Kisame and Itachi slipped into the village at dawn, even before the funeral, so quietly that it felt as if Konoha itself had decided not to acknowledge them, allowing them to move unseen for hours, long after the ceremony had ended.
No sentries alarmed initially.
No awareness rippled outward.
Beyond their already difficult-to-track speed and disciplined chakra suppression, Itachi laid a genjutsu over their presence when necessary.
It didn't erase them.
It simply suggested, gently and persistently, that there was nothing here worth noticing.
Faces turned away.
Eyes slid past.
Thoughts failed to linger.
On the surface, Itachi sold it cleanly to his "partner."
Intelligence gathering.
Post-invasion assessment.
Assessing how thoroughly the village had been gutted, and whether the Nine-Tails' container had changed amid the chaos, demanded an early and deliberate move.
Sensible. Professional.
Entirely Akatsuki-approved.
Like the work of an employee who guarded the company's interests even more fiercely than the boss ever did, acting on his own initiative rather than waiting for permission.
Kisame accepted it without much friction because it sounded 'reasonable' to him.
A village that had just been cracked open was worth examining.
Power showed itself most clearly in the aftermath, and the Nine-Tails chakra alone made the trip justifiable.
More than that, Itachi had never dragged him into something pointless.
When he moved early, without orders, it usually meant there was something worth seeing.
In Akatsuki terms, that was about as close to compatibility as it got.
That was enough.
Akatsuki always moved in pairs.
That rule existed for survival, not sentiment.
Itachi could not have come here alone, no matter how insistently his heart dragged him back, unless he brought someone with him.
So he did what he always did best.
He 'convinced' the man in question.
This trip, in reality, had nothing to do with Akatsuki.
Itachi had simply come back because Konoha had screamed loud enough to reach him.
The invasion alone would have been enough.
The scale of destruction.
The sheer audacity of it.
The idea that someone had walked into the village he still, inexplicably, called home and kicked it to its knees.
Had Orochimaru always been this strong?
How come he didn't notice?
Or had the Konoha he had always revered truly been this fragile all along?
The thought made Itachi feel as though he were being forced to reevaluate his entire life, almost to the point of absurdity.
And those five unknown figures who fought at his side, entities even the Akatsuki had no records of, where had they come from?
What kind of power operated so completely outside every intelligence network?
Worst of all, how had another Uchiha with the Mangekyō Sharingan emerged among them at all? But more than anything else, one fact eclipsed all the rest.
Hiruzen Sarutobi was dead.
Not retired. Not wounded. Dead.
For Itachi, that mattered more than he wanted to admit.
Of all the elders, Hiruzen had been the one Itachi felt the least resistance toward.
The one he convinced himself understood, at least in principle, what needed to be done.
Not the details. Not the methods.
But the direction. The vague outline of necessity.
The most "reasonable," which in Konoha terms meant someone who looked kind, benevolent, and selfless enough to be believed, even when he chose inaction.
With Hiruzen gone, that fragile balance collapsed.
And that meant Danzo.
That meant promises were no longer guarantees.
That meant Sasuke was no longer untouchable.
Itachi told himself he had come to observe. To confirm.
To make sure nothing had already gone wrong.
In reality, he came to remind Danzo that he still existed.
He let Kisame follow him through the village like a shadow with teeth, deliberately careless in just the right places.
Vanishing near the Hokage Rock.
Reappearing along administrative corridors.
Lingering where Root's eyes might be watching.
A warning written in footsteps.
Touch my beloved brother, and I don't stay hypothetical.
Danzo, of course, did nothing.
No response. No movement. No counter.
Whether that meant the message had been received or simply ignored, Itachi couldn't tell.
Danzo was always like that, a man who preferred silence because it made everyone else fill it with fear for him.
That uncertainty gnawed.
And then there was Sasuke.
What had happened to him during the invasion?
Had anyone out of those elders already decided that the last Uchiha was suddenly inconvenient?
Itachi's old justifications stirred again, uninvited and familiar.
He had acted first.
He had slaughtered his own clan because he believed Konoha would win anyway, because a doomed rebellion would have taken Sasuke with it.
In his mind, there had never been a version of events where the Uchiha emerged victorious.
Only different shapes of loss.
Better to trade a clan for a brother.
Better to kill his parents so his younger brother could live.
Better to offer leverage than to lose everything at once.
At least, that was how he had justified it.
And he still believed it. Or needed to.
Protecting "world peace," protecting the village as one great family, had been the other reason he told himself, the one that made the choice sound necessary rather than personal.
But protecting Sasuke had always carried equal weight. Just as real. Just as decisive.
Not separate. Not contradictory. Layered together until he could no longer tell where one ended and the other began.
What unsettled him now was the possibility that Danzo might decide the original agreement, the one concerning Sasuke's continued safety, no longer applied.
Kill Sasuke, carve out his eyes, add them to that warped collection, and finally put an end to the "Uchiha problem" he had never likely stopped obsessing over.
Or worse, keep him alive and reshape him into something "useful."
Take him.
Turn him into a puppet.
Itachi couldn't tell which possibility hollowed him out more.
An even worse way this could unfold weighed beneath everything, heavier and more suffocating than the village's shattered streets themselves, and once again, it led straight back to Sasuke and Danzo.
If Danzo used Shisui's eye, and Itachi was certain he had it, then the chaos left by the invasion would have been the perfect veil.
Not a seizure of power by force, but a coronation by implication.
Authority installed quietly, without resistance, without blood, without anyone fully realizing what had been taken from them.
A Hokage chosen not through consent, but suggestion.
If the institution Itachi revered so much, the chair he had butchered a clan to preserve, ended up occupied by the one man he could never accept wearing it, then something inside him would finally fracture.
There would be no room left for delay.
Hokage or brother.
Order or blood.
Even Itachi finally did not know which part of himself would break first.
What eased him, marginally, was what he learned by probing quietly.
A brush of genjutsu here, a glance there.
From various sources, he learned that Koharu and Homura didn't feel… wrong... yet.
No overwritten will. No obvious distortion.
They were pushing Jiraiya.
Then Tsunade.
Jiraiya had already left to find her.
Not Danzo.
That bought Itachi a little air.
Not much.
So now he sat with Kisame in a small, unremarkable shop, steam curling from chipped cups of tea neither of them cared about.
Itachi said nothing.
Kisame noticed everything.
He didn't comment on the tension.
Didn't joke. Didn't pry.
For once, even Kisame could tell that whatever this was, it wasn't an Akatsuki errand.
It wasn't even a mission.
It was personal.
Which raised a deeply inconvenient question Kisame kept to himself.
Was Itachi the butcher everyone said he was, or did he actually care about this place the way he'd previously mocked him for?
Itachi felt the question forming and realized, belatedly, that he'd slipped.
Too much silence.
Too much weight.
He corrected it the way he always did, with a flat remark delivered like boredom.
"Reconnaissance is dull," he said, eyes on the tea. "But necessary."
Kisame grunted, accepting the line even if he didn't fully buy it.
That was when Itachi felt it.
Kakashi.
Closing in.
Careful. Curious. Too competent to ignore.
Which meant this visit was already over.
He hadn't learned what he came for.
He hadn't confirmed Sasuke's safety.
He hadn't forced Danzo to blink.
All he'd done was reopen wounds and remind himself how fragile his entire justification really was.
Itachi stood, setting the cup down untouched.
Time to leave.
Once again, he would walk away with nothing resolved, carrying the quiet hope that restraint would hold a little longer.
And pretending that was a strategy, rather than fear.