Hi Guys. First of all, apologies. I made a mistake yesterday posting a Yugioh chapter instead of this one (thank you to for letting me know), and then it was too late and I was quite sleepy so I simply delete it. But here it is, chapter 8.

I have to warn you that my beta Caia is on holidays, so this chapter will have more mistakes than usual. I didn't want to make you wait another week to read it, not after all the wonderful reviews you left me (they cheer me up so much every time I read them!), but it's up to you to read it. Once Caia is back and I get the edited version, I'll repost this chapter again, so you might want to wait for that.

For those who want to go ahead, well, I hope you'll enjoy it!

PS? I'm definitely changing this fic's name to "Because now I know, all my roads lead to you." I'll do it in a chapter or two. Just letting everybody know to avoid confussion later.


Chapter 7

Konoha; in the Hokage's Tower…

The Hokage finished reading Jiraya's letter with a frown and a few new worry lines on his forehead. He could hardly believe it. The Sanin had failed to retrieve Naruto. Jiraya had located the boy and confronted him, and yet he had not been able to retrieve him. He assured Hiruzen that Naruto was healthy and in good spirits, but he also wrote that the boy had made his mind up and nobody would be able to persuade him otherwise. He added that it was probably in his best interested to let him be.

Best interest for whom? The Hokage wondered ironically for a minute.

These were the worst news he could have expected, and at the worst possible time too. The Chuunin exams were now in the final phase. The first combat, Nara Shikamaru versus Sabaku no Temari, had taken place that very morning with an outcome that favoured the Sand. Hyuga Neji had defeated Doso Kinuta easily after that.

While usually a victory for his village would make him joyous, this time the Hokage was finding it difficult to stop worrying long enough to celebrate it properly. Strange events had been happening in the last few weeks. Strange and dangerous. He would said it had all started with Sasuke's visit to his office and consequent desertion from the village.

In just one day, Konoha had lost two major assets: the last Uchiha and the Jinchuriki. But that had been only the beginning.

A month ago, during the second stage of the Chuunin exams, his old disciple Orochimaru had been spotted in the Forest of Death; and soon after, three genin's bodies had been found horribly mutilated. It wasn't difficult to guess a correlation between these two events, but he still didn't know what had brought Orochimaru back to Konoha, or what had made him so angry as to pay it off with three helpless children.

A week later, in the preliminary combats, everybody had been shocked when the youngest genin of the Sand, the most powerful weapon of his village, had refused to fight, giving the victory by default to a fuming Rock Lee. Hiruzen had heard enough rumours to discern that such behaviour was terribly out of character for the Sabaku no Jinchuriki. And the shock in the face of his allies had been honest, which only left him with more questions.

On top of all that, since Sasuke's and Naruto's departure, both Kakashi and Danzo hadn't stopped asking questions, if each with very different concerns in mind. He had done as much as possible to cover their desertion, making up a story about Jiraya requesting the boys for an special mission to gather information. That had finally shut them up for a while.

Of course that lie was only believable for a limited amount of time, and as long as it was Jiraya himself who brought the boys back to the village with him, effectively corroborating his story with his actions, which Hiruzen had expected him to do without too much trouble. After all, they were a pair of over confident teenagers, and he, one of the Legendary Sanin. As clever as Sasuke was, and he had indeed proved himself to be clever, he didn't stand a chance.

Obviously, the Hokage had been wrong to think so.

Naruto and Sasuke were still wandering freely, Orochimaru was hiding somewhere nearby, and the Sand was planning something. Now Jiraya had deserted him, and if Danzo found out the truth about the missing kids, Hiruzen trembled in fear imaging what he would do. It seemed as if each and every one of his biggest mistakes over the last twenty years had come back to bite him in the ass at the same time.

He wouldn't say it was undeserved, for he may very well deserve it, but in his defence he would say that he had been more than willing to pass along the Hokage's hat –and the responsibilities that came with it–, to a younger shinobi, when it became obvious that his time had passed.

Minato would've handle matters very differently, and it was very likely that under his rule events such as the Uchiha's massacre wouldn't have taken place. But Minato had died and Hiruzen had been once again the only one left fit to lead the village. That had always been his first priority. To lead and protect the village. It still was. And the village needed his jinchuriki. For the good of the village, once again Hiruzen was forced to do something he had sworn to himself he wouldn't. He would ask this man for help a second time.

He only hoped he was still loyal enough to answer his plea. Kami knew that Hiruzen wouldn't blame him if he wasn't.


Somewhere in the Land of Waterfall…

The mission was easy. The two clouded figures watched their pray from the shadows. The woman was beautiful. She had bright red hair that fell to her waist like a waterfall. Her eyes were emerald green, her lips were full, and her facial features delicate and sensual. Her laugh was soft and warm, and when she made her way around the room her movement displayed uncharacteristic grace.

