（ forcing sasuke to break first, as always, triggers a distantly-examined swell of self-loathing the way one expects to find fragments of bone during kotsuage. there's no surprise when he finds it — it serves only as relic and reminder that there was once something other corpses between them.
he studies the ceiling, so different than the industrial gray of the ximilia, and then: ）
No.
I will make dinner if you have likewise abstained.
[ Had his brother been sleeping? Studying? Reading?
How does he spend his free time? Can Sasuke guess with any level of accuracy anymore? Could he ever? The vr training he's utilizing to give himself a workout is hardly enough of a distraction from the intrusive thoughts, or even challenging enough to make his conversation with Itachi stutter. Pathetic. ]
I ate.
[ It's Itachi he had been worried about. But even still... ]
( by the time sasuke arrives at his quarters, he will find the door faintly ajar. the room is spartan inside, as empty as if no one lives there at all save for the fact that itachi is seated at the small table — a plate of simple onigiri laid out between them.
the other indication — for there is none to be had in terms of outward personal affects — is the fact that a familiar sword is hung on the wall. once chipped and rusted, worn by the elements where he had left it all but entombed in the earth at the edge of fire country, it has been worked back to a soft burnish, the tsuka-ito bloodlessly rebound.
[ He's not hungry. More than that, his diet is as well-regimented as the rest of his life is nowadays, parceled in the same way that everything about him is. His exercise. His hobbies (few as they are). His emotions.
But to pass by an opportunity to witness the product of his brother's domestic efforts is loathsome to him.
And so he arrives, right on time, hair still matted with the sweat he's dutifully toweled off his face and collar, his delaying of his own shower just further evidence of his desire to rush to see him. He's an easy read with him and he wouldn't deny it. Even the way his eyes go to that sword, linger, and then abruptly cut away with a twitch of his mouth is showier than he intends. Did he display it as some sort of test?
As directed, he sits. ]
Onigiri. [ Stated without emotion or a readied follow-up. ]
（ itachi looks at plate, each little ball of rice perfectly formed and unmistakably onigiri, and wonders if that was meant to be a question or an accusation. another thing better left unclarified — he simply reaches forward with one finger to push the plate a few centimeters closer to sasuke, unspoken invitation. ）
Do you find it easier to train at night?
（ yes let's talk about that thing you've done most of your life with the hopes of killing me, surely this won't backfire. ）
[ Calloused fingers pluck up one of those onigiri for a passing inspection, turning it as if judging the evenness of its formation. And he is. ]
I doubt you called me here to ask me that. But fine. I find it easier here because there are fewer prying eyes. Outside of this environment, that kind of thing doesn't matter to me.
（ his mouth thins faintly, and there's a faint sideways tick of his jaw. the care implicit in that — and what else is it but a plea? — is worse than any veiled barb he could throw.
there's a chastisement, a sharp severance that dies in his throat. his brother cares for him, after everything, despite everything. it should be a thing cherished. instead, he draws a breath and lets his gaze cut away, to linger on that sword. ）
I do not neglect myself, Sasuke.
（ he doesn't recognize his own tone. it takes a moment to realize it's because he's speaking gently.
but sasuke is correct — that wasn't why he called him here. his focus redirects, sharpens. itachi lifts a hand, and lets the tips of his fingers rest along the sharp jut of one cheekbone. difficult to miss his meaning, red-eyed in the low light of the room. ）
Will you permit me?
（ very likely, LILITH has files on their abilities and skills. why else would it have gathered two of the most powerful sharingan users of the past decade in one place?
(and that bitch kakashi, i guess.
and that random yamanaka girl he still hasn't met, oops)
but it does not mean he wishes to share more than absolutely necessary, or offer the same trust viveca earned in this untested place. ）
He doesn't need to to feel the weight of that sword in his peripheral, omnipresent and challenging the composure he's sworn to himself to keep. Regardless of the balance of sins between the two of them, he accepts this for what it is: an opportunity. Itachi is allowing him in, and should he chance an upset he might not be invited back. In spite of his lack of appetite, he takes a small bite of that onigiri to pacify them both.
