Chapter Text
Kisame won Samehada in combat, the sword he was bred and born to wield. He was officially a Swordsman, the highest ranking any jonin in his village could get. He was the Monster of the Mist, the Mizukage's wrath. His path went exactly as it was set for him when he learned to walk. Even better. He was exactly what his village wanted him to be, and more than what they thought he should be. He not only met but surpassed all their expectations, he was at his prime.
It was all downhill from there.
The next thing on his list was to die in horrible fashion. He didn't fear it, not really, since the alternative was much worse. Growing old and weak just for a kid, exactly like he once was, to take Samehada away. No, he would rather charge into that horrible death, it gave him some sense of control.
Unfortunately for him, he liked living too much. Kisame would never be able to close his eyes with a kunai to his neck and let it touch his skin. And the relief of a quiet battlefield with the smell of blood making his mind foggy was still the best feeling in the world. So he waited. Waited for the fight he could not win and prayed it would come sooner than later. The winds were changing quickly. The damn wave was coming. It made sense to die with the world that made him.
The mission was simple. A man had intel the Mizukage wanted, he was just supposed to escort him to the village, but, as it looked, every single other Shinobi nation wanted that man too. He destroyed a squad from the Grass in two minutes and wore down a Sand team until his hidden mist jutsu was red. The Stone group at least had the self preservation to retreat, not that Kisame let them, he didn't like runners. It was a regular mission for him. The client was terrified of Kisame, of course, trying to get away even if he was the one that hired the Mist and asked specifically for one of their monsters to begin with. He could have toned it down for the civilian, but the village only asked to bring him back alive, not unscared.
They couldn't stop when night fell and were a day away from the village when he sensed a new chakra around. Only one. Red, warm as fresh blood. Kisame looked at the trees waiting for them to show themselves. After a week awake between vigil and fighting, he was the most tired he could be without being compromised. He could fight another battle, it just had to be quick. He pulled the client closer and sent chakra to the protective seal he had put on him before they left the court. The man had already closed his eyes, praying to his god for his own life and leaving Kisame to his luck.
"The others are coming in groups of ten." He said to the nothingness. "Is your village trying to kill you?"
He felt the same chakra be divided equally amongst ten clones in response. Kisame laughed. Sense of humor was hard to come by these days.
Three clones dressed in anbu uniform charged to him. Easy to deflect, but the flock of birds that emerged from their destruction distracted him long enough for one to catch the client. Kisame turned back immediately and destroyed the clone with Samehada in one blow, making sure it was drained so the original, wherever they were, would receive nothing back. It was just the first contact, but it already felt different from the others. The birds freaked him out.
"Do not move." He whispered, pulling the client by his shirt. And reinforcing the seal. He trusted his instincts enough to know when to play it safe.
"That won't work." He said to the trees. He heard of a ninja who used the birds, just couldn't remember who. "If you want the prize you have to kill me first."
He felt the remaining clones come back to the original, with only 7/10 of his reserve of chakra thanks to Samehada. They could be certain of one thing: Fighting Kisame alone was a mistake no matter who they were.
The ninja dropped to the ground and walked towards him, bathed by light only enough so he could see the Leaf markings on his anbu mask. He couldn't be older than a teenager by the flow of his chakra, so that narrowed down his guesses of who that could be. Konohagakuge wasn't exactly known for their young talents. The boy put himself in a fighting stance and Kisame attacked, aiming to kill, and he should be succeeding.
Holding Samehada down was impossible, if he managed to hold her blow she would dry him out either way. He knew that, so he never touched the sword. It was frustrating. So he resorted to manipulating his movements. To avoid the sword the Leaf ninja had to move right into traps of punches and blows, but it wasn't helping either. Him being smaller meant he was faster, he was everywhere at the same time. Kisame had to kick him away to a tree to have just a second to breathe and make the Hidden Mist jutsu.
In the night, the fog made everything pitch black. The dark never bothered him, Kisame could move on sound alone if he had to, but his opponents usually couldn't. He heard the impact on the trunk of the tree and the body dropping again. In the darkness he saw clearly a flash of red in the anbu's eyes as he looked around trying to locate himself. His mask had broken. Kisame could hear his heartbeat in his ears.
