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When Sasuke came to, it was sunset.
It was like waking up from a long dream. He’d been caught in the haze of all-consuming fury for so long that when all recent memories re-arranged themselves and came into a new starling clarity inside his head, he felt like a stranger inside his body.
Naruto told him something about avoiding blood loss. He looked down - he didn’t feel anything at his missing left arm, but the sight of the bloody bump where Naruto’s right arm was supposed to be made him feel sick.
He felt- tired. Worn down to his bare bones. He’s made such a fuss all this time and all he had accomplished is blowing off his best friend’s arm, the one person who had never wanted to hurt him.
He couldn’t seem to take his eyes off Naruto’s missing arm. It wouldn’t have been this way, if it weren’t for him.
Memories washed over him like waves. The blood from Naruto’s ribcage coating his fingers. Karin’s still, lifeless body. Sakura’s and Kakashi’s horrified faces. Itachi’s gentle smile when he fell down for good. Sasuke had ruthlessly stabbed, repeatedly, into the guts of the one person who’d sacrificed everything to protect him.
At least the world was safe. He hadn’t disappointed his brother’s wish. His part was done here, now.
He gave up.
“Hey Naruto,” he croaked out and smiled at the warmth in Naruto’s blue eyes. He tried to commit them to memory, his karma for all the times he’d made himself not look. “You would make a fine Hokage. It’s the one thing I’ve always believed.”
Then he grabbed a kunai from his weapon pouch, quickly so Naruto wouldn’t catch him, and slit his throat.
For how long, Itachi himself didn’t know, he’d been existing in this timeless, weightless space. Miles and miles of soft white light, with nothing else in sight. If this was his personal hell, Itachi mused, then it wasn’t doing a very good job.
Then Sasuke popped into view with a slitted, bloody throat and one lost arm, blood a violent red against the sterile white of everything else. Impossibly, distantly, Itachi had to think, That’s more like it.
Familiar black eyes stared at him, first hazy and unfocused, pupils blown wide. Itachi could see the exact moment the recognition settled in, and Sasuke’s features crumpled into a mess of snot and tears.
Itachi was beside Sasuke before he could think, and Sasuke fell forward and clutched at him, fingers a vice grip on the fabric of Itachi’s shirt, broken sobs tearing their way out of his bony frame. He had never seen Sasuke cry like this before, like he was finally done, finally broken beyond repair.
Itachi caught him in his arms just as tightly, trying desperately to hold Sasuke and himself together so they wouldn’t break into a million pieces. Sasuke hid his face in the crook of Itachi’s neck; and heaved and heaved until his throat had run hoarse and could only croak out pitiful hissing sounds, like boiled water reaching a fever pitch. Itachi didn’t know what to do but to hold him and whisper into Sasuke’s hair over and over like a plea, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Sasuke. It’s my fault; I’m sorry.”
They cried until they passed out.
When Sasuke woke up again, he froze upon realizing that he was still in Itachi’s lap. The unclenching of his muscles right after was too quick to be anything but forceful. Itachi didn’t blame him. This was an easy gesture of their childhood. Since then, it had been too many years, too much hatred and blood and complication between them.
Some of Sasuke’s mental clarity seemed to have returned to him as he assesed the environment. Itachi was playing with his hair, but he didn’t seem to object.
“What is this place? Some sort of afterlife?”
“My guess is as good as yours.”
“How long have you been here?”
Itachi considered. “Could be forever, I think. Time doesn’t exist here.”
“Hn.”
Alright then. If Sasuke was not going to say it, he would. “Why are you here?”
Sasuke gestured vaguely at his throat, a bland, uninterested expression on his face. The act would have been more convincing had Itachi not witnessed his breakdown an hour earlier. “Ah, I killed myself.”
Itachi had guessed as much. “You shouldn’t have done it.”
“Pardon?”
“You shouldn’t have killed yourself.”
Sasuke sat up. “That’s not something you can tell me to do or not do.”
Itachi missed the closeness immediately. “I know. I just wish I didn’t have to…”
His brother had apparently decided to be difficult on purpose. “What, be plagued by your annoying little brother even in the afterlife?”
Itachi gave him a helpless look. “You know that’s not what I meant.”
“No, I don’t know. It’s hard to tell with you sometimes.” Sasuke's face made a mulish expression. Itachi suspected he’d have crossed his arms if he still had both of them.
He tried to catch Sasuke’s eyes, letting the earnestness show in his voice and his face. “I’ve always wanted you to have a long, happy life, Sasuke. I just regret the fact that circumstances had not allowed that to happen.”
“Hn.” Sasuke seemed to have found that answer acceptable, as he laid back down on his lap and closed his eyes.
He looked over his brother again. He didn’t have a lot of chances to see Sasuke during his teenage years, but there were always some common denominators: Sasuke was always too thin. A bit underweight, which had gotten worse when he’d gone off to Orochimaru’s. His collarbones and ribcages poked out from his paper-white skin, both a Uchiha trait and the direct result of spending too much time in underground caves and not enough under the sun. He would frankly have looked like a poor, underfed child had it not been for the scorching fire in his eyes and the way his attitude towered over any physical height.
That fire, that attitude was gone now. There wasn’t any physical difference, but Itachi could feel it like a tangible thing. The air draped over Sasuke now was the kind of calm that belonged to dead lakes, muted and devoid of life.
Itachi didn’t know what to do with that, so he offered the one activity little Sasuke had always responded well to, “Wanna spar?”
Sasuke opened one eye. “Sure. Here?”
Itachi looked around. Suddenly, the space around them transformed: It was like watercolors bleeding into a sheet of white paper. A winding path to a forest clearing bloomed open in front of them. It was the forest next to Konoha, where Itachi and Sasuke used to train.
“The hell. You know what, whatever, I don’t care.” His brother muttered and stepped down the path. Itachi followed suit.
Sasuke’s throat wound closed once he stepped down the path, skin smoothing over like there had never been a wound in the first place.
The spar was… interesting. Itachi couldn’t help the pride blooming in his chest to see how much Sasuke had grown since they last fought. He had the Rinnegan now, and he used it with a cocky wickedness he was sure pissed off his opponents to no end. It was the first time they’d fought head-to-head without Itachi having to hold back for him, and he was pleased to find out he was losing.