The question has him swallowing fast. ]
... I will. [ "Though I don't believe it guarantees us privacy", he thinks to add, but that would require his sense of logic and preservation to be greater than his desire to be close to his brother. They both know that's never been the case. ]
（ not a guarantee, no. given the changes done to their eyes — though he has not been able to determine if it has rendered them capable of recording energy as it may well verbal and physical exchange — but given the sharingan's impact on the prosencephalon of the brain, it may be enough to bypass.
at the very least, if there are cameras hidden in their rooms, it will prevent those from following the lines of their communication. some caution is better than none.
itachi activates the mangekyō, and sasuke will undoubtedly notice — the design is not quite the same as before. the eternal mangekyō now written plain in the way the tomoe sharpen into curves. tsukuyomi is a whisper, and then — the world shifts, falls away.
they are no longer in the base, in his room in revelation. instead, for no reason he can quite describe, he's brought them to cirawei.
it's a broadly alien landscape. strange mushrooms and beautiful flowers tower overhead, the ground beneath their feet is soft and springy with moss. the air is sweet and ancient and green. overhead, the sky is cut with ribbons of colour and awash with the stars of a world very clearly not their own, and there is a meteor in the sky, casting a red pallor all around them.
he says nothing. simply waits for sasuke to acclimate to the nightmare realm, and speak. ）
[ For half a second upon seeing those eyes, at once hauntingly familiar and then shockingly foreign, an overwhelming sense of dread washes over his person. It's a wave far greater than his conscious awareness of his brother's intentions or his self-delusion of "objectivity" that has him sitting so still and calm in Itachi's presence, and even as lips part and the fingers of his remaining hand clamp down white-knuckled against the table's surface he's unable to further react.
It's a perfect crystallization of years and years of buried trauma, all relived in the presence of the monster his brother has painstakingly created. Tsukuyomi is a technique employed effortlessly for his torture, not for communication or peace, and when his own eyes reopen within the vision he half-anticipates a blood-red sky.
Nothing could be farther from the truth, and rather than being unsettled by the unknown he is deeply, viscerally comforted by it. Tension is gone from his shoulders as he openly examines his surroundings, senses alight with a vivid swath of color, smell, and feeling. ]
（ sasuke might not suspect that it is difficult for him, too. that the pause between the question and the answer is his innate recalcitrance, and not the swallowing of his own panic and a clot of bitter emotion. that he is controlled is only natural — he is always controlled. but even just the simple act of sharing something beautiful with his brother at the knife's edge of tsukuyomi is — exacting. ）
It is a world called Ciraiwei.
（ the first thing he has said, even vaguely, that hints at the life he has led elsewhere in the time since last they spoke. his tone is wistful, as he turns to surveil the area himself as though seeing it for the first time. he was not here long enough to see everything this small planet and its small people had to offer, to remember — but the illusion of tsukuyomi is seamless. the world alight with life beneath a watchful gaze. ）
I was here a little over a year ago, for ten days.
[ He both wants and fears interaction with this new environment, hand held stiff at his side to combat its urge to reach out. ]
A year ago? [ Before, in Sasuke's timeline, he'd even drawn his last breath. Before Sasuke had had his eyes transplanted into his own skull, desperate for power and clinging to what little remained of his big brother all at once. ]
logically, he knows that there is no value in keeping the ximilia from his brother. in fact, it only harkens back to old habits — and old failures. once, to be worthy of a second chance, he made a choice. now comes due the cost.
and yet — it is easy to strip himself away from the telling, dispassionate and informational, no weight behind it save what is implied. it is easy to vivisect his own pride, his own preference for secrecy, to lay bare the truth no matter the sting of it for the sole reason that sasuke has earned it of him. his feelings have never mattered by contrast to the enormity of his brother's. he has spent his life in eclipse not out of fraternal duty, but because love had demanded it of him. because it had been born in him before sasuke ever drew breath. the world was a pale shadow, muted and amorphous, compared to the colour his brother brought him at a word.
he recognizes, too, that is not the approach he should be taking. it is not the one that is healthy, to treat it like a judicial flaying and not a simple, honest act of communication. but it is, at present, the best he can do to make himself speak at all. the weight of their many silences, their many unspoken things, would otherwise continue to drag them both beneath its vicious riptide. it would fill their lungs to bursting, and drown them as it has been drowning them, in one capacity or another, for more of their lives than not. a clean break is better. it permits healing they would never attain on their own.
he tips his chin up, and studies the canopy. above them, mushroom lamella only enhance the alien nature of the landscape — so very different from their own. ）
Three years ago, I made a deal with a power very nearly beyond comprehension. 'To undo a regret'.
