His breathing slowed, but his pulse didn't. It thundered in his ears as he lifted his hands, almost disbelieving, palms up, fingers trembling despite himself. Across the pale stretch of his palms, across the calloused fingers, bright specks of blood dotted the skin. They stood out most where they stained the black crescent moon tattooed across his left palm. His fingers curled slowly, unconsciously, into a loose fist.
He hadn't meant to go that far. He knew better. He was better.
This wasn't supposed to happen.
He was supposed to have control, not lose it all where it mattered the most.
The realization struck like a slap. All the preparation, all the discipline he had so arrogantly assumed he possessed had shattered in the span of a few minutes. He had underestimated his fury, completely and utterly, the pure, roiling hatred that had slept within him, that old anger he thought he'd buried. Seeing Itachi again—this Itachi, the one who still wore the mask of righteousness, who still dared to preach after bathing the clan in blood—had ripped open scars he hadn't known were still bleeding.
He thought himself above it, thought the cold, rational mind he'd cultivated would anchor him through anything. He had thought the 'love' he had for his brother's tale would've stopped him. But no, for one reckless moment, he had been nothing more than the screaming child he used to be, the one who watched helplessly as a blood-stained brother stared at him coldly through the darkness.
His lip twitched. His eyebrows pulled together in a flicker of emotion, eyes burning—
ENOUGH!
STOP!
He crushed it ruthlessly, slamming the grief, the rage, the horror into the steel cage where they belonged. Sasuke's breathing slowed even further as he assessed the wreckage of his carelessness.
For a moment he remained still, standing over his brother, the silence stretching into a suffocating eternity.
"hhrrkk—"
Itachi was trying to claw his way back to consciousness. His breaths deepened with each passing second, though labored and uneven. Both eyes fluttered half-open, the familiar Mangekyou Sharingan stared back at him, simply watching.
Why?
Why have I kept him alive?
That was the question that plagued him.
Was it truly just to force Itachi to see the new Konoha? To make him witness, firsthand, the revolution that would render the old shinobi world obsolete, a clean white future, the revolution Sasuke would command, one founded not on the illusions of peace or fleeting alliances, but on power, control, and hatred? Was that really the purpose? Was his vision truly that small? Had all his sacrifice, his planning, his grasp of history and politics, been reduced to something so pitiful as dragging a half-dead brother to the future just to gloat? To hold a petty grudge? To force Itachi to watch what could be accomplished by the brother he had once tried to break? To rub it in his face?
Was that all?
His fists tightened at his sides, nails biting into his palms, and his lip curled into a sneer. Pathetic.
An year ago, back in the timeline that no longer existed, he had resolved himself fully. He had accepted that Naruto would die by his hand. His oldest, last remaining tie to the past, the final bond. He'd promised himself that cutting that bond would grant him the freedom to reshape the world as it should be. Not as the Sage of Six Paths had dreamed, not as his foolish brother in spirit wanted, but as Sasuke Uchiha demanded.
But here he was.
Clinging to another tie from that same past, like the sentimental loser he was becoming.
Itachi.
How could he continue this cycle of contradiction? How could he expect the world to take his revolution seriously if he himself could not sever one of the two last phantoms of his old life?
He nearly crushed a molar at the anger he directed at himself.
No.
No. He had been weak, at one point, believing that bonds meant something, that being alone was a sign of weakness.
But not anymore.
He would not, could not cling to those thoughts anymore.
Itachi needed to die. Not tomorrow. Not after some grand revelation. Not after being paraded as a lesson in Sasuke's new order.
Now.
Here.
Permanently.
Lightning surged across his fingers with a sharp, violent hiss, crackling as it spiraled into a focused mass. His eyes hardened, the swirl of the Rinnegan intensifying, Sharingan tomoe locked into a predator's gaze.
The path of his Revolution demanded sacrifices, it demanded he abandon the past completely. If he faltered here, if he hesitated even once, everything he built afterward would be hollow, a complete lie and a waste.
He lifted his arm.
"This is the proof," he muttered under his breath, voice steady, detached. Lightning crackled in arcs around his hand. "The proof I have the will to do what must be done."
Goodbye, Itachi.
But just as he prepared to strike—
Itachi's chakra flared violently, not from his eyes but rather from his arm.
