Felix Culpa

Author's Notes- Another two chapters uploaded at once, so if you've skipped straight to the last (as my stats page seems to be suggesting people are!), then click back to read chapter 9 first!

Like most people, I've always thought there was more to the Uchiha massacre than Itachi thinking it would prove how great he was if he murdered a clan he thought was useless, and that presumably included children and the elderly as well as some ninja. It would be nice to know the reason before writing this, but then I might have to wait for weeks to update (and luckily the POV shift makes it unnecessary). Oh, and I have no idea whether electricity can be conducted in the way mentioned later, but then I don't think jutsu adheres all that strictly to the laws of physics anyway.

Disclaimer- I don't own any of the recognisable characters or concepts. No copyright infringement is intended and no profit is being made.

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Little happened, but there was something quietly chaotic beneath the final few days. The Sharingan burned almost constantly between Itachi's eyelashes, with the uneasy glow of settled coals waiting to flare up into fire. Kakashi's single eye was lazy and unperturbed. Itachi watched the black treetops to see which would come first, Konoha or the others. Kakashi counted down the hours in the dull thuds of kunai.

An uneasy sense of purpose, of something left unfulfilled, ran through each day. Itachi still did not know what it was. Without memories, it had been reduced back to the level of the same basic instincts that made fish swim upstream, and birds migrate in winter. His fragmented memories still revealed nothing, save that he now knew the name of the boy, and how they were related. It meant very little to him. Itachi had not felt any animosity towards Sasuke in his dream, but then he had felt any real dislike for the boy in the river either, and that had not saved him.

He spent hours turning the name over, seeing what memories it may stir. Sa-su-ke, three syllables tumbling over and over into nothingness, the first link in a chain fallen slack long ago.

Itachi had tried to avoid the voices at first, in case they had been able to trace him somehow, but there was nothing to lose now. He couldn't consciously seek them, but he didn't resist either when he felt the pull of that broken, telepathic link. He caught six fragments of sentences over the last few days. Five of them were unrelated. The sixth-

How far from Konoha?

A day.

They were close.

He did not leave. Itachi had committed a massacre within Konoha's walls. No matter who the voices came from, they could not be a more immediate threat than those in the village. And when they came, there would be Kakashi to get through first. He had acknowledged long ago that Kakashi would be a formidable opponent. He had only seen a few seconds of battle, but that had been enough, and he had suspected Kakashi had barely had to exert himself in that fight.

But then if he had killed his entire clan, he would be at least Kakashi's equal, and perhaps beyond. Itachi could still not remember how the massacre had gone. He turned over the images of how that night must have been. At least thirty or forty in the clan, perhaps as many as seventy or so. Excluding the children and the very elderly, almost all of those would be ninja. The Uchiha clan did not produce civilians.

He could picture it, vaguely, how it must have gone. The white fans that they stamped on every surface would be spattered red, blood sinking into stone to leave stains that would still be there today. The screams and smoke would bounce back silenced inside a genjutsu falling over the complex, locking in the slaughter like a glass killing jar. Hundreds of Sharingan would fade into the black smoky colour of blown lightbulbs, brittle and empty in the indifferent moonlight. Itachi pictured entire faceless families of pale, red-eyed ninja, killed them in his mind, and it was all nothing to him.

Something was different. He lay quietly in the greyish wash of dawn light, listening to the clotted silence, waiting for the things that would begin today. And then after a moment, he stood slowly, in no particular hurry, and eventually made his way to the back door.

It had been left open, throwing a trail of brilliant winter light inside the house. Kakashi followed it out onto the porch. Itachi was standing not too far away. A moment had passed before Kakashi realised there were no tracks around him, and the snow lay in soft unbroken drifts where the wind had carved it.

The snow had stopped, and the sky above was the smooth grey of wet concrete, as blank as the skies in Itachi's mind. The world outside was waiting for him, and Kakashi paused for a moment on the porch, listening to the near-silence. Something dull and remote creaked inside the house, but there was nothing there for him. After a moment, he stepped out into the soft and shapeless world that the wind had moulded, nothing but Itachi between the formless snow and sky.

