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i.
The raindrops slide down his face and hurl themselves against the ground, as if to accompany the dead on their last journey. For the sake of convenience, his clan members are buried in groups, their coffins each marked with the Uchiha fan as one last colorful protest before they're hidden by loose earth.
(A ribbon of red slowly meanders across the floor; he follows it to its source, wondering with forced detachment who must be dead in this room; who may be dying; who killed everyone out there, who left a ridiculous number of limp bodies lying around—
—and there! a flash of black hair that sticks up strangely, a small figure made even smaller by the encroaching shadows—
“Sasuke?”—but there is no answer.)
The Sandaime stands some distance away, the only other spectator to another funeral for the termination of the Uchiha clan. He ignores the Sandaime. The rain seeps into his bandages: wrapped around his arms, bound along his thighs, pasted over the bridge of his nose and the curve of his cheekbones. His right forearm twinges. The shuriken had cut deep.
(And this, this is not Shisui as he knows him; but his friend, the familiar made unfamiliar, steps forward, eyes cold and dark and flickering with a terrible intensity—
—they whirl into a pattern of blades—
He knows better than to look into those eyes, and twists away to reach for his kunai; knows better than to ask questions first, knows better than to stand there, even while something bitter rises up into his throat and mouth.)
He no longer wants it, but—Mangekyou—he opens his eyes and sees the world in twisting, spinning red and black. He knows his ability; he knows his capacity.
Itachi is the pinnacle of the Uchiha clan.
He is the clan.
The living stands and watches the burial of the dead, and reminds himself: No more requests for shuriken practice now.
ii.
This is how the Uchiha begins. A man; a goal.
Uchiha Madara has a clan with a kekkei genkai: Sharingan, with its knack for memorization and imitation and prediction and hypnosis. So useful, it can copy a person’s every movement; so useful, it can make a person think he’s dead.
So useful, for Madara’s own purpose.
The Shodaime finds damning evidence. He does not consult anyone; the Hokage knows what must be done.
So the two friends fight at the Valley of the End. Madara lives, because he has no qualms about killing his best friend, not when it means his own death: for his fear is greater than his love. Hashirama knows the same, but is still too slow in his final blow. Madara avoids it.
iii.
Sometimes he dreams.
He dreams of Sasuke—Sasuke with eyes too wide and a smile too bright, with the look on his face he always reserved for Itachi (forgive me). He dreams of his mother’s bentos, onigiri and tomato and tempura (you’re special), and his father’s lectures on improving his speed and predictive capabilities (as expected from my child—). He dreams of people, people who are now interred within the earth, who once lived in the house, who could once break the present, never-ending silence.
He dreams of Sasuke, Sasuke dead and gutted on the floor. He dreams of the crescent of splattered blood which marked the blade’s path, of dark hair splayed out against the ground.
He dreams of Shisui, of the days when they sat by the bank of the river and watched the clouds in silence. He dreams of pressing a nerve in his friend’s neck and watching him go limp before he has time to pull a kunai. He dreams of watching Shisui float in the river, before he pulls him under the water.
He dreams of watching Shisui die. He dreams of killing him.
The last should not be a dream. Outside his dreams, he remembers the murder; Itachi’s blade shimmered dark crimson as his eyes stung with black fire and the gleam of a blood-red moon.
But he dreams, anyway, of being strong enough, at the height of his capacity—strong enough to decide to kill Shisui when he changed and became unlike himself, before he had rid them both of the clan. Before he killed Sasuke.
Itachi was not strong enough. In this respect, at least, he knows he is a failure.
iv.
This is how the Mangekyou begins. A friend; a death.
No one else knows why Madara leaves Konoha, although if they looked closely enough they could figure it out.
Madara intended to keep his secrets, but he overlooks the notes of his research left behind in Konoha. There are two sets: one is the original at the main temple of the Nakano shrine, on the far right side under the seventh tatami mat, guarded by his own special genjutsu; the other is the copy that the Shodaime finds, and puts away in his library.
(Because he does not want to think that the jutsu’s purpose is completely criminal; he wants to think that maybe it can be adapted for the good of Konoha somehow, wants to think that what his friend has done is not utterly twisted—does not want to think that he completely missed the signs of Madara’s original intentions in the first place—and so he does not destroy the notes.)
But the Shodaime didn’t tell anyone else before going after Madara (he thought, No time to lose, not now); and the fight and death and Madara’s research are left as mysteries.
v.
