The first time Itachi Uchiha held a sword he was three years old. At that age he was almost as tall as the sword had been long, but the handle felt right in his hand and when he pulled it down from the den wall it was just light enough that he could take it down without dropping it, but heavy enough that he'd had to drag it across the floor once he did.
It was his ancestor's sword and Itachi had been drawn to it, enchanted by the golden braid hanging from the pommel and intricate metalwork of the blade, so polished it was almost white, shining like the delicate pearls his mother hung from her ears.
He had only just began to learn how to read, so he skimmed over the inscribed words briefly before tracing the images on the side: the small figure of a man standing alone against a giant beast rendered in swirls and individually carved scales. An ancestor of theirs, his father had told him once, had banished an evil dragon from their land, then had the sword cast in commemoration of the act.
His ancestor had been a hero.
At four years old, hero was an enormous word, one of incredible capabilities, reserved exclusively for people who were admired and acknowledged by their communities. The kind of people who could have stories written about them.
By then the sword was more of an heirloom than a weapon, so beautiful and fragile no one would ever imagine taking it into battle, but when he held it in his tiny child's hands it seemed to fit just right, warming quickly in his grip. He could, like his ancestor, be a hero.
His father, however, did not quite see the situation in the same light and Itachi had gotten a sound scolding when he and the sword had been found with several fresh gouges in the den floor.
Afterwards, though, his father had walked him into the backyard and, handing him a proper wooden practice sword, began to teach him how to use it.
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Itachi was four when Sasuke was born and even then, even as a child with no understanding of the world and its dangers, he somehow understood what it meant to want to protect something, to have someone who relied on him. He had Sasuke, and that meant he had a cause for which he would give his life.
Sasuke's very existence changed something fundamental about him: he was no longer just son, boy, student, or child anymore: he was brother.
He was Sasuke's brother.
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It took less than a year for Itachi to understand that yes, the world was dangerous and yes, he would need to protect Sasuke from it.
He had taken to his role as older brother with gusto, dividing his time evenly between training with his father and teaching Sasuke everything he knew, repeating the tales of his favorite heroes: Orochi the Deathless and Tsunade Skull-Splitter, One-Eyed Kakashi and the She-Wolf of the Rainlands.
As a baby, Sasuke was a very good listener and while Itachi rarely talked to others he found it easy to carry on his one-sided conversations with Sasuke, who would watch him speak and smile, gurgling with excitement. Though he was young, their parents trusted him to the point where they would often leave for hours, knowing Itachi could look after himself and Sasuke for short enough periods of time.
It was on one such night that monsters attacked their village.
Their parents had left early in the evening and, despite the ominous feeling in the air, Itachi had been glad to spend a few hours with Sasuke. It was when he was putting Sasuke down for his nap that he heard the scratching at the front door and knew something was horribly, terribly wrong.
When his parents had finally made their way through the scaly fanged creatures and back into the house they found Sasuke napping peacefully in his crib, and Itachi slumped outside their bedroom door where he had either passed out or fallen asleep, unable to recall the next day which it might have been.
And, of course, they found both of the beasts he had bashed to death with his wooden practice sword, their blood spattered along the hallway walls.
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By the time he was seven, Itachi had garnered something of a reputation in the village.
His parents and fellow villagers called him a hero for what he did the night of the attack, and that scared Itachi more than any snake, beast, or monster ever would.
When the monsters attacked he hadn't felt brave or powerful or magical. It was an experience fueled by fear and panic, knowing he was the only thing separating the beasts from Sasuke and that if he failed to act his baby brother would be eaten alive as he slept. It was not a story he wanted anyone, let alone himself, to tell.
The nightmares he had of broken bodies and blood spilled along the kitchen floor were not heroic. His compulsive need to have Mother and Father home as often as possible was not heroic. The tears he shed at night when the floor creaked unexpectedly were not the tears of a hero. The monsters may not have killed him but they had broken something within him, taken something precious from him.
The villagers thought he had turned into a hero but Itachi knew he had become a coward.
He knew he was not a hero, but he understood that, compared to the other village boys, he was talented and physically strong and so when his father announced he would begin training with the junior rangers, Itachi did not argue. He fought the memories back with as much frantic energy as he'd fought the monsters themselves, bludgeoning and suffocating every fear or insecurity before either his parents or Sasuke could so much as glimpse them.
