Chapter Text
He had seen it a thousand times by now. His uncle slashed down, spine sliced like paper. His aunt decapitated from behind, the same curve of the blade, the same stagger before she fell to the floor. His mother collapsed, blood catching in her throat. His father after, chest crumpled inward with a sword poking through. Blood smeared across the floor in the same spot it always had been, every time. Like the massacre remembered its own choreography.
Tsukuyomi wasn’t just an illusion. It was a time loop, a curse woven from memory, from grief and for torture. Not even time followed the laws of reason, seconds stretched and shrank like elastic, hours collapsed into flashes, days passed in the blink of an eye yet never passed at all.
Sasuke stood in the hallway each time, seven years old, barefoot. Already exhausted in a way a seven year old shouldn’t be. He stared as the world reset around him again. Doors creaked open, screams echoed in the walls, Itachi stepped forward, his ANBU mask discarded like a lie peeled off his face. Why would he wear it anyway? What was the point of him putting it on for this, only to take it off. The blood on his brother’s sword glinted like moonlight on a frozen lake.
Sasuke didn’t scream anymore. The panic died after the fiftieth time. The nausea had faded. By the hundredth, he could tell you how many footsteps before a kill. By the 504th, he could tell you where his aunt’s head would land, where his cousins organs lay. A chunk of his lungs would slap onto the wall, before slipping to the floor with a thump. He watched Itachi drag a child by his leg, no doubt what he would’ve done to him. Why not, though?
Sasuke blinked. The scene shifted.
Without warning, he was inside the house. No footsteps, no transition. Just darkness pressing closer like water in his lungs. Memories drowned him, and he waited for the scream of his mother. The air thickened around him.
It didn’t come.
His heart skipped a beat.
He sprinted, door slamming open beneath his small hands. He arrived just in time to see his mother stabbed from behind. But it wasn’t the act that froze him. He focused on the blood dripping from her lip, then lifted his gaze to her face.
There was no horror, no shock, no anger. Only peace. A knowing, quiet acceptance.
Sasuke stumbled backwards, falling onto the floor. This wasn’t how it ended. He’d seen this hundreds of times, why does she look so prepared now? As if she accepted it. Welcomed it, even.
He watched his father fall next, the same look of acceptance on his face. The scene reset.
Sasuke ran, again, faster. He reached them just in time, but the look never changed. Once he saw it, it was impossible to get out of his mind.
Everytime, her serenity, his fathers calm.
The house. The blood. The screams.
And each time, the illusion cracked a little more. Eyeballs popped loose, bouncing across the tatami mat. Teeth dropped to the floor, scattered like rice. The blood grew bright, engraining itself in his mind. The shadows deepened into oily black voids. Faces became masks painted with grief,twisting and malforming. Itachi’s face warped, his eyes stretched wide, skin rippling like wax under a flame. He became faceless, no longer the brother he was.
Still, Sasuke searched. For a pattern, for a break, for something real. Anything real.
Because Itachi’s illusion wasn’t perfect.
It wasn’t an illusion.
It was a memory.
And memory could crack.
Memory could twist and reshape itself.
The scene reset. Sasuke screamed, not from pain or fear, but from defiance.
“Stop! Just stop it already!”
The world shuddered. The floor rippled beneath him.
Tsukuyomi shouldn’t ripple.
He looked up. The moon above cracked like a mirror split down the middle. The floor beneath him undulated. The corridor tilted as he stepped forward. Doors stretched. Blood flowed upward. Bodies reassembled in reverse, parts attaching to the wrong places. His aunt’s eye in his cousin’s socket. His uncle’s hand on his aunt’s knee. Her head floating, rejoining, falling again.
He clutched his head, pain bloomed inside of him, his vision growing fuzzy. No, no, this couldn’t be happening.
“This isn’t real,” he whispered, his voice echoing back twisted and slow. Low like something underwater.
He turned.
And saw himself.
A child, curled in the corner. Crying. Powerless.
He hated it.
Not the child.
The helplessness.
The illusion tried again.
The door slammed. The blade swung. The scream echoed.
But Sasuke didn’t run.
He turned toward Itachi.
Who raised his sword.
And his hand trembled.
“Why?” Sasuke asked.
The words came. Rehearsed.
“To test my power, foolish little brother.”
But they rang hollow. Flat. Wrong.
His brother's mouth moved, but his voice cracked. The script faltered.
