“What? You know just what tomorrow means!!” In the dead of night, his father’s roar echoed throughout the house.
Itachi’s first reaction was not fear of his father, or concern about his rage. It was the trivial thought, Did that yell wake Sasuke up?
His little brother had school in the morning. Knowing nothing of the ominous shadow that hung over the entire clan, Sasuke spent his days concentrating on himself and his own work. His little brother needed his precious sleep to recharge his batteries for the following day, and Itachi didn’t want it interrupted by a boorish roar of anger.
His father’s room. His parents were both sitting in front of him. His father had his arms crossed, and was glaring at his son, while beside him, his mother’s eyebrows were raised, and her mouth turned downward at the corners. Seeing this, Itachi realized for the first time that his mother and his father felt the same way.
He had never once spoken with his mother about the clan issues or the meetings. His mother didn’t ask, and he hadn’t initiated any such conversation. Because she had never once spoken about these matters with his father while he was present, he hadn’t known before now just how she viewed the clan. But in that instant, he understood everything.
His mother, sitting next to his father and his obvious anger, was a member of the clan, and in favor of the coup. When he thought about it, it was only natural. She was not the sort of wife to shout out objections when her own husband was the leader of the scheme. Even just reasoning from her gentle temperament, he saw that she was not the sort of person who would go against his father’s wishes.
Itachi had known this about her. But even knowing it, he was still quite shocked to see her feelings on display before him like this. Itachi faced his father, trying not to look at his mother to the extent possible.
An aura flickered on the other side of the sliding door behind him.
Sasuke …
So his father’s loud voice earlier had woken him up. A flame of anger sprang to life in Itachi’s heart. His father completely lacked consideration for his little brother.
Fugaku had forgotten about Sasuke the day before the entrance ceremony, and tried to go along on Itachi’s mission, and now, this angry roar. Even when he looked at his brother’s report cards—always straight As—he didn’t really say anything to the boy. His mother had told Itachi that Sasuke was disappointed by this, and he couldn’t help but feel so sorry for his little brother.
Recently, Sasuke’s feelings toward his big brother had become more complicated. He had gotten the mistaken idea that their father only ever looked at Itachi, and a faint jealousy had taken root in his heart.
Itachi wanted to shout at Sasuke that he had it all wrong. Their father didn’t see Itachi as his son; he saw Itachi as a useful tool, necessary for his own ambitions to carry out a coup d’état. Itachi’s relationship with their father was definitely not what his little brother thought it was.
What was Itachi actually getting yelled at for in that moment? Not for going against his father’s wishes as a son, or for acting incorrectly as a human being. No, his father was furious that Itachi would not be at the meeting that was so critical to his own aspirations.
Itachi steeled himself and opened his mouth, as if to brush aside his father’s hatred. “I have a mission tomorrow.”
“What mission?!”
The foolish question exhausted Itachi. At the very least, his father knew that Itachi was obligated to keep Anbu mis-sions confidential. He couldn’t simply answer just because he was asked.
“I can’t say. It’s top secret,” he replied, his irritation growing. The naive questioning was an obvious annoyance, but he was also frustrated by the fact that his parents were so absorbed in the conversation that they didn’t even notice his brother’s aura.
Hearing the words “top secret,” his father closed his eyes, arms still crossed. His always tightly closed lips were pressed even more firmly together, and he stayed silent, tension oozing from every pore on his body. His mother turned worried eyes on her husband. Both of their faces shone with a thin layer of sweat.
A silence that was difficult to endure filled the room. Worried that Sasuke might not be able to withstand this tense atmosphere, and collapse, Itachi focused his mind on the aura behind him.
“Itachi,” his father said, and then paused before speaking again. “You are a pipeline that connects the clan with the center of the village.” His eyes were colored a faint red, but they didn’t change so much that the pattern of the sharingan rose up in them.
A pipeline connecting the clan and the center of the village …
A spy, basically. You push this dirty job on your own son, and now you have to pester him about it? Itachi asked his father, silently. Naturally, he did not get an answer; his father’s sharp gaze simply hurt, and stabbed through his tattered heart.
“You … know that, yes?”
“Mm hmm.” It was all he could do to offer that answer.
If he were to do exactly as his father wished, and work in a way that would delight Yashiro and the younger people of the clan, what on earth would become of the village? The 24-hour monitoring of the clan by the Anbu. Danzo’s request to provide information about the clan. These bits alone were more than enough to enrage his father and the others. The plan to stage a coup, already advanced to the stage where they were about to decide on a specific day, would be accelerated, and the resentment of the young people toward the village would reach its peak. And what would come after that?
War.
And then the defeat of the Uchiha clan, and persecution greater than anything they had seen before.
Itachi had come to understand only too well in his life as a ninja that the village of Konohagakure was most certainly not pure and innocent. It wasn’t just a prejudice toward the Uchiha clan. They had sealed the Nine Tails in a newborn baby, and then, with only the baby himself unaware of this fact, they had isolated him, surrounding him at a distance. The Anbu was the same. The Hokage himself had organized this institution that bore the burden of the darkness of the village, and singlehandedly forced them to take on dark work behind the scenes.
This village took the things it didn’t want to look at, foisted them on someone else, and then pretended not to see. In a place like this, would the clan be able to live as it had after being defeated in an attempted coup?
No. The path his father was attempting to walk was a road to ruin.
Itachi’s thoughts were shattered by his father’s voice.
“Bear this in mind.”
What did “this” indicate? Floating in a sea of thought, Itachi had for an instant lost sight of what Fugaku was talking about. And then, he remembered that his father was referring to the “pipeline connecting the clan with the center of the village.”
“And you will come to the meeting tomorrow,” his father continued.
Itachi stayed silent. He could not go. He had promised Shisui.
Still, he couldn’t muster the energy to declare here and now that he would not go. If he did, his father would get even more enraged. And if that happened, this conversation would go on even longer. He couldn’t sit here with his father any longer.
Sorry, Sasuke, he apologized to his brother in his heart, before turning his eyes away from his father, and toward the aura behind him.
“Sasuke. If you’re done in the washroom, hurry up and go to back to bed.”
In that moment, his mother and father appeared to notice his younger brother’s presence for the first time. The sliding door behind Itachi slowly opened, and Sasuke stuck his head in apologetically.
“A-all right.”
His father stood up, and looked at Sasuke. His eyes had already stopped seeing Itachi. “What are you doing wandering around in the middle of the night? Hurry up, and go to bed!” Fugaku called, in a voice that was very close to a reprimand.
The anger bleeding into his father’s words wasn’t purely toward his brother for being up so late. His anger at having an important discussion interrupted won out. Actually, that was all it was.
Perhaps cleverly understanding their father’s mental state, Sasuke simply answered, sadly, “All right.” He lifted his hanging head, and turned toward Itachi.
His eyes are blaming me for something …
What on earth could his brother be blaming him for? Because he had revealed Sasuke’s presence there? Or because the boy thought it was Itachi who had put their father in such a state? Or simply because he was jealous of his older brother having their mother and father all to himself?
In Sasuke’s eyes, brimming with emotion, there was a depth that didn’t allow Itachi to read the younger boy’s true intentions. He was spurred by the urge to know what his brother was thinking, even if he had had to use the sharingan, but he didn’t actually do anything.
There was only one thing in Itachi’s heart. A desire to atone for having used his little brother to cut short the conversation with their father.