AN: Sooo, I edited this chapter and added lots of details. Then when I tried to update, the internet cut off, so I lost everything. Forgive me if it's crappy. I'm too tired to read particularly carefully again. Hopefully it's all right.
Chapter 29: That Night
"The most painful moral struggles are not those between good and evil, but between the good and lesser good."
~Barbara Grizzuti Harrison
Red numerals glared into the darkness from the dashboard digital clock. 4:56 a.m.
The leather upholstery creaked as Naruto straightened himself up in the car seat.
"So...where are we going?"
"You'll find out soon enough." came the monotone reply.
Naruto looked out at the dark, dirt road ahead of them. Wherever they are was out in the middle of nowhere. There were no streetlights, but he could see the dull, orange lights of the city shining along the horizon.
"Why are you helping me?"
No answer, only the sound of the groaning engine. Naruto let out a growl of frustration as his patience quickly came to a burning end.
"All right. Enough." he said and he grabbed the car door handle with both hands. "You'd better tell me exactly what is going on or I swear I will jump out of this car, and you will never see me again."
Itachi glanced over at him before returning his eyes to the road.
"Now is not a good time."
Naruto clicked the handle and blustering wind blasted through the door crack. The car began making an alarmed ding ding ding sound and a red warning light lit up the dashboard.
"Now is a good time." said Naruto.
Itachi sighed, and reached across him, slamming the door shut. The blustery noises and dinging stopped leaving them in a muffled box of rumbling quiet.
"Fine. What do you want to know?"
"Why are you helping me?"
"Because you may be the only person who can stop the Akatsuki."
Naruto stared at him.
"I don't know if you've noticed, but you ARE the Akatsuki."
"I have my reasons for working with them."
"Care to share any of those reasons?"
Itachi kept his gaze straight ahead, surveying the tunnel-like night stretched out before them. The white road markings flashed beneath the car headlights before being smothered by the darkness behind.
"I have been working with the Akatsuki for years."
"Uhuh…"
Naruto waved his hand for him to continue.
"I began as a double agent. I was in training to be in the Konoha special corps."
"You worked with the special corps? Then that means you worked with…"
"We've met once before, you know. When you were younger."
He turned to look at Naruto then, the red light of the dashboard clock danced across his face, reflecting in his pitch black irises.
And Naruto remembered. He had seen that face before. That night that his parents were taken he had been there - the dark figure of Itachi standing in the hallway as the door behind him banged in the wind. The rain outside had cascaded in through the gap, but it wasn't just water that had dripped off the young man's hands that night. Red spots seeped into the carpet, and Naruto remembered now the bolt of fear that had shot through him as those deadened eyes looked upon him, a face covered in crimson blood. He had hugged his caretaker then, protective hands smoothing his hair.
Naruto's hands snaked back towards the car door handle.
"You were the mole." He whispered.
"I was not." said Itachi.
"But you were there that night."
"I came to warn your parents, Naruto. Instead, I found you."
"Warn them about what exactly?"
"About what was going to happen." said Itachi. "The Akatsuki had all the information they needed - the safe house, the informants, the details of the sting operation. The entire thing was a trap."
"But…how did you know?"
"Because my father was the mole."
"Your father?"
Itachi nodded.
"He was chief of police, the only one in the police department that had been trusted with details of the special corps. It was his job to protect this city. Instead, both he and my mother decided to sell it out. The Akatsuki had threatened to reveal a past indiscretion in their history. It would have cost my father his job, their estate, their reputation. My parents decided to sign the death warrant of thousands for the sake of the family name."
Itachi's face remained emotionless as he spoke, but Naruto noticed the tightening of his grip on the steering wheel.
Naruto shifted in his seat, putting a few more inches of safe distance between them.
"But I saw you. You came to the safe house. There was…blood."
"I thought that with my…actions that I had stopped them, but my father had contingencies in place. I realized when I got to the safe house that I was too late. He was already there."
"Who?" asked Naruto.
Itachi paused and looked at Naruto.
"Orochimaru." He said quietly.
It was like someone had sucked all of the oxygen out of the car. Naruto chest became tight. He closed his eyes and concentrated on breathing.