The Sandaime does not give Itachi a choice. “You will be relieved from ANBU missions for an indefinite period of time,” he says. “It is common procedure if something like this—“ this goes unelaborated, unspoken, but the fact of the Uchiha massacre hangs in the air “—happens. Considering the effect it can have on one’s judgment in certain situations, it was the medic’s opinion that you be discharged from ANBU duty. I’m sure you understand.”
“Yes, Hokage-sama.” Itachi looks levelly at Sarutobi, then slowly pulls his ANBU mask a little forward and up, shedding the face of the animal. He places the mask on the Hokage’s desk; he bows, though the sign of respect means nothing to Itachi.
It is what is expected of him; there is no reason for him not to do so.
He straightens up, glancing down at the smooth sheen of the mask; ignores the way it reflects the Sharingan in his eyes. The painted animal grins back at him in a rictus of a smile (He had smiled that way too, looking at Itachi as they stood apart from each other—“Not bad,” he said, “truly the Uchiha genius that they say you are—”).
He leaves the Hokage to his paperwork in his office and goes down the corridor. He overhears some shinobi chattering away; a carrier-nin rushes past with a package.
“—him, over there—entire clan murdered—”
Itachi walks past the two chuunin without looking at them, but he feels them draw back a bit—senses a touch of their shame from being overheard, from sounding too gossipy. It is best to keep up appearances of sympathy and sorrow, his mind muses, even when they don't feel much about the massacre at all besides the usual vague horror. Isn't that how people work?
He doesn’t know. He doesn’t care.
(“You told me that you’d teach me some new shuriken moves!”
“Sorry, Sasuke. I have an important mission tomorrow—I have to prepare for it.”
“Brother, you liar!”)
He returns to the Uchiha compound, which opens wide before him like a gaping mouth, full of nothing but silence. His stomach twists with hollow hunger, so he looks for food. This is what he finds: left-over crackers; a frozen fish; a large bowl of soup; vegetables in the refrigerator.
Itachi knows he is not good at cooking. It was Uchiha Mikoto who prepared his meals.
He sits at the bare table and reads the scroll for his next mission (no more ANBU for now, just ordinary missions, the Hokage had said). The food goes untouched.
vi.
This is how his immortality begins. A Sharingan eye; a body.
Madara lasts for some time. When his body is beginning to fail him—not that he is old, but it’s somewhat creaky around the joints in his middle age—he returns to Konoha and goes to the family compound. He does his usual observations before finding one of the strongest Uchiha there. Three tomoe; particularly talented in taijutsu.
During the Shinobi Wars, the leaders of Konohagakure are just a little, just a little disgruntled with the Uchiha. Not that the clan itself is disloyal to the village; still, in every generation there’s always one good Uchiha shinobi who goes missing-nin. When the village needs all the fighters it can get, this proves irking.
Later, a pale-skinned man, student of the Sandaime, is in the library and finds a sheaf of notes. The soul-transfer jutsu is perfect to achieve his goal of immortality—only he does not have the Sharingan. But he tweaks the jutsu to suit himself, though he still has to change bodies rather often. What would be best, he decides, is to get a body with the Sharingan. No more of these silly complications.
Once you can persuade someone else to believe in their death, taking the body is no longer a problem.
vii.
Itachi knows why he lived.
Shisui had a reputation for being brutally ruthless in severe circumstances.
(When he first steps out of the shadows and draws Itachi’s attention, Itachi sees that Shisui's eyes are cold with the look of someone who has done his duty; someone past the edge of reason—
—then Shisui fades into the face of a stranger who says, “Let’s compare how strong we are.”)
When they fought, Itachi fought to kill; the other fought with care for Itachi's body and the sureness of victory. They did talk, a little, but Itachi did not let in any distractions—not the other’s words, not the cold pressure bearing down upon his chest, not the sight of Sasuke lying sprawled to the side. Sasuke, not breathing.
Itachi lived, because he had no qualms about killing his best friend, not when it meant his own obliteration (and anyway, his friend is dead already, even if his body is still moving).
viii.
This is how his end begins. A breakout; a massacre.
His transfers have always been smooth, and there is no reason to think this one any different. It’s been a few months since he moved himself, looking over the clan to find the strongest and decide upon a more permanent transfer. Madara likes to be careful. He's pleased to have encountered Uchiha Shisui during his last mission, for he is undoubtedly one of the Uchiha’s finest.
Madara likes to have the very best, however; and the best, everyone says, is that genius Itachi. It’s his luck that Shisui is friends with the otherwise unapproachable boy.
All is well.
But then Shisui breaks from Madara’s hypnosis. I am not dead, he snarls, desperation in his voice, and Madara loses control of the body in his surprise, because this—hasn’t—happened—before.
