Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

His duty orders arrived a day after he saw his passing grade listed at the Academy’s front noticeboard. Report for Team Assignment on 6/1 at 700 hours, Academy Classroom 1. Even less fanfare than getting the headband, which was probably for the best. People whispered last day of class. That little traitor, from that clan, becoming a ninja. It made people nervous.

It made Sasuke nervous too, not that he would ever admit it. He tried very hard not to think of Itachi, but how could he not remember that at twelve, Itachi had been recruited for ANBU? Graduating at the top of his class barely ranked as an accomplishment.

Around him, his classmates chattered like hens that didn’t know they were in line for slaughter, excepting clan brats maintaining an air of professionalism. Well . . . Yamanaka argued with that pink kunoichi with high scores on written tests, Nara seemed to be napping, and Hyuuga always faded to the background, and not on purpose. A handful of minutes later, Sasuke himself had a dumb fight with that moron Uzumaki, who’d somehow weaseled a headband from Iruka-sensei.

Not much professionalism from anyone then. Sasuke could hardly take the high road when he worked himself into such a tizzy that he accidentally “kissed” that imbecile. The girls acted like they were in a soap opera over that, but Sasuke had little to report besides faint nausea that he knew Uzumaki had cheap miso ramen for breakfast.

Ending up in Uzumaki’s team irked him, but traditions were traditions. No matter how dumb. Getting Haruno actually bothered him more since she was one of the annoying girls always harassing him (he would have picked Hyuuga, if only because she rarely talked to him . . . or even looked at him). None of it mattered. Only his jounin-sensei mattered, and then only if whoever they'd been assigned took their teaching assignment seriously.

And didn’t shun Sasuke for a traitor.

His head pounded as the jounin arrived for their teams. The new Ino-Shika-Chou team got the Hokage’s son, as expected, and the rest got jounin that Sasuke couldn’t recognize. Which didn’t mean much, since Sasuke no longer had any reason to know who was who in Konoha’s army. Then he was alone in the classroom, Haruno and Uzumaki grating at his nerves.

“Why isn’t he here yet?” whined Uzumaki, voice pitched to a note that made Sasuke’s eardrums recoil.

“Maybe he’s busy,” said Haruno.

Sasuke grunted and laid his head on the table.

“Now you’re bothering Sasuke!” screeched Haruno.

“Am I supposed to give a shit about that?”

“Shut up, both of you!” said Sasuke.

Haruno made a sound fit for a wounded animal, but at least she retreated to a desk a few feet away from Sasuke. Of course, Uzumaki took that as a challenge and rushed closer, chanting some random challenges that Sasuke didn’t bother registering. He couldn’t afford to beat some sense into the idiot today, not when there was the slightest chance that he’d get a jounin-sensei with the mildest of intentions to train him.

Sasuke’s short supply of patience was exhausted by the time the sun was halfway through the eastern sky, and they were without any sign of their jounin-sensei. Maybe it was all a hoax and the council was waiting outside, making bets about how long the Uchiha traitor would wait meekly for a jounin-sensei that would never come.

“That’s it,” yelled Uzumaki, rushing to the front of the classroom. “I’m gonna show this asshole.”

“What are you doing?” Haruno followed him, wringing her hands as Uzumaki grabbed the eraser and headed to the door. “You’re gonna get us in trouble! Stop it, stop it; Sasuke do something!”

Sasuke sighed. He wasn’t going to make it.

At least Uzumaki calmed down after setting up his little trick, and settled at a front desk to giggle and fidget at odd intervals. Haruno glanced anxiously between him and the eraser, making Sasuke wonder why she didn’t just disable the dumb trap if it worried her so much. Not that it should. Their jounin, if he bothered to show up, wouldn’t fall for it anyway.

The door finally nudged open about an hour later. Sasuke couldn’t keep himself from leaning forward, certain as he was that the trap wouldn’t work. He heard Uzumaki and Haruno gasp loudly, then froze on his seat as the eraser missed a long braid by a breath.

“Damn it!” yelled Naruto. “He dodged.”

“Juvenile.” His voice was the same.

Sasuke’s throat spasmed. He almost doubled over when those dark eyes passed over him briefly. No expression whatsoever. Maybe he didn’t see Sasuke at all. Maybe it wasn’t him.

“I’m so sorry, sensei,” Sakura breathed out, bowing almost to the floor. “Naruto’s just deficient; he never knows any better.”

“Like hell I don’t,” said Naruto. “Why are you so late?”

“For good reasons, rest assured,” said Itachi.

Itachi. It was Itachi. Sasuke would recognize the bastard blind and deaf. And in hell.

“Follow me,” said Itachi, without bothering to look up at Sasuke.

Somehow, Sasuke’s joints hadn’t locked in place. Proud that he didn’t tremble, he got up and followed Haruno and Uzumaki. He even managed not look like was hurrying, though his teammates were tripping all over themselves.

“This isn’t fair,” said Uzumaki as they walked through the village, a few paces behind Itachi. “Shikamaru gets that badass with a beard, Kiba gets that hot lady, and we get the girliest-looking fucker . . . besides Sasuke.”

“He can hear us,” hissed Sakura, punching Naruto’s shoulder and glancing back at Sasuke in obvious despair.

“I hope he can,” huffed Naruto.

Sasuke focused on his heartbeat. No. He focused mostly on the fat braid between Itachi’s shoulder blades, or on the ACE bandages wrapped around his calves, trying to judge if his brother was skinny or not. It was too hard to tell an enemy’s weight when they wore the bulky standard uniform favored by Leaf jounin. Bile bubbled at the back of his throat. Itachi walked around without a care in the world, decked in the outfit worn by the most respected ninja in the village. Maybe he thought it was a fair reward for ripping through his family in a crippling wave of betrayal and murder.

Itachi paused on the trail leading to the Hokage monument, then gestured at a bench meant for sight-seeing. He leaned on a fence and scanned them, his expression placid. Sasuke couldn’t restrain a reflex to curl his hands into fists when their eyes met, but Itachi didn’t seem to recognize him.

Maybe it wasn’t him. Sasuke hadn’t seen him in five years, and it wasn’t like Itachi had ever been particularly striking. Straight black hair and dark eyes, voice soft. There might be those birthmarks under his eyes, but they were only obvious up close. And the jounin was standing with his back to a wide tree trunk that shrouded him in a veil of dim shadow. Maybe it wasn’t him. Maybe it was just an anonymous guy with dark hair and eyes.

“My name’s Itachi.”

Sasuke’s throat clenched.

“That’s nice,” said Uzumaki. “Now what?”

“Naruto, don’t be rude!” Haruno slapped his shoulder, then turned to Itachi and bowed to her waist. “He’s uneducated, Itachi-sensei. I’m Haruno Sakura, and that’s Uchiha Sasuke over there, and this idiot is Uzumaki Naruto.”

“I know your names.”

Sasuke's gonna have vomited by the end of the day.

“So. What. Now?” repeated Uzumaki, perhaps angered at how Itachi’s words made Sakura’s shoulders slump.

“We get to know each other, I suppose,” said Itachi. A gust of wind blasted through the tree, blowing some locks of hair in front of his eyes. He ignored them. “Hobbies, goals, and dislikes. That sort of thing.”

“You tell us first,” said Naruto. “Why are you a ninja?”

“Well,” said Itachi, tilting his head at Naruto. “I was born here, a hidden village, and happened to have some talent.”

Happened to have some talent. Someone, somewhere, was laughing his ass off at Sasuke.

“I don’t have much time for hobbies,” continued Itachi, gazing at the sky with an absurdly wistful air. “I’m fond of candy . . . I think I would collect the wrappers if I was one for indulgences.”

“That’s the weirdest shit I’ve ever heard,” said Uzumaki.

“Naruto.” Sakura slapped his shoulder again, and then turned towards Itachi with a saccharine smile. “And what do you dislike, sensei?”

“Paperwork,” said Itachi. “On a positive note, I’ll have a lot to delegate now.”

“So you’re a desk jockey,” said Uzumaki.

“Sometimes,” said Itachi, “I’m very organized.”

Sasuke remembered his room back in the day. It'd always been pristine.

“That’s not fair!” Naruto actually stomped his foot, making Sasuke consider the possibility that he was hallucinating. “I want a real jounin to be my teacher.”

"There's a box at the Main Mess Hall for suggestions and complaints," said Itachi.

Sasuke hated to admit that from almost anyone else in the world, he would have found that funny.

"Please just stop talking," Haruno pleaded with Uzumaki.

"That's alright; honesty is valuable among comrades," said Itachi.

"I became a ninja because there's a man I have to kill," said Sasuke before he even registered the fury Itachi's words triggered.

Itachi turned to him, tilted his head, and . . . smiled. His lips twitched.

"That's dumb," said Uzumaki, "especially for you. I became a ninja because I want to protect the village."

"You became a ninja because you want people to like you," said Sasuke. "Fat chance. Everyone hates you."

"Not as much as they hate you and your traitor family, asshole."

"Naruto!" Sakura yelled at the same time that Sasuke prepared to rain down on Uzumaki like a beast on soldier pills.

"That's enough," said Itachi, voice devoid of levity for the first time.

Sasuke stopped in his tracks, gaze fixed on Uzumaki's frame, now in a defensive position. He glanced at Itachi, noting that he'd straightened up and shed all pretense of being relaxed. With great effort, Sasuke forced his joints to loosen. Attacking fellow shinobi outside of self-defense was grounds for dishonorable discharge. Technically. He would not make it so easy for Itachi.

"And you?" Itachi asked Haruno after the moment had passed, voice subtly light once more.

Haruno blinked. "Huh?"

"Why do you want to be a ninja?" repeated Itachi.

Sasuke zoned out Haruno's undoubtedly idiotic answer, determined not to lose his mind again. He needed to make it home, and then . . . one step at a time. For now, he just needed to get home.

Chapter Text

Itachi let them go early, but Sasuke couldn’t make himself go home. He almost wished he’d accepted Sakura’s stupid invitation for whatever it was she’d wanted to do if only because it would’ve given him an excuse to stay away.

He had plenty to do, starting with figuring out what he’d tell his parents about his new jounin-sensei. Sasuke swallowed, momentarily nauseous, then set out for the main secret library. Even with a genin’s pseudo-clearance, he should be able to access some files on Itachi. First and foremost, he needed something to say besides “Itachi looks healthy and happy”.

His parents, Fugaku especially, would be crushed. They’d try to hide it, but Sasuke would be able to tell.

Getting into the secret library was so easy that Sasuke wondered if he couldn’t have been sneaking in the entire time he was at the Academy. He noted the broad-shouldered ninja guarding the stair to the lower levels of the basement and assumed all classified information is much more heavily guarded, then turned to the shelves of scrolls, folders, and booklets that contained basic shinobi profiles. At some point in the week, some harried paperwork chuunin drone would slip a page with Sasuke’s name into the row with all the U’s.

He figured Itachi’s was longer in that row, not after he personally decimated its numbers, and headed for “I”, grateful that their parents didn’t go for a common name like “Sasuke” for him.

Every time he explicitly considered his relationship to Itachi, he wanted to throw up. Wonderful.

Another punch to the gut came when he opened the bona fide textbook that passed for Itachi’s profile book. Itachi, formerly of the Uchiha Clan. It was practically emblazoned in the heading, right beside a picture of Itachi that looked a few years old. Konoha was not the slightest bit ashamed of what they’d done to his family. They weren’t even bothering to coat it in the usual veneer of propaganda.

Sasuke breathed, not loudly enough that it might attract any other ninja perusing the floor. He spared a second to be grateful for Konoha’s decision to be cheap with the surrounding light bulbs since it probably made him a little harder to recognize, and forced himself to keep reading.

And hit another roadblock at Itachi’s stat ranking. Thirty-five-point-five. That was insane. The Third didn’t hit thirty-five, though Sasuke didn’t remember the specific number. According to Iruka-sensei, few jounin ever hit the low thirties. And Itachi was seventeen.

Irrelevant. For the time being. Sasuke’s eyes skimmed the missions listings, noted the insane number of S and A-rank missions Itachi had completed, and moved to the comment sections. Shinobi wrote anonymous reports about each other’s performance out in the field, presumably to prepare for missions with unexpected teams and partners, but everyone knew the system was a village endorsed popularity contest and shit-talking mill. Even if Konoha hadn’t fucked him over with Itachi as a jounin-sensei, Sasuke would’ve made his way to his profile booklet eventually.

And would have been equally gobsmacked by it. It seemed like all Konoha shinobi cared about was that Itachi was giving his ANBU boyfriend special treatment. Sasuke scanned the teeny handwriting people used to save space on the paper, growing more incredulous with every passing page.

It’s just not fair, random#7 commented. Eiji’s on ANBU payroll and completes like one mission a year just because he’s blowing this asshole and the brass just looks the other way.

What, you think they’re gonna start shit because the strongest ninja in the village has a pet medic? said ANBUrankandfile. Be reasonable.

And so it went, until . . .

And it’s more than one mission a year. Eiji’s treated half of ANBU by now.

Hello, Eiji. Hopped off Itachi’s dick for a change? asked BlondShurik.

Fuck you, you’re the one who keeps bringing him up.

We are all Eiji in this booklet. random#7 returned after a few days of silence. Even you BlondShurik. Embrace it.

Did these people not realize what Itachi had done? Did they really care more about this Eiji? Speaking of . . .

Hello, motherfuckers. I’m here to gift you with my handwriting so your conspiracy theories can pick up some steam.

XOXO,
Eiji, A. K. A. Wasp, A. K. A the man your mom pictures when your dad fucks her

If someone had told Sasuke he’d be reading about Itachi’s boyfriend by noon when he woke up in the morning, he would’ve needed a moment to process the sentence before punching whoever said it in the face.

Eiji’s interjection triggered a flurry of enraged, barely coherent comments that Sasuke mostly skimmed through, though he had to admit he was beginning to like random#7, whoever they were.

I hope some enemy village steals this booklet at some point, they said, because this stupid-ass conversation is humanizing us.

Isn’t this shit supposed to be about how Itachi is on missions? interjected a seemingly new person. If I want shit-talking about Eiji, I can always go to the hospital cafeteria.

Sasuke was about to give up when he finally ran into a useful comment buried all the way on page thirty of the stupid booklet.

I’ve actually been on missions with Itachi. No, I’m not Eiji. Here’s the the gist of it for anyone who’s here looking for information:

• Itachi is not a team player. He’ll make a decision and expect you to follow it, though he at least lets you bitch about it. I don’t think anyone’s ever fought him on a call because, honestly, would you?
• He doesn’t share information. This is the fucking worst. From his POV, it makes sense since it is true they can’t torture shit out of you that you don’t know, but it’s nerve wracking to actually be in his squads because shit could be hitting the fan at any moment and you wouldn’t know it until you got shuriken flying up your ass.
• None of that actually matters once you realize he turns most S-ranks into jokes. I’ve tracked six bingo-book missing-nin with this guy, and all six fights lasted less than a minute. Once he’s got them under genjutsu, it’s fucking done.
• I was with him on a mission to bring down a Root asshole who hit like a fucking truck; think Might Guy but without the flamboyantness to make him less threatening, and the guy went down in an instant after Itachi joined the fight. Itachi looked freaking bored the entire time.
• You all realize this kid has a flee-on-sight order in some regions of Lightning country, and you all got a bug up your ass because he gives his lay special treatment? Like most of you assholes wouldn’t have a personal harem if you were half as strong as he is.
• This is all about the mess with his clan, but no one has the balls to bring that up, even on paper.