Itachi looked no different. His stance was not aggressive. The Sharingan burned quietly like stoked coals, but his expression was impassive. He was standing in the snow, as though waiting, as though he had known that Kakashi would come this way.

Kakashi slowed down. A last three steps bringing him closer to Itachi, who did not move away or turn to face him. Without the wet flurry of the snow, it was oddly quiet, a thick and ominous hush waiting for the sounds that would break it apart into splinters. Itachi tilted his head, surveying the blank skies. His expression was distant.

“You remember?”

“Everything.”

The Sharingan swirled around itself like a maelstrom of blood and shadows, like a gashed hole opening up into Itachi's mind. Three black blades sliced together to open up the full Mangekyou Sharingan like the tip of a drill.

Kakashi moved before he knew what was going to happen, behind the house and watching a glassy ripple of fire stream past, shimmering pale gold among all the black and white. A rush of heated air hit him dully, and when the fire faded, there was a smoking trench cut through the snow like a scar. The sides were sharp, the snow vapourised so quickly it had not even run to water.

He was calm. His heart had sped up, but only out of function. The adrenaline brought no sick panic, no dread. He had known this would come one day. This was what he did, what he had always done since before he could remember. It was what he would always do, and what would someday kill him. Kakashi tilted the forehead protector up, and watched the world snap into sharper focus through Obito's Sharingan. He could see a lot of things through the dead boy's eye, but he never saw the ghosts he may have expected.

Itachi would not be far away, but he could not see from here. A clone would be best, if he could spare the chakra. Better yet, two clones. He could send one either way around the house while he remained here, to see which way Itachi would come-

Three clones, and Kakashi fumbled for it, found the handle, opened the door behind him without looking and stepped backwards into the house just in time to see flame ripple down before him into the snow where had had stood. Three clones would be best. One to go left, another to go right, and the third to go over the roof, because that was the way he would have come, and it was what Itachi had done.

And now they were in a stand-off. Itachi was not moving. The sound would travel straight through the skeleton of the house, if he tried to leave. There were no trees near the house. He would be too easily caught jumping down from there, unable to change course until he hit the ground. Except they were both trapped now, because wherever Kakashi left the house, he'd be easily visible from above. And he couldn't hit Itachi with a jutsu through the first floor and the roof.

He listened to the steady drip of water melting under the sudden heat of Itachi's flame, and the answer was very simple.

Kakashi moved quietly into the earth cellar, and sent a lightning jutsu directly into the metal and water that ran right through the house, through the entire pipes system up to the roof and the melting snow-water that streamed from it.

There was a sharp crack and the world flared blue and white in an invert of itself. He waited while it faded, listening to the far-away soft thump before he began moving swiftly through the house, using the cover to work around to the other side without being seen.

Itachi had landed to the west, and Kakashi emerged towards the east side of the house, keeping close to the walls. He could get under the cover of the trees in a few seconds, but they offered little advantage. The bare branches would give no cover, and would shower snow at every movement. Every movement would stand out very clearly against the white and the black. It would be as much of a disadvantage for Itachi as it would be for him, except he would not last as long if they spent an hour or two moving between the cover of trees.

Kakashi let another minute or two slip away. No sounds came from the other side of the house. Itachi was waiting, and that was more like him. That first attack had almost caught him by surprise. Not the jutsu itself, but that Itachi had attacked at all, that Itachi had followed him when he had retreated. It had never been Itachi's style unless it was necessary, and it was rare enough to see Itachi really move that it had always come as a shock. Nothing so beautiful or poetic about it, just a sudden brutal dose of reality to see how fast people could come undone.

He waited, feeling his chakra slowly seep away in the whirl of Obito's Sharingan. Itachi only needed to keep his distance for a few hours, and he would win. Kakashi only had four shots at Chidori, and he would not be able to kill Itachi with any simple jutsu. If he needed to use a lethal attack, it would have to be soon.

