Chapter 10

He could see.

He could finally see. Sasuke didn't even wait to try to figure out what Sakura was trying to say to him before he dashed down the hall toward where his brother was.

Itachi wasn't in his room.

Sasuke's mind blanked as he looked at all the equipment gently cast aside, the blankets folded neatly. The heart rate monitor was turned off. It was turned off.

Heart racing he activated his sharingan instinctively. The room sharpened into focus as he looked for clues. Everything was too neat—

A hand fell on his shoulder startling him.

He turned sharply to see Sakura behind with an expression of confusion and fear when she saw the swirling tomoes in his red irises.

Where is Itachi? Sasuke signed, his sharingan memorizing his fingers instantly and committing them to visual memory but he was too worried to feel relief. Itachi was missing. They would have told him right? Would Tsunade have made Itachi go to prison? He didn't know her and she owed him nothing. He was a criminal too after all.

Sakura's hands began to sign but he couldn't let the change from tactile to visual slow his understanding of the situation so he placed his hands over hers. His sharingan swirled as he watched her hands and face, and felt her signs.

I don't know. I don't think you should use your sharingan just yet your eyes—

Ask some one! Sasuke cut her off taking a sharp intake of breath. My brother is dying!

And might already be dead, said a small voice in his mind. He followed Sakura out of the hospital room as she asked various nurses for information. Everything was slightly overwhelming Sasuke. All the lights, movements, colors, facial expressions, signs and posters and pictures on the walls, papers moving and rustling, people in the background, people staring at him, mouths moving everywhere—and his—Itachi's eyes could see everything, read the words right off the lips of people easily.

His head gave a sharp pang of pain at all the new stimulation.

The nurses didn't know where Itachi was. Sakura was trying to translate as she spoke to various nurses and doctors trying to locate Itachi. Sasuke's hands pressed against Sakura's as she acted as a translator but she was slow. The nurse they were talking to now looked at Sasuke for a moment, pity brimming in her eyes, when her lips moved in a way that he wished he didn't understand.

"His body was failing when we left this morning after feeding him breakfast. We were going to tell you so you could say goodbye." The nurse's eyes suddenly bulged as she remembered something. "Oh! He wanted me to give you this note."

…

Itachi walked to the old temple where he knew Danzo was waiting for him after he had disappeared from the hospital bed. No doubt Sasuke would figure out what was going on soon but Itachi probably had enough time to take down this bastard who had manipulated him when he was younger in his vulnerable state after the death of Shisui. Because why shouldn't he have believed the man who had harmed the supposedly all-powerful Shisui Uchiha?

He wasn't wearing a forehead protector or his Akatsuki robes. He had robbed some ninja of kunais, arm pads and chest plate so that he was dressed much more like he did during his ANBU days.

"I see you pulled yourself out of death," Danzo sneered but Itachi noticed how the old man deliberately avoided eye contact. "I wonder how you did that, will you tell me?" His tone was mocking.

Itachi made no answer to that. There was only so much time after all. "You are going to surrender to me Danzo and turn yourself in for all the treachery you have committed."

"Every decision I have ever made has been for the sake of this village!" He began unwinding the bandages around his forehead and his arm. "As will be your death, Uchiha Itachi, traitor of the Village of the Leaves and murderer of the disgraceful Uchiha clan."

Itachi's eyes widened when he noticed all the eyes in Danzo's arm and he recognized the coloration as the First Hokage's cells. So that's what happened to his clan's kekkei-genkai. Danzo had just used him to steal their power and not share it.

Itachi scoffed.

They never learned but he could still play the part.

"You think flaunting the eyes you stole in front of me will frighten me?" Itachi asked in a deadly calm voice. "You realize that it was I that extinguished the lights behind those eyes, right? It was I not you that brought down every person who once had those eyes." He squinted Sasuke's eyes at the bandage around Danzo's head.

Despite Danzo's sharingan's, he was no Uchiha. Definitely no Uchiha prodigy.

"Tsukuyomi."

Itachi appeared behind Danzo in an instant, catching the man in a genjutsu easily. It wouldn't be long before the man would break out of it but Itachi was simply using it to stall. Half of his mind pining Danzo to a mountain dripping with blood and plucking out his eyes while in the real world, he pulled a kunai high into the air—

Sorry, Shisui.

And went to plunge the weapon into Danzo's covered eye. The one he stole from Shisui. The one that drove his beloved cousin to suicide leaving the weight of the Uchiha situation on Itachi's shoulders. He gritted his teeth. He had failed Shisui.

Danzo screamed as he pulled himself out of the genjutsu springing back from Itachi before the kunai pierced the covered eye. Itachi's hands were faster forming the signs for a fireball jutsu wordlessly. Danzo's form sizzled before Itachi but his eyes didn't miss the first eye closing on Danzo's arm.

