sasuke reaches forward, hesitantly, to grip his brother’s hand. “Please, Nii-san. Wake up.”

“Wake up. Itachi, wake up.”

…

“Please.”

…

“Nii-san.”

Snippets of voices—the same voice—float in and out of his head. Sasuke, Itachi thinks, trying to pry his eyes open. He can’t understand any of the words, but that’s Sasuke. Sasuke, Sasuke, Sasuke, Itachi has to get to him—

It feels like fighting against gravity. Like his eyelids have been cemented shut. It’s only when he manages to pry them open that it occurs to him that he shouldn’t be. He shouldn’t be opening his eyes, he isn’t supposed to be opening his eyes. He isn’t supposed to be alive, so why—

The second impossible thing that hits him is that he can see. Better than he has in years.

“Itachi?” someone says. “Shit, hold on—”

The light momentarily blinds him, in a way he’s become unaccustomed to; like knives stabbing into his eye sockets and straight into his brain. Itachi tries to identify the voice. It’s familiar, but not Sasuke. He blinks rapidly, trying to clear his vision from the sudden assault. He can see, he can see everything, not just poorly outlined blurs of colors and shapes. His eyes, for the first time in so long, don’t have to be strained, don’t ache with an ever-present pain.

Everything else does, though. His chest hurts, and attempting to breathe feels like razor blades scraping across his lungs. Like swallowing jagged pieces of glass. He can barely feel his right arm, and his entire body feels feeble. His arm nearly gives out just trying to push himself up from the bed he’s laying on.

“Where—” Pain rips through his chest, and he bites down on the instinct to cough as the word scrapes up his throat. “W-Where am—”

He can’t help it. He chokes on his own breath, and a horrible, scraping cough is torn from his throat. Agony rips through his chest and then he can’t stop; he’s hacking and gasping for breath, each desperate gasp of air only slicing his chest up further and setting him off again. His vision goes black and he can taste blood, thick and disgusting in the back of his throat.

“Whoa—whoa, whoa, you’re okay. Take this. Breathe—”

Something cold is pushed into his hands, his fingers guided to wrap around it. It takes Itachi a moment to realize it’s a glass. When it’s pushed toward his lips, he’s too out of it to think about how he should try to resist—it could be anything, it could be poisoned—and instead he lets the cold water trickle down his throat. Slowly, as to not cause another round of coughing and gasping.

“Itachi,” the man in front of him says. “Are you with me?”

Kisame, Itachi realizes. There’s an undercurrent of uncertainty to his partner’s voice that Itachi’s never heard before.

Slowly the black spots begin to vanish from his vision. He can see again, clearly, as impossible as it is and despite the fact that his eyes should be an irreparable mess. He blew everything in his fight with Sasuke. He could barely see a single thing at the very end, dragging his broken, bleeding body along as it fought to give out.

Sasuke. Itachi inhales sharply at the thought. He was here. Itachi heard his voice.

Kisame is in front of him, staring at him with an expression that looks faintly like concern. It isn’t an emotion Itachi has ever seen on him. He forces himself to do what his years in ANBU taught him; he shoves back all of the questions swimming in his brain, the instinctive panic response, and forces himself to remain calm and collected.

“Where am I?” he asks. It still feels like he’s swallowing glass, and his voice sounds raw and hoarse. “Wh-Why am I—”

“You’re at the Akatsuki’s headquarters,” Kisame tells him. “You survived. Madara brought you back here, along with your brother. You’ve been in a coma for about two months.”

Alarm shoots through him. Sasuke. With Madara.

Itachi’s mind does some quick-as-lightning processing. Taking in Kisame’s words and his current situation, and then filling in all of the blanks; guessing the subsequent events as they must have taken place. Madara must have reached them after the fight before the squad from Konoha did, Sasuke drained of chakra and Itachi clinging to life by a thread. He would have told Sasuke the truth about the massacre—Itachi’s last ditch attempt to kill him, planting Amaterasu in Sasuke’s eye, must not have worked—and he would have kept Itachi alive as insurance, a bargaining tool to make Sasuke easier to control. His brother must have switched eyes with him, that’s why Itachi can see so clearly now.

And if Sasuke knows the truth, then that means…

Itachi feels a heavy stone sink into his stomach. “Kisame,” he says, in a level voice that betrays nothing, “where is my brother?”

The Kiri-nin hesitates before he responds. “With Madara. The five Kage are holding a summit. Your brother’s planning to attack them and kill Danzo.”