Too young to have a reputation, crows, anbu, Sharingan. Yeah, that narrowed down the list to one.
Kisame tried to think back on the fight. His eyes were black before, he was certain. He hadn't looked into them, but he had just now. He pulsed his chakra through his mind, dug his nails on his hand until they bled and felt no trace of a genjutsu. Itachi of the Sharingan had not looked back. Maybe it was that, it needed intention. He would fight looking down from now on.
He thicked the mist, enough to drown a regular man if they stayed in long enough, just enough for him to summon the sharks. The Uchiha knew Kisame was circling around him, and yet, he didn't move. One of his sharks went for his head and he burned it to nothing with a black fire he'd never seen before, but it was…. Beautiful. The next shark came from the ground and the next from the left and the mist started to smell like blood, like victory. He heard one frustrated grunt from the confusion of bodies and all the sharks caught fire at once. Before they disappeared with their teeth still barred Kisame joined in. It was a fatal blow, he should have pulled a lung out at least but Itachi was still fast, all Samehada caught was flesh and he screamed in pain.
The sound was not strange to him, every body he ever left behind made it near the end, so he didn't know why that one scratched in his bones like nails on chalk. Itachi of the Sharingan, class S, 14 . It didn't matter that he was 14. At that age Kisame had done worse, lived through worse. His hesitation was a flaw, because Itachi kept fighting, and he was winning. He pushed Samehada off of himself, kicked it away with his side bleeding and torn, and was gaining ground on Kisame. He lit the grass with regular fire trying to keep the Hidden Mist jutsu on check, the smoke turning the water black, making the air poisonous, and it was as if they were cooking themselves alive. If the client was still standing after all this… shit, he forgot about the client.
"Look at me." Itachi said after a blow that made blood pour from his mouth. Kisame almost looked instinctively, but backed off at the last second. The melting pot was getting to him, he was losing conscience. And if he lost consciousness Itachi would kill him and take the target. That was not going to happen. Shinobi of the Mist finished the mission at all costs. The next kunai he threw went straight past Itachi's head and the boy followed it with his eyes not understanding where it was going until a body way beyond the now black mist around them fell to the ground.
"You…" Itachi turned back to him with an anger so palpable that Kisame laughed. He should have run, there was no mission for him to finish now. But since he wanted to finish their little fight, Kisame went all in.
He tackled him to the ground. Now that none of them could breath Kisame being stronger was weighing on his favor. He was almost disappointed he would win. Even if he would go without Samehada in his hand it would be a good death now that he thought about it. Being killed by the Itachi of the Sharingan was a great way to go without tainting his reputation. But at the end of the day, if Itachi couldn't kill him maybe he didn't deserve to be the one to do it.
After the third rib Itachi broke in Kisame trying to kick him out of him he simply patted the hand the other kept on his neck. The gesture was so odd, like he was commanding a training session to stop, so familiar that made Kisame… look up. The first thing he saw was the red trail of blood leaking from Itachi's left eye. Then his open wounds of eyes. He did not have time to register the smile he gave him before the world ceased to exist.
The amount of red he saw in his eternal nightmare and the amount of times fire killed him made Kisame beg to die, then beg to live, then beg to go home. He didn't even realize that the Mist was home until that moment. He just wanted to see the sea, one that hadn't frozen over and wasn't red, and he would never complain about the rain again as long as it didn't rain blood. He started making promises to ancestors he didn't have, legends he never believed in. If he was allowed to live, he would kiss every stone in the Emerald Palace and join the god-damned revolution instead of defecting when it started. He would find it in him to care, he would find it in him to change.
How terrifying it must be to be an Uchiha and know that you could make sinners repent only with a look. It didn't mean anything anyway. He knew how the genjutsu worked, he was stuck there until his body died on its own.
He didn't know how long it took but the torture stopped. Then it was just red. His mind was clear for the first time in what felt like years and he felt a tingle in his hand. He followed the feeling back to reality.
Samehada was in his grasp feeding him chakra like a lifeline, the only thing keeping him alive. The vultures who had already finished their meals with his client's already decomposed body brought it to him by accident. They were probably going to eat him next if he hadn't woken up. All a huge coincidence.
He made a lot of promises, didn't he?
