When Itachi wakes, there is no true pain, only soft blankets and the pleasant soreness of well worked muscles. The swelling of dread he feels comes from the fact that he's awoken at all.
He had been so sure that his penance was finally over. Sasuke had proven himself strong enough to survive, would be strong enough with the help of Itachi's eyes -- only Itachi still has them. The dawn light creeping under his lids is proof enough of that, and there isn't the tell-tale-ache of a transplant to explain how.
He is alone to his own senses, not that it means much when he knows at least three shinobi who don't even need to breathe who could be responsible for his survival. At this stage, an explanation is far more important than his life, so he opens his eyes and jerks out of bed, sharingan whirling. The sight he etches into his mind is far more sickening than any of the Akatsuki hideouts he had been imagining.
Itachi wakes up in his own bedroom, in the Uchiha compound, morning light spilling into his room to highlight the supplies haphazardly scattered on the table, as though he has been taking inventory after a mission and decided to leave it until the morning; something he hasn't done since --
The smell of fish and miso hits his nose and freezes Itachi in place. It's a traditional breakfast, nothing special, but Mikoto liked to add chili paste to her own mackerel and that spice on top of it is so nostalgic that bile climbs up his throat. The only thing that stops him from heaving it up is his training.
This isn't a dream, his sharingan spinning and burning up his chakra is proof that it can't be -- but how could it be anything else?
Outside of his own body, like a puppet pulling his own strings, Itachi pads out of his room and down the hall. Silently, presence pulled tighter to himself than even the ANBU taught how, he slides through the morning shadows and down the stairs until he can see into the dining room.
He sees Fugaku first, his frown the same as it always was in memory. He reads through a scroll in favor of eating the breakfast his wife has set in front of him. Mikoto appears next, somehow both older and younger than Itachi remembered her -- he knows she had stress lines around her eyes but he never thinks of them when he pictured her. She turns over her shoulder to look into the kitchen and calls "Sasuke!"
Ice claws down his back as Sasuke -- six year old, baby-faced Sasuke who hasn't even started to form calluses from holding a sword -- appears from around the doorway.
"Go to your brother's room and bring him down for breakfast," she tells him. Sasuke nods back, innocent in his determination.
No .
No, no -- Itachi will not be able to sit through a meal with any of them without raising suspicion. He's moving backwards before he's even had the conscious thought to move, and has leapt from the window of his room long before Sasuke can reach him. He has no plan, no thoughts besides buzzing panic. The Uchiha district blurs beneath his feet as he runs, already bustling in the early morning. Even though Itachi does not dare to look down at them, they live on regardless.
He does not have a direction in mind, he runs until he's so deep in one of Konoha's old forests that light struggles to reach the ground. It's the clear sight of his own hands -- a child's hands -- that have him stumbling to a stop, knees hitting the dirt, stomach rolling.
He did not vomit after his massacre. He will not do so now.
Everything else, he is helpless to stop. His ears ring and his vision blurs so badly that he may as well have gone deaf and blind, and he cannot take a full breath, though the blood he's expecting to cough up never comes.
He rarely ever allowed himself to dwell on what he had done, had known that he could never be redeemed for it, but had believed, thought, hoped that he had done all he could, regardless. He still served the village, he had made Sasuke strong enough to stand on his own feet, had borne all of the blame and hatred from both until his dying breath.
Done it all for nothing, it seems. A lifetime of suffering undone, without rhyme or reason. A second chance gifted to the undeserving, to serve as his true punishment. Why else would he be made to face all of them and be the only one to know what he's done?
Will he be allowed to change fate? Or is he doomed to play it out for a second time? Will he allow himself to? That thought, more than the others paralyzes him, sticks him to the forest floor like an insect pinned to a board.
Itachi is still, even now, loyal to the village, and so long as Konoha stands he will be nothing less. But he knows now what he didn't before -- the Hokage is not infallible, his advisors do not want a peaceful resolution -- but can he truly claim to know better? Would he even be able to stop them if he tries?
He does not know how long he spends kneeling on the forest floor, only that when he becomes aware enough of his own body to control his breathing the sun is high in the sky. His whole body is sticky with sweat, and his head is pounding. Shamefully, it was not his own control that pulled his awareness back to himself, rather, it was a presence in the woods, rustling leaves enough to make itself known.