That was until Sasuke seemed to have had some sort of traumatic memory when pointing a sword at his chest, so his reactions were delayed by a few seconds. He’d just shaken himself out of it when Itachi’s sword was at his neck.
Sasuke pouted. “You’re just lucky.”
Itachi pulled him up. “Luck comes to those who are prepared.”
When night fell, they built a small fire on the edge of the forest clearing. Sasuke sat across from Itachi, wrapping his hand around his knees. He was staring at the flickering fire. Itachi didn’t remember his brother ever being this silent, but then maybe he didn’t really know this version of Sasuke at all. Many of his mistakes were made because he assumed he did.
So he looked at the shadows dancing across Sasuke’s face, his furrowed brow, the purse of his mouth, and tried to look for familiar traces of a language Sasuke no longer spoke.
Sasuke breathed out. “After all this time, I’m still not strong enough. I still couldn’t win against you.” He didn’t look at Itachi, staring daggers at the fire like it personally offended him.
Itachi resisted pointing out that Sasuke was contradicting his previous self there. He waited.
His brother huffed out a laugh that sounded too much like a sneer. “Naruto, too.”
“Did you fight Naruto?” Itachi asked lightly. The “Is that how you ended up here?” was unspoken.
“Yeah.”
Silence. Itachi looked down at his hands.
Sasuke snorted. “You don’t have to walk on eggshells around me, you know.”
“Then why?”
Sasuke hugged his knees tighter. “I guess… I just got tired of hurting him. Of hurting everyone.”
“I didn’t really do it because of… guilt, or atonement, or some sort of noble purpose. I’m not you, nii-san. I just… I got tired of hurting people, is all.”
Before Itachi could argue that at least he himself deserved whatever Sasuke did to him and then some, or say sorry again, Sasuke continued talking. “Speaking of, weren’t you supposed to be some sort of pacifist? What kind of pacifist told his brother to kill his best friend for a pair of eyeballs?” He didn’t look angry or resentful, just morbidly amused.
“You don’t know.”
“I don’t. Enlighten me.”
Itachi considered his words. “I’m not really a pacifist.”
Sasuke’s eyebrows rose.
“Okay, maybe I am somewhat of a pacifist. I didn’t - the sufferings I saw in the wars, they were… Unnecessary. Unreasonable. Conflicts and suffering only breed hatred, and hatred leads to more conflict and suffering. So I never wanted to inflict more pain and violence than I had to. But…”
Itachi paused. He felt a bit like a man who had a foot over a ledge - one step away from the deep abyss. He took the plunge anyway. “Remember that boar we hunted together?”
Sasuke’s mouth quirked. He absently poked at the fire with a stick. “So you keep mentioning.”
That day, Sasuke was a bit more persistent than usual and decided to chase Itachi - chasing, always chasing - to where he was getting rid of a wild boar that had been disturbing the villagers. And Itachi had had no choice - helpless, always helpless - but to indulge Sasuke, told him to shoot to scare the boar and not kill him, so Itachi could corral it back to the forest. Itachi didn’t want to kill unless he absolutely had to.
Itachi had set multiple exploding tags around the boar so Sasuke could aim correctly, but his brother missed anyway. The boar had gotten agitated instead of afraid, lunging for Sasuke, and no more than a second later, a deadly arrow pierced the boar’s skull.
What seemed like a million words lodged in Itachi’s throat, but Sasuke seemed to understand what he was getting at. “Naruto is not a boar.”
“Neither was our clan.”
“Hn. So what you’re saying,” Sasuke drawled, sharper now, and he was turning to look at Itachi with a cruel look on his face, a look that said he didn’t believe Itachi at all and was waiting for him to admit his lie. “is if push comes to shove, you’d kill anything to protect me? Even the Konoha you oh so love? You’d choose me over your beloved village?”
Sasuke needed to know this, Itachi told himself. Sasuke didn’t know, he never knew, and so Itachi had to tell him. He tried to look into Sasuke’s eyes and felt the disbelief in them stabbing at his innards like a million glass shards. “If push comes to shove, I won’t spare a single life just to keep you safe. Even if I have to kill myself after.”
“If this is some ploy to justify killing our entire family…”
“It isn’t. Sasuke, I know I don’t - deserve to ask this of you, but… If nothing else, you have to know that. You have to believe that. Please.”
“Hn.”
When Itachi chanced a look at Sasuke, his heart twisted again. Sasuke didn’t look disturbed or horrified. He didn’t even look disbelieving. He… and Itachi realized that his brother didn’t change much at all - he hid it well, with the press of his lips, expressions carefully smoothed over; but Itachi knew: He cradled Itachi’s bloody promise of love with the childish pride of being “chosen”.
Somehow, Sasuke also knew that Itachi knew. He scowled at him. Itachi took it in good humor.
Maybe that’s what made him say his next words. “Remember when I was Edo Tensei-ed?”
“Would be hard to forget the experience of you dying on me again.”
Right, his brother did hold grudges. Itachi decided not to poke that can of worms. “When I learned that you were attacking Konoha to avenge me, the first emotion I felt wasn’t concern for the village’s safety. It was - it was worry for your life, and… I don’t know how - I spent so long trying to make you hate me, I thought by then I’d have made my peace with it. But when I knew you learned the truth, that you were waging a war in my name…”
“I felt happiness, Sasuke.”
He felt oddly lightheaded. The truth came out.
Sasuke was pillowing his head on his knees. Itachi didn’t avoid his gaze.
“Shame on you, Konoha’s protector.” But his tone was light.
Itachi smiled wryly.
Then the thoughtful stare disappeared, replaced by a sullen look. Sasuke’s features scrunched up like he loathed to have to say the next words. “Me too, you know. I would choose you over the rest of them. I miss Mom and Dad, I really do, and it broke me when they died. And yet… I know that doesn’t make me a good son or whatever and I hate myself for it, but…” He shrugged. “It is what it is. Even now. I hate you, I still do, but I will always love you more.”
Itachi frowned. “You shouldn’t. Considering… everything.”
Sasuke’s mouth quirked. “Mom and Dad really gave birth to us two nutcases.”
“Maybe it’s not them. I blame the noxious fumes in Orochimaru’s hideouts.”
“Said the one who went and got himself tuberculosis.”
At Itachi’s puzzled look, he explained, “Tobi told me. Ah, Uchiha Obito now.”
They stared at the fire in silence for a while.
“Itachi?”
“Hmm, what is it?”
