Work Text:
Uchiha Mikoto sat on the sofa, her youngest son curled against her side with his wide, dark eyes riveted on the television. The dramatized retelling of Konoha’s founding was one of his favorites, and when she had noticed that it was on, she’d made him a deal that he could watch it if he finished all of his Academy homework in time, performed the new kata he was working on to her strict standards, and kept it a secret. Typically, they didn’t allow Sasuke to watch TV during the week to avoid distracting him from his studies, but Mikoto couldn’t help but indulge him once in a while, when his father wasn’t home. She’d always regretted that she and her husband were so firm with her elder son that at five years old, he had voluntarily denounced such foolish pursuits as a waste of his time. Itachi was twelve now. He had already served in ANBU for over a year and there were rumors that he was being considered for promotion to squad Captain. It was said that ANBU looked beyond petty concerns like age, rank, and family affiliation when judging their members, but if he succeeded, he would be the youngest in the history of the organization to take up the position, beating out the former record-holder and his own current Captain, Hatake Kakashi, who had been promoted at age fourteen.
It should have been an honor to know that she had given birth to such a prodigy, and in her capacity as the Lady Uchiha, it was, but in her heart, Mikoto wished she could have prevented her husband and the clan elders from pushing Itachi the way they had been doing since his hands were large enough to hold a kunai. She tried to take the pressure off him in the few ways that she could, cooking his favorite meals when she knew he’d be coming home and keeping his room perfectly free of dust during his long absences, but Itachi didn’t allow her to do anything more. He hadn’t confided in her since before he’d graduated the Academy, and though he never objected to her little displays of affection, it was clear that he didn’t desire them. When she hugged him, his back would go ramrod straight, and he would simply stand there until she released him. He was slightly more tolerant with his baby brother and permitted Sasuke to climb all over him at will, but he still didn’t appear to enjoy it. I will not let Sasuke grow up like Itachi had to. The war is over, and he is a second son. There is no need for him to go through what his brother did.
The music coming from the little television intensified as the film approached its climax, the battle between Senju Hashirama and Uchiha Madara for the leadership of Konoha. Sasuke sat up straighter, leaning toward the screen.
“Kaa-chan, look! There he is! Look at Madara-sama’s katon jutsu! It’s perfect!” Sasuke babbled, entranced.
Mikoto had been keeping a private tally of the mistakes the actors made in their hand signs and their sloppy taijutsu forms, not to mention the historical inaccuracies. Madara had never married, and there would be no widow waiting among the Uchiha for a brave, but misguided man who would never return, nor would this woman be the one to truly move the Uchiha toward peace with their Senju comrades. The entire idea was just ludicrous. The first time she and Itachi had watched this movie, they had discussed these things and picked the film to shreds between their intellects, but she only smiled and nodded at Sasuke. “They recreated it very well, didn’t they?”
“Uh-huh, but mine is gonna be better!” the boy exclaimed. “I can do a little bit already, but once Tou-san or Nii-san have time to help me train, I’ll be the best at it!”
She chuckled at her boy’s determination. She herself was quite proficient with the katon, despite not having taken a mission since before she became pregnant with Itachi, but what little boy wanted to learn from a gentle housewife when he had the head of his clan and an ANBU shinobi living under his own roof? She glanced up as she heard light footsteps on the porch and extended her chakra curiously, wondering which of her clansmen had been given the unenviable task of coming to tell her that Fugaku would be working late again. Instead, she sensed a much more welcome chakra hovering outside. Itachi had been gone nearly a month and had sent no word that he was coming home, but that presence was unmistakable.
“Sasuke, guess who’s here?” she said excitedly. Sasuke noticed a moment later and scrambled out of Mikoto’s lap, properly embarrassed with himself, as his older brother slid the door open.
“Nii-san! Hey, do you want to finish the movie with me? It’s at the best part!” he shouted, but fell silent as Itachi stepped into the light.
The young man’s gray flak vest was streaked with blood, and from the way he was holding himself, some of it was definitely his own. His long hair was disheveled, barely restrained by a crimson tie, but enough of his face was visible for Mikoto to see that his Sharingan was still blazing in his eyes.
