No Revenge Is As Complete As Forgiveness

A/N: Aaand this chapter is finally done. I apologize of there are any annoying typoes, I proofread it several times but I also typed it with one bandaged hand after a minor surgery on my finger.



Thank you so much for your reviews, people! I appreciate them greatly! They motivate me to write. So thank you!



CHAPTER 15



“Before we continue, though” Nagato began “I have one question to ask you.”



Sasuke looked at him expectantly.



“Have you forgiven your brother, Sasuke-kun?”



Sasuke stared at the red-head when he was asked that question, taken aback by the brutal honesty of it.



“Why do you want to know?” he asked, wishing to avoid the conversation.



“Because in here there’s no place for lies and illusions. This is not a Genjutsu, Sasuke-kun. Its purpose is not to confuse the mind, but to help clear it. I need you to be honest with me about this, if we’re to help your brother.”



Sasuke remained silent for a few moments before Nagato continued:



“Do you even know if you’ve forgiven him?”



The younger man flinched at the question and rubbed his face, trying to put his thoughts in order.



“No. I don’t know.”



He wanted to sit down and think about this and then suddenly a three-legged chair formed next to him, another forming next to Nagato. Cocking an eyebrow at the red-head, he sat down.



“Are you reading my mind?”



“I cannot spare the effort at the moment, Sasuke-kun. This world is as much yours as it is mine, so it’s reacting to your wishes.” Nagato explained patiently as he settled on his own chair. Sasuke absently wondered how come they were both soaked and yet felt no chill. Finally, he focused back on the strange rippled eyes.



“I don’t know if I’ve forgiven him.” He repeated. “I know I love him. I don’t think I ever stopped, and that made me hate him all the more at the same time. I don’t know if that makes any sense.”



Nagato thought bitterly of his Sensei and nodded.



“Yes, it makes a lot of sense.” He murmured.



“Sometimes” Sasuke continued “I forget all that happened between us. I just live in the moment. We’re together and that’s enough. And then I remember what happened…” he looked away. “…and all the hate I felt back then comes back. I don’t want it to, but it does.”



Nagato nodded again. He could relate to that. He had spent years hating Jiraiya-sensei for abandoning them, and yet he had obsessed over him so much that he had hunted down his former opponents and he had taken their forms as a way to connect himself to the man again.



Before he could say anything Sasuke spoke:



“I don’t want to hate him. I don’t. I am trying not to, I am trying not to blame him, but…”



“Emotions aren’t logical.” Nagato mildly noted, got up from his chair and moved to stand in front of Sasuke, covering his hands with his own. “And healing takes a lot of time.”



The younger man gave him a small, hesitant smile.



“Why haven’t I ever talked to you like that before?”



“I was busy with the war effort to stop Madara and you were too angry at me for harbouring and helping your brother.” Nagato replied, the corners of his lips twitching with amusement.



“Oh. Right.” Sasuke looked uncomfortable. “I was probably very rude to you, considering I was living under your roof.”



Nagato patted his hands and withdrew.



“Don’t worry about that now. Let’s go and find your brother.”



Sasuke looked at him, confusion written on his pale features.



“You won’t be trying to convince me to forgive him or anything?” he asked.



Nagato shook his head.

“No one can convince you of that but yourself. I asked you about it because I needed to know as many variables about the situation we’re about to walk in as possible, so that I can react in the best possible way should something go wrong.”



Well, that certainly made a lot of sense.



“I understand.” Sasuke murmured.



“Are you ready?” Nagato asked him. The younger man nodded again.



“How are we going to do this?”



Nagato reached towards him, grabbing his hand.



“Just hold onto me and relax. Let me lead us into his mind. While we’re inside, follow my lead, don’t wander on your own. Mind-probing someone is a dangerous business even if that person isn’t suffering a mental breakdown.”



“I see.” Sasuke’s hand tightened around Nagato’s. “What happens when we find him?”



“We try to convince him to come with us.”



