Chapter 1.1 : The Pure Land or Something Else ?

"I will love you, always."

With a smile on his face, Uchiha Itachi faded away.

"Live well Sasuke. For me. For mother. For the Uchiha clan."

A soft whisper caressed his soul.

Murmurs of peace and a promise of rest.

A breath.

"Not yet…"

The warmth of the sun.

The soft lapping of water reached his ears.

A cool breeze swept by, shifting through unseen branches overhead.

A hint of salt in the air.

Itachi opened his eyes and sat up.

"Is this the Pure Land? I was expecting more fire and brimstone or even nothingness for a soul like mine. Not something so… tropical?"

He swept his eyes around his surroundings, taking note of the beach he was on. The trees above him continued to sway in the soft breeze. Something felt… off.

He wasn't sure what it was, but just a niggling sense in the back of his head that something was different.

He looked at his hands. Then his arms. Somehow, he was still wearing his old Akatsuki cloak, although this one was fresh. The red clouds bright red and vibrant, the blacks inky and dark. The material was softer, silkier. The rips and tears from his fight with Sasuke, gone.

"Interesting. I remember quite clearly that I was resurrected with a plain black cloak. Perhaps my existence is associated heavily with this cloak, and as such, my image here in the Pure Land reflects it."

Itachi looked down into his lap and found a piece of paper. A note that he hadn't noticed. Picking it up he read what it said-

"Live Unburdened."

A simple message to some, but to Itachi…

It meant so much more.

His breath hitched as a dizzying amount of emotions bloomed in his chest.

Memories flashed through his head.

People. Izumi. Shisui. Mother. Father. Sasuke. The clan. Places. The house. The tablet. The village. The . .TheplanthepaintheillnesshiseyestheblindnessTobiMadaraThewarkabutothecrowsnarutonagatoSasukeakutsukiithurtihurtithurtithurtdyingdyingresurrectedimportantyetnotacogofagreatermachinevitalyetsmallsmallyetlargesotiredsohurtSasukegriefSasukepainpainPAINSASUKE MY LITTLE BROTHER…

Itachi was crying. Tears dripped from his eyes. Sorrow and regret and hurt and pain and loss. Burdened his whole life. With genius. With purpose. With a choice. With the cutest little brother in too harsh of a world. With the Sharingan. With love. With death. With loneliness. With illness. With guilt. With a false life. Burdened by his own pride and selfless selfishness, he finally let it all go.

Those bitter, bitter tears fell into his lap, soaking the cloak, not a sound leaving from his throat. Too well trained to make one, but the anguish and sadness within his eyes told everything.

He wept for what should've been.

For a life with Sasuke. Something he cherished so much, but was ripped and forever withheld from him. The potent hate in Sasuke's eyes. It hurt his heart to look at, but he had nurtured it to begin with.

He sat there, hands fisted in his cloak.

And he wept and wept.

Time stretched and an eternity passed.

Itachi sat on that beach and he reflected on his past, the cathartic release of his tears present in the redness that rimmed his eyes.

He looked out onto that endless sea and reminisced.

"Enough of that. I must figure out where I am and if this really is the Pure Land or some sort of hell for damned souls."

He stood up, shook the sand off his cloak and went for a walk.

Some time had passed, and Itachi found himself on what he believed to be an island of sorts. He had begun walking along the beach to get a sense of his current location. He was even warier than he was before when he found his sword and a weapons pouch lying innocently by a tree close to him.

Someone or something had brought him here. For what reason, he did not know.

The note along with his weapons made Itachi suspect more than before that this was not the Pure Land, but something else entirely. His senses were on high alert as he continued to trudge through the admittedly beautiful island coast. He kept one hand inside his cloak, lightly resting on the hilt of his sword, which he had strapped to his waist for the time being (he would need to find a way to strap it to his back once he got his bearings).

Eventually, he had circled around the entire island stopping where he had woken up. The island was quite large. Itachi estimated its coastline to be about 10 kilometers give or take. With its perimeter "secured", Itachi turned to the thick forest that bordered the beach. He could barely make out the top of a mountain through the thick canopy.

With nothing better to do, he began to walk into the forest towards the mountain to see if he could learn anything else about the island.

The forest was quite pleasant. The trees offered shade and the wildlife seemed to be unafraid of him. More than likely this was a deserted island he thought to himself. The trees were nothing like those of the Land of Fire so Itachi did not attempt to tree hop to hasten his travel. He was happy to learn that he still had chakra and that he still retained his Sharingan.

He had passed a small lake and tested to see if he could still water walk. He ended up staying by the lake to test out some of his jutsu. It was then that he realized what had been bothering him since he had woken up. He was no longer nearly blind and he didn't feel ill at all. He nearly smacked himself upon this realization as the difference between his eyesight before he died and now was immense. He chalked it up to him being too busy trying to figure out where he was and left it at that.

Staring into his reflection in the water, Itachi activated his Mangekyo Sharingan and then he understood. Within the eyes staring back at him, in addition to his original tri-pronged iride, the thin familiar shape of a six-pointed star spun lazily around his pupil.

Itachi jerked back in horror realizing why the design was so familiar. It was Sasuke's Mangekyo Sharingan.

"No. No. NO. NO!"

