... have you already gone to him?

[Huge sigh of relief over the speaker; yeah, something had Alphonse spooked for a moment there.]

Good. That's good.

Since he bit you and left the seal on your neck, right?

... I was worried, because the timeline fits. In your world, you'd have seen him soon.

It... wouldn't have been good for you.

[A long, long pause while Al stays in his own thoughts.]

Sasuke... this is going to sound weird, and I know you might not believe me, but... I have to tell you this. Even if it's only to prevent you from hearing it from someone else first.

Your future... it's not a bright one. I've known your future self, and even though I cared deeply for him, he had a lot of pain in his heart, pain that he caused himself. Pain, because he carved himself to bits and traded even his soul to come after Itachi.

... I-I can't let you do that again. I've seen the aftermath of that path. We all have. Although the people who love you had begun to heal you, there was no helping the scars. There was no helping the nightmares.

As you are now, Sasuke, you... you have a chance to escape that.

Please, don't come after Itachi. You'll win in the end, but you'll find out that in doing so, you've lost everything.

I know.

Your family. Your clan. Your life. Everything has been him.

... but what if I told you... that everything you've been told is a lie?

Itachi did kill your family.

But Sasuke... the reasons... he wasn't truthful. He couldn't be.

He didn't do it because he was insane. Itachi didn't do it for power, or to prove something.




He did it on orders.

[Silence, for a few heartbeats. Al's voice is flat, and sad. He knows that even if Sasuke comes to hate him for telling him this, he must know.]

Think, Sasuke. Think.

It wasn't that Itachi was insane -- his movements are too calculated, too precise for a sociopath. He relied on the shock and horror his actions caused to pull the wool over everyone's eyes. He made everyone so afraid, they didn't even think to ask why.

It was all part of the plan. Itachi became the enemy. He became the sociopath. He became the monster.

He became the sacrifice.

Sasuke, he did it all on orders.

Orders from Konoha.

[This isn't the first time Al's seen that touch of madness in Sasuke's eyes -- it takes everything he has not to remember Drake, and how he nearly killed himself with those memories.

... Al has those memories too, from Itachi's point of view. He knows everything that happened that night, in vivid detail. Everything.]

...

He spared you.

Why?