For a moment, everything around Sasuke went pitch black. There was no light, no sound, no sensation, no sense of direction. His only anchor to sanity and reality was the warm hand around his fingers, purposefully pulling him in some direction without any trembling or hesitation. Sasuke couldn’t help but feel impressed - this wasn’t anything like Tsukiyomi at all.



When the light returned he realized that they were back at the Uchiha compound. Everything looked… normal. The sun was shining, the sky was blue, the birds were singing, his Clansmen were going about their business as usual. He stared at those long-dead faces, fresh and pink and happy now, hurrying up and down the dusty street. They passed by him and Nagato and showed no reaction whatsoever at their presence. In fact, it appeared they couldn’t see them at all.



Sasuke turned to look at his companion, to ask for an explanation and found him frowning at the scene around them, looking both worried and displeased.

‘

“I was hoping we could avoid this.” He muttered unhappily.



“We could avoid what?” Sasuke asked, struggling with the rising hysteria he felt at the sight around them. “What is going on? Is this a figment of Itachi’s imagination?”



“A memory, actually. I’ve been here before, a few times.”



Sasuke looked around again.



“When is this here, then?” he asked quietly.



“The morning before your clan was murdered.” Nagato explained.

Sasuke stared at him in horror, then looked around again. This day didn’t look like any different than the usual Konoha summer, there was no indication that disaster was about to strike, no indication that in a few short hours, all these people would be slain by someone of their own blood.



“Why are we here?” he asked, still looking around, his eyes focusing on the three children playing on the street – they had drawn a bizarre chalk figure made of squares and were taking turns jumping on one leg through the squares. They were two girls and one boy, each not much older than five, all of them his cousins. The girl whose turn was hopped on one leg from square to square, careful not to step on any line, the red bows of her pigtails floating with each jump. He observed her, mesmerized by the movement of the red bows, his eyes slowly sliding down to the figure on the ground – it was a dragon, he realized, crudely drawn but a dragon nonetheless. And the little girl was unavoidably moving towards the gaping maw.



Sasuke looked away and met concerned rippled eyes.



“You need to hold it together, Sasuke-kun.” Nagato warned him, not unkindly.



“This feels so wrong.” Sasuke answered, his voice brittle.



“I know.” Nagato grabbed his hand again. “Come. Let’s not linger here anymore, we’ve got work to do.”



Together, they moved through the dusty street careful to avoid touching any of the people around them. Sasuke didn’t know why that was important but he followed Nagato’s lead anyway.



“If you’ve been here before, then you know where to find my brother?” Sasuke inquired as they left the Uchiha district and ventured into Konoha.



“Not exactly. I am not even sure if he’ll reside in this particular memory, nor if the memories we’d have to visit are in chronological order. This is just a starting point. As it is, even if we do see him, we wouldn’t know if it really is your brother or a spectre, like those others we met on the street.”



Sasuke wasn’t entirely sure what that was supposed to mean but didn’t ask. Obviously he was in over his head and he had to count on the other man to know what he was doing.



The world around them suddenly shifted and Sasuke felt a sickening sensation of falling as everything around him blurred and twisted, cracked and fell apart. The hand around his tightened as the darkness enveloped them again. They came back to the light gasping and trembling, feeling as though someone had dunked them both into freezing water.



“What… what?” he tried to ask, still trembling at the sudden shift of reality as he found himself standing in a forest meadow, all by himself. Nagato was nowhere to be seen. That couldn’t possibly be good.



Someone suddenly burst from the bushes, a tiny, dark-haired form. A child. Sasuke stared at the running boy and much to his shock he recognized his own seven-year old form. The boy was flushed and grinning, obviously happy.



When was this? He certainly didn’t remember going to the woods on the day his Clan was murdered. Did he appear in another of Itachi’s memories?



The boy hid in the bushes next to Sasuke and let out a small giggle before quieting down completely. Everything was still for a few minutes, then another figure appeared on the meadow.



Sasuke clutched at the side of a tree as he watched his brother take careful, silent steps through the grass. He was as he remembered him – small and pale, his hair caught in a short pony-tail on the nape of his neck, dressed in plain, dark clothes with the clan crest on his back.