（ that part, clearly quoted, creates a pinch in his expression. sasuke will not need to guess at that regret — he told his brother plainly during that last fateful conversation. not the massacre. not the lives lost beneath his blade, not the clan all but extinguished, not their parents and the way he had stood in the room with their bodies long enough that the hot tang of blood soaking the very air he breathed turned coppery and cold. he did not regret the cruelty, he did not regret the killing, not the years with akatsuki or the evils done in their name.
it had been, only and ever, not trusting sasuke. ）
In exchange, I was utilized on missions necessary to that power. It was always intended to be borrowed time. I accepted that at the final conclusion of the last mission, my fate would remain the same as it was in our world, and a new timeline with divergent events would occur at the epicentre of my regret.
（ that a boy named itachi — but not him, would make a choice so very different from his own, and alter the destiny of their accursed clan. ）
[ Silence hangs heavy in air already thick with fungal spores and the detritus of floral rebirth, each breath in filling his lungs to capacity faster than it feels they should. Is he imagining it? Is it the compression of his own chest? "Anxiety" and "stress" are words allowed only to civilians, not to shinobi, and the rare spikes of panic he's experienced under Orochimaru's gaze or when subjected to Obito's callous revelations aren't something he lets himself entertain here.
It's almost easier when Itachi starts speaking, revealing to him something so unbelievable that at first he's unsure how to respond. His first question – why? – is answered by his claim that things would remain the same in their world. Not even necessarily because Sasuke believes they should, as that's a lesson he's learned but not worn well, but because he can't imagine his brother seeking any kind of happier resolution for himself. ]
And this power... this– [ He falters uncharacteristically, eyes chancing upward at the meteor tearing through the sky above them. It's surreal, in part because it's a reality inside Tsukuyomi that he hasn't experienced firsthand. ]
Whatever the source of it was, it's what resurrected you. That's how you were available to LILITH, and how they were able to continue to use you in the same way. [ Without his own realization or conscious awareness, the hand at his side has curled into a fist. ]
（ a single word, yet there are tomes of possibility within it, written in blood ink. a dark gaze flickers to sasuke's hand, the curl of his fingers in against his palm. his brother's reaction to emotional turmoil is violence, always violence — and itachi knows that is no one's fault but his. ）
However, it is equally possible that... an individual I came to call a friend has sent me here, intending to safeguard my life from its inevitable end. Or that it was done to give me an opportunity to speak with you.
（ that last conversation they had, before the final mission began... yes, it would not surprise him to learn that this is viveca's hand at work. ）
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Are you in your quarters?
（ sorry was he supposed to be answering... something...? ）
no subject
Are you?
[ Tell me you are and had zero distractions so I know for sure that you're avoiding me, do it. ]
no subject
Come to my room on your return.
（ he's so good at conversation, rly. ）
no subject
no subject
（ bitch don't call his bluff you won't like what follows. ）
no subject
It's an easy answer for someone who still hasn't learned to flex his ability to grasp both. ]
I'll come by. Expect a twenty minute delay.
Have you eaten?
no subject
he studies the ceiling, so different than the industrial gray of the ximilia, and then: ）
No.
I will make dinner if you have likewise abstained.
no subject
How does he spend his free time? Can Sasuke guess with any level of accuracy anymore? Could he ever? The vr training he's utilizing to give himself a workout is hardly enough of a distraction from the intrusive thoughts, or even challenging enough to make his conversation with Itachi stutter. Pathetic. ]
I ate.