In conclusion, consider yourself blessed if he asks for you on a mission. Itachi, if you’re the type to read your own profile booklet and you recognize me, hit me up once you get sick of Eiji. As long as you don’t like any weird shit in bed, I could use a string of S-ranks on my resume.

Sasuke put the booklet away after that, briefly considered searching for this “Eiji” before deciding that no one would care, except to wonder if Itachi had chosen a man because he cared in the slightest about giving away the Sharingan, or because he genuinely preferred men over women, then chose to head home. It was still early afternoon, but he had no excuses left to keep him from facing his parents.

The Uchiha compound was quiet, as it was most days since Itachi. It was how Sasuke thought of the incident that had rendered most of his family amputees, by his brother’s name. No wonder seeing it grated his nerves like rust on a hinge.

He resisted an impulse to find some older aunts and uncles to see if they needed help with chores because they might ask him about his first day as a genin, and he didn’t want to lie to them. His parents should be the firsts ones to learn of Konoha’s latest insult.

The family cat, a sleek tabby they called Yori rubbed its spine along his calves as he took off his sandals. Normally, Sasuke would call out for Mikoto, but the word got stuck in his mouth. His eyes fell on the pristine house, at the sunlight that failed to lift the ever-present gloom from the neat furniture and wooden floors. A picture of their family as it used to be adorned the wall: his father confident and proud, his mother beautiful and serene, and Itachi. Young, thin, and expressionless. It’d been taken a month before it.

“You’re back earlier than expected.”

Sasuke had long since stopped jumping at the sound of his mother’s voice, but his nerves were on edge. He could only meet her dark gaze for a moment before his eyes slid away, frowning at the empty space where her right arm should be. Itachi had sliced it off midway between her shoulder and elbow, and Mikoto never wore a prosthetic. They didn’t make fake arms worth the trouble, she said.

“Sasuke.”

“I’m fine,” he said, but his voice broke around the second syllable.

“Let’s go to the kitchen,” said Mikoto. “I’ll make some tea.”

Sasuke followed her, forcing himself to hold back stupid, useless tears. Mikoto was still serene, and still beautiful, and he didn’t want her seeing him sobbing like some kind of baby. She didn’t deserve that.

“Your father retired early today,” she said as she put a kettle on the stove.

No, he’d just taken too many painkillers again. Fugaku suffered from phantom limb pain, as did many of Sasuke’s aunts and uncles, but he was the only one who anesthetized himself into a stupor on a regular basis. Not for the first time, Sasuke was guiltily grateful to get a break from his presence.

“So, what’s wrong?” Mikoto said after setting a plate with the steaming kettle on the table.

“It’s him,” said Sasuke. “They made him my jounin-sensei.”

“Has his name become difficult to pronounce?” asked Mikoto.

Sasuke looked up.

“Itachi. See?” She was expressionless as she sat beside him, wiping her hand with a kitchen towel.

“How did you know?”

“Who else would send you into such a state?” asked Mikoto.

“I’m sorry,” said Sasuke.

Itachi had seen, of course he had, and Sasuke hadn’t even thought of that.

“There’s no need to be sorry,” said Mikoto as she poured herself some tea. “How does he look?”

Sasuke shrugged. “He looked like himself, a little taller and with longer hair. I read his profile booklet.”

He gave a short summary of the ridiculous fight scrawled on the thing, and Mikoto reacted as though he was recounting a vaguely interesting fiction novel. Sasuke didn’t know what to make of it, so he forced himself to find the reaction calming. Nevertheless, he couldn’t force out the flee-on-sight order, or the fact that Itachi already seemed to be the most powerful ninja in the village.

How was Sasuke supposed to measure up to that?

“And your other teammates?” asked Mikoto.

“Haruno and Uzumaki.” He frowned, for once careless with his emotions. “They’re useless.”

“They didn’t make Itachi your jounin-sensei,” said Mikoto.

“Huh?”

Mikoto put her teacup down and looked down at Sasuke. “They made him Uzumaki Naruto’s jounin-sensei.”

“What?” Sasuke shook his head. Whatever Mikoto was getting at, he couldn’t glean a wisp of it. Uzumaki was a nonentity, notable only for his extreme stupidity.

“Do you know what a jinchūriki is?” asked Mikoto.

“Isn’t that what the Fourth used to take down the Nine-Tails?”

“In a manner of speaking,” said Mikoto. “The Fourth used Sealing Jutsu to bind the Kyūbi to a human—a jinchūriki. Uzumaki Naruto, to be more specific.”

Sasuke’s thoughts raced. That idiot? The Nine-Tails? How? Did he even know? And . . . “What does that have to do with Itachi?” He didn’t think to be nauseous until after the name had burst out of him.

Mikoto smiled at him. “Sharingan can control the bijū, or so they say.”

“. . . That’s why they blamed us for the Nine-Tails’ attack,” said Sasuke. No one, in the village or in the Uchiha compound, had ever brought that up. Why not?

“They blamed us because it was convenient,” said Mikoto.

Sasuke looked away, ashamed and unable to say why. No one had paused at the notion of him in the same team as Uzumaki. “I might never awaken Sharingan.” He was pushing thirteen, already manipulated his chakra with ease, and had gone through his first puberty growth spurt. And still no sign of Sharingan in him.

“That’s alright,” said Mikoto. “There’s more than one way to control someone.”

Chapter Text

“Well, this was embarrassing for all of you,” said Itachi, the husk of the tree Sasuke had scorched framing him.

Sasuke had just gotten his breathing under control, but only time would vanish the sheen of sweat over his skin. His only consolation was that Uzumaki and Haruno looked much worse than him: Uzumaki stood soaking wet and Haruno looked a second away from bursting into tears. Though considering they were barely shinobi, Sasuke shouldn’t take much pride in looking less foolish than they did.

“Come on, sensei!” whined Uzumaki. “Just give us another chance, and don’t do that nasty genjutsu. It’s not fair.”

Itachi looked at him, sighed, and tucked a few locks of dark hair behind his ear. His gaze passed over Sasuke and Haruno, maintaining a long-suffering air to it. “You really should reconsider your career choices.”

“What?” cried Uzumaki.

“Being a ninja is a difficult job,” said Itachi. “For many, the benefits aren’t worth it.”

Sasuke could punch him. Barring people born into money, being a ninja was the best job in the village. Even those that weren’t skilled enough to take a shot at more dangerous missions still got free treatment at the hospital and some travel flexibility, which allowed them to visit towns to look for odd jobs and potential clients for smuggled goods.

“I’m not reconsidering shit,” said Uzumaki, crossing his arms. “You have any idea how hard I worked to get here? And how much I still got left to do?”

“The villagers won’t accept you, much less respect you, if you become powerful enough,” said Itachi. “There’s no threshold of jutsu that will buy you their affection.”

Uzumaki froze, his eyes wide and his mouth hanging slightly open, for once at a loss for words. Mikoto’s warnings replayed in Sasuke’s mind. Itachi lies with the truth. Perhaps, but Sasuke couldn’t find the lie in that moment.

“The old-man Hokage . . .” started Uzumaki.

“Sarutobi Hiruzen is Hokage because he is respected,” said Itachi. “He is not respected because he is Hokage.”

As if Uzumaki would ever grasp the difference.

“Sakura.” Itachi turned towards her while Uzumaki glared, trying to come up with a retort. She cringed at his attention, looking at his feet. “Shinobi work is painful, both physically and emotionally. Be really honest with yourself about how much you’re willing to suffer for whatever glory you’ve imagined it is.”

While Haruno hiccupped, Itachi flicked his gaze towards Sasuke.

“And you,” he said, while Sasuke focused every fiber of his being on keeping his muscles lax and his breathing even, “you don’t need power to defeat this man you hate so much. You need time. Ask your mother what I mean, if you have the guts.”

Sasuke refused to rise to the bait. He would only be flattened and humiliated, as the stupid morning exercise to get those damned bells from Itachi had proved. He would keep his gaze locked on Itachi’s dark gaze and make sure his face stayed frozen. Mikoto would probably want him to smile, but he had not reached that level of control.

“Come on, sensei,” said Uzumaki. “If you just give us another chance . . .”

“Take today to think about what I’ve said.” Itachi folded his hands at the small of his back. “If you’re sure, report to the tower at seven-hundred hours tomorrow for our first mission. I won’t think any less of you if you decide this isn’t for you.”

“Seven-hundred—”

But Itachi flickered away before Uzumaki could even get the protest out. Sasuke let out a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding.

“Damn it,” muttered Uzumaki, before brightening up and smiling. “Well, at least he didn’t demote us or whatever. You guys wanna grab some lunch?”

Sasuke growled before whirling around, too wound up to dignify the idiot with a response. He was halfway to the outskirts of the village, heading to a strip of forest that neighbored the Uchiha compound, before cooling down enough to think. Hadn’t Mikoto instructed him, in no uncertain terms, to befriend Uzumaki Naruto, vessel for the fearsome Nine-Tailed Fox? Sasuke extended his neck, closing his eyes to ward them from the biting brightness of the midday sun, and sighed.

He had to go back to the village, to brave the bustling plaza a couple of blocks from the Tower, and sidle up to Uzumaki. Undoubtedly, the moron had gone straight to that stupid ramen stand. Villagers and shinobi alike flooded the plaza at lunch time, which would make it a joke for anyone interested in overhearing anything Sasuke might say.

Not an excuse. Sasuke allowed himself another suffering sigh before setting out for Ichiraku’s.

He spotted Uzumaki waiting in line at Ichiraku’s, trying to chat up some girl who looked everywhere but at him. For a moment, Sasuke berated himself for never noticing the oddness surrounding the villagers’ contempt for his new teammate. Uzumaki was irritating, yes, but no more so than . . . say, Inuzuka, yet the villagers treated him as though he carried some sort of plague. The only person they might hate more was Sasuke himself.

Sasuke was tempted to take the busy crowd as an excuse to put off the unpleasantness of spending time with Uzumaki, but since there was no way to ever be around the idiot without arousing suspicion anyway, he braced himself and cut through the crowd. A few customers glared at him for cutting in line, but the combination of a headband and the Uchiha fan at the back of his navy shirt was enough to keep them at bay.

“Hey,” he started, once he was by Uzumaki’s side.

“What the fuck!” Assuming that Uzumaki’s surprise was exaggerated for effect was probably giving him too much credit. “Bastard?”

“Uh . . .”

“You know there’s a line, asshole?”

Sasuke glanced at the complainer—a paunchy old man with a bald spot and a beer belly—then shifted his attention back to Uzumaki. “We need to talk?”

“Do we?”

“I mean, I want to talk,” amended Sasuke.

Uzumaki stared at him as though he’d sprouted a second head, and walked forward with the line. “Seriously, what the fuck?”

At a loss for what else to do, Sasuke slid behind him. “Come on, it’s important.”

“Whatever, douche. I’m hungry.”

A few customers grumbled, but no one dared to say much. Sasuke admitted, though only to himself, that Uzumaki’s refusal to acknowledge his presence was impressive. Sort of. He’d always thought of the moron as incapable of anything as subtle as passive-aggressiveness. When Uzumaki still didn’t acknowledge him even after they picked up their orders of miso ramen and Sasuke followed him to a somewhat secluded spot behind a depilated flower stand a block away from Ichiraku’s, Sasuke started to reevaluate a few of his assumptions.

Much to his annoyance, the ramen itself proved to be excellent. The salt did not overpower the collection of spices dissolved in the broth, which was more than could be said for anything prepared in what amounted to a little shack.

“Alright, asshole,” Uzumaki said finally, “what do you want?”

“I was thinking that since we’re teammates now, we should make amends,” said Sasuke.

Uzumaki fixed narrowed blues eyes on him.

“And,” continued Sasuke, refusing to let the idiot unsettle him, “maybe train together.”

“. . . Yeah, right,” said Uzumaki. “Get out of my face.”

Well, what was Sasuke supposed to do next? Beg? “Is it really so hard to believe that I’d want to be on good terms with you?”

“‘Dead last, you make me want to puke’,” Uzumaki spoke in a sing-song voice that sounded nothing like Sasuke. “‘Your mother must have smoked, drank, and dropped you on your head before the war’, ‘I’d rather choke on my own kunai than practice with you, dead last’, ‘you’re so stupid I’d forget the jutsu if I tried to train with you’.”

“You can’t imitate a voice for shit,” said Sasuke. Not the most diplomatic of responses, but Uzumaki would wall off even more if Sasuke laid on the sweetness too thickly.

“That’s all from last week,” said Uzumaki. “And now you expect me to believe you wanna be BFFs?”

“Last week I wasn’t stuck with you,” said Sasuke. “Dead fucking last,” he added for good measure.

“Tough shit,” said Uzumaki, smirking so hard his face muscles probably strained. “Now I’m the one who doesn’t want to train with you.”

Sasuke sucked in an angry breath, then paused. What would Mikoto do? Find a way to make Uzumaki believe he’d changed his mind on his own.

“Fine then,” said Sasuke, gleeful that he didn’t need to hide an iota of his disgust. “I’d be scared to spar with me if I was you too.”

“Fucking excuse me?”

“It’d be what? The millionth time I wipe the floor with you?”

“You know what,” said Uzumaki. “It’s on . . . after I finish my ramen though.”

Sasuke looked down to hide his satisfied smile. “It is pretty good ramen.”

“And after it goes down ‘cause this is too good to throw—hey, what about Sakura?”

“What?” It took Sasuke a moment to remember Haruno’s first name. “Oh, right.”

“She’s part of the team too,” said Naruto, beaming. “We should tell her to train with us.”

“. . . Right,” said Sasuke, wishing desperately for an excuse to stay away from her that wouldn’t make Uzumaki suspicious of his intentions. There just wasn’t one.

“She’d never listen to me,” said Uzumaki, “but if you say we should train together . . . for some reason she can’t see what a dick you are. We should spar tomorrow and find her after lunch.”

“Right.”

Sasuke decided to call the conversation a success. Considering how annoying Uzumaki could be, Haruno would refuse to be around them in a few days at the most. Sasuke hoped, anyway. Haruno was pretty annoying herself.

“Sakura would be with Ino around this time,” said Uzumaki, about half an hour after they’d finished their ramen. “Except Ino’s probably with her team so I’m not sure where she’d go . . .”

Sasuke didn’t have the first idea, not that he wanted to find her anyway, so he was content to let Uzumaki speculate.

“She wouldn’t have gone home because then she’d have to tell her parents what an asshole Itachi is,” continued Uzumaki.

