Reunion!
It takes nearly a month for the dogs to sniff out Itachi’s location, and they don’t even find him. He gets to them first.
By this point, Kakashi has gone through every stage of grief regarding his new position in the world. After the shock wears off, he realizes he doesn’t have to answer to a CO, doesn’t have to accept a single mission, can spend a whole day just lying on a sun-warmed rock by a river. He’s giddy with the possibilities. Then he gets bored, after only a few hours on the sun-warmed rock, and realizes he has absolutely nothing to do. He hasn’t had this much free time, ever, or at least not since the Academy. Which he graduated when he was all of five, so thinking back to how he spent his free time at age four is not exactly helpful.
At which point, Shiba helpfully informs him that he smells terrible, and Bisuke chimes in sweetly to alert him that his clothes are dirty, and also ugly and unflattering. He’s been bathing as best he can in rivers and streams, but there’s a certain grime that only comes off with a real bath. The clothes thing, according to Bisuke, is a problem unrelated to his newly minted missing-nin status. Apparently, it’s been a consistent issue for as long as Bisuke has known him. Kakashi tells him kindly to shut up after that comment, and sends him on a wide-ranging patrol of the nearby grassland in retaliation.
But both dogs have a point, so Kakashi goes into the nearest random River Country town, transformed into a forgettable man with dark hair and one brown eye. The other he ties a bandana over, removing his Konoha headband for the first time since he left. He hasn’t put the slash through the leaf symbol yet, and he wonders if he should, how long other missing-nin waited before marking themselves irrevocably as rogue ninja. His dogs, presumably directed by Pakkun, have all stopped wearing their Konoha hitai-ate, but he doesn’t know if they’re stowed somewhere or just thrown away. In the end, he decides to deal with it later, and shoves it to the bottom of his pack.
Being in town is weird; people react to him differently than they do in Konoha. The girl in the clothing store chats amiably with him, flirts a little, and it occurs to Kakashi that if he wanted to, he could flirt back. They could go get a drink after her shift; he could sleep with her, if he wanted to. In Konoha, ninja and civilians are fairly segregated, or they self-segregate. Shinobi tend to be too paranoid to hook up with random civilians, and for any longer-term relationships, the lives they lead are so different, and they spend so much time and energy at work, that they tend to date and marry their own colleagues too. Kakashi, on the rare occasions when he goes looking for sex, prefers at least chuunin-level shinobi, who seem less likely to break than civilians. But then, he’s hardly ever in Konoha anyway, and finding someone to sleep with usually seems like far too much effort to satisfy a need that’s not really all that important.
Here in this clothing shop, with the River Country girl grinning knowingly at him across a rack of shirts, he thinks maybe that could change. But he’s not that far from Konoha land yet, and he kind of really needs a bath and a shave and maybe even dinner that’s not a ration bar or unseasoned game cooked over a fire. So he dips his head, feigning shyness, and buys from her store three pairs of plain black and blue pants, a black haori with green trim and a hood, and four t-shirts. He ditches the ninja sandals in favor of black leather boots, still open-toed, that rise to mid calf.
He takes his bag of clothes, bows when the girl presses his change gently into his palm, and goes and blows the rest of his money on real, actual food and a real, actual bedroom with a bathroom attached. Bliss.
He emerges the next day both very refreshed and completely broke. ANBU are salaried employees of Konoha, rather than being paid by the mission like the regular forces. As Lieutenant, his salary is substantial, and has been for some years. Unfortunately, most of it is also sitting in his bank account in Konoha Central Bank. Somehow he doesn’t think he’s going to be able to make a withdrawal from a KCB ATM.
It doesn’t matter, though, because a) he already went and got all his favorite weapons out of his ANBU locker right after leaving the Sandaime’s records room, so he only needs money for food, b) he is a shinobi, and could survive in the wilderness as long as he needed to, c) also due to shinobihood, he could totally steal money and supplies, and d) he could even find some work that’s not ANBU!!!!
After these revelations, Kakashi falls into a pattern. He wanders from village to village, steadily moving further and further from Konoha, avoiding any of the other Hidden Villages. He picks up odd jobs in the towns he visits, fixing roofs, guarding merchants between villages, helping a family haul their belongings to a new house. He chats with the other day laborers as they lean against fences waiting for someone to come by looking for a day’s hire. He invents whatever stories come to his mind for a cover, pretends he’s the exiled son of a huge family, that he’s wandering the land looking for his lost lady love, that his father is sick and he’s earning money for a cure. He doesn’t look like a shinobi anymore, but the sword at his back and the tanto at his hip make him look dangerous enough that most people seem content to take him at face value. He gets paid in money, hot meals, sometimes a night in someone’s house.