He could pretend he never did. No one would know. No one had to know. No one other than himself.
And yet, the second Kisame could get himself up he headed home.
Itachi collapsed at the village's gate and was caught by two Shinobi before his knees hit the ground.
"What happened to you?" The Hyuuga asked.
He swallowed, his vision was still blurred. The eye that wasn't his was aching, so were his lungs.
"Kisame Hoshigaki."
They exchanged a look.
"Did you kill him?" The other asked, an Uchiha.
Itachi nodded. It was the first time he casted it, but if he was in the Tsukuyomi with that amount of damage to his body he would inevitably be dead in less than three days.
The Hyuuga girl laughed.
"The Leaf killed the Monster of the Mist." She cheered. The other guard made a face that clearly said 'Itachi's merits were not the village's merits', a face his father wore, constantly. She put his good arm around her to get him up.
"Congratulations, cousin." She said, and he couldn't look at her own Sharingan. He wasn't brave enough.
Congratulations were not in order, he failed the mission. And was about to do something much worse.
The doctors struggled to sew his muscles back together after the legendary sword Samehada tore them apart. He would go through his mission with his back held delicately by stitches and with his left shoulder basically useless. He could still do it, he knew, he just made his own life a little harder. Itachi was glad he went on that mission, he had to use Shisui's eye at least once before turning on his entire clan. It was a necessary evil. Wasn't it?
"You need at least three days in observation, the damage could be permanent if we can't treat you every few hours…" Itachi just agreed, barely hearing. He wouldn't need an arm in exile anyway.
He asked the nurses to not let anyone visit him. It was better to not see his family at all before it happened. All their current goodbyes were good enough for him. Cooking with his mom, annoying Sasuke, helping Fugaku with his work. They weren't for him anyways, it was best if their last memories of Itachi were good, and not of him in a hospital gown.
"You did it on purpose, didn't you?" The voice ripped through his ears worse than the sword ever could.
“No.”
He chuckled.
“You are a liar.” Danzou's tone was wicked. "If you don't feel up for it, we can always go with the original plan. You never had to do this to yourself." Itachi hoped that was his way of apologizing for what his silly B tier mission just to say goodbye did to him.
Shisui's eye started to bleed. He couldn't make it stop.
"Our agreement stands." Was all Itachi planned on saying.
"What a good boy." A rush of fury made him get up from his bed, but didn't stay long enough for him to turn around and kill Danzou. Because Itachi was a coward. He went to the window.
The village stood below him, provincial, proud, joyful. He wondered how many of these people would grieve an Uchiha tomorrow, clearly not enough. If there were enough this wouldn't be happening. He wouldn't have to do this.
"Are you happy with our agreement?" Danzou continued.
He almost snorted. The word meant nothing in his lips. He didn't want to be called a liar again. Why did he continue talking? He already got what he wanted, a confirmation it would happen. He had no reason to stay.
"It's already sealed." He said.
Danzou moved behind him, he seemed uncomfortable. Itachi activated the Sharingan because that's what his body learned to do in the face of a threat, even if his mind was struggling to keep up.
"Contracts not written can always be renegotiated." And there it was.
Hoshigaki failed to kill him. Danzou was there to finish the job.
"If that's the case I want something else." He accepted what was about to happen like it was his death sentence. It very well could be.
The head of anbu let out a small laugh and closed the room's door behind him.
"What do you want, Itachi?"
He was waiting as he walked over to him. Did he really think Itachi was broken enough to let him kill him without a fight?
"Shisui's other eye."
Everything after that was a blur.
He was found in the wreckage of what used to be Konoha's hospital beating repeatedly a disjuncted corpse that used to be Danzou.
He was weak.
This entire time, he was weak.
A weak Shinobi, a mediocre man that only had a title over him and… a pose.
Itachi didn't have a drop of chakra in his body anymore and the one that he had was focused on not letting the eye he had just pulled out of his skull die in his hand. He tried to pull the fight away from the hospital but Danzou preferred close quarters, and had an advantage as long as Itachi cared about civilians.
He kept thinking, why he didn't do this before? Why didn't he try killing Danzou? Was it loyalty? No, it was fear. Fear that somewhere out there was an anbu squad at the door of his clan waiting for orders that now would never come, or were already given. The possibility of having made his worst fear come true made him stop striking. Then the sounds came to him.