"Aah, there you are Itachi-kun. Your family was asking all over for you!"
Itachi does not move a muscle -- he can face this person even less than the ones he killed with his own hands. Shisui drops from a tree branch to land next to him, body language casual -- easy and curious. "I told them you got called away on an urgent mission, so they shouldn't ask, but why are you out here. Is everything --?"
But he cannot help himself, if he needs to prove any one thing as real, it is this. Itachi snaps his head up to look at Shisui through a haze of red, heart pounding wild. Only when he sees Shisui go carefully still does he realize -- too late -- that he's activated not just the sharingan, but his mangekyo.
"…I guess not." His cousin says, hands coming up slowly, as if Itachi is a frightened animal that needs to be soothed. And perhaps it’s the right thing to do, because that's certainly how Itachi feels. He doesn't dare move as Shisui kneels next to him and pulls him into a loose approximation of a hug.
Itachi did not cry back then, either. He does not believe himself capable of it any longer, and yet as warm arms circle him he finds himself unable to stop trembling. Even in this body, it's been years since someone has offered him comfort this way, and when he doesn't push the older boy away Shisui only grips him tighter.
Can he even call him the older one now? Itachi outlived him by over half a decade, and the thought makes a helpless wretched noise crawl out of him. Shisui's hand cups the back of his head as he pulls Itachi into his shoulder.
"I've got you," he says quietly. No reassurances that it will be alright, no questions as to what happened, and it makes Itachi's throat clog up all over again. Shisui always was the better of the two of them, and to Itachi his death marked the point of no return. Maybe… No, surely, if Itachi can change only one thing about the future, it should be this. For if Shisui lives, Itachi is certain that he will be able to find the path that he could not.
The thought is enough to finally make Itachi straighten, spine aching from being curled in on himself for so long. He meets Shisui's eyes only to be paralyzed all over again at the open concern he sees there.
Desperately, helplessly, like the moon pulling the tide, words threaten to spill out of him, but Itachi does not have an explanation for himself, and therefore no idea where to begin with Shisui.
"We need to talk," he croaks. "Somewhere with no possibility of being overheard."
"The Naka Shrine basement. The tablet room." Shisui offers immediately. It is a good choice, the building does not see much traffic on most days, and those without advanced enough sharingan can not go too deeply inside. Itachi does not want to go back to the Uchiha district again, but knows that he will not be able to put it off for very long.
Shisui is still staring at him, and he visibly hesitates before his next words. "Do you want to clean up before we go? I can stay with you, if you want."
Only now that he's said it does Itachi realize the picture he must paint, still in his sleep clothes, hair unbound and tangled, hands and knees covered in dirt from the forest floor. Shisui would be under the impression that his mangekyo is newly awakened -- it isn’t a surprise that he's being treated like a flight risk.
"No… I can handle that." He breathes, steady enough now to begin to plan ahead. If he's going to venture back into the compound, he can at least take the opportunity to gather some intel. He does not know how much time he has, does not know his exact age and therefore if he'd already been drafted into ANBU or if the stirrings of a coup have already started by now. "The shrine is fine, I'll meet you there in an hour."
"If you're sure," Shisui says slowly. He does not pull away, Itachi has to be the first to do so, standing up and brushing himself off, mission composure quickly returning. He nods. Shisui, still obviously uncertain, nods back, but he allows Itachi to leave, and if he follows, it's done skillfully enough that he does not notice.
It isn’t the first time Itachi has had to move about the Uchiha compound as an infiltrator, and now, in the middle of the day, it's simple to avoid detection and slide back into his childhood bedroom. The first thing he does is duck into the closet and pull away the false wall that hides the storage space for his ANBU uniform. The weasel mask inside is clean and unbroken, which means he hasn't been in the corps very long; on his fifth mission with them, a weapon clipped off the tip of the ear and it remained that way for the rest of his service.
He puts it back and turns to bathing and dressing himself instead. Whatever he's going to do, he can't afford to draw suspicion by going around looking unpresentable -- that Shisui saw him that way was bad enough. He hesitates when he looks through his drawers. Nearly everything he owns has the clan’s mon stitched into it, and he knows at this age that he wouldn't go out without it, but it still feels wrong for him to wear.
