The Game
Chapter 1
The clearing was calm. Blessedly calm, after the chaos of the night. Itachi, after a moment, sat down in a tree to collect his thoughts. Nobody would discover the dead clan for another hour at least. He had some time to collect his thoughts. Figure out what he needed to do next. His superiors had made it clear that he was on his own from this point on. On the run. Without orders. Without structure. It made him feel somewhat… lost.
A missing-nin…Itachi's hands shook slightly as he slowly untied the headband protecting his forehead. He held it in his lap, face-up, and stared at it. It was a symbol of his role in life, of his duty to his village. And, from now on, it was a lie.
It didn't matter that he'd been following orders. That it had been the only possible decision. He'd betrayed his family, his brother, and, because they didn't know, his village. He was no longer fit to wear the symbol of Konoha.
He lifted it. Made to throw it away, but stopped. He couldn't do it. Couldn't bring himself to do it. So he compromised. With an ever-ready kunai, he mimicked an old tradition he'd learned to look for from the Bingo book and slashed a deep cut through the Konoha leaf. He supposed that would become a new symbol; of his life as a missing-nin.
Standing up, he retied the headband and returned to more practical matters. He'd lay low for a while, he decided. Then find a village somewhere far from Fire Country. With any luck he could make himself a new identity. Live as a civilian. Peacefully. If he did it well enough, nobody from Konoha would ever find him.
He'd barely decided this when he froze suddenly. Below him, staring up at the boy, was a hunter-nin. A hunter-nin he hadn't felt approach. He did the first thing instinct told him to in his exhausted and chakra-less state: bolt.
A few branches later, a sandaled foot shot out and hit him in the chest. The force had him tumbling out of the tree, only to be brought up short by a hand on his ankle. For a second he mused about how brief his stint as a missing-nin had been. Then the hunter-nin raised him to face-level. Or at least chest level. Itachi was upside down, after all. It took a moment for the Uchiha to realize that he was not looking at a Konoha-nin and, at this particular point in time, only Konoha knew of his "betrayal". They stared at each other for a while.
"Nice weather."