chapter title: bite my tongue, bide my time

summary: It's been seven years since the Akatsuki took over, but in the dark underbelly of Konoha's criminal underworld a silent war is still raging. As the heirs of the city's fallen leaders are picked off one by one in a bloody rebellion, Uchiha Sasuke returns with vengeance in his heart for the one who betrayed his family

dedication: beloved bf, for making me tea when i am sad and telling me i am obviously a great writer even though i have never let him read a single word i have written. love him.

dead end street

The burner phone was heavy in his pocket as he ascended the steps towards the main house. Behind him the garden was full dark and overgrown, a far cry from the scene of so many elegant parties in his youth. Once, it had been lit up with white lights and the branches of the trees strung with even whiter flowers, the scent of sweetness mingling with the sultry smell of the city at night.

Once, the manor looming before him – dark windowed, ghostly – had been a home. Akatsuki had made graveyards of many such houses in the seven years since they'd taken root.

Enough.

It was not useful to recall the distant, shining past. Those days were gone and the boy he had been, gone with it.

Except –

He's here, the message read. Two words that had him slipping inside the manor like the ghost he'd become, only the barest semblance of a plan in mind because all his carefully laid plans had changed the moment she opened her mouth.

"I owe you a debt," Haruno had whispered, all grown up and somehow not grown up at all. She hadn't trembled at their tete-a-tete, but under the defiance in her green eyes he'd seen a fear that was threatening to swallow her whole. It was the same fear he'd seen in her eyes when she was a bruised and bloodied child and he'd carried her single-handedly through the snap of Akatsuki's closing jaws.

Even now, she would be walking into the hotel –

Stop, he told himself, pausing for the briefest of moments, the way he always did when he needed to master himself. One heartbeat, two – and then he was silently letting himself into the study that had once belonged to Minato Namikaze. It took the work of moments to hack in. Usually he took more care than this, breaking into the system in short, carefully calculated bursts that wouldn't be noticed, but he was under a deadline now.

"I owe you a debt," Haruno Sakura had whispered, so earnest. The first person in years to look at him, really look and see him; not the criminal, or the weapon or the spy, but the person he was underneath.

He pulled up everything he could find. He pulled it like a gardener yanking weeds up by the roots, careless, urgent, without finesse.

Practically begging to be caught, a small voice whispered at the back of his head and for the barest possible moment, a smirk touched the corner of his mouth. It died quickly when he realised he would never hear that particular voice in life ever again.

Not now. Don't think about it now. And yet, despite himself, his fingers disobeyed him, searching through files upon files for a death trail; where did it happen? How did the money change hands? Who gave the order?

There it was; the crime scene photo. The elevator in some grotty multi-storey car park, blood and brain matter spattered over the walls, the stone floor. The body curled in on itself, a question mark obstructing the doors.

The blank and staring eyes, the bullet hole in the forehead.

"Uchiha Sasuke is back in town," Haruno had whispered and he'd known the moment she spoke what that meant, even if she did not. But it was one thing to know it intellectually, quite another to be presented with the evidence. The irrefutable facts.

I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry –

He was not aware of moving.

One moment he was crouched in front of the tablet, fingers frozen over the keyboard, the next he was standing by the French doors, back turned to the room, eyes on the dark lawn below, the florescent lights of the city stretching away beyond it.

If he squinted, the grey eyes looking back at him in the glass could belong to someone else rather than his own sorrowful reflection.

Behind him, the tablet pinged; download complete. Download complete. Download complete –

It happened like this; an ambush, a struggle, a shot to the head, point blank. Execution style.

It happened like this: a city ravaged in a single night, the blood of its elites still staining the concrete.

It happened like this; a savage murder, a bomb in a shopping mall, two genius boys sharing a look across a darkened room.

It happened like this: a spy in a darkened room, balancing the future of a whole city against the one thing in the world he had left to lose.

He was alone in the study, until suddenly he wasn't. He did not hear the door open. There was no creak of polished floorboards. He only knew he was being watched by the hairs on the nape of his neck standing up.

"I wondered," a soft voice said, "when you would show your true colours."

He said nothing.

Behind him, the computer continued to ping insistently, but his attention was on the shadowy figure lingering in the corner of his vision.

