Naruto's world and characters belong to Kishimoto Masashi.

Chapter One: Homecoming

There was a time when the faces of six Hokages looked out from the cliff above Konoha. I will never forget the day they collapsed, the fear and confusion, the smell of smoke and rock dust. Shouting. My first day at Academy, there barely ten minutes and hating it so much I wished the sky would fall.

The school building was badly damaged. I could hear Hinata-sensei's voice, calmly calling instructions over the screams and coughs, and distantly the sounds of explosions. The ceiling had fallen on my desk and I was trapped under it, my arm pinned. Wholly convinced I'd caused it all.

I cried out for Hayashi – his class was only next door – and it seemed like magic that straight away the desk was pulled off me. But it was my father, who had after all only just left after the entrance ceremony. His face was set, eyes bloody red, tomoe slowly revolving. "I didn't mean it!" I said, and he shouldn't have understood me but did, and bent to gather me up, murmuring: "You're overestimating yourself," in so warm and kind a voice that I burst into tears and clung. It was years before I talked about it with my mother, was told that Father had always considered school a lesser kind of hell, and had probably wished for it to be destroyed often enough himself.

After that attack they'd left the newly scoured cliff-face bare, so it was a shock to see through the grey dawn haze the symbol of Konoha carved in grand swirling lines. I'd only been away eleven months – I wasn't expecting everything to be the same, but still-.

Some things, though, never change. Hayashi, loose-limbed, stance relaxed, the pink bleached from his close-cropped hair by the thin light. I was three weeks early, had sent no warning, and still Hayashi had known, was here, standing exactly where I'd planned to cross the wall.

"The border guard sent an alert?" I guessed, stopping just out of arm's reach, allowing myself a single glance to confirm that he was whole and unharmed and as fully himself as the last time I'd seen him.

"What need, on mother's birthday?" Hayashi's eyes, as black as my own, reflected his faint smile. "Year's leave or not, there was no chance you would miss it. I've prepared everything."

He headed to the Uchiha compound without another word, marking my return with no more fuss than my departure. My older brother possesses an equilibrium a tsunami couldn't trouble. I took a breath to regain my own, then followed him along the familiar rooftop path to my family's home.

"Flowers," Hayashi said, as I carefully tucked my pack out of the way into a corner of the dining room. The ingredients for our mother's breakfast tray were already laid out on the kitchen bench, and as I headed into the garden Hayashi began assembling the light omelette he had made on the twenty-eighth of March for sixteen years now. His cooking had long surpassed the charred and gluggy effort our mother had bravely swallowed the first time we had celebrated her birthday this way, and the stool he'd required to reach the stove long forgotten, just as I no longer needed to perilously scale the trees to collect the few blooming sprays of Sakura blossom standing out from the tightly-clasped buds.

I arranged the vase before washing off a little of the trail-dust, and by the time I was done Hayashi had the rest of the tray ready, omelette faintly steaming, juice freshly squeezed, the small bowl of yoghurt and cut fruit little resembling the overflowing and half-pulped mess which at four I'd considered such an achievement. Hayashi was well past needing my help to carry the tray, but as usual it was my task to open the door to our parents' bedroom. This short dawn ritual is so set, evolving yet enduring, that I could have been any age, it could have been any year.

Father was awake – we'd never done this without finding him sitting up, impossible to approach unaware. His eyes were open very wide, a storm of hastily-suppressed emotion, for he had been far from happy at my departure, and had long before that been unable to look me in the face without some measure of conflict. But then he smiled - that faint, disarming shift of his mouth which reminded me that my parents adored all their children - and squeezed my mother's shoulder to wake her.

Mother, groggily turning, represented undisputed proof that time had not stood still, for her belly curved out heavily, making her movements awkward. She froze at the sight of me, then let out a breath – almost as if she'd been holding it since the day I left – then opened her arms for me. "Shinrin."

Home has always been my mother's arms, and I knelt on the tatami mat and lost myself in that comfort, gaining as I did so a moment to lock away the distress which came from not even knowing my mother was pregnant. I had done this, separated myself.

"Happy Birthday, okaasan," I whispered, then drew myself back, struggling against the tears I saw in her eyes.

