LOCATION: UCHIHA COMPOUND – MAIN FAMILY HOME
The world dissolved into a kaleidoscope of sensation and memory. Sasuke was no longer sitting in the dusty living room. He was there.
He was Itachi.
He felt the tightness in a thirteen-year-old's chest, the weight of the flak jacket, the subtle tremor in hands that were already too skilled at killing. The memory unfolded with cinematic clarity, seen through Itachi's eyes, felt through his nervous system.
MEMORY SEQUENCE ONE: THE ROOT FACILITY, NIGHT
The air was cold, sterile. Danzo Shimura stood before him, his single visible eye gleaming in the dim light. The bandaged right side of his face seemed to suck the warmth from the room.
Danzo (Memory): "The Council's patience has expired, Itachi. Your reports on the clan's mobilization are alarming. Stockpiling weapons. Secret meetings. Encrypted communications with foreign elements. The Uchiha cancer is metastasizing."
Itachi (Memory, his own voice young but terribly weary): "They feel persecuted, Lord Danzo. The relocation to the compound's edge after the Kyuubi attack. The increased surveillance. They speak of rights, of dignity."
Danzo: "They speak of treason! Your father, Fugaku, leads them. He would rather see Konoha burn than remain in what he perceives as second-class status. He is willing to sacrifice every man, woman, and child in this clan for his ambition. You have seen their plans. The simultaneous strikes on the Hokage Tower, the ANBU barracks, the power station. They would plunge the village into darkness and blood."
Itachi-Sasuke felt the conflict churn—the love for his father, the duty to the village. Danzo pressed a scroll into his hands.
Danzo: "The Hokage is weak. The Council is divided. But I see the path to salvation. A surgical strike. Remove the infected tissue before the body dies. You, Itachi, are the only one who can perform this operation. You have the access. You have the skill."
Itachi: "You are asking me to… to kill my entire family?"
Danzo: "I am asking you to save your village. And your brother. Sasuke is innocent. He is young. He can be spared. The alternative is a civil war. The Uchiha will be exterminated by Konoha's forces, yes, but thousands of loyal shinobi will also die. Iwa and Kumo will smell the weakness and invade. Konoha will fall. Everyone dies. Including Sasuke."
The ultimatum hung in the air, a monstrous trap. Itachi-Sasuke felt the walls closing in.
Danzo: "Do this, and Sasuke lives. He will be a hero of Konoha, unaware of the sacrifice that preserved his life. Refuse… and I cannot guarantee his safety when the fighting starts. ROOT will be deployed to cleanse the compound. We are… thorough."
The threat was unmistakable. The memory vibrated with Itachi's despair, the feeling of being caught between two abysses.
MEMORY SEQUENCE TWO: THE COUNCIL CHAMBER, TWILIGHT
The Third Hokage, Sarutobi Hiruzen, looked aged and burdened. The two elders, Koharu and Homura, sat with stern faces. Danzo stood apart.
Hiruzen (Memory): "Itachi… the reports are grave. Is there no path to negotiation? Can your father not be reasoned with?"
Itachi: "He believes negotiation is surrender, Lord Hokage. The clan's pride is wounded. Their grievances, real and imagined, have festered too long. They will not back down."
Homura: "Then they leave us no choice. A coup attempt cannot be tolerated. The Uchiha must be… contained."
Koharu: "Containment of an entire clan of shinobi within the village is impossible. It would be a war in our streets. The Uchiha must be… neutralized."
Itachi-Sasuke felt the hope drain away as Hiruzen bowed his head, silent. The Hokage's inaction was a confirmation.
Danzo: "Itachi understands the necessity. He has proposed a solution. A single night. One perpetrator. Minimal collateral damage. The village remains strong, united against an external tragedy—a rogue Uchiha. The boy Sasuke is spared, to be raised as a loyal Konoha shinobi. It is the least horrible option."
Hiruzen looked at Itachi, his eyes filled with profound sorrow. "Itachi… is this truly what you propose? To bear this… alone?"
Itachi-Sasuke heard his memory-voice, hollow: "To save the village, and my brother… I will bear it."
The memory conveyed not pride, but the sensation of stepping off a cliff. The Council's relief was palpable. They had found their sacrificial lamb, someone to do the bloody work and carry the sin so their hands could remain technically clean.
MEMORY SEQUENCE THREE: THE NIGHT – FLASHES
The memories came faster, fragmented, visceral.
