Disclaimer: I don't own "Naruto, I don't make any money with this story, the rights of the authors are of course not touched in any way.

A/N: Well, the whole story is set in some parallel world where one decision has been different. But this is the first chapter that is now really outdated, as in chapter 367 Sasuke does not panic when he sees Itachi...

We did not travel one single metre on that day, which was fine, as we had no idea in which direction to go. I sent my ninja dogs to look for Itachi, Juugo sent his birds, Sakura and Karin went out for long walks to see if they could sense Itachi's chakra somewhere – all without success.

Sasuke did not seem to care. „He will have to find us, now that Naruto is with us. We just have to wait."

„See what love did to him", Suigetsu said. „Before we found you, we could not find Itachi fast enough, now he seems happy about every extra day he can enjoy with his friend."

It was even difficult to make him get up in the morning in order to spar with me. I was glad that he was able to forget about Itachi, but it was my responsibility not to forget. If I wanted Naruto to be safe, Sasuke had to be as strong as possible.

After three days he managed to get the bell from me for the first time. I was not content yet, and the next day he failed again, so we repeated the exercise, until he got it in every second attempt. I made him spar with Naruto and Suigetsu as well, requiring him not to use his Sharingan. I even let him fight Sakura, but this was not a great idea, because first he did not care to defend himself against her blow, and when he had recovered, he caught her quickly in a genjutsu. Afterwards they decided that it was better if she concentrated on helping him improve his chakra control.

He grew more focused again, realizing that the burden of fighting Itachi was on his shoulders, and on his shoulders alone, and that he was not any more responsible only for himself, but for the rest of the team as well. He was not impatient to meet Itachi any more, but every day that he could put to good use to increase his skill and his chances to defeat Itachi was welcome to him.

I saw quickly that there was not much left that I could teach him in terms of new jutsus: He knew more than enough and used them intelligently. So after a short time we concentrated on techniques that involved the Sharingan: Genjutsu and controlling other dimensions. We would fight for hours in some weird, otherworldly place, while the others only saw us stand and stare into each other's eyes.

„I have played that game when I was a kid", Naruto said. „You look at each other making a perfectly serious face, and the first player on whose face there is the faintest hint of a smile will lose. Sasuke, do you want to play?"

„You don't think that you can beat me in such a game?" Sasuke said. „You are not even able to make a serious face for just one minute."

„Do you want to play or not?"

They sat down opposite each other, relaxed their facial muscles, the game began – and Sasuke broke out into a smile almost immediately, and then even into open laughter. Naruto with a serious face was such a strange unusual sight that anyone who saw it would have laughed.

Sasuke was good with Genjutsus and other dimensions, much better than I was: He had now truly mastered the Sharingan. What kept worrying me was his tendency to be overcome by his emotions when he saw Itachi. The boys had finally told me about his last encounter with his brother when he had been twelve and had gone after Naruto and Jiraya in order to protect Naruto. They told me how he had been unable to think of anything than that he wanted to kill Itachi, how he had attacked again and again using beginners' jutsus as if he were a small child, neither realizing that they did not work against Itachi nor noticing that he was in no state to fight any more – and how he had finally been brought down by the Mangekyou Sharingan of Itachi.

Sasuke had been too ashamed to tell me about it before, ashamed not only of his own weakness, but ashamed also because this had been the event that had made him turn his heart from us and even attempt to kill Naruto.

Trusting me that I did my best to help him defeat Itachi, he found the courage to speak openly to me – or maybe it was because he recognized the necessity to do it if he wanted to achieve his aim.

So for the next days when we fought I used henge to assume the look of Itachi, and even though he knew that it was me, not his brother, he panicked, attacked too early, dodged my blows instead of parrying them, and was unable to come up with any new ideas but used the same jutsus over and over again. I defeated him within a minute, which I could not even have done when he had been twelve, and he sat down and was depressed and knew that there was a lot of work ahead of him.

„Try to forget about your revenge", I advised him. „Try to think of Itachi as a normal enemy whom you have to fight in order to protect the one you love. Itachi is not stronger than you in terms of genjutsu and ninjutsu, he is not even better at using his Sharingan. But he is using your anger and your fear to disarm you, and you must not allow him to do this."
„My fear?" Sasuke replied.

„Indeed, your fear."

„Then let us try again."

He managed to concentrate a bit better, and it took me longer to make him break down again. Slowly he learnt to remain calm, learnt to shut out his hatred and his fear, to shut out all thoughts of the murder of his parents, of his previous defeats, of Itachi's pure evilness and to think of him just as a normal opponent. He managed again to enter the state of being more than awake that was his specialty and that made him such an efficient fighter – that state in which he was shutting out all thoughts of danger and fear and was just concentrating and analysing and even coming up with new ideas in the middle of a fight. It helped him to remember that he had to protect Naruto and that to do this he had to stay alive. After some time he managed to defeat me regularly, even when I had taken the appearance of Itachi.