The dogs rotate through, never leaving him completely alone. He assumes this is deliberate, but it’s nice to have the company. They bring back updates about their search that are essentially just “no news, boss”, but he has faith in their tracking abilities. Itachi is not an easy man to track. In the meantime, he keeps moving, heading generally southwest, skirting the eastern border of Wind Country and moving further through the Land of Rivers in the direction of Wave.
The country is beautiful, dramatic in a way that Fire Country isn’t. The foothills at the southwestern edge of Fire territory grow into a low mountain range that runs along the River side of the border. Clear, cold water flows out of the mountains and into lush valleys that wind through the land. Further west, closer to Wind Country, the valleys are drier, bare walls of multicolored rock that plummet vertically towards the canyon floor. Kakashi traces the bottoms of these valleys, following the icy streams of snowmelt. He looks up toward the cliff tops at sunset, when the orange light softens the harsh edges, when the outlines of the gnarled trees that cling stubbornly to the cliffside are outlined in stark relief against the painted sky, and breathes the clean, dry air in deep.
He’s climbing out of one such valley, crossing a broad, flat expanse of smooth gray rock, when Uhei materializes out of the treeline to his right, jumps the shallow water flowing down the stone’s middle, and skids to a stop at his side, panting.
All Kakashi’s senses snap to high alert. Uhei is the fastest of his ninken; for him to be in such a desperate, panting hurry is rare.
“Report,” he orders, letting the dog lean against his right leg.
“Itachi,” Uhei gasps out. “Close by. Following you. Pakkun sent me.”
Kakashi narrows his eye, scanning the trees, reaching mentally for the controlled, icy blaze of Itachi’s chakra signature. He senses nothing. The air smells like rock and pine.
A crow caws behind him, and Kakashi whips around to nothing. Fucking Itachi. Maybe he’s planning to ambush Kakashi, but that seems unlikely. The Itachi he knew would have wanted to ask why he was there. On the other hand, this Itachi did massacre his whole clan in an hour. Kakashi lays a hand on his tanto.
“Kakashi,” a familiar voice says from behind him. He turns. Itachi is standing on the rock thirty feet from him, across the clear water.
This Itachi is almost certainly a genjutsu. Kakashi fought with him for two years, long enough to learn his style. But he catalogues the changes in Itachi anyway. Gone are the ANBU blacks and armor, replaced by a high-collared black robe with red clouds. That must be Akatsuki’s uniform, unless someone else is dumb enough to wear red cloud symbols. Itachi is taller, leaner, his face slenderer than Kakashi remembers. The weary lines of his face have deepened, but it only adds to his remote beauty. Itachi has always possessed an elegance Obito would have envied: the aristocratic grace of the Uchiha compounded by an unblemished perfection born of Itachi’s untouchability in battle. Kakashi has hardly ever seen him injured, and rarely ruffled.
“Itachi,” he says, looking his former teammate in the eye. He’s not here to be a threat. “You’ve grown.”
Itachi doesn’t beat around the bush. “You are following me. May I ask why?”
His voice has deepened in the past six months, low and even. He’s still polite. Kakashi suppresses a shiver.
He takes his cue from Itachi. “I found out the truth about the massacre. I came to find you.”
Itachi’s eyes flick up to the hitai-ate he put back over Obito’s eye, still unslashed. “I do not think you are here to kill me, Kakashi-senpai. Is Konoha forgiving my crimes?”
Kakashi wonders if that’s a joke. He could never tell, during their time in ANBU. He opts for the truth. “I left Konoha. I have been classified as a missing-nin.”
Itachi is silent for a moment. Then his face distorts, and his whole body dissipates into a flock of crows. Kakashi does an about-face to where Itachi is really standing, a yard behind him.
He’s not sure where to go from here. Itachi lifting the genjutsu is encouraging. But the kid willingly obeyed Konoha orders to slaughter his clan and live the rest of his life as a hunted criminal. He must have loyalty to the Village still, or he would have gone to clear his name, revenge himself on the leadership, take his brother with him. He has done none of the above; Kakashi does not know whether he still sees himself as Konoha shinobi or not.
He’s been waiting for a month to find Itachi, and he spent much of it rehearsing different ways to explain his defection, ask about the massacre, find out what Itachi is planning to do with the rest of his life. Now that he’s here, he’s not sure how to proceed.