It’s what he expected, but panic still shoots through him. He’ll die.

“Where?” Itachi demands, still evenly and unemotionally, but with a film of ice to the tone that’s impossible to miss.

Kisame frowns. “Itachi, I don’t think—”

“Where?”

“The Land of Iron,” his partner reluctantly admits. “I don’t know the exact location. But—hey, Itachi! What do you think you’re doing?”

Itachi is pulling the IV from his arm, pushing himself up despite the way every part of his body screams. He’s used to ignoring pain, has learned to turn it off and push through it. Kisame moves to block him from getting to the door.

“You can’t go after him,” he says. “Just because your eyes are healed doesn’t mean you aren’t still dying slowly from illness. Your body is barely functioning, you’re going to keel over—”

Itachi’s eyes—Sasuke’s eyes—bleed into red. The three tomoe swirl, his gaze locking with Kisame’s, and the man drops instantly like a pile of rocks. He hits his chin against the bedrail as he falls hard on the stone floor.

Itachi steps over his fallen body and exits the room.

Itachi sends out his crows to scout the land for his brother, and they quickly find him. When Itachi arrives at the bridge, Danzo Shimura’s body is being devoured by black flames. Sasuke is standing over it with his sword and hand smeared with blood, a coldness in his eyes that chills Itachi’s soul.

Itachi’s heart leaps into his throat when he sees him—and so clearly, not the blurred image his damaged eyes needed to strain to see during their battle. He was right when he told Itachi he wasn’t that same thirteen-year-old kid; he stands taller, with a steel written into his bones, and the fury in his blood-red eyes is less like fire, more like ice.

Itachi wishes he could be proud. Instead he just feels cold.

He does a quick scan of the area. He sees no one else, only his brother and the burning corpse. The bridge has been broken apart, large pieces of stone crumbling away and falling into the water below. Blood and scorch marks and stray weapons are scattered across the structure, painting a clear picture of the rough battle that has just taken place.

It’s not too late, Itachi tries to reassure himself. Danzo’s death is—unfortunate and disadvantageous, but no one has to know it was Sasuke. The situation can still be salvaged. He can still make this work.

He pushes himself off the tree he’s crouched in, dropping down onto the bridge. “Sasuke!”

He ignores the painful lurch in his chest as he lands, the sharpness that cuts through his lungs like a blade and makes his vision briefly go black. Spots dance in front of his eyes. Sasuke turns toward the voice, his eyes still twisted into the Mangekyou pattern, and his face goes pale.

“Itachi?” he breathes, staring at his brother like he’s an illusion.

He doesn’t move, seemingly frozen in place. Itachi approaches him slowly, his expression devoid of any emotion. He is unsure how to approach his brother, his brother who now knows when he was never meant to. Itachi’s face settles into its usual blankness automatically. These days, it’s not so much as a mask he chooses to put on, and is more like one that has molded to his face. Prying it off himself takes more effort than maintaining it.

There’s a shallow cut on Sasuke’s forehead, blood smearing his skin and trickling into his right eye. He’s covered in dirt and bruises, and his clothing is ripped. Exhaustion is written into his bones. He gazes at Itachi in stunned disbelief.

“Is it really you?”

Itachi reaches up with the sleeve of his cloak to gently wipe the blood that’s trickling into Sasuke’s eye. “It’s me. It’s really me.”

Sasuke shakes his head, still staring at him with a dazed look in his eyes, as if he expects him to fade away like a mirage. “No. No, you were—you were in a coma. You were—”

“I woke up,” Itachi tells him. “Kisame told me where you were going. Sasuke, I don’t know what Madara told you—”

At Madara’s name, the stunned look finally clears from his brother’s face. His eyes go sharp with anger—a look Itachi is sure he’s worn many times before, that Itachi would have seen clearly were his eyes in working condition during their battle. The look is as wrong on him now as it was at thirteen at that inn, lightning sparking in his palm.

“He told me about you,” Sasuke says, his fists clenching. “He told me about Konoha. They ordered the Uchiha Clan to be killed. Don’t even try to deny it. Don’t even try to say he was lying. Danzo confirmed it to me.”

Itachi looks down at the body less than a foot away. The air smells sickeningly like burning flesh. Were the circumstances different, Itachi might feel a dark curl of satisfaction watching the skin slowly burn from Danzo’s bones. The man who is the reason his best friend is dead, who is the reason he was forced to stain his sword and his hands with the blood of his kin—Itachi does not revel in violence, takes no pleasure in death, but for this case he would make an exception.

