Work Text:
Naruto remembers the first time he saw Itachi Uchiha.
(Saw him, not met him. That won’t come until five years later, standing in the doorway of a hotel room and looking up into blood-red eyes—)
He was hiding in the woods, after running from an angry shopkeeper that had been chasing him. Naruto had been admiring—not stealing!—some of the masks that he’d been selling, and he’d been caught.
Naruto was no stranger to angry villagers. Or to being chased. But this man had looked like he would seriously hurt him, and the way he had grabbed Naruto’s wrist and twisted—
Naruto’s heart pounded in his chest, unable to shake the fear. He shook, wrapping his arms around himself as he walked.
His wrist hurt. Naruto’s eyes stung with tears.
It took him a while to calm back down and consider going back. He wasn’t sure where these woods led to, but he knew they were nowhere near his apartment. He was just turning around when he heard a voice.
“Ow! Nii-san, that hurts!”
The voice was familiar. As quietly as he could, Naruto crept closer. He peeked out from behind a tree.
“Well, maybe you should be more careful. Did you ever think of that?”
The second voice Naruto didn’t recognize. It belonged to an older boy with dark hair. His hair was long, pulled into a ponytail. There was a symbol on his back that looked slightly familiar.
He was crouching in front of a younger boy who was Naruto’s age, and Naruto recognized him immediately. Sasuke Uchiha—the top student in Naruto’s class.
Naruto knew as much about Sasuke as he knew about his other classmates. Which was to say, he knew absolutely nothing. Naruto drew a bit closer, watching curiously.
With slight alarm, Naruto noticed that Sasuke was bleeding. His eyes widened when he saw the bright red blood dripping from his palm.
That looks deep, he thought with worry. His gaze darted to the ground, seeing the discarded kunai. Did he cut himself?
The older boy—the one Naruto didn’t recognize—was crouching next to him. He was holding Sasuke’s hand in his, pressing a ripped cloth against his palm.
“I was being careful,” Sasuke said. “You’re the one who startled me.”
The older boy's lips twitched slightly. His gaze darted up for a moment, from the wound on Sasuke’s hand to Sasuke’s face.
They had the same eyes, Naruto realized.
“So this is my fault,” he said, a hint of amusement in his tone. “Is that what you’re trying to say?”
“Exactly,” Sasuke agreed. “You shouldn’t sneak up on people, Nii-san.”
“Or maybe, you shouldn’t play with dangerous weapons before you can properly use them.”
The older boy—Sasuke’s brother—reached up to pull on the ends of Sasuke’s hair. There was something unmistakably fond in the gesture, and it made Naruto’s chest feel strange.
Sasuke huffed, his bottom lip poking out. “Itachi.”
Naruto had to cover his mouth to prevent a laugh. He never thought he’d see the day that Sasuke Uchiha would pout.
He hadn’t known the boy for too long—only about a month—but everyone already considered him to be the coolest kid in the Academy. The girls were always chasing after him. If only they could hear him now, with that whine in his voice—
Naruto fought back another laugh.
Itachi pulled the cloth away from the cut, then began lightly dabbing it. Sasuke winced, and Itachi’s fingers were gentle as they cradled his palm.
“Why would you do that?” he asked. “You know you’re too young to be attempting such things.”
“Father said you could do it when you were only five.”
Something dark flitted through Itachi’s eyes, and his expression seemed to tighten slightly. “You shouldn’t listen to Father so much.”
He held his brother’s hand out as he began to carefully wrap it. Sasuke bit his lip and stayed quiet.
Naruto couldn’t look away. He was fascinated by this window he was getting into his classmate's life—into the life of a family.
He was fascinated by the gentle care that Sasuke’s brother took when wrapping his palm. How light his every touch was. He was fascinated by the way Sasuke looked at him—the quiet trust in his eyes.
No one had ever looked at him that way.
“I’m sorry,” Sasuke whispered.
It was soft enough that Naruto barely heard it. Itachi looked up, a small frown on his face.
“Sorry? For what?”
“I didn’t mean to get hurt. I just wanted to be better.”
The words—the self-doubt they contained—threw Naruto for a loop. It was the last thing he expected to hear from someone like Sasuke.