“Will you be here when I wake up?”
Itachi considered, then shifted closer to Sasuke. His brother curled up and put his head on his thigh, the movement easy, natural.
“I promise.”
“Keep it this time.” Sasuke whispered and promptly fell asleep.
The next morning, they trudged down the winding path leading back to Konoha.
Sunlight tangled feather-like in Sasuke’s hair. His gait was different from when he was small. Itachi could call it a “swagger”, what with the way Sasuke strutted about like he was above every living creature in a 5-kilometer vicinity, but he didn’t want Sasuke to blow a giant fireball in his face.
Besides, he knew it was an act anyway, a mask that had been worn for too long, so now it clung to Sasuke’s person like his real skin - the ramrod-straight, tightly wound way an unprotected child carries himself, bony shoulders always poised to defend, to retaliate.
The Konoha gate groaned open for them. The streets were empty, because of course they were. The food carts and stores were still open, though, displaying all kinds of mouth-watering offers and glistening under the sunlight. Sasuke pilfered a tomato from a random vegetable stand and bit into it.
Itachi couldn’t help his look of mild disgust. This was one food habit of Sasuke that Itachi could never fathom.
Sasuke rolled his eyes and threw him a dango stick. “Ishida’s, your favorite. I don’t understand how you haven’t eaten your way to a heart attack from these.”
“Just thinking of eating that,” Itachi pointed at the half-bitten tomato dripping juice on Sasuke's bony-white knuckles, “damages my mental health.”
For a while, they just wandered around the empty streets, munching contentedly on their snacks. There was probably something fucked up about the fact that it didn’t feel that different from when they were kids - the rest of the world wiped out and whittled down to the other’s presence, simultaneously each other’s tragedy and saving grace, caught up and pulled down into the other’s gravity. The world might as well have been empty, faded into a muted grey, when he carried Sasuke on his back, Sasuke’s smile warming him up like the sun.
Sasuke lingered for a second at a ramen shop.
Itachi looked at the sign. Ichiraku’s. “Naruto’s favorite place, isn’t it?”
Sasuke narrowed his eyes at him. Itachi said earnestly, “I have my ways.”
“To get information on the jinchuuriki or to get information on me?”
“Both. I had to know about the jinchuuriki; that was my job. And you- I had to make sure you were safe.”
Sasuke smiled, the small, smug one that looked more like a smirk.
Itachi ventured, “Did you and Naruto come here together?”
“What, your spies didn’t tell you that?”
Itachi gave him an exasperated look.
“Fine, fine. Yeah, we went together sometimes. Sometimes with Kakashi and Sakura too, but we often trained late together, so mostly it was just us. He would get one with the narutomaki and fancy himself terribly funny, and - he’s like you, you know. He would act disgusted at the tomato ramen I ordered. But sometimes he’d bring a bowl over for me when I couldn’t make it.”
“You miss him.” Itachi observed.
Sasuke’s shoulders jerked up to his ears, then went down just as quickly. There’s little point in lying by now. “I do. Before I… before I- came here, I-”
Sasuke stopped and tilted his head at the sky. Itachi looked away.
“He still thought of me as his friend, you know. After everything. I’ve - I’ve tried so many times to kill him, and meant it. And he- it was so overwhelming, it was suffocating. It was killing him, I was killing him and yet he refused to… I couldn’t face that kind of- boundless affection he had without feeling like slitting a kunai across my throat.”
“So you did.”
“So I did.”
They walked in silence for a while. Then words tore their way out of Itachi’s lungs. “I think out of everything you’ve ever done, this hurts him the most.”
Sasuke’s back hunched in on itself. “It’s for his own good.”
Sasuke had always seemed taller than he actually was, larger than life itself, intense and compelling and inevitable like gravity, but at that moment, he looked smaller than his age: Just a lost child holding himself on trial for his wrongs, at once the unforgiving and unforgivable.
He knew they would wind up at the Uchiha compound anyhow. His hands still shook when they walked through the gate.
Even when he went back to the village for recon with Kisame, he had ordered him to take the longer route to avoid the compound. Ever since the massacre, the place was like an oozing, festering wound in his mind that wouldn’t stop throbbing. He’d built walls and walls around it and yet was acutely aware of its presence. Just the sight of familiar curved wooden roofs or the sound of vaguely familiar windchimes would ruthlessly cut that wound open once again.
And now he was at the crime scene. The compound looked like it had crumbled in on itself, the outer walls half-demolished, succumbing to the hungry green life crawling and sinking its fingers through. The dust had blanketed the path beneath his feet, and nature should have washed over most evidence of that night over the many years he was gone.
Yet the memories stared at him like ghosts. He had kept his Sharingan on, he didn’t need the evidence to remember-
Sasuke jerked to a stop, his voice harsh. “That’s it. We’re going back.”
He didn’t look at Itachi’s shaking hands, but he might as well have.
“Itachi, it’s okay, I know. Let’s go back.”
He shook his head. “I have to do this. No, it’s something I want to do.” Sasuke had lived here for years. He didn’t deserve to hide. Couldn’t, anymore.
He steeled himself and took a few steps forward. A hand wrapped around his elbow. Sasuke fell into step with him.
“I can’t believe I’m escorting you in like the belle of the ball.”
He breathed out and focused his attention on their single contact point. “Who the belle of the ball is might be up to debate.”
Sasuke raised his eyebrows again. It was an incredibly cocky expression. It suited his brother well. Itachi coughed. “Let’s say only one of us was the Academy sweetheart. And I happened to hear a certain blonde-haired friend of yours waxing poetics about how good-looking you are.”
Sasuke’s brows, if anything, climbed impossibly higher. “Interesting. Did you even do any work in the Akatsuki, or did you just sit there spying on me all day?”
“It’s not the sitting-there kind of spying.”
“So you’re saying you had at least one active human spy inside Konoha.”
He realized he knew the path they were taking. It probably wasn’t intentional, but Sasuke had chased after him here, the night of… “The Akatsuki had at least one active human spy inside Konoha. And if they didn’t, I would have tried to find one myself, I had to make sure you were safe. Who knew what Danzo might have done to you.”
Sasuke’s face twisted at the mention of Danzo’s name. He spat, “That wretched bastard.”
They walked past a lovely cottage house. The parents in that family had begged and begged Itachi, not to spare their lives, just to spare their 3-month-old baby. He had killed them, then used his blood-coated sword to slit the baby’s throat. “It was as much my decision as it was his.”
