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in my nothing, you meant everything to me
[The world comes back in blinding white, an abrupt end to consciousness that isn't restful — he's awake, and everything is very wrong. In one tormented moment, panic is all that centers his mind. It overwhelms the torrent of thought and funnels it into instinct. He's somewhere else. He's in the past — on a medical table beneath articulate hands, syringe plunged into the vein of an arm as experimental doses of chakra-enhanced antitoxins flood his bloodstream. His body jolts upright, turned wildly on the clean and clinical bareness of his surroundings, fumbling for the buckled straps that should be holding him down. Except that when he reaches with both hands to assist, only one is there.
Sasuke stares straight down at his lap. His left arm ends in a sudden severance, sleeve hanging lank and loose, useless to his purposes. Slowly, the pulse of his heart like a rippling pool of water, he calms. Slowly, the rest of what has happened — pain and madness, dark gaps between loss with bright light at the end of a long tunnel — all of it drifts back into memory. He relaxes, easing back onto the cot with eyes turned up to the ceiling. His vision is divided in half by a veil of red; Rinnegan, ever-active, continues its gradual drain of chakra reserves. A drain that he notices is less severe than usual. Expected; he is imprisoned.
His head rolls on the pillow, fringe of hair swept across a brow, studying the room. It's unfamiliar to him. Logic skips in immediately after, because if he is imprisoned, shouldn't he be wearing the blindfold and the binds reinforced by fūinjutsu? Yet he is entirely unrestricted.
With what minimal strength Rinnegan possesses, he peers out through the four walls around him, glimpsing hallways that make no sense to him if he is still within Konoha's subterranean dungeon. More awake and alert now, reeling from the fugue of a dream he's certain wasn't real — What are you willing to do to erase your regret from existence? — it is then he senses it. Through the gauzy blankness of his perception, there are two chakra signatures in immediate vicinity of this room. One he knows well: cool and blue, colored in equal tones of assurance and guidance, the pillar of a man who had tried to reach him in his own way.
All of Sasuke's awareness swings, instead, on the dark red center of the other. The one of his nightmares and his dreams, the one he has chased for endless grief-ridden years, the one he would recognize blind and deaf and dumb at only a pale wisp of presence, the one that cannot be here, because he is dead, because Sasuke killed him with his own two hands.
Itachi.
He stumbles badly in his fit to stand, right hand knocking the small table beside the bed so hard the lamp on it topples and rolls off in a clatter. His concentration becomes singular, obsessive. He's at the door, into the hall, pitted like a hound upon that trail, following it in complicated path through rooms he's never seen in his life. None of that matters. Everything has become secondary to his destination.]
Sasuke stares straight down at his lap. His left arm ends in a sudden severance, sleeve hanging lank and loose, useless to his purposes. Slowly, the pulse of his heart like a rippling pool of water, he calms. Slowly, the rest of what has happened — pain and madness, dark gaps between loss with bright light at the end of a long tunnel — all of it drifts back into memory. He relaxes, easing back onto the cot with eyes turned up to the ceiling. His vision is divided in half by a veil of red; Rinnegan, ever-active, continues its gradual drain of chakra reserves. A drain that he notices is less severe than usual. Expected; he is imprisoned.
His head rolls on the pillow, fringe of hair swept across a brow, studying the room. It's unfamiliar to him. Logic skips in immediately after, because if he is imprisoned, shouldn't he be wearing the blindfold and the binds reinforced by fūinjutsu? Yet he is entirely unrestricted.
With what minimal strength Rinnegan possesses, he peers out through the four walls around him, glimpsing hallways that make no sense to him if he is still within Konoha's subterranean dungeon. More awake and alert now, reeling from the fugue of a dream he's certain wasn't real — What are you willing to do to erase your regret from existence? — it is then he senses it. Through the gauzy blankness of his perception, there are two chakra signatures in immediate vicinity of this room. One he knows well: cool and blue, colored in equal tones of assurance and guidance, the pillar of a man who had tried to reach him in his own way.