But he can’t. He can’t feel pleased. Not when Danzo is apparently Hokage now (who the hell was in charge of that decision?) and his death means Konoha will be without a leader at a time when it needs one most. Not when his death means Sasuke will be hunted down and the plans Itachi made for him burning up.

It’s okay. It’s okay. I can still fix this.

Itachi pulls his gaze from the body to look at Sasuke. “It’s true. The complete truth, most likely not—Madara no doubt took certain liberties when telling you the tale to sway you to his side. But the coup. The orders. That’s true.”

Sasuke’s eyes are still in their unique star-like pattern, something fragile in them as he processes the words. Then they return to their previous anger, flames flickering within them like the ones burning at his feet. “They’re going to pay for this.”

“No,” Itachi says forcefully. “Sasuke, you have to stop this. You’ll get yourself killed. It’s not worth it. Let it go.”

Sasuke’s expression freezes, and standing this close, Itachi can see the betrayal that flashes through his red eyes. “Let it go?” he repeats quietly, and for a brief moment, he looks exactly like that wounded child Itachi left in the street. Bleeding, broken, and struggling to understand why.

Then his expression darkens, and that child is gone. The hatred etched into his face is unwavering, sharp claws latched deep into his soul. “I’m going to kill every last one of them.”

Itachi grabs his brother’s arm as he tries to move past him. “I can’t let you do that.”

Sasuke jaw clenches. “Are you going to kill me?” he asks. “Because that’s the only thing that will stop me. Madara told me my life was more important to you than Konoha. Was that the truth, too? Or was that one of the parts he ‘took liberties’ with?”

Itachi feels a tightness in his chest that’s only partially due to his poor physical condition. It takes him a moment to find his words again. “That isn’t—I’m trying to stop you from getting yourself killed. It isn’t too late. You can still go back. You can live a life.”

“Why?” Sasuke demands. “You think I would go back there? After everything they’ve done?”

“The Uchiha were the ones who made the choice to lead a revolt. It shouldn’t have happened like it did, but it isn’t Konoha’s fault—”

“Stop defending them!”

Itachi’s grip on Sasuke’s arm tightens, nails digging into the fabric of his shirt. He opens his mouth to reply, a sharp emotion in his chest that he hates the feel of, feels too much like anger for his liking, when he hears someone approaching. A voice calls out.

“Sasuke?”

Itachi drops his brother’s arm and looks past Sasuke. One of Sasuke’s old genin teammates, the girl with the pink hair, is standing on the other end of the bridge. She’s staring at Sasuke as he spins around, his eyes narrowing when he sees her.

“Sakura,” he says. The previous emotion is gone from his voice, replaced by a blankness. It reminds Itachi unsettlingly of himself. “What are you doing here?”

Itachi can read the nervousness in her posture, in every line of her body. Her eyes land on him and flash with shock, but she makes an effort to compose her expression again as she forces her eyes back to Sasuke.

“I came to ask you to let me come with you,” she says.

Itachi has made a life out of lying, and so, he knows what it looks like on someone else. This girl is lying, and not well at all. Her voice trembles and her hands shake. She holds herself too stiffly and the emotion in her eyes betrays her. Itachi can see her hand, closed around something and hiding it from sight—a kunai.

It takes Itachi less than a moment to surmise what she has come here to do—what she has come here attempting to do, for there is no way she could ever succeed. How she has fooled herself into thinking she might, Itachi does not know.

Sasuke sees too, the realization clicking in his expression. “Liar. You came here to kill me.”

Sakura swallows, her expression unbelievably guilty even as she stutters denials. “Wh-What? No! I was—I told you, I—”

Sasuke’s eyes are dark as he steps forward. Itachi quickly steps in front of him before he can do something he can’t take back, before this escalates out of control. He meets the young girl’s eyes and says, “Can you put the kunai away, please?”

“You’re supposed to be dead,” Sakura says, staring at Itachi. “Sasuke killed you.”

Itachi feels Sasuke flinch at the words.

“He didn’t,” Itachi says. “Please put the weapon down. I can explain.”

Sakura stares, her eyes flickering back and forth between Itachi and Sasuke. Her green eyes harden, become like steel, and she shakes her head. Her hand tightens on her weapon. “No,” she says. “I don’t need to hear anything from you. You’re the reason for all of this. You destroyed Sasuke-kun’s life—made him become like this. You’ll die for that.”

