Naruto Fan Fiction ❯ Scarlet ❯ ANBU ( Chapter 4 )

Yamisui: Hope you've all taken your Prozac.

 

{OoO} SCARLET {OoO}

 

{OoO} {OoO} Chapter 4: ANBU {OoO} {OoO}

 

 

My father did not answer my question immediately. I think . . . by that point . . . not only was he afraid for me---he was afraid of me. He knew very well what the Mangekyou Sharingan was, and how it could be obtained. So he looked down into the face of the ten-year-old boy who had killed Uchiha Setsuna and said, “That dojutsu is something you will learn about when you're older.”

 

I misunderstood him at the time. I thought he meant I would `learn' the dojutsu from him, as if the Mangekyou were something all adult Uchiha knew how to work. My instruction concerning that technique and the complete and utter disillusionment that came afterward would not occur for another two years. In the meantime, however, I was beginning to be resentful---truly resentful---for the first time, after I'd returned from the Rice Country mission. I had become an assassin and lost two comrades all at once. Achievement of Genin and Chuunin rank should have been enough to prove me in my father's eyes, and if not for the sake of those then suffering should have been enough. But for all I'd suffered and seen, for all the new strength I'd acquired, it was never enough.

 

My father kept me at an arm's length, and watched me carefully.

 

It seems a simple thing, I suppose, to say I was being watched. But think about it: do you know what it's like to have those who are supposed to be more powerful than you begin to look at you with wariness in their eyes? To be a child and to realize you somehow have the power to unnerve? I wasn't stupid, and after what I'd been through in the Rice Country I knew I was drawing near to being as strong as my father. I kept training, and growing . . . and still I saw no limit in the near future.

 

What I learned from my father's wariness was to be afraid of myself.

 

There were only two people, at this point in my life, who looked at me without wariness. The first was Shisui. The second was Sasuke.

 

Sasuke . . . worshipped me. I'm not sure when it began. Shisui noticed, on the rare occasions he accompanied me to my training grounds, that Sasuke was trailing me and hid to watch me practice. “Itachi, you've got a shadow,” he remarked. I'd noticed, too, but hadn't tried to make a great deal of it. I started trying to leave the house more quietly after that, and made a new training area that I kept secret. But Sasuke, to my surprise, found me again.

 

Eventually I stopped trying to hide. I called out to him, so he didn't have to crouch in trees until his knees grew stiff to watch me in secret. Once, he sheepishly admitted to me, he'd even knelt on an anthill when he was hiding in the bushes and went home with welts all over his shins.

 

He was fascinated by my strength. He wanted to know what I wanted to do with it.

 

He wanted to know how he could grow up to have it.

 

Sasuke was just like me in that respect. He really was my shadow. I let him watch me, though I never directly invited him to come---I left it up to him to figure out when and where I was going. And I didn't mind when he asked me stupid, childish things, because I saw in him my past self---the Itachi who hadn't yet killed a boy in the Chuunin arena, or become an assassin. Sasuke had the cruel honesty of the innocent; some of his questions made me question myself.

 

It was ridiculous that my father didn't pay much attention to my brother. Sasuke had such a hunger for strength. And for truth. But my father saw only me, with my strength and my cold heart. He was too determined to make me a leader.

 

One hot summer day after sparring with me, my father stepped back, sweating, and told me gravely that he'd taught me everything he knew. There was pride written plainly in his stance; he clasped his hands behind him and faced me straight-backed and level-eyed like a man does his equal.

 

“Now it's up to you to use it wisely,” he told me, nodding acknowledgement. “You'll make a fine leader.”

 

My father never once told me that I must also become a good man.

 

Of course, good and evil are created by the simple, the fearful. Power transcends everything---every shinobi knows this instinctively. I was beginning to understand that.

 

I was growing rapidly at that age, approaching Shisui's height and beginning to fill out. My shoulders became too broad for my clothes; we bought new ones. And I knew instinctively, with the wordless intuition of the young, that I was meant to keep growing to fill out the dimensions of a greater life. How could my father tell me proudly that I had reached the height? I had barely begun.

