[He watches Itachi state the words plainly and flatly and it's enough to believe this time. It doesn't feel good to be right, even to his older brother — a momentum built on perfection in his mind. In childhood, he'd dreamed of conquering Itachi at shuriken and kunai practice; and in the nightmare that followed, he wanted nothing more than to see Itachi defeated beneath those blades. Something to achieve. Something to guide him.

Shoulders rounding forward, Sasuke leans into the desk and reaches for the cup of tea in a gesture that feels like he's lost, anyway. All of that restless anger evaporates in smoke.]

It didn't. [Hand around the cup, it's nearly lukewarm now but still he lifts it to his lips, swallows, and looks away.] Even before Obito told me everything. I didn't feel that peace. It felt like nothing.

[Like something cut out of him, a darkness grown misshapen and sore, hurting all the time — and once it was gone, there wasn't anything left in its place.]

Even when I hated you, [said quietly to the rim of the cup at his mouth] I still missed you.

[There are two halves of his heart capable of intensity in both directions, of love and hate. He has thought for a long time of what he would say to Itachi again, knowing they could never meet, knowing this meeting now can't last, not as he needs it to. The honesty comes out of him in the way he was taught by Naruto — not the way he was taught by Itachi.]