Road Trip!
“Infiltrating Sunagakure” apparently, if you’re Uchiha Itachi, is about the easiest thing in the world. Kakashi would be pissed about how simple he makes it look if he weren’t so goddamn thirsty after three hours in the desert. Itachi weaves a genjutsu around them, a don’t-look-at-me-I’m-not-at-all-interesting genjutsu that makes every guard completely forget to ask them for ID, if they acknowledge them at all. They just walk through the massive sandstone wall and bam. They’ve infiltrated.
Kakashi turns a sardonic eye on Itachi. “Don’t remember you pulling this one out of your sleeve in ANBU, Uchiha. Could’ve been useful.”
“There was never a need,” says Itachi, unperturbed.
“Great,” Kakashi mutters. He forgot how cocky Itachi is. Well, not even cocky, because he doesn’t even brag about anything. He doesn’t need to. He’s so calm and assured of his own power a lesser shinobi might be tempted to punch him. Kakashi just kind of wants to bother him.
He ruffles Itachi’s hair like he does to annoy Tenzo. “Good work, kid. Where to?”
Itachi’s face softens into a faint pout. Kakashi smirks. Itachi reminds him of a cat, so determinedly dignified that he’s just begging to be pestered. Maybe it’s an Uchiha family trait. Obito had none of Itachi’s composure, but he was so easy to rile up Kakashi could never resist. He’s really only continuing his sworn duty to Obito by bothering Itachi.
“I am here to find out who is the jinchuuriki of the Ichibi,” Itachi says. “But Nagato does not want Suna to know of Akatsuki’s interest. We are spending one night here.”
He leads the way down the sandstone streets to an inn. Kakashi wonders if he should perform a henge, or if this business is in league with Akatsuki somehow. As it turns out, neither; Itachi works another genjutsu on the front desk girl and they are given a corner room with no trouble.
“Why are you paying if you could just make her think you paid?” Kakashi asks, watching Itachi count out bills onto the front desk. The girl smiles vacantly, sliding them into her cash register.
Itachi gives him a stare of withering condescension. “We’re using a room at her inn. Why would I not pay?”
Kakashi very carefully does not let Itachi see him smile again. No matter how powerful Itachi is, it’s never not going to be funny to receive such disdain from a fourteen-year-old. Kakashi’s glad they’re allied, at least temporarily, so Itachi can be rude to him again. It reminds him powerfully of Obito again, who when he felt especially disrespected would lapse back into the haughty superiority of the Uchiha.
Their room is clean and pretty, whitewashed walls and linen curtains keeping out the worst of the day’s heat. There are two twin beds, and Kakashi flops gratefully onto one. He likes the desert’s desolate appeal, but the heat is stifling.
Itachi is stripping off his black robe with quick, clinical motions. Kakashi watches him through one slitted eye, cataloguing his appearance. He looks skinnier. He entered ANBU with baby fat still on his cheeks, slighter even than Tenzo. The baby fat is gone, replaced by the awkward coltishness of someone who has grown a lot in a short amount of time. Kakashi makes a mental note to buy the kid some sweets.
“Tea?” he suggests, propping himself up on his elbows.
It turns out that they have very little tea in Sunagakure no Sato, because of the heat and the cost of import. What they do have is a lot of drinks made of camel’s milk, which they discover upon entering a café. It also seems that discovering the identity of Suna’s jinchuuriki is going to be almost comically easy. The little girl at the next table is telling her mother with wide-eyed excitement about the ‘demon boy’ that she saw earlier.
Itachi raises his eyebrows very slightly at Kakashi. His fingers flicker in ANBU sign around his cup. Mission intel—confirmation required—ask target—you hold.
Kakashi holds obediently, curious. Itachi is not a natural undercover agent. He doesn’t put on new personas with the ease that Kakashi does, to say nothing of a born spy like Yugao.
Itachi knocks his drink over violently. It sprays all over the little girl’s table. Itachi, already apologizing profusely, bobs his head when the mother hands him a napkin. The little girl looks up at him with huge eyes, and he grimaces comically at her. It’s so unlike Itachi that Kakashi almost laughs aloud. He’s imitating someone—he’s imitating Tenzo, Kakashi realizes, Tenzo when he screws up during training and is all worried they’ll be mad at him.