"Happy Birthday," Hayashi echoed and knelt to present her with the tray, knowing as he always did when I wanted attention distracted away from me.

"A wonderful surprise," mother said, which again were ritual words, repeated every year, but this time not referring to the breakfast.

Interruption was heralded by feet thudding lightly along the hall, and Hazakura, dragging Kobai by one arm, slid into the room. "I told you to wake –" he began, but then stopped and gaped a moment before launching himself at me with a cry of: "Nee-san!"

Father deftly removed the breakfast tray to the far side of the bed, as I kept an enthusiastic embrace from landing me in my mother's foreshortened lap. Hazakura is irrepressible. Not my father's reserve, nor the solemnity of any formal ceremony; nothing can dampen his enthusiasm. He likes everyone, assumes everyone likes him, and comes very close to being correct. His colouring shows his bloodline, but it's a common joke in Konoha to say that Hazakura is the least Uchiha Uchiha who has ever drawn breath.

Kobai, on the other hand, is my father's image, and owns the same guarded reticence. I had long been his favourite, and I gave him a faint smile over Hazakura's shoulder, only to have him avert his eyes, mouth turned down. I was not going to be quickly forgiven my desertion, but that is not a bad thing. I had not missed how greatly it troubled father to have Kobai adore me.

"Save your questions," father said, interrupting the flood from Hazakura. "Wish your mother happy, then go fetch your breakfast." He waited until my brothers had obeyed, then looked back at me and said: "Welcome home," and for that moment at least his eyes were purely glad, with no shadow of what had long stood between us.

After my mother had hugged me again, we left our parents to their own morning greetings. Hayashi, who cooks for pleasure, resumed breakfast duties while I collected my sparse pack and found my way to my abandoned bedroom to change.

There is a mirror on the wall which faces the door of my bedroom. For ten years, every time I've walked through this door, closed it behind me, I've stopped and faced myself. There is a photograph hidden behind the glass, a square of fading colour which Kajika discovered mysteriously in old boxes belonging to her father, and which she gave to me because it was an explanation no adult was willing to provide. Four people, eyes and hair Uchiha black. The child my father was once immediately recognisable, face so innocent and joyful. A stern man, my long-dead grandfather, and a woman whose steady gaze spoke of gentle kindness.

And my face, there in that group. A little more angular, the jaw faintly different, mouth a trifle thinner. Uchiha Itachi. My eyes, especially, are his. Murderer, monster, arguably Konoha's hero, but above all my father's beloved brother. The child in that photo looks up at him with the same total adoration Kobai once directed toward me, before I left and lost his trust.

In my early years the resemblance was not so strong, had not become marked until my cheeks had lost their baby's roundness. I don't know when my father first saw his brother in my eyes. In my memory it has always been there, that shadow. He has never shown me anything but a father's love and pride, but I have always seen reflected the memories my face conjures, the pain, love and hatred he will never forget.

My parents think that is the reason I asked Uzumaki-sama for a year's leave, permission to travel. It is at least the reason I cut my waist-length hair, once my secret vanity. Since I saw that photograph, I've worn it nearly as short as Hayashi, because that blunts the resemblance, slightly, not enough.

The true reason I found standing in the kitchen, serious violet eyes widening momentarily at the sight of me. Uzumaki Kajika, best friend, former team member, her white-blonde hair neatly braided, wearing the uniform of Konoha's police force. Another surprise, but perhaps not so great a one. It is, after all, my family's chosen calling.

This early morning visit was nothing to do with me, or my mother's birthday. Kajika was reporting to my father, centre of attention in a room full of family who looked grim even before she said: "Uchiha-sama. We've found another body."

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Author's Notes:

This is a twenty-three year timeskip. The updates will be fairly slow. Oh, and it's not yuri - sorry yuri-fans.

It's quite possible the names aren't gender-appropriate, but I don't mind. Here are their meanings.

Uchiha Hayashi – forest

Uchiha Shinrin – sacred forest

Uchiha Hazakura – leafing cherry tree

Uchiha Kobai - red plum

Uzumaki Kajika – River frog (lit. river deer)

Uzumaki Huziiro – lavender