“Another time, Sasuke,” he said tiredly, and took a few steps forward to get out of the doorway. He didn’t stumble, but his catlike grace was somewhat muted as he pushed the door shut and started toward the hall. That alone would be cause for concern, even without the blood. Itachi had learned early in his training that acknowledging pain or exhaustion would only encourage an enemy. If he couldn’t prevent himself from showing this much, she didn’t want to imagine what he was hiding from them.
“Here, let me take a look at you,” Mikoto offered, but Itachi waved her away.
“It is nothing, Okaa-san. Please, finish your movie.”
She glared at him. “Uchiha Itachi, come here right now! That’s an order!” It broke her heart, but if he wouldn’t listen to his mother, he would listen to his Clan Lord’s wife. Unlike her husband, who had always been both father and Clan Lord simultaneously, she had filled two distinct roles in his life. What he would no longer allow from his mother, he could hardly deny the Lady Uchiha.
He hesitated for a moment and then obeyed, kneeling on the floor in front of the sofa. Sasuke was staring at him with awe, and more than a little fear, in his eyes. Itachi had come home injured a few times before, but never when his little brother was there. She didn’t think Sasuke had even seen him lose a sparring match, let alone something like this.
“Are you okay, Aniki?” he asked, reaching out with trembling fingers to touch his cheek. Itachi flinched at the contact and Sasuke retreated to the other side of the sofa, clutching a pillow to his chest.
Mikoto looked into her son’s eyes, still crimson with the kekkei genkai that he had mastered, and knew that something terrible must have happened to him. She would have to be careful. With gentle, but firm hands, Mikoto unbuckled her firstborn’s flak vest and set it aside. The tension in his shoulders frightened her as she peeled his sticky shirt up over his head, but aside from raising his arms to help her remove the ruined fabric, he kept his hands folded in his lap, away from his weapons holsters, and didn’t move. Before her forced retirement and marriage to Fugaku, she had been a renowned Tokubetsu Jounin at only nineteen years of age, and she had seen many injured shinobi attack their own medics on the battlefield out of raw instinct for the simple crime of invading their space when they were vulnerable. It was a delicate balance, helping them without triggering their frayed nerves. She wanted to tell Sasuke to leave, but she knew it was safer if no further attention was drawn to the quiet, unobtrusive presence sitting six feet away.
She gasped when she saw the jagged slash running along the length of her son’s ribs on his right side. Through his flak jacket? she wondered, looking at the thick fabric. No, he must not have been wearing it. She wanted to know what could have possessed him to remove it, but she restrained herself from asking. Itachi was neither careless nor overconfident, and he would not deliberately put himself in unnecessary danger. Like as not, the details were classified anyway. Even if Itachi wanted to tell her, he couldn’t. ANBU shinobi lived in the shadows.
“Stay still,” she ordered, and very, very cautiously, she rested her fingertips against his skin, just above the wound. Itachi jerked away from her hand and she froze until he slowly leaned back toward her, reestablishing the contact between them with an expressionless face that somehow still conveyed an apology. Or it would have if his eyes weren’t still glowing red, three black tomoe whirling on a disc of flame. It took considerable control not to activate her own Sharingan, but she could not afford to let this devolve into conflict. She waited nearly a full minute before she began easing her chakra into him, just taking stock of his injuries. He felt like he hadn’t slept in days, and his heartrate was much faster than it should have been. His chakra system was pretty strained, indicating chronic chakra exhaustion for at least a week, if not the entire time he had been away. Thankfully, there was no internal damage, and though he had lost a lot of blood, it wasn’t enough to truly endanger his life. Not yet, anyway. If she could close up the wound quickly enough, he wouldn’t even need a transfusion.
Satisfied that it was nothing she couldn’t handle, she started knitting the tissue, muscle, and flesh back together, as well as mending his two cracked ribs. She had never been a fully qualified medic, but she knew enough to manage clean cuts and simple fractures, and there was no cure for chakra exhaustion but rest. If it had been anything worse, she would have had to summon the clan's only physician, Kagura, and she knew Itachi would have been furious. She could almost hear the perfectly respectful, deadpan voice that indicated anger in her eldest son saying, If I required a medic, I would have gone to one, Okaa-san. Your concern is touching, but unnecessary. Please do not worry yourself.
