Eight

Devotion

Maybe I thought I knew what it was like to feel remorse at the deaths of the innocent.

But I soaked my hands in blood anyway.

:: ::

Itachi held himself on one of the crumbling walls of the old Uchiha Hideout. There was nothing left here—there would be nothing left here after this last fight. This was not a place Sasuke grew up remembering, or had ever gotten the chance to after Mother's corpse toppled back, life pooling around her torso and her eyes wide with acceptance and fading light. Father followed half a second after, slashed at the back, red in his hair, his body falling atop his wife's in a crude semblance of one last embrace. Even in death, they did not part.

Down past the caverned flooring amidst all the rubble and rock stood Sasuke, worn but not ragged, glaring up with blood red eyes while Itachi only ever tried to remember the times those eyes only crinkled with wide smiles.

"Power and hatred brought me here," his younger brother seethed. Lightning cracked overhead, thunder roaring in its wake. "You'll die today, Itachi, and it will be at my hand!"

The first raindrop Itachi felt landed on the left side of his forehead, ice cold against the fevered heat of his skin.

Power and hatred.

Love and death.

(What was it that Aburame-sensei had said?)

"So Uchiha-san," Aburame-sensei begins conversationally. "How long have you allowed this respiratory disease to slowly kill you?"

Nimble fingers clamp around a scarred wrist quicker than an instant and he's halfway to pushing himself off the examination table when the heavy weight of healing chakra pushes more firmly against the backs of his eyes. It's only then that he freezes, foreign warmth in his veins and insects in his skull and perhaps in his desperation to hold out just a little bit longer he manages to make his first real mistake in a long, long while.

"My apologies," the medic says in a very unapologetic tone. "It wasn't my intention to alarm you."

"Then you found it apt to introduce this topic while my life is quite literally in your hands?"

He feels the nerves behind his eyes warm and relax, inflammation settling and micro-tears knitting themselves back together. It might be the best feeling he's felt in the years his condition has slowly hollowed out his body—he settles back minutely, muscles pulled taut to the brink of snapping, and he wonders what this medic will ask for in exchange for his silence.

"I'm a medic performing my duty," Aburame-sensei answers simply. His heartbeat thrums through the tips of his fingers, even and calm, and healing chakra continues to pour out from them to soothe the damage like honey-lemon down a sore throat.

Tens of insects shift under Itachi's skin.

He releases the wrist and continues to prepare for the worst.

"Forgive me if I don't find you entirely truthful."

"You came for healing." The minty-chilled rush moves to the left side of his head and slowly begins to overtake the burning sensation he could never stave off himself. "And after meeting Kiba and Sakura weeks ago, you mean to tell me you didn't do your research before coming to me?"