Sasuke couldn’t suppress a frown at the sound of Itachi’s name. He’d have to work on that.

“I bet she went to that little park near her house,” said Uzumaki. “She goes there when she feels bad.”

If it was Sasuke and he was trying to keep anything from his parents, then he wouldn’t go to brood anywhere near their home while he was supposed to be doing something else. Someone might see him. Though he wouldn’t be surprised if Haruno hadn’t worked out that much.

“Alright, let’s go,” said Uzumaki.

As it turned out, Haruno had enough sense not to retreat to a little playground within walking distance of the house she shared with her civilian parents. Uzumaki frowned at the pre-schoolers running around a swing set, their mothers chasing around them with happy laughter, and plopped down on the tree branch he was sharing with Sasuke.

“I don’t think she’d go to the library now,” he said. “She doesn’t go there when she’s upset.”

“How do you know so much about her?” asked Sasuke. The only reason he’d found Uzumaki at the ramen stand was that the moron ranted praises for the place nonstop to anyone who’d listen. And anyone who wouldn’t listen too.

“She’s gonna be my wife so I have to know what she’s up to,” said Uzumaki.

“In other words, you’re stalking her.”

“No, I’m practicing stealth,” said Uzumaki, crossing his arms over his chest.

Sasuke shot him an unimpressed look. He was vaguely offended on Haruno’s behalf, at least until he remembered that if she couldn’t detect Uzumaki tailing her, then she probably deserved to be stalked.

“I know!” said Uzumaki. “A couple of weeks back she had this big fight with Ino and . . . come on.” He grabbed Sasuke’s arm and gestured deeper into the forest.

Haruno had retreated to a semi-secluded grove less than a kilometer south of the playground. It was well within village borders, but away enough that most would avoid it without a thought, including shinobi trying for some privacy. As far as hiding spots went, it’d do for a civilian. Haruno sat against a tree trunk, legs drawn to her chest and face buried between her knees. She didn’t notice him and Uzumaki approaching her, and also did nothing to muffle the hiccups and sniffles escaping her.

“Sakura,” started Uzumaki as he walked towards her.

She startled and raised her head, then glowered when her red-rimmed eyes fell on Uzumaki. A scrape on the lateral side of her left knee glowed an angry red, a souvenir from whatever skirmish she’d had with Itachi.

“That’s looking pretty nasty,” said Uzumaki, gesturing at the bruise. “You wanna go to the clinic?”

“No, it’s nothing,” said Haruno.

Sasuke agreed. It looked worse than it was, and probably stung like hell, but it wasn’t worth bugging the medics about.

“Ugh, that bastard!” said Uzumaki. “He shouldn’t have hit you that hard.”

“He didn’t,” said Sasuke.

Haruno looked at him, as though she hadn’t noticed him until that moment, and shrunk in on herself.

“Then who, dumbass?” asked Uzumaki.

Sasuke shrugged. Itachi hadn’t hit either him or Uzumaki, and there wasn’t a single reason he’d be tougher on Haruno, so . . .

“I t-tripped,” admitted Haruno.

Itachi is neither violent nor cruel, Mikoto had warned Sasuke, but he is careless, and a terrible of judge of others’ limits.

“Uh, it happens to the best of us?” tried Uzumaki.

No, barring drugs or injuries, good ninja didn’t trip, but it wasn’t in Sasuke’s best interest to alienate Haruno. Not yet.

“Give me a break,” said Haruno. “Itachi-sensei’s right and I’m not cut out for this.”

“That’s not true; you have the best grades,” said Uzumaki, then gestured at Sasuke. “And the Bastard here said we should train together, so I bet you’ll fight much better in no time now.”

“I don’t know,” said Haruno, glancing at Sasuke. “Maybe it’d be better for you guys if I quit and a better fighter takes my place.”

“No way,” said Uzumaki. “If you quit, I’m quitting too. We’re a team.”

Sasuke rolled his eyes. So much for that determination to be Hokage.

“This is exactly what I-itachi wants,” he said, despising himself for having so much trouble with the bastard’s mere name. How did he expect to ever beat the fucker in a fight, much less kill him?

“Yeah, totally,” said Uzumaki. “It’s more of his mind games.”

“You really think so?” Haruno sniffed and rubbed her nose.

“He knew we had absolutely no chance to get those bells from him,” said Sasuke. “Maybe this is the real test. Which of us has the psychological fortitude to report for duty after being humiliated?”

Haruno didn’t look more confident, but she nodded, and Sasuke knew he’d won the first round. Team Seven would not dissolve so easily despite Itachi’s best efforts.

Chapter Text

Itachi didn’t seem surprised when all three of them showed up at the Tower the next day. That was fine. Sasuke hadn’t expected a reaction. He eyed the scroll Itachi had slipped under his belt, unable to suppress a flash of curiosity even though he knew it would be a dumb chore/pseudo-mission. Had Itachi ever done D-ranks? He’d been part of a genin squad once. Sasuke ought to look for those records next.

“We’re here!” declared Naruto, loud enough that a few of the chuunin around glared his way. “We passed your little psych test.”

Sasuke thought that Itachi’s eyes slid over to him, but . . . he probably just imagined it.

“Less paperwork for me, I suppose,” said Itachi. “Meet me at TG-7 in an hour. I have a meeting.”

“That’s not an excuse,” said Uzumaki.

Naruto. Sasuke had to start thinking of his teammates in more familiar terms. Mikoto always said that the best lies had a grain of truth to them.

“I don’t owe you excuses,” said Itachi, a second before he vanished.

“Damn him!” Naruto raised his fist to the air like they were all in a badly acted play. “I wanna learn to disappear like that.”

“Let’s just get to the training grounds,” said Sakura, sighing.

Sasuke tried and failed not to obsess over Itachi’s meeting while Naruto annoyed Sakura with some invitations to lunch, dinner, the next festival Konoha had in the works, and the end of times, probably. Whatever. The morning sun burned his forehead, or maybe it was just his thoughts trying to burst out of him. The jinchuuriki, Naruto, the Sharingan, and Itachi.

Itachi from before, the absent hole of the last five years, and whatever he’d turned into.

“The good news is that becoming a chuunin is easier than most imagine.”

Sasuke’s breath caught.

“Oh, come on!” yelled Naruto, hopefully masking Sasuke’s reaction. “That’s just rude.”

“Stop it,” said Sakura, slapping Naruto’s shoulder.

Itachi sat in front of the burned tree trunk, unconcerned with Naruto and Sakura’s bickering. If he noticed Sasuke staring at him, nose itching in sympathy as the wind blew Itachi’s bangs into his face, he didn’t care.

“The next chuunin exams are in nine months,” said Itachi. “That should be more than enough time for you to learn basic reconnaissance and foraging, then we can all go on with our lives.”

Liar. Liar. Itachi wouldn’t be allowed to stray too far from Naruto. He wanted to get rid of Sasuke. And Haruno.

“Good going on letting us know you wanna get rid of us as soon as possible,” said Naruto. “What special jutsu do you know?”

“I’m good at genjutsu,” said Itachi, which was so criminal an understatement it might as well be a lie. “Most chuunin know only the bare minimum.”

“Iruka-sensei said I have potential with genjutsu,” said Sakura, gaze fixed on the grass.

“But you fell for my illusions just as badly as these other two,” said Itachi.

Sakura shrank. Naruto came to her defense in a flurry of indignation that Sasuke didn’t care to pay attention to. He remembered, despite his best efforts, Itachi floating away from him whenever he asked to train. There had been half-smiles then. He was grateful that Itachi wasn’t bothering with the mask this time; then he hated himself for being grateful.

“We’ll do missions in the morning, and spar in the afternoon,” said Itachi.

The missions were as stupid as Sasuke had expected: hunt down lost cats, take cows grazing, chase away ducks, clean the grimy hotel near the busiest village gates (Naruto’s clones were indispensable for once), transport sugar sacks from a warehouse to several markets in the village, etc., etc. Considering the pittance charged for a standard D-rank, Sasuke couldn’t even think of it as grunt work.

“It’s the businesses you’re helping,” Mikoto told him one afternoon when he couldn’t stifle his complaints. “Some of them.”

The sparring . . . well, it was more of an exercise in humiliation.

Itachi didn’t bother to spar with them personally after the first disastrous day of training. Sasuke hadn’t been able to touch him, hadn’t been able to see him at some points. He knew that sparring sessions where one partner could do little beyond throw katas at the other were boring, but what else could he do? Itachi didn’t react to him; he just dodged with a blank look on his face.

So he made a dull Shadow Clone from then on, one that danced away from them without speaking. It was like fighting an infernal doll.

“I don’t know how he expects us to learn from that thing,” complained Sakura about two weeks into their training.

Left to his own devices, Naruto would eat at Ichiraku’s every day, three times a day, but the summer intensified each passing week, making hot ramen a special kind of torture. Most ninja preferred assorted salads with extra meat, noodles, and potatoes during the hotter months. And shaved ice with sugar and food coloring that probably eroded the stomach lining in high concentrations, but Sasuke didn’t care. He had too few relaxing things left in life.

“I think I’m getting stronger,” said Naruto, ever the optimist. “The clone was a little slower today.”

Sasuke attributed that to Itachi being distracted by an official looking scroll that he hadn’t managed to examine, but Naruto was getting stronger. Because Sasuke was training with him daily. Sakura too, but she didn’t seem able to keep up with them. He didn’t push because Naruto was happy enough as long as she was around, even if the two of them were the only ones doing anything. As long as Naruto was content, he didn’t need to waste too much time on her.

All in all, being paired with Sasuke was the best thing that had ever happened to Naruto. It turned out that the idiot could be taught as long as the lesson was framed as some kind of competition.

“Tell you what, moron,” said Sasuke. “If you can climb this waterfall faster than me, I’ll give you one of my mother’s shuriken.”

“Really?” Naruto said, blue eyes wide.

He always looked like Sasuke was bringing down the sun and the stars for him with every hint of acknowledgement, and it made Sasuke feel a strange mix of happiness and anxiety that at least one aspect of his mission was so easy. He bet that Naruto already loved him, though he probably wouldn’t admit it if asked.

“Yeah, really,” said Sasuke. It’d be weeks and weeks, maybe months, before Naruto would be close to beating him at speed.

“What about Sakura?” asked Naruto.

Sakura was taking yet another break, nursing a cramped muscle after a mere thirty minutes of climbing up the waterfall. She had better control than either of them, but less motivation than a pampered noble.

“Sure, she can try to beat me too,” said Sasuke.

“Alright, I’m gonna go tell her!”

Sasuke sighed and rubbed his face. It was going well, he told himself at least ten times daily, but strength seemed to desert him at random times anyway. Either he gritted his teeth while Itachi ignored them during missions, or when Sakura worked up the courage to invite him on some stupid date, or when Fugaku asked about Itachi during dinner. Most nights, Sasuke woke in the grips of palpitations, and he was freaking twelve-years-old.

As the sun started setting, Sakura approached him, hands crossed at the small of her back and eyes locked anywhere but on his. “Sasuke—”

“—no, I don’t want to go anywhere with you,” snapped Sasuke. “How many times do I have to say it, for fuck’s sake?”

Sakura dipped her head and sniffed. “S-sorry, I didn’t mean . . .” She whirled around and ran off.

A loud breath wheezed past Sasuke lips. He hadn’t even realized he’d stopped breathing. That was definitely an overreaction, but at least Naruto had gone off to piss in the forest, so he hadn’t witnessed it. Sasuke wouldn’t have to suffer through a half-hearted apology. He ignored a voice in the back of his head suggesting that, maybe, he owed Sakura one regardless. It was not his fault that she couldn’t get it through her thick skull that every time she made advances, she disrespected his entire family.

Or maybe she did, and she just didn’t care. Sasuke got up for a walk, ignoring the thought that he should wait around to say goodbye to Naruto.

“Hey!” called Naruto later. The moon peeked through the hazy orange sky of sunset, and Sasuke had only the vaguest idea of which part of the village he’d wandered to. “What’re you doing here?”

“What are you doing here?” asked Sasuke, looking around. A garish neon sign advertised custom cocktails from a feminine silhouette with curves too steep to be anatomically possible. Men scurried around, hands in their pockets and eyes fixed on the ground.

Somehow, Sasuke had stumbled into the Red Lights District. He considered picking some pockets just to make the trip less pointless. Genin made shit money.

“I’m taking a shortcut to Ichiraku’s,” said Naruto. “You wanna come with?”

Considering Ichiraku’s was practically at the other end of the village, that made no sense, but Sasuke was in no mood to argue.

“Sure,” he said. Thinking about food made him realize he was hungry.

Sasuke had a feeling that Naruto used to pester the old man who owned Ichiraku’s for conversation, but was more than content to indulge Sasuke’s introverted nature. They picked up their ramen and retreated to a rooftop near a streetlight, Naruto babbling about some idiotic novel he was reading.

“Like, I’m sorry, but this main girl is just being dumb now,” rambled Naruto. “She’s trying to turn herself in to this creepy old man even though her ninja is as strong as the Fourth.”

“Aren’t they all,” said Sasuke, chewing one of the sundried cherry tomatoes scattered in his ramen.

Dimly, he thought of Namikaze Minato, a man that Konoha pretended to worship while treating his son like shit. He should just tell Naruto the truth and spare himself the tedium of a fake friendship. Naruto would probably decide the damned village wasn’t worth it all by himself.

“Sakura was crying, y’know?” Naruto slurped on his noodles, and Sasuke couldn’t tell if it was a clumsy tactic to avoid having to look up.

“She cries a lot.” Not exactly a show of remorse, but he sensed Naruto didn’t need him to go that far anymore.

“She wasn’t even gonna ask you out,” said Naruto. “She was just gonna ask about chakra.”

“Bullshit. She knows more about chakra theory than me.”

“No, I’m serious,” insisted Naruto. “None of that ‘theory’ is helping her in practice and it looked like you got the stick outta your ass a little . . .”

Sasuke could concede that maybe he’d overreacted at Sakura, but since she’d been bugging him with the rest of the girls in their year since forever, he wasn’t about to self-flagellate about it. “She should just ask I—” Despite it all, the name still got tangled in his tongue.

“Why do you hate him so much?” asked Naruto.

For the first few days, Sasuke had waited for Naruto to bring up Itachi’s background because he wasn’t the type to tiptoe around anything. Sakura had obviously sorted out who Itachi was, or rather, who he used to be. But by the third day or so, Sasuke had realized that Naruto just wouldn’t think to do even the most cursory research on his jounin-sensei, and a part of Sasuke he hadn’t even known existed relaxed.

“It’s like you’re gonna throw up if you look at him too long,” said Naruto.

“What, like you don’t?” He wasn’t as dumb as Sasuke would like sometimes.

“I think he’s a dick,” said Naruto.

Sasuke bit his lip to hide a stupid smile.

“He’s lazy as hell and he’s trampling all over Sakura’s confidence.” Naruto shrugged. “But I don’t hate him.”