 

My breath caught in my throat after his pronouncement. I wanted to shout, This can't be all there is! There must be more! But my cold, rational self---so adept at reining in those impulses---moved my lips, and I found myself asking, “Wasn't there something else? Another dojutsu?”

 

My father grew curt and tight-lipped, and his only response to my question was, “One more year, and you'll be old enough to know about that.”

 

I was eleven.

 

After that day, I kept training obsessively. There had to be more. Kunai could fly with greater accuracy. Sharingan eyes could see more clearly. Desperate to keep the mind growing and changing so I didn't become bored and stagnant and dead.

 

One day I returned from training to find what seemed like my entire clan waiting for me, seated in our receiving hall. All in rows, as if there were a funeral. But there was no shrine at the head of the room, and no incense. Instead, there was a scroll. My father held it.

 

“Come, Uchiha Itachi,” he told me, beckoning me to him. He said it proudly, but there was a set to his jaw even grimmer than usual, and I approached with misgivings. “You're twelve years old now, and a man in our eyes. It's time you learned the secrets of the clan.”

 

When he told me this, I went to him without hesitation. It's fair to ask, I suppose, that if someone had told me then that my innocence was about to be lost forever, would I have accepted the scroll? My head was full of questions then, and I was in no state of mind to refuse answers. So yes, I would still have accepted the scroll. Because the truth was important.

 

And the secret. Of course, the secret . . .

 

Konoha, champion village of the Fire Country, was not originally governed by a Hokage. When the village was first formed, there was only a council of representatives from each founding clan. But there were two men---the heads of the two most powerful clans---who felt that the strongest should lead the others. One of these men was a Hyuuga. Great dissent arose in the council. Breakout violence, or even civil war, seemed inevitable.

 

That was when, and why, the Uchiha were created. Created. Bred. Engineered. The clan opposing the Hyuuga did this in secret, using the genes of their rivals to create an even stronger clan.

 

I read with no expression on my face, but as I did something inside me began to burn.

 

Why were the Uchiha created?

 

Why was I created?

 

Our purpose?

 

My purpose?

 

The Uchiha were born to become stronger than Konoha's strongest clan. To rule the village.

 

But we were a failure.

 

We couldn't compare with the Hyuuga. War did break out, between the two great clans, and the Uchiha were caught between. Many died, because we weren't strong enough to be used for our intended purpose. And afterward . . . the two clan leaders fought one-on-one, at the Valley of the End. The Hyuuga leader died. His rival became Hokage. And the Uchiha, whom he'd created, became his watchdogs. We became Konoha's policing force, and established our name and our place in the new government. The first Hokage treated us as an honored clan, and we became wealthy.

 

But every time there was a war, we were sent to the front lines. And the Hyuuga, Konoha's trump cards, were guarded like hothouse flowers.

 

Our clan had a secret: a terrible secret, developed by the first Hokage during his conflict with the Hyuuga. When he saw that the Uchiha weren't strong enough to win him his war, he found a way for us to become more powerful. Stumbled upon it by accident, while experimenting. I won't speak of the nature of those experiments---they were disgusting. Demeaning. During one of them, an Uchiha man rebelled and killed one of those overseeing the experiment. She was a woman he'd once loved.

 

He went insane with grief. For months, he was like a man with no soul, except in sleep, when he raved like a madman. And then . . . he returned to himself. And his Sharingan was changed. Members of the first Hokage's clan---the ones who had created the Uchiha---wanted to develop the Mangekyou Sharingan to use against the Hyuuga. They were ruthless and shrewd, with the foresight to see that strength is everything. But when their clan leader achieved his goal, becoming the Ichidaime, and he changed. He felt the eyes of all Konoha on him, and sensed that if he couldn't make them forget his past brutality they would overthrow him. The new government was soft, after all. Letting old men and women make our laws; sitting peaceably at a table while they sent shinobi out to die in strange lands.

