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Sometimes, Itachi wonders if his life started on the battlefield.
Surely there was something before that. Surely Itachi was not always aware of death, was not always faced with the fact that he would one day take someone’s life. He was not born with a weapon in his hand. He had been a child once.
But he can’t remember it.
When he was twelve, Team Ro was given an ANBU mission that went sour. It was meant to be an assassination and intel retrieval job, but something had gone wrong, and the targets had expected them. There had been enemy shinobi present, a team of hired guards, and one of them had let loose a doton jutsu that had gone awry and crumpled the wall of a neighboring home.
It was the wall of a bedroom. A child was killed under the rubble. Brown, stubby little fingers illuminated by the fire of katon.
When Itachi had gotten home the next night, he had sat in the ringing silence of his bedroom and wondered, was I ever that small? And it wasn’t just about size. Was he ever so young, so small, that he did not know of the dangers of the world? Was he ever so blissfully ignorant of the ever present threat? Had he ever been so innocent that he would hide under the covers in fear, rather than rising to face it?
He tried to think of being so young, but all he could remember was that battlefield his father had taken him to as a child.
There was nothing before that.
He had stayed on the floor shaking with that knowledge. His chest had felt tight, and his entire body trembled as if he were shivering. He had curled up there, ducking his head between his knees the way he had done when he was younger.
He had thought about Sasuke, then.
First, his mind mercilessly gave him the image of Sasuke being under that rubble, and the surge of nausea and horror that the thought brought forth made him lightheaded. Then, his mind put Sasuke in the place of that shinobi who used the doton. He pictured Sasuke, older, with a ruined expression sick with terrible realization.
It was the second that had him vomiting into the wastebasket next to his bed.
Three weeks after that mission, Sasuke tugged on the bottom of Itachi’s shirt and pleaded, “Can I come with you? Please? I wanna train with you!”
Itachi paused, one hand on the door. He blinked, brow furrowing, and really considered it this time. He looked down at Sasuke’s wide, dark eyes, so young and innocent.
There are many reasons that Itachi had a tendency to turn Sasuke away when he asked this question. Sometimes, it was because Itachi knew that it would be dangerous to have somebody untrained on the same field as a spar of his caliber. Other times, it was for Itachi’s own benefit, because training with Shisui is special; training with Shisui meant that Itachi got to be angry, because Shisui could handle his anger and he could force him to cool down afterwards.
Most often, however, it was because Itachi did not want to train with his younger brother. He did not want to teach Sasuke how to better wield deadly weapons, and he did not want to see weapons in Sasuke’s hands at all.
Itachi was stressed, he knew. He was fraught with worry, so much so that he had been having trouble sleeping for more than a handful of hours a night. The clan was growing more tense by the day, and the Sandaime’s gaze had become noticeably heavier when Itachi reported in.
He also knew this: when Sasuke asked to train with him, it was not with the desire to actually train. It was just with the desire to spend time with Itachi, who had so very little of it recently.
There are other ways to spend time together, Itachi thought to himself, and gently ran a hand through his little brother’s thick hair.
His fingers snagged on a tangle, and Sasuke yelped and batted at Itachi’s chest in affront, making Itachi laugh quietly. Strangely, this had garnered a pleased smile from Sasuke, who subsided as Itachi worked the knot from his head.
Does he really smile that little, that Sasuke finds it to be something rare when Itachi does? His heart clenched in dismay.
“How about this, otouto? Instead of training, let’s go shopping. We’ll get some snacks, and I’ll let you pick out that new pair of gloves you’ve been talking about,” Itachi proposed.
Sasuke stared up at him, wide-eyed, and guilt choked him when Sasuke asked in a small, surprised voice, “Really?”
He forced himself to smile instead of letting his face crumple like it wanted to. “Really,” Itachi confirmed, and had let his Sharingan flicker to life for a moment to forever remember the blindingly bright smile that his little brother responded with. “Go put on your clothes for a day out in the village. I’ll tell Shisui about the change in plans.”
Sasuke nodded eagerly, darted into the house, and then paused five steps away. Looking over his shoulder, he asked Itachi hesitantly, “Is Shisui-nii coming?”
Examining his brother’s expression, Itachi answered, “No, otouto, not this time. Maybe he’ll join us later.”
Sasuke nodded again, seeming to vibrate in place with glee, and then sprinted away from the genkan and down the hall that led towards the siblings’ bedrooms.
When Itachi found Shisui waiting by the gate of the Uchiha compound in the late morning sun, he felt strangely nervous when he informed him that he wouldn’t be training that day, and that he had decided to take Sasuke out and about in the village instead.
Shisui smiled in response, corners of his eyes crinkling. He seemed pleased. “That’s alright, Itachi. You two have fun, yeah? We can always train another time.”
Itachi breathed a sigh of relief, unsure why it was that he had expected a worse response. When had Shisui ever treated Itachi harshly, after all? He nodded and said stiltedly, “Of course.” Saying goodbye to Shisui after willingly canceling plans on him was foreign to Itachi. He felt as if he was a child again, lying to everybody about his whereabouts when he would disappear for hours at a time after the loss of his genin teammate. He wasn’t lying just then, obviously, yet he couldn’t seem to shake the guilt that would accompany such a thing.
Shisui gave him a long look, something strange and sad in his gaze. “Have fun, Itachi,” he said again, and lightly patted Itachi’s shoulder— barely a brush of the fingers— before he flickered away.
Itachi stared at where he had been standing, feeling confused. After a moment, he shook it off and headed home to pick up Sasuke.
At thirteen years old, gazing at Shisui’s eye in a crow’s skull, Itachi had thought back to that look on Shisui’s face.
He wondered if Shisui had wanted to be invited. He wondered what Shisui did that day. Had he gone to the training ground alone, practicing in solitude for hours? Had he gone back home to his mother and that quiet, empty house? Had he perhaps ventured into the village and seen Itachi and Sasuke from a distance?
Had Shisui been lonely?
“Itachi-san,” Kokuzo, one of the first and wisest crows that had introduced themselves to him, said solemnly. “I will safeguard it for as long as you need.”
How long would Itachi need, he had wondered. How long is left? How long did he have?
The answer, as it turns out, is not very long at all.
Four weeks after Shisui’s death, Itachi is given the order.
Afterwards, when Itachi shakes and trembles and pinches his eyes shut, gasping for breath, the man with the swirled mask simply looks at him silently. For just a moment, from the corner of Itachi’s eye, he sees the man stare down at his own gloved hands, at the blood on the fabric.
The man does not comfort him, but he also does not rush him, or belittle him. He remains a still and silent presence, and Itachi wonders if the man was born on a battlefield.