A tear hit the floor.
It didn’t belong there.
Nothing ever changed. Nothing cried except Sasuke.
Sasuke’s heart pounded. His gaze shifted, not to the corpses, not to the cracked walls. To Itachi.
Not Itachi.
He took a step forward, the floor cracking beneath him.
“Why are you crying? You didn’t cry before!”
The illusion should have reset. The script should have played.
Instead, Itachi blinked.
“To test my po-” The words caught. A pause. A breath. A tear fell.
The excuse didn’t match the question.
“You always say that. To test your power.” Sasuke stepped closer.
Itachi stared at him. The tomoe of his mangekyou trembled. Another tear.
“You said I wasn’t worth killing. So why do you look at me like that?”
Itachi opened his mouth, but no sound came out. His eyes blurred with guilt.
This time the scene didn’t reset.
The floor cracked. The blood froze midair. The screams reversed.
Sasuke stood in front of his parents' bodies. The walls were still, as still as walls painted with blood could be. He collapsed, gasping, sweat pouring down his face.
Itachi was gone.
The scent of iron stayed. His hands shook, his palms scraped raw from falling. His eyes stayed wide open.
It wasn’t just a genjutsu. It was a memory.
He clenched his fists. He should be furious. Screaming. Ready for revenge. But all he could see was his mother’s face. The peace. His father’s eyes. The acceptance.
They hadn’t died like strangers. They had died like they chose it.
He squeezed his eyes shut. The truth refused to stay buried.
Itachi had cried.
He woke on the cold floor. The scent of iron lingered, blood in his nose and on his tongue. His palms were scraped, his throat dry.
It was morning. Itachi left in the middle of the night. The compound was still empty.
Where was ANBU? Where was the Hokage? Surely, an event like this had to be reported.
Sasuke sat up slowly. His head ached, his limbs trembled. He could feel the blood trailing up him, feel the throbbing behind his eyes. He rubbed them, but the memories still stayed. His eyes drifted to the corner of the room, the misaimed kunai imbedded in the wall. His parents bodies were gone, nowhere to be seen. The only clue was the blood splatter on the floor.
Footsteps approached, dried blood crackling beneath the shoes. Sasuke snapped his head behind, holding his hands up and trying to defend himself. He has to be prepared.
"Sasuke."
An ANBU agent quickly approached him, panting hard. The porcelain mask glinted under the sun, fox-shaped and unfamiliar. Spiky, grey hair popped up from underneath. He slowed to stop a few feet away, cautious.
The man, or boy, as Sasuke should say, knelt down infront of him, voice softened and awkward.
"Err, we've been looking for you. Come with me."
Sasuke looked up, face blank and unimpressed. His ears didn't register the words, too focused on replaying the screams of his mother.
"I'm fine." The lie slipped out smooth and cool. Too smooth.
The agent narrowed his eyes, as far as Sasuke could tell at least. "What happened to your hands?" He asked, pointing an accusing finger at him. Sasuke grit his teeth, it wasn't his place to know.
"I said I'm fine." Sasuke repeated, his tone making the agent recoil. So much for a seven year old.
"...I'll be around the corner then. If you need anything."
He left Sasuke sitting alone in the ruins.
That night, Sasuke didn’t sleep.
The temporary apartment was quiet. Too quiet. No rustle of his mother folding laundry in the next room. No clack of his father's shogi pieces as he played alone after dinner. No smell of grilled fish or clean tatami or ink from his father’s calligraphy.
Just this cold, impersonal space with white walls and a futon that smelled like someone else.
The ANBU had set it up quickly, clothes that didn’t fit, food he didn’t touch, a nightlight in the corner as if that could shield him from the kind of darkness he had seen.
He’d been offered a bath.
He didn’t take it.
He didn’t want to scrub the blood off his skin. Even if it wasn’t really there. Even if it never had been.
The room was clean. But it felt wrong.
Too clean.
No dust in the corners. No creaking floorboards. No framed photographs. The Uchiha had always been meticulous, but their home had lived. It had breathed.
This place was sterile. Quiet like a waiting room.
Sasuke sat cross-legged on the futon, a blanket draped over his shoulders though he wasn’t cold. He stared at the far wall. Minutes passed. Then hours. The moon shifted in the sky. Still, he didn't move.
He'd been handed a cup of miso soup earlier by a woman in a Konoha vest. She'd smiled kindly, crouched to his level. He hadn't responded. Just took the bowl and set it on the floor.