Itachi regards him coolly. “What is it that you want with me? You were disillusioned with ANBU before I joined your team. You told me as much when I was training. What does this have to do with me?”
Kakashi inclines his head. Itachi is right; he had been keenly aware of the role he played, the guilt and loneliness inherent in ANBU missions. He had seen Itachi, just Obito’s age, and had tried, vaguely, to warn him away from it. It had not been enough for him to defect then.
“I was… disillusioned with ANBU,” he says slowly. “I did not want a child to be doing the work that I was doing. But I thought—” He doesn’t know how to phrase what is so clearly delineated in his mind. The difference between him assassinating people on Konoha orders and Itachi killing his own clan on Konoha orders is so stark in his head, but it’s harder to express the conviction to Itachi than to the Sandaime. “Why did you accept that order, Itachi? You could have figured out another way.”
Itachi doesn’t have to answer him, doesn’t actually have to have this conversation at all. Kakashi is mostly at his mercy, meeting his eyes and not even uncovering his own Sharingan. He hopes it’s not a miscalculation. Uhei gives a low snarl at his side. Itachi tilts his head to one side, considering, looking for all the world like one of his crows.
“Danzo offered me a deal,” he says eventually. His voice is flat. “If I had not accepted the order, every single Uchiha would have been killed, without exception.”
So Pakkun was right, back in Konoha. Itachi spared Sasuke out of love. Kakashi remembers the way he had smiled in the hidden tower above the Uchiha compound, watching Sasuke run cheerfully home from school. Twisted, but love. “You could have killed Danzo.”
“That would not have prevented the coup,” Itachi says. “That would have aided the Uchiha clan’s goal. And it would have started a war.”
Kakashi had not thought of that, but of course Itachi is right. If Itachi had killed Danzo, it would have been a green light for the rest of the Uchiha to begin their coup on the Village; it would have been nothing more than an Uchiha murdering a superior, followed by more of the same. And Itachi could not have reported back the news of the orders to the clan, either. That too would have incited violence. But there had to be another way. The Sandaime could have brought forces to the Uchiha compound, shut the coup down before it could really begin. Lives would have been lost, but Itachi would not have had to kill his whole clan.
But maybe, that was what the Sandaime had intended, bringing so many ANBU to the compound the night of the massacre. He was not the CO who ordered Itachi to begin the slaughter, Danzo was. With a sudden glimmer of understanding, Kakashi wonders if the Sandaime had put Tenzo on guard on purpose a month ago, to let him into the records room.
Itachi looks up at him, the weariness of his eyes incongruous in his young face. “The Shodai Hokage created Konohagakure no Sato so that children would no longer have to go to war and die in adult battles.”
Kakashi can’t hold back a snort. Itachi does not smile, but one slender eyebrow lifts slightly.
“I thought, if not me, then Sasuke,” Itachi says. Kakashi waits for him to continue, but that’s it, apparently. Itachi always was a little abrupt, he remembers with sudden clarity, despite his soft-spoken politeness.
But Kakashi understands anyway. If not Itachi, then Sasuke. Hadn’t he been in ANBU for the same reason? Too late for him, in a war by seven. If the Shodaime’s dream was not to be for him, he could make it true for someone else. He has dug himself a grave for eight years for that purpose alone, until he realized Konoha’s deception.
“I thought, if not me, then you,” he says. Itachi’s mouth tightens slightly. “I defected because I will not kill anymore for a village that massacres its own clans. I came after you because I refuse to abandon a comrade. You already know what I promised Obito.”
He told Itachi, sitting under a tree, of his intent to honor, always, Obito’s wish. He had wondered then what, if anything, Shisui had said to Itachi before his death. Itachi wouldn’t tell him, but the grief had been etched on his face, the dark circles beneath his eyes deepened.
“Kakashi-senpai,” Itachi says, calm. “It is too late for me as well. I am a shinobi. I have already made that sacrifice.”
Kakashi wants to say no, you haven’t, you’re here and still alive and this world could be good for you too, but he doesn’t. He’s painfully aware that any argument he makes against that is completely hypocritical. Thinking exactly like Itachi has gotten him through the past decade of his life, from the war to his ANBU career. He doesn’t think Itachi will accept his conviction that he is, if not innocent, worthy of some kind of forgiveness. Kakashi certainly wouldn’t, in his shoes.
“What will you do now?” he asks. He actually doesn’t care. Either way, he’s going with Itachi. He did not break his vow to Konoha and walk a hundred miles to let Itachi brush him off in one conversation. He can work on the rest of it later; he’s sticking with the kid.