He had expectations to fulfill, and nightmares and memories would only get in his way.
He had Sasuke to protect.
The rangers were the protectors of the village, explorers who traveled every inch of the continent. They were the first to defend the village but also the ones who traveled the farthest, bringing back news from countries Itachi had only seen on maps and tales from people Itachi had only ever read about in books.
The junior rangers, on the other hand, were a group of loosely-supervised children who ran about the village with wooden swords and steel-toed boots, first learning to create trouble before they learned how to contain it.
It was only a few months before Itachi surpassed all of the other junior rangers and had been allowed to join the regular rangers in their practices, naturally excelling. It was here that he met Shisui.
Being distant cousins, it was only natural that they would have met eventually. That they became friends was somewhat less predictable.
Itachi was not one prone to conversation but, as he would learn over the years, Shisui was not prone to giving up.
Shisui made himself at home in Itachi's world, tugging him gently by his hair and putting his arm around Itachi's shoulders and generally invading his personal space in ways Itachi would not have ever tolerated from anyone else.
He found he did not care very much what Shisui did so long as Shisui stayed close to him.
Shisui was something bright and beautiful and Itachi was drawn to that: Shisui saw the world as a journey, as an adventure waiting to happen. He could read his passion into everything he touched, and, just maybe, he could read it into Itachi too.
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Itachi was eleven when Sasuke and Naruto met, and it was then that he realized Sasuke would never be like him.
He suspected Sasuke had come to realize the same thing but, while the thought was a comfort to Itachi, it seemed to be a constant source of frustration and anxiety for Sasuke.
When Sasuke looked at him, Sasuke saw only his talents. Itachi couldn't fault him for that, but it meant Sasuke was overlooking a good deal. He saw Itachi as a destination, a level of achievement. Sasuke was blind to his many failings, and instead used him as a standard. As a child this was to be expected and Itachi did not begrudge him that.
What Sasuke did not understand was this: Sasuke had the potential to become so much greater than Itachi.
Itachi did well because he was naturally gifted. He could, with very little trouble, read of complex formations and forms in his books and then execute them flawlessly in practice. There were few ideas beyond his grasp, no challenges beyond his abilities.
Struggle was a foreign concept to him, but not to Sasuke.
Sasuke saw this as a weakness but Itachi understood this was what would make Sasuke far, far greater than he could ever be.
Itachi would always excel because it was natural for him to do so; Sasuke would excel because he wanted to, and in doing so had learned what it meant to truly fight and succeed and deserve something.
Itachi never had; he'd fallen into his career without ever needing to think of it, without ever learning to want it, to form a passion for what it is he did.
It was his duty, and so he did it; there was little more to be said of it than that.
When Sasuke met Naruto, Itachi realized Sasuke could never be the same.
It had started with angry grunts and glares thrown each other's way when they passed in town and quickly devolved into fistfights behind the orphanage, wrestling matches in their classroom.
Ordinarily Itachi would have wanted to mediate but something in the way they interacted held him back.
When Sasuke talked about Naruto Itachi could hear a burning desire in Sasuke's tirades, a fervent need to improve and overcome and succeed. It was a hero's passion and it was something that could only ever be discovered, never learned.
Whatever it was between Sasuke and Naruto, whatever force was dragging Sasuke out of the house and to the training grounds at dawn was not a force raw talent would ever beat. Sasuke had earned more bruises and broken bones by age seven than Itachi had in eleven years and in the years to come they would only make Sasuke stronger.
Itachi had gone his whole life without taking on even minor injuries while Sasuke was out brawling with Naruto every day being beaten and broken and remade constantly. Sasuke could bear being beaten and broken and would come back stronger every time.
Itachi had been broken once and knew he was not capable of being broken again.
For years Itachi had been the center of Sasuke's universe and Sasuke had been the center of his: Itachi lived to protect Sasuke, and Sasuke lived to meet his potential.
Naruto changed that.
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When Itachi turned thirteen he was made the leader of a squad of rangers and tasked with heading expeditions across the continent. His mother had cried, overjoyed, and his father gave him a firm pat on the shoulder in a rare show of pride.
