Disclaimer: 'Naruto', with all its characters and plot, belongs to Masashi Kishimoto.
This is a two shot I quickly wrote up the other day about one of my favourite characters ever, Itachi Uchiha, I think he needs more love.
It hasn't been edited so I have a feeling I switch between tense a lot, especially since it's third person! Sorry if it annoys anyone!
ONE
When they met it was on his first mission.
He was seven years old and covered in blood that not even the rain could wash away. The team he had been assigned consisted of two boys who were older than him by at least four years and a civilian-born sensei that ignored him out of spite. His father had been furious when he heard who the Hokage had put him with, taking it as another slight against the Uchiha name. It caused him and the elders to become even more restless.
The rest of his team had separated from him during the battle. He had killed three other shinobi and now he was alone. The mission was a simple delivery to a town on the outskirts of the fire country, but they were attacked and then diverted. Now, he was in the territory of their enemy.
Instead of staying in the rain, he followed the tree-line that lead him to a cottage on the outskirts of a village. A girl his age wandered outside. The rain stopped.
"Oh!" she gasped when she noticed him, standing on the outskirts of the clearing. "Are you okay?"
She ran towards him as he fell to his knees, clutching the wound on his side just below his ribs. His hitai-ate didn't deter her from her task as she hefted him up so he was balanced against her. This was strange because the area he was in was part of the Land of Earth and they usually didn't take kindly to visitors from Konoha.
But he was seven years old, the same age as her. She didn't think he would hurt her. She was right.
The girl managed to half drag him inside and place him on a worn-out couch futon, not caring that his wet uniform soaked into the blanket. When she returned again it was with a first aid box clutched to her chest and and old woman following her. The woman blinked in shock, her eyes going from his hitai-ate to his clan symbol.
"What is your name, boy?" she growled as she lifted cut away his shirt to see the wound.
"Daiki."
"Hm." She could tell he was lying but didn't say anything else on the matter. "Natsuhime, fetch some water to clean his wound with. I can't see through all of the blood to start stitching."
"Yes, Obaa-sama."
When the two of them were alone, the old woman glared at him. "I don't know how you got here, Konoha shinobi, but I expect you to leave as soon as you are able. My granddaughter is a kind soul and I am the doctor of this village, so we will heal you out of the goodness of our hearts as long as you promise never to return here."
"I promise."
He had never been very good at keeping promises, right Sasuke?
The next time they meet he is desperate. He has been an ANBU for ten months now and he is twelve years old. The other children in Konoha who are the same age as him are sitting their graduation exam. He is in charge of assassinating a noble in Iwagakure no Sato.
The mission goes off without a hitch until he is caught by the guards on the way out. Ten jounin-level shinobi. He defeats them but not without being stabbed three times with a nodachi. The wounds are too severe. He won't make it back to Konoha.
His mind goes into auto-drive and suddenly he finds himself in front of a mildly familiar cottage, the sun beating down on his back. The backdoor opens and a girl with sunshine hair steps out to help him inside. Her smile is like a long-forgotten dream. He passes out.
When he awakens he's on a futon in a living room. Someone has taken his mask and bandaged his wounds. He feels more rested than he has in weeks.
"Daiki-kun," the girl from before greets, carrying a tray of food. "I'm glad you're awake. Obaa-sama is tending to her garden but she'll be back soon to check on you. Hopefully you can return to your home soon, your family must be worried."
"H-How…" his voice cracks, a mixture of exhaustion and puberty. The girl looks amused but doesn't laugh.
"You've been asleep for three days, Daiki-kun," she replies gently. "But you'll be okay. It was mostly chakra drainage; the sword didn't pierce anything vital."
"Hn."
A familiar old woman enters then with a basket in the crook of her elbow. She stares at him with a severe expression on her face and he remembers his previous promise. His heart drops into his stomach.
"I will heal you," she says when her granddaughter has left the room for a moment. "But this time you will owe me a favour."
The contents of that favour weren't known until the next time he saw them.
At thirteen years old he kills his clan. His mother, his father, his aunts, uncles and cousins. All but his brother were now gone because of his hand. The Sandaime Hokage hands over the money he earns from completing the S-Rank mission before informing him that he must never return to Konoha, his beloved village. In return, he makes the old man promise that his brother will be protected from Shimura Danzo, a man after the sharingan. Now, he has no where to go and his only purpose is to protect the future he sacrificed everything for.
Uchiha Madara had already informed him of the criminal organisation Akatsuki that threatened all the lives in the Elemental Nations. He was welcome to a position there and he was going to take it. In order to protect his village, he would pose as a criminal and anonymously feed back information on the group to Jiraiya of the Sannin.