The little girl’s face has shifted into a pout. “That was my after-school snack!” she says to Itachi angrily. “And you got it all wet!”
Itachi glances nervously at the mother, who’s folded her arms and is regarding him with one skeptical brow raised. “I’ll buy you another one!” he says anxiously. “I’m sorry!”
She frowns harder. “I don’t want another one. I want that one.” She gestures to the soggy pastry on her plate.
Itachi crouches down to her level, and says, “What if you come and pick the one you want?” He glances at her mother again. Her face softens, and she nods at him. Kakashi is surprised at her easy acquiescence, but she’s a civilian. She must see Itachi only as a kind fourteen-year-old boy. It strikes Kakashi that she’s not wrong, that part of Itachi was a beloved big brother for years. Mass murderer or not, there is a gentleness to Itachi that he buries for shinobi life. Kakashi sees it in the way he talks to this child, the way he pays at the inn even though he doesn’t have to.
The girl trots obligingly after Itachi towards the front counter, under her mother’s watchful eye the whole way. Kakashi sips his fermented camel’s milk and pretends to be engrossed in the fake cactus on the middle of their table.
“The jinchuuriki is the Kazekage’s youngest son,” Itachi informs him in a low voice as they leave the café. “All of Suna knows this. The Ichibi makes him unstable and he kills people with sand. They are terrified of him.”
Kakashi’s mildly interested to hear this, but he’s not a part of Akatsuki, and he doesn’t know what they want with the Ichibi. The back of his brain is curious already why the Ichibi would make its host murderous—the Kyuubi never did so to Kushina, so it could be a difference in the beast, in the host, or maybe in the seal—but mostly he’s wondering what Itachi’s next move is going to be.
Itachi says, “We are leaving the city. It would not be wise to linger here.” He brings his hands up into a seal, then another, until Kakashi recognizes the modified shunshin he’s going to employ. It’s flashy, disappearing in an explosion of genjutsu and a flare of chakra. He raises an eyebrow at Itachi.
“Trust me, Kakashi-senpai,” Itachi says, the corner of his mouth twitching upwards. He folds his fingers into the hare seal, and explodes into his usual flock of crows. Bemused, Kakashi mimics him, reappearing just outside the city walls.
“What was that for?” he asks. “I thought Nagato did not want Suna to know about Akatsuki?”
Itachi is paying him literally no attention, eyes narrowed and scanning the horizon. Kakashi rolls his eye. Tenzo has given him a lot of patient instruction in the past few years about Explaining Shit to Your Less Brilliant Teammates, which Kakashi has honestly attempted to improve, but only to a point. There are some times (okay, many times) when he would prefer that his teammates don’t know about his plans, and just obey him unquestioningly.
“We head northeast,” Itachi says eventually. He’s holding himself in readiness. Kakashi watches the line of his shoulders tighten, and then, deliberately, smooth out. Expecting something to happen, but not too suddenly.
Orochimaru, then. Kakashi has met him only a few times, while acting as Minato’s aide/apprentice/ANBU/former student that no one knew what to do with. Even then, the man’s power had been obvious, his sleek, deadly, chakra oppressive even from across a room. Sannin, not to be underestimated. Kakashi knows Jiraiya well enough to know the old pervert could probably kill him without really breaking a sweat. Senju Tsunade is legendary enough that even without meeting her, Kakashi wouldn’t have bet on even Minato to beat her. Orochimaru, creepy motherfucker that he is, is in their league. Sick.
They run through the desert for three hours, stopping when the sun is low and swollen in the sky and their shadows stretch on long and rippling across the dunes.
Itachi pulls up to a halt on the western side of a jutting red rock, facing the setting sun. The sky is darkening slowly into shades of purple to the east, but to the west the view is overwhelmingly red, dunes, sky, and scattered rocks painted into fire by the sun. Kakashi slaps a paper seal on the rock to his right, and standard ANBU wards tingle into life around them.
“No wards, please,” says Itachi politely.
“You’re kidding,” says Kakashi. “One of the most legendary ninjas in living memory wants to come steal your eyes, and you don’t even want an advance warning?”