Sasuke stared at his ramen cup, gripping his chopsticks so tight he had to force his hand to relax or risk fracturing them.

“I don’t think he’s rude on purpose,” continued Naruto. “Trust me, I would know. He annoys the hell outta me, but shit . . . Sasuke, I can get his name out without looking like it’s choking me.”

Sasuke’s cup of ramen hit the sidewalk. He stared down at the white carton, wondering how it got down there, and forced himself to take a steadying breath. If even Naruto could see how messed up he was, then . . .

“I’m late,” he said.

“Sasuke—”

“—I’m late,” he repeated.

Mercifully, Naruto didn’t try to follow him.

Next morning, the sun seemed as angry as Sasuke. Sweat poured down his temples as he chased after Itachi’s infuriating clone all over Training Ground Seven. A couple of times, he couldn’t help but look towards Naruto. The idiot always complained about the dullness of chakra manipulation exercises, but at least he got to stand below a cascading waterfall during the hottest days of summer. Sakura wasn’t far off from the edge of the pond trying to move around a boulder bigger than her. A boring exercise, but one that should help her with her reserves, assuming that she was doing it right.

Sasuke sighed, then looked back at the clone. The thing stared at him with dark eyes, unconcerned with the wind blowing its hair into its face, or with the heat, or with anything. The real Itachi had disappeared into a tree at some point and was currently doing fuck knew what.

“This is so stupid,” said Sasuke, wiping sweat from his brow. The clone was beyond him. Itachi had to know that.

He sat right on the ground, taking advantage of the shade offered by the sycamore tree over them. Mikoto’s words rang in his ear; Itachi’s clones were harmless unless provoked. Most of the time.

Less than a minute later, the real Itachi stood in front of him. “What are you doing?”

“What do you care?”

It’d been weeks and Itachi had done nothing. Sasuke bet he would continue to do nothing. He would’ve realized it sooner if not for the simmering rage that overboiled whenever he thought about Itachi too explicitly.

“You have to train,” said Itachi.

“No, I don’t,” said Sasuke.

That was bullshit, but if Itachi disagreed, he’d actually have to do his job. Or hurt, maybe even kill Sasuke. Anything but the nothing he was doing.

The confrontation, if it could be called that, died when an anonymous ninja Sasuke couldn’t detect flickered behind Itachi.

“Ibiki wants you,” said the bulky ninja in a gruff voice. Jounin, Sasuke assumed.

“Tell him I’m busy,” said Itachi.

“Don’t be a dick,” said the ninja. “It’s not like Ibiki ever asks for you unless it’s an emergency. Dismiss the brats early.”

Naruto and Sakura had noticed the newcomer. They approached quickly, perhaps expecting more excitement than was warranted.

“Itachi,” said the ninja.

“Take the day off,” said Itachi.

They were gone before Naruto and Sakura reached the sycamore.

Chapter Text

Sasuke had a new baby cousin, but her eyes were pale green. Fugaku was less than pleased, and he was awake enough when her parents brought her to meet their Head Family to say as much. Thank the spirits that no one took the ramblings of an addict seriously. Sasuke’s chest ached every time he thought of his father in such uncharitable terms, but the ache grew fainter every day. If Fugaku couldn’t see that there was more to being an Uchiha than the Sharingan . . . well, then Itachi remained a better Uchiha than all of them.

He headed to the Tower determined not to think about the spat he’d almost had with Itachi the previous afternoon. He hadn’t spoken to Mikoto about it, but he bet she would have told him to stay calm. And to control his temper better next time. He couldn’t afford to go around making principled stands when the village would seize the flimsiest opportunity to prune him from the ninja ranks. If Itachi wanted him to waste morning after morning chasing after a Shadow Clone, then Sasuke would waste his mornings chasing after a Shadow Clone.

At the Tower, the chuunin manning the cubicle that handed out D-ranks took one look at him and said that Itachi had decided to take a mission from the fourth floor that morning.

“What?” said Sasuke.

“Am I fucking stuttering?” said the chuunin, without looking up from a manga volume. “Stupid genin.”

Sasuke rushed towards the stairs, then forced himself to walk with some damned dignity. The fourth floor was the Mission Hall, where real ninja missions were divvied out.

Had Itachi gotten tired of sitting around while he, Naruto, and Sakura milked cows and cleaned roofs? Or maybe it had to do with that messenger who’d summoned Itachi to Ibiki, who Mikoto had identified as an Intelligence specialist? Or he wanted to avoid further confrontation with Sasuke? He couldn’t suppress a short, strangled laugh at that last thought, earning himself a funny look from a pair of chuunin passing him at the stairs.

The Mission Hall looked like any random office might, except the secretaries were chuunin sporting any assortment of scars and injuries. A stout woman limped to the window and slid it open as she fanned herself with a bunch of papers. Sasuke had never seen disabled ninja still working, and it surprised him so much that for a moment he missed Naruto shambling towards him like a drunken tiger.

“We’re going on a real mission!” he yelled, throwing his arms around Sasuke.

“Naruto, stop being so embarrassing,” said Sakura.

Sasuke pushed Naruto off, glad that no one seemed to be paying them the slightest attention.

“We’re escorting an artist,” Naruto told him, gesturing at a short woman with hair dyed flame-red. “This is Miss Eiko.”

The word for her was voluptuous, and judging by the way she dressed in a kimono that was a hint too short and a touch too low-cut, she knew it. If she was a kunoichi, she’d be the perfect type for seduction missions.

“Isn’t this one adorable,” she said, reaching for Sasuke’s chin.

Sasuke just stood there, annoyed by Sakura’s snitty little ‘hmph’, waiting for the moment to pass. This woman was obviously too old to genuinely consider him attractive, so she’d lose interest in teasing him much faster if he just ignored her.

“Where is this jounin of yours?” Eiko asked, moving away from Sasuke, fake interest evaporated.

“He comes and goes whenever he likes,” shrugged Naruto. “What kind of things are you an artist about?”

“I draw, mostly,” she said, smiling at Naruto’s odd way to phrase the question.

“The mission debrief said she wants to draw some sketches for naturalists,” said Sakura.

“I haven’t read it yet,” said Naruto.

“Where is the jounin?” repeated the client.

“I told you, he—”

“—I’m here.”

Itachi’s voice hit Sasuke’s ears before he felt the bastard’s presence on his left. Sasuke forced himself not to whirl towards him, to look his way as though he’d known the fucker was there the whole time. Itachi wouldn’t fall for it, but maybe some of the people bustling around Mission Hall would.

“You didn’t surprise me this time,” said Naruto. “Hah!”

“Yes, I did,” said Itachi. “You’re just not surprised I surprised you, for once.”

“Is that really important right now?” asked Sakura.

“Wait, where’s the jounin?” asked Miss Eiko, looking Itachi up and down.

Itachi hadn’t bothered to put on the full jounin uniform, settling for the slacks and a black wife beater that did little to hide that he was slim, if well-muscled. His headband was wrapped around his belt instead of around his head, and his hair was done up in a fish-tail braid that must have taken some time to do. He hardly looked like what most civilians imagined when they pictured a jounin.

“That’s pretty much him,” said Naruto, as if he remained as unimpressed as Eiko.

Sasuke bit back a smile at his tone.

“Alright, there’s been some kind of mistake,” said Eiko. “I was told I’d get a real ninja, preferably one taller than me.”

“I’m not fake,” said Itachi.

“He doesn’t look like much, but he’s actually pretty badass,” said Naruto.

Sasuke hated himself for being annoyed at that. It was the truth.

“I’ve been a ninja more than half my life, Miss Eiko,” started Itachi.

“Which would be impressive if you were an adult,” interrupted Miss Eiko. “I need to speak to your manager.”

“Lady, this isn’t a restaurant,” said Sakura.

“Yeah, don’t insult him like that,” said Naruto. “He’s gonna give you nightmares.”

Well, the client probably wouldn’t have gotten what “genjutsu” is.

“Miss Eiko, you paid a fraction of what someone of my rank costs in exchange for letting your trip become a training mission,” said Itachi. “If you want a different jounin, then post another request, multiply whatever you paid by about five, and wait for a jounin to become available. We don’t exactly grow on trees.”

Miss Eiko glared, but she couldn’t tolerate the increased cost or the wait, or both, and agreed to be off with them by mid-afternoon. She kissed Itachi’s cheek, a move he tolerated as blankly as Sasuke had tolerated her chin grabbing. Then she left, saying something about friends and goodbyes, and Itachi looked at them and gestured to follow him. Moments later they were using one of the tiny conference rooms beyond the main hall where the missions were assigned.

“Here’s the deal,” he told them without preamble, “she’s hiding something. We’re to find out what it is before we reach Hagi.”

“Why not just torture her?” said Sasuke.

“Wow, that’s a little extreme,” said Sakura.

“It’s not your place to ask questions, genin,” said Itachi. “Just listen, and do what you’re told.”

“I guess you always did.” Sasuke was proud he sounded so casual, though every part of him was screaming to shut up and keep his head down.

“No,” said Itachi, looking straight at him. “Not always.”

“Uh . . .” Naruto leaned closer and started mock-whispering to Sasuke. “Did I miss something? You guys fighting?”

Sakura mumbled Naruto’s name and dragged him away from Sasuke, but the interruption was enough to reel Sasuke back in. He forced himself to look away from Itachi’s eyes, hating the surge of relief that followed, and glared at the beige wall while Itachi went on with his mission briefing.

“Chances are she’ll target one of you when she tries to escape,” said Itachi, “and that’s when I’ll intervene. In the meantime, she must go on believing that I suspect nothing. Keep watch, and report to me if she does or says anything strange.”

“She hit on Sasuke,” said Naruto. “That was pretty weird since she’s a grown up and all.”

Itachi stared at him. “This is going to be a long trip.”

“Not that kind of weird, then?” Naruto shrugged. “My bad.”

“You have four hours to get your affairs in order,” said Itachi. “Don’t brag about details of your first mission to anyone, and meet me at the northern exit.”

Sasuke stood up at once, eager to put as much distance between himself and Itachi as possible, but Naruto wasn’t done.

“Can I bring a book?”

“Naruto!” said Sakura.

“He said it was gonna be a long trip,” protested Naruto. “So, can I?”

“If you can hide the book from me, sure,” said Itachi.

Naruto was still rambling about accepting challenges when Sasuke escaped the room. Four hours was plenty of time, technically, but he . . . he fled via a window, and it was a good five minutes before he realized he’d gone into the forest with no particular direction in mind. What a disaster. Itachi hadn’t even done anything yet, and Sasuke could barely stand to be in the same room with him. How would he handle days and days with the bastard away from Konoha, with no escape available? Could he force himself to care enough about the mission to put Itachi out of his mind?

One way or another, he would have to.

He made it home in record time, certain that Fugaku would be deep into his second dose of morphine milk for the day. In his mood, even speaking to Mikoto made him grind his teeth, but he had to tell someone he would be leaving the village.

“It’ll be your first time away from home,” Mikoto said, rubbing her arm just above the stump.

Sasuke had been so preoccupied with not screaming obscenities at Itachi that he’d forgotten all about that. “Yeah, I guess.”

“It’s a big world out there,” said Mikoto. “Few places, if any, can boast Konoha’s comforts.”

Sasuke rubbed his wrist. He wouldn’t call any part of Konoha comfortable.

“How’s your training going?”

“It isn’t,” said Sasuke. “Itachi’s refusing to teach.”

“He’s not refusing.” Mikoto didn’t quite smirk, but her smile looked sour. “He just doesn’t know how to teach. How could he, when he’s never struggled to learn anything in his life?”

“You’re not the one spending every day with him,” said Sasuke, disregarding how disrespectful he might sound. Technically, he was an adult now. “He’s not even trying.”

“Sasuke.”

Feeling small, Sasuke looked up at her.

“How is your relationship with Naruto?”

“He likes me,” said Sasuke, shrugging. “It was easy. He’s lonely.”

“He’s not the only one.” Mikoto reached for his chin, a mirror of the client’s gesture earlier, which did little to make Sasuke confident of his adulthood. “Itachi won’t do anything to you. Ignoring him should not be so insurmountable a challenge. So forget him for now, and focus on Naruto.”

“How do you know he’s not going to do anything?”

Mikoto let go of his chin, and shrugged. “He hasn’t so far, has he?”

Maybe not physically, but Sasuke hadn’t gone a day without nausea or tension headaches in five years, all thanks to what Itachi had done.

“If you must,” said Mikoto, “tell yourself you’re grateful he didn’t murder us all.”

Sasuke snorted. Thankfully, Mikoto took it in stride and chuckled along. Talk about damning with faint praise.

Chapter Text

It’d been a long time since Mikoto experienced pain besides the flashes of phantom agony from her missing limb. The throbbing from the rusty nail she’d driven through the bones of her right foot was both more intense and duller, as though her brain knew that it would soon be resolved.

Well, perhaps not soon.

Konoha’s emergency room was crowded with sniffling children, adults with hacking coughs, bored shinobi waiting for routine physicals, and elderly people complaining of aching joints and churning bellies. Mikoto had been assessed, judged not to be in immediate danger, and planted on a stretcher that at least offered her an excellent view of the emergency room.

Itachi had left the village for that mission, giving her an excellent opportunity to meet the infamous Eiji.

When she first heard of the boy, Mikoto had assumed he’d be old news in a matter of weeks, but he’d become a fixture in Itachi’s life. Or the rumors about Itachi’s life. Sasuke seemed incapable of even thinking Itachi’s name without suffering a minor breakdown, not that Mikoto blamed him (her dear Sasuke, resilient and hardworking as he was, was young in a way Itachi had never been).

So Mikoto decided that some recon on Eiji would be . . . interesting, if not necessarily useful.

The boy was unusually handsome, but if Itachi was the type to be distracted by superficiality for so long, then she’d known him even less than she realized. Eiji might be skilled, but she knew Itachi placed little value on that, which was just as well. He’d go mad from pride and frustration if he went around looking for people to impress him.

She watched Eiji work, judged him competent if not exactly pleasant. Or conventionally pleasant, to be more accurate. He touched patients as he glared at them, distracted children before giving them shots, and used chakra sparingly, always watching himself for exhaustion. Judging by the way he responded to subtle changes in the room’s bustle and noise, he knew the place like the back of his hand.

For once, fortune was on her side, and another medic interrupted Eiji as he headed to her bed.

“Hey,” said a girl with a butterfly pin in her hair. “Do you remember a patient you saw last week? Fifteen-year-old with an STI?”

“I don’t remember patients I saw half-an-hour ago,” said Eiji, shrugging his broad shoulders. “So I’m going with no.”

“She says she saw the male medic,” said the girl.

“Maybe Jian?”

“The tall, hot, male medic with gray eyes.”

“Sounds like Jian to me,” said Eji.

“Come on!”

“I’d fuck him,” said Eiji, reaching for the curtain around Mikoto’s bed. “Better go consult with him about that . . . and what the fuck happened here?” he asked when he turned around and his eyes fell on Mikoto’s foot.

