Prelude

Peter Pan Syndrome

.summary.

Before and after and always, there was always Itachi. Sasuke's teen years. (prequel to red moonshine, standalone)

"Big brother?" Sasuke stood by Itachi's desk, looking hopefully up at him.

"Hm? Oh, Sasuke." Itachi barely looked up before he returned to his bookwork, pencil moving fast over the page.

Sasuke faltered. "Brother, weren't we going to go out today? You promised!" Sasuke became angry and rushed at him, but the twelve-year-old boy was easily stopped by Itachi's outstretched arm.

"Oh, I can't. I'm going to study abroad in America next week, so I have brush up on my English. Maybe some other time."

"How long will you be gone?"

"Three weeks," Itachi replied.

Sasuke was silent for a moment, before his anger flared back up. "You'll be gone on my birthday!"

"I will, won't I? Sorry." Itachi patted Sasuke on the head. Sasuke scowled and tore away.

Sasuke's thirteenth birthday was kind of miserable. His father, the president of the Uchiha Corporation that specialized in supplying the military and police forces and investing, insisted on hosting a birthday party at their mansion and inviting everybody in Sasuke's class. Sasuke knew that the man only wanted him to make connections with the rich parents of these students, as he attended one of the most prestigious Junior High School academies in Japan.

Sasuke had to smile and be painfully polite in order not to offend; the closest person to him in his class was Hyuuga Hinata, who was the heiress to the Hyuuga Corporation, one of their family's partners. Her cousin Neji, a year ahead of them in school, tagged along as well, as did Hinata's friend Kiba, who was well known to be future yakuza head.

Sasuke almost hadn't recognized his—friends—outside of their school uniforms. Sasuke had never thought brown to be Hinata's color; she looked much nicer in a light blue kimono. Neji wore a similar garment, while Kiba came wearing jeans and a t-shirt, which Sasuke found a little insulting.

"Uh-um, is Itachi-sama here?" Hinata asked with a blush.

"No," Sasuke said with a scowl. He knew that the girl had a crush on his brother; it was a combination of Itachi being a mysterious, older man, and the romantic notion of falling in love with the man with whom one was engaged. "He's in America; he won't be back for another week."

"It's a shame," Kiba piped up. "It's summer vacation. You must be lonely here in this huge mansion without your brother."

Sasuke shrugged.

After the party hosted for his classmates, Sasuke's favorite cousin, Obito, took him to Disneyland. Obito was cool because he was in his twenties, but acted like the older brother Itachi never was. Plus, the goggles he wore as an accessory were so ridiculous, they made Sasuke laugh every time. "What's wrong, Sasuke?" Obito asked as they waited in line for the Pirates of the Carribean ride.

"Itachi," Sasuke scowled. "He didn't even call me to say 'Happy Birthday.'"

Obito shrugged. "It's probably the time difference," he suggested. "Itachi's probably keeping busy with his studies."

"But he's only a freshman in college! You didn't do so much work when you were in college," Sasuke pointed out.

"But I'm not the heir to the corporation," Obito said.

Hatake Kakashi was the son of a general in the army, and had come to known Obito through the dealings his father had with the Uchiha Corporation. Sasuke had once heard that Obito and Kakashi had started off with a rocky relationship, but after some accident where Obito had almost put out Kakashi's eye (as it was, the other had been temporary blinded for months and left a scar), they became fast friends.

Kakashi annoyed Sasuke in how perverted and absolutely annoying he was. He was in his mid-twenties, for goodness sake! Yet he insisted on acting like a horny teenage boy, even in front of the thirteen-year-old. He met up with Sasuke and Obito at the gates of the Pirates ride (he cut through the line with incredible ease). And then he groped Obito's ass. "Cut it out!" Obito hissed, blushing. Kakashi just shrugged and pulled out his erotic novel.

"Happy birthday kid," he said to Sasuke. "I would have gotten you something, but I couldn't think of anything I could give you legally."

