“Oh, so we are finally willing to talk~? How fortuitous~.” Asami grinned in victory. “As far as your question is concerned, enough to doubt your version of the events. As you might know, I was once an ANBU Captain, just like you. Second youngest in history, they called me. Only second to you. I had the rank. I had the clearance. I have seen the archives, Itachi. I know the files. I know the reports. You struck the clan compound after evening. You were quite thorough, disposing everyone in sight except for your little brother. Obviously, it would fall to you to eliminate your own family. Your brother testified as much. And yet ... so many unsolved mysteries remain ...” “Such as?” Itachi maintained his blank expression, his face hard like granite, without emotion, without compassion. Asami stared at him, her purple eyes gazing into him. “Itachi, do you seriously expect me to believe that a thirteen year old boy was able to exterminate the entire Uchiha clan in a single night all by himself? All while simultaneously striking multiple locations throughout the entire village at the exact same time and in absolute perfect synchrony. I doubt so. You might be talented, Itachi, but even you will find it a daunting task to appear in multiple places at once, even within the clan compound. You were not alone that night, Itachi. You had help. From within the village, did you not?” “... ... ...” Itachi answered with silence, shame, and guilt. No words needed to be spoken. His silence was confirmation enough. “As I thought.” Asami snorted, her suspicions confirmed. “It seems that contrary to what the world was led to believe that the fall of the Uchiha was hardly the act of a lone madman. To think that you would go so far as to sacrifice your own clan and kin, all in the name and for the sake of Konoha. Only to be branded a traitor, a kinslayer. It must have been a heavy burden to carry this kind of guilt for all these years.” “... ... ...” Itachi did not respond. It was. His hands were stained with blood. Not a single day passed without the ghost of the past haunting him. Every night, he saw their faces before him, reminding him of what he had done. “It is how it is. Not all of us are fortunate enough to be able to make the choices we would like. Sometimes, fate makes the choices for us instead.” Moments passed and silence lingered. His words had given the girl pause, her eyes closed, her mind sunk in thought. It was as if she understood. Maybe she did. Asami raised her voice at last, “Who was behind it? Was it the Third Hokage? Or was it done on Danzo’s orders? As far as I am able to recall, he was never one to hide his loathing for the Uchiha.” So she knew Danzo ... It was as he had suspected, Asami was also a carrier of secrets, privy to the darkness lurking beneath the great tree. “... ... ...” Itachi took a deep breath. After all these years, the time had come to reveal the truth that lay hidden for so long. “The Third ... He neither had the strength, nor the resolve necessary to do the unspeakable. It was Danzo with the of the village elders who orchestrated the fall of the Uchiha clan. He was the one to order the elimination. Nobody should be spared. Once the deed was done, I would assume responsibility for their deaths and become known to the world as the man who slaughtered his own clan.” “I see ... So it was like that ...” Asami fell silent. “It appears that Danzo finally came to see his dearest wish come to fruition. After all these years, he was finally able to witness the complete extermination of the Uchiha clan. By the hands of one of their own, no less ... I presume that it was in exchange for the life of your little brother. Sasuke’s survival was hardly a coincidence, was it?” “... ... ...” Itachi closed his eyes. His silence served as confirmation. “The question remains, though.” Asami studied him intently, her purple eyes gazing at him. “What was it that warranted the elimination of the entire Uchiha clan?” “... ... ...” A heavy sigh escaped Itachi. His voice carried the pain, the desperation of the past. In the end, both he and Shisui had failed to avert the tragedy that should have never been. “It is a long story ... A story of pride and hatred, of arrogance and misunderstanding ...” Itachi paused, Asanmi’s purple eyes still fixed on him. “At the heart of it lies the sharingan. They were the eyes of heaven, bestowed upon the Uchiha by virtue of our blood. The sharingan were our pride and strength. And yet, they were also our curse. Because with great power comes great responsibility. It was a lesson that the Uchiha failed to heed far too often. We abused and misused the power granted to us. During the era of the warring clans, the strength of our eyes led us Uchiha to believe that it was our destiny, no, our duty to shape the fate of this world. That like our ancestors before us, it was our divine right to rule over those lesser beneath us. Many of us believed these words. Far too easily we were seduced by ambition, greed, jealousy, by the thirst for power and glory. Graced with the power of the sharingan, we imposed our will upon the surrounding clans, then upon the neighbouring lands. They were all made to serve and obey through force and fear. Any resistance was drowned in blood. People did not respect us. They feared us for who we were. It was then that the Uchiha met our most stubborn enemy, the Senju and their allies. Decades of bloodshed passed, yet we were never able to break their will. The Senju resisted. Thus, the war raged on, with no quarter given by either side. Both sides were trapped in a spiral of violence, vengeance, and death that was thought to never end, and yet it did. Some say it was a miracle. Some say it was fate, but the day came when the First Hokage Senju Hashirama and Uchiha Madara concluded the peace that would bring upon