“I stepped on a rusty nail, I’m afraid,” said Mikoto, smiling gingerly.

“Were you running?” he asked, opening the cart beside Mikoto’s bed. “‘Cause it looks like it went right through.”

He poured crystalline water into a bucket and started mixing powders and salts while asking Mikoto a stream of questions that Mikoto assumed were routine. Again, she noted his competence at medicine, if not for anything else. Mikoto was young to be an amputee without a headband, and she knew for a fact that Itachi’s resemblance to her was not insignificant.

“Morphine milk,” said Eiji, waving a syringe with milky fluid at her. “This is some good shit, or so I’m told.”

“I won’t need it,” said Mikoto. “I’ve birthed children.”

“I’m sure that was painful, but there’re no bones in your cervix to grind into fine powder.” Eiji paused, then looked at her and gestured at her belly. “That’s the smallest part the baby has to squeeze through.”

“I know what a cervix is,” said Mikoto. “I still refuse the painkiller.”

“Okay, badass,” said Eiji. “If you start hollering, I’m gonna give you some anyway.”

“I didn’t holler when my son cut this off,” said Mikoto, raising her stump.

Finally, Eiji stopped in his tracks. “. . . Oh.” He put the syringe down and avoided her eyes. “Alright, I need to examine that foot.”

Mikoto smiled and left him to his work. He did things Mikoto would not have expected, like ask if she felt his touch at specific areas that she assumed corresponded to different nerves, then asked her to move her ankle up and down, warning her half-heartedly about the pain.

“Looks like you didn’t fuck up a nerve,” he said. “Now here comes the chakra. Remember, I got painkillers.”

The gentleness evaporated then, as did his apparent efficiency. The salt bath burned the wound, especially when he forced the water through the hole, but it was nothing compared to the subsequent tendrils of chakra he jammed into the fractures. She was no expert, but she didn’t think mending the injury would take quite as long as it did, or that she’d be tempted to take up his offer of opiates. She was sweating by the time he finished, and her heart fluttered like a trapped rabbit.

“No scar!” said Eiji, patting her foot. “I’m getting better at that. I’m gonna give you a course of antibiotics just in case; please fucking finish them.”

“You’re going to pretend you don’t know who I am,” said Mikoto.

He kept on cleaning up. Mikoto gave him a point for being a quick learner.

“You’re the one who put a fake name on your papers,” said Eiji, shrugging.

“And to think I went through all this trouble to meet you.”

That gave the boy pause. Then he turned to her with an incredulous frown. “You did that on purpose? Crazy bitch.”

“Crass, but then again, you are a whore’s son.”

“And according to certain files, so is Itachi.”

Mikoto laughed, surprised that it was actually genuine. “Clever boy.”

“What do you want here?”

“I have some questions about my son.”

“You’re not the first one with questions, lady.” He sighed. “My address is public record, you know? This,” he gestured at her foot, “was fucking unnecessary. Especially because I don’t know anything. Unless you’re wondering what your son likes in bed.”

It would have been unnecessary if she didn’t care about the whole world knowing she had anything to discuss with Itachi’s . . . acquaintances. “You know more than you realize,” said Mikoto.

She let her own chakra loose then, and the boy didn’t notice anything except for a faint ache around his temples. He rubbed at his eyes, looking around, eyebrows furrowed. No defenses against genjutsu. Had Itachi taught him nothing?

“Is he sorry?” asked Mikoto.

Eiji grunted and tried to curl in on himself. “He’s not sorry about shit.”

“Why is he with you?” asked Mikoto, mostly to see what the boy thought of himself.

“Because I’m a medic.”

Interesting. “Is Itachi ill?”

“That’s . . .” He tried to suck in a deep breath, but Mikoto made him choke. “Why do I wanna tell you this?”

Mikoto would respect his loyalty, but any loyalty towards Itachi was nothing but stupidity. “Is he ill?” She pressed harder against his mind.

“He’s an insomniac,” said Eiji. “Pretty bad . . . hallucinates sometimes.”

Mikoto would press harder, but she couldn’t risk breaking one of Konoha’s precious medics with genjutsu. Not one connected to Itachi in any way. She scrubbed the last few minutes of his memory clean, and let him go.

“Fuck . . .” he mumbled. “M’head’s killing me already. You have any questions, lady?” He wasn’t even looking at her anymore.

“No, you’ve been very helpful.” She stood up to test her foot and nodded in satisfaction. No pain. “Thank you.”

“Yeah.” He yawned. “Don’t forget your antibiotics. And finish them!”

“Yes, of course,” said Mikoto, heading out.

So Itachi was an insomniac. Not perfect after all, then. She smiled, remembering a small boy who refused to nap in kindergarten, for the few weeks he attended. Then the war had come, and few people slept at all.

Chapter Text

Fire Country’s forests were so thick that they blocked out the sky. Sasuke liked it, since he could pretend that the relative darkness shielded him from Itachi’s gaze. Though Itachi’s indifference probably shielded him from Itachi’s gaze all on its own. Sasuke was loving the mission despite a multitude of annoyances. He wasn’t training, but he was hunting, setting up traps, and learning how to track his own progress through a forest even though he couldn’t leave tracks for pursuers to follow.

A compass could only take a person so far, especially with no stars to help the process. They needed other tricks, or memory games, as Itachi called them. He taught them to recognize different trees, or branching patterns if they were all identical, and then to keep a mental map of where they were.

“It’s really hard,” complained Naruto.

“Only because you never study,” said Sakura, obviously satisfied that, once again, she had an opportunity to shine.

Itachi could keep long strings of numbers in mind and somehow connect them to the seemingly monotonous arrangement of trees surrounding him. Only Sakura came anywhere near close to him in rote memorization skills. He seemed impressed, or at least satisfied. Sasuke didn’t want to examine his feelings about that too closely.

Of course, Naruto had the hardest time with the dull task, especially because he was more interested in the type of things that attracted Miss Eiko’s attention: flowers, birds, squirrels, and picturesque rock formations.

“All these pretty things could help jog my memory,” he’d complained to Itachi at around the third day of the mission. “Why doesn’t your silly memory thing work with them?”

“They do,” said Itachi.

“How?” demanded Naruto.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean how?” Naruto screeched, waving his arms in frustration.

“It just does,” said Itachi, looking at Naruto sideways.

It was like watching a professor trying to talk to a clown with brain damage, which was perhaps an unfair analogy to Naruto, but . . .

“He wants us to relate all these landmarks to our mental map,” Sasuke explained to Naruto later, as they hunted rabbits.

“Well, I can’t keep a boring number map in my mind like that,” said Naruto. “Why can’t we draw any of this?”

“You want to hand any potential pursuers a literal map?” said Sasuke. “Why not just leave burned firewood and unburied shit around?”

“I wouldn’t let anyone take my map,” said Naruto.

“So you’re the strongest ninja alive now?” It took one bump in the road for Naruto to regress to the same immature moron of the Academy.

“We could draw it in code.”

Sasuke just looked at him.

“Whatever,” said Naruto. “I’m bored.”

Itachi had confiscated Naruto’s stupid romance book the instant the idiot tried to read it, so he spent most of the time annoying Sasuke. Or Sakura. But mostly him. Naruto didn’t seem able to enjoy the forest’s symphony, the wind whistling through thick branches, the rustling of bushes when animals moved through them, or the streaming water of the river they were following. He babbled on about nothing, as if he loved the sound of his own voice.

“I just don’t get what his problem is,” whined Naruto, while Itachi explained something about a particular tree to Sakura. The two of them were skinning six white rabbits for dinner. Sakura and Miss Eiko had gathered wild berries earlier. “It’s not like we’re doing something all the time; why doesn’t he let me read during my break? He’s such an asshole.”

“Naruto, you’re working a few feet away from me,” said Itachi. “I can hear you.”

“You four are so cute,” said Miss Eiko, rolling her eyes.

She was sketching something on that pad of hers that Sasuke had expected to be fake, considering Itachi’s warning before the mission started. But it seemed that she was an artist, and good enough that Itachi confiscated most of her drawings because they might help potential threats map out one of Konoha’s northern trails.

“This mission blows,” said Naruto as he peeled gleaming white fur off a dead rabbit.

“Yes, running around after his clone and milking cows in the afternoon was so much better,” said Sasuke.

He didn’t want to hear what Itachi was telling Sakura; or rather, he wished he didn’t want to hear. At some point during the mission, Sakura realized that Itachi would rhapsodize endlessly about the forest in that creepy monotone of his if given the flimsiest opportunity. His voice no longer made Sasuke internally flinch; at least, not all the time. He should be proud of himself, but . . . he just wasn’t.

“These trees are excellent help if you ever need to hide,” Itachi was telling Sakura. “They exude chakra; they’re quite wasteful, actually, so if you can mask your own chakra appropriately, they could confuse full-blown sensor types.”

“Sensei, what’s that?” asked Sakura.

“They’re shinobi that can locate you by tracking your chakra,” said Itachi.

“Like a Hyuuga?”

“No, a sensor’s vision is normal,” said Itachi. “They have a sixth sense, you could say. It’s a terrible nuisance when they’re not on your side, but they’re thankfully rare.”

“Oh, so how do you mask your chakra?” asked Sakura.

Sasuke didn’t understand why Itachi didn’t tell her to shut up and leave him alone. He ripped fur off his rabbit with more force than necessary, forgetting to be careful with the blood.

“You simply block your own chakra pathways as much as possible without putting your body at risk,” said Itachi.

“Oh, I remember that from the books!” Sakura swayed a little closer to Itachi. “They say you’re supposed to scramble your chakra circ—which I don’t know what that means, by the way; the scramble part, I know circ is short for circulation—but I mean, they say to scramble your chakra circ and run into a crowd, and hopefully these sensor types will lose your signal.”

She sounded like Naruto, but with a better vocabulary.

“That wouldn’t work,” said Itachi, actually frowning. With his facial muscles. Sasuke fought not to stare.

“What do you mean?” asked Sakura.

“Civilians have too little chakra,” said Itachi. “Even I have significantly more than they do.”

“Well, you’re a jounin.”

“Yes, but I have very low stamina.” Itachi waved a hand.

Sasuke had heard as much, but if that was true, then why was the world still so scared of Itachi? Why had the village entrusted him with Naruto?

“What scroll did you read this . . .”

Sasuke stopped listening and focused on removing his rabbit’s entrails. He found the disgust he’d lost for Itachi’s voice.

Days and nights were harder to differentiate when the sky hid behind a canopy, drenching the forest in ever-present darkness. Sasuke credited the lack of sun to his surprising lack of hate every time Itachi opened his mouth. He must have started thinking of the bastard as some random jounin at some point.

“Baby jounin,” Miss Eiko said one . . . well, it wasn’t morning or night, so Sasuke was going to call it an afternoon. He guessed it was raining outside the forest because the trees were dripping more than usual.

“I have this cute bird sketch I’m really proud of,” continued Miss Eiko, swaying a little closer to Itachi.

Naruto tapped Sasuke’s elbow, signaling him to look closer at their client. Sasuke jerked away. He was alreading watching out the corner of his eye, and he bet Sakura was as well.

Miss Eiko leaned over, bending so that her chest hovered close to Itachi’s face, and presented him with a piece of paper. “See the detail,” she said, pointing at something on the page. “My art isn’t usually this good; I really want to keep this one. I promise I won’t sell it.”

“No.”

“Oh, come on!” yelled Miss Eiko, leaping away from Itachi. “It’s just a bird.”

“No,” repeated Itachi.

“Fine!” screeched Miss Eiko, ripping up the page and throwing it at Itachi’s face. He caught it, making her grunt loudly. “I’m going for a walk.”

“Go with her, Sakura,” ordered Itachi.

“Do I have to?” Sasuke didn’t know why Sakura seemed to hate Miss Eiko so much. Must be a girl thing.

Itachi looked at her. “Yes.”

Sakura and Miss Eiko were gone moments later, leaving the three of them standing around, more or less. They were only stopping because Miss Eiko needed way more rest than even a genin, so Sasuke didn’t see the point of their pitstop if she was going off on a sulky walk anyway. Something wasn’t right.

“I’m gonna ask him now,” said Naruto, interrupting Sasuke’s thoughts.

“What?”

“You know, about Miss Eiko!”

“Naruto, again,” said Itachi, “I can hear you.”

“Oh, good,” said Naruto, scampering away from Sasuke’s side. “I wanna talk to you about Miss Eiko. You said to tell you if we saw anything weird, right?”

“Yes,” said Itachi, though he sounded suspicious.

Sasuke walked a little ways off, vaguely alarmed that he was, once again, recognizing the subtle tenor changes of Itachi’s voice.

“Well, she’s hitting on you . . .”

No point in listening to that. Sasuke had been close to noticing something before his hatred, or lack of hatred, towards Itachi’s voice had distracted him. They’d stopped to rest for Miss Eiko, yet Itachi didn’t protest when she demanded to go on a walk. He might have chalked it up to client eccentricities, but it wasn’t like Itachi had been understanding of those so far. What had changed?

Maybe there were people actually after them.

Up until then, Sasuke had assumed that Itachi had babbled about tracking and mental maps in a genuine attempt to teach them something for the sake of their education, but it was way more probable that they were actually running from someone.

He looked towards Itachi and Naruto, frowning. Would Itachi have told them if they were in any danger?

No. Mission leaders often chose to keep those kinds of details to themselves. And that other anonymous ninja had been very clear in Itachi’s public profile: he doesn’t share information. This is the fucking worst . . . it’s nerve wracking to actually be in his squads because shit could be hitting the fan at any moment and you wouldn’t know it until you got shuriken flying up your ass.

For the first time since the mission started, Sasuke yearned for the sun. The darkness under the canopy suddenly suffocated him. He wished he could see past wide tree trunks like any random Hyuuga, and looked at Naruto and Itachi again; Naruto seemed to be telling a story, gesturing wildly and mimicking wide kunai slashes while Itachi listened patiently, expression blank as ever.

Sasuke was being paranoid. If there was someone after them, then Itachi wouldn’t have sent their client/target off for a walk with Sakura. He took a deep breath, ordered himself to stop fixating on every random chirp whistling in the forest, and headed back towards Naruto and Itachi.

“. . . and he’s really upset because being a ninja is really hard,” Naruto was telling Itachi. “Then the pirates or bandits or demons want to kill the girl, and the jounin protects her and kills the bad guy. And then they fuck, or make love—whatever, in a meadow, or an altar, or a river, and there’s thunder and rain. Then the Sasuke gives up being a ninja so they can move to a farm and have like five babies.”

The Sasuke? What?

“Naruto,” said Itachi, pausing wearily on the name. “Have you been reading Jiraiya-sama’s novels?”

“Who?” Naruto shrugged and waved a hand dismissively. “I don’t care who writes them.”

Itachi tilted his head, then opened his mouth. And then he grabbed Sasuke’s forearm—Itachi hadn’t touched him in years—and shoved Naruto to the ground, leaping to the side. Sasuke barely managed not to trip into Itachi’s arms like a baby.