All of Sasuke's awareness swings, instead, on the dark red center of the other. The one of his nightmares and his dreams, the one he has chased for endless grief-ridden years, the one he would recognize blind and deaf and dumb at only a pale wisp of presence, the one that cannot be here, because he is dead, because Sasuke killed him with his own two hands.
Itachi.
He stumbles badly in his fit to stand, right hand knocking the small table beside the bed so hard the lamp on it topples and rolls off in a clatter. His concentration becomes singular, obsessive. He's at the door, into the hall, pitted like a hound upon that trail, following it in complicated path through rooms he's never seen in his life. None of that matters. Everything has become secondary to his destination.]
no subject
itachi has spent nearly a year with his own thoughts, in a place and among a people not touched by war as konoha has been. he has laboured beneath the knowledge that if this second chance is to be a thing deserved, it must be one of which he is worthy. he has learned to choose kindness over cruelty and more importantly — to recognize that it is a choice. but now, with his brother before him, his resolve feels brittle. there is an itch beneath his skin, to fall back on the old roles carved around them.
it is not lost on him that his first true foray into cruelty was against sasuke.
itachi lifts his cup of tea, and takes a very deliberate drink.
tops the cup off again, when he sets it down on the desk. ）
It was an invitation to continue. There is more to your story, presumably.
（ his fingers twitch faintly, in encompassment of his missing arm, gesturing at the empty space at sasuke's left side. ）
I will speak when you are finished.
no subject
He doesn't know how to say the rest of the story. Perhaps wishing Itachi would rip it out of his head is as much a mercy for himself as it is a weapon against his brother's past actions.]
... And nothing. My actions aren't worth repeating. I set out to destroy Konoha, because I hated them for what they did to you. [His hatred is not something that can simply be shed once its progenitor is gone.] I attempted to erase all of them — all of those leaders who created that world, who forced the rest to live within it, repeating the same mistakes over and over. [Sasuke's voice lowers to a hollow scrape, head turned as he restlessly paces the room. It is always excruciating to be pinned beneath his brother's judgment.] And I was stopped.
I'm not here to justify or explain my decisions. [I couldn't handle your death, he may as well be screaming with every cell in his body.] They are the burden I've agreed to live with, for the sake of someone else.
[He looks back at Itachi finally, while standing on the opposite side of the room now. The physical distance isn't purposeful, but it may be instinctive, some part of him seeking freedom from Itachi's oppressive proximity.]
Is it as you planned? Or didn't you think of what would happen once you were gone?
no subject
the only reason sasuke had hated him so much was because he once loved him in equal measure. if you remove the barrier to that love, he would have swung like an unsettled pendulum, hitched the wagon of his suffering to some other cause and driven forwards like an arrow loosed from catgut string. itachi had built him to be single-minded in his determination, he has no one to blame in this but himself.
he is resolved not to dwell on i hated them for what they did to you. sasuke lacks the intentional, deliberate cruelty to have said it to wound, but nevertheless it tightens like a garrote. ）
I thought often of what might follow my death.
（ it was an easy, idle thing to dwell on. his focus was always the horizon of all the tomorrows to come in his brother's life, which could not truly begin until itachi was no longer in it.
but there was one constant, in everything. ）
Ultimately, I wanted you to live. And you have. I don't care about the rest.
（ another lie. it is habitual, that everything said to his brother be sieved through a web of mistruths. ）
no subject
It's not a good enough reason.
Sasuke stops pacing, turning his head to look at Itachi through the fringe of his hair, overgrown from his time in prison so that it almost covers the eerie purple glow of his left eye.]
I don't believe you. [He wonders if he will ever take a word out of Itachi's mouth on faith again. It hurt, hearing Itachi say he loved him, not knowing if it was true. Wishing desperately that it was anyway. Obito told him one story—the evidence of his memories, of his brother's memories now embedded into his own mind, suggests that the events of the past are true. And still he can't trust. As though the ability has been broken, shattered, beaten in him beyond repair. How is he supposed to know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, why Itachi does what he does?] That wasn't your only goal. And if it was, it wasn't because you cared about me and nothing else. You should have killed me instead. That would have been better than living like this.