After a minute, Kakashi slowly moved out around the side of the house, moving deliberately away from the shelter of the walls. There was no cover here, the house a little too far to his left, the trees too far to the right. Kakashi waited patiently. Itachi would be nearby.

When Itachi emerged, Kakashi let Chidori spark around his hand, watching the flurry of white light burn small holes into the snow. Itachi deliberately raised his hands before beginning to form the seals.

Kakashi could not risk looking up to read the movements. He had to assume Itachi thought the same way he did. That out here without shelter, it was worth using jutsu to kill- even jutsu that took time to prepare, or jutsu that could only be used once. As soon as Itachi began, he let Chidori fade into white sparks, and began forming seals again behind his back. One. Two. Itachi was faster and had a head start, but Kakashi only needed a very simple technique this time. Three.

As the air streamed black, his earth jutsu broke through the ground and he fell into the cellar below.

It would have taken a stronger jutsu to break through frozen earth like this, and it would only have trapped him near the intense flame, just ten or twelve feet down where he would be roasted like an animal caught underground in a forest fire-

-except before leaving the cellar that ran right out under the house, he had flooded it with a water jutsu that had began crumbling the earth walls from beneath.

The weakened ground broke easily and he fell through the ruined roof of the cellar, something tearing a long raw patch up his arm, went straight to the bottom and held on there. Some of it had seeped away through the earth walls, but there were still seven or eight feet of muddy water between him and Amaterasu.

The water seethed behind him as he fell through it, the surface already churning away to steam. Seven or eight feet of water. He didn't know how fast the heat would work through it. Two seconds. Some floating furniture drifted into him, and blundered away like a blind sea creature. Three seconds. He could see nothing through the cloudy water, but the Sharingan could see the dense stream of chakra above, and he could feel the burn of it chewing through the water like something alive. Four seconds. His eyes began to burn as the temperature soared in seconds. Five seconds, and only two feet of water-

Five seconds, and the flow of chakra began to peel away as Itachi pulled back the black fire, and then he would see there was no-one there-

And it all depended on whether he was right, and whether there was a refractory period after using the Mangekyou Sharingan. Even just two or three seconds recovery time before it could be used again, and if Kakashi was wrong and Itachi had another lethal attack in him so soon, there would be no way to avoid it up this close-

Six seconds after he had broke through the ground, and he came up as the fire peeled away from around him, less than fifteen feet from Itachi. It was dangerous to use lightning jutsu when he was wet, but Chidori would be streaming away from him, and if he was right, he would only need it once.

The air shimmered lethally hot around him, but Itachi's Sharingan had rearranged itself back into the normal pattern, and he didn't think he could control the black fire like this. Chidori sparked, like a handful of trapped lightning.

It took less than two seconds to reach Itachi, already shaping hand seals, but it was too late. Pain streamed backwards from the white fire he held. And then he was there, Itachi's face unreadable even through Obito's eye. The faintest change, something that wasn't a smile, more like a thin gash opening up into an expression even the Sharingan could not untangle, and Kakashi did not hesitate.

His dreams were broken up, tumbling into each other like paper caught in a breeze. He existed in no particular place or time. He was nine years old, and his father was bleeding out into the garden. Thirteen, and Obito was talking to him in that strangely calm, hollow voice, watching him with a death mask crushed half in like papier mache. Nineteen, and in ANBU. A whisper to his left, there's something strange about- and the Sharingan burned slowly in the porcelain, watching.

Sometimes things didn't go that way. Sometimes his father was never disgraced. Sometimes his father died before he was born. Kakashi was raised away from the ninja lifestyle. He pleaded for it a little, as children do, but soon forgot about it. He ended up in Konoha anyway, one of the civilians drawn to it and the comfortable lifestyle. He met Iruka. It was a good life.

Sometimes Obito survived. Sometimes they all died. Sometimes his whole team were dead, and sometimes they did not drift away one by one, drawn to better tutors than he would ever be. Kakashi went through them forever, trying on a hundred lives for size, until he forgot where he had began and where he had ended.

