Thought and deed
Itachi thought about his teammates as he fled the village.
Odd really, that they came to his mind so readily now, when he’d spent the last few months keeping his distance. Avoiding them in thought and action and word as much as he could manage.
They had never been as close as they should. Itachi had been keeping the wrong kind of secrets for far too long, and neither of his teammates was stupid, they’d known he was holding back and it had put a distance between them.
They’d come together late. All early graduates, from various years, trained alone as apprentices until someone had the bright idea of throwing them together to learn teamwork. Belphegor had been the oldest of them, Itachi the youngest, and it had showed. The older two had always been closer, shared jokes that Itachi was never quite in on, wasn’t always old enough for, and in their own way, they’d tried to shelter him a little. Bel was always quick to take the kills, to do violence when violence was called for, Fran was always ready to play distraction, to draw the enemy’s rage, their attention, and that left Itachi to do the stealth work, safely unseen, in and out without having to bloody his hands, or speak to another living soul. It wasn’t much maybe, but it was more than anyone else had ever offered him.
Even now, Itachi appreciated what they’d tried to do for him, futile as it may have been.
But they hadn’t been close the way most genin teams were close, bound bone deep by shared innocence, lost together, by growth shared and shaped by each other. They’d all grown up too quickly, innocence vanished like snow before they’d ever met, too skilled too young to have had any meaningful impact on each other’s abilities.
Itachi wondered if that would be enough for him to fool them. For them to believe he’d done what everyone said he’d done. If the distance would be enough to obscure the truth from his too sharp teammates.
Probably not. Maybe they weren’t close the way genin teams usually were but they knew each other well enough, understood each other well enough, alike in all the worst ways, and his teammates were too clever to be easily fooled.
Itachi wasn’t sure whether or not to think of it as a relief. It should be a relief, knowing that someone still thought of him as something other than a kinslayer, without him having to explain, or argue, or prove anything. But there was a part of him that was still an open bleeding wound of grief, and guilt, and horror at what he had done, that wished they were less brilliant, that they could just accept the reality of what he’d done. A part of him that wanted them to hate him the way the rest of the village did, the way Sasuke did, the way Itachi hated himself.
There was another part of him, equally irrational, that was still standing by the Naka river, that was still watching Shisui falling, blind, and broken, that said that no-one could know, that knowing would only get them killed and Itachi didn’t think he could bear it if he was responsible for the deaths of anyone else he loved. It was more than half of why he’d never tried to tell them anything, never asked for help, because it had been clan business, and private, up until the point everything had spiralled out of control and Itachi hadn’t dared drag anyone else into the mess he was drowning in.
But in the end, his teammates weren’t really people Itachi could protect, had never been people he had needed to protect, and so when he thought of them figuring out the truth, under the irrational panic and the self hatred, the part of him that wanted Danzo to pay for what he made Itachi do had settled into a bone deep spite that Fran would have been proud of.
Because Itachi had always been the least terrifying of their team. The others had let him be the least terrifying, had given him that gift without flinching, without hesitating, and Itachi rather thought that nobody had realised what that meant.
Itachi had done what he had done, whatever the reasons, had earned his name in the bingo book as a monster among monsters, a nightmare that ordinary monsters fled from and yet still he was the youngest, the softest of the three of them. His teammates had the strength, the brilliance, the ruthlessness to let him to be that, each in their own way, and if Itachi was a monster among monsters then what did that say about the others.
Less manageable monsters than Itachi that was for sure. He had always been vulnerable, possible to manipulate in ways that they weren’t, because he had spent his whole life bowing to the pressure of what everyone else needed him to be, because love and duty held him like chains and he’d realised too late there was no line he couldn’t cross in their name. Danzo had seen that, had used it against him, and used him as a weapon against everything he loved. But Danzo had forgotten, that Itachi’s teammates had no such weaknesses, would not be so easily controlled.
Because they were older, and stronger in spirit, and they knew exactly who they were, and Itachi had never seen anyone who could make them bend or compromise. Not even Hyuuga Xanxus who commanded their loyalty in ways the village never could, not even Sawada Tsunayoshi, who even Xanxus would listen to, could make Bel or Fran do anything they didn’t want to do. And they were his teammates, and maybe they weren’t as close as they should have been but they were close enough, they would know to look deeper, and they were smart enough to find the truth, and for his sake they wouldn’t let it rest.
He hoped Danzo choked on them.