The Uchiha clan surrounded him in the uniforms of Konoha's police force. At least fifty, most of the adults. They couldn't kill the children and keep the adults alive, if the mission was supposed to be carried out today it would have to be postponed. He was just in time.
"Itachi, stand down!" A cousin had to scream, because the chief of police was speechless. He locked eyes with his father. That was the most distress he ever saw in his face, but also something he never saw, not directed to him at least. Disappointment. "Step away from the body!" Itachi started to cry, relief washing over him as he kneeled in the ground and was bound to a million seals. Never opening his hand. He looked like he had gone mad. Maybe that was just what they needed. Just one more mad Uchiha kills a village authority and shame is enough to make the clan stop thinking about the cue all together. He wanted to believe it could work. He really did.
Itachi refused to speak the whole time. No matter how many times his father begged him to tell him what happened. He was quiet until they put him in the detention center to await trial. He would have to be moved to another facility when he was found guilty since he could break out the seals in his body in his sleep. The guards quickly realized just how much trouble they would be in if he decided to escape and were now watching him closely, so he couldn't even let the grief of ruining his life settle in.
Itachi stared at the walls and waited. It was about noon, the Academy was far away enough that the kids would only know what happened if a teacher told them, Sasuke would find out any second.
He didn't expect the Hokage to visit him.
"Hello, Itachi." Hiruzen walked in gesturing for the guards to leave with a file in his hand. "How are you feeling?" He didn't answer. "We are all worried about you, you know?" He sat down in a chair in front of him, right outside the circle. "We were wondering where all that came from."
"I don't know what happened." He would play the mad card. "Please don't blame this on my family."
"I won't. They seem more confused than me." Hiruzen opened his file. "I know how Danzou… was. And I know how you are. So it's safe to say you didn't kill him for fun."
Itachi held back his tears. That door was already shut behind him, he didn't see how anything he had to say could help him.
"If we proceed to trial without your collaboration you'll be stripped from your position in anbu and be sentenced for the destruction of the hospital and execution of a superior." He sighed. "That's 25 years before death penalty for treason, you know that?"
Itachi knew.
"We can ditch death penalty and turn those 25 years into 5." He kept wording it as if expecting Itachi to ask about it. "We do have evidence to support that it was in self defense."
He turned to him slowly, his face enough of a question for the Hokage to pass the file to him through the barrier, finally getting what he wanted, interest.
"Your blood test." He didn't understand it much, it was never his thing. Two substances were highlighted. "The first is a blood thinner, which your doctors are sure they didn't prescribe because you don't put anyone bleeding out on blood thinners. And the second is something I know only Danzou had." He sighed. "We used to give that in the rations of Shinobi less eager to fight in the second war. It makes you a little more reckless." If that was what he thought it was, it was an understatement.
Blood thinner to make Shisui's eye unstable, drugs to see if he could squeeze one more evolution out of that eye before stealing it. Tightly planned. A biopsy was also there, a picture of a dot being handled with gloves.
"This?"
Hiruzen smiled.
"You killed Kisame Hoshigaki, didn't you?" He was proud. "That ugly mess on your back is from Samehada?"
He nodded not knowing where that was going.
"This is a parasite. A student of mine developed it." It was the proudest sad smile he'd ever seen. "Once it comes in contact it stays right under the skin and with the right incentive it goes straight to the brain and… eats it." The Hokage thought it was funny. "Samehada ripped it out. They found it fighting to survive on the dead skin you brought home."
Then Itachi was lucky he even got a chance to fight Danzou. He should send flowers to Kisame's funeral as a thank you.
This should be enough to free him, but none of this could be presented in an open Court without putting the village in a tight spot.
"I'm considering saying you carried out the execution on my orders..."
"No." Itachi cut.
The Hokage sighed.
"Precisely."
It was Uchiha code that any heir publicly involved in the village's internal disputes in detriment of the clan had to be out of the line of succession. If Hiruzen knew that and gave the order anyway his father would say out loud what he'd been thinking for years, that Konoha was trying to separate Itachi from the Uchiha.
"Any ideas?" The Hokage pulled out his pipe.
"What do you think?" Itachi asked in a small voice.