Orochimaru.
The hand, that pale hand that had stroked his hair. The man who had sat with him telling him not to worry, that his parents would come home safely. The man who had searched around the house, pulling out drawers and rifling through papers while on a "treasure hunt". He had been with him that night, and Naruto hadn't even remembered. Why? Why did it always come back to him?
Itachi's voice broke him out of his spinning thoughts.
"You didn't know he used to be Akatsuki." he said.
Naruto shook his head, staring numbly at the dashboard in front of him.
"He found out the location of the safe house before I could." said Itachi, "Most likely he killed any of the operatives that were there."
The noises. It was the thumps and yelling that had woken Naruto up that night, that had had him crawling out of bed to see what was going on, only to find a pale stranger laying a blanket over a lump on the floor.
"Shh. He's sleeping." said the man with a friendly smile as he put a finger to his lips.
"When I arrived, he and Kabuto had ransacked the house. I don't suppose you remember anything they took?"
"Papers." said Naruto in a numb voice as the memories flooded back. "I think...just papers."
"This is a fun game, isn't it, Naruto-kun?" said Orochimaru, handing a stack of papers to a young Kabuto who could not have been more than 18. "Tell me, did Mummy and Daddy hide anything secret away? We have to find it for them so that we can help them. Maybe in a box or a special place?"
Naruto shook his head, and the man knelt down in front of him with a smile.
"Think hard, Naruto-kun. You wouldn't want something to happen to your parents just because you couldn't remember a little thing like this, would you?"
Naruto's bottom lip trembled at the thought and he shook his head again.
"Now, now. They'd want you to be strong. Big boys don't cry."
The door slammed open and Itachi's blood-soaked figure strode in. Silhouetted in the darkness of the night, he looked like a demon figure to a child's eyes.
Naruto squealed and clung to the man next to him, who stroked his hair.
"Nothing to be afraid of, Naruto. This is our friend, Itachi." He said.
"Good evening, Itachi."
"Orochimaru." replied the man, his eyes flicking towards the lumps under the blankets and back to the pale man. "I thought you were supposed to be in East District with Deidara."
Orochimaru shrugged.
"Something came up." He said. "And what brings you here, Itachi-kun? Shouldn't you be celebrating with your parents?"
"My parents are dead." replied Itachi shortly. "They were loose ends."
"You are truly ruthless, Itachi." said Orochimaru eyeing the blood dripping onto the carpet and the gun in the younger man's hand.
"Obito's orders, I assume."
"Much like he ordered you to come here, I assume." said Itachi. "Strange though that I got a call from Deidara saying you had sent him to an empty location and then disappeared. Imagine my surprise finding you here. If I didn't know better, I would have said you wanted to get your hands on the cure for yourself."
Naruto cried out as the soothing hand in his hair tightened to a painful grip.
"I have another loose end for you to clear up." said Orochimaru. In a flash, he picked up Naruto and threw him screaming towards Itachi.
Itachi caught the child instinctively and set him down before raising his gun, but he pointed only at an empty room. The back door slammed open as Orochimaru and his progeny ran out into the night with the stolen papers.
"That was the night Orochimaru defected." explained Itachi, "He had betrayed Konoha special corps and betrayed the Akatsuki. In the end, he was only serving himself. He stole what research was left on Akatsuki's drug from your own parents, which I'm guessing is how he developed and produced his own version of the Akatsuki drug, "Bliss". It's also the reason the Akatsuki didn't start putting their own product out on the streets. Until they knew what information Orochimaru had, they couldn't take the risk."
"Why didn't they just kill him?"
"They tried to, or I should say, we tried to." replied Itachi. "But he laid low for a long time. He couldn't be found, and when he finally surfaced it was with the might of his own organization behind him, one more powerful than our own weakened one, at least until you came along and destroyed it. By that time, the Akatsuki had their own plans, and the easiest route was for everyone to think they no longer existed. Orochimaru was a welcome distraction to the media when the news broke - a new 'big bad' if you like."
Naruto pulled his knees up, pulling his hoody over his legs as he hunched forward in the seat.
"That night..."
He glanced at Itachi, seeing this frightening man in a new light. "If you hadn't come, he probably would have killed me."
