Author's Notes/Warnings: Not at all canon-compliant, especially in view of the recent chapters. Characterization and plot is even more AU than before.

Boy, Reborn is not a multi-chaptered story by any stretch of the imagination - what's being posted below is something that fits into the universe that I wrote while trying to get a handle of what was going on in the background, and decided to share it because, well, that's what fanfiction is for. It's short, rough, and very clumsy, and although I'd like to think that my writing's a little more sophisticated than three years ago, who knows? (Actually, I wrote this a year ago, but the point stands.) In any case, I hope you enjoy this short piece.

Itachi does not believe in monsters.

There was once a time when he could have been happy.

These are facts, dry, dead things pinned to a table, whispering spider-husks somewhere in the recesses of his memory. They are unrelated (or so he tells himself).

Sasuke smiles across the table and Itachi knows that there is no pattern to life. Only opportunities, and chances to rectify old mistakes. Sasuke is so bright, so young, so fragile, and Itachi could crush his life again in a second, because strength is not a matter of chakra or muscles or ability but of will, and Sasuke would never resist him.

Itachi is not hungry, but there is no point in not eating, so he picks up his chopsticks and murmurs the required itadakimasu and pretends not to notice Sasuke watching him so, so carefully.

There was a courtyard, fenced by stone walls, faded fans painted over the cracks. The sun so bright Itachi had to squint his eyes as he pushed back the sliding door. The grass growing between the stones on the ground.

Itachi's shadow, swallowing his brother.

Itachi remembers more than Sasuke does.

He remembers the scroll, written in letters that curved and slashed the paper, writhing beneath his eyes and strangled in his throat. Tangling with his tongue and slamming against his teeth. The sensation of loss. The smell, as if the air itself burned. The strangeness, the idea that this was not a jutsu, this was not an ordinary scroll, but what did it use, if not chakra? Because Itachi does not believe in monsters.

He dug Sasuke out of the grave himself. He remembers how the sun beat down on the back of his neck as he read the memorial stones, his brother an afterthought in life and a tragedy in death. Itachi remembers the betrayal of his hand in Sasuke's hair, the weakness of Itachi's command. The lift of the sword and the easy give of Sasuke's flesh. The pattern of blood on Itachi's clothes, on the floor of Itachi's home. The feel of Sasuke's skin before death exhaled.

Itachi remembers everything. All these sensations locked inside his skin, all these snapshots of touch.

Sometimes Itachi thinks of Sasuke, digging his way out halfway through. The red, red eyes. The claws. The shape of his teeth, so smooth and so white, so long and so pointed. The movements of his muscles beneath his flesh. How his head turned, how his body stilled, how his teeth gleamed.

But Itachi does not believe in monsters, so he does not remember often.

Instead he remembers a lake that the sun would set on fire. He sat with Sasuke on the dock and shaped Sasuke's fingers around the seals and told him to learn. Sasuke had frowned and bitten his lip and tried to obey as Itachi looked out into the horizon and thought one day he might walk away from Konoha. He remembers the bite of the flames on his lips as fire billowed out over the lake; Sasuke's face alive and warm, painted with the same colors as the horizon. The taste of ash thick in the back of Itachi's throat.

Sasuke's eight-year old body, so strange beneath the blanket as Itachi waits for his brother to return. Face so pale, so thin. Something old about its youth, caught in the cheekbones that protruded in the gaunt, hollow face. As if he has been starving to death. No sign of that neat, fatal slash. Itachi had been kind to Sasuke, because – oh, did it matter?

Sasuke's eyelids begin to flicker. His chest rises as he inhales.

"Open your eyes," Itachi murmurs, and Sasuke obeys. Itachi's palms itch; his arms ache in their sockets.

There was once a time when he could have been happy.

Sasuke's eyes, so filled with trust.

Itachi makes himself think of the Mangekyo Sharingan, but heat moves through him and he remembers a sky so blue that he looked at his brother's face and was startled by the rust-colored gaze. He remembers once there was a smile as bright as the sun.

He thinks Kisame is laughing in the shadows where he has staked out a corner and a chair to watch Itachi do the impossible. Someday Itachi will know why people laugh like that, but right now Sasuke's life is gleaming in his hands and Itachi thinks he could stop himself and crush his brother back into the dust.

But Itachi does nothing without a reason.

He thinks of a bridge, of moonlight, of a body face down in the river, of a slow-moving heaviness. Of the whirl of hands and feet as they fought, the kind of movements that Shisui had always called a dance when Itachi could see it was nothing of the sort.

Itachi is sure of himself, and spins his lies. Sasuke has never had the ability to question him. Believes him in an instant, trusts him so much. Itachi has never known anyone as stupid as his younger brother.

"You've been asleep," Itachi says even though his hands remember how it felt to kill the only person who truly loved him, "for many years."

"I died?" Sasuke asks.

Sasuke's gaze is like shallow water, and Itachi cannot find a hint of that rust-red gaze.

The eight-year old child Itachi left behind could not have known that. The eight-year old child that sits in a cold bed with blankets bunched around his legs should not—cannot—Itachi keeps his breathing under control.

"Yes."

Itachi wishes for a moment that Sasuke would turn from him, would spit at him, would fly at him and try to kill him. He is not sure why. He touches the back of Sasuke's neck, where the skin is so pale and smooth and soft. Caked with grave dirt. If he moves his hand like so he can snap Sasuke's neck and walk away.

The moon shines through the window on Sasuke's face. Itachi shoves down the prickle of unease, the blue light building Sasuke into something whose heart beats to the pulse of the waves. The creature that pulled itself out of a small grave, that smiled at Itachi with no recognition in its feral-bright eyes.

Itachi does not believe in monsters, so he tells Sasuke the truth.

And after that, it's easy.