（ it's so combative, so petulant, that for a moment it is as though nothing has changed, and sasuke is still seven years old and smouldering with resentment that itachi's time has been by needs spent elsewhere. if he had ever permitted himself to feel nostalgia for days long lost, he imagines it would feel something like the odd warmth that suffuses him, sinks into his bones the way ivy punches holes in brick. it seems a little like being hollowed out, just the same.

he thinks of bodies being left where they fell, as the slow creep of nature overtakes the rot, and says: ）

Take them if you wish.

（ the drumline of his regret is never far from his mind, and sasuke has struck on it with the precision of a lightning strike — very likely, he does not realize it at all. in many ways, he is barely even a person. a formless ghost, anchored to the world by the weight of their clan, the deaths. amorphous, except for the shape itachi poured him into and stoppered off.

sasuke is trying, clumsily, to connect with him. itachi knows full well why, but knowing something rationally is not quite the same as being able to fathom it on any level but the intellectual. he studies him a moment, the line of his nose, the jaw that's no longer a stubborn haven to lingering baby fat. the eyes. even without the sharingan active, no one could ever fail to see the stamp of the uchiha lineage upon him.

it is so strange to see him grown.

even when i hated you, he had murmured, i still missed you. ）

Viveca is responsible for the restoration of my vision. You would not be aware of this, but our father had the Mangekyō as well.

（ horrifying implications from the local eldritch terror. ）