Stop pretending it doesn't matter.
[He paces back across the room, to the desk, resisting the urge to knock both of their cups of tea off the table's surface.]
no subject
（ ultimately, it changes nothing. sasuke has to decide for himself what amorphously held-beliefs will shape his future, itachi cannot hand them to him. the issue, he realizes, is that sasuke has no idea how to be. he acts as if there must be a greater motivation, a greater reason than simply love alone to have left him alive. because to think that it was only that is horrifying, one soul weighted against hundreds. does he want to hear that itachi wished him to carry on the clan? to have children, to fall in love? would that be a purpose sufficient for him, some milestone worth reaching?
did he even recognize the irony, in his claim of accepting that he would live with a burden for the sake of someone else?
itachi takes up his cup before sasuke can loose the leash of coiled rage and do something drastic, closing one hand around it. his nails are a pleasant, matte colour, like the night sky as the velvet black gives way to predawn blue. it is an uchiha colour, subtle as a knife. ）
I knew you would suffer. I knew you would be alone. I knew my actions would deprive you of the chance to ever know normal again. It was selfish of me.
（ it was selfish, foolish, it was wrong, and ultimately he would do it again. he would relive the massacre a thousand times over if it meant sasuke was granted one more day. even this, being in ximilia — he clawed himself from the grave for sasuke's benefit and wellbeing, and he recognizes all too well that by being here he is yet again dismissing his brother's autonomy, changing his life in ways that he will never trouble himself to answer to. ）
What other 'goal' do you imagine of me?
no subject
How well does he know his brother?]
If you can see that much, then you should know the answer to that question. Don't hide it behind my life. You wanted to die, and you wanted me to be the one to kill you.
[Sasuke's voice has lost its ragged edge; he is, at least, no longer on the cliff of some unknown violence. Stepping forward, he takes hold of a chair by the desk and sits down in it, eyes never far from his brother's figure.]
Am I wrong?
[Because he has seen it now — lying on a rock in the sun, hot tears in his eyes, thinking that death would be a better option than the future, forced to face all of the misdeeds behind him. That he is still alive is only to see Naruto's world prosper. Yet Itachi wasn't willing to live for his sake, and that is a greater betrayal to him now, with everything known.]
no subject
（ in this, at least, there is little point in concealing his true motivation. the path he had envisioned when he was younger than sasuke is now was a line like a knifeblade from tang to tip, and it always ended with his death. he had walked it unerring. of all the things he ever had cause to fear in his life, his own death had never been among their number. ）
I had not intended for my reasons to ever be known to you. It was my hope my death would bring you peace.
（ his mouth quirks, something humourless and flat. ）
Another failure, I now realize. I did not calculate —
（ — a great many things. chiefly among them, that sasuke would ever be more than what he was made. that he could act outside of itachi's own carefully orchestrated plans was not a consideration he had held at thirteen. sasuke had always been so obedient. it was hopelessly naive to assume then he would remain as such.
itachi loved him, but what he loved was the child he had all but raised, who he had taught and trained, over whose shoulder he had absently read academy homework and committed sasuke's childish answers to memory. he loved something that no longer exists. and although his love has neither been lessened or lost, it is... difficult, to look at him now without seeing the boy in whose orbit he had been so helplessly caught. ）
— on you.
no subject
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.]
no subject
it had taken him a long, long time to answer no.
but sasuke continues, and itachi's frown deepens faintly. that attachment... it came from his own faults. he had allowed himself to be sasuke's main tether to the world — at that age, he had no other friends. the uchiha were not encouraged to socialize beyond their clan, and sasuke had never seemed to want for more than his company. itachi may as well have hung the moon for him.
he should have recognized sooner where the tensions in the clan were headed. the time between shisui's death and the massacre was not sufficient to have driven sasuke away — children look for love in hollow places where pain has come to live, and only ever know what they have been shown.
the honesty is excoriating. there is a part of him that hates the fact his brother is choosing to be vulnerable, because it feels like one more thing he is taking from him.
itachi rubs his thumb along the rim of his cup. then: ）
Tell me about Edo Tensei.
no subject
No. [And, in light of that, he can be petty.] Not right now, it isn't important. I want to know more about this place. And you.
