Disclaimer: Naruto, his friends and the universe they live in don't belong to me but to Masashi Kishimoto. I write this story solely for my own pleasure, and I don't make any money with it.

A/N: The idea to this story came to me after the reading chapter 397, which came to me as a surprise and not necessarily a good one. (I have always been a dyed-in-the-wool Sasuke-fangirl, and adamant when it came to Itachi's character whom I thought evil. It is of course not very pleasant to have to admit that all the Itachi-fangirls have been right after all.)

I tried to make sense of the new revelations (mainly that Itachi tried to protect Sasuke) into what I already knew, and the result is this fanfic... The canon has now caught up with my story, and I watch with interest how some of my guesses were correct and others were not – and I realize that the principal question, how it is possible that Itachi has done all he did in order to protect Sasuke, has not yet been answered - most of all, it seems that murdering the clan was not to protect Sasuke. He protected Sasuke in spite of killing the clan in order to protect the village. So, well, here is the result of my speculations before I knew Madara's real story.

(When I planned the story I concentrated on the background, and I finished my planning before the release of chapter 398 - but I did not manage writing and editing and publishing my story before Madara's tale was completed. So now my story is AR, and just offers a happier alternative to what happens in the canon...)

Thanks go again to eowyn unquendor who beta-read the story and helped me improve it and who encouraged me to continue it. Thanks go also to all those who read and reviewed it.

Warnings: Spoilers for the current canon. (Up to chapter 403, though mainly in the A/N-sections.)

Drug abuse (alcohol, coffeine.) Some talk about sexuality, but nothing graphic.

Language: I am no native speaker, and neither is my beta. With combined forces we aim for the best English we can manage.

Sasunaru: Seems I just cannot avoid it. (Nothing graphic. It was impossible to include anything graphic even if I had wanted for reasons that you will discover.)

Chapter One: To protect you...

Many stories have been told about me, and few of them are true. People have called me a genius, a lunatic, the personification of evil and Hitler reborn, though I have no idea who this guy should be. They were judging me from the stories they have heard and, even worse, from the stories they wanted to believe, always thinking that they in their peaceful villages were safe and good and that evil was only to be found outside.

They shunned me, and so I have grown lonely, never finding anyone who would listen to my story, told in my own words, telling what truly happened and what my true intentions were. They would rather listen to a stranger from a faraway country, born fifty years after the events than to me who had been there when everything happened.

I have longed to tell my story for such a long time now, always searching for new words, but always only in my mind. I have longed for someone to believe me, for someone to understand me and to realize that, though some of my deeds are surely what most people would call evil, I myself am not evil but have always aimed for the benefit of all.

Never did I realize how much longed for someone to listen to me and understand me than when I looked at the young boy I had just saved from certain death. Still sleeping peacefully and recovering from his wounds he moved my heart – people always say that most clan members, particularly the men, closely resemble my brother and myself, but I never see that similarity. I only see the traits of the clan's ancestress...

I had not known that my heart could hurt as it did just from looking at someone, nor had I known that it would suddenly feel all soft when he finally woke up and looked at me, confusedly and full of questions, and still with a look that said clearly: I don't want to hear anything. I won't listen to your words.

I longed so much for him to believe me. I longed for him to trust me, to understand me, to realize that I am not all evil, regardless of what people say. He, the last survivor of the clan, except for myself, and I am old and have lived far too long.

I wanted him to like me, but I did not understand it at that time. Still the first thing I said was that he should take better care of himself – and I truly meant it, not for my sake but for his.

I had lost the habit of liking people, and I soon turned back to my old ways, not expressing what I thought, but rather saying what seemed useful to further my plans, and thus I made my first mistake within the first minutes: Telling him that I had brought him here to tell him something – something about Itachi. Given that he had just killed his brother, and that he had spent years to get stronger and accomplish his revenge I thought that he would be interested in learning more about him, to understand him and learn the truth.

I was wrong of course. Sasuke was just relieved that his brother was dead and he was still alive, though I was not certain about the latter point. He wanted it to be over for good and did not want to investigate whether Itachi was as evil as he had thought, now that he was dead and nothing could be done to reverse this fact, just as his father and mother would never come back to life.

Also he was badly wounded and still utterly exhausted, he was in a place he had never seen, with a stranger he had never met. I tried to introduce myself, which of course was the next mistake, because it came as a shock to him and triggered an Amaterasu that Itachi had transferred to him before dying, and the Amaterasu was the next shock.

To be honest, I wanted him to be shocked and confused, and Itachi's Amaterasu, though it forced me to use space-time-ninjutsu to escape it, came rather handy, because it proved my point: That Itachi had loved his little brother and had done everything to protect him.

I wanted him shocked and confused, wanted him doubting himself and his judgement and what he had thought to be his just cause, I wanted his world and his perception of good and evil, right and wrong, true and false fall apart as it had done during what Itachi and myself called that night.

I thought he would be more open to my words if he doubted what he had considered to be true – and indeed he doubted, the confusion was written in his face, only instead of being open to the truth he just shut down – not wanting to see, not wanting to hear anything.

I pushed a bit further: "You need to know him – this man who risked everything to protect the Shinobi world, the Leaf village and most of all his little brother."

He did not answer but just turned away.

"I see, it's still too much for you", I said. "Rest for a while, I will bring you food and water and some clothes. We will continue our conversation when you feel less exhausted."

He accepted what I offered to him, though he had told me that he wanted to kill me, and that I should leave him alone and never come again. Both did not go well together of course, but he was not thinking clearly at the time. Later I discovered that clear thinking had never been among his talents.

