TH: Sorry about the wait. Here's the next chapter. I'm not sure how much longer this fic will be, but we are getting toward the end!

I was silly and made the jutsu name all geeky. Can anybody guess what show I'm alluding to?

beta: Icescim

The Philosophy of Self

Chapter Seventeen

"Sasuke." Itachi's voice broke on the syllables of his brother's name, cracking under the weight of the emotion it carried. "Sasuke."

He remembered. He remembered. In that split second before he woke from death, in that path between life and death, that narrow corridor… Itachi and Sasuke's souls crossed in the dark. Enough time for a fleeting touch, a trade of memory and emotion.

Love.

Regret.

Forgiveness.

"My weakness would have destroyed it all. It destroyed me. I cannot; you must. You should. You deserve this more than I. I'm sorry… onii-tama."

A deliberate use of the fond, childish address Sasuke had used for Itachi, once upon a time.

Itachi had time for a flash of horror, of denial, before his soul was thrust into life. The transition was harsh, jarring. Mind confused, he no longer remembered what had occurred in that dark corridor.

Until now.

Gasping, Itachi became aware that he was on his hands and knees, with Sakura crouched next to him, a healing hand on his back. He shuddered. "I'm fine."

Her hand hesitated, then dropped away. He pushed himself upright so he was just kneeling, waited for his vision to clear, and then rose to his feet with the help of the empty morgue table beside him.

"You were right," he croaked, speaking to Sakura but not looking up. "Sasuke was the one to bring me back."

There was a slight pause, a silence full of the questions.

"He used a forbidden jutsu, one of the many that Orochimaru had researched and ultimately discarded because it wasn't what he was looking for." Itachi had kept tabs on Orochimaru, after he had driven the Sannin from the Akatsuki. For his own benefit as well as Konoha's. He remembered learning about this jutsu. It worked, in that it did what it was supposed to, but it hadn't suited Orochimaru's purposes or circumstances.

After all, who would sacrifice their own life to bring Orochimaru's soul back from death? Not even his lackey, Kabuto, would have done so.

But, evidently, Sasuke would only too willingly trade places with Itachi.

"Forbidden?" Naruto said hesitantly. "Then… what happened to Sasuke?"

Grief squeezed Itachi's chest, and he carefully avoided looking at Team Seven, knowing that their expressions would reflect their hopelessness.

Forbidden jutsu were forbidden because of their power, and their cost.

"Kinjutsu: Touka Koukan," Itachi said.

"Equivalent…" Sakura whispered. He could hear the fear and denial growing in her voice. "N-no!"

"What?" Naruto demanded. "What does that mean?"

"Sasuke traded places with Itachi," Sakura choked out. A tense pause, then:

"Sasuke's dead?" Naruto's voice was weak.

Itachi couldn't help but glance up, to look at them. Naruto was shattered, lost. Sakura looked as if someone had slapped her. Even Kakashi was pale. He looked away again quickly. His hands, curled into fists, creaked as his grip tightened.

"He was never supposed to know," he said, voice rough with emotion. "He was never supposed to know. But Madara…"

His throat closed off, and his eyes snapped shut, burning. A few tears managed to escape, and he lifted a hand to shield them from sight. How could he presume to grieve with them? He was a Clan-killer, no matter what his reasons. And he had been cruel to Sasuke, even if that was just an illusion. Team Seven had lost their Teammate and friend because that Teammate had sacrificed himself for Itachi. The jutsu's name was a sick joke—there was nothing equal about the exchange.

:I have failed in everything,: Itachi thought, momentarily overcome with despair.

Fingers wrapped around his wrist, gently forcing his hand down. He matched gazes with Sakura, whose eyes flicked as if she wanted to look away, wary still of his doujutsu. But she held his gaze deliberately, brow furrowed with concern.

"You've been hiding your grief for a long time," she said quietly. "You're not alone anymore. You're not undercover, posing as an enemy. You shouldn't hide from us."

"Everything I have done in my life—everything—has been to protect Sasuke," Itachi said. "Now I have learned that he has taken my sacrifices, and turned them back to me. Sasuke gave his life to me. I do not know if I am angry or grieved. Or if I should feel guilty that I am not grateful."

"It's hard to feel grateful when someone you care about is dead," Naruto said. "On our first mission, Sasuke threw himself between me and an enemy, and took several senbon in the neck. I thought he was dead. I was angry… and I was sad."

Itachi could feel despair yawning like a pit just at the edge of his psyche—he could fall, and be lost in it, if he let himself. He wavered, then hardened his heart. "I don't have the luxury to examine my feelings and options at this time. We should continue on; Zetsu is obviously waiting for us."