What are you doing...?
Before he could react further, something shifted in the distance. His senses picked up a flicker, a pulse connected to Itachi's sudden flare. It was faint, but it was there, a signal of some sort.
Behind him.
Without hesitation, Sasuke pivoted on the ball of his foot. His eyes narrowed, the tomoe in his Sharingan and Rinnegan spinning into sharp focus. His senses stretched outward, spatial awareness expanding. In a single thought, his body blurred forward, lightning chakra sparking faintly at his heels as he propelled himself toward the disturbance at the tree line. It took a fraction of a second to cross the distance, the wind parting around him with a low hiss.
A single puff of smoke curling lazily, just above the branch of a tree, where there had once been something. Whatever had been there was gone. A summoning technique, if his instincts were correct.
But why? For what reason would Itachi have a summon there?
His mind raced, calculating with the same precision that had carried him through countless battles. From his understanding, several possibilities came to mind. A means of escape? No, Itachi had no intention of surviving this encounter; Sasuke was certain of that. His brother had accepted death the moment he stepped onto this battlefield. A last-ditch attack? Unlikely. Even now, Itachi would not waste chakra or summon an ally for a futile strike, especially when he knew no technique at his disposal could seriously harm Sasuke. An implanted jutsu, perhaps? The kind of failsafe Itachi had once used to brand him with power meant for Madara's destruction? Sasuke dismissed the thought almost immediately. His senses felt no new chakra signature woven into his coils, no invasive foreign presence. Nothing had been transferred to him. Whatever this was, it wasn't a trap or a weapon. It was something else entirely.
A cold scowl formed on his lips.
He was done playing games.
Returning just as swiftly, Sasuke appeared beside Itachi once more, the elder Uchiha still slumped at the base of the tree. He seized the front of his brother's cloak, fingers twisting into the fabric, and hauled him upright with little effort. The Rinnegan in his left eye pulsed once, and with it, the power of the Preta Path flared to life. He pressed his free palm against Itachi's chest.
The Sharingan in Itachi's eyes glowed weakly at first. Then, as Sasuke continued draining him, the crimson pattern dulled, spiraled, and slowly bled away, the tomoe fading into black emptiness. No more illusions. No more Mangekyou, no more last-minute surprises, no more tricks.
He tightened his grip and lifted Itachi higher.
"What did you do?"
Itachi coughed harshly, the sound wet and ragged, his breath stuttering in shallow gasps. Blood trickled down the side of his mouth. His body trembled in Sasuke's grasp, shaking faintly from exhaustion.
Itachi's lips parted, but no words came out. Another harsh cough wracked his frame, blood splattering against Sasuke's chest.
His brother struggled even more, using his entire force of will to lift his head, inch by painful inch, his black eyes locking weakly onto Sasuke's. His voice, when it came, was little more than a croak, fractured and shuddering between broken rasps.
"...Sasuke..." Another cough. "...after this... after everything..." A rasp. "What... what will you be?" His voice cracked badly, like the very act of speaking tore at his throat. "...What will you... stand for... once all of this ends?"
Sasuke's eyes narrowed.
Why would he ask this? Now?
He answered, regardless, the words had been engraved in his mind for years, an unshakable truth, the words that had always been there, the words that felt right.
"To protect the Leaf. To be... the pillar that holds Konoha steady."
_____________________________________________________________________
He had expected to lose.
From the moment he first saw it, the left eye with the pattern of the Rinnegan, the same eyes as those of the Akatsuki leader, Itachi knew the outcome had already been written. Even if he had been at his prime, even if his body had not betrayed him with sickness, Sasuke would have won. No amount of skill or cunning would bridge the gap that lay between them. Still, he had fought; he had to fight. Not to win, of course, but to test something of utmost importance.
As he clashed blade against blade, kunai scraping steel, he watched carefully. Sasuke's movements were precise but restrained, like he was holding back something, like he wasn't even in the battle but somewhere else entirely. His eyes were glazed, not bloodthirsty. Even when Itachi launched the Fire Style: Great Fireball, a jutsu meant more to provoke than to harm, Sasuke had not retaliated in anger. He had absorbed it with that left eye and stood still, unmoved.
He was holding back.
It meant that Itachi still had enough time to see where his brother truly stood.