Itachi was the youngest such leader to be appointed outside of wartimes and it was then, as a thirteen year old boy, that he killed another human for the first time.
She was the commander of a group of bandits that had been plaguing a key trade route between their village and his squad had been dispatched to deal with them by any means necessary.
While he had initially wanted to negotiate with them, she made it clear their criminal ways were the only lifestyle acceptable for her band and they would not be stopped except by force.
When it came down to it, Itachi had only to decide if he would kill this woman now and live with it, or allow her to take his life and potentially the lives of his comrades.
This was something he had trained to do and the fear he had felt as a child was non-existent, long buried. His ability to keep calm and decide quickly under pressure was a skill that had been ingrained in him over the course of many long practice sessions, rooting out his weaknesses and fragilities until there remained nothing left to distract him.
That he chose to take her life was not a problem. That it was not difficult for him to do so was.
Itachi walked away with the woman's blood staining his uniform and could not help but wonder what it was he was supposed to feel.
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He was fifteen was Sasuke turned eleven, when Sasuke and Naruto officially joined the junior rangers as trainees.
It was a terrifying and exciting experience, knowing Sasuke was joining a world where, yes, he would succeed, but also one where he would be constantly at risk. Sasuke had a hero's heart but it would always lead him into danger.
On his first day, Itachi had personally seen to it that Sasuke had the chance to meet Itachi's comrades, that Sasuke would have the right connections and resources to go as far as his potential could carry him.
When he went to walk Sasuke home, his classmates had stared at both of them, bug-eyed and open-mouthed. Itachi had, of course, built himself somewhat of a reputation, and it was expected Sasuke would be a proper continuation of it.
That night Sasuke had politely knocked on his bedroom door and announced he was going to become the best ranger ever, stronger than Itachi had ever been, and that he would do so relying only on his own abilities.
Itachi had learned a few very important lessons then.
Sasuke did not need his help.
Sasuke did not want his help.
Sasuke would struggle and fail on his own and he would prefer to do that rather than have Itachi looking over his shoulder all the way, and Itachi had no choice but to let him.
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At age sixteen, he quit the rangers and applied to the University several towns over be a scholar. It had been one of the greatest scandals of the village: that one of their strongest and most experienced fighters (nevermind one still in his teenage years) would choose any other path.
He could spend the rest of his life becoming the greatest ranger in history and, he had realized, he would not enjoy a second of it. It would never mean anything to him.
He could remain there to help Sasuke, but Sasuke no longer needed him. No longer wanted him, and it was Itachi's coward heart that could no longer tolerate its work without having Sasuke to motivate it.
Itachi was sixteen and he was tired; tired of killing and tired of seeing people die.
Shisui had, in his own way, understood: he had seen the same horrors Itachi had, but Shisui could look past them. Being a ranger was a type of freedom for Shisui, and Shisui understood this was not the case for Itachi.
His mother had hugged him and said she would always love him without seeming to realize how unusual it was to say such a thing to her own son. She meant it kindly, he knew, but that she felt the need to say it at all told him enough.
Sasuke only watched, confused and concerned and, Itachi imagined, probably angry too. Itachi had obtained everything Sasuke ever wanted and could turn his back on it, could walk away from that life without a single regret.
Sasuke likely saw it as a genius moving onto another conquest, but Itachi knew what he really was: a man with no real interests and no real passions who would continue to succeed without ever truly wanting to. A coward who would run away from the rangers, who would gladly pass the responsibility of taking lives onto another.
His father had no choice but to accept the change: to become a scholar was an honor, if an unusual one. The few days of stony silence between them was a small enough price to pay.
Upon his acceptance he packed his bags and left. The University was a day's travel from the village, so he was never too far away from Sasuke or his family, but living on his own offered him a measure of independence he had never had before.
For the first time, he lived in a world where he was a virtual nobody, where his name carried no weight and his reputation was nonexistent. Every other scholar was also a genius of some kind, unusual and excellent in their own ways.
Now, at age nineteen, he was content to stay in the University library and work on his thesis which was, well, something he hadn't quite figured out yet.
He had once been told the University library carried over fifty-thousand books and it would be wrong to settle on a single topic before he had made it through at least a percentage of those.
Author's note:
Thank you so much for reading, everybody! Feel free to leave comments, thoughts, questions... anything you'd like!
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