Itachi sits on the inn's windowsill and recalls being five and fighting the sleepiness in the dark of the night just one more book, one more scroll, one more technique.
Nagi sleeps peacefully behind him.
Yuki-sensei has rented them a twin bedroom to share. Yoji takes one and the other is more than enough for the youngest two to share without much trouble.
The day Itachi met Nagi, the Hyuuga genius, he remembers thinking if the adults see in him what he sees in her. He doubts it.
Nagi is the same as him, but different.
Where as Itachi dwells too much on things, Nagi prefers to move on, taking the world in as is. Too somber, they sometimes whisper when looking at him. Unnerving. While she's calm, the word 'somber' doesn't fit Nagi.
She's just a kid. If one doesn't know her too well, you can't point her out in a playground. Maybe just that quiet kid who'd rather take a nap or sit and tell stories rather than jumping around. Which is a bit ironic, knowing her attitude when it comes to her work ethic in taijutsu. But still just a kid with her own quirks and fancy.
Itachi is the one you'd know on one look is shinobi.
Speaking of stories...
Listening to her, once he'd accepted that she is actually telling them what may very well have been the past, the present, and a possible future, he'd been...
Itachi had been frustrated to say the least.
The way she talked about the other him.
There was admiration there when she was usually entertained but unmoved by them.
The other him that was so strong and still wasn't able to save everyone.
He watch his nails leave indents on his palm, calloused but still with the roundness of childhood as with everything about him. As if he can't quite manage to shed it.
("Tou-san, why did he try to kill me? I didn't do anything."
"Strangers kill each other meaninglessly. That is war."
He still can't understand why they won't just stop then.
He still can't understand and that's probably what still keeps him as a child.)
How strong, how far does he need to reach to be enough?
Itachi look down into the empty streets.
Shisui will confirm the higher Intel, and for his own peace of mind, Itachi will also do his own investigation.
He pulls up his legs.
A part of him, as much as it prickles his conscience, hopes that Nagi is wrong. Maybe she's compromised, a high level genjutsu as unlikely as it would've stayed undetected in her clan compound.
Another part though, hopes against all hope that she's right.
Then they'd know, and in the ninja world, knowing can be worth more than power.
Knowing means power.
Knowing means they can change it.
XxXxXx
"Taichou."
"Yeah, Uchiha?"
The mission's team captain is a stranger Shisui has never met until now. He can say the same for every team captain he's ever gone with.
Maybe it's different for other Uchihas. After all, there's at least a hundred active shinobi in his clan, surely even Konoha doesn't have the resources to do the same complicated shift rotation for every single one as they do for him.
Shisui is the clan's most hailed prodigy right now, the eyes on him makes his possible actions limited.
Still, he gives the man the usual grin, "I'll go look around, you don't need me for anything, do you?"
"... not really."
"I'll be back later then." He doesn't say that he'll look for a souvenir for his cousin, as he usually would.
Shisui grits his teeth, face unsmiling, as he lands on a tree outside of the town.
He'd thought that Itachi's status as the heir, the son of Uchiha Fugaku of the Wicked Eye will protect the boy so Shisui had allowed himself to get attached to him, to use him as alibi.
Shisui instinctively tree jump like only a Konoha shinobi can, a flash of brown and green in the corner of his eyes that he's learned to ignore because the last time he tried to chase after it, he almost lost his mind.
The reminder just sinks Shisui's mood further down.
He... He was, is a regret that will stay with Shisui forever (Has to stay with him, it's the only thing he has left of him and he owes him that). Too preoccupied with envy, he'd realized too late what he would loose if he didn't move.
Shisui hadn't and for that he received eyes to help him get whatever he wanted as his reward.
(It was then months later, still grieving, that he unearths his father's journals and realize the once familiar words disappear under his new eyes, shifting into a different world of suspicions that had most likely led to the truth of his murder.)
They will never be used, he'd swore that on his name in the memorial- but now, Danzo- he-
Surely, whatever Shisui uses it for will be better than how Danzo- Shisui will know when to stop. Where to stop.
He'll only use it for the betterment of Konoha.
Danzo probably thought the same.
Shisui shakes his head, running laps around the town.
He stops in a clearing because showing signs of being troubled might be interpreted wrongly.
Or correctly.
Uchiha Massacre.
It's messed up.
But everything checks.
If... if it came down to it, Shisui can definitely see himself using the last moments of his life as a twisted sort of gift to Itachi, to impart something powerful enough to protect his baby cousin (brother) and help him protect the village that Shisui will leave behind.
Unsheating his tanto, Shisui proceeds with some katas.
But it's still messed up.
Even now, he'd held hope that if he's reached the end of the line of what he's capable of on his own, that he can still go to the Hokage.
To the adults.
And the council is wise. The Hokage is wise.
And in their wisdom, they chose to order his family's death.
(If they can't trust the Hokage, then who?)
No. Most likely, it was because of these eyes. The Hokage wouldn't- it's not entirely out there to assume that Danzo used the eye against his old friend.
It's because of... these eyes...
Shisui pause.
How many times has he contemplated gouging them out, going to the clan head to request for some Sharingan eyes to replace them or, heck, even just normal eyes. Really, he won't mind.
Well, it'd set him back quite a bit, but not so far that it'd make him feel worse than the constant guilt already makes him.
Guilt for the things he hasn't done, hopefully will never do, but sometimes he thinks.
And it scares him, he scares him, and in some dark moments even, when memories return to him, of a battlefield thick with desperation, he manages to half-convince himself that he'd used his eyes on Itachi, Aunt Mikoto, Uncle Fugaku, obaa-san to make them stay with him.
But he can't (or is he just telling himself that) because if Nagi's words are reality, a day will come when the stakes become so high that it's no longer just village against village, country against country.
If Nagi's words are reality, then there'll come a day when everyone fights as one and there is peace and he will no longer need these eyes.
Then, and only then, can he burn it with his entire heart.
Shisui can't quite process it yet, can't bring a picture to his mind of what exactly peace should look like, only less names of children on the KIA stone.
But he's willing to hope.
That's something he's always had, even though it's more faded and older than Itachi's and Nagi's eyes as they listened to her story's ending.
Shisui blink at the moon and he smiles wryly when he finds himself waiting to see if the moon blinks back.
Nagi's eyes are closer to the purple of where the night attempts to devour the freaking ten tails corpse rather than the silver of its centre.
Reality or an elaborate delusion. this still gave him a deeper insight on Nagi.
He's become genuinely fond of her, had allowed himself to, assuming the curse chaining her to her clan can also provide her some protection from outside forces, and it also have him the confidence that she's on his side of the fight.
Where else could she be, with what happened to her father and her connection to her clan, even if she didn't want to, she'd have to fight for her clan and in proxy, the village.
But without her seal... Shisui can't quite imagine how those knowledge affected her perspective, but however it is, by the way she spoke and reviewing all their interactions to date, Shisui can say for certain that Nagi isn't loyal to anything but strength.
Not to her clan who have such practices, not to the village that no one can tell where the Sandaime's Konoha ends and Danzo's begin.
Simply to her freedom and to her strength.
Nagi is untethered and Shisui can't take that chance.
The twelve year old goes very, very still at the obvious course of action.
The thought of someone loyal to him, and not just to his ideals, is such a surreal and terrifying idea that it sends him retching behind some trees and planning.