Itachi’s dark eyes carefully scanned his surroundings and unsurprisingly completely missed adult Sasuke only to focus on the spot where his younger self was hidden. A small smile played on Itachi’s lips as he hid in the trees once again.



Suddenly he remembered that day, the day when he went with Itachi to the forest. His brother had wanted to train, but he had managed to convince him – through a lot of puppy-dog stares and whining – to play hide and seek with him. Finally Itachi had accepted with the explanation that it was part of training. His younger self had believed that with the naivety of youth, of course, but he knew now that back then he had had no chance to hide from Itachi, let alone find him, had their roles in the game been reversed. Itachi had simply postponed his own training to indulge a childish wish of Sasuke’s. He also remembered how the rest of the day played out.



“Got you!” Itachi exclaimed from the bushes next to Sasuke and he jumped alongside his younger self as Itachi burst through the leaves and grabbed the squirming boy.



“You always win!” younger Sasuke complained but made no attempt to free himself from the hug.



“It’s because I am your older brother.” Itachi explained self-importantly, but the tender smile on his lips softened the words.



He looked… pure, Sasuke thought. Untainted by death and betrayal and murder, by years of running and hiding, by years of grief and disease. He looked happy. His eyes moved onto the face of his younger self to find the same kind of innocent joy. That Sasuke looked up to his brother with utter adoration and admiration. Itachi was his hero, his role-model, he was all that he wanted to become when he grew up. Funny how he had thought of him as a grown up at the tender age of thirteen.



The world began to shift around him again and he tried to focus on that perfect picture of happiness, the last moment of true joy he got before everything began to fall apart.



This time he was ready for the nauseating sensation of falling, of the directionless darkness that enveloped him before it melted away into another scene.



If the previous scene had shocked him with its purity and innocence, this one was its complete opposite.



It was dark, the single source of light in the room he was – and Sasuke assumed it was some sort of a room with stone walls – came from several lit candles in a niche nearby. The room itself appeared quite small, three by three meters at most, bare, except for a rickety wooden table by the wall next to the niche with the candles. There was something on the table, something that gleamed like polished metal and well-oiled leather, but Sasuke was too busy staring what was in the center of the room to take a better look.



There was Itachi, much older than in the previous memory, perhaps nineteen or twenty years old, naked as the day he was born, his wrists tied together and strung up above his head, high enough for his toes to barely touch the floor. His hair, much longer now, was down, cascading in a tangled mess on his back and the sides of his neck. This Itachi also appeared not to notice his presence. He was also very, very aroused.



He took a step forward to peer at his face and realized it was wet with tears, lips trembling, dark eyes feverish in the flickering light of the candles.



There was a sudden swish and a whipcrack and the naked body arched as much as it could in the restraints, a small cry leaving the soft lips.



Sasuke jumped back and immediately looked behind his brother, furious with himself that he had been so focused on his naked form that he hadn’t even noticed the other man, the large Mist Nin he knew Itachi had had a relationship with, now standing behind his brother, fully dressed, holding a coiled whip in his hands. He had never known though just what kind of a relationship it was.



“Treasonous slut.” The man hissed, his large hand gripping the messy back hair and pulling his head back. “You like this, don’t you?” he asked in his ear. “You like it when I treat you like a piece of meat. You know it’s all you deserve!”



The other large hand slid down and cupped Itachi’s arousal, working it more roughly than it could’ve been pleasurable.



Itachi let out a small whimper and Sasuke saw fresh tears sliding down the flushed cheeks.



“You wish it was your dear brother doing this, don’t you?” the Mist Nin taunted again, but Sasuke did not hear the answer to that, because the dark enveloped him once more.



When the world formed around him again he was gasping and shaking, both from the unpleasant experience of reality constantly blurring and shifting around him and from what he had witnessed last. He had had no idea that his brother engaged in that sort of thing. Had it even been consensual?



He had no time to wonder about that though, he realized, once he noticed where he had appeared. Was this…?