 

Thanks to the Ichidaime, the Mangekyou Sharingan became forbidden. Knowledge of it was banished, except to be used as a warning to Uchiha boys coming of age. With it, I understood, the Uchiha could have been stronger than the Hyuuga. We could have been gods. But Konoha's laws forbade it.

 

And the stupid, blind Uchiha forsook it for the sake of peace.

 

As I stood there, rooted to the spot, holding the scroll, I began to realize for the first time the depth of that stupidity.

 

Why? Why? I pretended to still be reading, but my eyes saw nothing. My ears rang with silent questions. What am I doing? Why do any of this? Why fight to protect when we're nothing but tools?

 

“Itachi,” my father said. He reached for the scroll. Took it easily because my fingers had gone numb.

 

“Now you know the secret,” my uncles said to me. “Now you are truly an Uchiha.”

 

They were telling me: Now that you know the height you could have reached, you must abandon all hope of reaching it.

 

Afterward, when they left me alone at last, I went to my room and tore up the scroll where I'd once written down the Yondaime's words. Protect? Serve? Is nobility just an easy way to die? Bits of shredded paper fell around me like snow. The clan! The clan! Damn them for their cowardice! Let them take their secrets straight to hell!

 

I was never the same again.

 

I began to hate everything around me. It was like a slow-working potion, poisoning everything familiar until I could no longer see it, taste it, feel it. As it had after the assassination, the world's color faded to black and white.

 

I trained. I ate. I spoke, and no one was the wiser. But inside I burned. Instead of becoming numb and dead as I had after the assassination, I let the slow hatred fill me. And it suffused me with strength, like chakra itself.

 

Sasuke sensed it, I think. He followed me everywhere, wide-eyed and smiling shyly because even though he loved me he was nervous of me.

 

Once, after a particularly long practice, he became overly excited and managed to sprain his ankle. I carried him home. On the way, we passed the station where our father worked. As we passed I felt Sasuke's heart skip a beat against my back and came to a halt.

 

“What is it?”

 

“This is where our father works, right?”

 

“This is the headquarters of Konoha's police force,” I explained.

 

He asked me why it bore our symbol on its sign-block. It was like a needle in my gut.

 

I swallowed my bitterness and gave him the appropriate explanation. But I also said, “The only ones who may judge the crimes of shinobi are superior shinobi.” I was telling him that by right the strongest rule. What I wanted to say was that the Uchiha were weak because they chose to be, and so others ruled over them.

 

“Are you gonna join too?” he asked.

 

Ahead of him, where he couldn't see, my face went dark. “Hmm . . . maybe.”

 

And why not? I thought, with a viciousness that surprised even me. After all, aren't I also destined to bow to the destiny of my clan?

 

“You should!” he chirped in my ear. “When I grow up, I want to join the police force, too! For tomorrow's entrance exam, `tou-san's gonna come too. It'll be the first step to realizing my dream.”

 

His skinny little-boy-arms tightened round my shoulders. There was such fervor in his voice, such naïve earnestness, that it jolted me from my resentment. I hadn't realized until that moment just how much my creature he was. Sasuke wanted to join Konoha's policing force because he thought I did. If I'd told him then what I was really thinking, I believe he would've accepted it and changed his mind in a heartbeat. Because he loved me.

 

It was like I was seeing him for the first time.

 

That day, my father met us and hurried us home. He wanted to accompany me on my next mission, and he seemed excited. I wanted none of his excitement. So I reminded him that Sasuke was entering the Academy, and threatened to forego the mission to attend the ceremony. I knew my father well. All it took was a subtle reminder not to neglect Sasuke and he surrendered to guilt. And I'd gleaned from his behavior that the mission was something very important. Some opportunity to earn me some new acclaim; the Uchiha constantly sought acclaim in the village. They used pride to distract themselves from what they could really do.