Itachi gestures with one hand to his robe. Kakashi notices he’s painted his nails a dark blue. “Is your eye devolving so quickly?”
Kakashi doesn’t even have Obito’s Sharingan open, but he rolls the other eye. “When did you start making jokes, kid?”
“It is clear from my clothing that I have joined Akatsuki,” Itachi says, completely serious. “You must be experiencing reduced vision to not have realized this.”
Kakashi feels a little lighter, somehow. “Okay, so you’ve joined Akatsuki. What next?” Akatsuki is mysterious. He knows they’re led by Jiraiya’s former students, and that they have wrested control of Amegakure away from Hanzo. But he’s also heard darker rumors, about how they have achieved their ends, about their plans for the future. Amegakure is difficult to survey; it’s small enough to be under complete surveillance from its leaders at all times, making spying nearly impossible. But apparently not completely, if you’re Itachi.
Itachi tilts his head again. “I am keeping tabs on them in case they threaten Konoha.”
“You’re trying to protect Konoha? Still?” It’s an honest question; he doesn’t expect Itachi to destroy Konoha, but to actively continue work for her is beyond the call of loyalty and homeland.
“Sasuke is in Konoha,” says Itachi simply.
If not Itachi, then Sasuke. Kakashi needs no other explanation. He’s not going to ask, today at least, about the genjutsu Itachi tortured his little brother with. He’s not going to ask about his half-formed suspicion that Itachi actually wants Sasuke to kill him, truly wants Sasuke to avenge the Uchiha clan. But he will not forget those things either. He will go with Itachi for now, and he will try harder than he did in ANBU.
“I’m coming with you,” he says. Itachi frowns slightly.
“I do not need your help,” Itachi tells him.
“But I won’t hinder you either,” says Kakashi cheerfully. “Come on. You know we were a good team.”
Itachi narrows his eyes. Kakashi holds his breath. Itachi has no particular reason to say yes, and probably several good reasons to say no. If he says no, they will have to either fight or Itachi will give him the slip, and Kakashi will have to track him again.
“I am on a surveillance mission to Sunagakure,” Itachi says finally. “I have another twenty miles to go today. I cannot be followed.” He turns and springs up into the trees. Kakashi follows him without hesitation.
—
Kakashi follows him instantly.
Itachi still does not know what Kakashi aims to do. Clearly, his defection from Konoha was mostly about his own long-held resentment toward ANBU, not the Uchiha massacre. Itachi remembers clearly how Kakashi had tried to steer him away from ANBU, how at the beginning every mission was accompanied by quiet commentary about the darkness of ANBU duties. It would never have worked; the Uchiha wanted him in ANBU, and he could not have been dissuaded from his duties no matter how unpleasant they were. But he had realized what Kakashi was trying to do for him, and trusted him a little more for it.
Kakashi’s defection is more surprising. He had been stubbornly loyal to Konoha the two years Itachi had known him, despite the grief and guilt that overshadowed his every move. But maybe he has interpreted Kakashi wrong. Maybe that obstinate loyalty had been to his teammates, whose graves he visited faithfully whenever they did not have missions, and not to the Village itself.
Either way, it is not worth it for Itachi to part from him right now. Regardless of his motivations, Kakashi is an excellent shinobi, and could unfailingly track Itachi down again. And if all the force of his stubborn devotion to his comrades is now focused on Itachi, it will be hard to avoid him. And Kakashi is right: they were a good team. Itachi will allow him to stick around for now.
Itachi tries hard not to think it, but he cannot help but be a little glad that someone knows the truth of the massacre. The guilt of it is enormous, a burden he has resigned himself to carrying until Sasuke comes to put him to rest. He deserves no forgiveness, because orders or no orders, the simple fact is that he murdered his own parents in cold blood. He would do it again, for Sasuke, and for Shisui. Kakashi seems to understand this, without Itachi needing to explain.
Next to him, Kakashi bites his thumb and summons his entire pack of ninken. All eight dogs fan out around them, except for the pug, who takes up stride right between them.
“You found him, boss,” the dog observes. Itachi glances sideways at him.
“I found him,” Kakashi agrees, still obnoxiously cheery. Itachi had forgotten this part of his persona. Mainly how annoying it is.
“Where are we going?” the dog asks. Silence. Itachi looks down to see the dog staring at him. Kakashi’s expression is completely, deliberately blank.
“Sunagakure,” he tells the dog. “We are infiltrating.”