[ It's Itachi he had been worried about. But even still... ]
Make it anyway. I could use more.
no subject
( by the time sasuke arrives at his quarters, he will find the door faintly ajar. the room is spartan inside, as empty as if no one lives there at all save for the fact that itachi is seated at the small table — a plate of simple onigiri laid out between them.
the other indication — for there is none to be had in terms of outward personal affects — is the fact that a familiar sword is hung on the wall. once chipped and rusted, worn by the elements where he had left it all but entombed in the earth at the edge of fire country, it has been worked back to a soft burnish, the tsuka-ito bloodlessly rebound.
it did not occur to him to hide it.
instead — )
Sit.
no subject
But to pass by an opportunity to witness the product of his brother's domestic efforts is loathsome to him.
And so he arrives, right on time, hair still matted with the sweat he's dutifully toweled off his face and collar, his delaying of his own shower just further evidence of his desire to rush to see him. He's an easy read with him and he wouldn't deny it. Even the way his eyes go to that sword, linger, and then abruptly cut away with a twitch of his mouth is showier than he intends. Did he display it as some sort of test?
As directed, he sits. ]
Onigiri. [ Stated without emotion or a readied follow-up. ]
no subject
Do you find it easier to train at night?
（ yes let's talk about that thing you've done most of your life with the hopes of killing me, surely this won't backfire. ）
no subject
I doubt you called me here to ask me that. But fine. I find it easier here because there are fewer prying eyes. Outside of this environment, that kind of thing doesn't matter to me.
Tell me you're eating more than this.
no subject
there's a chastisement, a sharp severance that dies in his throat. his brother cares for him, after everything, despite everything. it should be a thing cherished. instead, he draws a breath and lets his gaze cut away, to linger on that sword. ）
I do not neglect myself, Sasuke.
（ he doesn't recognize his own tone. it takes a moment to realize it's because he's speaking gently.
but sasuke is correct — that wasn't why he called him here. his focus redirects, sharpens. itachi lifts a hand, and lets the tips of his fingers rest along the sharp jut of one cheekbone. difficult to miss his meaning, red-eyed in the low light of the room. ）
Will you permit me?
（ very likely, LILITH has files on their abilities and skills. why else would it have gathered two of the most powerful sharingan users of the past decade in one place?
(and that bitch kakashi, i guess.
and that random yamanaka girl he still hasn't met, oops)
but it does not mean he wishes to share more than absolutely necessary, or offer the same trust viveca earned in this untested place. ）
no subject
He doesn't need to to feel the weight of that sword in his peripheral, omnipresent and challenging the composure he's sworn to himself to keep. Regardless of the balance of sins between the two of them, he accepts this for what it is: an opportunity. Itachi is allowing him in, and should he chance an upset he might not be invited back. In spite of his lack of appetite, he takes a small bite of that onigiri to pacify them both.
The question has him swallowing fast. ]
... I will. [ "Though I don't believe it guarantees us privacy", he thinks to add, but that would require his sense of logic and preservation to be greater than his desire to be close to his brother. They both know that's never been the case. ]
no subject
at the very least, if there are cameras hidden in their rooms, it will prevent those from following the lines of their communication. some caution is better than none.
itachi activates the mangekyō, and sasuke will undoubtedly notice — the design is not quite the same as before. the eternal mangekyō now written plain in the way the tomoe sharpen into curves. tsukuyomi is a whisper, and then — the world shifts, falls away.
they are no longer in the base, in his room in revelation. instead, for no reason he can quite describe, he's brought them to cirawei.
it's a broadly alien landscape. strange mushrooms and beautiful flowers tower overhead, the ground beneath their feet is soft and springy with moss. the air is sweet and ancient and green. overhead, the sky is cut with ribbons of colour and awash with the stars of a world very clearly not their own, and there is a meteor in the sky, casting a red pallor all around them.
he says nothing. simply waits for sasuke to acclimate to the nightmare realm, and speak. ）
no subject
It's a perfect crystallization of years and years of buried trauma, all relived in the presence of the monster his brother has painstakingly created. Tsukuyomi is a technique employed effortlessly for his torture, not for communication or peace, and when his own eyes reopen within the vision he half-anticipates a blood-red sky.
Nothing could be farther from the truth, and rather than being unsettled by the unknown he is deeply, viscerally comforted by it. Tension is gone from his shoulders as he openly examines his surroundings, senses alight with a vivid swath of color, smell, and feeling. ]
Where are we, Itachi?
no subject
It is a world called Ciraiwei.