“No, it wasn’t. You were 13 years old.”
“I was also a trained shinobi and an ANBU captain. I might have been too young to make a decision, but I made one anyway.”
He felt a wretched sort of satisfaction when Sasuke bristled. He was always explosive, never one to back down from a provocation, a fight. “What are you doing? What do you want, Itachi? Do you want me to yell at you and hit you and remind you at all times of everything cruel you’ve ever done to me? Because I can do that. I can do that for days, right here, right now, I spent my entire life doing just that! I fantasized about lodging a kunai into your chest, I imagined a hundred different horrible, torturous ways to make you experience unimaginable agony before you die. Would you have liked that, huh, you masochistic control freak?”
Itachi vaguely registered that Sasuke had cursed at him. He had never cursed at him before. Once, Itachi was his sun, the person he looked up to, and then he was his greatest enemy, the evil mastermind he was supposed to kill. Sasuke could have cursed at him then, but he picked now.
Sasuke pushed into his personal space. He was heaving, and his eyes were wild with fury. Maybe this was the final straw; maybe from here on out, he’d only have anger left for Itachi. “You would have liked that, wouldn’t you? You would have liked me to hate you because of whatever fucked up guilt complex you have in that insane brain of yours. But get this through your thick, stubborn skull for once: I LOVE YOU TOO! I can’t fucking help it! Even when I was trying to kill you! Even when I thought you killed our parents for sports! The thought disgusted me so much you don’t know how many times I’ve wanted to slit a kunai across my own fucking throat!”
It was Sasuke’s hand turn to shake, and oh- he was wrong, Sasuke still had tears for him. “I’m so, so tired of hating you, you bastard of a brother. I don’t think I have it in me anymore. You might as well kill me now, for good.”
Itachi put a tentative hand on Sasuke’s trembling shoulder. Sasuke didn’t push him away, so he wrapped his arms around him, and they collapsed into a heap in the city of ghosts.
Sasuke clung to him, his tears and snot streaming down Itachí’s neck. He said between sobs,
“So you either do this or don’t, I know what you’re trying to do but I won’t care either way, and we’ll get the hell out of here. But stop pushing me, stop fucking testing me, and stop doing that fucked up thing when you try to make me hate you. I don’t fucking want to be your form of self-harm!”
They lay like that for a while, Sasuke clinging tight to Itachi, his hand fisting on Itachi’s collar, all bony knuckles and knobby knees. Itachi patted his back rhythmically, helplessly.
Once Sasuke’s sobs had subsided, Itachi asked, trying to mimic what he remembered a teasing tone sounded like, “So, is “fuck” the only curse word you know?”
“Oh, fuck off.”
There was, fortunately, no blood splatter in the kitchen of their old home. They had dug out a dusted dome of a cookbook that Mikoto never used - it’s better to not push it too far and bring back from the dead the happy memories Itachi stained with blood.
Sasuke leaned on the small table and played idly with a few shurikens he had procured out of nowhere. Itachi busied himself with studying a Kiri recipe Kisame used to sing praises for. Sasuke expressed no intention to join him. Just as well, he wouldn’t be of any help anyway.
Sunlight dripped over the counter, slow and sweet. The sun had started to set, tinting the kitchen a warm orange. The room was silent, save for the sound of water boiling and Sasuke throwing and yanking the shurikens, zip, zip, zip.
Hundreds of once-warm sunsets like this hung between them. Itachi had almost always cooked for Sasuke, Mikoto being too busy and Fugaku being, well, Fugaku. He didn’t think their parents hated Sasuke, they just- didn’t show it, when it really mattered. And Sasuke was a child, one with too much love to give, at that. They were his entire world, and he wasn’t theirs - Itachi himself wasn’t, was he, otherwise they wouldn’t have tried to rebel and damn their own children - so little Sasuke was cursed to always love them more than what they could give him.
Sasuke must have remembered the same thing. He breathed out, humored and overwrought, “Funny how some things don’t matter anymore once people are dead.”
Itachi turned around from the counter to look at his brother. Sasuke didn’t pay attention to him, sharp eyes and nimble fingers forming complicated paths to throw the shurikens. The Sasuke of the past had stared up at him with wide eyes and wonderment. The Sasuke of now didn’t even look at him, sunlight-golden halo on the tips of his hair, and in his voice, Itachi heard something like a pardon. An absolution.
Over and over and over again.
Maybe Sasuke hadn’t been the one who didn’t know. Maybe he was. Maybe he’s the one who hadn’t understood, all this time.
Sasuke had always been the one who loved people more than what they deserved.
He swallowed the lump in his throat and said, “Let’s eat.”
There’s probably something about being technically dead that made Sasuke abnormally tactile. Or, maybe being set free from the weight of living had returned Sasuke to his base level of tactility. He was putting his head on Itachi’s thighs again, his whole body curled up like a giant cat. When Itachi carded his fingers through his hair, he even hummed (purred, Itachi’s mind supplied), which didn’t help.
The night had settled around them again. They meandered their way out to the veranda across from the pond, watching the dark clouds form and part.
Something about the hushed quiet of the night made Itachi’s throat close up, the words an unbearable weight pressing on his ribcage. His hand in Sasuke’s hair stilled.
“I’ve always wanted to do that.” He told Sasuke’s hair. “Cooking for you again.”
A shaky whisper. “I’ve missed you. Terribly. All these years. I just thought you should know.”
Sasuke was still quiet, but it wasn’t the hostile kind of quiet, so he forged on. “One time, when I went to Kiri, they showed me a type of tomato that looked really weird. It looked like a pumpkin, but they called it “cherry” somehow, and it tasted really good. And the first thing I thought was, “How can I send this to Sasuke?”
“I really did try to form a plan.” Sasuke shifted to look at him, his gaze turned incredulous. “I was… my tuberculosis had gotten worse then. The Akatsuki had to give me meds to prolong my life, and I was- terrified, not of dying, but of dying without getting to see you again. I knew you were risking your life to get stronger, I was just running on borrowed time. So I thought if I didn’t get to see you again, maybe at least I could send you this weird tomato.”
Sasuke’s voice was quiet. “But you didn’t send it.”