By the time she withdrew her hand, she was exhausted, but she had done well enough to heal the gash without leaving a scar. Thirteen years of retirement had not done her endurance any good at all, even if her skills were less rusty than they might have been. Itachi seemed to take the cessation of contact as permission to move again; he gathered his shirt and vest in his arms, and walked away in silence. A minute later, she heard water running from the bathroom and let out a breath she hadn’t realized that she’d been holding. That had gone much better than it might have. She had never truly been afraid of her own son, but tonight had brought her perilously close when she looked into those Sharingan eyes, so much stronger than her own.
“Kaa-chan, why was he hurt so bad?” Sasuke asked, crawling back over to her. “He’s the strongest ninja in the world! Who could have hurt him?”
She shook her head and held the boy against her side so he wouldn’t see her face. “Even your brother gets hurt sometimes.”
Sasuke looked back at the television as Senju Hashirama limped away from a devastated battlefield, leaning on his younger brother Tobirama’s shoulder, but the little boy no longer seemed to see the images playing across the screen. He remained there until the water shut off and two doors opened and closed again at the back of the house, one with the telltale creak of Itachi’s bedroom door. No matter how many times she oiled it, disuse made it stiffen up again, resulting in that same noise. She’d have to fix it again in the morning, before Fugaku noticed it. He already thought that she was foolishly stubborn to refuse to keep any staff in the house, and if he believed that she was slacking in her duty to keep his home running smoothly, he’d lecture her like she was some sort of silly Genin and insist that she hire a maid from one of the few civilian families among the Uchiha clan. And it would be treason for her to deck him for it.
There was a quiet thump from the back of the house, probably the sound of Itachi collapsing in the privacy of his room, and Sasuke gave an exaggerated yawn. “I’m going to bed.”
She wondered what the little boy was planning as he trudged away from her, putting a false sleepiness into his steps. She knew he had been hanging around with the trouble-making jinchuuriki at the Academy lately, a fact that she had very deliberately kept from Fugaku, which must be where he had practiced the art of deceiving one’s caretakers. If he pulled some childish prank on Itachi tonight, things could end badly. She may have dealt with Itachi’s physical wounds, but there was clearly some mental trauma, as well. What had he done, in the three weeks that he had been gone? What horrors had her little boy been forced to see?
“He hasn’t been ‘my little boy’ since the assault on the fortress,” she murmured to herself. Itachi had been thrust into battle at the Uchiha fortress during the last weeks of the Third Shinobi War. The four-year-old boy had seen his defenders, two older cousins, burned alive as they tried to protect him. Then he’d taken up their kunai blades and killed the Iwa shinobi who'd done it. All five of them. That had been the first time he'd activated his Sharingan. Though it had only a single tomoe in each eye, it was still capable of the Sharingan’s best known ability: perfect memory of anything it saw. The boy hadn’t known how to deactivate it, and the carnage of that night had been burned into his mind forever.
He’d been a mess after that, crying, refusing to eat, hiding in his room, and stubbornly ignoring her attempts to coax him out. After three days of this, Fugaku had kicked his door in and dragged him to the Uchiha meeting house by the hair, despite a heavily pregnant Mikoto’s protests. She didn’t know what he and the clan elders had said or done to her son, but that night, Itachi sat at the dinner table, cleared his plate, and answered politely when she spoke to him. All Fugaku would tell her was that his heir could not afford to be weak. All Itachi would say was that he had duties more important that his own feelings, and that he would never display such weakness again. A four-year-old boy had said that. Itachi had always been an unnervingly intelligent, mature child, but after that... She simply didn’t know what to do with a child like that.
She rose and crept down the hall toward the boys’ bedrooms. As she had feared, Itachi’s was ajar and she sensed Sasuke’s presence inside. Drawing on all of the stealth training she had done in her youth, Mikoto inched closer and peered inside. What she saw took her breath away.
Itachi had indeed collapsed on the floor, hair still wet and dressed only in his boxers, but Sasuke had shoved a pillow under his head and dragged the thick blanket off of the bed and draped it over his torso, leaving his legs free. Now, the little boy was curled up against his brother, on the outside of the blanket, and had draped an arm and a leg across his chest to hold him. No part of Sasuke touched Itachi’s skin, but the comfort of the gesture had clearly reached the unconscious young shinobi. His pale lips quirked up just slightly at the corners, and the lines under his eyes had smoothed out somewhat.
