Hello everybody. First of all, an apology. Something happened to a member of my family a few months ago, and I had to leave my job in England to go back home. It was a really difficult time, and despite how much I tried, I could not muster much interest for the fic - for anything really.

The situation is a bit more hopeful now, and if everything goes alright I should be back to England in a month or so. This fic is in hiatus until then.

This chapter was already finished for quite a long time, and I'm sorry I didn't post it before or let you know what was happening. But at the time, I was shocked and in a terribly painful position. As I said all is better now, so I hope you can enjoy it.

I want to thank my friend Bubbusaja, who helped me to finish this chapter.

And I want to especially thank my new beta, IceCreamIceQueen, who has helped a lot revising this and the preivous chapter as well! Thank you so much for your help! You did a fantastic job!

Chapter 10

In the quiet of their room, the moon high in the sky, Naruto watched over the sleeping figure of his best friend. Anyone could see that the events of the previous day had driven him to exhaustion. This was not surprising. Not only he had brought the Mangekyou into play again, but this time Sasuke had used it to show his brother ten years' worth of memories.

However, it was the emotional fallout that had followed what truly had drained all his strength. He and Itachi had stood still in their position for a very long time; both brothers kneeling on the ground, not daring to let go of the other.

At first, the two brothers were crying. Naruto hadn't been very surprised by such a display of emotion. He had never been a victim of the Tsukuyomi, but he remembered the precarious state in which Kakashi had been brought to the hospital after Itachi used that technique on him. Although Sasuke's purpose hadn't been hurting his brother, Naruto doubted he had taken the care and time to censor the memories that he had forced Itachi to watch.

Naruto remembered very well the behaviour Sasuke had displayed a few years ago; the crimes he had committed, and the flickering state of his mental health. He had been dangerously close to falling into insanity. Some nights, Naruto still had nightmares about it – about reaching him too late, about failing during their final battle and losing Sasuke forever in a world of darkness and demons of his own creation.

Despite Itachi's usual detachment from his feelings, having all these memories thrown at him, without proper time to process them... It wasn't that shocking that his unyielding grasp over his emotions had shattered, redeeming him unable to do anything else but to hold onto his beloved brother tightly.

Naruto walked away a few steps, and turned his gaze away. He didn't want to intrude the brothers' privacy, nor did he want to listen to the words they were whispering at each other. This moment, this long awaited moment, was sacred; and it belonged only to them.

Itachi calmed down first, but he kept holding onto his brother, not wanting to let go of him even for a second. His tears had dried and his expression had recovered its usual calm by the time Sasuke's cries quietened, having fallen asleep in his big brother's arms. Itachi's eyes searched for Naruto then. "Please, show me where I can take him." He asked him.

Naruto nodded at him, and started walking. The older Uchiha rose to his feet, lifting Sasuke in his arms like a baby. There was nothing in his posture or the way he carried himself that betrayed the fact that he had been kneeling on the ground for hours. He followed Naruto as he led the way to Sasuke's and his hotel room.

Sasuke didn't as much as twitch on the way there, but the moment Itachi laid him on the futon, his eyes opened wide and his hand moved quickly to catch his brother by the arm. "Don't go. Don't leave me. Please."

Itachi, who couldn't stand the thought of his brother begging once more, acquiesced easily and sat on the futon right beside him. "I won't." He promised.

Gratified, Sasuke let his eyelids close again and his breath gradually fell into a relaxed pattern. By the time the moon reached a high point in the midnight sky, he was deeply asleep.

Itachi stood slowly from the futon, his feet leading him to the window. The night seemed extremely peaceful outside these walls, in radical contrast to the way his emotions were raging at war inside of him. He wasn't used to this… feeling – this uncertainty –, and he didn't like it.

Someone like himself, who held so much power just in his eyes, shouldn't let his emotions rule him, or worse yet, cloud his mind. It was dangerous. At the same time, Itachi was aware of the source of such confusion –the origin and cause of the storm that boiled inside of him–, and knew what steps to take to regain control of himself.

His eyes travelled to the figure his little brother, who was peacefully asleep on his futon. His little brother…

"You can't leave." A voice commanded, as if reading his thoughts.

It wasn't Sasuke this time. Itachi blinked, and for a moment he failed to identify the owner of said voice – seven nights without barely any sleep were finally catching up to him. Then he saw him, the silent figure standing not too far from himself. "Naruto." He recalled his name from the memories that Sasuke had shown him.