"That's fine," Sasuke muttered, blanching. "Thank you any way."

Itachi didn't come home after week three.

It was probably the scandal of the month: two college students, Uchiha Itachi and Yukushi Kabuto, both brilliant and rich students, disappearing off the face of Earth when they were supposed to be studying overseas. The private police the Uchiha controlled searched for their heir, but it became obvious that Itachi was nowhere to be found.

"I don't blame him," Kakashi told Sasuke once, when they were in the kitchen of the guest mansion on the Uchiha grounds that Obito lived in. Sasuke sat glumly at the table while the man made him a peanut butter sandwich. "I would probably disappear as well, if I had all that pressure on me. Itachi always struck me as a pretty stressed out kid. Only nineteen, with the weight of the world on his shoulders."

"What if Itachi doesn't come back?" Sasuke asked. "And I'm left to be the heir?"

"Well, look on the bright side," Kakashi pointed out, "You'll get to marry that cute Hyuuga girl. Neji was it?"

"Neji's a boy," Sasuke answered flatly. "Hinata is the one that is Itachi's fiancé, and I have no interest in her."

"I see," Kakashi said, scratching his chin. "I remember now. I keep mixing up their faces, because Neji seems so much more heir-like. It's too bad that he isn't even—oh hey Obito!" The man quickly slapped the sandwich together and down in front of Sasuke before dashing off to his cousin.

Was it just Sasuke, or did Kakashi just act as if he had said something he wasn't supposed to?

Months passed, and Itachi never turned up. Eventually there was a memorial service for the lost boy, where Sasuke stood stoically in his black suit. He was named the heir of the Uchiha Corporation, and a meeting between his parents, him, and Hinata and her parents set them up to be engaged, wedding date to be chosen some time in their twenties.

Hinata had been devastated by Itachi's disappearance, and Sasuke had noticed Neji sticking closer than ever to his cousin. "Why do you follow her around like a guard dog?" Sasuke asked him once.

"To protect Hinata-sama is my job," Neji replied stiffly. He gave Sasuke a glare that sent shivers down the younger boy's spine.

"Neji-niisan," the girl in question pleaded, with a hand on Neji's arm. "D-don't scare Sasuke-kun. P-please."

Neji snarled before backing off, and Sasuke thought that he truly did look like a dog, with frightfully sharp canines and a kind of feral gleam in his eye.

In the summer of the ninth grade, Sasuke jetted off to America for an education program. He really didn't care that he was far away from home. He didn't really have any friends, unless you counted the extremely shy Hinata and her guard dog Neji. You could even count the love sick puppy Kiba, who followed her around whenever he could without getting told off by Neji.

The only people he liked to hang out with were his Obito and Obito's friend. Sasuke realized that it was kind of weird, twenty-seven-year-old men hanging out with a fourteen-year old kid like him, but they had a tendency to tell it like it was, and they were so laid back, which was refreshing for him. He had a feeling they were keeping something from him though, because when he asked why they were out so late and slept in so long, they glanced at each other with something in their eyes and didn't answer. Sasuke shrugged it off as something adult he wouldn't care about, so he stopped prying.

In California, the climate was hot all the time, and the bugs were annoying. Even worse, his roommate in the dorm kept a miniature ant farm on his desk. They really made him nervous. And a blonde girl in his class seemed to hang on his arm whenever she could. "Sasuke, you're English is so good!"

Sasuke really didn't care. It seemed that as soon as he stepped off the plane after a cramped, fourteen hour flight, he couldn't wait to get back on it.

Sasuke's birthday came three weeks later, on what happened to be his home coming day. Obito came personally to pick up Sasuke from the airport. The plane arrived late, coming into Tokyo International at almost eleven at night, and Sasuke was anxious to sleep in his own bed.

"How was America?" Obito asked as he pulled up to the front gates of the Uchiha grounds. He clicked the intercom buzzer and waited.