“What the fu—”

Itachi—no, his clone—deflected a kick from an enemy dressed in cream-colored pants and shirt. A second enemy tried to hit the clone’s back, but it slid to the side as it grasped the enemy’s arm and pushed them to the ground.

“. . . the fuck,” gasped Naruto. He rolled to the side and jumped to his feet, kunai in hand.

Sasuke ripped his arm away from Itachi’s hold, reaching for a kunai.

“Get Sakura,” ordered Itachi, while the two enemies tried to take on his clone.

“But,” started Naruto.

Sasuke reached for his arm. “Let’s go.” It wasn’t the time for insubordination. “Let’s get Sakura.”

He scanned the area one last time. An older woman, cream outfit dripping wet, had emerged from the stream in the brief moment Sasuke had rushed to Naruto’s side. One of the ninja fighting Itachi’s clone screamed, then slashed his eyes with his own kunai.

“Let’s go!” Sasuke yelled, pulling on Naruto’s arm.

Sasuke could only barely read tracks when something wasn’t pursuing him, so he was grateful that Naruto followed him without question. He had no real idea where Sakura had gone off to with the client, but something told him that he couldn’t trust Itachi to have things under control. Or to consider Sasuke’s survival while getting things under control.

“Hey, how’d you know where Sakura went to?” yelled Naruto.

A barrage of shuriken spared Sasuke from having to come up with an answer. He and Naruto leaped away from each other, Sasuke making sure to grab some of the shuriken. He launched them in the direction they’d come from. Wind shifted around his left side, and he almost didn’t jump back fast enough to evade a high-reaching kick.

“Make clones!” he shouted at Naruto, unable to risk ripping his attention away from the enemy to make sure he was alright.

The girl attacking them didn’t look like much; cream outfit, headband from Kusa, wavy dark hair and pale skin. Sasuke got the odd feeling that he’d seen girls just like her in anonymous crowds his whole life. She rushed at him, moving so fast that Sasuke had to rely on instincts and shifts in the wind to avoid her strikes.

He used henge to look like Naruto, hoping to get lost in the crowd of orange clones, but the girl saw through it. She kicked at a few clones surrounding him, dispatching them as easily as Itachi during his impatient days, and rushed at Sasuke once more.

Three strikes later, Sasuke’s focus started slipping. He caught the girl’s fist, and his breath caught when the bones of his wrist grinded against each other. Gravel flew into his eyes as he ducked, his feet slipping on the wet, mossy patches. This girl was faster than him. Faster, and she packed unbelievable strength in her seemingly nonexistent muscles.

“Don’t fucking ignore me,” Naruto shouted, leaping at the girl, fist raised.

She caught his arm, pulled him forward and drove her knee into his stomach. Sasuke jumped backwards, his heart climbing to his throat. She launched Naruto against a tree—Naruto cried out, and the trunk cracked—then turned her attention back towards Sasuke with mechanical precision.

He thought of asking for more clones, but she’d run through them like a train.

“This doesn’t have to end with you broken,” she said. Even her voice was nondescript, and more toneless than Itachi’s ever managed to be.

“Doesn’t it?” asked Sasuke, stealing glances towards Naruto. He twitched on the ground; he was fine. He was the Kyuubi.

“If you come with me, you’ll live.”

“And my teammate?”

“He’s not worth recruiting.”

Recruiting for what?

Naruto gathered himself up, growling like an enraged beast. Idiot couldn’t even play dead. Orange clones burst out around them, buying Sasuke just enough time to string together the necessary hand seals for Fireball Jutsu. He didn’t bother to aim at the girl, and instead ignited as much forest as he could, trying to create some cover before breaking into a run.

If he got some of Naruto’s clones, then he could make more.

He got maybe ten yards away, then he had to scramble behind a tree trunk as the girl rained a flurry of kicks at him. A pair of Naruto’s clones distracted her, which only let Sasuke contemplate how fucked he was. She moved too fast; he would be dead already if only she didn’t want to “recruit” him for something. And if she focused on Naruto just a little bit . . .

“Alright,” shouted Sasuke. “I’ll go with you.”

An instant later, the girl stood before Sasuke, expression blank. “What changed your mind?”

“I don’t want to die here,” said Sasuke, praying for Naruto to be around somewhere, hearing this.

“And your teammate?”

“There’ll be others,” said Sasuke.

“Sasuke?” Naruto, or one of his clones, called out from somewhere behind him.

“I’ll kill him,” said the girl.

Sasuke shrugged.

“What . . .” Naruto tried to come closer; Sasuke heard him running, his steps loud as they rubbed against the forest moss.

The girl intercepted him with a kick to the ribs that landed him on his ass, several feet away. Sasuke sighed, resisting an unexpected urge to help.

“I won’t kill you if you just let us go,” the girl told Naruto.

“He’s my friend,” said Naruto.

“No,” said the girl. “I don’t think he is. He just said he doesn’t care if you die.”

Naruto growled, or maybe screamed, and reached for the girl. She grabbed his arm, punched him in the jaw, then kneed him in the belly before throwing him in Sasuke’s general direction.

He stood up, faster than he should have been able to after such an assault. Chakra, thick and luminous, bubbled from his pores.

It worked. Sasuke fought not to smile, because it was a terrible play he made from a terrible hand. He’d tricked the girl into goading the Kyuubi out of Naruto.

Chapter Text

Sasuke’s plan, if it could be called as much, didn’t have complexity beyond infuriating Naruto into unleashing the Kyuubi’s power. It’d worked, or was working, and that strange girl was no longer fast enough to flick Naruto off like a flea.

She tried, and her kicks landed with consistency, but Naruto barely faltered. And he threw punches, artless ones that didn’t connect, but forced her to jump backwards and roll behind him. Her agility just made Naruto angrier—and faster. He cornered her against a tree and struck at her head. She ducked away in time, and the force of Naruto’s punch made the trunk tremble.

The girl jumped away, gazed fixed on Naruto’s back. Her composure was admirable, if not outright creepy. She couldn’t know what she was up against.

Sasuke ought to run, but where?

Naruto growled, then pulled his nails out of the tree trunk. He turned towards the girl, breathing hard. A moment later, he was on her, his artless punches getting quicker. The girl kept dodging, but she no longer attempted any strikes of her own. Or perhaps she couldn’t.

The atmosphere got more oppressive with each passing second. Thick, glowing blue chakra filmed over Naruto’s skin and hair, bubbling as though he were boiling from the inside out. All around, the forest went on mute, like all the rabbits, squirrels and insects had fled the perimeter. The very air burned as it passed Sasuke’s nostrils.

Naruto gripped the girl’s arm, slammed her to the ground, and kicked her in the stomach. He leapt after her and they both ended up about a foot from Sasuke, Naruto gripping the girl by the throat. Sasuke scrambled to the side.

“He’s my friend,” said Naruto, driving his knee into her stomach. She gagged, coughing up bile. “He’s not a liar like all the others.”

Sasuke had to run back to Itachi. He’d worry about the consequences later, after Naruto was back under control.

With a pained shout, Naruto threw the girl again, towards Sasuke. He took the risk and caught her, and when she didn’t immediately attack him or jump away from him, he decided to take another gamble.

“He’s the Kyuubi’s jinchuuriki,” Sasuke told her. “He’s not gonna tire out; you have to run.”

And with that, Sasuke took his own advice. He pushed the girl at Naruto, and turned right back towards the direction they’d come from. Itachi would have to fix this. Sasuke didn’t even have to admit anything about orchestrating the Kyuubi’s appearance.

He tried to locate himself, to recognize the pattern of trees around him, but the Kyuubi’s chakra blanketed the world in an eerie light. It all looked blurry. His instincts told him to run like prey, not like a ninja with a plan.

Sasuke stopped to look around, scared that he was running deeper into the forest rather than back towards Itachi. His heart did not slow and his limbs shook with repressed energy. Panic. The Kyuubi’s chakra was making him panic.

“Sasuke!” yelled Naruto. “Where the fuck did you go?”

Angry, yes, but at least he still remembered Sasuke’s name. That had to be a good sign. Still, Sasuke couldn’t waste time investigating. He had to get back to Ita—

Naruto burst out from behind a tree, somehow ahead of Sasuke . . . not that Sasuke knew where he was going anymore. The chakra must be getting to him.

“Sasuke.” Naruto paused in front of him, several yards away. But it wasn’t far enough.

“I didn’t mean it,” he said, swallowing through a rock in his throat.

“So what did you mean?”

Sasuke had nothing plausible that didn’t make it obvious that he knew of the Kyuubi. And he could not reveal who had disclosed that secret to him. He ran without any thoughts of direction. Or Itachi, who would have to find them on his own.

He ran until his calves burned, then ran faster, pushing chakra through his muscles until they were on fire. Branches came too quickly; more than once he almost ran into one like a pre-genin under a genjutsu.

Predictably, he couldn’t keep that pace for long. He hadn’t stopped by a tree trunk for a minute before Naruto reached him, wasting no time to get in his face. Sasuke tried to flee, thoughts flying towards Itachi, but Naruto grabbed his arm, right below the elbow.

“You’re just like the others!” screamed Naruto. Red chakra steamed off him, hot enough that Sasuke’s skin burned where they touched under his elbow. His eyes were red. “They take me, and they use me, and then they put me in a cage.”

“Naruto—”

“ —shut up!” He squeezed Sasuke’s elbow, and then the bones of his arm snapped like twigs.

Pain snapped through him like lightning before he could get a half-aborted scream past his throat. The world bled red, and the forest seemed to slow down even further. He breathed through his nose, trying to ignore the pain as Mikoto had taught him. Naruto grabbed his hair before it could make a difference.

Something stopped Naruto in his tracks when he caught Sasuke’s gaze.

“Please,” said Sasuke, grasping the opportunity like a drowning man. “Dead last, if you’re going to kill me, at least do it as yourself.”

Naruto’s grip on his hair loosened, and his expression changed so fast it gave Sasuke vertigo. He let go of Sasuke’s elbow, sending another flash of pain up his arm. Sasuke gagged as Naruto stepped away, trying not to move his arm and failing.

“Oh shit,” said Naruto. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I’m—”

“—shut the fuck up,” said Sasuke. “We have to splint my arm. Fuck.”

“I’ll go get Itachi.”

“How’s he gonna fix my arm?” demanded Sasuke. “Shit, why’s everything red?”

“Uh, ‘cause your eyes,” said Naruto. “Maybe?”

“. . . Damn,” said Sasuke, blinking furiously. He always dreamed, when he dared to dream about it, that awakening his Sharingan would be a less pathetic affair. That he’d come out a hero. He had to get rid of it for the time being. The waste of chakra wasn’t worth it with nobody around to fight. “Did you kill that girl?”

“Y-yeah,” said Naruto.

“Good,” said Sasuke, both at their enemy’s death and at his ability to turn off Sharingan already. “Get me some small branches; I said I need to splint this arm.”

Sasuke got nauseous twice as he removed his sleeve, and his Sharingan activated once in the middle of a panic. A red bruise had already bloomed just under the inside of his elbow. He was no medic, but since it’d been less than five minutes since Naruto cracked his bones, that shouldn’t be happening yet. At least the joints of his fingers still worked. He didn’t have the guts to try and move his wrist.

Naruto returned with a pair of twigs that didn’t fill Sasuke with much confidence, but it was better than nothing. He handed the moron his sleeve. “Tear this to pieces.”

That took a moment, which did nothing to make Sasuke more willing to get the splinting business started. Iruka-sensei’s lessons about proper splinting had been a lifetime ago, and his assurances that bone pain always felt worse than it was made Sasuke want to laugh bitterly.

“Alright,” he said, taking a deep breath. “Let’s do it.”

Chapter Text

Splinting the arm was almost as bad as breaking it. In fact, Sasuke considered that he might be exacerbating the fracture with every leap they took towards camp, then put the idea out of his mind. One way or another, they had to get back to Itachi.

“I could carry you,” offered Naruto, haltingly.

“My legs are fine, idiot,” said Sasuke. Yes, it hurt every time his elbow twitched, but he’d be jostling just as much on Naruto’s back.

On a brighter note, the forest was much easier to navigate without the Kyuubi’s suffocating chakra permeating the air. Critters were still missing, but the eerie quiet did not make Sasuke’s heart beat erratically anymore. He could breathe without burning his nostrils.

Since they’d been too scared and/or enraged for forethought, they’d left a ridiculous swath of clues to lead them back. Naruto made a choked noise when they passed by the girl’s corpse, a body on the forest floor with its neck twisted at an unnatural angle and a pool of blood around its middle. He stared, blue eyes wide and mouth hanging open.

“She’d have killed you,” said Sasuke. “Come on.” Hurrying made his elbow scream, but the faster the body was out of sight, the better.

“Were you really gonna go with her?” Naruto asked once the body was safely behind them.

That wasn’t what he really wanted to ask, but Sasuke answered it anyway. “Of course not. You know what would happen to me if I didn’t have Konoha’s protection?”

“You mean because of your eyes,” said Naruto.

“I’d be tortured and raped,” said Sasuke. “Then murdered so some medic can examine my internal organs.” It galled him to admit it, but Mikoto was right. In their weakened state, the Uchiha needed Konoha’s army more than ever. Uchiha men especially.

In his momentary anger, he forgot to step without swinging his arm, and had to yelp back a pained shout and pause to catch his breath. Naruto instantly got in his face to offer support.

“I’m sorry, Sasuke.”

“Just get off me,” said Sasuke, pushing him away with his good arm. Damn it. Ninja supposedly fought through worse injuries. How did they do it?

“You can wait here,” said Naruto. “I’ll get Itachi-sensei.”

“No!” said Sasuke. “Fuck knows what nonsense you’ll tell him; we’ll go together, and let me do all the talking.”

“I won’t lie,” said Naruto.

“That’s the first problem, right there.” If Itachi worked out that Sasuke had goaded the Kyuubi out of Naruto on purpose, then Sasuke was fucked. “Listen to me. This is what happened: that girl attacked me and broke my elbow, and you got upset and defended me. I didn’t pretend to defect, and you were never angry at me, alright?”

“But won’t it be worse if he finds out we lied later?”

“Why would he find out?” demanded Sasuke. “There was three of us there, and she’s dead.”

Naruto looked away at the reminder, but he stopped arguing.

“It’s for your benefit anyway,” pressed Sasuke. “Attacking a teammate, even an Uchiha, is grounds for dishonorable discharge.”

“You don’t have to cover for me,” said Naruto, squaring his shoulders, ready to face his executioner with his head held high.

“Alright, my arm is about to fall the fuck off,” said Sasuke. “I don’t have time to talk you out of some stupid, misplaced nobility, so just promise you won’t contradict me.”

“Sasuke—”

“Promise me!”

Naruto swallowed, then nodded. “Alright, I promise.”

One problem handled, for the moment. Sasuke sighed, then mentally prepared himself to keep moving. They were almost back at camp, thank the forest spirits.