The Hokage’s Office, he concluded, with it’s pastel painted walls and the portraits of the previous Konoha leaders. The old man Sarutobi was there, as well as another pair of elderly people, a man and a woman Sasuke had never seen before, and right next to Sarutobi there was a familiar and much hated face. Grizzled and wrinkled, Danzo sat with his legs folded under him, back ramrod straight, his single uncovered arm resting on his knee. All four pairs of eyes were focused intently on a figure kneeling before them, a young man, no, a boy, no more than thirteen or fourteen years of age, with dark hair caught in a short pony-tail, dressed in plain clothes with the Uchiha crest on his back. Itachi.



Sasuke sucked in his breath and tried to remain calm. He was pretty sure what he was about hear, but whatever fate had brought him to this memory, he knew that it was important to witness it. Perhaps, it would make him understand.



The silence in the room stretched, the four adults staring down at the boy like blood-thirsty cats stalking a mouse, their eyes dark and intense in the brightly lit room.



“Is there no other way?” Itachi asked and he sounded so young, so very young, his voice not even properly broken yet.



“You understand what is at stake, Uchiha?” the elderly man next to Sarutobi asked. “You understand how much will be lost, how many innocent people will die, should we choose any other course of action?”



“I know a lot of people will die should I do what you’re asking me to do.” Itachi answered, squaring his shoulders, glaring back at them.



“Indeed. Whatever we do, people will die, Uchiha.” The elderly woman said, shifting in her position, hands serenely resting on her plain kimono. “It could be your clan, together with a great number of Konoha citizens, or your clan alone. Either way, the Uchihas cannot be saved. “she patiently explained.



“Look at this as the one mercy we’re willing to show those who have betrayed us.” Danzo said, his eye glinting as he closed in for the kill.



“Mercy?” Itachi whispered, shoulders sagging.



“Yes. If you do not do this, then we’ll be forced to dispatch ANBU to do it. It’ll be a lot messier, and we’ll have to take prisoners for interrogation. Especially among the leaders of this coup. Do you want your mother in the hands of ANBU interrogators, Itachi-kun? Surely you’ve been present to enough sessions to know what they entail. On the other hand, we’re giving you the opportunity to do this quickly and as painlessly as possible. You have the means for it.”



Sasuke stared at the scene before him, hands curled in fists by his sides, struggling with the urge to scream and rage against the injustice of it. They had manipulated him, all of them, they had used him and manipulated him, taken advantage of his weakness.



Before him, the kneeling form of the boy seemed to become even smaller as his will bent to theirs. He was no longer the hero little Sasuke worshipped, the role-model he aspired to be one day, the genius ninja admired by the entire village. He was a thirteen year old boy used by a group of ill-meaning adults to do their dirty work.



Sasuke felt sick.



“My brother…” Itachi whispered.



They seemed to be about to conclude the meeting and didn’t even hear him the first time, so he repeated louder, his voice gaining volume:



“My brother.” He said loudly, shoulders squaring up once again. “He’s innocent. He doesn’t know anything of my parents’ scheming.”



“So?” Danzo asked, suspicion colouring his voice.



“He will be spared.” Itachi stated. It was not a question.



“We’re the ones giving the orders here, boy!” the elderly man behind Sarutobi exclaimed, face twisting in outrage.



“Actually it’s the Hokage-sama who gives the orders here.” Itachi corrected him mildly. “And yet he has not spoken a word.”



“This has been a very difficult decision for me, Itachi-kun.” Sarutobi finally spoke. “I did not wish for it to come to this.”



“Then grant me this one request, Hokage-sama. Allow my brother to be spared. Tell him nothing of this, let him think that I… that I was the instigator of the massacre. Let him live his life safe and free of the burden of betrayal. I can guarantee you that he knows nothing of the plan.”



He was glaring at them, challenging, no longer the broken puppet waiting for the master to tug its strings.



Finally, the Hokage nodded.



“Very well. Considering what we are asking of you, it would be cruel beyond words not to grant this request. Your brother will live, Itachi-san.”