Itachi’s brave, sure, but he’s not an idiot. He can’t want to confront a legendary Sannin this badly. Unless, Kakashi realizes, this is the same as the massacre. Maybe he is willing to let Orochimaru take his eyes, if that means he won’t take Sasuke’s. But Sasuke doesn’t even have the Sharingan yet. That seems like a risky gamble.
“I can beat him,” says Itachi calmly. Kakashi looks over. He’s utterly still, in a way that means it’s a conscious effort.
“You do want to beat him,” Kakashi says slowly.
Itachi gives him another scornful stare, somehow without even changing expression. “Yes.”
“If he takes your eyes, he won’t need to take Sasuke’s,” Kakashi says, blunt.
Itachi looks over at him sharply. “I am not willing to bet on that.”
Fair. Orochimaru isn’t exactly a model of restraint. Kakashi resigns himself to the fact that again, Itachi is probably right.
Which is exactly when Orochimaru rises straight up out of the sand thirty feet in front of them.
Next to Kakashi, Itachi rises to his feet, one hand sliding into his Akatsuki robe. Orochimaru, in a matching black robe, draws himself to his full height, swaying like one of his snakes.
“My lucky day, Itachi-kun,” he calls. “You brought Kakashi too. Another Sharingan for me. Hello, Kakashi.”
“Yo,” says Kakashi. The possibility flutters across his mind that Itachi has been playing him, and is going to give him up to Orochimaru or the Akatsuki. But he’s trusted the kid this far. It’s a little late to back out now. And they have a better chance of beating Orochimaru together.
“You are not going to take anyone’s eyes today,” Itachi tells Orochimaru steadily. Kakashi really, really hopes he’s not bluffing.
A slow smile spreads across Orochimaru’s face. His tongue darts out to swipe delicately across thin lips. “I think we’ll see about that, Itachi-kun,” he purrs, and raises one arm, palm towards them. Kakashi readies himself to dodge.
Snakes explode from the end of Orochimaru’s sleeve, shooting towards Itachi faster than Kakashi’s eye can track. He substitutes instinctively with a rock to his left. Itachi doesn’t move.
The snakes are already twined around Itachi, who still hasn’t moved. Kakashi pushes up his hitai-ate and opens Obito’s eye, bracing himself for the familiar stab of pain. It’s a genjutsu. Itachi is really standing beside Orochimaru, Sharingan swirling in both eyes.
Orochimaru narrows his eyes, tongue flickering out like a snake.
“I can smell you, Itachi-kun,” he hisses, and strikes out to his right, a curved knife in his hand. Itachi flickers into existence, the knife drives directly into his chest, and he looks directly at Orochimaru, face blank.
Kakashi is already hurling a fuuton at Orochimaru, the desert air sharpened into whirling blades. The Sannin raises a palm without even looking, and a snake rears up and swallows the fuuton whole. Kakashi flips to the side an instant before it spits the air blades back at him, deep grooves carved in the sand where he was just standing.
Itachi’s body explodes into crows, and Orochimaru snarls, face twisted with fury.
“You are overconfident,” Itachi’s calm voice says. Kakashi can’t pinpoint where he is, even with Obito’s eye. Perhaps this is Itachi’s Mangekyou. “You want my eyes so much that you have overlooked my power.”
Orochimaru’s thin lips turn up into a smile. “You are powerful indeed, Itachi-kun.” He spins the knife in his hand idly. “I want your eyes, but I will settle for Kakashi’s until you decide to truly face me.”
He strikes, the knife hurtling across the sand. Kakashi launches himself upwards, out of reach, but there is a snake rippling through the air toward him, jaws gaping. He catches its fang on the blade of a kunai, driving his tanto into the side of its neck with his other hand. The snake writhes.
“Katon: Hosenka no Jutsu!” Itachi shouts from below him, and fireballs whirl toward Orochimaru. Kakashi throws another fuuton toward the Sannin, who sinks directly into the ground. The fireballs slam into the sand where he was, dying away into four shuriken.
Kakashi lands next to Itachi, wiping his tanto clean of the snake’s blood.
“Chatty, isn’t he?” he remarks pleasantly.
“He wants your eyes only as long as he cannot have mine,” says Itachi, brows lowered. Not one single hair is out of place from his sleek ponytail.
Orochimaru emerges from the ground in front of them, untouched. He’s still smiling, disconcertingly enough.