Itachi can feel the killing intent coalescing in the air. Normally he would scoff at such a threat, coming from a girl who clearly possesses barely a fraction of the skill he does. But his organs are shredded, dying, and it hurts just to breathe. He doesn’t have the strength for even a single jutsu. He can’t even activate his Sharingan.

“No,” Sasuke snarls. As the girl gathers chakra in her fist and moves to punch the unstable bridge beneath them, Sasuke pushes past Itachi and flies forward with his sword aimed at her throat.

“Don’t!” Itachi yells.

“Sakura!” another voice screams.

In near perfect timing, Kakashi and Naruto appear in the distance. Their eyes are wide as they take in the scene, and with Sasuke about to slit his old teammate’s throat, Itachi’s brain flies through options in a fraction of a second, calculating and configuring.

He forces his damaged chakra network to work, and he calls on the crow he left to Naruto. Come.

Naruto bends over, clutching his stomach and heaving like he’s struggling not to barf. A black crow shoves itself up his windpipe, and Naruto gags and chokes as it bursts out of his mouth in an explosion of feathers. The blonde boy falls to his knees, gasping, and the bird flies straight at Sasuke.

The moment the bird’s single blood-red eye makes contact with Sasuke’s Eternal Mangekyou, the shape of the crow’s three tomoe swirls into a familiar pattern. It casts the genjutsu, just as Itachi programmed it to.

Protect Konoha.

Sasuke freezes in place, his gaze locked with the crow’s.

(To Sasuke, it feels like this:

Inky black tendrils seeping through his brain and his heart like ivy, twining around his thoughts and his ribcage and spreading their inky, poisonous blackness wherever they touch. It seeps into every synapse of his mind, every crevice between his bones, pushes its way up his throat with the thickness of tar and the sharpness of blood. A sickness that burrows itself deep in his soul and then reaches outward like spindly fingers, strangling him and beating to the very pulse of his heart. Twisting his thoughts, his ideas, his beliefs, his self—not changing them or transforming them, just twisting—and turning them into something else, something still his, but not his, something wrong, but not wrong, something invasive and violating and parasitic, but still his, his, his—

Protect Konoha. Protect Konoha. Protect Konoha. Protect Konoha. Protect—)

Sasuke drops his sword.

“What the fuck?” Naruto exclaims. “Why the hell did that crow just come out of my mouth?”

Kakashi would very much like an answer to that as well, but unfortunately his concerns revolving around his student throwing up corvids will have to wait since that’s the exact moment Sasuke decides to faint. His eyes roll back into his head as his knees give out. Kakashi lunges forward but Itachi gets there first, catching his brother before his head can smack against the ground.

Kakashi can’t help but notice the gentleness in his movements as he does so. The tenderness as he guides Sasuke’s head to fall against his chest. So unlike the S-Rank criminal who ripped into Kakashi’s mind without mercy, and more reminiscent of the eleven-year-old ANBU agent who once hummed a lullaby to a dying comrade as they took their last breath.

This, more than anything else, convinces Kakashi that the masked man was telling the truth.

But he doesn’t understand how Itachi is alive. Did Sasuke not win the fight against him, as they were told?

“You!” Naruto says, pointing accusingly at Itachi and forgetting about the crow for a moment in concern for his ex-teammate’s safety. “I thought you were dead! What did you do to Sasuke?”

“He’s only unconscious,” Itachi tells him. “He isn’t hurt.”

Sakura is staring wide-eyed at Sasuke’s body in Itachi’s arms, white and shaking with her hand at her throat. “He tried to kill me,” she says quietly, her eyes glistening with tears she doesn’t let fall. “He… He would have…”

Kakashi pulls his gaze from Itachi to walk over to his student. He’s also horrified, realizing how close Sasuke’s sword came to slitting Sakura’s throat. It shakes him to his core, seeing how far the boy has fallen. That he would have killed his own teammate. He pushes it from his mind from now, placing a reassuring hand on Sakura’s shoulder.

“A man in an orange mask,” Kakashi says. The words grab Itachi’s attention immediately, and his gaze snaps up. “He claimed to be Madara Uchiha. He told us things about the Uchiha. About you. Are they true?”

He keeps his words vague. Sakura still remains ignorant of the information, and Kakashi intends to keep it that way until he has a clearer view of the situation.