Izanagi.

Itachi knew it.

His body shuddered under the pressure of the fight. It was sheer willpower and copious amounts of painkillers that were keeping him alive at this point. Everything he did now was an act. Danzo didn't eve notice that he was fighting a shadow clone while the real Itachi stood weakly trying everything in his power to finish the fight.

Shisui. Among his many great regrets about Sasuke and the failure he was for his family, he would regret never saying anything to Shisui.

…

Itachi had been travelling alone when he came upon a small village a few years ago. Itachi had been keeping tabs on his little brother when he happened upon this small little village. He stopped for a drink at the local inn and to rest. Something was happening within his body that he knew needed to get checked out. Every now and then his chest constricted, his right arm felt tingly, and the constant use of his sharingan had started giving him splitting headaches. So he decided a few days off to figure out what was wrong would be good.

There wouldn't be anyone that would recognize him here. He didn't sense any ninjas just civilians. There was an orphanage here and he could sense the general nervousness these people had with ninjas. So naturally he hid that fact from them. He sat at the bar.

"What can I get for you?" the bartender asked politely.

"Water and the soup, please."

"Would you like to try some of our fresh sugar muffins with that?" the bartender asked.

Itachi smiled. "No. I'm afraid I don't eat sweet things." Especially since I murdered the people who used to make the best sweet desserts—

A plate dropped as a figure entered the bar area. The bartender sighed.

Itachi's eyes widened, his heart aching as it pounded in his chest. It was a tall man with long wild hair, eyes covered by dark glasses.

"Are you okay?" the bartender asked worried. "It's been a few years since you dropped a plate." Clearly they had known each for a while, the bartender placed his hand on his friend's back. "Get our customer some water while I clean this up."

"No I'm—"

That voice.

"Shisui, it's okay. He's sitting at the fifth chair in from the front door."

Itachi was suddenly faced with the new man's face. Years had passed, his eyes covered, his hair different, but it was unmistakable. It was Shisui. He felt sick.

He quickly masked his chakra. How had he missed him when he was scanning for ninjas? He watched shocked as Shisui, the man who had once had the most power sharingan in their clan, feel along the counter for the tap and filling the glass leaning to listen for the sound of the water nearing the top.

Watched as Shisui counted his steps to where Itachi was sitting. As he slid the glass across the bar.

"Here, sorry about the disturbance, sir," Shisui apologized in his direction.

"If—" Itachi swallowed. "If it's not rude to ask: how did you lose your sight?"

"Hmmm." Shisui's fingers tapped the wood of the counter, cocking his head slightly in Itachi's direction. "How could you tell I wasn't born this way? Have we met before? Your voice sounds familiar."

Itachi's stomach tightened but on the outside he remained composed. "Just a hunch by your movements and I don't believe so else I wouldn't have asked." Logic. Use logic to escape the situation. Then eat. Then leave and never, never come back.

"That's a fair point." Shisui laughed. Laughed. He scratched the back of his head just like he used to when they were younger. "I lost my eyes in a . . . struggle of sorts." Then he paused shifting slightly. "It's interesting what you learn, what you become, after losing things—"

"Shisui!" The bartender called from the kitchens. "Come on we need you."

Shisui bowed toward Itachi with an odd twist to his expression before going into the kitchen.

Itachi paid for the food and left without eating.

He knew. Shisui had been Itachi's closest childhood friend. Of course he knew.

…

Sasuke sensed the disturbance from the old distract where his clan once thrived. As soon as he sensed it, he ran from the hospital without a word. He knew what his brother's chakra felt like better than anyone in the village. He didn't have any time to lose. He pushed himself, running faster.

…

Itachi's clone dodged Danzo's attacks. Danzo was using all his chakra working through the different layers of genjutsu Itachi had placed around him while avoiding shuriken. But Itachi's strength was waning. There were two eyes left. Itachi had used genjutsu to close a few eyes but Danzo had ended the jutsu when he realized he wouldn't actually die in the illusion. That's when Itachi began layering the illusions and coupling them with taijutsu, clones, and ninjutsu from his real body. But now he was at his limit. He squinted and called on the black flames.

"Amateratsu!"

The flames were wild as they consumed Danzo and closed another eye. Perfect. But then his clone was suddenly met with a sword of wind and dissipated. Danzo appeared before his real body.

"Found you, you traitor!" Danzo growled. "It's over!" He raised his wind chakra sword but Itachi called on his trump card.

Sasuke's eyes in Itachi activated the Susano'o with its orange ghastly chakra protecting his body from behind hurt by Danzo's jutsu. The Susano'o raised the totsuka sword high and smashed it at Danzo.

Another eye closed and Danzo appeared again. Itachi blinked sending another illusion into Danzo's head. Danzo checked his wrist at his last eye and charged toward Itachi.

