To The Future

A Successful Session

Itachi politely thanked the nurse as she informed him about another chemo session the next day, while he frowned inwardly. He would never deny that chemo was helpful. For the first time in many years his chest felt clear and he was able to breathe without pain, and it was thanks to the two sessions of chemotherapy that had regressed his lung cancer to stage two. But he hated how it made him feel - weak, unable to stand upright, incapable of coherent thoughts.

He didn't always have to be strong though, he reminded himself. 'It was okay to be weak when he was amongst allies', Ino-san had told him during his last counseling session. It wasn't what his father had taught him, but it made sense. Nobody could remain strong all the time, they would break, like Itachi had...

He had been reluctant to the counseling sessions but Naruto-kun had insisted that he atleast attend one before rejecting them, and Itachi had complied. Yamanaka Ino had visited him in his hospital room last week and preceded to have a casual conversations with him skillfully avoiding sensitive topics and still managing to leave him feeling much lighter at the end of the hour. Itachi was surprisingly looking forward to the next session, which coincidentally, was in five minutes.

The door of Itachi's room opened, however, instead of Ino-san, Sasuke came inside. Only, he was different. His chakra was coiling and raging in distress and his eyes were as cold as the day when they had battled to death.

"Sasuke." He greeted, cautiously.

"Itachi." Sasuke replied coolly. "We managed to bring Shisui. He will be fine."

Despite the tense atmosphere, Itachi let out a sigh of relief. "That's good to hear. Thank you for telling me."

"I also visited the compound. I didn't see mother and father because of a clan meetings, but guess who I saw?" Sasuke asked bitingly.

Itachi stilled. He knew whom Sasuke saw. He didn't need to be reminded. He remembered them with perfect clarity, far better than Sasuke did.

"Kazuko-chan. Do you remember her? I used to play with her. She was a year younger than me. And there was her little brother Riku. He was three. And half a dozen other kids. I don't even remember their names. Naka-san was there too, taking care of them. She was pregnant, wasn't she? Did she give give birth to her child before you killed it or ....."

"That's enough, Sasuke-kun." Ino-san's voice rang out from the doorway. Itachi berated himself for not even noticing her. "You are agitated right now. Go home and calm down. You can talk to Itachi-san later."

Sasuke glared at her for interupting and essentially kicking him out. A lesser woman might have quailed, but it seemed Ino-san was made of sterner stuff and glared right back.

Sasuke left, slamming the door.

"You didn't have to do that, Ino-san."

"On the contrary, since I am responsible for your mental health and Sasuke was currently doing his best to damage it, I would say that I absolutely had to do that." She replied casually, taking a seat.

"He wasn't wrong." Itachi countered.

"He wasn't right, either." She insisted. "I had planned to avoid the sensitive topics untill we got to know each other a bit, but it seems it can't be helped. Tell me, Itachi-san, in a world where you hadn't existed, what exactly would have happened to the Uchiha clan?"

"They would have been killed by Root." Itachi answered. It was the same argument Itachi had used hundreds of times against himself. It never managed to quell the self hatred.

"Yes, but they wouldn't have spared Sasuke-kun. He would have died at seven and little Sarada-chan wouldn't even exist." Ino-san argued. "Or maybe Danzo might have had the adults killed and the kids inducted into Root. That might have been even worse. You didn't save them all, but you also didn't make things any worse."

Itachi imagined Sasuke being in Root before banishing the image away. That didn't happen. He didn't need more stuff to fuel his nightmares.

"I don't wish to speak further about this." He told her. He had followed Danzo's order after a lot of consideration. He didn't need the points of his arguments repeated at him.

"Very well. Let's talk about something else." She agreed. "Are you angry?"

Itachi blinked. "I'm afraid I don't follow. We already established that we are dealing with guilt and regret."

Ino-san shrugged. "You don't wish to talk about that, so I'm shifting to another emotion."

"No, I'm not angry." He answered.

"All right. Let's take Sasuke. He's not a lot better than you at emoting but atleast he expresses anger well. Imagine it was Sasuke who was a prodigy, an ANBU captain at thirteen and he was the one who was ordered to massacre his clan by Danzo. Do you think he wouldould feel angry?"

It was a bit hard, imagining Sasuke in his place. His brother was so different than him. But yes, Sasuke would be angry. He would have been furious. With the clan, for planning such a foolish move (tobe fair, Itachi had also lost his temper at them after Shisui's death), with their father for approving such plans, with Danzo for manipulating him and expecting him to kill hundreds of shinobi all alone and with the Sandaime for not acting to mend the relation between the Uchiha and village even with ample warning given by him.

"Yes. He would." Itachi replied.

"If Sasuke would, why don't you?" She asked.

That was the question, wasn't it? Itachi didn't think it was right to be angry, especially at the Sandaime. It felt like being disloyal to Konoha. But that wasn't true. The Sandaime wasn't Konoha. He was a man. A man who made mistakes, one if which cost Itachi everything.

Itachi didn't expect the surge of emotion that coursed through him, causing him to activate his Sharingan. He was angry. He always had been angry, he realised, but he had suppressed the emotion so well that he hadn't even been aware of it. He had to get it back under control, he thought as he noticed his elevated heart rate and breathing.

"Your anger is valid, Itachi-san. You don't have to suppress it. You don't even have to let it go, as long it does not harm you. You have the right to feel the way you want." Ino-san's casual voice caused him to glance at her.

Her flinch was controlled but with his Mangekyou Sharingan activated, it was very noticeable. It was understandable, Itachi had been a notorious missing nin who tortured people with his eyes. But now that he was a perfectly civil and completely helpless ally to her, it made him angry.

As if a dam had burst, Itachi was feeling the emotion more acutely and recognising it, when before he might have automatically suppressed it. He was  angry at Sakura-san for forbidding Sarada from seeing him. He was angry at Sasuke for bringing up the massacre after they had decided to make amends. He was angry at Naruto-kun, for deciding to save him without taking his opinion into account.

He knew that in most of the cases, his anger was baseless. It would soon dissipate on its own. It still felt freeing. It felt like he had made progress.

Considering that Ino-san was smiling widely at him, he probably had.