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It’s the hair that gives it away, Fugaku though at the third time he double-checked the toddler while she played with the rest of the children in the playground. He’d come here unwillingly partially out of fear from his wife and partially because as the current Uchiha clan head, Fugaku knew he had no choice on the matter.
Especially if there was a possibility of adding another member to the Clan.
While he’d kept the elders in the dark about this one, Fugaku was sure that the second he stepped with the child out of the orphanage the whole village would know. It was the price they paid for staying in a ninja village, where information was power, and secrets were the currency.
So now there he was, dealing with this. He was no Hyuuga, but he could bet his eyes that during all the time the headmaster had accompanied him, he was smirking behind his back. Probably with the same stuck up expression with Danzo. The one that screamed “I told you so Uchiha”
And for the first time in decades, Fugaku had the need to punch someone.
Repeatedly.
The first part of his visit was wandering across the decrepitated building that was the current orphanage while the headmaster gave him basic information of the girl. Seeing the understaffed caretakers trying to do their best with the overpopulated kids had given him a headache and a reminder to talk to their elders about donating some funds to the orphanage.
Then came the second part, where Fugaku would meet her, and if everything played right the headmaster would bring the adoption papers. Except that…the girl was more focused on playing than meeting his potential future clan head.
So Fugaku had to wait until the girl got tired and was fetched. While Fugaku sat not too far, the girl with the ebony hair and the onyx eyes kept playing in a weird game of chase with a blond hair and blue eyes boy that was a complete replica of Minato. Uzumaki Naruto, his head instantly supplied, his eyes narrowing to the boy that holds back the Kyuubi no Kitsune from destroying Konoha.
How the girl befriended the Hokage’s protégé? Fugaku didn’t have one single fucking idea. Another glance at the girl. Black eyes and short, spiky, black hair. It made sense, Fugaku mused, how fast the headmaster approached him.
There weren’t many kids that have those features in Konoha.
“Are you sure she’s a girl?” He asked in the dullest voice possible once the headmaster sat beside him, trying very hard to not be a threat, and remembering the words Mikoto said to him earlier. Something about being civil.
Well, uh… Fugaku was a lot of things, but diplomacy wasn’t one of them.
“It’s the googles, isn’t it?” The orphanage headmaster fired back with a resigned sigh, rubbing his temple to ease the headache away. It gave him a feeling that the bright neon (and how did she get a hold of those, he thought horrified) orange googles have been the topic of many discussions with said girl.
“I swear I had toss those…” He murmured, before giving Fugaku an apologetic smile. “She’s been fixated on wearing them since…arrived here. We have tried everything to get rid of those. They're hideous.”
Too bad, he thought, because the second she stepped into the compound those googles will disappear.
“How old is she?”
“Rin is two,” The man spoke with a fond gaze. “When we first got her, we weren’t really sure what to think of her.”
“Why?” He inquired because having her for two years is indeed a long time. Enough time for the other clans and Danzo to notice the similarities and snatch her up.
“She didn’t want to leave” Was the sincere reply, which shocked Fugaku to some point. Something like anger and hurt twist his stomach at the thought of a toddler afraid to join them. He knew that ever since the Kyuubi attack, there was a sense of distrust from the village, but for a toddler to fear them?
“And she was still missing her mother,”
“Mother,” He repeated, arching one eyebrow. Then why is she here, he wanted to ask, demand. If the mother was alive Fugaku could talk to her and help narrow who the father was, and what was the reason that the mother had into tossing said child here.
Hell, Fugaku was even considering using Genjutsu to take this burden off his shoulders. It would solve…the gigantically political problem that was about to come. Not only because he, Fugaku Uchiha, had been summoned by the orphanage to take care of a half Uchiha-bastard child.
But because this was the first time, in all the ever-recorded history in Konoha, that an Uchiha clan head has been summoned.
When he first read the letter addressing the problem Fugaku though it was a joke. That maybe it was a product of a bored genin after performing a D-mission or someone’s desperate attempt to profit and get some money out of this. One Katon jutsu later, the letter was destroyed and Fugaku paid it no mind.
And then it just got worse. Letter after letter, Fugaku began to lose his patience. Whoever was sending it, was getting more insistent, figuring out more creative ways to send them. Not even his office at the police station was safe anymore. But Fugaku couldn’t bow down to those claims, because he knew (hell everyone in the village knew) that Uchiha’s didn’t do this.
While sexual relationships were the common norm in the ninja world to cope with the emotional trauma and scars, the Uchiha Clan had prided themselves that they were responsible to perform discretion. There were obligatory health classes; full of charts and images about what could happen if you weren’t careful to use protection.
Hell, Fugaku had even filed a bill in their clan budget to include condoms as an implementation tool to carry on missions. And there was a good reason for it, too. One could never be sure that the person you slept in the red district light was an undercover agent with the mission to harvest a bloodline or a desperate human who could sell the kid to another village.
(they could be also paranoid, but Fugaku refused to believe that)
Taking this into account, there was no possible way that kid could be an Uchiha. It was only after the fifth letter arrived in his house, demanding urgency of a meeting between Fugaku and the headmaster’s orphanage, that he wasn’t there to intercept it.
But Mikoto was there and oh boy was she pissed.
“Her mother recently passed away. About two weeks to be exact,” The old man continued, all while a cold shiver went down Fugaku’s spine at the memory of yesterday’s dinner, and the deadly glare Mikoto gave to him. Yaki Udon had been his favorite.
The abomination of Yaki Udon Mikoto served him yesterday while hissing “you will fix it” had given him nightmares.
“And you told me they had done a DNA testing?”
“Yes,” The man nodded, taking out an envelope with Konoha stamp on it. “There was a recent…mishap with another clan that well…we thought the girl was an Izunuka but years later they found she was from another clan. So now we take precautionary measures,”
“Hn,” Fugaku said opening and confirming that the girl was half-Uchiha. The high compatibility rate, and the DNA statistic didn’t lie. He was getting late, and the headmaster had yet to give him the adoption paperwork. Then the kid finally noticed them and came running towards them.
The headmaster was right
Those googles were more hideous in an up-close view.
“Hey, Itachi.”
“Hn?”
“Why did your father summon every teenager to the compound hall?”
“Hn,”
“Said something about extra training or whatever”
“I don’t know,”
“Do you think it has to do with the white balloons they give to us every mission?”
“No idea Shisui”
They would only learn later, as one of many reunions that were about to come, that those exactly white balloons (who Shisui always played with, filling them with water from the Naka River and throwing it to Itachi for “training”) had a name, and they were supposed to put those balloons in there.
All while Fugaku lectured about unprotected sex in the background with the coldest poker face he could do. Itachi?
Itachi just wanted to die.