Itachi’s mouth tightens. “I see that man really didn’t waste a second. Yes, it’s true.”

Sakura frowns. “Sensei, what are you talking about?”

Kakashi feels a sinking sensation in his stomach the moment it’s confirmed. He was already leaning towards believing it to be true. He remembers, back then, the constant surveillance the Uchiha were under. He remembers the tension and distrust, and the way the Uchiha closed ranks. As horrible and terrible as it is, it makes sense. Kakashi could see all of the pieces, how they all slipped into place to form a clearer picture than ever before.

But still, he was praying for it to be a lie. He wanted it to be. Things would be so much simpler if it were, and Kakashi doesn’t know how to deal with this truth.

“It’s true?” Naruto says, his face pale. “The Uchiha Clan really betrayed Konoha?”

Kakashi’s mouth turns down slightly. Something about the phrasing of the question bothers him, but he can’t quite grasp what. He shakes the feeling off.

(Later—much later—he will remember it and realize why. Is that really the part we found most appalling, he will think, feeling sick with himself.)

“What?” Sakura says sharply, head snapping in Sasuke’s direction.

Kakashi winces. His hand on Sakura’s shoulder tightens. “I’ll explain later,” he says quietly.

He glances back over to Itachi. He looks terrible, Kakashi realizes. Unhealthily pale, and far too skinny. He’s frail and weak, as though a strong breeze might knock him over, and Kakashi can see the way his arms strain beneath Sasuke’s weight. He may have survived in his battle against his brother, but clearly it was not without considerable damage.

Kakashi looks past him, to the burning corpse in the center of the crumbling bridge. Danzo, Kakashi thinks, feeling a conflicting twist of emotions in his gut. He knows exactly what sort of man Danzo is. If there’s anyone who deserved to die so gruesomely, it’s him. But he was still the Hokage—and Sasuke killed him.

“We shouldn’t talk about this here,” Itachi says, in response to Naruto’s question. He looks to Kakashi. “Is there somewhere safe for us to speak?”

Kakashi hesitates. Though it seems like the masked man was telling the truth regarding the Uchiha Clan’s massacre, that doesn’t mean Itachi can be trusted. Perhaps he was truly loyal to Konoha once, but that doesn’t mean he still is. More than anyone, more even than Sasuke, Itachi would have a reason for wanting the village to suffer. And he’s a member of the Akatsuki—a double agent, supposedly, but can Kakashi really risk letting him around Naruto? The whole point of taking Naruto out of the village was to keep the Nine-Tails hidden from them.

“I have no interest in the Kyuubi,” Itachi tells him, reading the conflict on Kakashi’s face. “I just want to get my brother somewhere safe.”

“Kakashi-sensei,” Sakura says, looking to him incredulously, “you can’t believe him, can you? After everything he’s done to Sasuke-kun…”

Kakashi clenches his jaw and makes the only choice he can in the moment. “Follow us. There’s a place we’ll be safe. When we get there, you’re going to tell me everything.”

Itachi follows the group to a small wooden cabin, his brother held tightly in his arms. It’s a long walk, afternoon bleeding into evening, and Itachi tries his best to explain everything he can. Yes, everything Madara said about him is true. Yes, he lied about Itachi being dead. Yes, Sasuke will be alright.

“And that crow in my mouth?” Naruto demands. “What the hell was that about, huh?”

“I apologize for that,” Itachi says. “I imagine it was quite unpleasant. You recall our meeting before I went to fight Sasuke, do you not? I told you then that I had transferred some of my power to you.”

“You could have been clearer,” the blonde boy grumbles, rubbing at his throat as though remembering the feeling of the crow forcing itself out. His eyebrows pull together slightly. “That day… you asked me what I would do if Sasuke ever attacked the village. Did you know this would happen?”

“I hoped it wouldn’t. But I considered the possibility that it would, so I had contingencies in place.”

“Will Sasuke be okay now?”

Itachi bites the inside of his mouth, looking down at his brother in his arms. “He should be.”

When they reach the cabin, snow falling lightly from the sky and covering all of them, there is a man waiting for them outside the door. With a slight start, Itachi recognizes him as Tenzō—one of his former squadmates in ANBU when he was a member of Team Ro. His face drops into shock when he sees Itachi with them, eyes going round and mouth falling open.

“Itachi? I thought you were dead!” He turns to Kakashi. “I thought he was dead!”

“A common misconception, it seems,” Kakashi says.

