Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto or any of its characters.

Warning: Major manga spoilers, character death.

Gazing Into the Abyss

Life after Konoha would have been a lot easier for Itachi if he had been the cold-blooded traitor everyone believed him to be.

Everything would have been a lot easier.

It would have been much simpler to kill his family if he had already hated them. Or, even better, if he had been indifferent to them, regarding them with nothing more than detached contempt. If he had already intended to kill Shisui for the power of the Mangekyou, if he had been the type of person who could have murdered his entire clan just to test out his new powers, it would have been easier to acquiesce to Danzou's orders. His throat wouldn't have closed and his eyes wouldn't have burned when he spoke the words, "I will do it." He wouldn't have had to steal medication from the medical corps's headquarters to stop his hands from shaking before embarking on the massacre.

He wouldn't have had to bite his tongue so hard it bled to keep from screaming as he cut down his mother and father.

Tears wouldn't have slid from his eyes as his brother pleaded with him to tell him why.

He wouldn't have collapsed to his knees in the woods just beyond the Land of Fire's border and released a howl of grief and misery that scared a flurry of birds from their roosting places in nearby trees.

If he had really been the monster everyone believed him to be, joining Akatsuki would have been easier.

During the massacre, he had had to ignore the part of his mind that screamed at him that this was wrong, that this was evil, that he should not be doing this. When fighting against so many shinobi of such a high skill level, even the slightest hesitation would have been deadly. So he had to clamp down on that voice, lock it away in a dark corner of his mind and pretend it didn't exist.

But he couldn't silence it entirely.

That voice continued to whisper at him on a regular basis after he became an Akatsuki member. Every time he had to stand by and watch as Pain tortured someone who dared to question his ideals. Every time Hidan's sadomasochistic laughter echoed in his ears as the immortal killed some luckless bystander who happened to cross their path. Every time Sasori injected a corpse with formaldehyde and asked Itachi's advice about what type of weapons he should incorporate when he turned it into a human puppet.

When he, himself, was ordered to assassinate a spy who had managed to infiltrate Amegakure, or to steal the secrets from some ninja stronghold and then burn the place to the ground, or to kill the family of someone who had defied Pain as a warning to others, the voice did not whisper. It shouted.

But Itachi knew that he must not listen to the voice--which, he came to realize, was simply his exhausted and long-ignored conscience. If he wavered, if he showed any hint of even possessing such a thing as a conscience, the other Akatsuki would kill him. And he couldn't allow that to happen--not for his own sake, but for Sasuke's, and for Konoha's.

So he kept the mask in place. Every time that voice began to whisper, he shoved it down, out of his conscious mind. He forced himself not to show any sign of misgiving or discomfort at the acts of torture and murder he witnessed on a daily basis. He forced his hands not to tremble at the acts of torture and murder he carried out himself.

And each time the voice spoke up, it was a little softer, a little weaker. A little closer to giving up for good.

If he had been the ruthless mass-murderer with icewater in his veins that everyone thought he was, fighting Sasuke would have been easier.

As with the Akatsuki, he knew that he had to make his pretense absolutely convincing, or all would be lost. That facade was even more crucial now. Faced with someone whose eyes could read every tiny fluctuation in his chakra, setting his face in an expression of masklike blankness would not be enough. Forcing his voice into a bored monotone would not be enough. He had to (temporarily) become what Sasuke believed he was. To fool Sasuke's Sharingan, he had to fool himself. So he gazed upon his brother with cold eyes and pretended that the boy meant nothing to him. That Sasuke was nothing more than a walking, talking incubator for his new set of eyes.

Itachi had been in physical pain for years. The power of the Mangekyou Sharingan was wondrous, but it came with a terrible price. The augmented chakra of its trio of jutsus burned through the user's chakra pathways like liquid fire, searing him from the inside out. But the pain of seeing the hatred, rage, and sheer hurt in his brother's eyes was far worse. So he did what he always did at times like this--he suppressed the pain, pretended it didn't exist.

He was frightened by how easy it was.

When he told Sasuke that he would make the illusion of stealing his eyes a reality, he found his fingers twitching as if they were actually eager to gouge out those crimson orbs. When the lightning bolt cleaved the sky, aiming for him as unerringly as a kunai, he felt a jolt of triumph as the protective shell of Susano'o formed around him. It will take more than that to kill me, foolish little brother. The pride he always pretended to feel in the powers of the Mangekyou became real for a moment, and it was slow to fade. Likewise, the horror he should have felt at the cost of those powers was far too slow to return.

And at the end, when he saw Sasuke lurch backwards in fear, hitting a wall of rock and realizing that there was nowhere else to go, part of him savored it. His bloodied fingers reached out once more, and it took a tremendous effort of will to adjust their aim slightly from Sasuke's eye to the center of his forehead. As he repeated the old gesture one more time, he felt the emotions and thoughts he'd had to suppress for so long surge to the surface. Anguish and sorrow over what he'd done, the hope that he had saved his home by doing so--and above all else, the overwhelming love for his younger brother.

I've done enough. He's strong enough. I can let go now.

I can...stop pretending.

With the last of his strength, he leaned forward and whispered in Sasuke's ear. "I'm sorry, Sasuke. This is it."

And then he smiled, because Sasuke had killed him before the voice that had begged and admonished and tormented him for years could fade away entirely. Because Sasuke had killed him while his conscience, battered and bruised though it may have been, was still intact. Because he would die before the mask he wore became his true face.

He smiled as he died because Sasuke had saved his soul.

A/N: When I was writing this, I got the idea for a rather darker (and distinctly AU) alternate ending for it. I couldn't decide whether to post two separate versions of this story, or to simply include the alternate ending as a second chapter. The alternate ending doesn't start until the final section of the fic, and I figured no one would want to read through the whole first two sections again before getting to the new material, so I'll be putting the alternate ending up as a second chapter to this story.

The title is from Nietzsche's famous quote, "When you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you."