[The mystery of the room around them, bare and impersonal at is may be, suggests to Sasuke that his brother has been living here for some time. He's established. He has connections to others, presumably. That interests him far more than what happened before. And there is a private, irrational pleasure in denying Itachi the information he's asking for, too — however he might reason with himself it's necessary. The edo tensei is no longer relevant. That version of Itachi isn't the same as the one before him now.
Maybe his brother hadn't meant his words at all.]
I noticed Kakashi earlier. Who else is here? I can sense something, but it doesn't feel like chakra.
no subject
did viveca know what it would mean, to allow him here? he doubts she would see this as a form of repayment, for what he did for her mother, but that concept of a transactional debt is not lost on him.
he makes a soft hm of sound, but it is the only reaction of any note.
his gaze is steady on sasuke for a handful of heartbeats, and just when it seems he might not reply at all — ）
No one else from our world. What you feel is either haki, from those hailing from a place called Wano, or qi, which is what the cultivators use to perform similar feats to shinobi. Neither are exactly chakra, but both are near enough that we are aware of them.
（ it is the simplest of those expressed curiosities to address, and so it is the only one he deigns discuss. ）
no subject
I see. How well do you know these cultivators?
[Because it wasn't a bluff, and he meant it: He intends to find out everything about his brother in this strange place where he's awoken. However long this lasts, however it's meant to end; if his regret can truly be undone, it will matter. And beyond that, more selfishly, he wants to know his brother's life. More than the permanent memories from within his eyes.]
Tell me their names.
no subject
（ it's said with a lift of one shoulder. ）
The Ximilia is not a large station. You will encounter them eventually.
（ lan xichen and nie huaisang would not pose him any threat. he wouldn't be able to feel wei wuxian unless the man was channelling resentful energy, and that is the meeting he is the most... concerned about. wei wuxian knows the most about sasuke save viveca herself on the station, and even though what he knows has been strictly limited... the danger lies more in what he could uncover. ）
no subject
If you're refusing to tell me who they are, then you have a reason. Either they aren't a threat or you don't want me to seek them out because they are.
[Not knowing his brother's mind, he wonders if these people are dangerous. If that's the case, he'll prove himself, because it would be worse to think that Itachi believes he's unable to handle that risk.]
I can always go find them right now.
no subject
Sasuke.
（ his tone is not sharp, but it is purposeful. pay attention. ）
Anything I tell you about the others here will impact your views of them. I would rather you form your own opinions. Meet them yourself and decide.
（ once again, making decisions on sasuke's behalf. ）
no subject
You're so difficult.
[Even as he says it, he recognizes the painful cut of irony — how often the same sentiment has been applied to him in the past. The comparison doesn't bring him any relief, but it does take him away from the dangerous edge of frustration, huffing as he leans back in his chair and takes another sip of tea.
And in that lapse, quiet falls, elongated between them in a strange new shape of discomfort. It isn't as though he's without words to say; there is plenty on his mind, plenty more questions in the depth of his thoughts. But he has not simply existed in Itachi's presence without violence or death at their heels in years. Not since childhood. So he manages, eventually:]
Is there anything I should know?
[That you'll actually tell me? is the unspoken implication.]
no subject
instead, he turns in his chair, opens a drawer and withdraws a slender black book, which is set down between them. there is a black-on-black glimmer across its front that catches the light, done in a circular seal. it's clearly set to self-immolate with amaterasu should it be opened by any he has not expressly given access. so far, no one aboard the ximilia has warranted it. it certainly does not help that it is written in a private uchiha cypher that can only be decoded with any amount of ease with the sharingan.
what it lacks is specifics about the orbers themselves, but it contains perfect accounts of the worlds, the local political structures, notable individuals native to each place, the orbs and how they were obtained. if sasuke is ever inspired to go back through the network in the year and a half the ximilia crew has been active, he can likely contextualize a lot of it for himself but itachi has clearly created this book with the foreknowledge that it could fall into the wrong hands, thus his myriad precautions. ）
Details of each mission up to this point.