She wasn't particularly tall. If anything, her height was slightly lower than average. However her waist was very slim, her breasts were big and tasteful, and her hips voluptuous, all which made her extremely pleasing to the senses. She had the face of an angel and type of body that could lead most men to madness, or redeemed a Lord his subservient slave.

Unfortunately for her, the man and his partner were far from most men. Sometimes the man wondered if they still qualified as men at all. They were killers. Murderers. And they were not deterred for something as insignificant as beauty… or clemency for an unborn baby.

Even though her body didn't show signals of it yet, the woman was pregnant. Only five or six weeks along. She was carrying a growing baby in her belly, and that baby, along with her unparalleled beauty, were the reasons the woman would die today.

Killing her was their mission, and neither the man nor his partner were men who questioned their orders.

In company of the woman there were three ladies in waiting, dressed almost as elegantly as her, if of far inferior beauty, and two samurais standing solemnly at the room's door. Those two were only a distraction though. The real security was better hidden. The man smiled to himself and shared a quick glance with his partner.

"I counted seventeen. Five in the garden, tree on the roof, four next to the entrance, two in the kitchen and three in the rooms next to her."

The younger man didn't return his gaze, his eyes fixed on the front. "Eighteen." He corrected him. "One of the ladies in waiting is a highly trained kunoichi."

The man nodded slowly, accepting his partner's words as true without a fuss. "Shall we divide them, then? Half for you and half for me?"

The man shook his head. "We'll wait until night-time. Meanwhile I'll cast a genjutsu in those outside the house."

"And then?"

"I'll dispose of the kunoichi and the target. You take care of the guards inside the house in case they realise what is happening."

"Are you sure?" For the first time, the man seemed to question the instructions of his partner. "You know I can take care of the women. It won't bother me."

"I know. But our employer ordered discretion. My jutsu is more silent than yours. If I kill them fast enough we can be out of the house before any of the guards realise what has happened."

The older man let a quiet laugh escape. "If you are sure..."

His younger partner nodded just once, not adding anything else to the matter. His face wore an emotionless, almost bored expression, his body language was calm and controlled, and his heartbeat remained constant. He had just volunteered to assassinate a pregnant woman and her protector.

If anybody else had witnessed that scene, they would think him a monster. A cruel beast with no conscience and no heart. He, however, wasn't anybody else. He had spent one too many years in the company of his partner to be fooled by the man's cold demeanour.

They waited until an hour past midnight.

The two samurais at the door had left their post, and most of the guards inside the house had retired to their quarters. The shinobis placed outside the house had doubled their number since nightfall but they were already under the effects of his partner's genjutsu. And their last obstacle, the kunoichi that guarded the woman posing as one of her ladies in waiting had finally fallen asleep in a bed near hers.

Every piece on the board was now in place. All that was left was for them to accomplish the mission.

"Are you sure?" The man asked again, before his partner could make a move towards the house. "I can still jump in there and disposed of the kunoichi and the target."

"You underestimate her." He replied. "Subtlety is not your forte. There is a big change that she will sense you coming and alert the guards."

His words, rather than offend him, amused him. "Perhaps. But it isn't as if you couldn't take them."

The younger man acknowledged his words with a small nod, but dismissed them quickly. "It may still take too long. They hired us for a quiet job. Our employer wanted to avoid a commotion."

The man did not raise another complain. Despite what people tended to think, he was smart enough to know when to leave a matter alone. And it wasn't like it was of any importance to him anyway. "As you say." He complied, reaching for the sword.

And yet, he couldn't prevent the small laugh that escaped from his lips. "You'll never change, even if it kills you." He commented amusedly. "Always trying not to waste lives, Itachi."

The mission was carefully executed afterwards, and the result was flawless. Kisame and Itachi exited the house barely two minutes after they had finished their previous conversation. Behind them, they left only one body to be found: a pregnant woman with a slit throat, murdered in her sleep.

The two men didn't congratulate each other. In silence, they resumed their march. The payment had been collected beforehand, and their employer, the wife of the dead woman's lover, had stated in very clear terms that she expected not to see them ever again, under threat of death. Her threat was meaningless, as the Akatsuki always moved on to the next target once a mission was completed

As a precaution, they jumped from tree to tree for a few hours until their target's location was left far behind them. Then they slowed their pace.

"There is a civilian village a few miles from here." Kisame broke the silence by the time sunrise was approaching. The sky was no longer dark, and the birds had started singing their melody to greet the morning. "We could stop there to catch some breakfast. Maybe some take away lunch."

Itachi seemed to consider this for a few moments; then nodded.

