2More Honor Than You Can Take
When Sasuke learns the truth, he realizes that in the end, Itachi was still the better brother.
Sasuke realizes that as the youngest he had only amounted to his parent's expectations for him. He had charged blindly and willfully into a revenge pursuit. He sold his soul to the devil and bargained his body away to a snake.
Sharingan be damned, he had been blind from the start.
A true Uchiha.
The truest left.
And if his parent's were alive, he'd be making them proud in a way that Itachi never could have.
Because, they never wanted Sasuke to disobey.
They never wanted him to have the strength to rise against them.
To have a mind of his own that would choose peace over chaos.
Was it just Itachi's loyalty to the village, and Sasuke's loyalty to the Uchiha that made them different?
Had Itachi exchanged one form of brainwashing for another?
Or had he surpassed them both to make his own decision? To have the strength of will to determine his own future? The strength to carry everyone else's burden.
The strength to rise above a fallen reputation. To take all of the shit and turn it into something redeemable. To make a village love the Uchiha again.
To play the part of a villain without becoming one.
Sasuke had failed.
His parents never wanted him strong enough to sacrifice his clan for the village.
Itachi had that strength.
Itachi was the better brother.
Sasuke lost, he admits it.
He'll never be as good.
Never.
Sasuke would have followed along with anything at that age.
As long as his father would recognize him and stop comparing him to Itachi…
As long as his mother respected him as an "adult."
He never had to work for her love and it made her seem like less, somehow.
That was the child inside him. The ignorant whelp that reached for only his father's approval and Itachi's attention.
Only now that he's older can he appreciate the fact that he never knew his mother.
How could she have had such unconditional love for her family? To see past Sasuke's rejection, Itachi's betrayal, and Fugaku's power-lust. To love them as people in spite of themselves.
And when would he learn to stop making the same mistakes?
With his mother's love…
With Sakura's love…
With Naruto's fierce friendship…
With Itachi's sacrifice…
He had sworn never to take family for granted again.
In the end, he did just that.