Pre-fic AN:
UNEXPECTED ITACHI IS UNEXPECTED.
Mikoto sighed.
"He's just so strange. I don't know what to do with him anymore... The dishes need to be done."
"He is a prodigy," Fugaku said, with that stubborn edge to his voice that she simultaneously hated and found incredibly sexy. "He will grow up to be one of the greatest Uchiha there ever was."
"Of course he will, he's your son. How can he not go far with such good lucks and talent and brilliance in his genes?"
"Fine, I'll do the dishes," he remarked wryly. "Shameless, that's what you are."
He got up and turned on the water at the sink.
"Thank you, sweetie. You know how it is when you're pregnant- well, you don't, but you know how it is when I'm pregnant, and just look at my feet! You are the most darling man there ever was." Mikoto smiled sweetly at him for a moment, and then returned to the subject at hand. "But honestly- he won't even let me cut his hair anymore! I can't imagine why. I tried today. It's getting so long. Doesn't it bother him when he's trying to practice? Doesn't it get in his eyes?"
"Copying Shisui, I would think," Fugaku said. "You know, that long ponytail. And your feet are just fine. But I must admit, it worries me, too- I mean, what if he's in battle, and it gets in his eyes?"
Mikoto waved a hand. "I just need to persuade him of a ponytail with bangs... oh, that will be so cute!"
"Cute is hardly the word I wish to use to describe my soon-to-be official ninja son."
"Of course he's cute. He's adorable. Just strange, is all. Fugaku, he's seven. They're allowed to be cute at seven."
"Not Uchiha ninja."
"Good heavens. Will you ever get over that?"
"No."
She stuck her tongue out at him.
"What about when Sasuke is born?"
"You've decided its name? What if it's a girl?"
"It's not a girl."
"How do you know?"
"I just knew with Itachi. It's a mother thing. We dream about them, you know. Before they're born."
"Is that so?"
"Sasuke is going to be a sweet boy, well-loved... I don't think even Itachi will be able to keep himself distant. Oh, Itachi-kun will try, I'm sure, but he couldn't ever succeed. You see, Sasuke will be so..." She struggled for words. "He'll never want for attention, let's just say. He won't be charismatic but he'll be noticed."
"Hm," Fugaku said.
Mikoto watched him, with that little smile on his face he wore when she was at her craziest hormonal stages of pregnancy. He'd believe her eventually, because Sasuke would prove him wrong.
"What if it's a girl?" Fugaku repeated.
"Well, it isn't, but I would name her Miyako."
Fugaku nodded. "Pretty name."
"Are you hoping for a girl?" she asked him.
"I want... to have a child that I can understand," he said slowly. "Someone that I can trust to take on the family name. Nothing more, nothing less."
"Itachi is trustworthy."
"I'm sure he is, I just don't understand h- Here he comes, Mikoto-"
The door opened.
"I want pickles," Mikoto announced as Itachi came in the door. "'Tachi-kun, get Mommy some pickles, please?"
"Okay."
The entire kitchen was silent as Itachi walked to the fridge. He was growing up to be a beautiful boy, with lovely shiny black hair that girls would kill to have and, on a boy, fall in love with and even prettier eyes, and Mikoto put her hand on her stomach, hoping that Sasuke would be just as gorgeous. He was going to have a Sharingan- she knew that much. She had wished so badly for him to be a normal child, no matter the stigma that had in the clan, because if he didn't have one he wouldn't have to measure up to Itachi, and he could find something else.
But he would, and it broke her heart that he would grow up with this shadow of Itachi, these expectations that would never be fulfilled, because Itachi was a freak of nature and she loved them both so much already that to see Itachi unintentionally hurting his younger brother killed her inside.
The only light she saw was her memories from the dream, which involved an Itachi whose eyes were coal-black and warm, not fiery red. The sight of her first baby with those eyes always made a chill run down her spine, causing her fear she could never really describe. But it felt good to know that Itachi wouldn't look at his brother through them.
He wouldn't hurt her with them, would he? She felt ashamed to even think it. Not her Itachi, not the one who she had held in her arms and sang to sleep, rocked when he cried, which was rare, as he had been a silent but loving child- or so she'd thought.
She didn't know!
He handed her the pickles and she looked with relief into somber black eyes.
"Here, Mother."
He'd never called her Mommy. Never Mom.
Just... Mother.
"Thanks, 'Tachi-kun," she said cheerfully, and he leaned forward obediently for a kiss on the forehead when she beckoned him. He put a hand on her stomach to steady himself just as Sasuke kicked, and drew back as though it had burned him.
"Was that Sasuke?" he asked.
Mikoto went cold under the five blankets Fugaku had reluctantly but lovingly brought to her. The first time she had told anyone the name she'd picked was just now, to Fugaku.
He heard everything...
She nodded, unable to speak.
"He's strong," Itachi said, neither a compliment nor a criticism- just a statement. "He will make an excellent ninja." And then he was gone, out the door as silently and suddenly as he came.
"The dishes are done, Mikoto," Fugaku said, walking over to her couch and, kneeling behind it, took her hand. It was pale next to his own, and she entwined their fingers so that it was pale-tan-pale-tan all the way across. "Where did Itachi go?"
He didn't see that, Mikoto realized. If he had- She had the insane thought for a moment that perhaps if he had seen it- with all the Sharingan could do- he could counter the assumptions Itachi would make, just as he could an enemy's move on the battlefield. But for all the Uchiha clan prided themselves on it, not even a Sharingan could help someone to predict Itachi.
"He went back outside," she said, feeling faint, somehow unable to tell Fugaku that he was probably out there listening right now.
"How strange," Fugaku said. "What did he want?"
Mikoto shrugged.
To tell me he'd been listening.
"I don't know," she said.
Fugaku pressed his lips to the back of her hand, and she could feel him breathing in her scent, letting down his walls for just that moment, and she wanted to take him in her arms and tell him that everything would be all right. That Itachi loved him, loved his parents, that he was strange and mysterious and downright odd, but underneath that was real, true love and gratitude to those who had raised him.
But she didn't know herself that it was true.
"I have to go," he said, still holding her hand. "Clan meeting in five minutes."
In only a few years, he would be taking Itachi to those.
"Okay," she said. "I love you, Fugaku." She pushed a stray hair behind his ear.
He stood up and, leaning over, kissed her on the nose, and she watched as he walked out the door without another word.
end.
Post-fic AN:
So, what did you think? This week's obsession is the Uchiha brothers. I reallyreallyreallyreally want to write them, but I just can't. So this is what happened instead.