It wasn’t until the sound of streaming water hit Sasuke’s ears that he wondered if just waltzing back to camp was the best idea. Why was he just assuming that Itachi would be the winner of whatever battle he was fighting? He’d heard nothing on the way besides rustling leaves and Naruto’s random, contrite sighs, but that proved nothing. If his research was to be believed, most of Itachi’s “fights” were quiet, instantaneous affairs.

Well, there were the occasional screams.

One pierced the air just as they neared the bushes that bordered the campsite, a raw shout that screeched to an abrupt halt. Naruto started running towards the sound, but he looked at Sasuke and paused.

“Didn’t sound like Itachi,” said Sasuke, not that he’d ever heard Itachi scream. So maybe. “Genjutsu, probably.”

They stood frozen until Sasuke realized that they were so close that any competent ninja—Itachi, certainly—already knew they were there. He gestured at Naruto as he reached for a kunai with his good arm, and walked forward. Whatever waited for him, it couldn’t shock him any worse than the Kyuubi’s chakra ripping through his bones.

Except finding Itachi facedown on the forest moss, motionless.

“Sensei!”

Naruto rushed towards Itachi while Sasuke stood like a dumbass, prompting him to actually take in his surroundings. A male ninja laid in a pool of blood about a foot from the river, and another had crumbled into a heap in front of Itachi. From the arrangement alone, Sasuke couldn’t tell who had done what, to whom, or when.

“He’s alive,” said Naruto, then started shaking Itachi’s shoulders. “Come on, wake up, wake up!”

“. . . You should go find Sakura,” Sasuke heard himself say as he walked forward. “I’ll handle him.”

“You’re sure?” asked Naruto. “Your arm . . .”

“Just go get her,” said Sasuke, falling to his knees before Itachi’s body, the pain from his elbow passing through him like an echo.

“Alright, I’m gonna flood this forest with clones if I have to,” said Naruto, “but I’ll be back before you even realize I’m gone.”

Sasuke noticed the commotion of orange clones through a fog. Itachi’s chest rising with every breath hypnotized him. Blood seeped from his left eye and stained his cheek. Sasuke never thought he’d see his god-like brother so defenseless. He gripped his kunai, barely daring to imagine that he could take revenge for his family right then.

A gasp wheezed past Itachi’s lips, and Sasuke almost dropped his kunai. Itachi’s hand twitched, then his eyes fluttered open.

“Sasuke.” He could not get any more words out.

“We’re back!” shouted Naruto, startling Sasuke out of a stupor he hadn’t realized he’d fallen into. “Sakura’s totally fine.”

Sasuke slid away from Itachi, trying not to gag as his elbow throbbed. He’d missed his chance, but maybe it was for the best. Naruto had seen that Itachi was just unconscious.

“You alright?” asked Naruto, focused on Sasuke while Sakura helped Itachi into a sitting position.

The client stood behind him, ashen and hugging herself, as though the forest had chilled during the attack. Sasuke hadn’t even noticed her. What the hell was wrong with him?

“I’m fine,” he told Naruto, suppressing a gasp. He struggled to his feet, ignoring his elbow, and pushed Naruto away.

“Water,” Itachi gasped at Sakura.

She grabbed at her flask with one hand while steadying his back with the other, then brought the flask to his lips. Itachi drank like he’d just been rescued from a desert as Sakura cleaned blood off his cheek. Sasuke missed when exactly she’d gotten so comfortable with Itachi.

“Naruto, get my rucksack,” ordered Itachi, leaning most of his weight on Sakura and blinking rapidly. “And start a fire in front of me. Sasuke, go make sure that old woman is dead; kill her if she isn’t.”

The woman was dead, with a look of terror frozen on her face. Sasuke remembered the aborted scream they’d heard as they approached the campsite, and passed his palm over her eyes. Genjutsu was a terrible way to die.

Sasuke shuffled back to where Itachi was shoving rations into his mouth like a famine refugee, trying not to move his elbow as he walked. The joints of his hand tingled, and the pads of his fingers were numb. He tried not to look at the ugly bruise around his elbow, which got redder and more swollen every minute.

“Sakura, go fill the flasks with more water,” Itachi was saying when he reached them. “Purify it with chakra, like we talked about before, and hurry.”

When the hell did Itachi start teaching her things?

“Sit,” Itachi told Sasuke. “The woman?”

“She’s dead,” said Sasuke, wishing he could sit smoothly, but every movement made his elbow thunder with pain.

Itachi opened his mouth, then glanced to his left. “Miss Eiko, what are you doing?”

Inching away from the camp, as though she honestly believed that she could disappear in the confusion . . . and then what? Dehydrate to death? She tried to answer, but Itachi shook his head with naked impatience.

“Naruto, don’t let her out of your sight.” He might be weaker than Sasuke had ever seen him, but Itachi still managed to order people around like it was natural. He rubbed his forehead, right above his left eye, and sucked in a loud breath. “Sasuke, what happened to your arm?”

He kept the story short and devoid of details, grateful that Naruto was about a foot away with Miss Eiko and Itachi seemed distracted by pain and exhaustion. Sakura returned with the water flasks, and for once Sasuke was relieved to see her because it distracted Itachi from the subject of his arm altogether. Though he was less relieved the moment she tried to ask about his arm.

“Do you need anything?” she asked.

“A medic,” said Sasuke, not bothering to hide his disgust at the dumb question.

“One is coming with ANBU reinforcements,” interrupted Itachi.

Sasuke wrestled with a curious mixture of relief and anger.

“Naruto,” continued Itachi, “there’s an orange tree half-a-mile to the southeast, where the river coils around a pair of boulders. Go there and get us as many oranges as you can carry; if you think anyone’s following you, double back immediately. Do not engage.”

“Sensei, is it a good idea to send Naruto out on his own?” asked Sakura.

“I can do it,” said Naruto, shooting Sasuke a nervous glance. “Don’t worry about me.”

“He stole a Forbidden Scroll,” Itachi told Sakura, before chugging down more water. “He should be fine. You guard Miss Eiko while he’s gone.”

Sasuke flexed his fingers, weary of how cold he felt past his elbow. Dimly, he remembered a few stray thoughts he’d had about asking Itachi for painkillers. The words died somewhere in his throat. He couldn’t ask for pills when Itachi had been injured, apparently, and still asked for nothing but water and food.

“You can’t just keep me against my will,” said Miss Eiko.

“Do not bore me,” said Itachi. “I can do anything I want to you, and you know it. The good news is that I have no interest in hurting you, despite your lies, so be quiet and wait for ANBU.”

“This is why the entire world hates shinobi,” said Miss Eiko. “You think you own people just because you’re stronger.”

“Sensei, what’s going on?” asked Sakura. “Why are Grass ninja after us?”

“Just stay alert,” said Itachi.

He doesn’t share information, the anonymous ninja had written.

Sasuke sighed and closed his eyes, determined to meditate the pain away until the medic arrived.

Chapter Text

The waiting for ANBU seemed to stretch for days and days, and not just because Sasuke’s elbow was trying its best to kill him. Sakura stood by Itachi like an anxious rabbit, Naruto hovered around Sasuke like a mother hen, and the client alternated between vicious glares and quiet, restrained sobs. Only Itachi seemed comfortable, if angry.

He’d devoured Naruto’s oranges in record time, and Naruto had bundled at least a dozen in that frightful jacket of his. Sakura had gone on three more water runs for him. Chakra exhaustion. Whatever he’d done to the dead Grass ninja littering the campsite, it’d cost him most of his chakra.

A crow reached the campsite at sunset, startling Miss Eiko into letting out a short scream that Naruto might have laughed at in any other circumstances. It flew to Itachi’s shoulder and . . . vomited a tiny scroll onto his palm.

“What the fuck?” said Naruto, sparing Sasuke the effort of doing it himself. Though not in quite those words.

Itachi opened the scroll without an explanation. “ANBU is about an hour away, Miss Eiko. Just answer their questions, and they won’t torture you.”

Predictably, that inspired a fresh round of waterworks. Sakura fidgeted, but didn’t dare to speak up. Naruto might have if he wasn’t glancing at Sasuke like he was a bomb. If Itachi hadn’t guessed something was wrong with the moron, he would before daybreak. Sasuke needed that medic to calm Naruto down more than he needed the bone mended.

“I want an orange,” said Sasuke.

“Really?” asked Naruto.

“Yes, go get me one.”

“No, sit down, Naruto,” said Itachi. “The medic might want to put Sasuke under to fix that bone.”

That would’ve been too easy, and Naruto would’ve been back in less than half-an-hour anyway.

“I could get you water,” offered Sakura.

“No, he can’t eat anything,” said Itachi. “Everyone, just shut up.”

Sasuke bit his lip because, pain aside, it was funny to see Itachi acting so rude. The chakra exhaustion was so bad it was affecting his judgment. Naruto was probably the last thing on his mind.

About an hour later, Sasuke couldn’t feel his hand at all, and his bruise had spread around his elbow like a purple vice. The pain got so bad that he had to grit his teeth to not whimper. He meditated with Mikoto almost daily, and still he couldn’t concentrate on even the most basic breathing exercises. The struggle distracted him so much that the ANBU team arrived without alerting him.

Two of them stayed perched on the trees around them, and the biggest one went straight for Itachi. A fourth one that Sasuke didn’t hear flickered behind him.

“You look like shit,” said the biggest one.

“See to my genin.”

Sasuke would have liked to see what Itachi said to the ANBU captain, and what Miss Eiko would do, or even how Naruto would react to everything. Hell, he would’ve liked to pay attention to Sakura rather than the giant shambling towards him. Painkillers or not, it was going to be . . . “painful” probably wasn’t strong enough a word.

“That’s some sorry excuse for a splint you got there,” said the medic, adjusting his mask.

“We did the best we could,” protested Naruto.

With a grunt, the medic crouched and put Sasuke through a series of simple motions with his good arm that he could not even begin to replicate with his broken one. It wasn’t just the pain, which he could have pushed through, but because his broken limb felt disconnected from his brain.

“Do you feel your hand?” asked the medic.

Sasuke shook his head. “It was tingling about an hour ago. Now it’s just numb.”

“How did it happen?”

“Kick from the girl who attacked us,” said Sasuke, resolutely ignoring the way Naruto fidgeted at his side.

The medic hummed, placed his satchel on the ground, and started pulling out needles and vials filled with multi-colored fluid. The last thing Sasuke remembered were large hands looking for veins going towards the bruise.

Sasuke had to claw through molasses the next time he woke up. His mouth was dry, his throat parched, his belly twisted into angry knots, and his limbs heavy as lead. But he was not in pain, not even from his elbow. All of last mission flashed through his memory like lightning, but he couldn’t force his body into alertness in an instant, as any shinobi should. He coughed, and it turned into a gag that undoubtedly alerted any enemy nearby.

“Sasuke?” asked Naruto’s voice. “Sasuke!”

“I’m fine,” croaked Sasuke, hearing the edge of panic in Naruto’s voice.

He tried to open his eyes, then blinked furiously at the sunlight streaming through a window.

“Sakura’s gonna be so relieved,” said Naruto. “And Sensei too; I’ve never seen him so pissed.”

Sensei meant Itachi, which was enough for Sasuke to spring into a seated position on the bed quickly, if not exactly gracefully. He frowned, then sighed in relief when he realized that he could lean weight on both his arms, and looked over at Naruto. Tired, the orange jacket still missing, and smiling softly like Sasuke was some kind of baby animal.

“Wait, I’m gonna get one of the medics,” said Naruto, turning to the door.

“How long was I out?” he asked, glancing down to examine his elbow. Smudges that resembled old bruises peppered the sides of his elbow, but otherwise, his skin remained pale and smooth.

“Like a day,” said Naruto. “The big ANBU said you should stay around until the anesthesia wore off, blah, blah, blah; lots of things I didn’t get, but your arm should be good. It was gross, what he did, but Sakura talked his ear off the entire time—afterwards, he was concentrating during the fixing part, and anyway . . . I’m pretty sure she’s in love with him now, even though he might be ugly for all we know.”

“Alright, go get a medic,” said Sasuke.

Naruto beamed and ran out of the room. He sounded nervous, but not Itachi-knows-we-lied-and-we’re-being-court-martialled nervous. Sasuke fell back on the bed, put his arm through a series of motions, then considered his eyes. Sharingan, finally, and he couldn’t muster much enthusiasm for it. He looked around, taking in the plain, greenish hospital room and the tree branches outside his window. A faint whiff of antiseptic and ammonia permeated the air. His eyes didn’t feel different at all.

But he could push chakra towards them, and . . . whoa.

The room bled red, as bright as some of the signs at the Red Lights district, and everything that moved did so . . . slowly, in lines that Sasuke could track so smoothly that he knew how things would move an instant before they did.

Naruto’s babble reached him before he heard the doorknob turning. He blinked the chakra away from his eyes and laid back on the bed. Until the mission faded from everyone’s collective mind, Sasuke couldn’t afford to let his guard down. He forced himself to stay placid as a thin medic with butterfly hairclips examined him.

The medic seemed desperate to get Sasuke off her list of tasks, which suited him just fine. He wished he hadn’t missed the tail-end of the mission, but considering how little Naruto could tell him about what happened with Miss Eiko, being awake wouldn’t have made much of a difference.

“What about Itachi?” he asked Naruto once they left the hospital. Unless his memory was playing tricks on him (a distinct possibility, with powerful analgesics in the mix), then Itachi had also been injured during the mission. In a manner of speaking.

“No clue,” said Naruto, shrugging. “He went off with ANBU and told us to take the rest of the week off. Sakura wanted to go straight to her parents, but I promised I’d tell her right away if anything changed with you.”

“You do that,” said Sasuke, scratching the back of his neck. “I need to get home too.”

“Right.” Naruto avoided the subject of Sasuke’s family with admirable tact, considering . . . everything. “You know, I still think we should just tell Itachi what happened—”

“—No, I told you, it’s for your own good,” said Sasuke, whirling on him. “Just,” he sighed and rubbed his forehead, “go see Sakura, and eat ramen or something, and don’t say anything to anyone. We can talk about it later. I have to go see my family.”

“Sasuke,” said Naruto, with a little sigh that would make a monk bristle, “are they the ones who want you to lie to the village?”

“This entire village is built on nothing but lies.” Sasuke didn’t even care who heard that. “They’re the ones who walk around pretending to be above everything, pretending to worship the Fourth’s legacy, and they treat you like garbage.”

“What does the Fourth have to do with it?”

“Nothing,” said Sasuke, eager to divert any suspicion about how he knows about the Fourth and Naruto. “Except . . .” he gestured at the monument, “he might as well be a saint, the way they talk about him, but he still shoved the Kyuubi into a little baby. A baby they treat like shit.”

“Alright, the villagers are assholes. I get it.” Naruto grabbed his arm. “What does that have to do with lying to Itachi?”

Mikoto would know exactly what to say. “Just give me a couple of days,” said Sasuke. “Please. You don’t have to lie; just don’t say anything. No one suspects a thing anyway.”