Itachi closed his eyes, knowing that in front of him stood the man that had succeeded where he had failed. The young man to whom Itachi owed his brother's life and sanity. His brother's best friend.

He was also the man who made possible for Sasuke to be here; the one who had carried out the Jutsu that brought them here, to a time they had already lived once. Itachi had conflicted feelings about that.

"You can't leave him." Naruto said once again, when he failed to obtain a reply from Itachi.

Itachi breathed deeply, trying to make some sense of the flow of images and feelings that plagued his mind. Memories that didn't belong to him, which perhaps explained the intensity with which they had hit him. They were his brother's memories. Sasuke had always felt things more intensely than him, his emotion running deeper than Itachi's, even as a toddler.

For the most part, they were terrible memories. Memories of a life that Itachi wished he could change, wished it had never taken place in the first place. And yet, despite this…

"I was dead." He recalled, surprising both Naruto and himself. "I was already dead when you came here. The war was over; the world was at peace. You had saved Sasuke, and he wouldn't have betrayed you a second time." He himself was shocked by the intensity of his feelings in this matter. "Why did you come?"

Why did you have to come? He didn't say that though. Saying that would've been selfish, and Itachi didn't want to be selfish in regards to his little brother. But he also could not help feeling atremendously jealous. How was it possible – he wondered for a moment –, to feel such a consuming jealousy towards no other than oneself, just a few years down the road?

However the Itachi of that future universe had already found peace. He was finally resting. He no longer belonged to this world – this ugly world full of lies and undeterred suffering. In death, he was free.

Itachi didn't believe in the afterlife. He never hoped to join his parents in Heaven, or feared eternal punishment for his sins. He saw death like an eternal night of dreamless sleep. He would close his eyes, his consciousness would fall, and nothingness would embrace him. There would not be more doubts, nor worries, nor pain. Everything would be over.

How could he not yearn for such an estate? How could he not be resentful when said destiny had been stolen away from him?

"We came here for you." Naruto answered simply.

His gaze was honest. Itachi believed him, and yet… "Why?" He begged to understand. "Sasuke was safe. Everything was… as alright as it could ever be, in life. And you left it all behind…"

"Sasuke wasn't alright." Naruto contradicted him harshly. "You can't honestly believe that after he showed you his memories."

"He was alive." Itachi argued. "He was alive and he had you. I saw that. You were always there for him, even when he didn't want you to. You succeeded where I failed… He loves you. He would've lived for you."

"But I didn't want him to live just for me." Naruto retorted quickly. "That's what you wanted. You gave him a reason to live where he had none – he lived to kill you. And then you gave him your eyes, so no one would be able to take his life from him. But that wasn't a life… To live like that, fueled only by hatred and fear and pain… it isn't worthy. You saw what it did to him."

Itachi could not deny that. He had never expected his actions from five years ago to break his brother so badly; to push him down such a dangerous path. He had hoped… Well. He had wanted Sasuke to survive, and to be proud of being who he was. He had hoped his little brother would kill him one day, getting revenge for his parents and obtaining the eyes that would shield him from his enemies. That would've given Sasuke the closure he needed to get over their murder, surely.

Then again, it was Sasuke. So perhaps Itachi hadn't thought it through properly. He had weighed his options, he had considered all the possible outcomes, and in the end he had chosen the one that secured the minimum amount of bloodshed in the long term – and he didn't regret it, for it had been the best choice out of a collection of bad choices, considering the information that had been available in the moment.

But Sasuke had never entered into that equation. Sasuke wasn't going to lose his life. In every alternative he had considered, every option he had imagined, that fact wasn't up for discussion. Sasuke always survived.

Naruto was right though. He had been so busy securing his brother's life that he had wasted little thought on his happiness. To Itachi, happiness always seemed fickle anyway; not something someone could trust. It was only a state of mind, a matter of perspective.

Of course Itachi had wanted Sasuke to be happy, but if his happiness was the price to pay for his survival…

"But he was better…" He argued again. "You were sharing a home, and even if it wasn't perfect… it was life."

"I know." Naruto admitted that fact. "Believe it or not, it was me who wanted to leave Konoha. You know that I am a jinchuuriki. For this, I grew up alone and hated. And all my life, all I ever wanted, was to be acknowledged by others. I thought I'd achieve this by becoming Hokage. It was only when everybody was asking me to step up as the Nanadaime that I realised… It wasn't at all what I wanted."