"You played the part very well," that voice continued measuredly, as if discussing nothing more than the weather. "Very well. Everything you've been asked to do, you never once flinched. I started to think you had no feelings at all. But that was the point, wasn't it?"

"People believe what they want to believe," he replied, making sure to keep his voice cool and inflectionless.

"But that doesn't make it the truth."

His heartbeat was steady, long years of training himself to stay calm in the face of the enemy. All his thoughts were on the computer behind him, plugged into the mainframe. All his thoughts were on the switchblade tucked up his sleeve.

"It was always a little too neat," Tobi continued. "The way you assimilated into the ranks. The way you dealt with the little Haruno girl. Sasori was always so disappointed that sedative killed her early. Accidental overdose, wasn't it?"

"You saw the body."

In the corner, Tobi stepped out of the shadows. As always, his face was hidden behind the balaclava he wore, but the gun in his hand, trained steadily in his direction, was unmistakable.

"I saw a body," Tobi said, cocking his head. "But people believe whatever they want to believe, isn't that right?"

He moved before Tobi could pull the trigger, throwing himself over the desk and whipping the switchblade out from his sleeve. The gun went off, missed –

Behind him, the shatter of glass. He lunged with the knife, barely grazed the other man's side. A hand came down, the butt of the gun cracking into his face – blood, white-hot pain, his own hand shooting out and wrapping around a throat.

The gun, get the gun –

They fell to the floor, blows coming down hard and heavy on his head. He kicked the gun away, but his head was slammed into the floor and Tobi rolled away from him –

He kicked out again, managed to swipe the other man's legs out from under him, but Tobi had the gun again and this time, this time –

It didn't quite miss. There was blood running down his arm, hot, sticky –

– but he'd got close enough to stab the knife through the taut skin just below Tobi's collarbone, made sure to twist it as he pressed in.

"…I will make you suffer," Tobi hissed. "For this."

Not if you're dead, he thought, pressing the blade in as far as it would go. There was blood pooling on the polished wooden floor between them, but it was not a killing blow. Not yet.

"You think I don't know your weaknesses? I do," the man below him continued. "I knew it months ago. Foolish little boy. You think we took the Hyuuga heiress to draw Uzumaki out? No. Oh no, no, no."

Quickly and methodically, he twisted the knife and was rewarded by a grunt of pain escaping his opponent.

"Speak."

Tobi laughed and it sent a chill through him. Too late he understood the shape of the trap.

He was on his feet before he remembered standing and Tobi moved for the gun before he could stop him.

It happened like this; gunshots, blood, a dive for the study window. The broken glass that twinkled on the lawn like slivers of ice. The shadow which moved into deeper shadows, battered tablet tucked under their uninjured arm – and was gone.

In the study, Tobi lowered the gun and turned away from the shattered window, the silver moonlight spilling in across the floor.

"Round one," he mused, pulling the switchblade from his shoulder with a hiss. "We'll see who walks away from round two."

The phone was cracked, but still functional. He sent one message, breathing hard through the pain of his wounded arm.

I am coming.

The ground floor of the hotel was in flames when he pulled up just a street away. Once a tall and proud symbol of freedom and democracy – it was a place where all the old guard of Konoha had gathered on breezy summer nights – now its ravaged façade seemed worn to the bones. It was the broken body on the funeral pyre, too tired now to fight the flames. Seven years, he thought, was a long time to stand against destruction.

It was a long time to stand alone.

Already the smell of smoke and gas was thick on the night air and the flames were almost blinding against the dark night sky. There were no sirens. Kakuzu would have paid the emergency services off for this particular execution, this snap of a trap closing its jaws around Konoha's children. There could be no witnesses and no survivors.

No hope of a rescue.

Itachi exited the car and raised the gun in his left hand.

It's time for this to end.

tbc

notes: surprise! who called it?

notes2: this was not intended to be an Itachi!pov interlude, but the short scene i outlined in my head ended up taking the form of a whole fucking chapter. that last paragraph was actually supposed to be the start of 14, followed by hotel shenanigans with our heroes. oh well. we'll pick up with them in the next one.

notes3: short but sweet. bashed this out in a couple of hours, don't judge me on the quality.

notes4: having a quarter life crisis probably but at least i'll have some of it in paris

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