"H-how? I don't understand. Did I take Sasuke's eyes? Wha-? Ho-? Why do I have Eternal Mangekyo? I died, didn't I? It should be impossible, but-but I can't deny what I'm seeing, Am I hallucinating? Going insane? Does it relate to where I am right now? If so, how? And again, why? Who implanted Sasuke's eyes in mine?"

"Where exactly am I!?"

Itachi's mind was racing with possibilities to rationalize the situation as best he could, but nothing short of supernatural influence was plausible.

There's no way God had a hand in this is there?

Itachi began to doubt that doubt. Always told to look underneath the underneath, but was there even any hidden meaning behind it all? The note, his weapons, his eyes. Something completely out of his control was happening and he didn't have the slightest idea, outside of divine intervention, what it was.

He shakily got up and continued to walk towards the mountain deep in thought.

Itachi really wanted to tear his eyes out now. Just the thought of them being Sasuke's made him sick, yet at the same time, he needed to keep them. Blinding himself in a foreign environment was the epitome of stupid, and despite all that he had done before he died, Itachi was not one to so easily resort to suicide, especially when he had little to no intel regarding his situation. He solidified his resolve to find answers or he would die trying.

Itachi quickly summited the mountain. An easy feat considering the ease that wall walking granted him. It was nothing too special. Shrubs and smaller plantlife dotted the rocky face. Birds flew overhead, but nothing else seemed to live on this little mountain.

He scanned the horizon looking for hints of land close to the island he was on, his Sharingan picking up the most minute details. In the distance, he could see the top of another island, but it was quite far. Far enough that he would collapse from exhaustion and dehydration if he tried to water walk there.

He continued to look around him but seeing nothing else, decided to hop down the mountain and head back to the lake. It was the best place to set up base for the time being. He would have to hunt for food or try his hand at scavenging, which he wasn't too keen on doing as he had no idea what was edible. He didn't have any food pills on hand either; he remembered checking the weapons pouch of its contents and not finding any within.

Arriving at the clearing by the lake, he set out making his temporary home. Weaving through a set of hand seals, Itachi cast an Earth Style jutsu he had copied from some Iwa shinobi. Placing his hand against the ground, a small dome grew from the earth, complete with two small openings: a window and a doorway. He walked inside and, using a similar jutsu, raised a small area to act as a bed and then another to act as a table.

Despite being only a minute old, the little hut felt homely.

"I, indeed, would make a great husband."

A universe away, Sasuke shuddered, memories of Itachi in an apron chasing a chicken springing forth.

Looking down at the eggs Sakura had prepared for him, he pushed them away feeling rather sick.

Itachi walked back outside and began to pick up twigs and sticks that he could use to make a fire. Although he could cook his food with a quick fire jutsu, nothing beat the warmth and security of a campfire.

Gathering for himself a decent pile of usable fuel, he looked up at the sky to see how much light he had left. Judging the approximate position of the sun, Itachi guessed that he had about four hours left? He couldn't be too sure as the island he was at could have faster or slower days than what he was used to. Only time would tell. Not bothering to dwell on it any further, Itachi decided to go and hunt.

"I remember there being some deer-like creatures around here somewhere."

Taking off his cloak and setting it down, Itachi ventured into the surrounding forest.

Itachi dropped the second body on the ground with a heavy thud. He was breathing quite heavily, the muscles in his arms and shoulders protesting quite vehemently. It had been a very long time since he had to carry so much weight. He had left most of the heavy lifting to Kisame as the shark-like man was incredibly strong physically and as much of a stamina freak like Uzumaki Naruto.

He was, in a lack of adequate terms, quite pathetic in regards to physical strength. It was not something he had really needed back in the Elemental Nations, especially with eyes as powerful as his. But here on this island? Dojutsu amounted to nothing.

He had thought about using the few sealing scrolls he had on hand, but without the tools to make more, Itachi did not want to risk damaging them with the wild game he caught. Thus, he was forced to lug them to his little hut so that he could skin and butcher them.

"Perhaps some training is in order? I don't know how long I'll be on this island and it is paramount that I am able to respond to any and all situations."

With a slight idea of what his future entailed, Itachi started working on the first body he had brought back. He could probably use the hide as some sort of bedding, but other than that, he had no idea how to use the rest of the body. The bones might be useful and he remembered faintly of a craftsman mentioning that hooves could be made into glue, but he was unsure of how to make said glue, if this deer thing's hooves would work just as well, or what he would even use the glue for.

Things to think about in the future he decided.

The work was slow and laborious as he was not at all accustomed to this lifestyle and as such, it was well into the night before Itachi finally finished butchering the second deer. He was glad he had taken his cloak and shirt off as the blood had gotten everywhere. His pants were a lost cause already, but nothing he could really do about it. He was going to wash them the best he could later.

He got up and walked into the hut to unseal his little cooking pot and grab some edible roots and nuts he had found earlier. A simple stew sounded incredibly good right about now. He set up the pot over the small campfire he had started and put the meat, roots, and nuts into the water already in the pot. He knew that it wasn't the best way to make stew and that it wouldn't be that tasty when ready, but he was quite honestly exhausted. While his food was cooking, he stripped off his pants and undergarments and walked to the lake to wash off the blood from his body and pants.

Fed and tired, Itachi fell asleep by the campfire.

The stars watched overhead, twinkling in the sky.

A warm breeze swept over the lake.

Within it carried a light giggle.

"Oh, how exciting!"l