Naruto thought about his dream. In that other universe he had been acknowledged, that much was true. People looked up to his name and respected it. But he had only achieved those thing by becoming someone that wasn't him; by giving up his personality and goals and dreams, and allowing himself to be reshaped into someone else.

Itachi was listening to him with interest.

"The people of Konoha, they thought of me as a hero, and they wanted me to become their Hokage." Naruto explained. "But they didn't really want me. They wanted another version of me, one that fit their expectations, and they expect me to fit this ideal. Luckily for me," he added with a smile "I realised in time that me giving up my identity, the things that made me myself, and the people I loved… so a bunch of stiff and selfish people would think I'm worthy of them, well, it wasn't worthy at all."

"So you walked away…"

"Yeah." Naruto agreed, unrepentant. "I was only eighteen, and as you said, the world was finally at peace. I had travelled before with my master, and some of my best memories were made in that journey. I'm not saying that if they needed me, I wouldn't have gone back to Konoha, because my friends were there and the village will always have a special place in my heart, but I wanted to… to be free and be without worries again; to hit the road, and be young, and have adventures and meet interesting people. As long as I had Sasuke with me, I felt I could go anywhere."

Itachi nodded. He could sympathise with such longing, but there was still something he needed to understand. "Why did you need to leave your universe then? If you could've gone anywhere, why use this sort of multi time-universe travel? You know it's not natural."

Naruto lowered his face, and took a few seconds to answer.

The answer came from his heart. "Because although Sasuke would have followed me anywhere, and he would have lived and laughed for me, sometimes I felt as if only half of his soul were present. I wanted him to live and laugh for himself." He confessed, his eyes staring at the night sky through the window.

The moon was partially darkened by clouds now, and only a few stars could be seen. Dawn was near. He could not face Itachi's gaze yet.

"Because I realised…" he continued, his eyes fixed on the landscape outside the window while his mind recalled the memory of that other carefree Sasuke – the one who laughed freely, smirked mischievously and kissed Naruto against the kitchen's counter, whispering words of love in his ear –. "I realise that if I could go anywhere, the only place I wanted to be was one where Sasuke had a chance to be truly happy – to give him back a little bit of the happiness and hope that other people's cruelty had stolen from him, that was what I wanted most. And I knew that to achieve it, the only thing that could make Sasuke hopeful again, it was you."

That was a very critical declaration. If Naruto spoke the truth – if Itachi's presence in his brother's life played such a fundamental role on Sasuke's mental and emotional health –, it put another heavy responsibility on his shoulders. And yet, Itachi could not bring himself to doubt this young man's words; because hearing him talk about Sasuke, he had realised something too.

"You love him." He stated. You are in love with my brother." There was no judgment in his eyes as he gazed at Naruto, only recognition.

"I am."

Naruto didn't want to lie to Itachi. He was the only person who loved and cherished Sasuke as much as he did, and if there was someone who deserved the truth, it was him.

"But he doesn't know it, and I don't want him to know it." He warned him calmly. "I love him." It was the first time he'd admitted it to someone aloud, and despite his fears, it felt good to finally getting it off his chest. "And I know he cares deeply for me. The fact that I also feel physically attracted to him is not important."

Itachi looked at him with a pensive expression; his eyes wise beyond his years. "Is that how you truly feel?" He asked.

Naruto's lips curled up into a tiny smile, but not a bitter one. "I believe that in another world he might have felt attracted to me too, and we would've been great together."

He laughed at this, but soon his expression turned grave again.

"But Sasuke, our Sasuke – he has suffered so much. And... although he has endured, he carries so many scars with him. He is so inherently good, and yet he struggles so much to feel any kind of empathy for others. He thinks he should care, but he doesn't – he can't –, and for that he considers himself a bad person. I'd never ask of him something that he isn't ready to give, or make him feel guilty for refusing." He vowed. "I'm happy if he is happy, and by my side."

Itachi had no answer to that. This time, he was the one who lowered his eyes and avoided Naruto's gaze. It was so easy to mistake this man in front of him as a kid – he looked like one, and despite Sasuke's memories, it was difficult to dismiss the truth of what his eyes saw as a lie.

But listening to him… It didn't matter if the body was that of a child; the words he spoke could only belong to an adult man. And the person he referred to, it was another man – a man with the complexity and depth of a fully mature person. A man whom Naruto knew intimately well – perhaps as well as he knew himself –, and one of whom Itachi knew so little.