Hiruzen laughed.
"I'm not the one chained to the ground, Itachi."
He frowned for a second. He didn't know what his own best case scenario was out of this situation. It would look very nice to the clan if the Hokage openly protected him when he didn't seem to deserve it, but the village would find it suspicious, minimum. The best way out of it was letting them believe the Hokage gave the order without outright saying it, which could possibly ease the village and strengthened the supposition that Itachi was being protected. It could please the Uchiha even if he was voted out of succession, and not give the Hokage's enemies any ammunition.
He thought about it sometimes, what it would be like if he wasn't his father's first child, what kind of ninja path he would lay out for himself. His inheritance came with many limitations, they couldn't marry outside the clan, couldn't be Hokage, as it was a conflict of interest .
The last one wasn't a law but a very strong convention. That information showed up on his head sometimes, covering a thought right under it that Itachi never got to see properly, never paid much attention to. There would be nothing he could do as an Uchiha leader that Sasuke couldn't, or literally any of his cousins. He didn't even know if he'd be eligible for the title of Hokage after all that so why was that the thought in his head at that moment?
"I should be punished." He found himself saying. "I can do 5 years in detention, I just want to have a life to come back to after."
Sandaime leaned back on his chair.
"Exile or house arrest?" He winced. He didn't want exile. Living the life he would live if he had gone through with his mission would probably kill him.
"House arrest." He could put his family in order better if he was home, and make sure there would be no cue. "Please."
He hummed.
"We walk out of here together. And you go home immediately." Itachi nodded, already dreading the next years of his life. "And when you are ready to tell me what happened you'll tell me."
That would never happen. The Hokage knowing would be one step closer to the clan knowing and if they did there would be no stopping the hell they would raise.
"Thank you." He wasn't sure why he did not feel grateful.
Kisame didn't cross the front gates, he came in by the sea. Something told him remaining dead was the right way to go.
He couldn't go to Mei's apartment, a surveillance team followed her around at all times. She knew that, of course, but still managed to do her thing. Kisame thought it was an unnecessary risk, if the rebellion was actually intending to win they would already have killed Mei and got themselves a new leader. But he was thinking as someone versed in the way of the Bloody Mist, exactly what they wanted to destroy.
It didn't surprise Kisame to see her with her feet on the beach, as her own chakra shone like a lighthouse in training arena 5 on the other side of town, making it explode in the lights of a volcano.
"My my." She crossed her arms as he rose from the water. "You didn't even have the courtesy to come back before the squad sent to retrieve your body left."
He made a full display of his teeth.
"What? You really thought a 14 year old could kill me?"
Mei closed her eyes and shook her head. She had been grieving him. How cute.
"You were once 14 too, I remember how you were." Oh yes, the mission he murdered her genin team, he remembered as well. "Whatever you did to ruin Itachi of the Sharingan made Mizukage Yagura very pleased."
He did nothing. What happened to him?
"Are you pleased?" He asked not knowing how to get there.
She blinked.
"Why do you care what pleases me?" He watched her posture tense. Mei was considering it could be a trap.
Kisame drew Samehada out his back and set her on a stone fairly away from them. He dug his feet further into the cold sand as if planting himself and sat down. Exactly as when he was a child and made his mother promise him the sea would never freeze in any winter. It was funny the genjutsu would choose this childish fear to torment him.
"I changed my mind." He sighed. "If you are not all talk I want in."
Mei took a long while to answer.
"What did Uchiha do to you?" She tried to touch his shoulder as support to sit down by his side but Kisame sharply dodged. Every time he closed his eyes he saw the Sharingan, red clouds, and felt the hot bloody rain falling on his skin. A few days later he could already force himself to stay close to fire, not flinch at his own blood, but Mei's hands would always be as warm as the lava in her veins, that was where he drew the line. For what he heard of the Sharingan it would take a while to get over the nightmare.
"My body was dehydrated for two weeks but in my mind it was… months." He would bet 18 months if he didn't know it was a worthless attempt with no actual impact.
Mei settled for just sitting down on her own.
"How are you alive?"
He laughed at the ridiculousness of it.
"Luck." 'Lucky' would never cross his mind as a word to describe him, at least not until he woke up. "So, are you all talk?"