the end of the warring clans period. Together, they founded the village of Konohagakure in the hope that Uchiha and Senju would be finally able to set their differences aside and live together in peace and harmony, but old grudges die hard even as Konoha prospered. The Senju ... The Shimura ... The Sarutobi ... The Akimichi ... The Nara ... The Yamanaka ... The other clans ... They had not forgotten the crimes that we had committed in our pursuit of power. Our past actions had bred deep seated hatred, both among our former enemies as well as those we had once subjugated. With time, their hatred morphed into resentment, then into contempt, then into distrust, but beneath the surface, the hatred never truly disappeared even as the years went by. A situation that was only worsened by Madara’s eventual betrayal. He turned against Konoha and all the village ever stood for, which for many of the clans was the conclusive proof that the Uchiha never could be fully trusted. We would forever remain a danger to people of the village. Unlike his more benign brother, the Second Hokage shared their beliefs. Ever since the foundation of the village, he had regarded the Uchiha and their power as an ever present threat to the village of Konoha, one which had to be put under strict control at any given time. Under his leadership, the Uchiha were even further marginalised than before. The Uchiha were systematically purged from positions of authority and their number within the ANBU was increasingly limited. He even went as far to remove them from the regular ninja force, only to assign them to the so called military police. It was meant to be a sign of trust in recognition of the Uchiha’s services to the village, but too many among us saw it for what it truly was, just another method to ostracise the Uchiha by isolating them socially and structurally from the rest of the village’s population. All these measures were a grave slight to the honour and the pride of the Uchiha who felt the weight of the accusations and the persecution resting upon us. We were one of the founding clans of Konoha. Our sons and daughters had fought, bled, and died in Konoha’s wars like the rest of them. We had paid a heavy price for victory. Even so, our sacrifices went ignored and our contribution disregarded. The Uchiha felt robbed of tthe respect and the recognition that we rightfully deserved. Instead, we were rewarded with nothing but scorn, contempt, and distrust. And yet the Uchiha persisted. We bore with the resentment and the discrimination that we faced, as there were still those among us, few in numbers as they might have been, who believed in the ideals of Konoha. Then the day came when everything changed. It was the night that the Kyuubi struck. The Kyuubi’s attack not only brought untold destruction and devastation to the village, but it also irrecoverably destroyed the last remaining vestiges of trust between the Uchiha and Konoha.” For origınal chapters go to 𝚗𝚘𝚟𝚎𝚕·𝚏𝚒𝚛𝚎·𝚗𝚎𝚝 “The Kyuubi attack ...” Asami pondered his words, deep in thought. “I presume that people suspected the Uchiha behind the attack, did they not?” “... ... ...” Itachi merely nodded. “They did. People remembered Madara and that the Kyuubi had battled alongside him against Haashirama at the Valley of the End. Furthermore, it was well known that the sharingan is able to control the Kyuubi. The situation was only worsened by the fact that those who had fought the Kyuubi attested that its eyes bore the shape and patterns of the sharingan, which all but confirmed that the Kyuubi was being controlled. The upper echelons within the village and the common people alike were thus convinced that the Uchiha were responsible for the attack and that severe measures had to be taken against the clan. The Uchiha denied the accusations, but it was already far too late. Truth and reality had long since ceased to matter. In the end, suspicion, distrust, paranoia prevailed. Following the night of the attack, all Uchiha were rounded up and confined to a single district located at the outskirts of Konoha centred around the Naka shrine. The district would later become the Uchiha clan compound. The Uchiha were treated more like enemies rather than fellow comrades. In the wake of these events, the accusations, the discrimination, the hatred intensified. Old grudges long since thought buried resurfaced, with both sides at each other’s throats. The situation was tense, and everyone knew that it was only a matter of time before tragedy would strike, yet nobody possessed the wisdom or the will to act. The Uchiha were unwilling to compromise at this point. Their pride and honour had been deeply wounded. The Hokage was far too naive to realise the danger of the situation. Danzo and the village elders, meanwhile, were far too intransigent and paranoid to see reason. It was these days that the Uchiha resorted to the last desperate measure. It was decided to stage a coup to restore the former glory of the Uchiha clan and reclaim the status and position that we were entitled to. The coup would have pitted the Uchiha clan against the rest of the entire village. No matter how much power the Uchiha wielded, against those odds, there was no hope for the coup to succeed. Meanwhile, Konoha would have been forced to respond with force. The coup would have ended in a massacre with heavy casualties on both sides, all while bringing about the complete destruction of the Uchiha clan. Such an outcome would have fatally weakened Konoha, which would have not only lost one of her most powerful clan, but also many good ninja, whereas her enemies would have only further grown in strength ever since the end of the last Great War. Thus, the difficult decision was made to eliminate the Uchiha to prevent further harm from befalling Konoha. It fell to me to execute the order.”