Sakura was still holding onto his hand. When he glanced down at it, she hesitated, clearing disbelieving his composure, but her fingers slid away and she stepped back.

"You're right," Kakashi said, and he sounded like he knew Itachi's balance was a façade, as well. "Our first concern is Madara, and to get to him we apparently need to go through Zetsu."

The Copy Ninja led the way out of the morgue. Itachi paused a moment, trying to draw a cloak of serenity and detachment around him, as he had been accustomed to in his previous life. As he struggled with it, he found his eyes caught on the corpse, or more aptly, the necklace around its neck. He felt a sudden urge to reclaim it—it had been a gift from one of his Genin Teammates. When he left Konoha, he'd kept it, as a memento and as remembrance. He hadn't worried about it giving away his lingering feelings toward his Village; after he had been promoted out of the Team, they had gone on a mission and had never returned. Nobody alive knew of the significance of the trinket. He could wear it as a silent testament to his hidden loyalties.

A part of him wanted it back.

"Here."

Itachi turned to see Sakura offering him a square of gauze from her med-pack. He gave her an inquiring look. She tilted her chin at the body.

"You want the necklace, don't you? You don't seem like you were ever the materialistic type, so it must mean something to you. But it's tarnished from the fire, and filthy," she explained. "I thought you might want to wrap it in something, until you can clean it."

Her capacity for understanding continued to surprise him, and he felt a wash of gratitude toward her. He took the gauze, and delicately plucked the necklace from its gory bed with a soft, but no less sincere: "Thank you."

He folded the necklace into a packet, and stowed it carefully away. Then with a flicker of chakra, he immolated the body in the black flames of Amaterasu—even half-burnt, there was no sense in leaving his corpse there for any to find, and he could do nothing with it himself. He glanced at Sakura and they shared a brief look before turning to catch up with Naruto and Kakashi.

As they walked away, Sakura said quietly: "You know you can't keep from thinking about it forever."

She meant about Sasuke. "I know," Itachi told her. "But I—we all—will need to face Madara with undivided attention. It would be best for now to leave that Pandora's Box unopened, until we have the time to properly deal with what comes of opening it."

They stopped outside the room where Zetsu's chakra signature burned bright and steady, suspicious of a trap. There were no doors on the entrance, and the room beyond was impenetrably dark—likely from a jutsu, since the transition from hallway to room was stark and unnatural. Itachi activated his Sharingan, Sakura tugged at her gloves, Naruto pulled out a kunai, and they all looked to Kakashi. As the leader of their group, Kakashi would be the one to tell them to move forward or take cover. But before he gave them any signal, Zetsu's voice cut through the darkness:

"We've been waiting for you." "You took your time getting here. Decide to indulge in some nostalgia first?"

Their detour into the morgue hadn't gone unnoticed.

"The second voice is Black Zetsu," Itachi murmured sotto voce to the others, ignoring the sting to the plant-man-creature's comment. "That means this is the real Zetsu, not a clone—his Black side cannot be cloned."

"Come in; we won't attack you." "Yet."

Itachi stepped into the doorway, the first level of the Sharingan burning in his eyes. Team Seven moved to stand at his back.

"Madara-sama sends his apologies that he couldn't greet you here, Sasuke-kun," White Zetsu's voice said. "He had business to attend to. He sent us to entertain you for now."

"Where is he?" Itachi asked brusquely.

"He'll be waiting at the scene of your great success," came the mocking reply. Itachi's eyes narrowed.

"Cowardly, to send you to face me instead of doing so himself," Itachi said, still mimicking Sasuke's pattern of speech.

"You can complain to him yourself… if you survive," Black Zetsu said.

"We will!" Naruto shouted, springing forward. "Rasengan!"

:Impulsive,: Itachi thought, with a slight sigh. :But not unexpected, considering.:

Itachi wasn't concerned; Zetsu was wildly overconfident. He wasn't a combat ninja, he was reconnaissance and intelligence. He wouldn't succeed against Itachi, Sakura, Naruto, and Kakashi—skilled combatants all.

"Kai!" Itachi dispelled the genjutsu that darkened the room, revealing the main chamber of the defunct Uchiha stronghold. The stone walls were cracked, vines beginning nature's process of reclamation on the building. The large crack running through the large Uchiha fan painted onto the far wall was almost poetic in its symbolism.

