I never meant any harm.
I didn't know I was hurting anyone when I became the youngest to attain the genin rank, the chuunin rank, and the jounin rankin all of Konoha's history.
I didn't know.
I didn't mean.

But I still did. Everything I try to do positive for the village creates a ripple of negative that, eventually, reaches back to the positive I had done.
It's just like father. I can't believe I still ended up like him.
I can't forgive myself either. Knowing that, this entire time, it was my fault.

You were the one trying to attain my level. That was how it started. I was the older, full-fledged, you the younger more inexperienced. I was 4 years ahead of you, almost half a decade your senior.

And it makes everything fit together so perfectly. Only reality could be this horrible. Only the reality behind your reason.

My eye feels heavy as it manages to flutter open to the darkness, filling the room. My limbs ache inside and out, aches everywhere as I realize I can't decipher where this is, can't move. Numb down to the bone.

You're not here. At least, as far as I can tell, I don't think you are. I don't feel your intense eyes on me, watching me from whatever twisted branch you perch on above. Maybe I'm just lost in my mind again. Maybe you were lost all along.
Or we're both lost in different places.
That's not it.
Where are you?

I knew your family. I definitely knew them. Cold hardened bunch, they certainly were. They pushed you, they pushed Sasuke, they pushed around everyone in the family they could.
They did it for their pride. The glory of the Uchiha, the prestige that had to remain strict and vigil.

I was being pushed too. Though, certainly not to the degree your family had surmised. I was the last of my family's name, the last to restore its crumbling structure.
I never did.
But they knew I was worth silver in the village, for my skill, proficiency high above others could, even you, and for that time I was just a valuable body to head out to the fading front lines at the end of the Amato war.
I know there were times when they told me to turn back. That I was going too far too fast for anyone to cope with. I brushed off their requests, attained jounin rank. Even after the Yondaime died, I hadn't taken his advice. I just pushed even harder, for his ultimate fiery sacrifice; I had to push harder into the depths of the ANBU.

Why couldn't have I quit there?

I have no doubt. The Uchiha family was angry at my talent of wielding the Sharingan with such accuracy, even able to unlock, at that point of time, the final stage the Sharingan that should naturally occur in. There was always that cold unease in the air whenever I approached any of them, especially when I was in the ANBU, in their territory of lineage and might.

You were the only one able to beat me to the only thing I couldn't attain.
An ANBU record. The youngest to dare enlist into the ANBU, take up the mask, you were even 13 when they appointed you the new ANBU commander in my place.
I didn't mind then.
But that wasn't it.
You still haunted me.

The greatest prodigy in Konoha, they made me. I can hardly grasp the concept of you, at any point of time, ever feeling that I was your superior. The way you say my name with the honorifics, giving it respect and yet loathing it all the same.

You had your own agenda of revenge. So expectantly unique that no one could grasp the idea anyone would go through this over one person.
In your purposeful brutality, you made Sasuke seek vengeance upon yourself. By this, and through your betrayal, you made me the only remaining Sharingan user in the village. Sasuke survival merely gave us bleak hope, a tease of sorts. And then, even when Sasuke had obtained his Sharingan, he used it for his power lust. Heleft tochase you, not do as I had advised all the same. Now again I am the only Sharingan user our village can depend on. I am the last of the Hatake and the Uchiha. Konoha has lost all of its renowned warriors of the art and you struck the country I love's blood for my especial suffering.

All this time I had believed you to be my comrade under our country, forpeople like Naruto who shine above all of the disarray and hell. Fight to protect them, to cherish them even if just a bit longer. I was so delusional.
I don't think I can face him now.
I can't face anyone. How could I? Naruto, he fought so gallantly, willing to push it beyond to the bitter end if he must to surmount Sasuke's quest, and to look at him now with the guilt that I had been the original spark that foresaw this result in the end? To see Sakura, her smile still pained with the malevolent memory and burying all the years of pain she suffered in his wake and selfishness, the tears she refused to give into again clawing at her heart nonetheless.
And to know, to realize, it started with me.

Suffering.I know it's beyond my numb body as I stiffly lay on the ground, dirt and rock, I can tell now that its dirt again, I'm in the cave. Are we both in the cave? I still can't feel and I'm far too exhausted to move. Has this been enough to satisfy you?

If this was what you really wanted of me… maybe I'll be graced with joy you could never show or feel.

Reality, afterall, penetrates those layers of pain just as well, if not better, than your eyes.
Itachi.