Chapter 34

Itachi could not understand it.

He had recognised that voice.

But, how?

Itachi stumbled in the darkness of his apartment, and fell against the wall. He slid down it slowly, taking refuge in the shadows. (If he were a civilian, he might have felt tempted to hole himself up in the gap between the couch and the wall, but as a seasoned shinobi, restricting his movements like that would have been anathema.)

Curled in on himself, Itachi shook at how close to killing his cousin he had come.

Was Itachi mistaken?

Had his madness progressed to full blown auditory hallucinations?

Was it now, finally, long after he had accepted this reality, that his madness had finally caught up to him?

Vaguely, Itachi realised that he was hyperventilating, and tried to forcibly calm himself down.

He registered approaching footsteps, and his head jerked up in time to see that Obito had for some reason decided to follow him.

Go away, go away, go away, GO AWAY!

"Holy shit little cous, when the fuck did you get those?!"

Itachi stared at his cousin uncomprehendingly, until he suddenly understood.

Oh. He had activated his Mangekyo Sharingan.

Shit.

Well there went his best chance to underplay his skills to his cousin.

Apparently his mother had been as good as her word about not spreading around the knowledge of his… achievement he supposed was the closest word… around the Clan.

At least, he thought a little wildly, he had managed to not pull out the taboo form of the Clan doujutsu in the middle of the family gathering.

Obito reached out a hand, slowly, as though Itachi were some kind of wild animal that he was trying to calm.

Itachi pulled back out of his reach, his mind racing.

Why, why, had he thought that Obito's voice matched Madara's? Was it merely the fact that they were related, and so it was some quirk of genetics that gave their voices a similar timbre?

It. Made. No. Sense.

"So, cous. Talk to me. What's going on in that head of yours? How can I help? Should I get someone?" Obito asked him in the type of tone usually used to calm children or wild animals.

Itachi couldn't think of an adequate response to that, and so remained silent.

"Wow, this is the second time you've thought Madara was fucking with you when I was around," Obito muttered after a while. "How big a number did those Otonin do on your head, cous?" he laughed a little bitterly. "Why the hell would you think I had anything to do with that nutjob?"

Itachi shook his head. "You wouldn't believe me if – wait." Itachi blinked. "What do you mean 'that nutjob'?"

Obito blinked. "Wait, you mean your parents never told you? I would have thought the Clan Heir would have been read into such things. I mean, it happened when you were a kid, but still…" Obito trailed off, obviously trying to figure out how to word whatever it was he was going to say.

Itachi let the tension of the situation wrench him back into shinobi survival mode. He could break down (shatter) later. Right now, he needed intel, and so, just like all those ANBU missions, just like all those Akatsuki missions, he shelved his impending psychotic break for the moment and dragged himself back up into a ready standing position, ignoring the way it made Obito tense.

Itachi didn't say anything, but Obito reacted as though he had demanded an answer.

(Uchiha were generally pretty good at reading body language, so Itachi almost didn't read anything into this. Almost.)

Obito cleared his throat.

"Okay. So uh. Here's the thing. You know how I was crushed under the rock at Kannabi Bridge? When I got all these scars?" he gestured vaguely at the right side of his body. "Well uh…" Obito winced, causing the scars on his face to contort. "So here's the thing. My team left me for dead, because to be fair the last they saw I was buried under rock and bleeding out, and I was rescued by Uchiha Madara."

What. The Absolute. Fuck. Itachi did not say.

Apparently his expression was eloquent though, because Obito winced harder.

"I know! It sounds crazy! But there I was, lying in the dark and dying, and then I wake up, and I've been… for a given definition… healed, and there's our ancestor sitting there by my side all shrivelled up and talking at me about how he saved me and about how Konoha in general and the Uchiha Clan in particular are symptoms of a disease that can be only cured by removing war from the world."

There was a particular part of that statement that was hauntingly familiar. Akatsuki had ostensibly been on a mission of peace. It was what had drawn Itachi to them, despite himself. They might have been violent terrorists, but Pein and Konan at least had spoken of ideals, of making the world a better place. A world without war. Itachi had killed for the chance to see it.

