Ch 170

Itachi's pov

Rain struck my skin in cold, rhythmic patterns, each drop sharpening the fading awareness still tethering me to my body. The storm drowned the scent of ash and blood beneath wet earth and split stone.

Somewhere nearby, I heard Sasuke breathing through pain, ragged but alive.

Alive. That alone made everything worth it.

My limbs had long since stopped obeying me. The agony that once consumed every breath was slipping away now, dissolving into numbness so profound it almost felt merciful.

I could hear my own heartbeat slowing, quieter with every passing second, until it no longer sounded like something human. Merely an echo preparing to disappear.

I had fulfilled my purpose. Sasuke was safe.

He would hate me. He would kill the monster I had created for him, and he would never learn the truth buried beneath it.

That was enough.

It should have been enough.

Yet as death approached and the weight of my life finally loosened its grip, one thought remained painfully untouched.

Ishi Uchiha.

My one regret.

Itachi's first meeting with Ishi had not been remarkable by ordinary standards. There had been louder moments occupying the clan at the time, greater concerns demanding attention, tensions already threading through the district.

Yet even so, he remembered her.

Looking back upon it now, he found it peculiar how memorable she had been even as an infant. Most babies blurred together in recollection. They cried, reached clumsy hands toward the world, then grew into people shaped by circumstance.

But Ishi had possessed an unusual vitality from the beginning.

She had been born amidst conflict, beneath the shadow of war and political unrest, into a world already eager to devour itself.

Still, she had looked upon life with wonder.

A new life.

Perhaps that had been why they named her Ishi. Something born from the Will of Fire itself. Hope given form.

Even as a child, she had been troublesome in a way that fascinated him. Curious fingers grabbing at everything. Endless questions. Expressions too animated for someone so young.

Itachi, who had already learned restraint by then, found himself quietly observing her from a distance more often than he should have.

And age only worsened her condition.

When he met her again years later, after she had grown old enough to speak with confidence and run recklessly through the compound, his earlier impression merely deepened.

She was bright in a way the rest of the clan disliked. Untamed. Unashamed. Entirely unwilling to make herself smaller for anyone's comfort.

The Uchiha did not know what to do with a child like her.

There were many reasons they looked down upon her. Her mother had been considered weak by clan standards. There had been whispers of disloyal blood, of disgrace inherited through lineage.

Her civilian heritage only deepened their disdain. No proud shinobi ancestry to elevate her worth. No prestigious expectations waiting for her future.

Every factor should have broken her spirit.

Instead, none of it seemed capable of reaching her.

She smiled through every insult. Spoke back when elders expected silence. Wandered through the district with dirt on her face and laughter in her throat as though the world itself belonged to her.

Itachi remembered one night more vividly than the others. The night the Fourth Hokage died.

The village had drowned in fear and devastation. Smoke choked the air. Buildings burned. The Nine-Tails howled with enough fury to make the earth tremble beneath their feet.

Death had moved through Konoha without mercy.

Ishi had nearly died that night.

She had seen corpses before she was old enough to understand mortality. She had witnessed the Fourth Hokage and his wife fall. Any normal child would have been shattered by it.

Yet when Itachi met her afterward, she had simply looked up at him and smiled.

Smiled.

Then greeted him as though the world had not just collapsed around them.

Even now, remembering it made something ache quietly within him.

She had always been that way. A persistent light in places where light had no business surviving.

Perhaps that was why he had grown attached to her long before he understood what attachment truly meant.

Before love had acquired shape or language within him, her presence already brought comfort.

He had never questioned the instinct. Never dissected it the way he dissected everything else about himself. Some things existed beyond logic. And somehow, impossibly, Ishi had become one of them.

The first time Itachi awakened his Sharingan, he sought out Ishi before anyone else. Not his mother. Not Shisui. Not the clan elders who would have praised him for the achievement and immediately burdened him with expectations heavier than any child should bear.

He went to her.

At the time, he had not fully understood why. The world had become unbearably loud after the awakening. Every sound scraped against his senses. Every emotion inside him felt sharpened into something dangerous.

Fear, grief, confusion, all of it churned beneath his skin until he thought he might suffocate beneath the weight of it.

Yet through that turmoil, one thought had emerged with perfect clarity.

