What He Truly Cared About

"As for the third question."

"Before I answer, there's something I'd like to ask you, Uchiha Itachi. What do you think of Sasuke? Is he simply a spare you can use to measure your own capacity? Or did you leave two safeguards in place for your clan? Or were all the crazy things you did just to protect Sasuke?"

He had chosen his words to probe and provoke even further.

Naruto knew the truth, of course.

But from the perspective of a true "bystander"—

Uchiha Itachi was an S-rank rogue ninja.

Whether he had slaughtered his clan out of personal ambition or colluded with Konoha's leadership before wiping out his own clan and sparing only Uchiha Sasuke, anyone who knew part of the truth could only speculate that one of those two motives was behind it. And when Itachi had asked what Naruto's relationship with Sasuke was, the obvious interpretation was that the man who had slaughtered his clan feared an outsider's involvement might interfere with his plans.

From any angle,

if Uchiha Itachi asked someone such a question,

the only people who would suspect anything else were the Konoha leaders who knew the truth—the now-dead Third Hokage and the three old men still alive.

Everyone else would assume nothing more.

And yet,

Itachi had miscalculated again.

The "truth" Naruto knew went far beyond anything he could have imagined.

With that as their starting point,

the answers that followed from working backward—

Naruto's final words sent another enormous wave crashing through Itachi's heart, even though he had just managed to calm himself. The one saving grace was that the earlier shocks had already been so overwhelming that, even as Naruto stunned him once more, Itachi kept his expression cold. Only his brow twitched slightly, as if he were showing a