 

While my father oversaw my brother's graduation, I embarked on the mission with a larger team than I was accustomed to---four other people. Kabuto, a Chuunin girl from the Inuzuka clan, and two Jounin. The Jounin were there to assess me for some reason; I didn't know at the time they were considering me for Jounin rank. Thus it was left to me to lead the mission, despite my young age.

 

I won't say much about the mission itself. It was dangerous; it required great mental and physical aptitude on my part. But what makes it worth mentioning at all is that I met Orochimaru. Again.

 

We met some heavy resistance from a renegade clan near the Cloud Country border. During the fight, I judged it best that my team separate and make for the trees, where as Leaf ninja we would have the advantage of terrain experience. Then I caught a glimpse of black, lanky hair, and a narrow, ghastly pale face, and without even considering the consequences I took off after him on my own. I didn't want my comrades to witness me speaking to him. Or killing him. At the time, in my state of inner turmoil, I wasn't sure which I wanted more.

 

He'd clearly intended for me to follow him, because after a while he came to a halt. He stood on the ground patiently until at last I descended from the high branches. He wanted us on even ground.

 

I stood before him a young man, shorter than he was but secure in my strength. And he . . . he looked different as well. He wore white robes tied with a purple obi such that they bulged round the middle, and upon his clothes he bore a crest I'd never seen before. I knew better than to think it was the crest of his former clan in Konoha.

 

“What is your reason?” I asked sharply. I was angry; I lacked the patience for preliminaries. I wanted to know why he'd sought me out again.

 

Orochimaru laughed, folding his hands composedly behind his back. “You've grown,” he observed. “You've already outgrown Konoha and its ideals. And everything around you makes you sick.”

 

I said nothing. Waited for him to answer what I'd asked.

 

“There's an organization,” he said, “called Akatsuki.” He lifted his right hand and I saw he wore a ring on it. “We believe that the powerful are meant to rule. Not civilians, not feudal lords, but shinobi.” His slitted eyes gleamed. “Superior shinobi.”

 

I kept my guard, holding kunai lightly in each hand to throw if need be. “And you want me to join? Why?”

 

“Because you're like me,” he replied, “and I'm like you. Or I will be.” He chuckled, seeming to make some kind of private joke. At the time I had no idea of his designs on the Uchiha bloodline limit, or that he used forbidden jutsu to change bodies. I was just tired of his riddles.

 

“And what is it . . . that you want from me?” I asked slowly. I knew better than to think he was doing this for me.

 

His smile grew slyer still. “I want the secrets of the Uchiha.”

 

“Why?” I asked. “What secrets we have are unique to our . . . blood.” I had just barely stopped myself from saying “breed.” We were a breed, after all. Like hounds the feudal lords breed for hunting.

 

“What I want from the Uchiha has nothing to do with you,” Orochimaru countered. His yellow eyes seemed to stare right through me. “Don't pretend you care what happens to them. You want power and you want freedom.” His lips parted in a grin again. “We both know protecting the weak is a waste of time.”

 

He paused; my hands had clenched round the kunai. But I neither moved nor spoke. His words frightened me, but at the same time the anger gnawing at my heart burned my chest, compelled me to listen.

 

“You already know that people who don't have strong desire are just bags of flesh. So what are the Uchiha to you?” When I didn't answer, he laughed, short and sharp. “Heh. Well, I have a lot to do. If you won't choose now, I'll see you again, in the Rice Country.”

 

I flew at him. I hated his cryptic promises and I hated myself for wanting to believe them. I caught him by the shoulders and slammed him hard against the trunk of a tree. But he melted backward into the bark, slipping through my fingers as if he were a ghost. Laughing.

 

“What is your limit, Uchiha Itachi?” he asked. Then he was gone.

 

{OoO} {OoO} {OoO}

 

I regrouped with my team not long after. We returned safely to Konoha. Afterward, there was a report filed by all members in the presence of the Sandaime. We stood in his office in a row while he listened to us with fingers steepled thoughtfully beneath his chin.