“You are strong, too, Kakashi,” he purrs. “Jiraiya and Minato were good for you.”
“Thanks,” says Kakashi. “I try.”
“Kakashi-senpai,” Itachi mutters next to him. Kakashi glances over. Itachi’s Mangekyou is alive, the curved swirls from his dream in Konoha spinning slowly.
“Enough talking,” Orochimaru announces, arrogant. “I am here for more of those red eyes.”
Two snakes curl into being around him, rising on either side of his head. It’s mesmerizing, the sway of their bodies, the glitter of their eyes. Faster than thought, they shoot towards Itachi and Kakashi.
Kakashi substitutes himself instinctively with another rock, but Itachi does not move. Both snakes wrap themselves around his shoulders
“This again, Itachi-kun?” Orochimaru says. “You underestimate me. I am a legendary Sannin.” He blurs in motion, and reappears in front of Itachi, the curved knife back in his hand.
He digs the tip into Itachi’s eyelid. Blood trickles down one pale cheekbone.
Kakashi blinks Obito’s eye, and blinks it again. He sees no genjutsu. Itachi is really there. He flings three shuriken at Orochimaru. One of the snakes deflects them scornfully.
Orochimaru giggles. “Do not worry, Itachi-kun. I will put these eyes to use.” He brings the knife sideways in one smooth motion, and blood pours down Itachi’s face. Orochimaru smiles, brings his free hand up, and yanks out Itachi’s eye.
Kakashi spits a katon at him, throws a fuuton after it, fans the flames as hot and fierce as hungry as he can manage. The snakes deflect everything effortlessly. A growl of frustrated helplessness bubbles up in his throat. This opponent is too powerful, and Itachi isn’t even fighting.
Orochimaru, holding Itachi’s eye in one palm, doubles over as if he’s been punched. Blood trickles from the corner of his mouth.
Itachi, half his face a mess of blood, the other half eerily perfect, looks down at him contemptuously. His Mangekyou is whirling in the unhurt eye. Oh.
“Mangekyou Sharingan,” Kakashi breathes, and Obito’s eye burns so fiercely in his head he almost cries out, but now he can see. Through a haze of pain, he can see the genjutsu Itachi just had them both in, and below it the reality: Itachi unharmed, Orochimaru in his original place, stabbed through the middle by a stake that doesn’t really exist.
Itachi glances at him. “Apologies, Kakashi. I did not have time to explain.”
Kakashi waves a hand, pretending his heart isn’t fucking pounding from watching Orochimaru literally rip out one of Itachi’s eyes. “I understand.” Itachi slants him a look that says he probably isn’t pretending as well as he wants to be.
Orochimaru coughs again. Itachi’s eyes narrow, and another stake made of genjustu drives itself through Orochimaru’s chest.
“This isn’t real,” Orochimaru grits out. He wraps his hands around his middle, in thin air where the invisible projectile has lodged itself. He yanks, hard, and blood spurts out onto the sand. “How can I be trapped and know it isn’t real?”
“This is the power of my dojutsu,” Itachi says. “You cannot hope to match the Mangekyou Sharingan.”
Confident little shit. From what Kakashi’s seen, he’s right. Kakashi doesn’t know what Obito’s Mangekyou can do, just that it hurts like hell and lets him see through Itachi’s genjutsu, apparently. He doesn’t get a chance to explore this train of thought further, however, because another chakra signature appears right next to Orochimaru.
“Kabuto,” says Itachi.
The new guy blinks. He’s got gray hair, a Konoha hitai-ate, and stupid round glasses that reflect the sun. He looks like a dweeb. “You know who I am?” he says, surprised.
Itachi doesn’t bother to answer that dumb comment. Glasses guy isn’t listening, but turning to Orochimaru and shooting a glare at Itachi.
“Come on, Orochimaru-sama,” he says. “We’re leaving.” He places a palm over Orochimaru’s stomach, glowing green with medical ninjutsu. The wound begins to close rapidly. A skilled medic, and a traitor to Konoha, or a spy. An instinctive anger rises up in Kakashi’s chest. He ignores it; he has no ties to Konoha anymore.
“I will let you leave for now,” Itachi says coldly. “But do not try to take my eyes again. Or his.” He nods towards Kakashi. “You know now that I am stronger than you.”
