"We know beauty because there is ugly.
We know good because there is evil.
Being and not being,
having and not having,
create each other."(1)
Sometimes his mother would read him stories before he went to sleep. Most of the time it was an over-glorified history of some clansman or another, how the first Uchiha broke away from the Hyuuga branch house to form a new clan, marry into another family with blood abilities that eventually transformed the byakkugan to sharingan; sometimes she would tell stories about the great heroes of fire country, even the ones that didn't carry the Uchiha name. Sometimes she read to him from the book she kept under her pillow, the old, old phrases she would always be quoting. His father would quote them on occasion, but he never knew them all; he would purse his lips, look to her, and she would smile serenely and say, If you know when you have enough, you are wealthy. If you carry your intentions to completion, you are resolute.(2) He would thank her and continue his letter, or the lecturing of his eldest son.
The stories wouldn't last very long, the nights she read from the text; she would generally illustrate the philosophy with an example, smile in her tranquil way, and kiss his forehead before tucking him in for the night.
Sometimes, if his parents were visiting friends or family, or during the missions of their own, his brother was left to take care of him. This happened once or twice a month, especially during one April when a close friend of their mother's was having a difficult pregnancy and kept her away two or three nights a week.
Silently, without ever voicing the decision, without Sasuke ever needing to ask, Itachi took up the ritual.
Itachi had missions as well, and sometimes he wouldn't get back until one, two, three in the morning; sometimes without having slept for several days. But he'd slide open the door to his younger brother's room, step inside quiet as a cat, and sit on the bed. Sasuke would wake up because he hadn't really been asleep, waiting.
Rarely, Itachi still had that metallic smell on him, staining his clothes even if he'd washed his hands.
But he'd pull out his own book, bound black with red characters and threading, but the same text as their mother's; and he would read the verses and explain them to Sasuke. His voice was always steady, his eyes always alert, even when he should have been exhausted. His hands never shook as they turned the thin, rice-paper pages of the slender volume.
Occasionally, the verses he chose were ones Sasuke had heard before, and the younger brother would light up with pride at his ability to explain the ideas behind the words.
As Itachi finished the reading with, "But when nothing is done sincerely, nothing and no one embraces us,"(3) Sasuke said eagerly,
"This one means that insincerity isolates you, so you should always be sincere and honest, otherwise you will be misunderstood."
Itachi waved Sasuke closer, smiling his strange, subdued smile; Sasuke leaned in.
Itachi flicked him.
With a soft yelp and a grimace, Sasuke turned up his nose. "But that's what Mom said."
"Is that all she said?"
"Well, she just told me I should live my life sincerely."
"Ah."
He was able to hold out for about seven seconds before he couldn't stand the wait any longer. "Brother, is she wrong?"
Itachi was silent for a moment, and then he said quietly, "She is sincere."
Sasuke fidgeted, wordless; he firmly believed that he understood his brother, and this silence, those precise words, meant that his mother believed what she said, but was mistaken nonetheless. "What do you think?"
"Isolation is not necessarily a negative state. For a ninja, it may even be a crucial part of survival. Insincerity is the basis for subtlety and finesse. To be successful, you must be able to lead your enemies astray and to properly maneuver your allies."
Sasuke was silent, listening, allowing his brother's words to both fill him and swallow him whole.
"If someone understands you, they understand your motives. They can predict you."
His eyes fell to the sheet where his hands clenched at the white coverlet, then rose again to meet the dark eyes that were so like his own, and yet so dramatically different; so black as to appear, in the vaguest corners of highlights, a deep, bloody, almost-red.
"That is inherently dangerous. Sasuke, you must always hold your intentions close to you until the proper moment. Everything up to that point is for arranging yourself around others: 'Thus do we create what is to use what is not,'"(4) and he stressed the words carefully. "Relationships between people are a framework to build up and dissolve as it suits your goals. Insincerity is your greatest tool for that because if you are believed sincere, you will remain unquestioned. It allows you to control people, and that is essential. If you are embraced, as they put it, or accepted; if you are known; that devalues you as a ninja."
He rose and closed the book, set it on the side table. He ruffled his younger brother's hair and smiled, the lines on his face pulled slightly with the movement. It made him look tired.
Really, it made him look like a snake that appears to be sleeping just before it strikes.
