(AN: My first upload in a very long time. I must say, I think it's muuuuuch more sophisticated in comparison to my older works. Nonetheless, I will make the point that I have written from Madara's POV with the intention to present him as Tobi (in line with the Tobi=Madara theory.) Please review if you have the time, I love feedback.)

Witness

It was all that I could do. My descendants crumbled before me, immersed in their foolish ideals and longing for past glory that I, no doubt, knew much better than they did, was long gone. They had been such fools to betray me before, and now it all had come to this. With my loss to Harashima, the linage fell to become a mere shadow of what it once was. A simple police force that the elders could babysit to be sure that no ambitions arose from the ashes of our past. Oh, how my legacy died that night, by the hands of a mere child, an extreme pacifist.

Despite that, in those crimson eyes, wet with the unshed tears of grief brought by the blood of his mother and father upon his very hands, I could see my long gone youth.

This was my dear descendant, my little Itachi.

I had watched the little prodigy for quite some time. It was like seeing my childhood dance again before my eyes. His physical gifts were all aids of war, and possibly for him a means of great emotional pain, for who indeed would want the ability to kill when their heart obviously bled and pleaded for peace?

I wondered what this child would do.

I waited.

I watched.

So cleverly he led his family along. Just as I had once done. He then destroyed them, all but one. Whether this was his own weakness or part of the plan, I would not find until much later. He could not kill his precious younger brother, who that night gazed upon him with wide and fearful eyes, the same color as his own. He spared him and left, before his tears fell, before his façade, his heart, broke before him.

I finally found Itachi then. We met outside the village, where he had hidden himself away from those who might pursue him. I remember the look in his eyes to this day: darkness and the overwhelming confliction of murder upon the hands of a pacifist, threatening to slowly consume him. This, I thought, and I knew, I could never forget. In that moment, where he had remained under the shelter of an oak, gazing up at me like that, still clothed in his stained uniform, now wet with the fresh rainwater that had just fallen, he had been so ethereally beautiful.

He did know me. That made itself apparent in the way that he immediately shunned my presence. I knew he and his bruised heart would initially reject me. I explained to him my simple desire now, which was to see what course of action he would now take.

Then there was a soft chuckle from his lips. It seemed to reflect a contempt for me. The statement that followed was dully spiteful. It demeaned the decades of familial pride and bloody dreams of retribution. It went against all I had once believed in.

"I will die."

At such a statement, I could only shake my head. In what way would he die? It seemed there was still much to watch. The story was not yet over.

My Itachi became a hero in the guise of a traitor, and through the many years I watched him. Slowly, it all came together, the intricate web of his innermost thoughts. I would watch him from afar, and when he felt need to call out my presence, I appeared to him. Sometimes he would speak to me. Most times not at all. Sometimes he simply did not have to express himself. I could read his eyes. Those lips had no need to part for me to understand him.

Only I knew Itachi like this. It was more intimately than anyone could know him.

It was I who wiped his lips when the blood of corrosive disease spilled out from his clenched teeth. He did not deny me. He knew it was pointless to try. He knew he was mine now, until he died. He belonged to myself and his final ambitions, which drew closer to him with each bloody cough and wheeze.

By that time, his dear little brother had grown up into a little traitor, just like Itachi himself. Fed on careful lies, he reached to grasp revenge.

And I knew.

Even before Itachi had turned to me with a wistful smile I had become so familiar to

I knew.

His lips parted, and his eyes closed as he spoke, his words like a lover's promise.

"I will die."

I had known. And in knowing, I approached him. Everything was so clear to me now. He was silent now, and did not stop my advance upon him. I came to rest my hands upon his soft, young face. Twenty-one, but life had come too soon to steal his innocence. Those crimson eyes did not even open to gaze back.

I closed our distance, and for the first time, placed my lips upon his.

There was no taste, and only the softest feeling of his lips. So light, I may as well have just kissed the air. But it did for a moment linger. As I slid away from him, his eyes opened again. Not a word was spoken.

And that was enough.

Days later, I watched my Itachi expire. He drowned in the blood of his wounds and cruel disease, upon the ruins of our family and the hands of his beloved little brother. All left now was an unmoving shell, a beautiful remnant of what was once mine. His eyes remain forever half open, and he now gazes upon the sky.

I had waited.

I had watched.

Now I, upon my knees, cry.

The wistful smile remains on his lips. I dream the whisper of my name.

"Madara…"