Kabuto hauls Orochimaru’s arm over his shoulder, and disappears instantly in a shunshin. Kakashi notes it’s the typical Konoha shunshin, a swirl of leaves drifting to the desert floor, and passes out instantly.
—
“Excellent Mangekyou usage,” Itachi says neutrally when Kakashi opens his eye. His hitai-ate has been pushed back down over Obito’s eye. Something soft has been shoved under his head.
He feels like shit. Drained, mouth dry, a deep ache in his whole body like his skin is too tight. Itachi is picking a hell of a time to start being sarcastic.
“Fuck off,” he says, pushing himself to a sitting position and ignoring the stabs of white-hot pain that lance through his temples.
Itachi’s mouth curls up into an actual smile, however small. “I did not know you could do that. You are a better Sharingan wielder than I thought.”
Rin’s death bursts unbidden into Kakashi’s head. He scrubs at the imaginary blood on his right hand before he catches himself. “Yeah. Well.”
Itachi’s dark eyes flick down to his hand and back up. He must know about Rin; he as much as asked Kakashi about it back in ANBU. He doesn’t comment.
“Why did you let him go?” Kakashi asks.
Itachi frowns, tracing idle patterns in the sand with his finger. “Kabuto is stronger than he appears, and your chakra was depleting. I did not think it was wise to take them on in the middle of the desert right then and there.” He pauses, smoothing out the sand. “Orochimaru has broken with Akatsuki. I do not know what they will do with him.”
They, Kakashi notes. Itachi is wearing his red-and-black robe still, but he has shown no inclination to return to Akatsuki base. Kakashi looks around. They’re still in the desert, but probably closer to the edge of it. The endless dunes of earlier have given way to cracked, dry rock and scrubby plants.
“Sitrep?” he asks Itachi, carefully not making it an order.
Itachi kind of sits up a little straighter anyway. A lifetime of military discipline is hard to shake in just six months.
“Orochimaru and Kabuto en route to Orochimaru’s hideout in the Land of Rice Fields,” he says. “Akatsuki presumably aware of his defection. I am expected to report back.”
Kakashi waits. Itachi was an ANBU Captain: he knows which questions Kakashi’s not asking.
“You are not going to join Akatsuki,” Itachi says. “But Kabuto was frequently on base despite not being an official member. I will go to make my report, and you will come along as my associate.”
“Will that raise suspicion?” Kakashi asks.
Itachi’s lips thin. “Perhaps. You are well known. But Akatsuki does not demand absolute commitment. Many of us have outside motivations and plans that do not involve the group. They only require that our other attachments do not interfere with Akatsuki plans.”
Kakashi can’t help but wonder how the fuck Akatsuki even operates. He knows that the leaders are Jiraiya’s kids from Amegakure, and that they’re supposedly fighting for peace in Ame and in the Great Nations, but the other members he knows of are Orochimaru, Hoshigaki Kisame of Kiri, and Itachi. With an organization made up entirely of missing-nin like the above, fighting for the end of war in Ame seems a bit dubious. But he does trust Itachi’s judgment, however moronic it might be to follow a fourteen-year-old mass murderer into a den of rogue ninja. Minato-sensei killed a thousand shinobi in a day once. There’s only so far he can differentiate between murder in war and murdering your family to prevent a war. Kakashi’s body count is probably still higher than Itachi’s. He trusts the kid.
“Done,” he says, sliding his eye shut again and laying back on the sand. “Can we go tomorrow?” It’s funny to ask Itachi things like that, after commanding him for a year. But he really, really doesn’t want to scare Itachi away, or resume the roles they held in Konoha. The thought of being Itachi’s ANBU CO again makes him a little ill, now. Neither of them needs that.
There’s a hint of amusement in Itachi’s voice when he says, “I do not think you are going anywhere today.”
Kakashi groans. “It’s not my fault, Uchiha. You were made for Sharingan, I wasn’t.”
Silence, and then Itachi says quietly, “You wield it better than many Uchiha. My cousin Obito chose wisely.”
Kakashi realizes with mild horror that the cloth of his hitai-ate is damp. It’s familiar, the irritation at the tears pooling in Obito’s eye. Stupid fucking crybaby-ass Uchiha. Stupid eyeball that somehow, ten years after its owner’s death, still weeps when Kakashi least wants it to.