“It was my actual last wish for a while. I would order the pumpkin-tomato all the way from Kiri, let them sit in my room in ice boxes, and throw them out untouched once they’ve gone bad.” He quirked a small smile. “Deidara and Konan sometimes yelled at me for wasting the “organization’s funding” that way.”
“Then I heard you killed Orochimaru, and I was… relieved. It was like I could breathe again. I knew you’d come for me next.”
For a while, all they heard was each other’s choked, shaky breaths. He could feel Sasuke’s bony shoulders jerking up and down, digging into his thigh.
“I hate you.” Sasuke told him.
“I know.”
His hands hovered over Sasuke’s open face, his wet lashes, and after a moment’s hesitation, wiped away the silent tears, wiped them all away until he could feel the dry skin under his fingers.
“You’re hurting me.” Sasuke pointed out.
Itachi realized he was using too much force and the skin under Sasuke’s eyes had started chafing, coloring his cheeks a searing red. He yanked his hands back. “Sorry.”
“It’s alright. You always do.” Sasuke’s voice was light. Itachi knew he meant it.
“It’s not supposed to be alright.”
“It is, because I say so.”
Itachi had the sense to step around the risk of another outburst. “Since when did my cute little brother become such a brat?”
“Didn’t you know, all orphans are like that. The kids in the Academy said so.”
He sucked in a breath. Sasuke glared at him. “Don’t.”
“That’s mean.”
“Now you’re starting to know me.”
Sasuke settled his head comfortably on Itachi’s thigh again, but not before sending him a pointed glance that clearly ordered the continuation of the hair-stroking. Itachi huffed out a laugh and obeyed.
Moonlight rippled across the pond. It was empty - Fugaku used to keep his koi fish here, and Sasuke would always come too close to the pond to gape at their billowing fins, the elegant swing of their body. Itachi had made him promise to only do that when Itachi was at home, so someone could notice in time and fish Sasuke out of the pond should he ever stumble and fall. Once Sasuke had tired himself out, sometimes Itachi would let him climb onto his lap to chatter about nothing and everything, and they’d both doze off on the veranda, the night’s gentle breeze whispering on their skin. Just like this night.
“But I am sorry, you know. For this morning. I didn’t mean to-”
“Yes, you did.” Sasuke cut him off. “You were selfish. Stop being selfish.”
“I wouldn’t say selfish as much as… self-absorbed.” Itachi said lightly.
Sasuke looked annoyed. “Potato, potato,” In another, better world, this was when Itachi would express his concern over Sasuke’s vocabulary and his progress in Japanese class. In this world, he continued threading his fingers through Sasuke’s coarse hair.
“When you hurt yourself, you hurt me too. Killing you almost killed me, do you know that? There was…” Sasuke began gesturing like he was trying to grab the words from the air and make them take shape. “There was this- void inside me. You finally died, and you took away everything to love and hate in the world, beside…” Sasuke cut himself off and visibly swallowed his next words, “.... and suddenly there was… nothing. I didn’t know how to live after- you.” Then Tobi, no, Uchiha Obito now, came and filled the void with a new kind of hate, and Sasuke clutched at it like a lifeline.
Itachi said for what seemed like the hundredth time. “I’m sorry.”
“Tch. Told you it’s fine.”
They could leave the house any time, but they didn’t. They tiptoe around it like they’re intruders, eating in the kitchen and sleeping on the veranda, where there isn’t any dried blood or things that looked like blood, and avoiding the rest of the rooms. It was more for his sake than Sasuke’s - Sasuke had lived here for years, after all. He never tried to scrub off the blood.
But some things took time, and while he tried, he never managed to completely wean himself off his more… self-destructive tendencies. The house also brought back unpleasant memories, and so Sasuke was getting more snappish by the day. Sasuke might have agreed to forgive him on principle, but…
One day, Sasuke had barked out something particularly vicious, something meant to draw blood, and stalked off to god-knows-where. He didn’t come back for dinner. There was a chance he was never coming back.
That night, Itachi found himself in front of his parents’ altar, Mikoto and Fugaku’s pictures staring pitifully at him, their failure of a son. Sasuke had put their altar in the exact place Itachi killed them, right in the middle of the room. His brother could be cruel when he wanted to, even to himself. Especially to himself.
Moonlight had slanted into the room in the exact same way that night. Itachi kneeled in front of them, a sinner begging for punishment that would never come, and made himself remember.
He vaguely registered wetness on his hands, sticky and familiar. His eyes hurt, Sharingan swirling to life, as he swung down his sword on the bony white of Mikoto’s neck. His movement was quick and steady - Fugaku had told him not to hesitate; he’d made his choices. Lifeless eyes stared at him, the smiles on their faces kind.
“Take care of Sasuke.” The decapitated heads of his parents whispered to him.
The room disappeared, and the sky turned blood-red. The motion repeated: His hands raised, no, no, stop it, he screamed, only there was no sound, he couldn’t move away, he was trapped in his own body, helplessly watching himself swinging his sword down to cut off Mikoto’s neck.
Mikoto’s smile was still kind. “Take care of Sasuke.”
He heard- sounds around him. He didn’t need to look to know- around him, hundreds of thousands of Itachis, slaughtering his parents, over and over and over again- A chorus rose over the carnage, their parents’ voices murmured low and coming from all directions, chanting like a divine judgment, “Take care of Sasuke. Take care of Sasuke. Take care of Sasuke.”
He stopped struggling. Time dragged to a halt, infinite and unchanging in the Tsukuyomi. There were only deaths left.
“Shit.” A strange voice hissed. “Shit, Itachi-”
Then he felt it; a pair of six-petal flowers bloomed, Sharingan-red. The blood sky shattered, and he was back in their parents’ room.
He was facing the ceiling. Sunlight spilled into the room, cold and bright. The hazy edges of the Tsukuyomi faded. His ears stopped ringing, and he could feel his fingers again. They were shaking.
He felt callused fingers on his face and distantly noted that they too, were trembling - Sasuke had found him, then, and was trying to wipe off the blood streaming from his eyes. He did it with his bare hand, so all that achieved was more blood smeared over Itachi’s.
He needed paper towels to do that, but Sasuke clearly didn’t trust him to be alone, so for a long time Sasuke just repeated that shaky gesture - wiping blood off Itachi’s face, then wiping it on the floor. He stopped only upon realizing he was close to scrubbing Itachi’s skin off.
Itachi looked at him, at the open emotions running through his face: Fear, assessing, relief, and finally, fury.