 

I was distracted; I scarcely cared what they had to say about me. That is, until Hatake Kakashi turned to me and asked for my report on what had happened after we split up. He had a vague, nonchalant way of asking things, but the one dark eye with which he regarded me was shrewd and keen. I'd been wary of him from the moment we met, because he seemed wary of me.

 

I hadn't prepared a lie, and I sensed Kakashi-san would catch any I invented.

 

Fortunately, Kabuto was an accomplished liar. “Our paths crossed soon after,” my teammate volunteered. “Itachi-kun saved my life.”

 

I stared at him. The smile he turned my way was so perfectly calculated that I knew I hadn't been the only one to meet Orochimaru during the mission. And I knew Kabuto had accepted Orochimaru's offer, because he didn't even try to make his own performance sound impressive before the Sandaime. He'd accepted the snake's offer in his heart long ago, and he had no use for pride.

 

Kakashi was still suspicious of me. I was curious because I knew he was someone my father disliked, but during the mission I'd made no effort to speak with him beyond what was required. As a genius, I was wary of geniuses---especially geniuses my father disliked. Setsuna-sensei had taught me that the powerful care only for themselves---a lesson I never forgot.

 

But Kakashi's mistrust was to have no profound effect on me. The panel named me Jounin, and Kabuto and I were secure in our lie. My father was proud. Everyone was so proud of me, they didn't notice the torment I was in.

 

“What is your limit, Uchiha Itachi?”

 

Orochimaru's question haunted me.

 

Orochimaru is honest to a point that transcends anyone I've ever known---and his honesty is too cruel for people to accept as truth, so they brand him evil and criminal and twisted and any label they see fit to use for an excuse not to listen to him. Even I---at an age where I was simultaneously haunted by doubts and determined to silence them---could not deny that his words rang of truth . . . such truth . . . I couldn't forget them. There's something about a question that rings truer than an answer; it challenges wisdom without presuming to be wise. To me, his question was a catalyst.

 

I began to question everything.

 

It was like a return to my childhood, when my head rang with ceaseless “Why?” Only now . . . the questions were cold and bitter, and I asked them only in my head.

 

It robbed me of sleep. That, perhaps, was the worst pattern I could've started. It made what was going on inside my head begin to show on the outside. That was dangerous, because it made my father forget his pride and begin to watch me more closely again.

 

{OoO} {OoO} {OoO}

 

It wasn't long before I was approached by ANBU and informed that they wanted me. I welcomed the opportunity to get out of the village, where the walls of my clan quarters had gone colorless, so I agreed to undergo their tests.

 

It wasn't long before the extra training on top of missions put too much strain on me. I began to do rash things.

 

One afternoon, I was training in the woods. I'd set up targets all around me, pointing toward me like a host of round Sharingan eyes.

 

I had just flung kunai toward them and settled to my feet after an intricate series of mid-air flips when I caught a glimpse of gray hair and glasses out of the corner of my eye. I landed in a crouch, wheeling about on the balls of my feet and balancing myself with the fingertips of both hands touching the dirt.

 

“Kabuto-kun, why are you here?”

 

I asked it calmly, but inwardly I resented that he'd found my secret training ground. Except for when missions required teamwork, I'd been avoiding Kabuto increasingly since the assassination incident.

 

“Looking for you,” he replied, sun-spots dancing on his shoulders as he moved further into the clearing. “I've come to tell you about the prestigious mission you're being offered.”

 

I stared at him. Kabuto was always hard to read. I never liked him.

 

But the air around him wavered, and the next thing I knew I was staring at a tall sixteen-year-old boy, lean but well-muscled, the back of his hair cropped haphazardly while the front still flopped rakishly across his forehead. His eyes were red with the Sharingan, but he was grinning at me.

 

“Shisui,” I greeted him, nodding soberly. He'd fooled me and we both knew it. Our clan had even nicknamed him “Shisui of the Mirage,” he'd become so talented with genjutsu.

 

“I seriously did come to tell you something good,” he informed me. “They're considering you for ANBU.”

