Judgment Day
A/N: Once again, my laptop is a whore. Slightly more 'cest-ish - just close one eye and look at it upside down...
He's smiling.
I wanted to see….I asked Madara for the body. I wanted to see if he was still crying tears of blood.
He was, but his corpse is smiling. Itachi's empty, half-lidded eyes stare at nothing and blood has dried on his cheeks and hands.
But he's smiling.
His last smile, one he'll be wearing for the rest of eternity now. It makes me feel hollow in my own skin - the way thinking of team seven makes me feel. I want to keep looking at his face - keep pretending we can smile - but Madara said that eventually I will have to bury the body of my older brother.
"I had to bury my own Izuna." he said solemnly. "I'll leave you to do that on your own."
I didn't bother with cleaning him up or putting him into nice clothes - most shinobi don't want that anyway.
I dug him a shallow grave and tried to tell myself that it was a corpse - only a corpse. One that has been left to rot for three days, at that. My ribs and shoulder were burning by the time I finished digging. So did my eyes.
I stared down at the empty, vaguely human-sized hole, then at the body of Itachi and for a moment, I almost lost my nerve. My eyes stung and overflowed.
I wanted to keep that smile in my memory. The act of killing him had soothed the conscience - both his and mine. But what did that leave me with - what? A dead body who smiled at me and a broken heart?
I bit my bottom lip to stop from screaming out in furious rage at him for leaving me this way - in which the guilt was on my shoulders and the blood on my hands. The skin broke and bled as I threw his body into the hole. My eyes were blurred with tears but I heard the dull 'thump' of it going in and then a sickening crack.
I was certain that I broke his skull, but I didn't want to look. I didn't dare - if I did, that would be the only thing I would remember and I wanted to keep that gentle smile. I shoved the dirt over Itachi's body with eyes tightly closed.
Yes, I knew I'd cracked open my dead brother's skull, but that didn't mean I was ready to take responsibility for it yet - that I was ready to own it. I was barely ready to own his death and that was without the fresh pain of this new information running through my mind.
The blood of my lips dripped down, soaking the black soil.
It never occurred to me to question why he'd done all these things for my sake.
After all, I thought, staring dully at the hard-packed earth below me, where my brother's body laid beneath. Who am I to question the will of angels - especially the darkest of them all?