He croaked out, “I’m sorry, Sasuke. They had told me to take care of you.”
It was supposed to be just him. He had wanted Sasuke to be safe, to be happy, had been more than happy to die for it.
And yet now Sasuke is here, with him, in this hell.
He must have said that out loud, because Sasuke scowled at him, “It’s my decision. It had nothing to do with you.”
But it’s different. It’s because of Itachi- he had led Sasuke on this path. He had pushed and pushed Sasuke until he had no choice but to- Sasuke was too young-
“Oh, so 13-year-old you could make a decision for yourself, but 16-year-old me can’t? How condescending can you be?”
Itachi opened his mouth to argue, but no words came out. Sasuke was right. Hadn’t all his messes been caused by his inability to trust Sasuke to make his own decision? He had- he had failed Sasuke in every way, he clearly couldn’t do what his parents entrusted him to-
“That’s why you left.” Sasuke said, realization in his voice. “That’s why you didn’t want to talk to me when you were re-animated. That’s why you wanted to leave so badly.”
“We were still in the middle of a war. If I hadn’t undone the Edo Tensei-”
“It doesn’t matter. You didn’t even try. You avoided me until you couldn’t.”
Itachi almost wanted to smile. Such is the way of little brothers, asking the impossible of their siblings as if it were their birthright.
“We were- I was toxic to you. That was what I thought, at the time.”
“That’s not your decision to make.”
Then Sasuke’s voice turned sharp, accusing. “That’s what this is, isn’t it? You tried to leave again.”
No, Itachi wanted to say, it wasn’t intentional, he hadn’t meant to- “No, I didn’t. I just…” wanted to punish myself. “You don’t have to be here.”
“No, I don’t. So guess why I’m here, genius.”
A beat. “For fuck's sake, Itachi. Stop being a fucking martyr for one second, won’t you? I’m here because I want to be here. I-”
He took a deep breath and reached for Itachi’s hand. Both their hands were smeared with blood. “I wanted to relive those days with you, too. Or make up for lost time, I don’t know. I would never have come here if I didn’t. Those were- they were the happiest days of my life. I felt like… breathing, for the first time, in a really long time.”
“Have you even considered how I feel whenever you get like this? I feel like it’s my fault.” Itachi opened his mouth. “Let me finish. I feel like- feel like it was my fault, that you were forced to do the things you did. I was too small and too weak and too helpless. I couldn’t protect you or even stand beside you, so you had to shoulder everything by yourself. To protect me.”
Nonsense, Itachi wanted to say, but no sound came out. Tears blurred his vision. Sasuke was still holding his hand, his grip tight. It hurt, but maybe this was the only way they knew to love each other anymore.
“I don’t need you to grovel at my feet or at our parents’ altar or punish yourself. I don’t want you to. Hadn’t I told you that whatever you do to yourself, you do to me? I just- please let me relive those days, Itachi. Stop hurting me by hurting yourself. I don’t care how guilty you feel. If you still care about me, I need you to promise me that.” Sasuke was looking him straight in the eyes now, pining him with his gaze, intense and demanding.
“Okay.” Itachi’s voice was hoarse.
“Good.”
Sasuke lied down next to him, forehead on his shoulder, hand curled around his left arm. Itachi had the belated realization that this was Sasuke’s way of holding on, of making sure he wouldn’t leave in his sleep.
“Let’s just… exist like this. Live with me, Itachi.” His voice was tight. “Who knows how long this is going to last.”
“Okay. I promise.”
So they lived. The world was vacant and quiet, and it was just them.
They spent hundreds of sun-warm afternoons together, Itachi cooking and Sasuke, after he decided to join him, avoiding setting the kitchen on fire. They didn’t really need to eat anyway, so Sasuke kept trying, and Itachi was patient. Not like he was ever impatient with him.
They went to the lake where Itachi and Sasuke had practiced their first katons. Sasuke speared fish with his chidori, and Itachi brought them home to make stew. For all of Itachi’s effort to make new, elaborate dishes, Sasuke always preferred salads, would you believe it, so Itachi had made it his goal to make something even Sasuke would admit was better than his bland tomato salads.
One day, Sasuke had lightly suggested that they scrub off the dried blood in the house. Itachi had swallowed around a yes, and so they had gotten to work. They did it slowly, incrementally, stopping immediately when either started to find it overwhelming. Sometimes, Itachi would turn around and feel like Mikoto and Fugaku’s pictures were smiling at them, warm and light.
It might have taken months or years to finish. Time didn’t matter here, and Itachi found he didn’t mind.
Sasuke asked Itachi to teach him shogi. He didn’t say it, but Sasuke probably knew it too: His little brother was atrociously bad at strategy games. Which didn’t make any sense because from what he had seen and heard, Sasuke’s battle sense wasn’t anywhere near this bad. He had lost to Itachi 1,062 times last Itachi counted, and when he tried to let Sasuke win, his brother had scowled at him and told him not to be a prick.
Itachi had chided him for cursing a few times, and Sasuke scowled some more, but he wasn’t actually annoyed, so Itachi had kept doing it.
They still didn’t go into the house much, having gotten used to sleeping on the veranda and listening to the water tinkling in the night. They didn’t have to worry about the weather either; here it was always perfect, never too cold, never too hot. Sasuke, however, said he got tired of sleeping on hardwood and dragged out two futons. They usually ended up using only one.
Sometimes, when Sasuke got into a type of mood, he would go up to his old room, where he’d lived even after the massacre. Itachi followed him a few times and always found him looking at the old picture of team 7 he’d kept in his bedside drawer.
One day, he asked if Itachi knew how to draw.
“I did learn when I was small, but it’s been so long now.”
“It’s alright. I’ve never got the chance to.”
So they procured what was left of Itachi’s old art supplies from his room and found out Sasuke was significantly better at this than shogi.
One day, Itachi found out what Sasuke was working on: A small drawing of three teenagers, around Sasuke’s age, with pink and orange and white hair. Itachi vaguely remembered having seen them.
“Were they your friends?”
Sasuke’s hand stilled from shading a frankly offensively orange head. “I don’t think we were. I didn’t let them in enough for us to be. But,” his eyes were faraway, “they were with me when I needed- someone. When I needed help. Besides Naruto and Kakashi and Sakura, they were the only ones to- I kinda wish I had let us have the chance to be. Friends, I mean.”
