"Our philosophies may differ… but I'm still proud of you. You are truly a kind child."
The memory surfaced, vivid and agonizing—Fugaku's voice calm even as Itachi drew his tantō. His father stood there with Mikoto, poised and composed in the face of death, in the face of their son's blade. Even then, even as betrayal sealed their fate, their eyes held no hatred. Only love.
The image dissolved, replaced by another: Itachi's final farewell to Sasuke, the curse of the Edo Tensei lifting at last. His form fading, transparent under the breaking jutsu, as he laid bare his truth.
His pain.
His choice.
The weight of his belief that the village's survival demanded the sacrifice of his clan—and himself.
"No matter what, I will love you always."
Those words, the last he could give his brother, echoed as his presence scattered into light. In the ruins of war, where brothers should never have met again, Itachi had fought beside Sasuke. For a moment, he had felt the closeness of what could have been—a different world, a different choice—where they might have stood united against their enemies, not each other.
Was I kind, Itachi thought, to put Sasuke on the path of vengeance? To cast him into the fires of hatred?
The ache in his chest deepened. He had burdened his brother with too much—an entire life steered by pain, shaped by betrayal, all to preserve the fragile peace of a nation that never knew the price of its own survival.
Was I right to love the village more than my clan?
Was I right… at all?
⁰
⁰
⁰
Itachi awoke as sunlight crept silently through the window, casting pale light over his face. The sound of morning birds filtered in through the open shutters. No dreams remained now, but the heaviness in his heart lingered like mist.
Waking early had become instinct. No matter how late he slept, his body obeyed the rhythms of discipline etched into him from childhood. A shinobi's internal clock—set by years of war, watchfulness, and survival—still ticked precisely within him.
He rose without hesitation, settling into his morning stretches before slipping into quiet meditation. These rituals were more than habit. In his past life as a ninja of the Hidden Leaf, such routines had kept his body honed and his mind sharp, always ready to react, to fight, to endure even when he had gone rogue. But here—wherever here was now—they had become something more.
A tether.
They grounded him in the unfamiliar, reminded him of the discipline and balance that once shaped his path. Stretching kept his muscles loose, a body ever prepared. Meditation kept the noise of memory and regret at bay—at least for a while.
Itachi walked down the quiet hallway of the main house within the Tokugawa clan compound—a place he had called home for the past sixteen years in this strange new life. The architecture here was strikingly familiar, echoing the dignified layout of the Uchiha compound he once knew: elegant courtyards, layered eaves, and the quiet weight of tradition etched into every corridor. The symmetry of the buildings, the arrangement of ancestral shrines, and the silent authority of the walls were almost mirror images of the place he had once called home in the Hidden Leaf.
And yet, beyond the boundary of this compound lay a world that was utterly foreign to him.
Towering buildings of metal and glass reached toward the heavens, dwarfing the tallest structures of the Elemental Nations. Vehicles without horses sped through sleek roads. Artificial lights cast no chakra, yet illuminated entire cities. Screens and handheld devices allowed instantaneous long-distance communication—tools that would have revolutionized ANBU operations in his past life. Where once messages were sent via chakra-infused scrolls or vulnerable couriers, here they were transmitted instantly, with no fear of interception.
Itachi had arrived in this world not as a shinobi, but as the third son of the Tokugawa main family—one of the most powerful and respected awakener clans in Japan.
"Awakeners rule this world, Itachi," he remembered being told early in this life. "We possess powers so unimaginable that the mundanes of the past deemed us as deities."
The term awakener had been foreign to him at first. In this world, it referred to individuals born with supernatural abilities, much like chakra users—but developed along a different evolutionary path. Their power manifested in two main forms: physical-type and kinetic-type awakenings.
Physical-type awakeners enhanced the body's natural attributes—speed, strength, agility, reflexes—to superhuman levels. They fought up close, turning their bodies into living weapons.
Kinetic-type awakeners, by contrast, manipulated external forces or elements through aether projection. Some wielded lightning or fire. Others controlled gravity, shadows, or telekinetic force. While physical-type awakeners pushed the body beyond its limits, kinetic awakeners bent the world itself to their will.