To hear that it had apparently been Uchiha Madara's plan was… disturbing.

Obito continued. "And the thing is… maybe it was the pain. Maybe it was because he was brainwashing me… you're not the only person who has needed to do time with the psychologists before being allowed back on active duty… at the time, it all made sense. Well, it didn't completely make sense- he said a lot of shit about Kakashi and Rin that I could never really quite believe… but he knew all the buttons to push about our family. I mean, I was an insecure teenager back then, and the only family member who took care of me was my grandmother. You know the Clan Itachi, it's not exactly what you'd call nurturing or accepting of anything other than stoic geniuses." His face did something then that Itachi did not entirely understand. "Not that it treats its stoic geniuses any better really, but back when I was 13, being told that I had to be like, well… basically you… was doing exactly nothing good for my head."

Oh. Pity. That had been what expression Obito's face had been conveying.

Itachi was not sure how he felt about that.

"Anyway," Obito said, ducking his head. "If it hadn't been for Hatake Sakumo tracking me down with his nin-dogs when he did, then who the fuck even knows what would have happened. I mean, I was trying to resist the crazy dude's words, but at the same time, as much as I logically I knew why my team left me, I was pretty devastated, you know? I felt… betrayed."

Wait. Obito had- Madara had- oh. Oh. Oh fuck.

People had called Itachi a genius before, but the fragility of genius was the fact that if you had no way of knowing things, then it didn't matter how intelligent you were, you could still be led about by the nose. And the fact that Itachi had had no way of knowing that Obito had been apparently brainwashed by Madara…

But there was another name in there that Itachi would never have expected to hear.

"Hatake Sakumo?" he asked, but already, his mind was working what ifs. What if Obito had somehow (somehow) been saved. (By Madara!?) What if Obito had lived, and somehow, Rin had not ended up dying at the hands of her remaining teammate, Kakashi (a story Itachi had never got the full details on, but nonetheless was starting to a sneaking suspicion that he might be able to extrapolate what the shape of it had been). What if the village's greatest tracker had not committed suicide. What if he had managed to track down Itachi's cousin. What if.

What if, even in his original universe, Obito had somehow, somehow been picked up by Madara, and brainwashed, and survived, and… and…

Itachi could not be sure. Itachi had no way of knowing for sure that some things at least had happened the same in his universe.

But at the same time…

FUCK. FUCK. WHAT THE ACTUAL EVERLIVING FUCK.

Itachi could not be sure, but he could surmise.

And what he surmised was that he had, in the common parlance, been fucked over but good in his original world.

But what the hell could he even do about it?

The answer, distasteful as it was, was nothing. Not a damn thing. It wasn't like he could get a message back. And even if he could, who would he contact? Sasuke? Please. Sasuke of his previous world wouldn't listen to a word he said, and really, the only people who might have listened to Itachi probably would not have actually cared about the information. After all, when the Uchiha Clan had been annihilated to the point where there were only insane, disloyal remnants, what real difference in the scheme of things did it make that there were three instead of two to consider?

And quite rightly, all things considered. Itachi had had a lot of time to actually stop and think since he had woken up in this weird world, and had gone through months of therapy. If there was one thing he had come away with from that, it was the understanding that his 13 year old self had made bad decisions that he absolutely should not have stuck to… if only he had not been a fugitive missing-nin living with a pack of psychopathic terrorists, maybe he would have had some time for proper introspection. But there was little use having regrets now, since there was absolutely nothing he could do about it.

Just like there was absolutely nothing that Itachi could do with this information right now.

Well. Wasn't that just typical.

Itachi started to laugh.

"…Wow," Obito said.

Itachi looked up, and saw that his cousin was (sensibly) assiduously avoiding Itachi's gaze.

Oh. Right. Mangekyo Sharingan.

"S-sorry," Itachi gasped, trying to drag back his usually infamous control. He managed to stop the chakra flow to his eyes, but a few errant giggles continued.