（ the first thing he has said, even vaguely, that hints at the life he has led elsewhere in the time since last they spoke. his tone is wistful, as he turns to surveil the area himself as though seeing it for the first time. he was not here long enough to see everything this small planet and its small people had to offer, to remember — but the illusion of tsukuyomi is seamless. the world alight with life beneath a watchful gaze. ）
I was here a little over a year ago, for ten days.
no subject
A year ago? [ Before, in Sasuke's timeline, he'd even drawn his last breath. Before Sasuke had had his eyes transplanted into his own skull, desperate for power and clinging to what little remained of his big brother all at once. ]
Itachi, what happened to you?
no subject
logically, he knows that there is no value in keeping the ximilia from his brother. in fact, it only harkens back to old habits — and old failures. once, to be worthy of a second chance, he made a choice. now comes due the cost.
and yet — it is easy to strip himself away from the telling, dispassionate and informational, no weight behind it save what is implied. it is easy to vivisect his own pride, his own preference for secrecy, to lay bare the truth no matter the sting of it for the sole reason that sasuke has earned it of him. his feelings have never mattered by contrast to the enormity of his brother's. he has spent his life in eclipse not out of fraternal duty, but because love had demanded it of him. because it had been born in him before sasuke ever drew breath. the world was a pale shadow, muted and amorphous, compared to the colour his brother brought him at a word.
he recognizes, too, that is not the approach he should be taking. it is not the one that is healthy, to treat it like a judicial flaying and not a simple, honest act of communication. but it is, at present, the best he can do to make himself speak at all. the weight of their many silences, their many unspoken things, would otherwise continue to drag them both beneath its vicious riptide. it would fill their lungs to bursting, and drown them as it has been drowning them, in one capacity or another, for more of their lives than not. a clean break is better. it permits healing they would never attain on their own.
he tips his chin up, and studies the canopy. above them, mushroom lamella only enhance the alien nature of the landscape — so very different from their own. ）
Three years ago, I made a deal with a power very nearly beyond comprehension. 'To undo a regret'.
（ that part, clearly quoted, creates a pinch in his expression. sasuke will not need to guess at that regret — he told his brother plainly during that last fateful conversation. not the massacre. not the lives lost beneath his blade, not the clan all but extinguished, not their parents and the way he had stood in the room with their bodies long enough that the hot tang of blood soaking the very air he breathed turned coppery and cold. he did not regret the cruelty, he did not regret the killing, not the years with akatsuki or the evils done in their name.
it had been, only and ever, not trusting sasuke. ）
In exchange, I was utilized on missions necessary to that power. It was always intended to be borrowed time. I accepted that at the final conclusion of the last mission, my fate would remain the same as it was in our world, and a new timeline with divergent events would occur at the epicentre of my regret.
（ that a boy named itachi — but not him, would make a choice so very different from his own, and alter the destiny of their accursed clan. ）
no subject
It's almost easier when Itachi starts speaking, revealing to him something so unbelievable that at first he's unsure how to respond. His first question – why? – is answered by his claim that things would remain the same in their world. Not even necessarily because Sasuke believes they should, as that's a lesson he's learned but not worn well, but because he can't imagine his brother seeking any kind of happier resolution for himself. ]
And this power... this– [ He falters uncharacteristically, eyes chancing upward at the meteor tearing through the sky above them. It's surreal, in part because it's a reality inside Tsukuyomi that he hasn't experienced firsthand. ]
Whatever the source of it was, it's what resurrected you. That's how you were available to LILITH, and how they were able to continue to use you in the same way. [ Without his own realization or conscious awareness, the hand at his side has curled into a fist. ]
no subject
（ a single word, yet there are tomes of possibility within it, written in blood ink. a dark gaze flickers to sasuke's hand, the curl of his fingers in against his palm. his brother's reaction to emotional turmoil is violence, always violence — and itachi knows that is no one's fault but his. ）
However, it is equally possible that... an individual I came to call a friend has sent me here, intending to safeguard my life from its inevitable end. Or that it was done to give me an opportunity to speak with you.
（ that last conversation they had, before the final mission began... yes, it would not surprise him to learn that this is viveca's hand at work. ）