The boy clings to his body with a will of iron. A will of fire. He has spent several months drifting between life and death in his mind, tattered remnants of his sanity fading like stones falling through water. There remains only one unrelenting mantra for him now: I will ruin you, I will stop you, I will bring you down—
Shisui had a reputation for being brutally ruthless in severe circumstances.
I will bring you down.
Disjointed thoughts in a disjointed mind, and Shisui seizes upon a passing plan.
Madara lives because of the Uchiha and their Sharingan—
Shisui draws his ninjato in the middle of the street and kills a Uchiha who has just walked past. He does not let himself stop.
ix.
Smoke drifts up, spiraling lazily around Itachi like a yawning dragon. A sheaf of notes burns on a small fire he's lit at the Nakano shrine. Surrendering to flickering golden flames, the paper blackens and crumbles.
Itachi has been visiting all of the Uchiha clan's shrines and bases to clean up, closing off places in which he is unlikely to set foot again. There probably won’t be a Uchiha who enters them again for years.
And at the Nakano shrine—
(His eyes are drawn to something that wasn’t there before—strange, unless there had been some genjutsu over it?
He examines the revealed seal under the tatami mat and, after making sure its removal will lead to no explosions or dispatched poisons, he draws from his knowledge of fuuinjutsu and the seal comes off—)
Itachi glances around at the shadows that the fire throws upon the walls. Sasuke had rarely been here; the last time he’d come, his face had worn an expression of extraordinary boredom, and finally he’d tugged on Itachi’s sleeve and said, “Brother, can we go now?”
“Not yet,” Itachi had said. “We have to pay respects to our ancestors.”
(Disgust explodes in his mind as he reads the notes, disgust bright and sharp—to desecrate the mind and soul, Itachi thinks, and to cling to the strength of others’ bodies to survive—what respect could be paid to this?)
Itachi knows his ability; he knows his capacity. He will never depend on another’s limits to define his own, he thinks, not like Madara. Not like Madara.
He could almost absolve Shisui of his sin. What Shisui did was rational in his mind, and if Itachi were in Shisui’s place, he might have done the same. To destroy Uchiha Madara, destroy the clan—as if the clan were simply the old leader's own collection of containers.
(What about Sasuke? He probably couldn’t kill him, and Madara would seize at the chance to leave another Uchiha alive as insurance, to motivate him and make sure he lives. Who knows?
Itachi doesn’t, at any rate.)
The last Uchiha killed the first one: he finds this scathingly ironic.
Itachi brings his hand up to his heart and bows lightly to the shadows. “Shisui,” he says. “I should've killed you earlier, then. So that you wouldn't have to suffer. I was too weak for that.” A pause. “I will grow stronger.”
The shadows the fire casts dance along the walls and bend briefly, as if to acknowledge him and his words.
“Sasuke,” Itachi says. “I’m sorry.”
And as the fire dies, the shadows fade in their last nod.
Itachi turns and leaves. Behind him, the shrine sinks into the darkness of the night.
x.
This is how the aftermath begins. A fire; an apology.
He buys some dango at a nearby stand and nibbles on it as he walks toward the training field. The sun peeks above the horizon to set the sky awash with streaks of red and orange. It is a strange sort of peace.
And:
“Itachi!” someone calls. He turns to see Kakashi waving at him. “Genma’s having a get-together at his place now, come along!”
He blinks. “It’s late,” he begins, "and I—”
But Kakashi is already pulling him down the street. “I am going to get you drunk,” his superior announces, “since you haven’t been through the initiation of drunkenness yet. Let’s see your holding capacity!” And then Kakashi smirks under his mask.
He thinks, at least, that Kakashi means well.
He does not think this when his head refuses to stop spinning in the morning.
And:
He passes the Academy on his way home and stops to watch the children running around, their teacher urging them on. This is the class Sasuke was in, he realizes slowly, and pictures a little boy with the Uchiha fan on his back, running at the front of them all.
His mouth twitches slightly, into something that almost approaches a smile, and he moves on.
And:
He stands in the training ground. Eight kunai. Eight targets. He crouches low, then launches himself into the air—twists so that his feet point toward the sky, with the air singing around him—spins, with six kunai fanned out in his hands—throws—two more, one strikes the other, and now—
He lands, knees bent and arms flung out to keep his balance.
Eight kunai. Eight targets.
He looks up at the clear, cloudless sky.
(“You told me that you’d teach me some new shuriken moves!”
He glances back. “Sorry, Sasuke. I have an important mission tomorrow—I have to prepare for it.”
“Brother, you liar!” Sasuke is sulking ferociously.
He stops; he looks at his little brother, and smiles. “… Come here. I’ll help you with your shuriken.”)