But then he had seen the change.
It wasn't in the eyes. Not at first. It was in the set of Sasuke's jaw, the narrowing of his gaze, the way his grip shifted ever so slightly on the sword.
Before Itachi could so much as breathe a strategy, the blows came, faster than anything Itachi had ever seen in his entire life. His ribs were nearly shattered, and his collarbone was almost turned into powder. Every strike was like a hammer fall, measured not to kill but to punish. To hurt. To remind him of what he had done. And when the oblique kick snapped his leg in two, Itachi had shouted for the first time in years, in pure, unadulterated pain.
Barely conscious, at the last ropes of death, Itachi realized there was no time left for delicate measures, for searching his brother's heart, through mere combat alone.
Hidden among the trees, he commanded it, the crow that bore Shisui's eye, the crow that had waited silently for this moment. The genjutsu triggered the instant Sasuke's attention was diverted, the imperceptible order weaving into the fabric of his brother's mind undetected.
And now, as Sasuke returned, seizing him by the front of his cloak, Itachi knew there was only one thing left to do.
It was to ask. Ask and listen, one final time, just before he died, to see whether his desperate gamble had succeeded.
To see whether he had succeeded in securing the future of the brother he knew and loved.
"...What will you... stand for... once all of this ends?"
White-hot pain seared in his throat, but he was past the point of caring.
And then the words came, the words he so desperately wanted to hear.
"To protect the Leaf. To be... the pillar that holds Konoha steady."
Happiness bloomed in his chest. A fragile, quiet warmth, almost foreign after so many years of cold calculation and colder deeds. He had succeeded. Against every possible odd, he had succeeded.
He would've laughed with joy if he could.
The path Sasuke had taken was being undone. He had diverted his little brother from Madara's machinations. Of course, he knew. The only reason Sasuke had corrected him about Madara and Izuna, the only reason he had spoken with such certainty, was because he had met the man himself. A fight most likely broke out, Sasuke's vengeance coming in full force. Judging by that Rinnegan, by Sasuke's power, the likely outcome was that he had ended the ancient ghost once and for all.
But Madara's poison, the venom of his ideology, was harder to kill. The Kotoamatsukami had taken root. Shisui's last gift would anchor Sasuke to the Leaf, would drag him back from the precipice, and whatever lies Madara had fed him, whatever warped truths had been seeded in his mind, would be undone.
The brother he loved, the brother he wanted, was alive.
The road ahead would be difficult, bloody, maybe even hopeless at times... but Itachi had heard and seen the container of the nine-tails. A boy with sunlight in his heart.
Perhaps, together, they could save each other.
His lips parted, a final rasp, even as his throat burned.
"Forgive me, Sasuke…"
Forgive him for everything. For the massacre. For the torture. For the lies. For forcing him into a life of blood and betrayal. Forgive him for every burden he had placed on those young, innocent shoulders.
His vision blurred. Through the sliver of sight he had left, he saw Sasuke's left eye darken, the tomoe spinning.
Amaterasu.
Mangekyou Sharingan.
Of course. He should've been surprised, but he had long since gotten numb to that feeling.
Black flames leapt from nowhere, devouring his flesh. The agony should have been unbearable, but his body was already too damaged, nerves burned out, his senses dull and distant. The smell of burning skin and cloth filled the air.
Good, he thought faintly. It is fitting. I deserve—
Pop.
A puff of smoke burst into the air.
For a brief, dreadful second, his mind refused to understand. Itachi blinked.
Then his lone, open eye widened in sudden, icy realization.
The body he had been fighting, the brother he had clashed with, bled for wasn't Sasuke.
A clone, a damn clone.
It had been a shadow clone.
The real Sasuke had never even been here.
No. No, no, NO—
Panic flared through his ruined body. He tried to surge chakra to his eyes, tried to invoke the forbidden jutsu—Izanagi—to rewrite this cruel reality.
Nothing. His chakra was gone. His eyes, drained dry by the Preta Path, held no power. No genjutsu. No more second chances.
His final gamble… had failed.
Itachi's final thoughts were a jumble of panicked shouts.
All the blood! All the lies! NO! NO!
No! I failed him! I failed Sasuke—!
Forgive me—
Darkness.
Then all was silent.