“You said surveillance!” says Kakashi.
Itachi stares at him. “How can we surveil the city without infiltrating it?”
The dog opens his mouth, and Kakashi says, “Shut it, Pakkun.” Pakkun’s mouth closes. “Akatsuki sends you alone, Itachi?”
Itachi wonders what the possibility is that he didn’t actually defect, and he’s here to gather intelligence on Akatsuki and Itachi. Kakashi is brutal and stubborn, but he’s also unusually honest. Also, his hitai-ate is not slashed through, which would have been an obvious part of a cover as a missing-nin. Itachi suspects Kakashi has left it unmarked for sentimental reasons.
“In partners,” he says. “But my usual partner is not given to stealth. And I requested this mission alone.”
There’s an expectant silence from both human and dog. Itachi ignores them both primly.
His current partner is Kisame, who is an excellent partner in many ways. Stealth is not one of them. He is too big and too blue, and he does not care about being unobtrusive. This is ideal for Itachi, who prefers not to have the attention of others on him when possible, but it means that he is taking this mission alone.
Also, and he is still debating whether to tell Kakashi, this is the first time that he has been out alone since Orochimaru started eyeing his Sharingan. They were semi-regular partners until a few months ago, when Konan swapped everyone around after Kakuzu murdered his partner again. Itachi is relatively confident he can protect himself against Orochimaru, but Orochimaru is still one of the Sannin, the most legendary ninjas in recent memory. He requested the mission alone even without knowing it was a stealth mission. He wants intel about what exactly Orochimaru has planned for the Sharingan.
Kakashi clears his throat. “Who’s your usual partner? And why alone?”
“Hoshigaki Kisame, formerly of Kiri,” Itachi says. He pauses. Telling Kakashi about Orochimaru’s interest would be strategically sound, as he would then have a second person on guard. But Kakashi has a Sharingan, and is not an Uchiha. Itachi knows it was a gift from his partner Obito, but it was still a gift taken from a dying relative. For all that the clan has done and been to Itachi, he is still reluctant to discuss with Kakashi the allure of their kekkei genkai.
But that is not practical. As far as Itachi can tell, Kakashi has built his life around his memory of Obito. His devotion to Obito’s legacy is almost religious in its consistency; almost every question Itachi asked him in their ANBU days was answered based on Kakashi’s commitment to his comrades. He was not lured to his Sharingan by thirst for the kekkei genkai. So Itachi says, “I requested this mission solo partly because I believe that Orochimaru wants to obtain my eyes. He has expressed interest recently while at Akatsuki, and he is more likely to make an attempt if I am alone.”
By “expressed interest”, Itachi means that Orochimaru has repeatedly lingered in the shadows of their hideout, swiped his tongue around his lips, run light touches down Itachi’s arms and purred, “Such keen eyes you have, Itachi-kun.” He does not share this memory with Kakashi, but he’s caught his companion’s attention anyway.
“Orochimaru?” Pakkun says, looking at Kakashi. “That’s, uh, not good.”
Itachi can only see Kakashi’s right eye, staring fiercely ahead. He’s unreadable otherwise.
“That creepy bastard,” Kakashi mutters finally. “I bet he’s expressed interest. Fucker never saw a kekkei genkai he didn’t try and steal.” His jaw tightens beneath the mask. Itachi wonders how much Kakashi has interpreted from his carefully vague phrasing. Perhaps he is familiar with Orochimaru.
“I think that he is interested in Sunagakure as well, so it would be convenient for him to ambush me there,” Itachi explains. “We should be on our guard.”
“Convenient,” says Kakashi dryly. “Okay, noted.”
They make camp that night at the mouth of the dry valley they met in. Before them sprawl miles of cracked, barren earth, marking the transition from River Country to Wind Country. Directly east, the earth becomes the endless dunes of Wind.
“You’ve been through the desert before?” Kakashi asks him, and Itachi lowers his gaze from the darkening horizon to their campfire. It is not exactly wise to broadcast their presence so openly, but realistically between the two of them there are relatively few shinobi who will pose a serious threat. Itachi suspects that Kakashi wants to be spotted, for the news to make it around the Continent of both his defection and new company. He does not argue.
“Only once,” he admits. “Envoy to Suna. Have you?”
“Yes,” says Kakashi. He doesn’t elaborate on this, but he adds buoyantly, “I like the desert.”