“. . . Alright, I won’t go looking for them,” said Naruto, frowning. “But if they ask, I’ll just say the girl was too strong to beat without the Kyuubi’s chakra.”

It was more than Sasuke could hope for. He offered Naruto what he hoped was an encouraging smile, and rushed home. Though not as gracefully as he would have liked, since jumping or running too quickly gave him vertigo. The painkillers must not have completely worn off.

In a rare instant of life cutting him a break, he found his house deserted. Something must be going on at one of his cousins’, so he seized the opportunity to shower before his parents got back. He meant to keep it perfunctory, but he found himself scrubbing every inch of his body, even between his toes, as though his whole body had fallen into a septic tank. Eventually, his eyes watered and he told himself it was the soap, even though he went for the scentless type.

His parents arrived after dinner. Fugaku was so near the end of his rope that he couldn’t even force himself to listen to Sasuke recounting his first mission, and retired for “meditation”. Which Sasuke knew was his euphemism for “opiates”. He told himself it was for the best. Fugaku wouldn’t be much help in any kind of crisis anymore, not with the way he trembled like a leaf in the wind if he went too long without his “tea”.

His mother, on the other hand, looked as calm and collected as ever. Determined not to look like a foolish baby, Sasuke told his story as matter-of-factly as he could.

Mikoto slipped her hand under his chin after he was done. “Let me see.”

It took him a moment to grasp that she meant his Sharingan. He narrowed his eyes and the red film fell over the world, making her look . . . older, maybe. Her facial expressions got sharper than Sasuke had ever seen, but he was no better at interpreting them.

“If you’re going to be hunted for it,” said Mikoto, letting go of his chin, “you might as well have it.”

Sasuke blinked away his Sharingan, and Mikoto’s face was once again placid and unreadable.

“So Itachi’s left eye bled,” said Mikoto with a little hum, “and the strain made him lose consciousness. For once, his arrogance might be unwarranted.”

“Huh?”

“He hasn’t been using his Sharingan much since that night, perhaps not at all,” said Mikoto. “It would explain why he remains healthy. Besides . . .”

“Besides what?” How could Mikoto know so much about Itachi? She hadn’t been spending every day with him for the last few weeks.

“We can talk about that later, after you’ve met with your grandmother, Rakshasha,” said Mikoto. “Let’s talk about Naruto; what you did right, and what you could have done better.”

Chapter Text

Itachi had ignored very few Uchiha during the rampage. A few very young children, Sasuke, and Elder Rakshasha. The rest of the Elders he’d outright killed, for the most part, and the few he tried to maim died shortly afterwards of blood loss or infection. Sasuke remembered those first few days as if they’d been a bloody whirlwind, except for Rakshasha’s bitter laughter at a stray suggestion that maybe Itachi had spared her because they’d been working together.

“Who says he spared me?” she’d asked as she enjoyed her pipe. “Maybe I fought him off. Maybe one of you should attack me and see what happens.”

Rakshasha had a bum leg, and she was so old that her spine had long since collapsed on itself and cost her a couple of inches of height, so Sasuke doubted that. So did everyone else, but no one had wanted to spill more Uchiha blood after Itachi’s betrayal. Rakshasha had been left alone, and since she was the only elder still alive, she’d gone back to handling all elder duties without much fuss. Among those duties was escorting anyone who awakened the Sharingan to the Naka Shrine and imparting certain clan secrets to them.

“This is insane,” said Sasuke, glaring at the stone tablet. He would glare at Rakshasha too, but obnoxious or not, she was still an elder.

“I said as much myself when I was around your age.”

Sasuke blinked the Sharingan away and looked at her, suddenly considering if he should examine her leathered, tanned and wrinkled face with the Sharingan, never mind that Mikoto had explained that the Uchiha considered it rude. Rakshasha had never once alluded to any similarities between them, and in fact once told him that Itachi was her favorite grandchild. After what he’d done.

“My elder backhanded me and broke my nose,” she said, frowning. “Let’s leave your face alone, as it will undoubtedly be one of the few remarkable things about you.”

“Thanks,” said Sasuke.

Rakshasha chuckled, patting the stone tablet as she would if it were an eager puppy. “Help an old woman up these blasted stairs. Next time one of you kids gets these blasted eyeballs, your mother will have to drag them down here.”

The sun shone brightly outside the shrine, making the green of the surroundings trees pop as though they were all part of a painting. Rakshasha hummed cheerfully as a tepid breeze passed over them, and started twirling the string of purple beads ever present at her waist. Sasuke waited for her to push him off and ask for her cane back, but it seemed like she wanted to walk with him back to the compound.

“You seem happier than usual, grandmother,” he said, eager to get the conversation over.

“My joints have been kind to me this week.”

Sasuke sighed. Somedays he liked being around Rakshasha, if only because she was the only family member who didn’t look at him with an odd mixture of pity and expectation. But at the moment, he’d rather be with Naruto, doing damage control. He wished he could walk faster to Rakshasha’s house. The old bat wasn’t half as frail as she pretended to be.

“I took your brother to the shrine after the Kyuubi’s attack,” said Rakshasha. “He couldn’t even read the classical style, so I had to explain the whole debacle to him. It scared him, like a ghost story might scare any small child.”

“Most of that wasn’t literal,” said Sasuke, more off-balance than he would have liked to admit. Talking to Rakshasha about Itachi always left him confused, perhaps because she was the only one left who still talked about him like he was a kid.

She talked about everyone like they were still a kid.

“It wasn’t literal?”

“It said I have to murder my closest friend, then transplant Itachi’s eyes into my head to awaken my Sharingan’s true power.” Sasuke snorted. “If Madara wrote that, then he was a little too fond of poetry.”

“Itachi attacked the clan shortly after Shisui’s ‘suicide’,” said Rakshasha, complete with mocking air-quotes.

Sasuke looked away. Once, he’d been jealous of cousin Shisui, jealous of Itachi’s eagerness to spend time with him. He didn’t know why the old pang of envy still resurfaced whenever the poor bastard was mentioned . . . regardless of the context, apparently. He paused in front of Rakshasha’s modest home and looked at her as she grabbed her cane and discarded his shoulder.

“So the rest of the clan believes it? That’s what you’re trying to say?” he asked. “Is that why everyone talks about him like he’s some demon? Literally?” He remembered Itachi struggling to rise, blinking blood out of his eyes and relying on Sakura and Naruto, of all people. Whatever he was, he was still human.

“I’m saying that if that’s the part you focused on, you missed the point,” said Rakshasha. “Uchiha who spend a lifetime chasing power go blind, and if they don’t stop, blind they die.” The breeze picked up again, blowing wisps of white hair before her eyes.

“Thank you, Elder Rakshasha, for your counsel.” He bowed and set out for Naruto’s apartment.

Chapter Text

The tail end of chakra exhaustion recovery involved something that medical pamphlets described as malaise, and warned shinobi that it was normal to feel discomfort without being able to identify a specific cause. Itachi appreciated the warning because, considering the paranoia that governed his day-to-day life, he would’ve otherwise had a panic attack the first time he managed to completely deplete his chakra reserves.

Well, he’d had a panic attack the first time, but it would be more accurate to call it an attack of despair. His parents he’d managed to treat like any random mission, but by the fifth cousin . . . Itachi barely remembered the fights, much less what illusions he’d employed. The moment that stuck with him was stumbling into the shower—the same one he was currently using, in fact—crumbling into a heap, hugging his knees to his chest, and sobbing until his throat hurt and he had trouble breathing. At least he’d had the forethought of renting out a hidey-hole a couple of days before carrying out his plan.

Itachi sighed and turned off the faucet. He always fixated on his family, or Shisui, or both, right before he stopped sleeping, until he suffered visual hallucinations. If there’d ever been a worse time for that, he couldn’t think of it, so he got ready to visit Eiji. No point in even trying to get to sleep like a functioning person when his skin felt too small for his body.

Usually, he wore a thin jacket to hide his weapons, regardless of the weather, but he was in no mood to use his chakra to modulate his body temperature. A black wife beater would have to do, and who cared if everyone noticed his ANBU tattoo? Hell, most days he didn’t care.

Something twitched behind him.

Itachi whirled around and threw a shuriken.

Kakashi caught it between his index and middle finger. “This might’ve killed anyone else.”

“Get out of my room,” said Itachi as he pulled the shirt over his head. “Get out of my apartment.”

“Well, someone’s in a mood,” said Kakashi, leaning on the wall. “My S-rank went great, by the way.”

“Mine didn’t,” said Itachi, reaching for a pair of sandals. Of course, it was supposed to be a C-rank, so he was trying really hard not to hold it against himself. And failing.

“Neji’s good too,” said Kakashi. “And back to stick it to the Hyuuga main family.”

“Good for him,” said Itachi, trying to decide what to do with his hair. Everywhere it touched him, it irked. He’d shave it all off, but then his scalp would start getting on his nerves.

“I heard you had a run-in with Root.”

Itachi paused, then settled for a half-ponytail that would keep his bangs off his face without saddling him with the full weight of his hair on top of his head.

“What are you gonna do?” asked Kakashi.

“Nothing today,” said Itachi. “Going to see Eiji.” He needed to sleep and fully recover from chakra exhaustion, then plan.

“Itachi. Don’t do anything that would give an opening to every enemy you have.”

Though his annoyance didn’t lessen one bit, Itachi offered him a nod before disappearing. If he went crazy, or the Council’s definition of crazy, then Kakashi would be the first person sent after him. He’d avoid putting Kakashi in that position for as long as possible.

On the way to Eiji’s, everyone was momentarily suspicious, be it a ninja out for a walk or a civilian selling snacks from a street cart. Itachi had too much on his plate, and none of it could be handled if he couldn’t think straight. If he was lucky, people would assume that he was going straight to Eiji for . . . Why bother to hope? He wouldn’t be lucky. Eiji was an indulgence that would cost him, if it hadn’t already.

He didn’t break into Eiji’s apartment because there was no need to resort to Kakashi-levels of rudeness, and it was for the best. A woman’s laughter reached him before he could knock on the door, making him pause. For about a second. Then he decided that whoever it was would be chased away by his mere presence.

Except it turned out to be some skinny civilian girl in tiny shorts who didn’t recognize Itachi, or have enough sense to read his expression, or lack thereof. He walked into Eiji’s small studio while she babbled some nonsense, appreciating that the place was clean. The one and only other time he’d visited, it’d been like walking into a dumpster.

“That was my maid,” said Eiji after seeing her out, looking chagrined even though Itachi had enough wits left to recognize that he could see anyone he wanted at his house.

“What was the report on my support mission?” asked Itachi, sitting on the old beanbag chair in Eiji’s living room. He was there to sleep, after all.

“Focused on that hot girl getting some Hyuuga cake in her oven,” said Eiji. “Or is that expression about a bun?”

“And Root?”

“Above my paygrade,” said Eiji, shrugging. “Listen, I have to be in the hospital by six, so if you could make this quick . . .”

“I need to sleep.”

“Right now?” asked Eiji. “I can’t stay here to guard you.”

“You wouldn’t be able to guard me if you stayed,” said Itachi. “Just help me pass out but don’t put me completely under. I just need to replenish my chakra faster.”

“Is Hatake back? I could leave you with him.”

Itachi shook his head. “Why is it so hard for you to do what you’re told?”

“Would you like the list in alphabetical order, asshole?” Eiji took half a step forward, then changed his mind and walked to his fridge. “I can’t just help you pass out in some magical way that’ll leave you alert, first of all. And even if I did, you don’t get to walk into my house and act like you own me and—did anyone follow you?” he finished, perhaps noticing that he was close to shouting.

“No,” said Itachi. Regrettably. He’d start a fight with the slightest provocation, and it might even do him some good.

Eiji made a frustrated noise before abandoning his fake fiddling with the refrigerator, then took a few strides and kneeled in front of Itachi. “I really need you not to be a dick,” he said, reaching for Itachi’s forearms. “Much as we like to give them shit, we need the Hyuuga, and even I feel like they’re about to implode. And Root’s been getting bolder since you left ANBU, Captain Crow.”

“Not my fault I got reassigned.” That made Eiji look away, as if ashamed, and Itachi filed it away for later examination. “Tell me about my brother’s injury.”

“It was just a broken arm,” said Eiji, nodding without looking back up at Itachi. “But . . .”

“But,” prompted Itachi.

“Can I tell you after you’ve slept?”

Itachi prayed for patience. Eiji would act like he was made of glass, being one of the few people, perhaps the only one, who saw how vulnerable he could get. Under the right circumstances.

He was a doctor, so Itachi rationalized that it was alright.

“Eiji, I already know he was lying,” he said.

“You do?” He looked up at Itachi. “How?”

“Naruto’s pretty transparent.” The kid had looked like someone was choking him the few times Sasuke had attempted some truncated lies about his injury.

“Right, so your brother said that other ninja ‘kicked’ him,” said Eiji, wrapping his hand around Itachi’s elbow. “But his ulna was displaced laterally and his radius medially.” He squeezed Itachi’s forearm. “What kind of kick breaks bones like that?”

“A second fracture from a rebound force?” It was stupid to lie about how the arm had fractured, and Itachi didn’t think Sasuke was stupid.

“Rebound from what?” asked Eiji, easing his grip. “And what about the bruising pattern? Someone gripped his arm and crushed it, and I doubt it was that girl they killed. She looked strong, sure, but I doubt I could break two bones with my grip . . . Well, I could, but not—”

“Yes, I know,” said Itachi. Left to his own devices, Eiji could ramble as much as Naruto. “Did you report this to Boar?”

“I described the injury to him, and he waved me off and wrote ‘broken arm’ in the official report,” said Eiji. “I choose to assume he got what I was saying, but didn’t think it was significant.”

“So you’re reporting it to no one else?”

“I’m reporting it to you, his commanding officer, right now.”

That technicality was flimsier than the assumption that Boar had understood the particulars of Sasuke’s injury. Itachi looked away. Whether he realized it or not, Eiji was displaying a degree of trust in him that he expected from no one. Not even Kakashi. Immediately, he wondered if it wasn’t some kind of trap. What reason did Eiji have to care for him so much? If anything, Itachi was no more than a nuisance to him.

“Anyway,” said Eiji, “something’s going on with the Hyuuga. Your client told us who knocked her up, and we’re watching him. There’s been rumblings about that Neji kid for months now. And now Root might be sticking its nose in there . . .” Eiji sighed and laid his head on Itachi’s lap. “It’s gonna get bad.”

Itachi lied back on the bean bag chair, suddenly tired. Great time for Konoha’s symbiotes to turn on each other, he supposed. Finally, Hokage-sama might lose what little patience he had left and sic him on Danzo.

“Don’t go crazy on us,” said Eiji. “Something tells me Konoha’s going to need you.”

That was the problem, wasn’t it? Konoha would always need him, and there was only one of him. He wasn’t sure he could deal with the Hyuuga, Danzo, and whatever idiocy his brother was trying with Naruto and the Kyuubi.

“Knock me out,” he told Eiji.

A good night’s sleep might make him less dramatic, if nothing else. Then he would plan his next move.