The path was silent. Not because there was no sound, the wind stirred the trees, distant birds called out, a river murmured somewhere below the cliff's edge — but because nothing within him responded to any of it. The silence was inside.
Itachi Uchiha moved through the forest as though the world itself no longer required urgency from him. His destination was known. A set of coordinates given to him by a man who shouldn't exist. A man wearing the name of Madara Uchiha, who stepped out of myth like a corpse learning how to speak again. And yet, even myth had leverage.
Itachi Uchiha, a man who was despite his age stood as one of the most formidable Shinobis of his village. A village he was loyal to and...
A village that no longer had a place for him — not openly. As he navigated continued through the woods his mind had drifted to the only task left to him and it was this masquerade. A threat looming in the shadows like no other seen before.
The Akatsuki.
He had seen some of them before — a swirl of names and chakra signatures that marked themselves in memory. Pain: a leader who spoke like a prophet and carried himself like a grave. His eyes bore the mythical Rinnegan. A dojutsu believed to belong to the Sage of the Six Paths and the one carrying it would be either a God of creation or a God of Destruction. Konan: a woman that carried an ambiguous charisma, her eyes older than her face.
Throughout their initial meeting she didn't did not speak a word just watched everything quietly. Kisame: his soon-to-be partner, if whispers were true — a man with a sword that devoured chakra and a grin too large to be genuine.
And the most enigmatic one Madara Uchiha. It was puzzling to him, Madara Uchiha was a man who possessed capabilities far beyond the level of an ordinary shinobi, or even an Uchiha for that matter, despite his reputation he was believed and by all accounts should have been dead a long time ago. Despite Itachi's formidable knowledge about the shinobi world from the people to the abilities they can possess even he was having a hard time believing that this person was the real Madara. But again such was the reputation of this infamous warmonger, a person with ambitions corrupted by the lust for power and control leading into turmoil and a war where no one wins and innocents getting under the fights between tyrants too blind to see the undeserving suffer because of them.
It...it reminded him about his own village his own clan. Itachi always put his village first and kept the bigger picture in mind but there was nothing justifying the death of innocents in a game of power they had no part in.
One such victim of this game of power, was his own brother, Sasuke. Just the thought of his little brother was the most bittersweet feeling he could experience, he was quite literally his only reason to live after all he had experienced and painfully, had to make Sasuke experience as well. Danzo Shimura even told him in a cold almost sadistic tone that if Itachi didn't massacre the Uchihas with his own hands, He will, and the bloodshed that would follow...will include his brother Sasuke, having no where to go he had to chose the lesser evil and carry out the genocide through his own hands.
Well...not completely by his own hands as he was assisted by the same enigmatic figure who carried the legendary name of Madara Uchiha.
As he was thinking about all of this he spotted a cave that matched the description of provided by Madara with a figure standing wearing the same cloak colored in black and red, he knew he arrived at the place, the place he would have to call home for as long as he could be useful to Konoha...or alive. It was one of the people he met earlier, a woman, the one he saw before standing behind Pain and Madara. Konan stood with the quiet poise of a storm held just beneath the surface. Her blue hair, tied into a bun with a single white paper flower, framed a face both delicate and unreadable — the kind sculpted by grief, not vanity. Pale skin, amber eyes that neither judged nor welcomed, and a stillness that felt practiced, as if silence itself had chosen her.
"Uchiha Itachi," she said softly, Her voice held no curiosity, no warmth, no judgment. Only confirmation — the kind one gives to a ghost. Not much different to the person he had been his entire life or had to be in his life from now on. As he replied with a tone similar to hers.
"I am here", said Itachi. Words and tone that lacked any enthusiasm.
"We were expecting you", replied Konan. Follow me. I will show you around the place and lead you to your assigned living quarters. You'll be sharing quarters on the east wing. Pain wants you operational within the week. I'll show you around." She turned without waiting for agreement. Paper fluttered faintly at her ankles as she walked, some sheets trailing like feathers. This was a unique type of jutsu that he had heard before but never saw in action as it required focusing on even the most intricate details in one's fighting style so few tried to learn it.
They passed the hall where Hidan's laughter echoed like something rotting. Past Kisame's chambers, shut and cold. The base smelled like damp earth, rust, and secrets too old to name. As she stood next to a door and turned to face him.
"This will be your room where you will stay, Do you have any questions?" she asked after some time, stopping in front of a stone door marked only by faint, blood-red symbols.
He looked at her then — not her eyes, but the slight curve of her mouth, the way her blue hair stuck faintly to her cheek from the moisture in the air.
"None that would matter," he replied.
A pause. She tilted her head slightly.
"That's an answer people give when they're not ready to ask the real ones."
He didn't respond. He wasn't expecting her to reply, even a dry one like that, but he stayed silent. There was nothing to say. Nothing except: Is Sasuke eating well? Does he hate me yet?
Instead, he merely nodded again. She gestured to the room.
"Rest. The others will size you up later. They always do."
She turned to leave, but hesitated.
"By the way," she said without facing him, "we don't ask about the past here. We just assume it burned. If your headband isn't enough of a symbol for that."
The door shut behind her with a soft click. He stood alone in his new quarters. The rain tapped against the high walls above like fingers against a coffin.
As he sat down the bed he that was positioned near the corner of the otherwise dark room, right now illuminated by a few candles. He took a deep breath, one that carried no emotion. Emotions were something he was taught to abandon long ago. Ever since his father brought him to the battlefield of the Third Great Shinobi World War at the age of four. That was what a Shinobi was and with the recent events transpiring, he had not even a sliver of doubt left that all of the cold unwritten rules of the Shinobi world were valid. Deception and lies was just the tip of this deep messed up iceberg. But he had to use these tactics once again as he knew this was a new mission in his life now. He had now just one job in this new unknown dreadful world he had stepped in.
Itachi Uchiha was many things. A murderer. A brother. A shinobi. And now? He had to take a new role. One that was going to dictate the course of his unstable life.
A Spy in the Akatsuki.