RECENT MANGA SPOILERS
Sasuke saves his brother and himself and goes home with the winnings.
Hollow Men
Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us—if at all—not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.
The Hollow Men - T. S. Eliot
He returns home not slowly or with difficulty. Uchiha Itachi's return is brokered within an hour, commences as fast as his brother's legs can carry him, and ends immediately in the hospital, where he proceeds to occupy his own room and the Hokage's full attention for the better part of a month.
Thereafter his condition stabilizes, eyesight, such as it is, returns. He is released to the interrogation rooms where he spends days going over everything he remembers of his life. He sleeps little, eats virtually nothing. But he is a good soldier and as all good soldiers knows that the hardest part is not the mission but the debriefing.
Tsunade-sama (he has trouble calling her Hokage, at least in his mind) tells him that they need intelligence on Akatsuki, and beyond that someone to act on this intelligence. The outcry of an entire village raised on tales of Uchiha Itachi, Mass Murderer is silenced in favour of one Chuunin team that wants its third member back and said member, who refuses to leave his brother.
Itachi tells Tsunade-sama that he is hers to command.
The first thing she asks for is his honesty. He tells her that the elders of the village bear watching, and that he can feel, even here, Uchiha Madare's eyes settled on him. These things are not such news, but they worry her. She asks about Madare.
Madare's strength is the strength of old mountains. Worn, certainly, but too slowly for a mortal eye to catch. Itachi tells her this but gently (he is remembering gentleness as from somewhere far away).
About the elders they do not act immediately. It is decided to announce that the third Hokage was the exclusive mind behind Itachi's mission, at least at present, because they cannot afford a civil war now. This the elders accept, because Itachi had been really a very young boy when this had all taken place, and it is not hard to believe that most of his thinking was handled either by them or the Third, and that he knew nothing of anything except the ANBU commander (long dead) who had given him a sealed scroll with his last instructions.
If it tarnishes Sandaime's reputation, this is soothed by his disciple and Itachi himself, who announces painfully that genocide was inevitable.
He wishes he were dead, but privately. Sasuke's eyes are on him, and he knows that his brother's faith in this village is resting squarely on his shoulders. He does his best not to destroy this thing that he has struggled to protect now that he is so close to finally being finished.
Akatsuki is hunted down. Itachi goes and kills Konan, who had given him a paper flower when he was fourteen. It is not an easy kill but he is supported by his brother and team. He feels filthy afterwards—even this fake alliance of his has been broken now, but he keeps going. Luckily, most of those he knows are already dead, and Tsunade has enough tact to let him avoid confronting Kisame. He destroys Zetsu who never so much as spoke an impolite word to him instead.
Then he returns to the village to rest. His health is failing, he is falling apart, and there is still Madare looming on the horizon Itachi can barely see. Sasuke needs his eyes, really, needs to murder him finally and get his Mangekyou, but there's a bit more usefulness that can be squeezed from him first, and Sasuke doesn't want to hear about that anyway. He labours under the cultivated illusion that Itachi's life has a future.
Itachi is not blinded by such things, and so he confronts Madare while Uzumaki Naruto and his team are handling Pein.
The single eye behind the mask is accusatory. Madare says that he knew this was coming. He is surprised that Itachi can bear going back to the village though. Itachi, who is beginning to realize how completely he's been played and how inconsequential his mission against Madare has been, replies only that he is a good soldier, and as such follows orders.
Madare says that he does not need to anymore. He can leave and rest and the world will take care of itself. And even if things go badly, Itachi does not need to know it. He can go somewhere where these things do not matter. Strangely enough he is the first and only person who has ever suggested that Itachi might want or need anything.
Itachi says that he is a good soldier, and as such is supposed to stay his course until death. Then he attacks, because there's nothing to say and Madare's eyes are giving him a headache anyway.
He's defeated, but gently. Madare's strength is the strength of the far-away ocean. It washes over him and keeps him still through its sheer, suffocating pressure. At fourteen he would have been able to die quickly. At sixteen he might even have made Madare miserable. At twenty two he makes Madare give him a sad, pitying look, and say that had things gone differently, they would have been great friends. Uchiha Madare was very proud to know Uchiha Itachi.
This is the last nail in the coffin of his self-possession, but that is irrelevant, as it also nails the small, black box of his life shut.
END
A/N: I don't quite like the last line. I like the idea but the wording is off. Comment please.
Other thing is how I see this being set up… not easily. I suppose Sasuke is approached by Madare first to prevent his fight with Itachi, and thereafter acts accordingly. I'm not even sure if he'd do something like this to start with, but I guess he might. It is hard to tell what one would do in that situation.
As for the poem, one of my absolute favourites and strangely appropriate here.
Suggestion: after reading the story read the poem again. It is worth reading and for me it was quite a good experience.