The first kill—an Uchiha guard at the compound gate who recognized him, smiled, said "Itachi, late for patrol?" before the kunai opened his throat. The hot spray of blood on his cheek. Moving through silent houses. The soft sounds of sleep. Then startled wakefulness. Confusion. Terror. Pleading. His father, Fugaku, in his study. Not fighting. Sitting in seiza. "Itachi… I am sorry. This is my failure as a father and a leader. Protect Sasuke. And… forgive your foolish father." His mother, Mikoto, weeping silently, turning her back to offer a clean kill, whispering "My brave, tragic boy…" The children. Oh, gods, the children. Hiding under beds. Clutching toys. Cousin Hiro, wide-eyed, asking "Ichi-nii, why are your eyes red?" The mechanical, dissociated state he entered. A puppet of duty. Every slash, every stab felt at a distance, yet each death carved a piece out of his soul. Finding Sasuke, small and terrified in the street. Forcing his face, twisting his own grief and madness into a mask of pure, cruel hatred. "You are weak. You don't have enough hate." Injecting the Tsukuyomi, programming the years of torment, the singular goal—to make Sasuke strong enough to one day kill him. To give his little brother a purpose, even if it was vengeance. To make himself the final sacrifice.
The memory sequence ended with Itachi standing on a blood-drenched street, the screams finally silent, the Mangekyō Sharingan burning in his sockets for the first time—awakened not by Shisui's death, but by the totality of his own damnation. The feeling was one of utter, catastrophic emptiness. He had traded his soul, and all he held in his heart was a void and a single, fragile thread: Sasuke must live.
________________________________________
The living room snapped back into focus. Sasuke gasped, staggering back as the connection broke. He fell against the wall, clutching his head. He could still smell the blood, feel its sticky warmth. He could hear the echoes of his mother's whisper, his father's apology. He had lived it.
Across from him, Itachi was bent double, one hand braced on the table, the other pressed to his mouth. A violent, wet cough wracked his frame. When he pulled his hand away, it was smeared with bright, shocking red. The blood dripped onto the tatami mat. His illness, the physical cost of the Mangekyō and a lifetime of bearing the unbearable, was advancing.
For a long minute, there was only the sound of their ragged breathing.
Sasuke: (Voice hoarse) "You saw it as a choice. Clan or village. A binary equation."
Itachi: (Wiping his mouth, his voice weak but clear) "It was presented as such. Save the many. Sacrifice the few. A shinobi's duty. The logic was… impeccable. Flawed, but impeccable."
Sasuke: "It was flawed because one variable was a lie." He pushed himself upright, his own eyes blazing. "The 'village' wasn't the innocent many. Its leadership was corrupt. Danzo was a monster. The Council was complicit. Hiruzen was willfully blind. You didn't choose the village over the clan, Itachi. You chose the rot over the body."
Itachi: "I chose stability! I chose to prevent a war that would have consumed everything! Even with Danzo's poison, Konoha was worth saving! The ideals, the Will of Fire—"
Sasuke: "The Will of Fire?" Sasuke's laugh was short and bitter. "A philosophy that preaches protecting your loved ones as the highest virtue. And you used it to justify slaughtering yours. Do you not see the contradiction? You extinguished your own fire to… to what? Keep a flickering, guttering lantern lit?"
Itachi: "The system could be reformed from within! By sparing Sasuke, by having you grow up within it, I believed—"
Sasuke: "You believed I would become a good little Konoha shinobi and never question the myth? You were wrong. And your faith in the system was misplaced. You trusted the very people who created the problem. Danzo. The Council. How could you? HOW COULD YOU LISTEN TO DANZO AFTER SHISUI?!"
The name exploded in the quiet room. Itachi flinched as if struck.
Sasuke: He took a step forward, his voice dropping to a deadly calm. "Shisui Shun. Your best friend. The one who believed in the village more than anyone. Who had the Kotoamatsukami, the power to change hearts without violence. He had a plan. A peaceful resolution. And Danzo stole his eye. Ripped it from his socket. Drove him to throw himself into the Nakano River. You found his body. You held your friend, who believed in the very village that murdered him for his power."
Itachi's breath hitched. Tears, fresh and mingling with the blood at his lip, fell.
Sasuke: "Shisui gave you his remaining eye. His last hope. And what did you do? You took that sacred trust, that final gift from a man murdered by the state, and you used it to… to better serve the men who killed him? You walked back to Danzo and the Council and continued to treat them as legitimate authorities? After they killed your brother in all but blood? Where was the Will of Fire for Shisui, Itachi?!"
Itachi: "I… I thought… his sacrifice couldn't be in vain… I had to make his dream of peace real, even if the path was…" His justification crumbled into dust before the raw, unanswerable truth of Shisui's betrayal.
Sasuke: "You thought wrong. You pathologized your own family. You saw their fear, their anger at being treated like prisoners in their own home, as a 'cancer.' But the cancer was in the administration building, Itachi. Danzo was experimenting on Uchiha children in dungeons while you were agonizing over their 'dangerous' political sentiments. He was turning our clan's grief into a weapon against them, and you handed him the knife!"
Another coughing fit seized Itachi, longer this time. He crumpled to his knees, blood spattering the floor. The mighty Uchiha Itachi was reduced to a frail, dying man. When it subsided, he looked up, his eyes utterly lost.
Itachi: "I… I was sixteen. They told me I was the only one who could see clearly. They told me I was mature. That I understood the hard truths. They flattered my intelligence and weaponized my love for Sasuke. I was a child playing with concepts too large for me, and they were master manipulators."