He grabs a high collared shirt anyways -- infiltrators should wear convincing disguises, after all.
He showers quickly and efficiently -- it takes longer to remove traces of him being in the room than it does to get clean -- and he forces himself to find and eat a small bowl of rice despite his lingering nausea. He faces no problems until he's making to leave and catches movement in the corner of his eye.
In the sliver of view from the open door, Itachi can see into the garden -- can see Sasuke, little eyebrows furrowed in concentration as he tries to go through the kata of one of the Uchiha taijutsu styles.
Shouldn't someone be looking after him at this age? Shouldn't I --? He does not know where the thought comes from, nor does he know where it was leading. He has no idea what he should do for Sasuke now at all. Itachi had always wanted his brother to avoid the evils of being a shinobi, if he could, and when that no longer became an option, wanted to ensure he'd be strong enough to survive them. Now it seems he has to make the choice all over again.
If he got stronger, sooner. If I gave him my eyes now and showed him how they were used…
Or perhaps this time around Itachi will be able to shield him from that darkness after all -- though he isn’t particularly optimistic. But those are thoughts for later, for now he forces himself to step back and leave the house through another exit.
He is spotted on the way to the shrine by a ninneko who yawns and blinks at him when they meet eyes across rooftops. He remembers that it's a sign of trust. He does not remember the cat's name.
He will likely have to relearn many of those, in the coming days.
He approaches from the side of the building, touching down lightly just inside the walls that mark the border of the holy grounds. He does not stop to cleanse himself -- if there is a kami enshrined here, it is likely the very one who is punishing him, and so would already know his crimes can not be washed away.
It takes a moment for his eyes to adjust to the shadows as he steps into the main hall. The lanterns are unlit today, the room already swept and dusted and so the attendants are long gone. The only person in the room is Shisui -- nearly twenty minutes early, but then Itachi is too.
"Itachi. No time like the present then, yeah?" The older boy smiles, but it's uncharacteristically small and somber. He jerks his head towards the passage they'll be taking and Itachi only nods and follows silently after him. The shadows grow even darker as they descend, their sharingan activating to pierce through the unnatural shadows. They pass through the doors, Shisui pulls them closed behind him, and for a dizzying moment there is no sight at all. Then a breath, a spark, and a flare, and one of the braziers flares to life, shading both of them in dying orange light.
For a long moment Itachi only looks at Shisui. Whole and alive and with still enough spirit left in him for optimism. He sees it, and is certain, now: he will do everything in his power to keep Shisui alive. Only if he should fail a second time will he resort, again, to drastic measures.
"What did you want to talk about?" The older boy asks, voice low, though they both know that the room is soundproof.
"I…" Failed, so completely and utterly that even the gods have deemed me not fit for death. That is what he believes, but he knows he cannot say it. He still needs to maintain some degree of credibility, and yet he wants, too, to speak the truth for once. So Itachi breathes and starts again. "I was the victim of a space-time jutsu. I lived to see the future years from now. It was…"
Bad, on every level he can think of. Death, defection, betrayal, and Konoha did not seem to thrive again despite all he had done. There is no simple word that can begin to cover it.
Shisui frowns and does not react beyond an intent stare. The boy Itachi remembered would have tried to laugh such a strange statement off, but he doesn't now.
"That jutusu-- was it a manifestation of your mangekyo?"
"No." Itachi blinks. What a strange question . "I can manifest Tsukuyomi, Ameterasu, and Susanoo. Whatever sent me back was something else."
"Huh." Is all Shisui says, and then, "I'm guessing you want to change the future?"
Itachi nods, his own confusion building. He knew Shisui was good at adapting, but to accept something as strange as time travel --
"That's your only question? I have told you something that should not be possible."
"Oh I have many questions." Shisui's wry smile returns. "But I believe you -- your eyes evolved and you know how to use them. For that to have happened, that means, well…" He shakes his head. "Lets just make sure that it doesn't happen again, right?"
And just like that, Itachi believes that a new future might just be possible. He blinks slowly, holds his eyes closed for a long moment. Darkness, then light again.
"Right." He agrees. "And if we want to do that, then there’s much to cover."
“You’re off on a mission right now, remember?” Shisui’s smile grows sharp and eager. “Lay it on me. We’ve got time.”