Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.
The muggy night bears the scent of copper. Sharp and stinking, the smell pierces the air and cleaves the heart.
Itachi blinks, and his head clears. The air does not smell like blood. Not yet, at least.
As dusk continues to fall like a black shroud over the Uchiha compound, his heart beats down the seconds to the climax, when the blissful colors of his ancestral home will be smeared a gaudy, sinful, cloying crimson.
His pounding heart is the only betrayer of the maelstrom tearing up the landscape behind the smooth impassive mask of his face. Father and Mother…non-combatants…likelihood of resistance…Sasuke…weak points…Sasuke…likelihood of losing sight…Sasuke…
Sasuke…
Where is Sasuke?
Itachi goes over the statistics of his mission one more time in his head. They are cold and unforgiving.
Sixty-three buildings in the Uchiha compound.
Fifty-three shinobi.
Sixty-two noncombatants. They are relatives by marriage, retired shinobi and kunoichi, academy students and younger.
Forty-eight completely unaffiliated with the Uchiha clan. Domestic servants, employees in shops, etc.
The long, loose fingers of his right hand tense around the hilt of his ANBU-issue katana; his throat grows dry.
Itachi reviews the plain facts. One hundred and sixty three, whom you'll have to kill. There are children, and you will slaughter them, cut them down like lambs to an altar. You will kill them all, down to the last man, woman and child.
Five minutes.
Itachi does not want to do this. No shinobi should have to kill their own family—"Blood should kill blood," a ghastly specter of Danzo taunts—and no swordsman should have to blemish his blade so.
The night will shield his sin for now, but when the sun rises, all will know what Itachi has done.
Four minutes.
Itachi is not suicidal; not right now, anyway.
–Itachi watches, somehow disbelievingly, as Shisui's long lithe body shudders and goes limp in his arms, and his laughing eyes close for the last time. For a moment, a long, heart-stopped moment, he waits for Shisui to wake up again. Because there's absolutely no way that that was enough to kill him. But he doesn't. Of course he doesn't. They never do.
Itachi isn't even aware as his cousin's body slips out of his arms and rolls down the gently sloping hill to rest at the river bank, the river that Shisui loved so much.
His hands go slack; his knees turn to water. This is what killing a loved one feels like.
Itachi clenches his face; his eyes feel like they are dying, like they are pouring out blood, but there is nothing there to show for the pain spreading through sinuses, to nose, to mouth, to throat, to chest, to heart… He collapses, and shivers on the ground, howling silently and gulping for oxygen when he's drowning in air.
Though Itachi does not know it at the moment, the pain is the experience of gaining the Mangekyo Sharingan. The pain is symbolic of the terrible cost paid for power. There will be more pain later, because the path that has been laid down for himself is now inescapable; all that is left to do is walk.
When the spasms have finally ceased and the young Uchiha can rise from the ground, he looks. And looks. He looks at the culmination of this night's labors, at the reward for his pains, and finds it hollow.
Itachi isn't quite sure how the kunai got into his hand. He isn't quite sure how many of his vital points he brushed it over; he only comes to when he feels it create pressure over his heart.
His black eyes narrow; his hands grip the kunai steadily. Maybe he should, he thinks. Maybe he should, and spare the Uchiha clan its slaughter. Maybe he should, and spite Danzo and the two aging, dusty, soulless members of the council who foisted his mission on him in the first place.
It would be so easy. A nick here, a long, thin laceration there. If one knows where to lay the blade and has a steady hand, just a small amount of pressure is enough to stop the heart beating.
But then sanity returns to Itachi. His clan is involved in a conspiracy to tear Konoha apart from the inside out. He's the only one with the skill, the inside knowledge, and the sheer stamina to complete what must be done.
And he cannot palm this off to someone else just because he's feeling sorry for himself. If Itachi dies, another will take his place, one less capable, one who may manage to kill a few, but will ultimately be cut down by the might of the Uchiha clan.