He woke up with a startle, and a sudden sense of dislocation, as though he had fallen from one dream into another. On the couch in the living room, but the room felt unfamiliar, as though he had returned from more than just sleep. The pale yellow light was all wrong too, as though he had slept for days. And before the dreams, there was-

It came back in a flood of hyperbright images that hit him hard. Out of the water that had nearly all steamed away, into heated air with all the oxygen burned from it. The fire had carved away to either side, still rippling gently like black gauze. Chidori had sparked into life, a thousand prickling pains streaming back from it as he used it while still wet. Itachi was too close and he must have known it, but there was nothing in his expression, no fear and no anger and no regret, nothing there at all. And when Chidori hit, Kakashi felt the electric snap right back through him, muscles suddenly going lax-

-and Itachi was down, black and red and white against the snow. Kakashi had never seen another Sharingan up so close. So red, as though Itachi was haemorrhaging somewhere, and nowhere else for it all to bleed out, trapped and clotting in the swirl of his eyes. The Mangekyou had formed too late, back into a kaleidoscope that trapped and twisted the world between its three blades. Then the Sharingan was fading, going to the dull, dusty colour of old stained glass, and then Kakashi realised there was nothing behind those eyes at all, and he was waiting for the explosion to come that would shred him into the clear winter air.

And then the clone was caving in and falling apart to scattering ravens, fluttering like torn scraps of paper, the air full of the dry clatter of their wings, and Kakashi was falling through them to land on his hands and knees in the snow. Then the pain had come, as though the Sharingan had split open his head and drilled right through into the core of his mind, and even Kakashi didn't know what was waiting there. He had staggered into the house, sick and sore and scared.

Kakashi stood up slowly, arthritic pains racheting up from every joint. The pain in his head had dulled while he slept, but each step jostled it, stirring up like a nest full of wasps. He touched his face cautiously, and felt no dried blood, then carefully touched a fingertip to his closed eyelid. His vision in that eye flared suddenly white and black. It wouldn't open enough to tell what damage had been done.

The other bedroom had always felt empty. It did not seem to have changed since they had arrived. The air was dry and scentless and heavy with curdled silence. The only thing that had changed was Itachi's thin presence, not even enough to disturb the collecting dust, and now that was gone too, lifted like dew at the end of long nights.

Itachi was gone. After a while, Kakashi stumbled back out into the snow, and sat there waiting for them to come.

He pressed a handful of snow over the eyelid, the pain calming as melted water ran out through his fingers. The water was clear, not running pink from blood. Perhaps staring into a real Sharingan so close had simply burned it out to a clean and cauterised hole. The inside of his head felt scorched and clear, not an entirely bad feeling.

Kakashi wasn't surprised when the ANBU squad slid from the cover of the forest to the cover of the house, slipping like cats up to windows and doors. They ignored him, sat idiotically in the snow with his hand over his eye. He ignored them too, waiting until Tsunade cautiously broke cover. She was talking to him, but her eyes were fixed above his head, on the house.

“Is he-”

“Gone,” Kakashi confirmed, and instantly, she was at his side.

“Are you hurt?”

“Just my eye-”

She tilted his head back, caught his wrist and moved it forcibly out of the way. Kakashi's eye still wouldn't open, but it did not matter to Tsunade. He felt her chakra seeping into him through his eyelid, cool against the raw tissue.

“There's no damage there at all,” she said, moving her hand away and looking directly at him. Her expression was unreadable. Kakashi didn't answer, and after a moment, she released his wrist. He covered the Sharingan again, as though the small darkness cupped in the palm of his hand would stop the snowlight spilling in.

“I'm sorry,” Tsunade said. “We came as soon as we heard rumours that an Akatsuki member was seen coming over the Wind border.”

Kakashi tilted his head, and “Oh,” was all he said. He wondered if Itachi had known that Akatsuki were nearby. He wondered if they had come to retrieve Itachi, or to silence him. He could wonder about these things a lot, if he cared to. It didn't really matter now any more.

“Is it worth pursuing him?”