Ishi would understand.

And she had. She did not recoil from his distress or stare at him with awe the way others did. She simply sat beside him beneath the engawa outside her home, speaking softly about meaningless things until the storm inside his mind eased enough for him to breathe properly again.

Afterward, he found himself returning to her again and again. She became a refugee without ever realizing it.

As the years passed, the world around them grew harsher.

They learned quickly that justice was a fantasy people clung to because the truth was uglier.

The village leadership distrusted the Uchiha.

The Uchiha distrusted the village in return.

Every meeting between them carried concealed hostility beneath polite words. Every political compromise resembled a threat wrapped in civility.

Itachi understood far too young that peace within Konoha was fragile. And as his strength increased, so too did the pressure placed upon him.

Responsibility followed him endlessly. Missions. Expectations. Surveillance. Sacrifice. The adults around him mistook competence for maturity and handed him burdens accordingly.

By the time he was truly old enough to comprehend the magnitude of what rested upon his shoulders, he already carried too much to escape it.

Through all of it, Ishi remained beside him. Sasuke preserved the part capable of humanity. Ishi preserved the part of him capable of tenderness. She grounded him in ways no one else could.

There was always something restless within her mind. Some hidden calculation. Some unseen path she alone seemed aware of.

Even when they were children, she observed the world differently than others did. Itachi noticed it constantly. The strange awareness she carried.

So he watched over her carefully. Not because she was weak. Never that. But because she was vulnerable in ways she herself refused to acknowledge.

The clan disliked her openly. Some viewed her existence as an embarrassment. Others simply resented how impossible she was to suppress.

A girl with impure bloodlines should have bowed her head and accepted her place quietly.

Instead, Ishi met cruelty with stubborn defiance and bright laughter.

Fortunately, none of those men possessed enough strength to challenge him directly. Protecting her from them was easy. Protecting her from the village proved far more difficult.

Itachi understood early that if Konoha's leadership discovered the full extent of her intelligence, they would never leave her untouched.

People in power coveted useful things.

They dissected brilliance until nothing human remained beneath it. So he concealed her as best he could.

Because for all her sharpness, all her resolve, all her impossible stubbornness, she was still only a child.

And she did not deserve to witness the worst the world had waiting for her. 

But in the end, none of his efforts had been enough.

Itachi had been brilliant, capable far beyond his years, but brilliance did not change the simple truth that he was still a child standing beneath the machinery of a broken system.

And that system had already chosen its outcome long before the night of the massacre arrived.

The Uchiha clan had pushed too far with the coup d'état.

Distrust had rotted both sides beyond repair. Negotiation had become impossible. Fear poisoned every conversation behind closed doors. The village believed civil war was imminent, and once that conclusion had been reached, only destruction remained.

Itachi was given his orders plainly.

Exterminate the clan. Spare Sasuke.

Only Sasuke.

No exceptions.

Not even her.

The elders feared Ishi almost as much as they feared the coup itself. A child with intelligence and Uchiha blood was not something they intended to leave behind.

They feared what she might become if allowed to live.

Feared what knowledge she already possessed.

Feared what influence the clan could gain through her existence alone.

Danzō had been especially insistent. Ishi was too dangerous. Too unpredictable. Too valuable to the wrong people.

Itachi argued anyway. 

For the first and only time in his life, he abandoned composure before Konoha's leadership entirely.

He explained that she had nothing to do with the coup. That she disliked the clan leadership as much as the village did. That if conflict erupted, she would never stand with the Uchiha radicals pushing toward rebellion.

They did not care.

Danzō dismissed every word without hesitation. A child capable of becoming a threat was already a threat.

And because of that, Itachi received one final command.

Kill her.

Kill Ishi Uchiha. 

A/n First and foremost, I dearly apologize. But then again, we knew this was going to happen. I always knew I was going to write an Itachi chapter but it wasn't until I started writing when I realized that I had so much to work with. Itachi had always been mysterious, even in the anime and manga. But here, we see his thoughts on her and her alone. I wanted to change it a little from how I write pov's for other characters, so I added the first part in first person to show how Itachi really was thinking about her in his last moments. Anyways, there will be more Itachi chapters, as I am obviously not done yet. So I hope I didn't break your hearts too much! Enjoy~