 

I nodded, offering a faint smile. “Oh.”

 

His grin lessened. “Congratulations.” I could practically smell the jealousy on him, but for my sake he just stood there, waiting for me to say something. The line between love and hate is sometimes paper thin.

 

“Thank you,” I replied, without feeling. There wasn't much else to say. With my recent promotion to Jounin rank, I'd achieved everything by twelve years that most shinobi spent a lifetime chasing after. Being inducted into ANBU only served to show me just how empty I was. I had everything.

 

And I had nothing.

 

But Shisui didn't understand that. My stillness and lack of enthusiasm were getting on his nerves.

 

“Well? Aren't you happy?” he asked, a bit too loudly. I rose slowly from my crouch, eyeing him with interest. He was more irritated than I'd thought.

 

“Uncle's proud of you, you know,” Shisui reminded me. “You're a promising heir to us. You don't have anything to worry over.” A pause. “Say something! You always go off on your own, like you think the world's against you. Well, it's not! You're being handed everything you could want!” Then he stopped himself, raking his fingers through his hair and looking away from me. “Shit, I didn't mean it like that.” He still sounded like he meant it. He started pacing. His feet swished through the grass as he moved closer to me.

 

Was he angry? Well, so was I. I wanted to see what we could make with our anger.

 

“Why don't we fight, then?” I asked him, my eyes flaring red. “Show me what strength is.”

 

But I'd made a mistake, challenging him like that. There was too little familiarity in my voice, and too much curiosity in the tilt of my head---too much detachment. It scared him. He grabbed me by the shoulders so hard his fingers dug into my upper arms and left bruises.

 

“What . . . the HELL is WRONG with you?” he snarled between clenched teeth. He looked as if he wanted to embrace me or shake me until my teeth rattled. But I stared at him coldly, waiting. When you lock hatred away inside is that it sears you, eats you, until you're paper thin and you want everything you touch to burn. Shisui could see through to the turmoil inside me, to what no one else could see because they wanted only to see that genius. Before my friend's eyes, every role I played---Uchiha heir, Jounin, son, brother, prodigy---all these fell away, and he saw Itachi. I loved Shisui in that moment.

 

And I hated him. Because what he saw confounded and frightened him. Because I couldn't bear my wretched self to be naked before another's judgment.

 

“I don't know myself,” I told him, my voice ragged and thick. “What I'm meant for. Why I am. But no one here knows themselves. Not you. Not Chichi-ue, not the Uchiha. We serve and we protect. We die! And none of it means anything!”

 

He let go of me roughly, shoving me a few feet away from him. “Is that what you think?” he demanded. “That our lives are worthless? Genius, my ass! You're a damned moron. You go on missions, and they matter. You eat dinner with your family, you have a brother who worships the ground you walk on, and that matters too. You and me, standing here, that matters!”

 

“Do you know what it means to reach the height?” I snapped. “Do you? Does anyone?”

 

He didn't. And when I tried to put my frustration into words I failed miserably, leaving him confused and worried. “Stop looking for some great meaning to the world we're in,” he finally said, shaking his head in disgust. “If you think too much, you're bound to hate yourself. You're just running in circles, and anyone with eyes can see it's wearing you out.” He turned away from me and began to head off toward the village. Giving up on me.

 

The Uchiha crest, emblazoned on the back of his shirt, glared at me like a target.

 

A horrible thought occurred to me.

 

“Shisui. Is my father making you keep an eye on me?”

 

I saw him shake his head, but I knew he wasn't really denying it.

 

“Get some sleep, brat,” he admonished gruffly. “You look like hell.”

 

{OoO} {OoO} {OoO}

 

A few nights after, Sasuke had a nightmare and came into my room again, just like he had when he was five. “Eight years is too old to be scared of the dark,” I told him. He just stood there, in the shadowed doorway, rubbing his eyes. “Did you see a ghost again?” I asked, as he climbed into my bed and claimed the middle space and my pillow for himself.