“They'll already be over the border,” And moving fast too, even if the Mangekyou Sharingan took as much out of Itachi as he expected. Teamwork. Itachi and his partner had worked well when he had encountered them that first time. They'd probably pass his bell test. He smiled at the thought. Tsunade gave him a strange look.

“Fine,” she said, letting it go, turning to the forest. “You can come out now then.”

Sakura broke cover first. She paused before Kakashi.

“Are you hurt?”

He gravely held up his grazed arm for her to admire. She flung herself on him in an unexpected hug. He remained still, unsure what to do.

“He isn't dead, is he?” Naruto looked unusually sober, eyes troubled and hands shoved in his pockets.

“No,” Kakashi said.

“I thought if he died, Sasuke would have to come back,” Naruto said. There was a pause.

“Well, you still have almost two years to kill him,” Kakashi said, consolingly. It probably wasn't what Naruto really needed to hear. He thought it would do.

“Kakashi-sensei?” Naruto said, head tilted slightly. “Why are you sat down there?”

He shrugged, and stood up, then walked away after a moment. It seemed very busy all of a sudden. There were perhaps only ten people there altogether, but it felt like more, all of them swarming over the empty house. He did not expect they would find anything useful.

“I don't know how they followed us,” Tsunade said, in a low voice. “The date your mission was to be terminated was always confidential information, and we only had a few hours' notice to get a team together after the Akatsuki sighting.”

Over the Hokage's shoulder, Sakura had the grace to look a little guilty.

“Excuse me?” a hollow voice asked. An ANBU member held a piece of paper in a clear bag. “Is this your writing?”

It wasn't a threat, or a warning, and it didn't even explain so very much. Itachi had left a single line, not signed. His writing was as clear and stark as the black branches against snow.

I killed Shisou for mine.

Kakashi shook his head. Tsunade turned to look at him questioningly. “Itachi killed Shisou for his what?”

“Sins,” Kakashi said, the first thing that came into his mind. “Itachi brought up Obito before we fought.”

He wasn't quite ready to give the real answer, and it was, after all, still speculation. Tsunade regarded him questioningly, and then shrugged.

“Are you ready to go back?”

He turned briefly to the house. There was nothing in there that he really cared to go back for. Kakashi shrugged, and turned away in the direction of Konoha. He turned the words over as he went.

I killed Shisui for mine.

Shisui. Another Uchiha. He had been Itachi's friend, perhaps his closest and only friend. They had all suspected the part he had played in his death, and taken it as fact after the massacre. And they had never known what Itachi had stood to gain from that one small death, but then when someone becomes a mass-murderer, people stop looking for new patterns, and now-

Sasuke. He could have came closer than he ever knew to killing Naruto. And if Naruto had been a little slower or little less lucky at any point in that battle, he would have died. Because Itachi had told Sasuke to kill Naruto, to kill-

Kakashi clapped his hand over the eye that was not injured at all, and felt the full Mangekyou Sharingan twisting on itself as everything fell together.

To obtain the Mangekyou Sharingan, one had to kill the person they were closest to.

Everyone close to me is already dead.

He hadn't killed Itachi, but he had not known it was a clone when he had moved to kill, and did Obito's eye know any different than what it saw? If Shisui had been pulled half-dead from the river, five minutes after Itachi had slowly turned and walked away, would that have made any difference? It was only circumstances. He would have killed Itachi. He would do it again.

“Kakashi-sensei?” Naruto was looking up at him questioningly. “What's wrong with your eye?”

Kakashi let his hand fall away, covering the eye with the forehead protector as usual. After a moment, he felt it slide back into the normal pattern of the Sharingan. A sharp twinge like a dislocating joint as the kaleidoscope untwisted itself, and he wondered what skewed world Itachi had seen, looking through it so long.

“New jutsu,” he said. “I'll show you when we get back.”

Satisfied, Naruto went bounding away into the treetops, maybe still hoping he'd find a trail to follow. Sakura carried on walking sedately besides him, Tsunade barking orders out not too far behind.

The snow was melting, Kakashi noticed, as they carried on into the forest. It never lasted long, in Konoha.