"Most likely."
"You dropped me off at the police station, didn't you? They could have arrested you."
Itachi turned to him with a small smile.
"No one was looking for me at that point, didn't even know that they were supposed to look for me. Besides, I didn't go inside if you remember."
Naruto remembered. It was like his mind was finally clear as the fragments of memories connected. He had been terrified as he walked through the heavy wooden doors into the police station, walking up to the sour-faced woman at the desk. Then it had all been downhill from there, from one plain white room to another until he arrived at the towering concrete-gray walls of the Home.
The sun tipped its face just over the horizon as they pulled into a large graveyard. Faint beams of early morning light shimmered amongst the gravestones as they drove amongst the various plots, deeper inside the graveyard. The purr of the engine felt like an intrusion in the peaceful glade.
"Sasuke is waiting for us here."
"In a graveyard? Why?" asked Naruto, scanning the grass rows for Sasuke.
"It's where our parents were buried. He thinks someone is coming to give him information on your whereabouts. I will drop you off farther up. You will find him in plot 16."
"Wait, I'm going alone?" asked Naruto. "No, you need to come. You need to explain this to him."
"There are things that still need to be taken care of. The Akatsuki-"
"Are you freaking kidding me?" interrupted Naruto "This is your brother."
He was met with a blank look.
Naruto narrowed his eyes.
"Do you have any idea how long he's been hunting you? How obsessed he's been? How much all this has hurt him? He needs to know why you did what you did. He needs to know you're not the bad guy."
Itachi let out a small sigh.
"Do you really think that what Sasuke needs to hear is that his mother and father were traitors who sacrificed innocent people's lives? How did that work out for you?"
Naruto shot him a glare. "It's better than believing your only living relative is a psychotic murderer."
Itachi slowed the car to a crawl, craning his neck to see in the plots as they passed through an avenue of trees.
"No, it's better that he believes they were innocent." He said with a frown. "I'm the one he needs to hate. I'm still alive. He needs to know there is a danger still out there. It gives him a goal, a drive. If all he has are our dead parents, then his fight is over. With the way things are now, he needs something to fight for. Besides nothing will ever change the fact that I killed our parents. For that, I can never be forgiven."
Naruto shook his head in disbelief.
"You know, for you Uchihas being so smart, you really are a bunch of dumbasses."
Itachi blinked and looked at him.
Naruto let out a growl of frustration.
"Geez, you guys are more alike than I thought, constantly lying and manipulating instead of just saying it straight, then with the guilt trips. You honestly think that the best thing for him is to have no one left in his life? You think that will make him strong? He grew up thinking his own brother murdered his parents!"
Naruto threw his hands up in the air.
"I mean, you can't be serious! It's obvious that you don't know him anymore because you seriously underestimate him if you think he wouldn't fight with everything he has. He's not your baby brother anymore. He's a smart, capable person. And you Uchihas need to stop trying to manipulate everyone around you. You ever stop to think that just telling the truth and talking this shit out might actually work?"
Naruto paused, breathing heavily after his long speech, and fixing Itachi with an accusing glare.
"It's too late for that." replied Itachi simply.
He pushed the accelerator sharply and the car revved as they sped through the avenue of trees into an open area.
That was when Naruto saw him. A couple hundred yards away at the far end of one of the plots - a lone, human figure kneeling on the grass, encompassed by an army of stone. He rose to his feet upon hearing the roar of the engine.
The gravel on the dirt road crunched and sprayed out under the wheels as Itachi stamped on the brakes. He cut the engine.
"This is where I leave you." He said. "Go to him."
Itachi leaned across Naruto and opened the car door.
"I can see why he chose you." He said with a small smile. "Perhaps next time I'll have a chance to explain things, but now is not the time. I leave him in your care, Naruto. Protect him."
Naruto shook his head as he got out the car. "Yeah, well, someone has to, right?"
He glanced back at his odd rescuer, unsure whether he should be grateful or just be plain angry.
"Thanks, I guess." he muttered and slammed the door shut hard.
Maybe a bit of both then, he thought as he tightened the cords of his hoody around his neck, blocking out the cold morning air. He turned to face Sasuke.