Itachi walked with quiet purpose until he reached the clan's sprawling training grounds—wide open fields flanked by observation platforms and sparring arenas. The air buzzed with kinetic energy and shouted commands. Younger members of the Tokugawa clan were already training, their movements sharp and purposeful, guided by instructors and family elders. Some were lifting boulders with raw strength, others manipulating the environment with bursts of kinetic force.
Itachi stood at the edge of the grounds, his presence calm but commanding, a lone figure watching a new generation rise in a world both familiar and alien.
-----
The boy—Itachi—stepped quietly onto the training ground, his presence neither loud nor dramatic, but unmistakably felt. The genius of the Tokugawa clan. The prodigious third son of the main family, who awakened his powers at the tender age of five.
He was not like the other children.
Even as a boy, he carried silence like a seasoned warrior bore armor—not as burden, but as necessity. There was no reckless gleam in his gaze, no youthful restlessness or desire to prove himself. Instead, there was something older in him—thoughtfulness, calculation, and a depth that unsettled even the clan's elders.
You could speak to him plainly and yet feel as if he was listening to a conversation you had not yet spoken, one you might never have the words for.
He possesses what few in this clan ever truly master, thought Elder Gorou, watching from the shade of the manor veranda. Restraint.
Where others burned for praise and chased after recognition, Itachi receded into the background—not out of fear, but out of understanding. He observed. He learned. He let others reveal themselves first.
"The boy is only sixteen," Gorou muttered to himself, "and already the strongest of his generation of those below the age of twenty."
Even as a child, he had stood apart. He began reading and writing well before the age most children could grasp their first characters. His mind absorbed complexity like dry earth took in rain. Difficult math problems, theoretical exercises, moral dilemmas—he approached them all with the calm reasoning of someone far older, and explained his answers with clarity that left instructors stunned. His mastery of kanji, hiragana, and katakana surpassed his peers by years. And then, as if language itself were too narrow a boundary, he learned others—Mandarin, Korean, English, Greek even snippets of dead dialects from scrolls he sought out on his own.
But it wasn't just intellect that set him apart.
He painted.
And his paintings—his paintings were something else entirely.
Some were delicate renderings of nature: a heron standing in still water at dusk, a snow-covered bridge beneath a waning moon, a single plum blossom falling from a cracked branch. Others were more abstract—fractured impressions of memory and solitude, haunted by brushstrokes that spoke of things no child should understand.
Several of his works now hung in the administrative halls of the Tokugawa compound. One elder, moved to tears by a piece titled Silence Before Storm, claimed it felt like standing in the moment before one's own death—eerie, cold, and impossibly beautiful.
Now, Gorou watched as the boy faced an older clanmate in a sparring session. The younger students were no longer viable training partners for Itachi; his kenjutsu had outgrown them years ago. His current opponent was six years his senior and built like a seasoned fighter. Yet the moment they clashed, it was clear—it was Itachi who controlled the pace.
His swordplay was refined. Efficient. Every strike measured, every movement without excess. His footwork flowed in harmony with his breath, light and deliberate. There was no posturing, no waste—just pure, disciplined motion.
Even Gorou, who had lived through eight decades of his life and had trained dozens of heirs, found himself breathless.
He's not just matching his opponent, the elder realized. He's leading him. Guiding him where he wants him to be. Setting a trap beneath every step, every parry.
After several exchanges, the instructor called a halt. He approached Itachi's opponent, correcting his stance and highlighting the holes in his defense—holes that Itachi had exploited with precision.
The spar resumed, this time shifting into taijutsu. Gorou continued his silent observation, eyes narrowing slightly as the boy adapted seamlessly. There was no hesitation, no visible transition. His strikes were compact, clean, economical. He wasted no strength, never overreached. Every blow landed with intent, never aggression.
Watching from the shaded edge of the grounds, Elder Gorou felt a pang of emotion he did not often permit himself.
He should have been born the eldest, he thought.
And yet, perhaps it was precisely because he was not the eldest that he had become what he was now.