Before heading to Amegakure no Sato, he takes a detour into the edge of the Land of Earth to the cottage that had perhaps become his own medical station. This time it is raining again, heavily, with thunder and lightening screeching through the sky. When he arrives the backdoor is already open. Not for the first time, he wonders if the summer girl[1] is a chakra sensor.
She had grown again, her hair now reaching the top of her thighs and her head brushing the bottom of his nose. Her hand cups his cheek as he stands in front of her, eyes still whirling with the mangekyo sharingan, clothes still stained with the blood of his parents.
"Obaa-sama is gone too," she informs him, like she already knew of his suffering. "She left you a note. Come, you can change in the bedroom. I have clothes ready for you."
"How did you know I was coming?" he asks, belatedly surprised at his own forwardness.
"There are many things that can become known to you if you only listen," is the vague reply. He is too tired to pursue more.
The yukata laid out in the bare room is white with a black obi. He trades it for his ANBU uniform after a shower where the tiles are stained crimson. He doesn't think he will be able to sleep, but he slips into oblivion as soon as his head hits the pillow. There is no sorrow or guilt anymore, only a terrifying numbness.
When he wakes up there is a bowl of rice and fried egg on the nightstand, along with a glass of water and an envelope. The food is adequate but nothing like his mother's. The letter is from the old woman. It's short.
Visit my granddaughter once every month, brat. That is all I ask of you. It can get lonely here in the mountain.
- Namikaze Kiyoko
Namikaze… that name was an integrative part of his history. It was the clan name of the Yondaime Hokage, who had been orphaned at a very young age from memory. He hadn't originated from the Land of Fire- that was obvious because of his chakra nature. But that girl… she was a descendant from him. A cousin of Namikaze Minato.
"Good morning," the voice of his thoughts jolts him out of his reasoning, a sweet smile spread across her face. "How are you feeling, Daiki-kun? You didn't have any injuries, only a severe case of exhaustion." She doesn't ask whose blood it was that covered him if it wasn't his own. He wonders how much her omniscient knowledge told her since she still didn't know his true name.
"Thank you." He isn't sure what else to say, so he simply stands up and, after another glance at the short letter left on the bed, leaves out of the window.
Uchiha Itachi was a man who ran from nothing and everything.
He promised once a month but only returns after every three. His time in Akatsuki is spent hunting down bounties with his partner and establishing himself in the hierarchy. With his sharingan, he can beat all of them… until he starts coughing up blood.
Natsuhime knows that he's sick but doesn't forcefully do anything until the two of them are both sixteen years old. She places her hands on his shoulders and forcefully sits him down on the bed they now share. Her palms glow green.
"You need to take care of yourself… Itachi-kun." He never told her his identity. She just knew after a year of visits, he figured one of the trees told her.
When he returns in three months, she hands over pills that will prolong his life if he takes them once a day. He promises that he will but his promises mean nothing.
Their child looks like him, but his smile is his mother's. Natsuhime names the boy Uchiha Hikaru.
"His name will always bring him light, even if there is only darkness," was her reasoning. Itachi agrees mostly because he hopes for the same- that his son will grow to be more like Shisui or Kagami and not like the rest of their kin.
He never believed he would love again until he saw her in their bed, sweaty and cradling their son in her arms. The midwife that assisted her had less medical knowledge than even him, but Natsuhime never panicked throughout the entire labour. She seemed at peace and he was sure that was abnormal. Hikaru, on the other hand, doesn't stop screaming until he is placed in his mother's arms. Only there is he content. When Itachi finally holds him, the apathetic look in his eye is far too familiar, especially when it turns into a glare when the baby realises he is not his mother.
"He just needs to get used to you," Natsuhime assures as she takes the screaming child from his arms. "Hikaru is just very attached to me right now."
"Hn." His son is an absolute mama's boy, just like Sasuke had been.
At eighteen he sees Sasuke again. He has grown to look more like their mother than their father, and so much like him and Hikaru that he feels sick to the stomach. His brother is still a child so he forces him to see the reality of his life- he is still too weak, especially with the amount of people who will soon be after his eyes. Itachi can't train him himself, he can only protect from the shadows and force him to grow stronger through fear.
It took two years for Hikaru to mellow out from his possessive stage, where he wouldn't allow anyone but himself near his mother. As a toddler he proved to be a mixture of his two parents, with Itachi's intelligence and talent but Natsuhime's kindness and affinity for nature chakra. The boy seemed to predict the future without any need of the sharingan he would soon develop and spoke like an educated child. As soon as Itachi turns up for his tri-monthly visit, his son is at the door with a new book in his arms.