Obito stared at Itachi like he'd never seen him before.

"So uh…. On a scale of 'not okay' to 'in need of a room with chakra suppression seals and nice squishy walls' how are you doing?" Obito asked a little cautiously.

Itachi huffed out a breath and leaned into the wall, tipping his head back to look at the ceiling.

"I've been better," Itachi admitted. "It's just, you know, funny. Everything I worked for, everything I thought that I had to do to survive, to keep the village safe, to protect Sasuke… It was all futile. There was no point. I was being manipulated like a brain-damaged, chakra-deaf civilian under a genjutsu. Me. The Uchiha Genius. The irony is palpable." He shook his head. "This probably just sounds like I'm being insane right now, but I swear to you, I lived a full life before I woke up in that Sound basement, and I'll tell you this, Cousin, it was a living hell. I wish I remember what life was like for the Itachi you all remember, because he might have been a weakling, but I have an increasing suspicion that the bastard, who had no idea how lucky he was, might have been happy."

Itachi dropped his head and caught his cousin's eyes. Obito's flickered red for an instant, before settling back into their usual dark colour. It was a show of trust that Itachi did not feel that he had earned, but nonetheless, he'd take it.

"When did Hatake Sakumo die in this world?" Itachi wondered aloud. "Because in my world, he was long dead before the Kannabi Bridge incident."

Obito's eyes widened. "Seriously? How? Who was badass enough to take out the White Fang?"

Itachi let his lips quirk into a humourless smirk. "The White Fang. He committed suicide because people blamed him for starting the Third Shinobi War. He went back to save his teammates and the fallout caused an international incident, and so when the Treaties fell to pieces, he was shunned by the traditionalists and the civilians. From what I remember, this happened before your Team 7 was formed, but this is all hearsay about things that happened before I was born, so I can't confirm that with complete certainty."

Obito whistled lowly. "Well shit. That happened here two, well, except for the suicide. No idea what could have changed there. He ended up sacrificing himself to the Shinigami to bind the Kyuubi. Kakashi had always worried that his Dad had a death wish… fuck. So how fucked up was Kakashi in your world?"

Itachi grimaced. "His entire team was, as far as he knew, dead, at least one of them by his hand, including his sensei. He spent about a decade in ANBU, spent every spare moment either talking to the memorial stone or reading porn in public, and his closest associate was Maito Gai."

Obito made an odd choking noise, and then was quiet for a while.

"…I'm sorry I asked," he admitted.

Itachi nodded dully.

The two sat together in silence in the darkened room. It was oddly companionable.

"Either that was one seriously next-level fucked up Kurama-Clan's wet dream genjutsu you were under, or you're not bugfuck, and you actually experienced all of that," Obito decided after a while.

Itachi huffed out a sound that might have been a laugh if he had been at all amused by this situation.

"Those are indeed the two options," he affirmed. "Honestly, the best case scenario is just that I'm insane. If the other world was real, then I have no idea what happened to the Itachi who was in this body first. If he's lucky, he died here, where you were saved by Hatake, and I never participated in a massacre where the two of us killed all but two others of our Clan."

Obito considered that for a moment, blinking.

"…and why did I do that?" he wondered, his voice a little faint and higher pitched than normal.

Itachi grimaced. "From what you've just told me? I'm going to guess that the brainwashing worked better when you didn't get rescued from Madara."

Obito was silent for a while.

"That's some serious shit," he eventually said.

Itachi sighed. "Succinctly put."

The silence, previously companionable, became distinctly awkward.

"Well then," Obito said after a while. "I don't know about you, but I think I want to put off processing that until ooh, next century. I'm going to get dead drunk. You want to join me?"

Itachi considered the alternative prospect of sitting alone in his apartment for the rest of the night and made his decision.

"Fine. But you're paying."

...

A/N: Thanks to everyone who have left me reviews, are still reading even though I made you wait months for an update, and who haven't left me passive aggressive bullshit in my inbox. :) This update is for you people.