"Dull," Sasuke replied monotonously. He tapped fingers impatiently against the armrest as Obito leaned further out the window and buzzed in repeatedly.

"That's odd," Obito remarked, pulling back into the car. "No one's replying. Do you know the override code so we can get in?"

Sasuke grunted and got out of the car, stalking over to the box and punching in a five digit code. The gate finally opened. "You happy now?" Sasuke grumbled, getting back into the passenger seat. "Hey, where are you going? You can't park at the front door."

"I have to check things out," Obito muttered, stopping the car in front of the main mansion. "Wait here." And then he got out of the car and disappeared through the front doors.

Sasuke was never one to sit still when told, so only a few minutes after Obito went in, Sasuke followed.

It was eerily quiet in the house. There was no one around, and all the lights were out. Scowling, Sasuke searched for the light switch. He finally found it and clicked it on, light flooding the open entry hall, covered in blood and dead bodies.

Sasuke had never screamed so loudly.

A manservant's head, eyes wide in fright, feet away from Sasuke's feet. A maid with her white apron stained red. There were more too, every one of them frightened, decapitated or rammed through with an unseen weapon; they had been running to the entrance, away from their killer.

Sasuke felt sick. He stumbled past the bodies and up the stairs, stomach reeling. The hallway wasn't lit, but he could care less at this point. His feet pounded loudly past doorways—past his room, past Itachi's empty room—until he made it to the last bedroom door. "Mother!" he called out as he fumbled open the knob. "Father!"

Before he could scream again, a large body pulled him close, an arm tight around his chest and a hand clamped tightly over his mouth. Sasuke's fingers scrambled at the hand over his mouth, tears leaking out of his eyes. "Sasuke, it's me. It's okay," Obito soothed. But it wasn't, because no matter what, he could still see the bodies, his mother's body lying spread eagle in her nightclothes and his father with blood dribbling from the corner of his mouth. And Sasuke couldn't look away.

Obito eventually turned Sasuke around and gripped his shoulders tightly. "Sasuke, listen to me," he instructed. "You've got to get out of here. If everyone in this house has been killed, it's very likely he's done off everybody in the second house and even people working in the corporation building. You have to go find Kakashi." Obito drew a card from his pocket and slipped it into Sasuke's hand. "He should be able to help."

"Obito, what-?" And then Sasuke's eyes widened even further, and he shrieked so that his throat tore as a familiar face emerged from the dark, red eyes gleaming.

"What?" Obito turned around, but all that got him was a knife in the gut, which was pulled out swiftly and drawn across Obito's neck. Sasuke shrieked and backed away as Obito fell to the ground, lifeless, and the familiar person he hadn't seen for over a year stepped over the body towards him.

"Hello, Little Brother," Itachi smirked. "Happy Fifteenth Birthday."

.notes.

Oh my. I'm sorry I started this already. There wasn't going to be a prequel to Red Moonshine; it was going to be side stories, I swear, but now this is going to be a prequel, and then there's going to be something else for side stories, because now I really really want to write Obito and Kakashi. The reason why this came into being is that I wanted to write down what happened with Itachi for my own reference. I was never going to actually write about it, but now I have. And it went down a lot differently than I originally thought it would.

I figured I was going to write about Sasuke's year or so between Itachi's disappearance (it was originally going to be four, but didn't work with the timing) and coming back, but I found out that Sasuke's life was pretty boring then, and I didn't have the patience to write about teen stuff. I've out teen-stuffed myself by doing a contest recently. I'm going to chalk it up to the fact that Sasuke's life didn't seem to have meaning until he met Naruto?

I'm also going to apply the same principle to the style of the chapter. Red Moonshine is so much more sophisticated. It's the influence of all the vampires, I know it.

And, if it isn't obvious, I didn't look over this well. Probably ridden with mistakes I missed, like Red Moonshine. I need to start getting someone to look at this stuff.

Reviews?