Now it sat cold beside him, untouched.
The smell made him nauseous.
A clock ticked somewhere. He flinched.
He hated clocks now.
They made time feel real. Linear. As if things progressed in a straight line. As if what had happened was already over.
He stood up and moved to the window.
The glass was smudged with fingerprints from the last occupant. A kunai nicked the frame—just one, shallow, a sign someone else had lived here. Trained here. Maybe failed here.
He pressed his forehead to the cool pane.
Down below, he could see the rooftops of the district. Lights out in most homes. Civilians fast asleep. Unaware.
He wondered if they’d wake in the morning, stretch, and go on with their lives as if nothing had happened just two streets over. As if the Uchiha had never existed.
Would anyone mention the silence from the compound?
Would anyone remember their names?
Sasuke’s shoulders tensed.
A memory: his mother brushing his hair before bed. Her fingers gentle. Her humming quiet. The scent of plum blossom.
He blinked it away.
That life was gone.
He turned back into the room.
Too white. Too empty. Too fake.
On the desk was a notebook—a standard-issue academy logbook. The kind used for practice essays and memorization drills.
It had his name written on the front in small, neat letters.
But not in his handwriting.
Someone else had written it for him.
Like they were preparing for a version of Sasuke that no longer existed.
He sat down at the desk.
Opened the book.
And began to write.
His pen scratched against the low quality paper, his handwriting small and messy. He wrote down each and every single detail of the massacre, what was the same, what was different. The ANBU mask on the floor, the timing of screams, his parents final expressions, and the split second of hesitation Itachi had before moving his blade. The trembling of his brothers hand, and the singular tear that dropped.
He stared blankly at the paper, before drawing a crude, messy sketch of his parents final pose. He wasn't good at art, but it worked. Underneath, he wrote two sentences.
'They were waiting for it. Why?'
And below that:
'Itachi cried. He hesitated.'
He tapped his pen against the book. It didn't make sense, none of it did. His brother wouldn't snap like that, and he hesitated. He wasn't some idiot going on a rampage.
It would've been easier if they were scared, afraid. If they didn't expect it. If they resisted. If Itachi was the monster that he saw in the first few versions. But as Tsukuyomi progressed, it unveiled itself, even if Itachi didn't want it to.
But it was the stillness in their eyes. The lack of fear. A shinobi didn't flinch before death, but this wasn't stoicism. It was intent. They knew. And they let it happen.
'Uchiha Itachi. Traitor? Murderer? I don't know. Unclear. But a part of him didn't want to do this.' He wrote, stopping there. The candle burnt in front of him, lighting up the dark room. He watched from the window, gaze fixated on two civilians. Laughter and footsteps echoing in his ears. Life moved forward, oblivious to what it erased.
He hated them for that. How they could laugh so easily now.
And he envied them
Sasuke closed the notebook. Not slammed, not shut with purpose—just quietly. Reverently.
He placed it beside his bedroll, then padded over to the window, resting his forehead against the glass.
Konoha looked the same.
That was the worst part.
How unchanged everything was.
How easily it would forget. The police force would be gone, but they never did anything useful. Why were the Uchiha separated anyway?
He watched the Hokage Rock. The lights from the streetlamps below cast shadows on the faces of the past leaders.
Where was his father’s face? He was a Hokage candidate, yet they overlooked him for the young Minato Namikaze. Didn't even let the poor man rest, 24 and a hokage.
Where was his clan’s legacy? Why were half the Hokage Senju? The third was trained by Senju, surely he counts too. Kagami Uchiha was always fawned over in the Uchiha clan, and was the Seconds most trusted ally. Why wasn't he Hokage? His clans legacy was gone.
Buried. Scrubbed out. Smoothed over. Taken over.
Sasuke’s hand clenched.
He didn’t know what Itachi had done, or why. But he knew this: nothing the Hokage said, nothing the elders promised, could explain away the tear he saw.
Itachi had hesitated.
Just for a moment.
And in that hesitation, something slipped through the cracks.
A secret.
A truth.
Sasuke wouldn’t scream for revenge.
He wouldn’t shout his brother’s name to the heavens and vow to kill him.
No. That would be too easy.
Instead, he would remember.
He would watch. Wait. Learn. Grow.
Until he had the full picture.
And when that day came.
He would drag the truth out of the silence.
Even if it killed him.