Itachi inclines his head to the man. “Tenzō.”

It takes the older shinobi a moment to find his tongue. “It’s Yamato now,” he says, still staring.

The six of them head inside, out of the snow. Itachi is immediately surrounded by a comforting warmth as the door shuts behind them, cutting them off from the cold air outside. He can feel three different pairs of eyes on him and he turns to Kakashi, the only person in the group apart from his unconscious brother who isn’t staring at him.

“Is there some place I can lay Sasuke down?” he asks.

“Naruto has a room set up in that room there,” Kakashi says, gesturing with his hand. He looks at his blonde student. “You don’t mind, do you Naruto?”

Naruto forces his gaze away from Itachi. “Huh? Oh—uh, no.”

Itachi walks over to the room, refusing to show how heavy a weight Sasuke feels in his arms. He’s fighting down the cough that’s attempting to escape his throat, because he knows it will rip through his chest and make his vision go black. He’ll end up on his knees unable to breathe, hacking up blood as his lungs try to throw themselves up.

He can feel their gazes on his back. Once he enters the room and closes the door, he hears them all immediately start talking. Their voices are too muffled to hear the actual words, but he can make out a barrage of questions and demands being directed at Kakashi, who is trying to get them all to be quiet.

Itachi sets his brother down on the bed. He brushes the hair out of his face, and simply stares down at him for a moment. He looks so fragile, so breakable, completely at odds with how he looked before—standing over that burning body with his sword in hand, like a force of nature all in himself.

There are droplets of snow melting in his dark hair. Itachi brushes a few of them away and they turn to water against his fingers.

When Itachi exits the room, everyone else has seemingly disappeared into a different part of the cabin. The only one who remains is Kakashi, who watches Itachi with a single wary eye. He tilts his head in a silent gesture for Itachi to follow him. Itachi, not having much of a choice, does as he says.

“Where did the others go?” Itachi asks.

“In the other bedroom,” Kakashi says. “Naruto and Yamato are explaining the situation to Sakura. She wasn’t present when Madara revealed the truth of the massacre to us.”

Itachi grimaces. He hates the fact that people know. He hates the fact that the entire sordid story is being told right now, mere feet away from him, without him there to be sure it’s being told right. Sasuke heard the story, from the wrong person, from a warped perspective, and look how he responded.

Kakashi sits down in a chair at the table, then gestures for Itachi to do the same. Resigning himself to a difficult conversation, Itachi pulls out a chair and sits down across from him.

“The first thing I need to know,” Kakashi says, “is if that man is truly Madara Uchiha?”

It’s a long, difficult conversation. No, Itachi begins, he doesn’t believe the masked man is truly Madara Uchiha. However, he has no ideas regarding the man’s true identity, so defaults to referring to him by that name even in his own head. But he is an Uchiha, that much is for certain. He was also the one who was behind the Nine-Tails’ attack sixteen years ago—so in a way, Konoha’s mistrust and suspicions were correct. It was an Uchiha who was responsible, just unbeknownst to anyone else in the clan at the time.

He explains the attempted coup d’état, and the orders that followed as a result, in his own words free of any skewed perspective Madara might have put on it. He makes sure to outline Danzo’s manipulations, that it never should have happened, might not have if not for him—but also makes it very clear: It was to protect Konoha. There was no other choice.

Konoha should not be condemned for this. Sasuke was wrong. If only Itachi could have explained it himself, instead of his brother having to hear it from Madara.

(If only he never found out at all.)

“That’s all I want now,” Itachi says, his voice hoarse as he finishes. This is the most he’s spoken in years. “For Sasuke to return to Konoha.”

Kakashi looks at him. “That could be rather difficult, considering he’s an international criminal now.”

“I know he killed Danzo. But no one else was there to see it, were they? No one has to know it was him. You can say it was Madara. And it’s not like he didn’t deserve it—”

The jounin shakes his head. “I’m not talking about Danzo. Sasuke attacked the Five Kage Summit before he went after him. He killed numerous shinobi and samurai, and did considerable damage to the Raikage. There’s already a kill order out on him from Kumogakure, and by tomorrow there will probably be one on him from every other hidden village. He’s been identified as a member of the Akatsuki.”

It takes Itachi a moment to process that. He feels something in his stomach sink. “Surely there’s something that can be done?”

Kakashi considers him. “Well…”

“What?”

“You heard that Danzo was nominated Hokage, right?”