（ he taps the book at the heart of that meticulous, perfect seal, bringing it to life in a swirl of colour that matches his own chakra signature. ）
The seal requires a drop of your blood.
（ his meaning laid plain is that sasuke can do it himself, or he can take it. ）
can't believe you're giving him HOMEWORK
Sasuke considers his options, then moves his right hand away from the teacup and extends it on the table between them.]
It'll be easier if you take it from me like this.
[One-handed, he could certainly put a kunai in his mouth or use his teeth, but the risk of messiness is higher. It'll be more efficient done by Itachi.]
he expects a written report afterwards, single space paragraphs, 6k words...
his attention is briefly arrested by the swell of blood — deep red and venous — spinning off into the whorls of sasuke's thumbprint. then his gaze flickers to the book, and he gestures at the seal at its center, his meaning clear. ）
There is a measure of interconnectedness in the worlds we have visited to this point. Certain people or concepts that are continually resurfacing. Pay especial mind to my notes on Remi d’Arbes.
this is bullying
Remi d'Arbes. [A person, or a concept? He commits it to his memory.] And the regrets we're promised can be amended? I'd say it was a dream, but...
[All of this feels too real. Itachi is too real, familiar and completely alien, nothing like the warped caricature of his haunted nightmares, and nothing like the loving brother of their childhood.]
Has anyone seen them fulfilled and left the Ximilia?
so, canon? when does the psychological torture begin tbqh???
（ the seal accepts the blood, and the lines of ink turn briefly into an amalgamation of their chakra natures, the hybrid of a deep sunset red and predawn purple, before fading back to black. ）
There was a previous crew that succeeded in their goal. There are notes on them as well. （ a nod to the book. ） However, at some point after their success, the Orb was again broken into pieces. Both Viveca and Degar are remnants of the previous crew. I do not know what Degar's original regret may have been, but I suspect that Viveca changed hers, and forfeited her body in the process.
（ it's more than most people know. itachi, by nature, has spent his time here seeking out knowledge lost or denied to others. ）
wow 😑
Sasuke pulls the book toward him, deciphering the text through the gleam of Eternal Mangekyou.]
I see. [The allowance of this telling isn't lost on him; there's value in it, though the words are so impersonally picked apart that Itachi may as well not be involved at all.] 'Forfeited her body'. Who is Viveca? What is she to you?
[It's more than Itachi is saying, that much is clear. And perhaps more than he will even admit. It will never stop Sasuke from trying.]
no subject
these are the burdens i've agreed to live with, sasuke had said, for the sake of someone else.
and then there is the question of sasuke's regret.
a muscle twitches, barely imperceptible, in the line of his jaw. nature wars with experience wars with longing, and then — ）
She is, as I said, a member of the previous crew. Presently, she acts as our guide.
（ the simpler part. who is she. what she is to him is not anything he wishes to put words to, much less to sasuke. instinct tells him that it will complicate things unnecessarily — viveca, not one to judge and keenly aware of what sasuke is like, will understand should he take hostility out on her, but he would prefer not to contribute if at all possible. ）
To me, she has been useful.
no subject
Then again, the demands he is making when Itachi hasn't experienced the same future — he doesn't know whether they are reasonable. Nothing ever seems to feel reasonable between them.]
'Useful'. If I asked, I wonder if you would even tell me how. [Not if it bears any significance to his brother's interior thoughts, that much he can believe.] Fine. Then we work to collect these orbs through assigned missions.
[That reality isn't new or difficult; they are shinobi. If it means there is a chance to see his regret amended, to take Itachi back with him alive, he'll do whatever he needs to do.]
Give me time to read your notes. I'll do it here if you don't trust me to take them from this room.
no subject
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. ）