me talking to @asparkleofmuses about a lot of ideas and headcanons and focusing on that moment when Itachi went to kidnap Naruto and ended up fighting Sasuke and I’m just.
The fact that Itachi not only had to keep the facade up and pretend he didn’t care about this child who quite literally gave a sense of meaning to his life after being born - he actually had to beat the living crap out of him and scar his psyche all over again, for the sake of driving the message home. Imagine having to keep a straight face while destroying the person who means the world to you, inside and out, all over again. Just my spare eyes, nothing else here. To the point where even Kisame thought Itachi was going too hard on this stupid little helpless kid.
And then walk out of there and carry on with your day like nothing happened. And be fully aware that it was going to continue to be like that for the foreseeable future, every single day having to keep up that lie.
And still have the motivation to keep going.