Itachi's frown deepened. His hand moved from Sasuke’s palm, to gently circling his wrist. “What are you talking about? You don’t need to be any better—”
Sasuke’s eyes glimmered with tears. “But Father said—"
Itachi’s jaw clenched. “I told you, don’t listen to him. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”
Tears welled up in Sasuke’s eyes. “But he’s right—I’m no good—I’ll never be any good—”
“That is not true,” Itachi said. “Don’t think like that. Sasuke, you’re amazing. You’re top of your class—”
“But you graduated in less than a year! I should be b-better—"
Naruto wanted to look away. This was something private, something he shouldn’t be seeing. But his feet felt glued in place.
Itachi wore a pained expression, which confused Naruto, since Sasuke was clearly the one in distress. It took him a moment to realize that the pained look was for Sasuke—that he was in pain because his brother was in pain.
“I’m not a gold standard, Sasuke,” he said softly. “Don’t use me to measure yourself.”
Sasuke bit his lip. A tear rolled down his cheek, and he ducked his head to hide it.
“Everyone wants me to be just like you,” he whispered.
“I don’t,” Itachi said.
Sasuke looked back up. Itachi reached out to brush away the tears on his brother’s face. The love in his eyes stole Naruto’s breath.
“I don’t want you to be anyone else,” he said. “I want you to be you.”
Sasuke looked at him with wide eyes, clearly stunned. Then, he threw his arms around his brother, burying his face in his shoulder. The older boy was surprised, nearly falling over, but he embraced his brother back.
The two of them stayed like that, Sasuke sniffling against his brother’s shoulder, Itachi rubbing a hand over his back. Itachi was whispering something, but Naruto was too far away to hear.
Eyes stinging, a strange tightness in his chest, Naruto crept away.
Naruto remembers the first time he saw Itachi Uchiha. He remembers the way he cradled Sasuke’s hand, the way he brushed away his tears.
He remembers looking at them and thinking, I wish I had someone who loved me like that.
Five years later, he still remembers. He remembers careful hands and a soothing voice. He remembers kind eyes and a gentle smile.
But he has new memories now, too.
He has memories of hard fists and red eyes. Bones snapping and a cold voice. A hand wrapped around a pale throat, and Sasuke screaming and screaming and screaming.
Naruto has two memories of Itachi Uchiha. They contradict each other entirely.
Naruto sits cross-legged in the grass, wire-string wrapped around his fingers. He stares at the dark bruises on his teammate's throat.
Sasuke senses his staring immediately. He turns to look at him with a scowl. “What?”
Naruto swallows past the sudden lump in his throat. He struggles to find his tongue. “Your brother…”
Sasuke tenses, his fingers stilling on the shuriken he’s holding.
“… He wasn’t always like that, was he?”
Sasuke’s jaw clenches. His fingers twitch. “What do you mean?”
Naruto remembers red eyes and a cold voice. He remembers the snap of bone, a hand around Sasuke’s throat.
(He remembers fingers brushing Sasuke’s cheek. I don’t want you to be anyone else. I want you to be you.)
He wonders how a person so kind can become so cruel. He wonders how someone who once bandaged their brother’s wounds can now be the cause of them.
He wonders, and he doesn’t understand.
“I saw you guys once,” Naruto says. “You and your brother.”
Sasuke’s face is like ice. But he doesn’t throw the shuriken he’s holding at Naruto’s face, so Naruto takes that as a sign that it’s safe to go on.
“I was hiding in the woods, and I overheard the two of you talking. He was bandaging your hand. You were crying.”
The other boy is silent, not looking at him. Naruto wonders if he even heard him, but eventually, he replies.
“I don’t remember,” Sasuke says quietly.
“Oh,” Naruto says. He wonders if Sasuke is lying. He wonders if Sasuke wants to be lying.
(He wonders what would be more painful—to know your brother as only a monster, or to remember a time when he wasn’t.)
Naruto remembers gentle hands. The light brush of fingers. Eyes that looked at Sasuke like something infinitely precious.
“He really loved you,” Naruto says quietly. “Or at least, it seemed that way to me.”
Sasuke flinches slightly, his fingers curling around the shuriken held in his palm.
“Yeah,” Sasuke says, and there’s something poisonous in his tone now. It coils around his words like a snake. “It did to me, too.”