"You were like brothers."
That sentence echoes in Itachi's mind as he ploughs through the Uchiha region of Konoha. Shisui. One of the few competent individuals in the Uchiha clan, all gone. Dead, like his Aunt Shizu in just a little while, when her old heart stops fervently pumping the warm blood, spilling it out on the street.
It had been for power and now it was a test of that power, he told himself, but he knew it wasn't entirely true even as he sidestepped the growing puddle underneath his second cousin's cradle. So much blood for such a little body…
The first murder had been on a whim. The thought had always been there. Not always as in ever present, he hoped the mother knew as she practically threw herself onto his blade, but an ever reoccurring thought.
"I could do it, if I wanted to."
But the consequences… The consequences?
There would be consequences, right cousin's husband, who was also his cousin once removed on his mother's side? Who had patted him on the back every so often and smiled and told him how amazing he was for seven years now. Surely there would be consequences? There had to be.
Itachi was leaving, no longer content with being the praised prodigy of the Uchiha clan, of Konoha. And it was destroy or be destroyed, he knew. Wasn't that what his sensei had told him? Wasn't that what he had learned well enough on his own during the war that lasted forever, but really just for a year?
Somehow murdering Shisui mattered more than mother and father, who just gave up even when he saved them for last. They should have been special, icing on the cake, scolding him at the very least, but as always… Murdering Shisui hadn't made Itachi cry and whimper and shake like he had done after his first kill, which wasn't murder because it had been an order, a mission. But Shisui's end had mattered, somehow. A stepping stone, maybe?
The doors slide open and there's… ah… one alive.
Little one, I thought you would be much later.
Maybe if he pokes his forehead, Sasuke will go back to his normal wide-eyed self? Like a little doll?
We were like brothers, Shisui, and I murdered you.
There will be consequences, because this wasn't a mission, so it's murder, not killing. The blood looks the same to him though.
Yet Itachi did wrong, and so he will be punished. Finally he will see some serious consequences for his actions, the way he hasn't done since he joined Anbu. Six years of murdering, which is killing because of a slight technicality that hardly matters to the one doing the dying, and now suddenly there will be consequences? Maybe not. Maybe they will make excuses for him again, let matters slide, and allow him to get away with doing wrong once more.
No.
There will be consequences, because Itachi makes sure of it.
Itachi looks at Sasuke and he names him.
Avenger.
Give me my rules back.
Safety, sense of reason, security. Sanity of mind. Show me right from wrong, otooto dearest. We are like brothers.
Show aniki where he went wrong, for Shisui didn't know and papa wouldn't tell.