It is of a failure when fifty years after royalty is deceased and but a well-placed memory that man has completely hence forth erased said remembrance of the ones higher in rank. The worst, most shameful part on record is the fact that their forgetting of the other man's brilliance is no more remembered than the man itself.

Xxx-xxX

Itachi remembers all the cracked mirrors in the house, perhaps because he holds onto memories like a lifeline. Seven years of bad luck, for each broken one, and he has recited the moments in his mind again and again until they are over.

Sasuke breaks most of them, Itachi thinks, but it has always been easier to blame himself than his brother even if he hasn't quite remembered why. It must be a memory, as he remembers the mirrors and the mistakes, for if he is a genius than he probably figured it out some time ago. Faults are folded into small pieces, easier to collect than the glass shards, kind to him and easy to forget and they've never left scars on his hands.

But pieces collect, like the dust over the unused books on his shelves- except just as Itachi expects Sasuke to one day read the carefully aligned scrolls in his room he expects Sasuke to one day be mature enough to take every mistake he's made in Itachi and place it back in himself.

But seven years of bad luck is multiplied to a crack in them, deeper than what it takes to break a mirror, and they are all left shattered. All the blame and all the split ends worm their way out, slower, slowly, and one by one they are aligned in careful rows of military positions within Sasuke that are more well-placed then his bookshelves, and the sins written in red ink wind into a spool of thread they have to sew themselves back together with when they are ready.

When they've paid their dues and the clan graves have been danced upon, and their foot prints in the raised dirt are deeper than what it's taken to become broken and smooth over the pride in the Uchiha bloodline.

Xxx-xxX

Itachi almost finds humor in the fact that despite being praised as one of the better shinobi of his time, he seems to discover more potential in the people around him than he has ever found in himself. Mikoto wastes her days away as a widow with a husband, never fully accepting the fact even after over fifteen years of marriage that she is no longer single (Itachi finds her waiting for him to come back from missions on occasion, although the look in her eye suggests she is not longing for her son). Fugaku is even more blind than Itachi, lacking a developed sharingan or eyesight that does not only see prodigious acts (perhaps, Itachi thinks, that is the reason why Fugaku has dawdled more and more on Sasuke and seemingly less on him).

Sasuke has no more time than the chance to redeem himself for something of the past before he is committing himself to another mistake that costs more than the one before. Itachi thinks there is a fault in their system, there always has been, because there is the man who is blind and he has so many more eyes on him. Itachi's world is darkening, the glow of Uchihas fading from what once was, the only thing that kept his vision from bleeding and the blood is on his hands now.

Xxx-xxX

Shisui is found dead the next morning.

Xxx-xxX

-Blood runs cold in those who aren't human; humanity inside the population of us all a sore and bitter corpse that is decaying as a shed skin of the serpent and the spiders at his feet.-

AN: I wanted to make this sort of a 'filler' chapter, a sort of prologue to the next chapter, which is a more in depth description of what happened. I hope I gave enough hints to tell you what happened. I don't know where the diary entry came from, but since I normally work on impulse anyway it doesn't really matter, does it? If you couldn't tell, Itachi Met Orochimaru, and it implies that that has something to do with Shisui's death. This is almost a 'fill in the blanks yourself' story, and though the Orochimaru plot is overused I'm trying to take a new twist on it. I'm actually using a lot more clichés than needed/wanted/I expected/, but I almost like it that way because if I pulled something out of my ass that wasn't as…speculated as the theories that've already been invented on Itachi, I doubt anything would make sense. My theories often do have logic to them, but it's a very…difficult logic and it's too difficult to something (in this instance, Itachi's past) that I thought would actually be more simple. I don't want 'too simple' or overused, but I don't want to come up with something crack or unbelievable. Therefore, expect great things to come, friends. Hopefully I'll get the next chapter out soon, to clear some things up a bit more, AND JUST TO TELL YOU, YES, I'VE DECIDED I DO WANT THE PLOTLINE TO GO RATHER FAST, AS THIS WILL PROBABLY BE A SHORTER STORY THAN YOU EXPECTED WITH A PURPOSEFULLY ABRUPT ENDING THAT WILL COME SOON.

Now that that's out of my system, I want to totally spam you out with the fanart the LUVERLY, and most WONDERFUL CatGurl2004 drew me. I've been drooling over this thing like, all night since I got it, and I've been looking forward to linking it here! I love it so much! –hugs paper-

http ://s13. photobucket. com/albums/a284/LunaGlossamer/?actionview¤tUchiha. jpg (Remove Spaces)

REVIEW PLEASE!!!

(And shit will go down :D.)