 

He rolled over, too embarrassed to look me in the face. But he mumbled into the pillow, “There were lots this time. Watching me in my bed.”

 

It didn't take him long to drop off to sleep in my bed. I stayed sitting up for a while, watching him breathe. His face, in a square of moonlight from my window. The curve of his cheek and his spiky, tousled black hair. He looked like something awkward and unfinished.

 

We're connected by something I can't name, Sasuke and I. It isn't what others would call love---it's more like I'm filled with the responsibility of making him into something worthwhile. Because he's a piece of what I could have been, and because I can't let that go, I choose instead to master it and make it my tool. He's a piece of my shattered conscience, trailing after me like a shadow. Or a ghost.

 

Looking at him back then, in that square of moonlight, I wondered what sort of creature he would become. After all, when an artist holds a brush in hand before a blank canvas, can he help wondering what form he'll give it?

 

“But there's no hope for us in this village,” I murmured. “There's nothing.”

 

Sasuke muttered something in his sleep, then rolled over.

 

I was staring at him, but suddenly my eyes saw something else. My head snapped up, and my eyes flared red with a rush of ambition.

 

I knew, then.

 

There was more. For me, for him. My clan was afraid of it. But I . . . was not.

 

{OoO} {OoO} {OoO}

 

After my induction into ANBU, the workload tripled. I was left with very little time to train on my own. Nevertheless, I still found the time to locate the hiding place for the scroll, and to begin a deep study of the Mangekyou Sharingan. No one ever caught me---of that I'm sure. If they had, it would all have ended before it began.

 

I wanted that power. My flailing mind latched onto it like a death grip on sanity. Every time I activated my Sharingan, alone or in combat, I tried to simulate the emotions the scroll claimed brought the technique into play. Dojutsu, you understand, relies on chemical reactions in the brain to activate it. And certain emotions . . . The only Mangekyou cases documented in the scroll involved the user killing a loved one.

 

The ultimate mixture of hatred and love.

 

I stopped letting Sasuke come to watch me train. It's strange to admit, but the emotions required to produce the Mangekyou Sharingan make you see the world differently. If Sasuke had been with me while I was training for it . . . I don't know what I would have done. It hadn't taken me long to grow impatient with myself. Simulating the emotions in my mind wasn't producing results fast enough, and the prospect of an easier road was beginning to tempt me.

 

Just one person. One . . . beloved . . . person.

 

And I could reach the height. Know myself, what I was and why I was.

 

I was almost never home during those days. When I was home or at work, my father was watching me so carefully I felt like a prisoner in my own life. Always he asked after my health, out of worry, but also because he sensed his prized son and heir was slipping through his fingers.

 

I was slipping away. I was dying, slowly, inside. Every mission I undertook, I became less and less Itachi and more a creature who acted only according to the desires of others. My body was acting on its own, moving as I'd trained it, while my heart was buried somewhere cold and hopeless.

 

Then came the mission where I almost slipped away entirely. I . . . the details of that mission aren't clear to me, even to this day. My mindset during that time . . . everything was a blur. Gray and hazed over. The strain of too many sleepless nights and overuse of chakra. Our mission was to thwart an assassination on a Fire Country noble. Lady Aki, who ruled in her dead husband's stead. I was with ANBU, acting in conjunction with a Jounin team---Shisui's team. He had made Jounin not long after I did. Crawling along the ceiling, I sighted the assassin coming around the corner in the hall long before my comrades did. The hall was dark, but I could smell his fear. Though I could barely see his face, I knew he was young; a boy.

 

I was upon him before my comrades even noticed his presence. He was quick; he slid out from beneath me. I went hurtling after him down the hall, onto a terrace where the lanterns were lit. Knocked him down, crouched over him while he lay stunned. Raised the knife.

 

Hesitated.

 

The face below me was mine.

 

A shadow of me, I remember thinking in horror.

 

He hadn't copied my face with any jutsu---I was wearing the ANBU mask---but in my mind's eye he was what I'd once been. A boy, who'd come to this place to kill in cold blood.