“Thanks, kid,” he says, annoyed to find his voice a little gravelly.
Itachi gives a light hum. Kakashi slits his eye open. He’s let his hair out of its usual ponytail, dark strands drifting around his face as he stares into the middle distance, chin propped on one hand, elbow resting on his knee. His Akatsuki cloak is gone, pale arms bared to the shoulder.
He looks so young like this, one leg kicked out across the dry earth, gazing at the horizon, his eyes bright in the rays of the dying sun. Kakashi reaches up to the soft bundle under his head and realizes it’s the red and black robe. Itachi has bundled it carefully into a pillow for him.
Affection warms his chest. Analytical, practical, a little stiff, a little formal, but Itachi is kind in his quiet, sweet, way. This is the source of Kakashi’s faith in him. This is the child he abandoned Konoha for. Itachi is the best of them; raised in a war, but never has he erred like Kakashi into forgetting the value of his people. Kakashi has molded his life around what Obito believed. Itachi never needed an Obito to follow. He has an internal clarity of purpose, an unwavering commitment to love and justice. If only he weren’t a shinobi, Kakashi thinks, and smothers the rueful laugh that wants to come out.
“Orochimaru,” says Itachi abruptly, and his dark eyes lock on Kakashi unwaveringly. “He said something odd.”
“Everything he says is odd,” Kakashi grumbles, but he’s already mentally rerunning their whole fight.
“He said he was here for more red eyes,” Itachi says.
Kakashi remembers that suddenly, and sits up. Pain spikes through his temples. “Shit.”
Itachi looks pensive, not panicked. He doesn’t do panic, not to Kakashi’s knowledge, but he doesn’t even look disturbed. “There is no other living Uchiha from whom he could have taken them.”
Kakashi mulls that statement for a second. So he could have taken Sharingan from the dead Uchiha, of which there are plenty. Or is Itachi saying that there is another living Uchiha, strong enough to beat Orochimaru?
“Sasuke has not awakened his Sharingan,” Itachi continues. “The Sandaime would have informed me if anything had happened to him.”
Talking to Itachi involves a lot of filling in the blanks, Kakashi is remembering. He doesn’t outright lie, but he withholds information easily and often. The Sandaime can’t be in contact with an active Akatsuki member, but Itachi seems positive.
He decides to ignore that part and focuses on the looming question. “There’s another living Uchiha? Besides you and your brother?”
Itachi actually frowns. “Yes. But he is stronger than Orochimaru by far.”
Kakashi can’t hold it in. He can’t think of a single possibility. He counted every single Uchiha body that night. “Who?” The only person he can think of is Itachi’s cousin, but that can’t be... “Shisui?”
Pain flits across Itachi’s face, as raw as it was right after his cousin’s death. Kakashi winces internally.
“No,” Itachi says flatly, after a beat. “Uchiha Madara.”
No way, Kakashi thinks immediately. Seventy years ago, Konohagakure was founded by Senju Hashirama, his brother Tobirama, and his best friend Uchiha Madara. Madara defected, for reasons that with time have become unclear. The mistreatment of the Uchiha Clan, a break with his friend Hashirama, simply being evil. But he was already almost thirty. There is no way he could be alive today.
But Uchiha Madara was on the same level as Senju Hashirama. Gods among shinobi, ninjas who carved wounds in the earth itself when they clashed. If you had to bet on which shinobi had been able to prolong his life for decades upon decades, Uchiha Madara would not be the worst bet you could make.
“Shit,” he says again. His head is pounding. Obito’s eye is itchy and hot under his hitai-ate. “Shit.”
Itachi turns bottomless black eyes on him again. “You should rest, Kakashi-senpai. This will keep until tomorrow.”
Kakashi’s on a different mental track. Uchiha Madara is not a problem he can solve right now anyway. He might not be Kakashi’s problem at all. “Orochimaru—then he must have stolen Sharingan. From the bodies.”
Itachi’s eyes burn red, and killing intent, crackling and focused, presses against Kakashi’s mind. He winces, and the feeling recedes.
“Yes,” says Itachi. “I think we should change our plans.”