Itachi's body shuddered as he held the Susano'o. He almost lost the spirit jutsu protecting him. His chest throbbed, his lungs couldn't breath properly. The wheeze from his chest drowned out his fading heart. His memory blanked for a minute. Where was he? The world seemed darker.

He started to laugh. A part of him had hoped that with the transplant that it would be a magical fix but it seems that he overused the mangekyou to the point of no return. Sure he had prevented himself from completely losing his vision for years unlike Madara who had spammed his new jutsu until his sight was gone, eyes locked forever until Izuna took pity, but it came at another price: his life.

But he would bring Danzo down and protect Sasuke one last time. He braced himself raising the spirit sword one more time for the defining kill—

His eyes rolled back. The Susano'o dissipated.

Danzo leapt.

…

Sasuke saw Itachi's chest constrict, the way his eyes moved slightly toward where Sasuke was standing to look at him for the last time, the way Itachi's lips quirked up before those eyes those fucking eyes, those eyes that haunted him for years, those stolen eyes that had once looked up Itachi himself now embedded into his head, went out and he fell back.

Sasuke's sharingan swirled when Itachi fell analyzing every detail, every moment as if in slow motion when his brother fell, and burning it forever into his memory: the curse of the sharingan.

He screamed. Unable to hear himself. Vibrations in his throat. He ran but he would never be fast enough to stop it from happening. He was never fast enough to save anyone but he pushed forward anyway. Black flames provided a barrier between him and Danzo burning anything and everything in their wake when his arms came around Itachi's broken figure. He thought the lips moved but in his panic he couldn't make the words out before his brother's lungs exhaled their last breath.

Something broke inside him.

All those years. All those years he had been lied to. All those years he had sacrificed because of a fucked up village's inability to reconcile an internal dispute by placing the burden of finding an answer to a thirteen year old who's cousin had been driven to think suicide was the answer. Sasuke's cousin. Sasuke's brother. Sasuke's family paid the price—

Red twisted in his own stolen eyes blending and forming a new pattern as they landed on Danzo's figure.

Chakra burst through his body and took form of a ghastly warrior.

…

Danzo checked his wrist. He still had one second chance when he faced the might of the baby of the Uchiha Clan. He winced at the eye-ninja's harsh cry.

"What a monster you've created, Itachi," Danzo muttered as he braced himself for the impact. But Danzo was an Elder and he would not fall to these brats even in the wake of unimaginable power. And Itachi himself was nothing more than dust now. He would defeat this loose end and take their eyes for the betterment of Konoha.

He unwrapped the bandages around his stolen right eye. Shisui's eye. The one Itachi failed to reclaim. There was no time.

Sasuke's hands crackled with chidori. Danzo rolled away but not before Sasuke's hand came into contact with his right arm. Danzo's eyes widened. Where was his last eye?! Lightning crackled throughout his body. Itachi must have tricked him with an illusion. Hashirama's cells went wild trying to take over his body in the chaos of the lightning weakening him. There was no other choice. Trees and roots and shrubs and life burst from the right side of Danzo's body too fast and wild and alive.

It took everything he had to rip himself away from the wood and the live. Loss penetrated his cells. He panted for breath. He could survive this. He had too. Konoha needed him just look at this monster in front of him.

"I thought you planned on killing your brother?" Danzo taunted trying to buy himself some time to warm Shisui's eye up. "Not crying over him like a child! I'm disappointed in the Uchiha clan."

Sasuke's eyes squinted. He wasn't looking into Danzo's eyes but lower. His mouth? That was strange.

He disappeared.

Oh no! Danzo turned just in time to see Sasuke appear behind him amateratsu exploding around him. He dodged the chidori next diving over the flames and finally catching Sasuke's eye with Shisui's.

You're mine, Danzo thought working the genjutsu to make Sasuke into one of his pawns. Thank you for your kind gift, Itachi. Danzo scoffed as Sasuke's eyes blanked under the power of his predecessor's ocular power.

"And I shall make Uzumaki Naruto the same." Danzo coughed. He needed to get his injuries checked. Sasuke's strike had severely weakened him. "You both shall be our secret weapons because we are the most powerful village."

…

"I'm not your only guide, Sasuke."

Naruto.

There was a sudden little gust of wind. Naruto looked up from where he meditated, Jiraya's book in his hands. "Itachi?" his voice was barely a whisper.

The sun was high in the sky but for some reason it sent chills down his spine. Evil was in the area. An ominous chakra.

Something shifted inside his stomach, inside the seal.

"Naruto," the nine tail's voice boomed within him. "Are you prepared to die?"

…

There was an explosion in the village.

Several orange-haired ninjas scattered.

"Where is the nine tail's jinchuriki?" Pain asked before stabbing the useless ninja.