How did you know? she wanted to ask her youngest son. Her own former Jounin sensei had served in ANBU and had told her about the psychological strain that these agents endured, and the extensive training that each of them went through in order help their comrades cope with it. Each of them were supposed to be assigned one of their comrades to use as a touchstone, to go to them when they needed someone. She didn’t know who Itachi’s was or if he had ever gone to him, but what Sasuke had done was exactly what another ANBU shinobi might have, had Itachi allowed them to see him in this condition. Sasuke wore nothing that could associate him with the shinobi life; his simple gray pajamas were the epitome of nonthreatening, and were perhaps his only pair that did not bear the red and white Uchiha crest anywhere on them. Itachi had demonstrated quite clearly that he did not want to be touched, but he hadn’t reacted when Mikoto had removed his flak vest or shirt, only when she or Sasuke had touched his bare flesh. And not covering Itachi’s entire body with the blanket, only his chest...was little Sasuke truly perceptive enough to understand that causing Itachi to feel trapped right now could be a deadly mistake?
Why isn’t it me there, holding him, telling him that it’s going to be alright? I’m his mother, damn it! I should not be too afraid to comfort my own son! Mikoto shook her head in frustration. She knew that she had always failed Itachi as a mother, and she was determined not to make the same mistakes with Sasuke. He shouldn’t have to take on burdens far larger than his tiny shoulders could bear, and caring for his brother when he was in this condition fell directly into that category.
She paused, taking control of her emotions and readying her chakra as she planned the best way to get Sasuke out of that room, and she couldn’t help but feel that she was betraying Itachi. The young man had never once demonstrated a capacity for violence outside of mission requirements, and even within them, he worked to minimize the destruction that he was forced to create. She knew nothing of his assignments in ANBU, but unless he was explicitly ordered to kill when he was given capture assignments from the village police force, he often brought his targets back alive, and sometimes even whole. Considering that his targets were typically A-rank nukenin, this was highly unusual.
No, Itachi was not a dangerous man, but she couldn’t risk Sasuke like this. Itachi would never willingly hurt him, but in his current state, it could be reflex alone if Sasuke unknowingly tripped some wire in Itachi’s mind. He was a seven-year-old boy. He didn’t have the strength or skill to defend himself if it came to that. The shunshin, she decided. I’ll be fast enough, and I’m agile enough not to run into a wall, even in a tight space like this. I taught Shunshin no Shisui, after all. She focused on a point three inches to the left of Sasuke, the point where she wanted to stop the faster-than-sight movement of the jutsu, and eased the door open in perfect silence, years of espionage missions allowing her to prevent that dreaded squeak. She could do this.
As she prepared her chakra for a precise execution of the technique, Itachi’s right hand slipped out of the blanket. She waited, praying she hadn’t woken him somehow, but the steady pulsing of his nearly drained chakra indicated that he was still unconscious. Moving very, very slowly, Itachi’s hand brushed against Sasuke’s above his chest. After a moment, he let it rest on top of it, his delicate, long fingers enveloping Sasuke’s chubby ones entirely. Some of the tension went out of Itachi’s face then, and he drifted into a deeper sleep.
Mikoto had never seen him look so peaceful, so unguarded, as if all was right with the world for a few, precious moments. He hadn’t even looked like that when he was a child, still untouched by war and death and loss. Suddenly, she was disgusted with herself for even considering the idea that Itachi could present a danger to Sasuke. The young shinobi would carve his own heart out with a dull blade before he’d let any harm come to his baby brother. Her powerful, emotionless warrior son was only a mask, and this was what lay behind it. It was said that every shinobi had a reason they put themselves through the hell that their lives almost inevitably became. The Itachi she thought she knew would have said something abstract and deep, like bringing peace to the world, but this, right here, would be the truth. This was what he had spent a lifetime learning to conceal behind a facade of perfect control. Love. Simple, pure, transparent love. She’d seen glimmers of it in him before, but so rarely that she had dismissed it as fanciful imagining. I really have failed as your mother, she thought sadly. Itachi, I’m sorry.
Sasuke seemed to sense her gaze and slowly opened his dark eyes. He glanced around the room, and then shifted his head toward her, clinging tighter to his brother as if he expected her to swoop in and drag him away. Mikoto smiled as a tear rolled down her cheek, and she shut the door.
They would be alright. Both of them.