Itachi sat down next to him. “Do you miss them?”
Sasuke tilted his head. “Not really. I don’t know them that well. I guess I just hope they are okay after I’m gone.”
He continued shading the orange hair. “Not that I think they’d be terribly sad when I’m gone. I just hope no one would have the idea to lock them up or capture them. They had always wanted to be free.”
Once Sasuke was done with the drawing, Itachi framed it and hung it in their kitchen. Sasuke didn’t tell him to do so, but he didn’t object either. The next day, he took the framed photo of team 7 from his room and put it next to his drawing of team Taka.
“I stabbed through Karin’s chest once.” He told Itachi one day, staring at the drawing from the kitchen table.
Itachi continued chopping his vegetables and waited.
“It wasn’t- I didn’t care whether she would live or not - I mean, she had Uzumaki healing powers, and she was frankly really creepy, but that wasn’t the point, I didn’t even think- She was terrified, and she trusted me, but I had a goal and she was in the way. So I shot a chidori through her chest.” Sasuke frowned at the team Taka drawing.
Itachi set down a plate of mapo tofu on the dinner table. Today’s dinner consisted of mapo tofu, tamagoyaki, miso soup, grilled chicken skewers, and cucumber salad. He also made himself some dango. “You shouldn’t have done that.”
Sasuke was still frowning. “I shouldn’t have.” He turned to Itachi, searching for the answer to a question he hadn’t asked. “She survived, though. It’d be better if she hated me after, but she didn’t. She’s- I don’t know what she saw in me, you know. Sakura did too, but Sakura grew out of it. Karin… I think she’s fucked in the head somehow. She was obsessed with me for no reason. She’d let me hurt her and forgive me right after, just like that.”
“It is uncomfortable.” Itachi agreed. “But you can’t control the fact that people love you. It’s not your decision to make.”
Sasuke glared at him.
“It’s a lesson a certain brat taught me.” Itachi smiled at him. “Now let’s eat.”
They were stargazing, Sasuke’s head on Itachi’s lap, when Sasuke told him,
“I should have apologized to Naruto.”
Itachi continued to play with Sasuke’s bangs. They really should cut it soon, these bangs were starting to make Sasuke look like a prehistoric caveman. “For what?”
Sasuke started ticking off his fingers. “Off the top of my head, several times when I definitely tried to kill him?”
Itachi hummed. “I don’t think Naruto would have needed your apologies for those. You know that.”
Sasuke rolled his eyes.
“He should have been elated, when I took myself out. No one was standing in his way anymore, no criminal best friend to stain his future Hokage record, threat of vengeful Uchiha attacking Konoha eliminated. Really, all of his problems solved.”
Itachi frowned. “Don’t say that. That’s not fair for Naruto.”
Sasuke deflated. “I know.”
They were away from home. Sasuke had found an open field at the top of a hill, where the poppy flowers bloomed, and the moon seemed so close they could touch it. The light breeze carded its gentle fingers through the grass, rustling it softly.
“I hope he wasn’t too sad when I died.” Sasuke whispered. His fingers curled tighter at the hem of Itachi’s shirt.
Itachi took care to keep his voice kind. “I think it would have broken his heart.”
Sasuke’s voice was raspy now. “I always end up hurting him somehow. Even when I don’t mean to.”
“That can’t be helped.” Itachi poked Sasuke’s forehead, which earned him a teary glare that also looked too fond to be serious. “When someone loves you, you can’t help but hurt them a little, even when you don’t mean to. It’s what love is.”
“Naruto never hurt me.”
They both didn’t point out the obvious admission.
“Yet you’re here, crying for him.” This earned him a haughty sniffle.
Sasuke shifted so he was looking at the moon instead of up at Itachi. “I hope he’s doing fine over there. He’s always dreamed of becoming a Hokage.”
Naruto came to them- well, no, he ran into them one day when they were too lazy to cook and trying to look for free stuff to pilfer on empty Konoha streets.
Sasuke saw him first, his entire body stunned rigid, breath stuttered to a stop. Naruto saw him next, and the joy on his face was instantaneous and blinding like the sun. Then Sasuke turned into a blur whizzing past him - he’d run and tackled Naruto to the ground.
That didn’t even dim a fraction of the smile on Naruto’s face, but whatever expression Sasuke wore must have, since his brows furrowed and he offered a hesitant, “Sasuke… bastard?”
His brother clutched at Naruto’s collar and hissed, “Why are you here?”
Naruto scratched his head, still smiling, “Er, I don’t know? I woke up here, and I saw the Konoha gate, so I thought I’d take a look…”
“That’s not what I asked!” Sasuke shook him rather viciously. Itachi winced. “Why are you here, you idiot, you were supposed to be a Hokage and live until you’re a bazillion years old!”
“Er, I don’t think that’s possible…”
“I don’t care! You’re you! You were supposed to make it happen!”
“You’re literally not making any sense right now.” Oh, is that a hint of annoyance on Naruto’s face? “And what, you’re allowed to die and I’m not? Stop being a hypocrite!”
“You- you-” Sasuke was bristling like a cat. Itachi was loving this. It was honestly very cute. Apparently you only needed the presence of one Uzumaki Naruto to reduce Sasuke to a literal five-year-old. He grabbed a pack of popcorn and sat on the porch of a nearby store. This was going to take a while. “It’s different! They love you! You’ve got everything you ever wanted!”
Naruto hooked a leg over Sasuke’s and flipped them over with practiced ease. Itachi noted that the kid moved with less mindless enthusiasm and more battle-forged confidence now, a certainty in his own ability and vigilance of his surroundings, even with a lost arm. He’s grown.
It was Naruto clutching at Sasuke’s shirt now, “I love you, and that didn’t stop you from literally killing yourself in front of me, did it, you asshole? Are you deaf? I’d been telling you what I want for years! What part of “being the Hokage doesn’t mean shit if you’re not back” do you not understand?”
Sasuke responded to this heartfelt declaration of love with a fist to Naruto’s face.
It all went downhill from there.
The thing was, Itachi and Sasuke did spar together, but never with competitiveness or intent to win. Their spars were more like glorified workouts, something they do out of habit. Naruto, on the other hand, had presumably consistently faced countless opponents with intent to kill with no doubt varying methods of attack. In short, Sasuke’s skills were rusty, Naruto’s weren’t, and so his brother was quickly overpowered in a few minutes.
