Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto, and I wouldn't want to. I mean, no matter who I'd choose for a pairing (Sakura vs Hinata), millions of people would want to murder me. I don't envy Kishimoto in the slightest.

Sasuke's defection caused a great host of problems for the Leaf, including but not limited to the hospitalization of six promising genin, but it was Itachi who had to deal with the mother of all migraines.

"I knew you'd come eventually."

Silent as a wraith, Itachi glided forth from the darkness. The shadows seemed to lean into him, blurring the lines of his already hard-to-see form. Dark hair and darker clothes helped him blend into his surroundings to the point that if one wasn't actively searching, they would never know he was there.

He traversed the room with effortless grace before promptly occupying a chair in front of Danzō's desk, his arm rising to brush against his chin.

Danzō noticed that Itachi looked older, the lines on his face a bit deeper.

He saw the hard life of a missing nin.

Itachi looked at Danzō and only saw a man who wanted power.

Crimson eyes spun, and the village elder stiffened under the Sharingan's ferocious glare.

"Danzō-sama," Itachi said politely. The man in question only narrowed his gaze. That tone was polite, but the underlying inflection was frosty, sharp.

The older man leaned forward over his desk, his hands resting on either side. "Itachi, how brazen of you to come back so soon."

Itachi's face betrayed nothing of what he thought, nothing of what he felt.

But that did not mean he felt nothing.

He was the perfect shinobi, ruthless, cunning, and strong, but he was also an Uchiha, and no Uchiha ever felt nothing.

Pride was the dominant emotion in that clan, so corrosive, so unseemly. It was pride that led them to their doom, pride which made them reject their place in the world, pride which led them to dare to rebel.

In that traitorous, ungrateful Uchiha Sasuke, however, it was rage that ruled supreme. Rage fueled his training, rage fired his spirit, and rage consumed his soul as surely as Orochimaru's cursed seal took his mind.

It was emotion that led to the demise of the once-great Uchiha, and now it was emotion which had made Sasuke a traitor to his village.

How strange it was that Uchiha Itachi's fatal flaw, his one emotional weakness, was not pride, nor blinding fury.

It was love. Love for a depraved younger sibling, so far gone that he could never be saved.

Pathetic.

Danzō broke the silence as easily as he'd slit a man's throat. "You waste your efforts on him, Itachi. In the end, he would not stay loyal to the Leaf as you wished him to. No matter what you did, no matter how thoroughly you shattered his sense of self, that cursed Uchiha blood runs strong in his veins. If you are a true shinobi of Konoha, you will do as I say and kill him."

There wasn't even the slightest change in expression, nothing that betrayed what the Uchiha was feeling.

Without warning, Itachi's eyes spun faster. Faster, faster, and faster still until the lines blurred and stretched with a violent pulse.

Moonlight flooded the room, as though every cloud in the sky suddenly vanished.

Danzō felt a cold claw grip at his heart. "Itachi, how dare you—"

—threaten me. ME.

Itachi didn't so much as blink.

His expression was ice, and his voice was winter.

"Tsukuyomi."

Years later as he stood impaled by a blade of lightning, Danzō concluded that he should have killed the Uchiha to the last man after all, Itachi included.

He coughed up blood as the blade twisted and ripped right out of him.

Scratch that, especially Itachi.

Author's Note: This story was recently removed from my main account by myself, so I thought I'd repost it here instead.