Yeah, I know I said I would never write another fanfic, but I couldn't help it. This story just threw itself over me and I couldn't resist. It seduced me XD. Sorry to those who read my DN-stories, this is Naruto, of all things :P! But it does contain the single best thing in Naruto – Itachi XD! Well, sorry about that, but I am a fangirl...

To those who have never read my stories before, English is not my first language and I apologize for any spelling or grammar errors I may have committed.

Disclaimer: Do I seem successful? Is Itachi alive? No, I did not think so. Therefor, I do not own Naruto.

Warnings: AU. Has some vaguely described cousin on cousin yaoi :P! May also be a little tragic T/.\T! Has character death because that's the way I do things...

Dear Itachi

You must remember this. Remember these hands, now when they are scarred and bloody, bruised and broken, that they once held your baby brother, that they once touched your cousin. They were once soft, and clean, and you were once complete.

Even if you do not understand how this could happen, you are pretty sure you know why. When Konoha was under attack you, who had sworn never to take a life, went to war. After the first war you saw, this is the last thing that you ever wanted, but you did it anyway. You did this because it was the only way you would be able to protect your brother, your cousin and your village. You could not have run away with Sasuke (you are not sure you would have, even if you could) because not only Konoha but the world was at war at this time. It still is.

You only wanted to protect, but sometimes, protect will turn out to be the same as kill. If you do not kill you get killed, and then there is no one left to do the protecting.

Then again, that is just a bad excuse.

But as often as you can, instead of killing you will incapacitate them. You are good enough at anatomy to make sure they cannot fight anymore without killing them. However, that does not always work out either. To leave enemies alive behind you is not popular among your fellow shinobi. More often than not, if they notice what you are doing, they will kill your enemy for you.

And of course, if you are at the battlefield and your enemy falls, he will most likely get trampled to death anyway, and the merciful thing is to end his life, not to let him suffer.

It reminds you of the man from Suna. He was an enemy but not your enemy. Someone had fought him and left him and you found him. It felt like you were the only two people on that battlefield left alive.

He was screaming and screaming, bleeding and bleeding, and you knew that he was dying. You could tell from his face, drained of all colour, from his voice, because it was fading, ever fading. You could tell from the amount of dark red blood on the green spring grass.

No medic nin nearby, at least not from his side, and you could not use sharingan anymore because you had exhausted nearly all of your chakra. That battle had lasted for three days and you had been on active duty from day one.

That is why you took a kunai from the ground, held his hand ever so gently, and cut his throat.

Can you kill with mercy?

If your brother was dying, could you kill with love?

But no, you cannot think that way. Never.

Sasuke is your reason. Above all else, your human reason. Not your ideological reason, not peace or the village, but the one you can speak to, the one you can hug.

The one you must remember.

Dear Itachi

You must remember that your hands could once talk. With Shisui, when you could not find the words or when you did not need them, when your lips and your tongue were to busy tasting him.

It was too weird what happened between you. You were not very used to human contact, and you certainly did not know anything about love, or lust for that matter. So you let your hands do the talking, you communicated by touching that cold skin, by holding, by gripping, by feeling.

You were to embarrassed to say anything, too uncertain, and some things will lose their meaning if they are bound by words. Some things you feel cannot, maybe should not, be described. They go too deep, they are too strong. Fundamental.

Like if you would say that you loved Shisui, that you love Sasuke, it would never be enough. Of course you love them in different ways, but you love both just as much and that is more than words can ever hope to express.

Or is it possible that you love Sasuke a little more? Because he is purer than Shisui, because a brother is close in another way than a lover?

You are not sure, but you know this: Shisui is dead and you are alive. You do not know if you could survive losing Sasuke.

Even if words cannot describe everything, it is what you must use right now, because you cannot touch anyone out here. The cold is chilling you to the bone on these scornfully green plains where the battle took place today and your hands are covered in blood and mud and they keep shaking.

They no longer have a language.

They are just a weapon.

Dear Itachi

You must remember Shisui. Not how cruel he became for the sake of your clan, how merciless. Not the attack on the Uchiha's living quarters, when he stood side by side with you and laughed as he slaughtered the enemy, laughed and laughed until you were afraid he had lost his sanity and never would regain it. You shall not remember how you started pulling away from his touch, as it became more and more impatient, and uncomfortable. Like violence was what those hands knew, and violence only.

And you shall most definitely never let your clearest memory of Shisui be the one where he died.

It was in the woods outside Konoha, where you used to train, where you because of some cruel irony that you do not understand used to meet your cousin. It was your secret place, where you could kiss just for the thrill of it, where he would hold you after you had made sure there was no one else around.

It was summer and the leaves on the huge trees were no longer bright but dark green, the seasons had changed without caring for the war as they always did, and you had not even noticed. You were on your way back with Shisui and the other few survivors after a mission behind enemy lines gone terribly wrong. You were very dizzy and could only barely walk on your own, after sharingan overuse, and a lack of food and clean water and sleep.

