Chapter 556: The Gap in Ocular Power
"Sasuke. Who told you the truth?"
Itachi kept his gaze fixed on Satsuki's face, reading for anything he could find. His hands hung at his sides, the bandages beneath his sleeves slightly creased where he had been gripping them without realizing it.
"That's none of your concern."
Satsuki's eyes moved across Itachi's face and came back. "I've been asking the same question the entire time. Is it really that difficult to answer?"
Itachi lowered his head. A bitter curve pulled at the corner of his mouth.
He looked at the ground. Those chronically exhausted eyes, which had carried weariness for so long that it had become their resting state, were carrying something else now too -- something harder to name. His most cherished person knew the truth. Knew the full sequence of events from that night. Knew what had been going through Itachi's mind when he did what he did.
And even so, Sasuke was standing in front of him like this. Cold. Distant.
Itachi found that it stung, somewhere he hadn't expected.
He had believed, sincerely, that everything he had done was for Sasuke.
The massacre -- for Sasuke. Joining the Akatsuki -- for Sasuke. Staying alive -- for Sasuke. Eventually dying -- also for Sasuke. He had taken the entire length of his life and pressed it against this one person. Given everything available to give and several things that weren't. And the result: the person at the center of it all had rejected every part of it. Sasuke didn't want the future Itachi had laid out. Didn't want the protection Itachi had imposed without asking. Didn't want any of what had been purchased at such cost.
Itachi found himself at a loss. Was it really impossible -- even before he died -- to have even a moment that looked like it used to? When they were small?
The child who used to follow behind him calling out "big brother." Who wouldn't let go of his sleeve. Who said "big brother is the best" with complete sincerity and an open face. Was that child really gone, with no path back?
"...Yes."
He was quiet for a long time before he spoke.
"I would do it, Sasuke. You are the one person I cannot let go of. Even Konoha -- I would still rather you be safe."
He looked at Satsuki as he said it, and for once the Mangekyo held none of its battle-hardened coldness -- only something very faint, barely there, that might have been tenderness.
"Even if it left you with no one beside you? No family, no friends -- not even someone who loves you?"
A pause.
"Forgive me. But I cannot afford to be wrong about you."
Satsuki closed her eyes.
She was not this world's Uchiha Sasuke. She was Uchiha Satsuki.
But the emotion rising in her right now was still anger she couldn't hold back.
Not a single bond left to you.
She could not kill Itachi.
Not because she had no means. But because the Itachi in front of her was not her Itachi. This one belonged to this world. He was this world's Sasuke's brother. The person who had the right to deliver judgment on him was not a soul that had arrived from somewhere else.
His ending belonged to this world's true Sasuke.
Then, abruptly, Satsuki felt something land on her.
A gaze. The quality of it was subtle -- not killing intent, not hostility. Something quieter and more purposeful than either of those, concealed beneath the surface.
Her eyes opened and tracked the direction it had come from.
On a branch in a nearby tree, a crow was perched. She might not have registered it at all, except for the eyes. Those were not a crow's eyes. Rotating slowly in that small head was a Mangekyo Sharingan.
Satsuki's pupils tightened.
"Caw!"
The crow shrieked -- a piercing, desperate sound. Its body convulsed once, violently. The feathers exploded outward. The whole of it dissolved into scattered black fragments that drifted through the air and then vanished completely, leaving nothing.
Itachi's face went white.
He stared at the branch. At the space where the crow had been. His Mangekyo Sharingan was flooded with something he very rarely allowed himself to feel.
What just happened?
Kotoamatsukami. It failed?
The Kotoamatsukami he had planted -- the ultimate genjutsu technique, the one that rewrote a person's will in complete and undetectable silence, the one that could not be resisted once it had been seeded regardless of how strong the target was. That technique had failed.
Like a moth that flew into a flame and was burned until not even ash remained.
The technique was powerful. But genjutsu had limits.
Kotoamatsukami was not some rule-based absolute. Not a command that simply imposed itself on reality. At its core, it was a Mangekyo Sharingan genjutsu, and the ceiling of its power was determined by the ocular strength of the person who cast it.