"Very well." He said. "But I need a few minutes first. Wait here."

He didn't wait to see if his instructions were being followed. He jumped to a tree, then another, and finally he disappeared from sight. Kisame watched him go, unperturbed, and after a few seconds sat down on the ground with his back against a tree. Itachi never made him wait too long and once he came back, they could go to the village and get a proper breakfast for a change. All in all, it was a pretty good way to start the day.

Itachi slowed his pace after a mile or so, and stopped completely next to a little stream. The water was ice cold, but it felt good against his skin. The cold was one of the few things that could still make him feel alive instead of like a walking corpse, if barely, and he appreciated the feeling.

He washed his hands and then his face thoroughly, in an effort to erase any trace of blood that might have stuck to his skin. More often than not this was an unnecessary precaution, as he had enough skill as an assassin not to get splattered with the blood of his victims, but it had become somewhat of an habit – to wash his hands and his face every time he killed someone – and it might prove useful one day.

His thoughts drifted towards his elusive partner. While he understood the reasoning behind Kisame's words and actions during their mission – volunteering himself to kill the pregnant woman so Itachi wouldn't have to live with the weight of her death on his conscience –, and even felt grateful to certain extent, such an offer had been unnecessary.

A pregnant woman was not better or worse than the rest of the people that Itachi had killed, and her death didn't trouble him particularly. He had killed many innocents before, many people who didn't deserve to die. He had killed children and he had killed babies. He had literally cut his parents' bodies in half, and had figuratively shattered his little brother's heart.

Compared to that, killing a pregnant woman was easy.

Besides, once the price had been set over her head, she was going to die anyway. Nobody could prevent that. And allowing his partner to complete the task to save himself the judgement of his conscience would've been not only useless, but cowardly as well. Itachi was many things, most of them bad, but he was not a coward.

Regardless of this, Kisame's intentions had been good. He was killer, much like Itachi himself, but he was also an honest man and he wasn't unnecessarily cruel. Itachi considered him a more honest person than any of his old ANBU comrades in the village had been. The irony of this fact didn't escape him.

But this train of thought was useless – seeing as it wouldn't lead him anywhere –, so Itachi quickly stopped it right there. He took another couple of sips from the stream, and then dried his mouth with the back of his hand, standing up. His head was cleared now; his mind in order again. He was ready to go back to his partner.

He would go back to Kisame and then they would go to the near village and enjoy some breakfast together. If he was lucky enough, he might even find a restaurant that served Dango.

As a child Itachi had loved Dango. It had been his favourite since he was a toothless toddler, to the point that after his first try, he had refused to eat anything else for a week, if his mother was to be believed.

Nowadays he didn't enjoy the flavour as much as the reminder of a time when eating that particular sweet had made him happy. The familiar taste brought back old memories, memories that he had otherwise supressed under layers of determination and guilt.

Dango reminded him of the bright smile on an innocent young girl's face, the first time they sat to eat it together in front of a river. It reminded him of the smell of his mother's hair while she worked in the kitchen, and of the kindness in his father's voice as they walked along Konoha's streets, and of the funny way his little brother had grimaced after Itachi offered him his first taste when he was two.

Although, through his actions, Itachi had forsaken any right to these memories five years ago, it was nice to be reminded of what happiness had felt it like, even if it was just for a brief moment. With this hope in his mind, he turned his back to the stream and jumped onto one of the nearest tree branches.

He was about to jump to the next one when his senses detected something peculiar. It was a chakra signature, one that didn't belong to a human, but that was strangely familiar to him. One that he hadn't felt in years.

For a second, Itachi questioned his accuracy at reading this signature, but he knew his senses had never failed him before. He trusted them with his life. This chakra belonged to Perla, the ninja cat that had acted as a link between his clan and the Hokage many years ago. It was clear it was her. Now the questions were, what she was doing so far from home, and what had brought her to cross paths with Itachi.

Itachi's mind worked quickly to solve these puzzles, just seconds before the cat entered his flied of vision.

The ninja-cat greeted him with a nod, quickly eyeing him to confirm his identity, and slowed down until finally she stopped crawling a few feet away. "Uchiha Itachi-kun." She addressed him.

Nobody had added the "kun" after his name in more than half a decade. It shocked him for a second, but Itachi quickly disguised this reaction. "Perla-san." He returned her greeting with a straight face.

"I have an important message for you from the Hokage." Formalities over, the ninja-cat lost no time, confirming at once Itachi's assumptions and opening the door to a few new questions.

The Hokage had rigorously avoided any kind of communication with him for the last five years of his life. Every three months, Itachi had punctually delivered the most relevant information concerning the Akatsuki to his contact within the village, all along without revealing his identity, and not once, not even when the information had been extremely precarious for Konoha, the Hokage made an attempt to contact him.