She had something in her eyes, he didn't recognize it at first but a while later he was able to pinpoint it. Hope.
"Do you believe in the cause?"
"I believe that if I walk into the Mizukage's office right now he will send me to sleep with the fishes for a few days as punishment for not winning that fight." With the sharks. Yagura was under the impression that Kisame couldn't breathe underwater simply because he hadn't tried harder. "And I really don't want to sleep with the fishes today."
Mei stared at the sea. She had to be an idiot to trust his word, he would never if it was the other way around. He wasn't sure what would happen if she did decide it was a trap, because even if their words were vague she was still exposed.
"You are more useful to me dead." She gently tapped his clothed knee and he could not believe he was now serving an idiot. "We have friends in the Land of the Wind that I can't exactly leave to see."
He sighed in relief. Mei couldn't possibly know what she had just done for him. He barely did.
"On it."
Kisame spent a little over a year in exile. Being dead was surprisingly fun. Every time he intercepted a loyalist to the Mizukage in one of the missions to assassinate them and they looked at him like they were seeing a ghost he couldn't help but chuckle. He couldn't use Samehada in these killings, they would recognize his sword's damage in the bodies, so he had to learn to be way more stealth than he normally would. Kisame wasn't cut out to be a spy, that was certain, but it felt like a vacation to not be him for a while, just be a random ghost who no one could pinpoint who it was.
Even so, it was the year he killed less people since his graduation in the Academy. And he even got to know who he was killing and for why, that was new. Still, he couldn't wait for the war to start. He was tired of hiding.
In the rest of the Shinobi world the excitement for his death died out fairly quickly, but in the Mist a wave of uncertainty washed over. They didn't find a body, only the ashes Kisame left there to look like Itachi finished him with the black fire. His killer being Itachi of the Sharingan was enough to make it seem believable, and that would have been enough if they had found Samehada with him. But there was not a trace of her anywhere. The swords were sacred, they were passed down every generation since the founding, and they had already lost enough of them. No effort would be spared to take them back, if they could track one down there would be an army knocking on every village's door looking for it.
"I am thinking of doing something silly." Mei said on top of a mountain in the Land of Iron. "I'm thinking of using Samehada's disappearance in our favor."
Oh, he was waiting for this, something to do that didn't involve showing off to merchants on behalf of the cause. He was eating really well on their tables though, being dead was great.
"Make the Mizukage think Konoha has it?" They could create friction with a foreign power and if Konoha was still a cowardly village full of cowards, which it was, they might actually support a rebellion before going to war against the Mist.
She smiled wide.
"You read my mind."
He shook his head.
"On it."
He was not on it.
Kisame was great at reading battlefields, so he was great at manufacturing them by proxy. But his standards were too high for his own good. To make up a scene that would be believable to himself was going to be much harder than anticipated.
Going over a wreckage Konoha left behind was not going to be enough, any idiot could see Samehada did the damage on the bodies postmortem. So he found a scene where there were no survivors and incinerated some of the bodies. Then again. And again. Enough to look like they were hiding something. The next step was to make some shit up. If he could, he would make it seem like Itachi Uchiha was wielding his sword around, but nobody saw him in missions for over a year. Rumor had it he was imprisoned for treason. Kisame didn't think he looked like the type, but those were the rumors. The Leaf would figure out someone was framing him too quickly.
So, he waited a while longer for the opportunity to fall on his lap. And it did.
Maybe the Uchiha that almost killed him set the bar a little too high for his entire clan as a consequence, because these guys were losing embarrassingly to a team of rogues that could barely handle their ninjutsu. They were absolutely going to die, and the dead can't burn corpses.
Kisame started the hidden mist jutsu. The Sharingans were active so they could see anyways and quickly came to the conclusion that one of their targets did it and kept fighting. Kisame fought by their side for a split second, killing two of the weakest bandits in ways only Samehada could do. She was so happy, he was heartbroken to not be able to give her that joy more often.
"Who is there?" One of the Uchiha asked, sensing his chakra.
And he vanished with the mist. When the moon went back to shine the rogues did their jobs and finished them off. They choose to not take the bodies of their friends and keep running. Good for Kisame.