The saddest thing was, that even if he hadn't travelled back in time from a parallel universe, Sasuke would still have grown up to be an stranger. Someone of whom Itachi knew practically nothing. This realization – as obvious as it was – made his heart sank in pain.

Naruto didn't give him time to recover from it.

"You need to make a choice." He emphasized firmly. "Sasuke is here now, and he is no longer a child. You can't keep manipulating his life from afar – he won't allow that. If you love him, you need to choose."

At this, Itachi's gaze finally met his, and the black of his pupils was clouded by a shadow of fear. His eyes looked, perhaps, more human that Naruto had even seen them – and they bore such a strong resemblance to Sasuke's that, for a moment, Naruto's breath was taken away. But he couldn't relent now; for the good of Sasuke, he needed to say it all.

"If you love him enough to forgive yourself, and if you respect him enough not to question his choices – the fact that he considers someone worthy –, then stay. Itachi, stay and give Sasuke and yourself a new chance at life – a new chance at happiness." He spoke from his heart, praying this to be the choice he would follow.

There was only another alternative.

"But if you can't do that..." he added, his voice a few tones lower. "If you can't bear the thought of a life at his side, then leave; leave and put an end to it. Do not ask him to do it for you. You have weapons. If life is really something you can't endure, then end it, and let Sasuke be free of you."

It was hard to say all this, first because Naruto had come to greatly admire Itachi from the last few meetings they had shared – and he wished him well –, and second, because he knew Sasuke's heart would be shattered again if he lost his brother one more time. But he truly believed it was for the best, for both of them. No one could force another person to live if their heart was set against it. One could make sure someone survived, but actually living – that had to be their choice –.

Even in his childhood, when every aspect of his life was as good as it could ever be, Itachi had questioned the meaning of life, had wondered about the purpose of all of it – what sense did it make, to be alive?

For years after that, ever since he had held baby Sasuke for the first time, he had thought he had found his answer. Itachi lived to protect the innocent – to safeguard his little brother's innocence. He fought to make sure others wouldn't need to. He navigated the shadows, so that others could keep up their illusions of light – so that his brother could think of the world as a something safe and precious, a place worth living.

But then, life had showed him his true, ugliest face – an impossible choice that had to be made –. And Itachi had made a mistake. After viewing Sasuke's memories, and being a witness to his feelings, that was the only conclusion he could come to. He had made a mistake. He should have taken Sasuke and run – either destroying his clan first, or leaving it intact behind them.

He would be lying if he said he hadn't considered this option – repeatedly. But first his conscience had prevented him from running away from a situation that would cause a war on a great scale, when he held in his eyes the power to avert it. And after he became a kin-slayer, his guilt had stopped him from reaching out to his brother – for although Sasuke might have still loved him and forgiven him, Itachi hadn't considered himself worthy of such esteem.

This certainty only served to prove that Sasuke had been right at reproaching Itachi about taking his choices away from him, thinking he knew best. This was his chance to rectify that.

Could Itachi really accept that his brother loved him, forgave him, and wished for his presence, despite being aware of all the truth behind his bloody deeds? Could he put aside all the guilt, the contempt he felt towards himself, and the obligations that tied him to his old village to start anew, to build a new life together with Sasuke?

"I don't think I know how to be a big brother anymore." He confessed in a low mumble, his heart heavy with shame.

His words made Naruto smile a tiny smile. For the first time since the conversation began, he felt truly hopeful, and the fear that had taken hold of his chest started to vanish at last. In that moment, Naruto knew that no matter what happened from now on, the three of them were going to be alright.

"I don't think Sasuke knows how to be a brother either." He said. "But that's okay. You can learn together, I think."

I hope you have enjoyed it. As I said, the fic will officially be in hiatus for a few weeks yer, but I had this chapter ready from ages, and since I'm hoping to be back in England soon, I decided to post it here now.

If everything goes as I intend, the fic will have aroun 30 chapters, with 3 different story arcs. This is the end of the first arc. It was basicly a chance to see where Naruto and Sasuke stand with each other, a little bit of their past and a lot of their current relationship, and a quest for finding Itachi of course.

Next arc will be about Sasuke and Itachi mending their relationship, and we'll also see how Naruto and Sasuke come to be together by the end of it. But I'm afriad you still have to wait a little bit for that.

Again, I hope you have enjoyed this chapter and that you have forgiven me for my absence. I promise when everything is alright in my life again, I'll come back and write this story properly.

Best wishes for everybody. Read you soon guys!