Half:
because there is a process leading to everything, sometimes only half-completed, and because Itachi doesn't know which half of himself to listen to.
His brother is incapable of lying.
It's true, when Sasuke comes scurrying into his room in the middle of the night, retelling his nightmare of their tou-san…it's simply true, that a foul word has never escaped his lips, true that he has never known real fallacies.
It's true that Sasuke doesn't lie, because there are no lies, only truths, and because Sasuke is a child and somehow that changes everything.
Children live by different laws than adults; they tell the whole story even if it is unflattering. Children are unlike adults, who don't think twice about telling false recounts of missions to make them sound more heroic, who don't care that they are poisoning young minds everywhere.
Itachi…Itachi is not an adult. But he is not a child either.
Itachi lies, sometimes, but only in half-lies.
And, in his head, he almost believes that this is worse.
-
"What's wrong, Nii-san?" Sasuke asks, his legs dangling over the edge of the bathtub, an oozing scrape on his knee. "You look…sad." He said, wrinkling his nose.
Itachi smiles (and this is a lie, it's all a lie, going to fall apart any moment, this perfect world of Sasuke's), and takes a long glance at his brother's knee. After a while his stare moves to the tiled wall behind Sasuke, not looking him in the face, but just past, at something in the distance, unreachable.
"Nothing is wrong, Otouto." He says softly.
But, in his head, he knows otherwise.
-
Kill him, some part of himself says, kill them all. They deserve to burn, burn. Too weak!
Smiling to himself, a different sort of smile this time, he answers it. I will.
In the dark of the night, Itachi slaughters everyone but Sasuke. (And in this way, he has lied to himself.)
-
The world can be viewed in half-lies, whole lies, or the simple truth.
And, in his head, they are all exactly the same, equally as bad, equally as taxing on his wellbeing and his sanity.
Uchiha Itachi is not a liar, he is not insane, he has never killed before...none of this ever happened, none of these wrongs.
Uchiha Itachi is not a liar.
(Oh, but he is.)
Fin.
Note: Call this a continuation of "Some", a drabble I wrote a while back.