Naruto was pinning a struggling and cursing Sasuke down, his knee on his back, when Itachi spoke. “Naruto-kun, please do not maim my brother.”
Naruto looked startled to realize Itachi was even there.
“And Sasuke, don’t be rude. Let’s go back.” He stood up to throw away the empty popcorn bag. “Naruto-kun, would you like to have lunch with us?”
Naruto was clearly confused about Itachi’s presence, but he stood up and followed anyway. He offered Sasuke a hand to stand up, which Sasuke glared at and honestly looked like he wanted to bite it off.
Sasuke was sullen and sulking the whole way back, so Itachi had to sigh and ask the questions his brother wouldn’t. “How old are you now, Naruto-kun?”
Naruto apparently had to try to recall this information, “I’m not sure, but around twenty-eight? Twenty-seven? I think. Shikamaru would know. I don’t do birthdays anymore, and after a while people just stop asking.”
“And how did you… come here?”
“This is some sort of afterlife, right?” Itachi nodded. “So I really did die.”
Sasuke scoffed. “Idiot.”
Naruto jabbed his thumb at Sasuke, “I’ve been meaning to ask, has he always been like this? How do you even stand him?”
“No, I think he’s only ever like that with you.” Itachi gave him an amused smile. “And you seem to stand him just fine.”
Naruto visibly blushed. Ah, young love.
Once he’d got his blush onder control, they chattered on a bit more. Naruto told Itachi what it was like being the Hokage (“so much paperwork, Itachi-san”), how everyone in Konoha had been doing, (“Kakashi-sensei said he missed you”), how they’d been fending off a literal alien invasion. It honestly sounded a bit loony, but according to Sasuke he and Naruto had fought off a moon goddess who wanted to put humanity in a collective coma, so maybe it shouldn’t have been that strange.
“I died in battle, I think. Yeah I know, another one, right? This time it’s some sort of alien invasion, so there wasn’t much I could do with that.”
This piqued Sasuke’s interest. “If even you couldn’t fight them off, then who could? Is the world doomed? Is everyone dead now?”
Naruto shrugged. “The next generation has surpassed me. They will be fine.”
Sasuke seemed personally offended by this. “No they haven’t.”
“Bastard, just because you lost to me doesn’t mean everyone would.”
“It’s not that! It’s not about that!”
Itachi sighed. “Children, please.”
Sasuke pouted and stalked away. “I’m going on ahead. Nii-san, good luck putting up with him.”
Naruto fell silent after Sasuke left. He asked, in a quieter voice, “So, what is this place? I’d think I have gone to heaven, but - no offense, Itachi-san - we weren’t that close for you to be one of the only two people in my personal heaven.”
Itachi slowed his step. “This is just my guess, but… I think this is a place for people who died with regrets they can’t move on from. A chance to re-do or make up for those regrets. That’s how Sasuke and I have been- existing, here. We make up for lost time. I don’t know what we did to deserve this chance, and I don’t know how long it’s going to last. We just try to appreciate every second we have together.”
Naruto hummed, in thought. “That sounds like a kind opportunity.”
“It is.”
Naruto stared at the space in front of them. His voice was hesitant. “Do you think he truly doesn’t want me to be here? I know he’s happy with you; he’d chased after you his whole life. And apparently even death.”
Itachi quirked his lips, “Do you really believe that he hates to see you here?”
Naruto shrugged, “I don’t. But… I don’t know.”
“That’s not something for me to tell. You will have to ask him yourself.”
Itachi watched Naruto’s shoulders droop. He decided to take it easy on the kid. “Here’s what I can say. Out of the two of you, you’re not the only one who has regrets. He does, too. You wouldn’t be here if he didn’t. Maybe he doesn’t regret... leaving, not quite, but he does regret hurting you. You have to remember that he didn’t mean to. He had believed… something else, at the time.”
Naruto looked sad. “I tried to- I really did. To make him see. He still didn’t believe me.” He wiped the wetness from his face. It was just like Naruto, to not run from his tears. “Sometimes I wondered if I pushed him too hard, too far, and that’s why he-”
Itachi patted his shoulder. “There’s no use dwelling on that now.”
It didn’t matter anymore, Itachi wanted to tell him. You’re here, and he’s come alive again, whole, in all the ways that mattered.
They made their way back to the Uchiha compound. Itachi ordered Naruto and Sasuke to sit down next to the kitchen table, forbade them from fighting each other, and got started on making lunch.
Naruto immediately zeroed in on the framed pictures. “Hey, why do your freak friends get a handdrawn picture and we didn’t?”
“Your ugly mug is an insult to my art.”
Itachi sighed again. “If you want to fight, take it outside. Don’t destroy my kitchen.”
10 minutes and multiple explosions later, a particularly nasty blast flattened the mountain near their house. The ground shook under Itachi’s feet. He set three bowls of ramen on the dinner table and cast a stability jutsu over them, then went outside to tell the kids to pipe it down.
He went toward the direction of the biggest explosion, evidenced by the sizes of the holes on the ground - really, they might as well call them basins - but the fighting seemed to have stopped. Itachi briefly considered the likelihood of them killing each other even after death within an hour of reunion.
He found them near a random waterfall - not the Valley of the End, just a random, smaller one. They seemed to be having a moment. He concealed himself under the nearby foliage and observed. He had been waiting forever for these two to shape up and get their -stuff- together, there was no way he would miss this moment. Sue him.
Naruto had his brother pinned on the ground on his back, but they didn’t seem to be fighting. From Itachi’s angle, he was burrowing his head in the crook of Sasuke’s neck, violent sobs wrecking through his entire body. His hand was clutching at Sasuke’s shirt in a desperate motion, like if he let go Sasuke would fade away. Sasuke let him.
Then Naruto raised his head and said something to Sasuke, his face grim and stubborn, like he was trying to prove a point. A point Sasuke didn’t like, based on the way he immediately snapped back. But he’d never met anyone more hard-headed than Uzumaki Naruto, who snapped back even more firmly and with more stubbornness than the first time.
He leaned down, only a hair’s breadth away from Sasuke’s face, and murmured something. When Sasuke didn’t immediately impale him with a chidori, he bent down further and dropped a feather-like kiss on Sasuke’s lips.
Itachi turned away, making his way back to the house. Sunlight danced over the smile on his lips.
They were going to be okay.