These things are still lacking. The sad fact is, the only things no one ever seems to lack are enemies, and friends to bury.

Shisui was in a similar state as you, no, worse off because you sometimes had to support him. He had been forced to use his mind technique on a whole army of Mizu shinobi to convince them you were not their enemies.

You heard the enemy before you saw them, and this is the worst, the absolute worst, because it means you could have escaped and he could have lived. But one of the other shinobi on your side charged straight at them, and you know that Shisui never would have agreed to escape anyway.

You did not want to fight, did you ever? But this was far past the time when you had a choice. Some people would say you always have a choice. Some people have not seen a war.

You followed the others and the enemy turned out to be sex men with orange hair, dressed in the cloaks of the criminal organization Akatsuki, claiming that they had come for the Jinchuuriki.

You had no chance.

The fight was short but bloody. You cannot recall much of it, except the ending.

You know when Shisui fell, impaled through the heart by one of the six, that you asked the strange men why and one told you it was for peace, like a joke, just like you. Your ideology, a joke, a grim joke.

This is reality.

But no, there is hope, there is always hope. Nothing is meaningless, doubt that and you will have to give up.

The time Shisui died was the closest you have ever come to giving up, because watching him lie on the ground, bleeding, already dead (you never got that chance to say goodbye you always thought you would get, there was no closure), you simply could not remember why you were fighting. Was there a reason? Had there ever been?

But before the realization that he really was dead had dawned on you, you still had some defiance left in you. You remember telling the man from Akatsuki that this was not peace, this could never be peace. True peace is not bloody. It is pure.

To fight for peace is like trying to calm someone with a knife at their throat.

The man asked you, then, what you were doing there at all. And the only answer you could give was: protection and peace is not the same thing.

Of some reason that you still are not sure you can understand, the man let you live. But by the time he disappeared, leaving you the only one alive, you barely noticed and you certainly did not care.

By that time, you were at Shisui's side, feeling so awfully cold, waiting for tears that had frozen behind your eyelids, waiting for the darkness to save you, waiting for him to wake up, or for you to wake up, or for the end of the world if this was reality.

You remember this so clearly. The sunshine through the leaves, painting the glade in light and shadow, the clear red stains on the ground that was the blood of your fallen comrades, the impenetrable black of Shisui's curly hair, untouched by the sun. The birds were singing, insects was buzzing through the grass, and the sky was the light blue of childhood, of innocence.

Ever since, summer days like that one will kill you.

It truly was a mockery, a grim, grim joke. Like the entire war, so meaningless, so pointlessly cruel, so utterly stupid you would almost want to laugh but will most likely end up on the verge of tears instead.

You knew that the Jinchuuriki was not left in Konoha, they were hiding him on another location for the moment, and you knew you could not fight anymore and that the clan would make sure Sasuke was safe among with the other Uchiha children, because they were seen as valuable.

Therefore, you spent that day and the following night digging.

You buried your comrades, paid your respects to them, and at last, you buried Shisui. It was the strangest thing, to lift his stale, cold body, to dump it into a hole in the ground with one last kiss on his forehead. A dead body is not like a person, it is a thing. Without life, it is really nothing.

At the same time, the memory still keeps it alive.

When he was safe in the hole that was his grave, almost back to the earth, you took your traveling cloak and covered his limp body and his white, relaxed face as best as you could. It was too hard to throw earth over those hands, that chest, those lips, that hair while you could still see them.

You fell asleep on that grave when you were done, and though you know it should not be it has since then been your clearest memory of Shisui.

You gained the Mangekyou sharingan, and the enemy did not find the Jinchuuriki, but at the time, it did not matter.

Winning never happens in war. It is only about losing, and surviving.

Dear Itachi

You must remember the rain.

When you stand on the top of a mountain, alone, the rain will calm you, the rain will wash away everything. It is autumn, in the fifth year of this never-ceasing war, the leaves are falling, the sun is fading and in the rain, for just a moment, there is peace.

You have never felt so sincere, so frail, or so strong.

For the first time in those five years, you smile.

Maybe there is no killing for land and for power. Maybe there is no vengeance, no blood.

Perhaps this has all been a dream, a nightmare, and your cousin is alive, and your brother can still laugh. Maybe there is no pain, tearing your body apart from the inside, no illness making each step hurt and each breath harder.

Your village are not plagued by disease, and hunger and betrayal. They do not torture people at night so you cannot sleep because of their screams, and your own clan is not a bunch of war-loving, power-hungry fascists who revel in the bloodshed.

Maybe there has never been a war.

The rain is necessary. It gives life. Just like everything that dies in the autumn will be born again in the spring, maybe the rain can finally wash the blood off your hands, can give you back your dreams, and your hopes, and your future.

