Disclaimer: DNON
Itachi hasn't always been a shinobi. No one has, however much they may try to claim otherwise.
There had been a time in his life when he was little more than a boy from the esteemed Uchiha clan. That time lasted for the first two years of his life. His earliest memory is of seeing a shuriken stuck in one of the trees in the garden; it had probably gone astray during someone's target practice as weapons were not allowed within the inner compound where he lived. At first, he doesn't want to pull it out of the tree—his mother has made it clear that he is not to go near his father's shinobi weapons—but he sees no one around and soon finds himself aiming and then throwing it.
The dragonfly has no idea what hits it and finds itself stuck to one of the wooden pillars supporting the roof of the porch.
His next memory is of seeing his father standing not a yard away from the pinned dragonfly, a look of amazement on his usually stern face.
He is four years old.
Prior to then, death has never really bothered him. It is something that happens to the weak, to those who deserve it. Blood is a regular sight, nothing to get worked up over; blood only means you were stupid enough to get injured.
But when Itachi sees Shisui and his father stagger toward him, covered in blood and peppered with senbon and kunais and shuriken, suddenly blood becomes a harbinger of death.
He watches Shisui's father die that day, coughing up blood and oozing it from the various wounds over his body.
His mother has steadily been growing larger with what his father informs him several times a day is to be his younger sibling. She is chopping vegetables for dinner while Itachi sits at the table and reads a manual on how to sharpen different weapons effectively, when she doubles over in pain and water suddenly rushes from beneath her dress.
Hours later, he is standing straight-backed near the door to his parents' room, and is listening to his mother scream in pain (she never screamed when she accidentally broke her arm, she never screamed when a kunai went astray and hit her in the calf) and then he hears the wailing of a baby.
His father opens the door to find his now-eldest child shaking badly.
The first time Itachi feels love is when his little brother hugs him, ignoring the grime on his clothes and the stench of mud and death and blood he has brought with him.
That, he decides, that is love.
His father always tells him "That's my boy" and he realizes just how much he hates to hear those words leave his father's mouth.
His little brother, on the other hand, craves to hear those words and strives to earn them in everything he does. And never hears them.
Isn't Sasuke your boy too, Otou-san?
His little brother trails after him when he is home and not doing a mission. It is endearing to see the small, slightly chubby child (that some call his small clone) walking in his shadow, a look of determination on his face as he focuses on stepping exactly in his footprints.
He wonders if Sasuke will always want to follow in his footsteps.
Sasuke is always after his time and attention, and Itachi finds that he does not mind helping him with his schoolwork, even if he is fresh from a mission and wants nothing more than a hot bath and sleep.
Soon, though, his father notices how much time they are spending together, and the hokage suddenly begins to give Itachi more missions that keep him away from home six days a week. He doesn't know why his father doesn't want him and Sasuke to spend time together, but it makes him angrier with his father than he has ever been with anyone.
He yells at his father after several months of increased missions, and receives a beating that ensures it is also the last time.
His father stops saying "That's my boy".
His father wants to be hokage and hopes Sarutobi and the council will choose him (The Uchiha have never been anything but the police force, he overhears the advisor named Homura say, and they will never be anything else). Sarutobi tells his father (politely, but not nearly enough so) that he will not be chosen as he is needed on the force. He and his father agree (but not aloud nor to each other) that as long as the council is in charge, no Uchiha will ever be hokage.
Not long after that, his father begins holding clan meetings that soon turn traitorous.
If the council will not let an Uchiha become hokage, then the Uchiha will make it happen on their own through war.
He joins ANBU at age 12 because his father tells him to (Damn it, listen to me for once, Itachi!). He hates spying on the village for his family. He knows they are only using him to gather enough information to start yet another (awful, horrible) war that will only bring about more (senseless, horrifying) death and destruction.
The hokage asks him to keep an eye on his (damned) family in turn, not knowing that he is his family's spy, and Itachi wonders which side he should choose.
He feels like he is going to split in two.
Shisui is suspicious of him, and Itachi knows that the mission he has been given by the hokage is affecting his everyday behavior. When Shisui confronts him on the banks of the Nakano river, Itachi has no choice but to kill his best friend to keep the secret from getting out.
He cries tears of blood that night.
He loves his little brother so much, he would gladly sacrifice the clan to save him from the horrors of war (but not of death or blood).
He is crying the entire time he kills his family, but he wipes the tears away before Sasuke sees them. Sasuke must believe he hates him. Sasuke must hate him. He must kill him so Itachi can gain redemption.
He realizes later that he has become a monster in his brother's and all the hidden villages' eyes.
And it wasn't even by choice.
He leaves the village covered in blood (his blood, his family's blood), and it is not long after that a man with blue skin and gills on his face approaches him.