When he reads to Hikaru, Natsuhime stands in the doorway of the room with a content smile on her face. In that moment, he knows that she is imagining them as a true family.
But he cannot give that to her, despite how much he loves her.
Hikaru is three when he receives a sibling and his parents are both nineteen.
Itachi never planned on more children (he didn't even plan his son) and he knew that the more Natsuhime and he had, the more likely they were to be discovered, despite the isolation of their location. The Akatsuki had him so busy that he was only able to visit every four months, sometimes with even longer breaks in between. So, he sees his lover three times during her pregnancy: on the day she tells him, halfway through when the baby begins to kick and the day of her labour.
He is always told the day in advance so he can be present. How she knows when the child will come is not something he understands, but he has faith in her abilities for they had never been wrong before.
It is another boy and the scene is all too familiar for him. He stands with Hikaru in his arms as the midwife hands Natsuhime the blue bundle, this time with hair the colour of sunshine sticking out of the top. His oldest son squirms as thunder bangs outside, curious to see who his mother was holding.
"Hikaru," her tired but sweet voice calls, "come and meet your otouto, Raiden."
Raiden, the god of lightening.
Hikaru's eyes widen as he looks down at the baby who coos in his mother's arms. Itachi finds that his second son has Natsuhime's hair, however, he has his face. Whereas Hikaru has a mix of his mother's features and his own, Raiden seems to be a blonder carbon copy. He feels a small sense of pride as he trades with his lover and holds his youngest son. Raiden stares for a few seconds before breaking out into a soft, peaceful smile.
He knows the end is near when he passes out in the kitchen, choking on his own blood. Natsuhime finds him seconds later and manages to save him, but the look on her face when he awakens is heartbreaking. They are barely twenty-one and have been together for over fourteen years, from the moment they saw each other the first time. There is so much yet nothing to say between them.
The boys run in energetically, the dark haired one tugging along the much shyer blonde. He hugs both to his side, praying that they will live happily and away from the war that destroyed him.
Sasuke is coming for him. Before he dies, he whispers the address of the cottage in his ear, promising that it is a place he will find answers. In his final breath he pictures the viridian eyes of his lover.
She and Hikaru can both feel when he has departed. They will never have his body so they plant a flowerbed full of purple hyacinths (sorrow), statice (remembrance), sunflowers (dedicated love) and poppies (death and rebirth). Over the months it grows to flourish over the clearing, the flowers turning wild and abundant.
The shrine inside the house has both a single photo of him and a family portrait. Her hand ghosts over her stomach, sad that she will never have a complete one of them. Their last child was a surprise to her, as were all of them, but in a way she is also grateful to have one last piece of him.
Raiden and this new babe will not remember their father but they will always know of him, that is something Natsuhime will make sure of.
Itachi cannot resist visiting them when he breaks free from the control of the Edo Tensei. He knows he should be assisting the war effort and finding Kabuto, but he has to make sure they are safe. When he reaches the clearing that the cottage resides, he finds that it has had copious amounts of seals placed around it for protection. She had done everything she could to protect them, even though fuuinjutsu was the only shinobi technique she knew. A content smile spreads across his face. The three of them are waiting for him.
The boys pounce as soon as he walks, unhindered, through the protection. He catches them and marvels at how much they can grow in the space of a year. Sorrow pinches his heart because he knows he must say his final goodbye.
When his sons are finished greeting him, Natsuhime walks forward. She clutches a bundle swathed in a pink blanket in her arms. He cannot believe it as she hands over his daughter.
She looks so much like his mother that he feels tears fill his eyes. So much like Uchiha Mikoto, but only if she had eyes the colour of the brightest emeralds.
"Kotoko," he whispers instinctively.
"That's right," Natsuhime replies. "You've gotten much better at listening." Since your death.
He smiled sadly down at her. "Not anywhere as good as you or Hikaru… I don't have much time."
"I know." She cradles his face delicately in her hands. "I have one last thing to ask of you."
"Anything."
"One last family photo. Please."
They take two. In the first, Itachi and Natsuhime stand at the back, Kotoko cradled in his arms. The boys stand in front of them, Raiden leaning against his father's legs and Hikaru against his mother's.
In the second, Hikaru and Raiden are fighting and the two parents are trying to calm down the crying Kotoko.
To Itachi, both are beautiful and he watches as Natsuhime frames them and places them on the mantle. He knows that it is time to leave them.
He kisses Kotoko's forehead, whispers something into the ear of each of his boys before their mother sends them all inside. Only then, when they are alone, does he take her in his arms for one final embrace.
They murmur their love at the same time.
[1]- 'Natsuhime' roughly translates to "summer princess", I think, hence why Itachi refers to her as "summer girl".