Contacting Itachi meant endangering his cover as a double agent, which potentially could lead to revelling his true loyalty to Konoha, which, regardless of what it meant for Itachi, it would prove to be fatal for the Hogake and his council of elders.

If the truth about his clan ever came to light, it was highly likely that most of Konoha would rise in revolt against the government. It was a fact that the Hokage would lose the trust of his people, and the village would lose its moral high ground in front of all the other nations, with dire economic consequences. Hiruzen would never risk letting this happen, which left only a few possibilities as for why he was making contact now, and all of them were extremely worrisome.

In all honesty, Itachi would rather not know. He had no wish to hear the message that the Hogake had sent him, and rather stay out of whatever business was tormenting the old man. He was tired; very, very tired. With every day that went by, it was becoming more and more difficult to remember the person that he had been once.

His loyalty to Konoha remained unshaken, but he no longer remembered the reasons that had spawned such loyalty. He was still loyal because that loyalty had become ingrained in him, and he had lost so many pieces of himself already, that he could not afford to lose one more. Not if he wanted to keep living. And he couldn't die yet. Not yet.

Thoughts of his death led him back to the most likely reason that had led Hiruzen to contact him after five years of strict silence. Sasuke. Something had happened to his little brother. Itachi hoped to be wrong. Unfortunately for him, he rarely was.

He held the gaze of the ninja-cat as he said, steadily: "I will listen to your message."


Hi guys! I hope you enjoyed it, despite the lack of a beta for this chapter. As I said once Caia is back from her holidays I'll repost it again, so you can read a clean version of it.

Well, what do you think? I'm very anxious about your opinion about this chapter, especially about my characterization of Itachi. Despite not been a particularly long chapter, it took me ages to finish it, and I'm still struggling to write Itachi first scenes when he meets out two favourite boys. I need help!

I imagine many of you will be shocked at my choice for this chapter. But the things is, Itachi is part of a criminal organisation whose members all work as a contract killers. He may be a double spy, and a good person at heart, but he has killed people, many people, and many who had done nothing to deserve it.

Even before he worked for the Akatsuki, he was AMBU. And AMBU are also contract killers. Actually most shinobis are (that's what they were in history), and the show say so too in a few occasions, though often it tries to disguise this truth for us viewers to make more palatable. Young shinobis (like Kakashi or Itachi) are child soldiers, which all the psychological repercussions this have in the human psyche. They can never grow up to be well balance, grounded adults, and they actually should function worse that they do in the series (despite all their peculiarities and queerness).

Itachi is a pacifist at heart, thus he carries an unspeakable amount of guilt and self-hatred for his actions. I think no other character in the manga hates himself as much as Itachi does (he starts planning his own dead at his beloved brother's hands since he is thirteen, perhaps earlier than that). But he also is a pragmatic. He knows as long as the world exist, as long as humans are humans, there will be winners and losers, corrupted systems, cruelty and selfishness, and innocents who are killed or die of natural causes. He doesn't at any moment try to change this reality (because he knows it's impossible to change human nature).

He is a walking contradiction. Smarter than Shikamaru, more gifted than Minato, the most brilliant strategist in the series. And yet he struggles understanding the simplest emotions that make people click. He always sees the biggest picture, and thus quite often the individual escapes his notice. He loves the people, not the person, one could say to describe him. He is not an idealist, he is too intelligent for that. He struggles a lot to connect to people. They bore him (we can see this clearly in the last anime episodes about his early life), and he doesn't really understand them.

He also has a very bad grasp on normal human emotions (otherwise he would've realised from the beginning what killing his parents and showing it to Sasuke, taunting him and telling him how much Itachi hated him, would mean for his brother's sanity and mental development).

Seeing as I'm nowhere close to be half as intelligent as Itachi is, writing him without impoverishing his character is proving to be really, really difficult. I think Kishi managed because Itachi only appeared very sparsely in the manga (still, kudos for him for creating my fav character!).

So I really need your input. Any insight you have in the character, please share it with me. I'm totally stuck in the next chapter, writing the first meeting between Itachi and his brother (and Naruto, of course), but I never quite satisfied about what I write.

Let me know of what you think of his characterization and scenes in this chapter, anything I should change to keep him IC, and any ideas you might have for the next chapter. I will really appreciate it!

Thank you as well for your support till now. Every time I read a new comment I'm smiling for hours… My boss is starting to wonder what's going on with me XD

See you soon, guys! Mata ne!


PS: As I said, my beta couldn't help me with this chapter yet. I'd be very grateful if any native speaker could give me their opinion about my general skill level. The things that I should improve, and especially the things that stand up the most and that a native speaker would never do. Thank you, guys!