Itachi’s mouth twists slightly, betraying how he feels about that decision. “Yes.”

“The only other name put forward by the Council was mine. With Danzo dead, it’s likely I’ll be the one to take up the position.”

Realization dawns on him. “If you’re Hokage, then you can help Sasuke.”

“Possibly,” Kakashi says. “Some. But should I?”

“What do you mean by that?” He looks at the man accusingly. “He’s your student. He’ll be killed otherwise. You won’t help him?”

“I want to help him,” Kakashi is quick to say. “But should I just wave my hand and make everything he did disappear? He’s killed dozens of people. He’s attacked all five Kage and has consorted with a terrorist organization. He just tried to murder his own teammate.”

Itachi raises an eyebrow at him, not liking the condemnatory tone in his voice. “Did she not go there specifically to kill him first?”

Kakashi winces slightly. “She didn’t know,” he says quietly, “about the massacre. She didn’t know why he was behaving the way he was.”

“I don’t see how that matters.”

The older shinobi doesn’t say anything. Itachi clenches his teeth and looks down. His nails dig into his arms, pinching his skin through the fabric of his cloak.

“I need to know he’ll be safe,” Itachi says. “I need you to guarantee it.”

“I can’t do that if he’s going to be a threat. If he keeps trying to destroy Konoha—”

“He won’t.”

Kakashi gives him a doubtful look and is clearly about to ask him how he could possibly say that with such certainty when there’s the sound of a door opening somewhere on the other side of the cabin. Itachi tenses, his spine straightening as he turns around, and sure enough, there’s Sasuke standing in the doorway.

His eyes look bleary. He’s clearly just woken up. His gaze locks on Itachi and doesn’t waver. “Nii-san.”

Itachi’s heart catches painfully. How long has it been since he’s been addressed that way?

Kakashi looks hesitantly between them. He glances Sasuke over, seemingly looking for any signs of aggression or hostility in his posture. When he finds nothing, he reluctantly rises from his chair. “I’ll let the two of you talk,” he says quietly.

He exits the main room of the cabin. Itachi knows he won’t go far.

Sasuke walks closer to him slowly. Itachi doesn’t know what to say as his brother sits down next to him. His thoughts race though all the words he could speak. Before he can, Sasuke opens his mouth first.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

Itachi blinks, losing his own words. He stares at his brother. “You’re sorry?” he says finally. “What for?”

“You were right,” Sasuke tells him. “It’s hard to explain, but… it’s like I’ve woken up with a clearer perspective. I know what the right thing to do is now. I’ll return to the village, like you said I should.”

Itachi stares and feels a hope building in him he doesn’t dare let himself fully embrace. He didn’t know, until now, if the Kotoamatsukami would work. He’s never seen it used before. But it did. His brother is back on the right path, is going to return to Konoha and be safe.

“But you’re coming with me,” Sasuke says.

The older Uchiha looks at him in surprise. “What? Sasuke, I can’t.”

“You can. I’m not saying I instantly forgive you or anything. You’ve been terrible. But I can understand now, why you did it. Come back to Konoha with me. We can—we can work it out.”

Itachi bites the inside of his mouth, once again fighting down a wracking cough. “Sasuke… I’m still sick. I don’t have long—”

“Then we’ll fix you. We’ll take you back to the village, and—I don’t know. They’ll do something to help you. I won’t let you die.”

He wants to protest. He has to. There are a million reasons why he shouldn’t, why he can’t, return to Konoha. Why what Sasuke’s suggesting is impossible. But suddenly, he’s so unbearably tired of it all. He’s so tired of fighting, of holding this overwhelming weight on his shoulders. He’s carried it for so long, and suddenly he can’t bear the thought of doing it a second longer.

He wants to lay his sword down. He wants to rest his head. He wants to believe, just for a moment, in the warmth he sees in his little brother’s eyes.

Sasuke reaches over to grab Itachi’s hands, lightly squeezing them. “Everything will be okay now,” he says with a smile. “We can go home, Nii-san.”

Itachi smiles back at him hesitantly, like relearning how to use a muscle. He finds that his throat is burning, his eyes stinging with tears. This is all that he’s never let himself want. Everything that he thought he could never get back.

“Yeah,” Itachi says, and can’t even find it in himself to be embarrassed for how his voice catches. “We can go home.”

(And if there’s some small part of him that looks at Sasuke’s easy smile and screams wrong wrong wrong—he shoves it down.)