 

A terrifying question came to me: What if I were in his place? Would I surrender myself to die? Isn't it the fate of the weak to die?

 

Lanterns swung over us, shifting the red-yellow glow back and forth. I wavered.

 

And then . . . it came to me. An answer. The first lesson I ever taught myself.

 

Yes. If I were weak, I'd die. It's the order of life.

 

But I'm strong. I hate. And this boy, rank with fear, is already dead.

 

I slashed his throat.

 

It was Shisui who pulled me off him. I was covered in blood, and shaking.

 

“Idiot!” he bellowed in my ear. “We could have questioned him!”

 

Then I tore free of him, turning. “Don't touch me.” I still held the knife.

 

I was shaking with excitement. A nameless energy filling me. Here was someone I loved, who loved me. And I wanted to kill him. I could have, my certainty was so clear in that moment.

 

But he slapped me hard across the face. And, while my eyes were still filled with stars from the pain, held me so tight against him I couldn't breathe.

 

“Shit. Itachi. Don't . . . EVER . . .” He had no idea what to say. I think he knew, then, where my path was headed. Knew it had already taken hold of me beyond any hope of return.

 

But when we returned to the village later, he said nothing to my father.

 

{OoO} {OoO} {OoO}

 

The power I had tasted on that mission, in that moment, was the precursor to the Mangekyou Sharingan. To put that feeling into words . . . it's near to impossible. It's standing on the threshold between winter and summer, feeling the sun on your face and knowing you will be warm if you step through. Then your boiling blood cools, and the door shuts, and you are left standing frozen in a colorless hell, so hollow you would crack if anyone touched you.

 

Once you've tasted that height, you can never stop reaching for it.

 

I killed Shisui on a warm night in autumn.

 

It was . . .

 

My parents caught me sneaking out before the dawn of that day. I claimed it was for a mission---one whose secret nature I could not divulge because my father was not in ANBU. He reminded me of my duties and told me where my loyalties should lie. I listened, I nodded, but his words meant nothing to me.

 

In reality, there wasn't any mission. I spent the day preparing myself for what I knew I had to do. When night fell . . . I was ready. I went into it with a clear mind.

 

Shisui was following me. Trailing me, as I knew my father had asked him to do, because my father had sensed the lie. I let my friend follow me for a ways, through the Uchiha compound, until I came to the stone bridge we'd jumped off of as children. There I stopped, and stood staring down at my reflection until Shisui finally showed himself.

 

“You knew I was there all along,” he accused me, coming to stand beside me. He rested his elbows on the bridge wall, looking downriver as he spoke.

 

I smiled. Shisui always had a knack for stating the obvious. “My eyes are as good as yours,” I said.

 

He sighed, shaking his head and still refusing to look at me. “Your eyes are cold and sad,” he told me. His words were simple, but coming from a young man who wasn't comfortable with speaking his heart they were heavy indeed. He understood me so well.

 

“I am sad,” I answered him. “So sad. Even with you beside me, I'm alone.” I meant every word. I was already grieving for him.

 

The human heart is a wonder. It can turn to steel even as it breaks.

 

Shisui nodded slowly. Once again, he could say nothing to me. I was an abyss he knew nothing could fill.

 

“Let's run, Shisui,” I said quietly. “On the water. Like we once did.”

 

When we were children, and the world had color and I hadn't learned what real strength was.

 

We jumped, into the river, and went racing beneath the hunter's moon. Feet splashing softly on the surface. Gentle brush of wind on our faces.

 

He was always faster. He ran ahead . . .

 

I . . . can't speak of it. What it felt like to watch his last breath rise through the water until it burst silver on the surface . . . That is the deepest pain I've known.

 

And I won't speak of it. That memory is for me alone.

 

I gained everything that night. And wept, for the last time.

 

End of Chapter 4

 

Yamisui: Stay tuned Chapter 5: “Testing the Limits.” (About the Prozac, better double the dosage.)