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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
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. ）