Itachi examines Shisui's body. His attack has left no lacerations, and as far as Itachi can tell no internal injuries. There are small bruises, the "got it in training" bruises, the "bumped my hip/leg/arm/side against the table" bruises, and nothing more.
In Shisui's slightly untidy hand, Itachi writes a small, short note. It speaks of duty, and sorrow, and despair and of the river. He tucks it so far in his friend's shirt that it will come out damp enough as to eradicate most traces but not so wet as to be indecipherable.
Uchiha Shisui slides into the deep, gently flowing waters to complete his final journey…—
The chances of completing this mission are astronomical; Itachi stands as one against a great wave.
Besides, how can someone who is already dead take his own life?
—Itachi raises his hand to wipe away tears as he vacates the scene and finds…
Nothing.—
Three minutes.
Itachi is not a coward.
But sometimes, he wishes he was.
Why must it be me? Why did they choose me for this mission? It's unreasonable; as a member of the very clan they seek to destroy, I could very well be complicit in my family's illicit activities.
It's nothing less than a test of loyalty to the village. The members of the council, the old guard, the war hawks, the ones so old, so ancient and so long gone without a battle that they have forgotten what it's like to feel the heart stop beating underneath their hands, want this of him. They want their golden boy to prove that he's so loyal to the village, loyal to them, that he's willing to exterminate his family and blot out his name for the sake of the village.
But Itachi wonders what would happen if he rebelled. If he just looked up at them, looked into their empty eyes and said "no". He would fall, and another would rise to take his place.
It all comes back to that. No matter how much he pleads or begs or just doesn't want to, the annihilation of the Uchiha clan will proceed.
If he doesn't do it, they might even wait a couple of years, and make Sasuke do it. That was their threat, their promise that the burden would pass from the shoulders of one brother to another, and it is that threat that holds Itachi to his task.
Two minutes.
Itachi is not a fool.
He was given a choice of a night to carry out the task at hand, and he chose this night out of all nights.
Over the past few weeks, since Sasuke was admitted to the Academy, Itachi has been watching his brother's habits. On this night, every week, he is late getting home because of shuriken practice.
If Sasuke runs true to form, he won't be home yet. He'll still be in the Academy courtyard, mutilating a wooden post with shuriken.
But Itachi has been wrong before, and what he fears—more than anything—is that he is wrong tonight.
One minute.
Itachi pictures what will happen.
The first one will slip away quietly, killed in his sleep with the soft flick of a blade. The partner won't wake up, and she's next. Then the children. They will be smothered instead of gored, gently, so they don't feel any pain.
Then the next house, and the next.
Some will wake up, a panic will rise, but Itachi will cut them down like cattle to be culled before they can ever scream warnings and anguish to the unfeeling night.
They will fall. They will all fall.
When he finally reaches his home, the household servants will die first. Their throats will be slit so they can not alert the master and mistress of the house.
His father he will kill before his mother. He will stab him through the heart. Uchiha Mikoto will die at the edge of her son's sword, staring into his eyes until the last, until her head flies from her body.
And if Sasuke's there…
Itachi winces and grasps his head. His skull feels as though he's been swatted with a war club; his stomach churns, and he's almost nauseous. A few disjointed words flash through his mind…Brother…Sensory overload…Pain…Anger…Sorrow…Love…Otouto…
He will not commit that last act. Sasuke will not die on this night. This much Itachi is sure of. Even if it has been ordered, he will not do it. His honor, his pride, his life can be bartered away by glassy-eyed old jonin with God Complexes like cattle at market, but familial love, the love of one smaller than himself is so ingrained in the fibers of his being that if they opened him up to steal it too they'd never find it.
Sasuke shall live. And if they attempt to tell me otherwise, they will know pain. Then they will die.
Zero minutes. Time has run out for Itachi.
Itachi's breathing evens out; his pulse slows; his stomach settles. Poison ice settles in his veins and in his Sharingan eyes, burning out sensation and emotion. He has become in this moment what he was never able to be, the perfect soldier, able to kill without mercy or discrimination.
He sweeps down from his hidden perch, and catlike slides through streets to the first house.
It has begun.