Zetsu was pulling on the vines, using them as if they were extensions of his body—which, Itachi reflected, they could very well have been—to bat at the Naruto clones that were bombarding him. Itachi took one step forward, and immolated the vines with a high-powered Katon. It was strong enough that they crumbled to ash within moments, and the after-images of the brightly burning flames lingered in Itachi's eyes. He blinked them away, as Sakura punched the floor, shattering it. Kakashi charged past, Chidori blazing in one hand, aiming for the network of vines and roots that had been revealed. He smashed the lightning technique into one of the largest roots, and the charge crackling through the rest… and toward Zetsu, who had attached himself to the plants. The dichromatic man managed to break off the connection before the full charge hit him, but an arc of energy did jump the tiny gap between his body and the vine roots. He hissed, pitching to the side as muscles spasmed.

Itachi blew out a Housenka no Jutsu at him, and Naruto hopped after the fireballs, kunai in hand. Zetsu made a few hand signs, and stems burst from the ground. They had thick, bulbous ends… like seed pods, or…

"Get back!" Itachi shouted, and shunshin'd away himself. Naruto took a moment to launch a couple kunai toward Zetsu, as the pods swelled. He jumped away just as they burst, spewing yellowish clouds of spores, or poison.

Kakashi cast a Katon into the haze, burning away the particles. Through the drifting ash, Sakura leapt at Zetsu. He wasn't expecting her, so the kunai she held unwaveringly with both hands cut half way through his arm at the shoulder before he jerked back and tossed her away from him.

She went flying toward Itachi, who didn't dodge out of the way, but instead braced himself and reached up. His fingers closed around her wrist, and he caught the expression of slight surprise in her green eyes even as her body responded automatically and her hand gripped his wrist back. He didn't try to stop her momentum, which would have been impossible to do without breaking bones. He redirected it, smoothly spinning her around and launching her right back at Zetsu.

The wound Sakura had inflicted had inconvenienced the Akatsuki and given Team Seven numerous openings. But those wouldn't be open for long, considering that vine-y tendrils were already sprouting from his arm and knitting it back onto his shoulder. For now, anyway, he wouldn't be able to use that arm.

Kakashi seemed determined to take full advantage of the situation, because he fired up a Raikiri and charged in with all the speed his natural prowess and his borrowed Sharingan could afford him.

This time, Zetsu's arm was blown clean off, and torn down to its composite atoms. In other words, the Lightning technique vaporized Zetsu's limb.

In the next second, Naruto's Rasengan took off his other arm. The dichromatic man let out a terrible sound that was half roar, half screel. They all recoiled from it, giving Itachi a clean line of sight.

He took the opportunity. Blinked his left eye: "Amaterasu."

Zetsu's scream cut off abruptly, as the black flames consumed all the oxygen around him and within his lungs in a flash. He died instantly, but his body continued to burn.

All breathing somewhat hard, Team Seven watched a moment. Itachi let his Sharingan fade.

"Shouldn't… shouldn't we move out? Get to…wherever Zetsu said Madara was, before he leaves?" Sakura asked, breathing slow and deep. Itachi shook his head.

"No. It is not necessary to hurry," he said, calming his own breath. "Madara sent Zetsu to test us. If he'd beaten us, we would have been a waste of Madara's time anyway. But we beat him, so Madara will wait for us, where he said he would."

"And where's that?"

"Zetsu said that Madara would be waiting for us 'at the scene of your great success,'" Kakashi said, looking at Itachi.

"Yeah, but he thought Itachi was Sasuke," Sakura put in.

"The scene of Sasuke's great success," Itachi said. "He was trying to provoke me. He meant where Sasuke killed me."

With Itachi's assurances that Madara wouldn't slip away if they didn't rush along to face him down, Team Seven found a section of the base where they could build a secure camp. They wanted to face Madara fresh, without requiring stimulants like soldier pills, or the stronger ANBU Stimpacks they carried. So they'd sleep the night, and head out at dawn. They'd all agreed that the place where Madara waited wasn't far from their current location—only a few hours' travel.

They set a watch rotation, and settled down to rest before the fight. But Sakura was having troubles quieting her mind enough to sleep. As usual, things were flying thick and fast at them, the world turned on its head again and again. It was hard to keep up. In this quiet moment, she was trying to come to grips with Sasuke's… death.

:He's gone… not just run away, but dead.: She squeezed her eyes shut. :Naruto and I can't save him now, can't bring him home. Not unless…:

She opened her eyes, and they drifted hesitantly to find the shape of Itachi's sleeping form nearby.

:Touka Koukan…He knew what jutsu it was. He remembers Sasuke used it on him… Maybe… Maybe he knows the jutsu.:

Sakura watched Itachi sleep, thinking, until her eyes slid shut and she finally fell asleep.