Everything the war has devoted the last five years to wearing down, you may have it back.

It is really ridiculous to hope for that much from such a simple and natural phenomenon as rain, but when it has gone, you may be reborn.

Dear Itachi

You must remember that you once had eyes that could see. The beginning of the sixth year of the war, after an excessive overuse of the Mangekyou sharingan, your eyesight is steadily getting worse. Even now, you almost have to lean so close to the paper that your nose is touching it to see what you are writing.

Your eyes are hurting. Sometimes at night, you wake up because they bleed.

However, that was of little consequence the day Hatake Kakashi, the leader of the team your brother is a member of, came to you with a warning.

They were sending Sasuke out to fight.

At once, you were so terribly scared. You wanted to sit down and cry, and scream, or just run away, bringing your little brother, and never look back.

Of course, you did neither. You thanked the man, and he smiled this sad smile (only with his eye, because you could not see his mouth, but you were pretty sure it was a smile) and wished you good luck.

You remember hearing that this man had also had the Jinchuuriki of the Kyuubi on his team, before they took the Jinchuuriki away to train him to become a more effective weapon.

This was because after the third hokage died in battle, Shimura Danzo was elected fifth hokage. And Danzo, believing in might, decided that the ever-growing threat of the Akatsuki should be taken care of with the strongest weapon Konoha had.

The training of the Jinchuuriki was no doubt cruel, and inhuman, but no one had been able to stop it. The Jinchuuriki's other teacher, Jiraya of the Sannin, had already perished at the hands of those six men with orange hair, that you now knew were called Pain, and Hatake Kakashi did not have enough influence.

So maybe you knew why the man wanted to save your brother, and why he smiled so sadly.

Well, this is what you realized afterwards. At the time, the only one you could think about was Sasuke.

You went to the Uchiha's living quarters the fastest you could, luckily not having to rely on your eyes that much because you knew the way. Only a few people knew of the trouble with your eyes, because you relied mostly on sound instead, or memory and lightning fast reflexes.

You found your father at the house that used to be your home, even though his face had become blurry for you you could clearly make out and recognize his chakra.

He was seated by the table, working with something could not see but from the sound of it, it was paper.

"I have not seen you in this house for a very long time, Itachi," your father said, voice hard, "But I think I know why you're here, and it's not to prove your loyalty to the clan."

"Why Sasuke?" you said simply, ignoring his comments.

"Why? Because Sasuke is an Uchiha, and an undeniably talented one at that. Because the hokage and the clan demands it, and because whatever you may think about it, he is no longer a child."

You clenched your hands until it hurt but let none of the tension be evident on your face or in your voice.

"You cannot do that."

You could barely make out your father shaking his head.

"Itachi," he sighed, almost sounding sad. Or maybe just tired. "You were once the best, but look at you now. These dreams, these ideologies of yours have twisted your head. You're out of your mind! I don't have time for you anymore. You are no hope for our clan or for Konoha. Sasuke is better. He wants to become strong, and I am sure he will be."

"Not if you force him into a battle he is not ready for! You will..."

"I will not let a good shinobi waste his talent doing nothing!"

"You will not kill my brother!"

At those last desperate words you felt that there was another presence in the room.

Sasuke's chakra. Why did you not notice it before?

You turned around. It had been a long time since you had spoken to your brother. No time, and fear for what the war had done to him, or you both.

Naturally you cannot see him very clearly but you know he has gotten taller. Boys in his age grow up very quickly.

"Itachi," he said and his tone was angry, hurt. Like you betrayed him.

"Do you really wish to fight, Sasuke?" you asked him.

"Of course I do!" he snapped. "What? You're afraid I'm gonna steal some of your glory?"

And you could see it all clearly. An inexperienced boy, only thirteen, trying to live up to the hopes of his father, dying to be better than you. A boy that you could never stop because no one was forcing him to go to war, he was fooled into thinking he wanted it.

"Sasuke," you said, and you felt numb, hollow. "There is no glory."

Dear Itachi

You must always remember that your brother was once alive. Once a baby screaming once a child playing once a teen training once something else something else

no no please

this is too much

you never wanted this

You should have protected him.

Sasuke, why did it stop?

Always remember that he could smile that he was here. I hope he never doubted that I loved him.

Please, your hands, your eyes, the rain. You could lose it all again if only you could keep him.

Please.

Shisui is gone, and your family. You are gone, you went with Sasuke. But if it hurts, if it is hopeless, you will always hope for the war to end. Because you loved your brother, and you cannot let that love go to waste.

Black, black eyes will never close, smile will never falter, voice will never fade. Your brother will never die because he once lived.

He once lived.

Never forget.

Well, that was depressing... The last letter was a bit confusing because I guess Itachi was a bit confused..? Please leave me a review:)!