Sasuke: "Finally. An admission without the grand tragedy. You were a child. A brilliant, traumatized child manipulated by evil old men. That doesn't absolve you. It contextualizes you. It makes you a victim and a perpetrator. A pawn who thought he was a knight."
He walked to stand over Itachi, looking down at his brother's broken form. The hatred was still there, but it was now alloyed with a devastating pity. "You said you chose the village. But the village was already rotten. You chose the rotting institution over the living, breathing people who loved you. You chose the abstract over the concrete. You chose the lie of 'peace' over the truth of your family's lives."
Itachi stared at the blood on the floor. "What would you have had me do, Sasuke?" The question was a whisper, stripped of all defense. "Fight? Lead the clan in a suicidal war? Watch as you died in the crossfire?"
Sasuke: "Yes."
The single word hung in the air, brutal and simple.
Sasuke: "If the choice was between betraying everyone who trusted you and dying with them… you should have died with them. You should have stood with Father and Mother. With Aunt Misako and Cousin Hiro. You should have told Danzo to go to hell, and faced the consequences with your clan. That is what family means. That is what loyalty is. You don't get to murder the people you're supposed to be loyal to to 'save' them from a worse fate you can't guarantee. You fight for them. You die for them. You don't become the executioner."
He knelt down, bringing himself eye-level with his kneeling brother. "You chose the wrong village. You should have chosen your family."
Itachi's final bastion of justification collapsed. The noble sacrifice, the tragic burden, the unbearable choice—all of it was washed away in the tide of Sasuke's simple, devastating logic. He had not been a hero making a hard choice. He had been a profoundly broken boy who failed the most fundamental test of all.
Itachi: "You are right." The admission was a death rattle. "All these years… I told myself it was the only way. I built an entire identity, a mission, around that night. I joined the Akatsuki, furthering Obito's nihilistic fantasy, because the real world was the one where I had made the unforgivable mistake. I needed a grand, cosmic reason for my sin. But there wasn't one. There was just… fear. Manipulation. And a terrible, terrible error in judgment."
He looked at Sasuke, his eyes clear for the first time—clear of lies, of masks, of the disease of his own narrative. "I am not a hero. I am not a villain. I am a failure. I failed Shisui. I failed our parents. I failed the clan. And I failed you, most of all. I tried to give you a purpose built on my lie. I am… so sorry, Sasuke."
The apology, raw and unadorned, was more shocking than any attack. Sasuke felt something fracture inside his own chest. The icy engine of his vengeance, fueled for so long by pure hate, spluttered. What was left? Pity? Empathy? A hollow victory?
Sasuke: "Your apology doesn't bring them back. It doesn't unmake the night." He stood up, turning away. "It changes nothing."
Itachi: "I know." He struggled to his feet, swaying. The blood was a stark contrast on his pale skin. "But it is all I have left to give. The truth. And my life. The duel… it is no longer about my plan for you. It is about… closure. For you. Justice for them. You must be the one to end this story, Sasuke. Not as my pawn, seeking a power I decreed. But as their avenger, delivering the sentence on the one who wronged them. It is the only thread of honor left to me—to face your judgment, in truth, and to fall by the hand of the brother I wronged."
He drew a ragged breath, his body trembling with illness and emotion. "You have shown me the depth of my error. Now… show me the strength of your conviction. If you truly believe I deserve death for my crimes… then kill me. Here. Now. Not for your hate, but for their memory."
Itachi's Sharingan ignited, the Mangekyō pattern swirling with deadly intent. But it was not the look of a predator. It was the look of a condemned man, ready for the gallows. He took a shaky, resolute step back, putting space between them in the small room.
The air, thick with revelations and pain, suddenly crackled with a different energy. The conversation was over. The verdict was in. All that remained was the execution.
Sasuke turned back to face him. The devastating pity in his heart hardened, tempered in the forge of his newfound purpose. Justice was not about hate. It was about accountability. It was about balance. And the scales, heavy with the weight of a massacred clan, could only be balanced by one thing.
His own Sharingan activated, the tomoe spinning rapidly, the faint green sheen of his Sage energy flickering around the edges. The cold, analytical focus returned. The prosecutor became the executioner.
Sasuke: "For Aunt Misako. For Cousin Hiro. For Grandmother Satsuki. For Shisui. For Mother and Father. For every name on the stone. I, Uchiha Sasuke, last son of the main family, will deliver your sentence."
He did not assume a dramatic stance. He simply stood ready, a coil of contained lightning and banked blue fire.
Itachi offered a faint, sad smile—the first genuine smile Sasuke had seen from him since childhood. It was a smile of release. "Thank you, little brother."
Then, the sadness vanished, replaced by the focused calm of the warrior. The air grew heavy with killing intent.
The duel for truth was over.
The duel for justice began.
End of Chapter – 93.