Mangekyo genjutsu, measured against a Rinne-Sharingan.
Itachi had probably never thought to consider that comparison.
He had only ever known that Kotoamatsukami was powerful -- powerful enough to overwrite the will of anyone it touched. But between genjutsu and genjutsu, between one level of ocular power and another, there is a gap. It always existed. He had simply never encountered a gap this wide before.
A needle at its absolute sharpest can pierce through any fabric, however tough -- small defeating large. But what happens when the thing placed in front of you is not fabric but a mountain? What does the needle's sharpness count for then?
And beyond that: Satsuki's Mangekyo technique -- Amaterasu Rei -- required Amaterasu's black flames as a medium to activate, but the true scope of what it could modify extended far beyond any single person's will. At her current level, altering any concept belonging to an existence below Six Paths level -- up to and including converting a living person into an orange -- was a matter of a single thought.
Satsuki's expression darkened.
This man never changed.
With his mouth he said "you are the one person I cannot let go of." Said "I hope you can be safe." And then in the very next breath, he turned and planted Kotoamatsukami on her.
Claiming to act for someone's good while secretly moving to control their mind from the inside -- she genuinely had no idea how to evaluate that.
A dull, heavy detonation sounded.
Black flames erupted across Itachi's body without warning, instantly consuming half of him.
Itachi looked down at the black fire burning on his skin and clothes. Something like understanding moved into his expression.
Sasuke's Mangekyo -- it was also Amaterasu...
He closed his eyes. His lashes trembled once, faintly. Then he went still.
His body had not had much time left for a long while now. These years of moving through the Akatsuki with a frame that was already failing him -- every use of the Mangekyo had been borrowing against the life he had remaining. Burning up in Amaterasu like this, he supposed, was a fitting way for it to end.
Only...
A wave of regret moved through him that he hadn't anticipated.
He had genuinely hoped that before he died, he might receive his brother's forgiveness. Even a single word. Even one look. Even just Sasuke willing to say the word "big brother" one more time -- that would have been enough to make him feel that none of it had been wasted.
"...?"
But time passed.
More of it than he'd expected.
And eventually, Itachi noticed that something was wrong.
This Amaterasu was not hot.
At all.
He opened his eyes and looked at the flames. They were still burning -- dancing across his chest, his shoulders, his arms -- but he felt no pain. Not even warmth, in the way that fire meant warmth. Nothing.
Amaterasu was the black flame described as burning all things until its target ceased to exist. It did not stop. It did not show mercy. It burned until there was nothing left to burn.
And yet right now, standing in its fire, he felt the way a person feels stepping into a warm bath. A gentle, pervading heat, and nothing more.
More than that -- his body was beginning to feel lighter.
The sensation was strange. Like something that had been pressing him down from the inside for years was being lifted away, gradually, piece by piece.
His breath came more easily. The dull, persistent ache that had lived in his chest for so long he'd stopped noticing it -- gone. His limbs were no longer heavy. Even the constant soreness in his eyes had eased.
Itachi realized that the illness which had been consuming him for years seemed to have been suspended by the black flames -- held back, temporarily, by something inside them. He felt lighter than he had in longer than he could accurately remember.
"Sasuke... what is this?"
"Fight me."
Satsuki looked at him directly.
"You have no excuses now. Your body is whole. Your strength is complete. Your eyes are your own."
"So let me see it. You who believe that awakening the Mangekyo gives you the right to arrange other people's lives. You who think that offering your own sacrifice as payment entitles you to move everyone else like pieces on a board." She took one step forward. In the shadow beneath the trees, her eyes began to glow. "Exactly how much is that resolution of yours actually worth."
Itachi saw it.
In Satsuki's eyes -- eyes that replaced the ones he had been looking at -- were eyes he had never seen before.
Not the Sharingan he knew. Not the Mangekyo he had heard described. Something that had no name in anything he had ever learned or encountered. Purple and red patterns wound together in a design that seemed to have its own motion, its own gravity. Tomoe rotated slowly within the weave of those colors, emanating a light that reached something deep and wordless -- the part of a person that simply knew, before the mind could process it, that it was in the presence of something beyond its scale.
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