Itachi turns his gaze on the level sands stretching away into the night and says nothing. Land is land, but in his dreams he still wanders the massive sequoias of Fire Country. They are not the tallest trees he has ever seen, but they are so thick ten men could hold hands around one and not close the loop. He used to train in those forests, to meditate in the dewy sunrises in the rounded tops of the sequoias right outside the Uchiha compound. He fled to one of those trees right after the massacre, to wait for the bodies to be discovered, and to threaten Danzo over Sasuke’s life.
“I have always liked the ocean,” he says instead. It is not a lie. He likes the eternal renewal of it, the waves breaking and breaking and breaking against the same shore forever.
Kakashi turns his keen gaze onto Itachi’s face. So rare, this willingness to look into his eyes. Itachi wonders if it’s calculated, whether Kakashi trusts him, wants him to think he does, or simply does not care about his own life. The last seems like the Kakashi of eight months ago, but not the one in front of him. Even in the two hours that they’ve been together, Itachi has noticed that Kakashi is holding himself more loosely, has smiled with his exposed eye more times than in a month of ANBU work.
“Do you miss Konoha?” Kakashi asks him quietly. Itachi blinks.
“I was in Konoha a month ago,” he says. “I thought you would have sensed me.”
Kakashi’s eyebrow quirks. “I asked Pakkun why you’d be in Konoha. We figured out that night that something was wrong with the story.”
Itachi nods. He doesn’t know what the Sandaime had told the village exactly. Presumably that he had gone crazy, or been corrupted by evil somehow. He supposes it is not surprising that someone who knew him would have seen through that fiction.
“You have not slashed your hitai-ate,” he observes neutrally. Kakashi frowns, firelight painting shadows across his face.
“It seemed weird to. Feels like someone else is supposed to do it.”
Itachi regards him silently. Kakashi unties the headband, and with one quick, clinical motion, slashes the tip of a kunai horizontally through the stylized leaf design. He holds it in his hands for a moment, Sharingan swirling slowly.
“Yes,” Itachi says quietly. “I miss it.” Mostly, he misses the stability of belonging somewhere, the ability to relax when walking the streets of Konoha or the Uchiha compound. The normality of returning from a mission to Sasuke shouting “NII-SAN!” at the top of his lungs and dragging him into shuriken training.
It strikes him how honest he has been with Kakashi. More honest, by a wide margin, than he has been with anyone since Shisui. He wonders if it has been wise, but part of him has always resolutely trusted Kakashi, since they worked together in ANBU. There is something about Kakashi that inspires trust, no matter how he portrays himself. Since the day Itachi asked him if he would really kill a comrade for a mission, and Kakashi told him with calm sincerity that he would die to protect his comrades, he has trusted Kakashi.
The other man lets out a long sigh, flopping back onto the pine needles they piled into beds. “Sasuke is lucky,” he says, “to have a brother like you.”
Itachi privately does not agree, but it is not a point worth debating. He is the brother Sasuke has—the only brother Sasuke will ever have, now—for better or for worse.
Itachi lets his eyes slide shut. “I am my brother’s keeper,” he answers quietly. It’s a line from a legend his mother told him once. She was a deputy of Konoha’s Intelligence Bureau; she heard intel from across the Continent, collected rumors and whispers and sometimes legends to file into Konoha’s records. She told her favorites to Itachi when he was very small. He is quoting a line from an old story they tell in the far north of Earth Country, that his mother had told him when she was pregnant with Sasuke. In the earliest days of the world, there were two brothers. One murdered the other in a fit of jealousy, the spilled blood cried out from the ground in sorrow, and a god descended from the heavens. He asked the murderer what had become of his brother, and the murderer said only, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” The god had cursed him to wander the world in torment, and never to find death.
Itachi has done what the brother did; he has murdered his kin and spilled their blood upon the ground. The sorrow of all that blood cries out to him, even across two countries, and he is still wandering. He wonders if the brother felt the guilt of his actions press into him with every day of his fugitive life. Itachi does.
But unlike the story, Itachi will not have to wander this world forever. One day, Sasuke will come to give him his death, and Itachi will die with his little brother alive and with his clan name untainted by treachery. He can ask for no more than that. He is his brother’s keeper; that is all he will ever be.
Kakashi doesn’t respond other than a hum of acknowledgment, followed by a small flare of chakra as he smothers the fire with a fuuton.
“The dogs will set a perimeter,” he tells Itachi. “Sleep.”
Itachi pulls his hood up against the chill of the dry night air, and sleeps. One of Kakashi’s dogs curls up comfortably by his feet. Tomorrow, they will arrive in Sunagakure. They should both seek rest while they can.