A/N: The second chapter in what is turning out to be a series, after all. It's not exactly related in plot, but since it's set in the same universe, I put it together.
The premise, for anyone who doesn't remember the first chapter, is that Sasuke and Itachi's parents died during the war with the cloud, leaving the boys to live as orphans together. Itachi has not run away yet, nor has he massacred the clan.
Tattered
Itachi doesn't know himself anymore. He hasn't felt like himself in a long, long time. Possibly, this is because these days he's not doing missions as much as he's doing laundry, and instead of killing people he makes bento boxes for Sasuke to take to school. He goes to Parent-Teacher interviews and sits and listens to Iruka-sensei (a Chuunin he's gotten to know all too well) talk about how good Sasuke is and how brilliant and if they ever need anything to please come and talk because it must be very hard.
After listening to this concerned, enthusiastic stranger, Itachi feels all the less like himself. It is so confusing, being encouraged to ask for help. After a while, Iruka-sensei's words start to blur together and he begins to wonder if the man isn't trying to kill him, if he isn't an enemy. Itachi doesn't like it, this strange obsessive tendency he has to fight people who are only being nice to him. He knows he shouldn't do it, but he can't help himself.
He feels like a child sometimes, sitting there listening to his father go on and on about the Shinobi arts, eyes wide in a trance of revulsion and fascination. It is the same feeling that Iruka-sensei's talk about grading and school-work and extracurricular activities produces. He wonders if this isn't some sort of interrogation tactic, if he isn't on display in front of some superior.
Paranoia. Total and complete paranoia. Itachi can't help himself from avoiding every meeting but the bare necessities, twice a year for report cards.
Is this normal? Normal to Itachi is not questioning himself. Normal is not reacting so much to such a simple thing. It's only a Chuunin, and he's talking about Sasuke, the only subject Itachi honestly can't get enough of. Normal is going to a mission for weeks on end, the feeling of freedom, stepping past the gates and out of the forests around Konoha into the sun and the fields and the sky. A frighteningly addictive freedom, one Itachi can no longer indulge in. These days there is just too much to do, too much to worry and plan and think about to enjoy the simple act of killing.
Normal is Shinobi. Normal is feeling nothing.
So yes, he's gotten a little strange, even by his own standards. Itachi knows he is not exactly like other people. Most other Shinobi, even his teammates on the ANBU, don't quite have the helpless abandon he does when killing a person. They think too much, or maybe Itachi doesn't think enough, because to him a body is a body and it honestly doesn't matter whose body it happens to be, as long as it's dead.
Except these days it's not just a body, but the body of a 10 year old child with black hair and black eyes who screamed for his family before he died, and Itachi feels sick for a long time afterwards, without understanding, shaking slightly but for no apparent reason. When he'd gone home that night he'd made dinner and sat and just listened to Sasuke talk and talk about inconsequential things. He'd never thought before that he could ever require comfort, human interaction, but he does and it scares him.
Itachi remembers being eight years old, killing his first victim in the Chuunin exam, and he hadn't felt all that much back then, or in all the years afterwards. He'd always assumed that was normal. Now he doesn't know what to assume anymore, because he doesn't think he could kill that boy again, can't listen to the shrill, annoying little voice screaming in his ears, long after the boy himself is dead.
It is a different sort of paranoia than the one he has to face in Iruka-sensei's classroom. He doesn't honestly know which torture he would prefer.
Everything, everything is different now. His situation hasn't changed that much, he is still Shinobi and he's still a genius and he's still Uchiha Itachi, but these days he's also an older brother, a caretaker, a "parent". Itachi doesn't understand these things, honestly finds himself lost as to what to do with Sasuke most of the time, except saying "you did well", and "try hard", over and over again like a broken record. He tries to say something more, to explain himself sometimes, but the words lose themselves between his brain and his mouth. He thinks he is beginning to sound like his father, and it scares him. These days a lot of things seem to scare him.
He honestly wants to run away. Just leave one day and never come back, go somewhere where there is nothing to do but kill people, which is what Itachi is really good at, is really made for. He can't help but think that if he could just leave he'd be feeling better again, and he probably would, too, no Sasuke to distract and worry him, no more parent-teacher interviews to shake his nerves, nothing but a bloody sword and the Sharingan in his eyes.
Of course, he can't really do it. Itachi has grown attached, can't help thinking that Sasuke might die without him, and for some reason this isn't the same as his parents dying, as all the people he kills. He doesn't think he could accept it, if Sasuke died. So unlike himself.
The worse thing is, it's affecting his performance, this new behavior, these new expectations. It makes him pause in front of a corpse that looks like his brother, makes his hand shake sometimes when there's another report card coming up tomorrow afternoon and he just knows he can't face sitting there and listening to it again. His teammate, a man named Shiranui-san, asks if he isn't sick a little and if he needs a rest. Itachi doesn't know how to answer this, somehow he thinks that saying "I need to kill someone who doesn't look like my brother" will get him court-martialed for being psychologically unfit for duty.
Of course, he makes sure Sasuke never sees this, but he still worried that maybe his brother knows, somehow. It just adds to his nervousness. Sometimes he has to sneak away from the house, or lock himself in his room, just to calm down a little.
He is still not used to this village, even though he's never lived anywhere else. These days he knows people, whether teammates or civilians or just other Shinobi he occasionally interacts with. All of them say hello to him and talk to him and Itachi can't accept this sense of belonging to something. He remembers his childhood; living from mission to training to mission to graduation, all of it alone in a little bubble of isolation. This sudden, inexplicable change upsets him. He does not think that this is how a Shinobi should live, together with all these other people. These crowds of strangers who know him and look at him and talk to him makes him want to just go away somewhere. He would have wanted to run out of the village, but he can't so he goes home and sits on his bed for hours, trying to force himself to calm down.
Because Itachi is used to being ready all the time, not just on missions or outside the village or even in the streets, but for every second of his life, asleep or awake, and when he has to deal with so many people who know him too well, or even just a little, and live so close and walk by the house all the time, never far away, he begins to have the urge to kill them all, just so he'd feel a little lonelier, a little safer. Itachi can deal with strangers just fine, but he can't deal with the village which after 16 years of his life has grown to know him intimately.
He wonders what would have happened to him if his parents were still alive. Itachi doesn't think he could handle it, living always on edge out there in the village with all those familiar people, and then coming back to live with his father and mother again. His father wouldn't let him go away anywhere for long, or sit in his room on his own, he would probably want explanations, want Itachi to progress faster, and god knows what else.
Itachi wonders if he could even handle all of that without killing his father. Probably not. Thankfully he doesn't have to.
Still, Itachi wonders if the life of a hunted missing nin would be easier than this. It is something that he secretly wishes for, but cannot find it in himself to take.
END
A/N: You cannot force someone to be happy. This is an exercise in proving that.