He quickly went down and found one Uchiha still struggling to breathe. He avoided those eyes and the mere fear of being too close to them made him angry with himself. He just touched his sword's handle on his hand and watched her dry him and kill him in seconds.
He looked around. The scene told him the Uchiha's attacked first, but didn't realize they were outnumbered until it was too late. They started to get desperate and whoever wielded Samehada had to draw her, but couldn't exactly control her, so they all died anyway. Konoha would be very confused when they saw the bodies, especially because one was clearly the wielder. And Kiri would go berserker because it meant that one of the rogues took it from the Uchiha's body. When they inevitably found them and not the sword the answer would be laid out for them.
He went after the survivors and ended them the way he knew the Konoha anbu squads were trained to do.
Three weeks later Mei sent him a note with only the words "well done."
Itachi went to pick up Sasuke in the Academy. It was one of the few routes he was allowed to do, that one and the way to the Hokage's office, so he did it any chance he got. The hospital on the way was brand new, like it had never been destroyed, and the looks of distrust coming from civilians were perfectly balanced with the amount of knowing looks he got from people he knew were anbu but never worked with. It was an odd line to walk on.
House arrest was fine for about 7 months. He managed to heal his eyes and his back properly, slept for about a month straight until his mother started to worry, developed the eyes further, and turned the one that was Shisui's into his own. He had his breakdown over the unforgivable crime he didn't commit in the privacy of his own room, finally had time to start training Sasuke, now he left almost no genjutsu residue behind these days, and now… he was going completely insane.
His little brother came to him with a pout on his face and kept walking past him expecting Itachi to follow. He was at that age.
"You don't have to pick me up, I'm not a kid anymore."
He absolutely was, one of the annoying ones at that. Sasuke's Sharingan spun in his eyes with ease. They were more expressive than Itachi's, he thought it was a good thing.
"Have you had them on since this morning?" He asked, ignoring the complaint.
He sighed.
"No, it went out like… around nine, I restarted the clock."
Itachi hummed in approval.
"Seven hours then. It's your new record, good job." Sasuke turned his head away like he didn't care but was secretly proud. "What happened around nine?" He asked knowingly.
All the pride vanished from him.
"Stupid Naruto…" There it was, what it always was.
Sasuke awakened his Sharingan the day Itachi was arrested. It corroded him with guilt to know it happened because of him, that the pain he caused was enough for it. He made it up with training, enough that the one running away from it now was his younger brother. Their father said it was the only good thing that came out of that incident. Itachi was inclined to agree. A part of him he was trying to crush believed he should have chosen exile.
Itachi lost his favor with the clan, as expected. The hospital thing put him out of the board of leaders overnight. They finally had a good excuse to do it since Shisui's death still couldn't be tied to him, even if his father was the only one that refused to believe Itachi was his cousin's murderer. Everyone believed he had gone rogue those last few months and, according to plan, were very surprised when his sentence came down so light. They were under the impression that Itachi had the Hokage's favor due to something that changed from gossip to gossip and at first that seemed to outrage them, but the more time passed the more they started to appreciate what it meant for an Uchiha to not get a death penalty for treason.
His father wasn't that easily convinced that everything was fine. How could his perfect son make one stupid decision by himself, especially when it affected the clan? That didn't sound like Itachi. He was convinced he did it for the Hokage, which almost made Itachi tell him he killed Danzou because of the consequences of the mistakes he made in the first place as clan leader, but it would only make things worse. He only stopped drilling him down about it around month five, when the Almighty Hokage himself went to the Uchiha compound outside town to see Itachi.
That first time was just a chat. Sandaime was actually struggling with the same issues as his father, all he knew was that Danzou went there to kill him, nothing more. He had a feeling the massacre idea had moved forward without him, but if Itachi confirmed that version the next question would be ‘why didn't you tell me?’ And he didn't feel ready to answer that. The Hokage must have known there were eyes and ears everywhere because after that visit his father believed he acted alone. And that sunk his disappointment even further.
Sandaime probably noticed Itachi was going mad and started coming to him with stupid moral dilemmas, riddles, paperwork from anbu to get a "third party opinion" and simple updates on the village security. He didn't know what that was all for but it did a good job on easing his heart that their agreement was actually real and he would be out of the compound in… ancestors, three years and eleven months.