He joins the organization called Akatsuki, and it becomes his new family.
But Konoha will always be his home, and he will protect that home in any way he can. Including passing information on Akatsuki to Konoha through one of the Great Three.
When Sarutobi dies, Itachi knows the elders will try to find a way to kill his brother. They think he knew about the traitorous plot the Uchiha clan had concocted. If he does not find a way to stop them, Sasuke will not live to see another month.
Akatsuki wants the tailed beasts. Leader orders him and his partner (the blue-skinned man named Kisame) to bring the boy acting as the container for the nine-tailed fox to him.
Through this mission, he finds a way to remind the elders that there is yet someone alive who knows the truth about the massacre of the Uchihas. He uses his eyes as an excuse to put off taking the nine-tails for several days, but he knows Leader will expect him and Kisame to resume their hunt in a timely manner or face the consequences.
He meets his little brother again the day they finally find the boy who holds the nine-tails (What were his parents thinking, naming him Naruto—a fish pasty?). Sasuke has been consumed with hatred for him, as he had hoped (Did he really?). For a moment, he sees a chubby child chasing after him, trying to be stealthy and failing miserably. He sees himself poke that same chubby child on the forehead (Sorry, Sasuke, maybe next time.).
Will there ever be a next time?
He is no longer Sasuke's loving older brother, and Sasuke is no longer his sweet little brother.
Sasuke tries and fails to kill him, and Itachi reminds him of the night of the massacre and of what he is now. He forces him to relive that night (Sorry, little brother. Sorry.).
He hates Sasuke's screams of despair. They ring in his ears for hours afterward.
He and Kisame are forced to leave the nine-tails container and his little brother; the man traveling with the container is too much to handle at the moment.
Leader is not pleased with their failure.
He lives in a world that is colored the red of blood.
It has been so long since he has seen other colors that he has forgotten them.
His eyes are red all the time. He doesn't want to see his mother's eyes in his face. They accuse him all the time (How could you, Itachi? Your family! Your little brother! You're a traitor, a traitor!).
He breaks every mirror in the base after that last meeting with his brother.
He meets the Kyuubi container again while Akatsuki sucks the very life out of someone the boy calls 'friend'.
What are friends but people who will eventually betray you? He and Shisui are a perfect example of that.
He stalls the group until the extraction is finished, and tries not to injure them any more than necessary.
Yellow begins to invade his world of black and white and red.
Black, made up of all colors.
White, the absence of color.
Red, made of blood and death.
And now yellow, the color of sunshine, and daisies, and Uzumaki Naruto (a fish pasty).
He steals him from under his teammates' noses while they're on a mission and places his teammates in a genjutsu that will last for a week.
By the time his absence is discovered, it is too late.
Uzumaki Naruto is dead. He has just killed a friend, and a husband.
Uzumaki Hinata finds him a month later and joins her husband in the next life.
Itachi cries tears of blood that night.
Sasuke finds him a week after Pein started creating his 'perfect world'. The one without pain.
Itachi knows there can be no life without pain, but he doesn't tell the Akatsuki leader this, and just after the destruction of the final hidden village, Pein implodes and the nine bijuu turn into dust with their host (A bang, as Deidara would say).
Sasuke's eyes are not the same as his and he is glad that his little brother diverged from his footsteps, if only by that much.
And just when Sasuke is about to deal him the final blow, he falters and falls to his knees, crying.
The last thing Sasuke sees before his eyes are plucked out of their sockets is Itachi crying blood (Foolish otouto. Why did you hesitate? You were supposed to be my redemption.).
His disease is progressing rapidly.
He knows he will probably die soon, and he knows that he will die nameless, in a town that is not his home, surrounded by strangers he has never met.
And he's okay with that.
Because it's all a family-killing monster like him deserves.
Why had he drawn out his fight with Sasuke?
If he hadn't, maybe, just maybe, Sasuke would have been able to kill him.
But he'd seen it in Sasuke's eyes: Sasuke no more wanted to kill the older brother he'd idolized so long than Itachi had wanted to kill his family.
So he had chosen to save himself. (Coward, coward, coward. Unable to face death even at the last)
He decides to go south to the coast. The ocean has always had a special pull on him, and he wants to die somewhere that will make him feel at peace.
And it is on his way to die that a blur of pink flashes into his life.
And it is for that blur of pink that he feels love for the second time.
A/N: It's kind of a prequel/companion to Monsters. :) I really wanted to do something with Itachi and how he must have been feeling the whole time he was living in Konoha and even after he left.
I wanted to make it longer but I kind of like it like this. Anyway, I also want to do a chapter for Sakura and some of her precious people, and Sasuke.
Read and Review! And don't forget to check out Monsters! And if you're reading this because of Monsters, be sure to tell me what you think!