I wanted him to listen to me, and I intended to use all my cunning to make him believe me, and at the same time I pitied him: A big child, confused and lost in a world where he was all alone.

I left him in his room so that he could rest and think and waited for him in the other room. We were staying in some subterranean part of the Uchiha hideout that had survived the devastations of the fight, and I had a lot of fun listening to the Konoha team and Sasuke's own team Hebi and even Kisame – the only living Akatsuki who did not know my true identity – while they were searching for Sasuke and Itachi right above us, not knowing that we were just beneath them under the ground. Finally they gave up and set off to Konoha.

I had also sent Zetsu away to inform Pein and Konan of the outcome of the fight, and to tell them to hurry up and catch the kyuubi's jinchuuriki – which was, as I knew now, a task way beyond their capacity, with all the protection he had.

So it was only myself and Sasuke now. I made myself comfortable in the second room I had secured for us, which happened to be a kitchen. Most of the facilities were still working, and I had even found a generator to provide us with electricity, so that I could watch the video taken by Zetsu a second time.

I had just prepared myself a pot of coffee to drink while watching the video a third time – there was not much else that I could do – when Sasuke entered the room. He unceremoniously poured himself a cup of coffee (without asking or saying thank you) and began to drink it standing upright, watching the video of his victory. He did not move, except for taking another sip of his coffee every now and then, and he did not show any emotion, but he did take the remote control. He listened how Itachi told him about me and my brother, now without the images created by Itachi's genjutsu, and when the story was over and Itachi was shouting "You will become my new light!" he pressed the pause/start-button.

"So you are still telling me that he wanted to protect me? Shall I think that he only put up a show when he threatened to pluck out my eyes? That he faked this outburst of emotion?"

"I am not sure", I answered cautiously. "It might be – or not."

"Why would he have wanted to scare me if his true intention was to protect me?"

"He wanted you to fight him, and he needed to make you angry, and to feel threatened. He needed you to take him seriously, to realize that this would be your final fight, that he would not beat you up and then let you live with your shame as he has done before but that now he would kill you if you lost, or at least take your eyes. Also, if he did not put up this show for you, he might have put it up for me, trying to make me think that he hated you and really wanted to kill you."

As if I had not seen him through for a long time now. As if he had not known that I had seen him through.

"He was not good enough an actor to fake all this", Sasuke replied.

"Oh, you think he was a bad actor? Did he not fake to be a dutiful son and a caring older brother? He managed to deceive you, and the whole clan, didn't he."

"Not completely", Sasuke admitted with clenched teeth. "Also he faked being completely emotionless. How could he suddenly fake an emotional outburst?"

"He faked his love and concern for you. Are these not emotions?"

"Are you not trying to tell me that he did not fake them? And anyway, how could he fake such an outburst if he has never experienced one?"

"He did experience it", I said. "The Mangekyou Sharingan was taking its toll, and he was growing desperate. But this does not mean that he wanted to kill you."

He did not answer to this but pressed the pause/start-button, and the video continued. He stopped it again when it showed Itachi attacking him with his Amaterasu.

"I could barely escape it", Sasuke said. "I had to use some body replacement technique I had learnt from Orochimaru, or I would have been dead. He had already burnt my wing."

"Which was not of much use anyway. Have you ever used your wings to fly?"

"I could cover myself with them."

"And lose them at a rate of one per fight. Don't complain! They were not effective and now that you have lost Orochimaru's mark you could not use them even if you had not lost them., Actually you used them as effectively as possible."

"Itachi did not only attack my wing but also my body. My legs were burning when he stopped the Amaterasu."

"He stopped it however, didn't he?"

"The commentator said so", Sasuke replied, referring to Zetsu whom he did not know. "He stopped it before it reached my head, in order to protect my eyes. They were valuable – not myself. I would have died."

"You would have survived. Badly maimed, but you would have survived."

"Just the kind of protection I am looking for..."

"Also, what makes you think that he did not notice your body replacement technique? You should know better than to believe that you could hide it from a Sharingan user."

"Then why did he kneel down to pluck out my eyes? And why was he surprised when I was back in the hall?"

I shrugged. "He was putting up a show again. For you or for me, who knows. He wanted you to fight him seriously after all."

"It was convincing", Sasuke said.

"It was not easy for him", I continued. "Even if he neither wanted to kill you or to take your eyes, he must have been tempted to do it. The side effects were quite bad by that time."

"He was blind at the end of the fight, wasn't he?" Sasuke asked. "All these powerful jutsus, all those crimes to acquire them, and then you just end up blind."

His voice had changed with his last sentence, for a moment becoming soft and insecure and thoughtful, and again I was reminded of the clan's ancestress. I put the memory away.

"And dead, don't forget it", I said. "As we all do."

"Still you are evading my question: Did he seriously want to pluck out my eyes?"

I shrugged again. "You killed him. If he were still alive, he might be able to tell you."

He turned back to the screen and pressed the pause/start-button. He let the tape run withut interruption until it reached the point when Itachi poked his forehead.

"You see, in the end he did not do it."

"He was already blind. He was on the point of dying. Would my eyes have given him back his sight if he had already lost it? Or kept him alive?"

"Who knows? There has never been a series of controlled experiments to research under which conditions the plucking out of the eyes of one's brother works and under which it does not. What counts is that in the end he did not do it. He rather transferred his eye jutsus to you and accepted his own death."

He did not answer. Abruptly he switched off the video recorder, put down the remote control, then his cup and went to the stove.

"Is there some food left?" he asked and lifted the covers of the pots. When he saw that there was some, he filled himself a plate and left to his own room.