By month 20 he felt more like a caged animal than a person. The last time he spent this long without fighting for his life he couldn't walk. There were no other Uchiha's that could fight on his level, the only one that could had given him his eyes and died for nothing almost two years ago. It was even dangerous to train Sasuke, he could feel himself pushing his breaking point and had to stop himself from hurting him, reminding himself he was still a kid. He needed out. Hiding in the clan's records studying wasn't enough, he needed to be away from his father's judgment and his mother's pity, hell, Sasuke would eventually start believing his brother wasn't the role model he thought he was, and Itachi didn't want to be there to see it.
The Hokage called him to the edge of the forest in the middle of the night, but it wasn't like Itachi was sleeping. One thing had not gone away, the piles of bodies with red eyes in his dreams.
He made himself known. The Hokage didn't look happy.
"Sandaime." He waited for the explanation.
"Itachi. I'll ask you a few questions and you will answer me truthfully." Itachi moved uncomfortably, but agreed. "Tell me about your last mission before the Danzou incident."
He hesitated. He had every second of that mission engraved into his brain playing on loop every night he couldn't sleep. If one thing would have been different a million other things would be as well.
"Capture a high ranking official who had just deserted from the Iron Country's government. I knew he was being protected, but the file said it was a civilian escort. I got there and it was Kisame Hoshigaki of Kirigakure" Itachi said it as clinically as he could. "The mission failed. Hoshigaki terminated the target before I could reach him."
"How did you identify Kisame Hoshigaki?"
"Samehada." If all the swordsmen were like him the world was right to fear the Mist, he was lucky to get out alive. Every thing he trained in this last year was covering for something he identified as a flaw in his technique that day.
"So he was wielding it?"
"It tore my back off, sir." Itachi felt the pull on the huge and irregular scar going from his back to his arm. It was growing with him so it looked less bad than it did two years ago. His mom cried when she saw it, like she didn't know he was a Shinobi before that.
"How did the fight end?"
Itachi swallowed. Something was wrong.
"Target dead. The opponent was put into an inescapable genjutsu while he bled out. I had to come home because my wounds were going to be fatal."
"And Samehada?" Itachi tried to conjure the image again.
He gently tapped his finger on the hands around his neck and Kisame looked up. He was tired and tired made him stupid. He used Shisui's eye and severely underestimated the strength of the genjutsu it could do. He never saw an infinite tsukuyomi before, let alone done one, but it was too late to turn back. Kisame collapsed his weight over him and itachi fought not to scream as it forced his injured back into the ground.
His vision was blurry but he crawled out from under Kisame and watched as the hidden mist jutsu faded and his own fire went out. The small frown in Kisame's face was the only evidence of the suffering in his head. He looked much younger asleep. Itachi touched his blue skin smooth like shark's trying to calculate a time of death and arrived in 18 hours. He should have killed him then, but he was pissed, the mission failed, was undersold to him and now he was too tired to even hold a kunai. So he left him there to suffer a while longer and let nature run its course.
Where was the sword in all this?
"I didn't see it."
"You didn't take it?"
Itachi frowned.
"I wasn't well, I wouldn't be able to hold it on a good day…"
"Why didn't you take it?" The Hokage just sounded… disappointed?
"Because I wanted to live." He stepped back to control his tone, he was bordering on disrespectful. "The Mist cares more about those swords than the Shinobi that wield them, if the Leaf were to take one…" he stopped.
Where was Samehada? He didn't see it. He didn't take it. And Kisame was dead. Wasn't he?
"They think we have it?" Itachi's heart started pounding.
The Hokage sighed.
"And you just confirmed to me that we don't."
Itachi smoothed out the skin between his eyebrows. And it was his fault.
"Can I know what's the situation?"
Sandaime told him everything. Itachi had to fight back tears knowing his cousins were now dead and being framed for using the sword because of him. In different times with a worse Hokage this diplomatic incident would be enough an excuse to burn the clan to the ground. If Itachi wasn't 100% sure he didn't bring that thing home he would think his village had it too.
"We can't say we don't have it, it will only anger Mizukage Yagura." He said.
"That brings me to my next question." The Hokage crossed his arms. "How sure are you that Kisame Hoshigaki is dead?"