Chapter Text
Sasuke was not hiding. That had been the first unexpected thing.
He was not behaving according to the predicted profile of the "avenger." He walked calmly, deliberately, with a slow and open progression that felt less like a hunt for revenge and more like a polite invitation.
Through the eyes of his crows, Itachi had monitored every step.
Three days ago, he had watched Sasuke sit down and stay motionless for twenty-two minutes, his face unreadable. Then, Sasuke had flipped a coin. That too had been unexpected. A flicker of micro-expressions had crossed his little brother’s face, then: the tension of a suppressed headache, followed immediately by resolve. Then Sasuke had stood up and resumed his search for his monstrous older brother.
Committing to a pseudo-random decision maker, Itachi analyzed. A sophisticated counter-measure against external manipulation. By removing agency from the choice, he removes the ability for an adversary to predict or influence the outcome.
This indicated a meta-cognitive shift. Sasuke was no longer just executing thoughts; he was auditing them. Itachi would strongly approve, if only the whole plan didn’t rely on keeping Sasuke safe by keeping him blind. Too blind to ever see Danzo. As counter-intuitive as it sounded, Sasuke’s odds of survival were way higher as a pawn than as a player.
This had been solved already, years ago: Itachi would metaphorically take his little brother’s ability to see, and in return Sasuke would end up literally taking his big brother’s eyes.
He had been cornered. Danzo’s ultimatum had been absolute: Preventing the civil war takes ultimate precedence. Eliminate the clan, or be eliminated along with them. The default scenario was total loss. The Uchiha name erased, his family dead in the crossfire of a failed coup, Konoha weakened and vulnerable to foreign invasion. A cascade failure of the highest order.
Itachi had paced the length of his small apartment, Sharingan active, his mind racing through thousands of permutations.
Eventually, he'd seen it: a possible way to get a better ending. A ruthless plan, slowly taking shape, emerging from the noise like a signal clearing up. The puzzle pieces were falling in place one by one.
…saturate the market. Make sure Danzo acquires enough eyes, so the marginal utility of one more pair is low…
…ensure Sasuke never looks at Danzo. Construct a narrative so compelling, so all-consuming, that Sasuke becomes unable to ever find the truth. Make the blindness obvious even to the old war-hawk: Sasuke is no threat to you and your dirty secrets…
The line was there, terrible and beautiful. The way to save his precious little brother's life. And all it would cost him was everything else.
That was incrementally better than the default scenario, and yet somehow it felt even less attractive. Which didn't make sense. In a rational calculus, if an option offers higher utility, it should feel preferable. So Itachi had dismissed his feelings of reluctance as irrational. Distractions.
He would commit to cooperating with Root and spy on Akatsuki for them.
And as for the stick, Itachi could threaten to reveal Konoha's secrets to other villages if Danzo even dreams of messing with his little brother.
Shimura was a rational man, which meant he would choose the path with the best benefit-to-cost ratio. Itachi was certain the old man would hate every second of it - hate ceding ground to a subordinate. But in his own twisted way, he cared about Konoha as much as Itachi cared for Sasuke. The elder would definitely swallow his pride and make the optimal choice.
Since his eyes had awakened, he’d been getting better at building and running mental simulations. They had many uses, the most obvious being Genjutsu. Now he was running one after the other, refining his plan until it gave Sasuke decent chances of survival.
Itachi had taken a deep breath, feeling slightly better.
Improvement is possible, he had thought. Now let’s think of a plan where I save Sasuke and Mother.
The perfectly preserved memory receded like a tide going out.
Itachi noticed the familiar urge to re-evaluate the decision rising in his chest. He labeled it instantly: Probable rumination, and ran a quick utility function on the emotion: Does this feeling solve a problem? Does it improve Sasuke's survival odds? Does it alter Danzo's position? The output was negative on all counts. The rumination was a resource leak, consuming glucose and attention with zero return on investment.
He applied the cutoff rule: If it is not actionable, it is discarded. He consciously shifted his attention from the internal narrative to an external sensory anchor: he tracked the air moving through his nasal passages. Cool on the inhale, warm on the exhale. A simple mechanical cycle. He counted three breaths, syncing his heart rate to the rhythm, forcing the noise out with every expiration. The physical sensation grounded him. The regret starved of attention and faded.
He should be focusing on the situation at hand.
Yesterday, Sasuke had entered the range of his chakra-sense.
The flow of his chakra was laminar, not turbulent. There were no more spikes indicating rage and tunnel vision.
Had the plan been derailed?
I must verify, Itachi concluded. I must stress-test his resolve. If his hatred has weakened, I will have to reinforce it.
Forgive me, little brother, he thought, the phrase forming automatically in his mind. Then he cringed internally.
Error.
Of course he didn’t wish for Sasuke to forgive him. That would defeat the whole point. Forgiveness implied understanding, and understanding would lead to the truth, which would lead to Danzo, which would lead to death.
He was supposed to be better. He was a trained, competent strategist. He wielded his mind like he wielded his sword: efficiently, without hesitation. He could not allow the plan to fracture, not now, when victory was so close at hand.
If he falters now, the equation collapses. Zero utility. Total loss.
Not yet. Sasuke was not ready. The boy’s eyes had not yet matured to the required stage, and his mind was still… fluctuating.
Itachi stretches slowly, pushing the noise down, burying it under layers of logic.
He checks his internal state one last time. Chakra reserves: optimal. Cognitive latency: negligible. Emotional interference: suppressed. Physical condition: deteriorating, but sufficient for the duration of the encounter.
He drops the Genjutsu hiding his presence, and lets his chakra leak just enough to be a beacon.