On his second birthday Itachi received a katana from his dad. The blade was silvery-white and rang like bell when hit; the hilt was made of black leather, the Uchiha crest embroidered along the material. It was a work of art within itself.
More akin to the interests of a two year old, Itachi's mother gave him a simple stuffed bear she'd made herself. Her husband frowned upon the idea of giving something so impractical to his son and eventual heir, but after much convincing there was a compromise; the bear had the family crest sewn into its back.
Needless to say, Itachi was completely uninterested in the weapon. At the sight of the bear, however, his eyes widened and he reached for it with fascination. When he finally got to hold it, the first thing he did was shove one of the ears in his mouth. His mother laughed and his father, standing sulkily in the corner with his arms crossed, rolled his eyes.
Upon discovering the bear didn't taste very good, Itachi pulled the ear out of his mouth and bounced the bear in his lap, laughing with the kind of mirth that could only come from the mouth of a young child.
Itachi triple-checked his backpack before slinging it on before taking a final look at himself in the mirror and straightening his school uniform. Today was a big day so he needed to look really good. Snatching his stuffed bear from the counter, he ran made his way to the door.
"Ba," Sasuke stated proudly behind him.
Itachi turned and looked at the baby sitting in the middle of the floor.
"What?" he pouted.
"Ba da!" Sasuke proclaimed and reached his hands out to his brother.
"What do you want?" Itachi asked again. Even after one year he still refused to believe that his little brother couldn't talk properly.
The baby open and closed his fists in mid air expecting Itachi to pick him up.
"No!" Itachi frowned at his baby brother and cuddled his bear to his chest.
Sasuke lower lip quivered and he gave the older boy a watery-eyed look.
"Don't look at me like that!" The six year old whined, clutching the bear harder but not moving from the spot.
A tear threatened to fall down the infant's face as he tilted his head up to scream.
"No! No! Don't do that!" Sasuke stopped and stared at his brother as if expecting him to do something. Itachi glanced between his baby brother on the floor, the bear and the clock. Reluctantly he took a step away from the door.
Sasuke smiled a wide toothless grin and held his hands out again. Itachi sighed and walked the rest of the way over, squatting before his brother.
As soon as his older brother was within arm's reach, Sasuke grabbed a chunk of hair that hung loose over Itachi's shoulder and pulled hard. Itachi gave a yelp, pulled back, lost his balance, and fell on his behind.
Clutching the disturbed chunk of hair, he stood up and brooding went over to the cabinet in the corner. From the top drawer he pulled out a hair ribbon and tied his hair into a clumsy ponytail. He liked to keep his hair short normally, so not all of it actually reached the tie, but it got most of it out the way not counting his bangs and a bit that still stuck up awkwardly in the back.
Sasuke watched him to this, and when his brother finally turned again to face him smiled an innocent little smile and giggled.
"It's not funny. I'm going to have to wear it like this from now on so you can't pull on it," Itachi whined as he looked around the room to see where he'd put his bear. To his horror, Sasuke found it first.
"No! Give that back! It's mine!" Itachi ran over his brother and tried to tug the toy out of his hands.
"No!" Sasuke mimicked as he hugged the bear to his own chest.
Itachi pouted and gave his brother what he hoped was a threatening glare. The baby just giggled again and shoved the bear's ear in his mouth.
"That's not how you do it!" the six year old cried, and tried to pry the toy for his baby brother again. This time, he got a hold of it. Sasuke let out a wail as the toy was pulled away from him.
Ignoring the infant, Itachi held the toy up for inspection. He gave a disgusted look the ear now covered in baby drool and briefly wondered how stupid someone had to be to think that was what you did with stuffed bears. Sasuke, in the mean time, was threatening a fit again.
"Oh alright," Itachi rolled his eyes as he handed the bear down to his baby brother. "Here."
Sasuke smiled and accepted the bear excitedly, squeezing it in a hug. Watching this, Itachi couldn't help but smile.
"I wasn't going to bring it to the Academy with me anyway," he lied. "Everyone would laugh at me for carrying a toy around. I'm supposed to live up to the Uchina—Uchiwa—Uchiha name and I can't do that if everyone calls me a baby. But you're already a baby so that's okay. You can keep it." Itachi stood up and watched his brother play with the toy for a little longer. Suddenly, his gaze fell on the clock on the wall.
"Oh look what you made me do!" he yelled to the baby on the floor as he ran outside. "I'm going to be late to my first day!"
Sasuke scrambled around his room, looking for last-minute things that he might have forgotten to pack. Why did he have to oversleep today of all days.
"Aren't you ready yet?" his father was standing in Sasuke's doorway wearing his usual mask of disappointment.
"Almost, father!" Sasuke chirped as he stuffed the last of his things into his new backpack and grabbed the stuffed bear from the bed.
"You aren't bringing that rag along, are you?" Sasuke could almost hear the unspoken comparison between himself and Itachi in his father's voice.
Sasuke held the bear up by its arm and gave it a scrutinizing look; there was nothing wrong with it that he could see. The bear had been ripped and sewn up in a few places, but not before half the stuffing had fallen out. There was a slight gash under one of its arms and the embroidered Uchiha crest on its back was starting to fray. Nope, nothing wrong with it at all.
"Bringing such garbage with you to school," Sasuke father grumbled. "Pathetic. Not at all what I could expect from my son."
Sasuke looked up at the sound of these words, feeling slightly crushed.
"I-I wasn't going to bring it to my first day of Academy! Not at all!" Sasuke grinned exposing his missing front tooth. "In fact, I was just about to put this away! I'm too old for such things!" Pulling open the top draw of his dresser, he shoved the bear in as far inside as his arm would reach and slid it shut.
"Whatever," his father sighed and he turned to leave. Sasuke ran after, although not without pausing to look back at the dresser reluctantly. It was finally his chance to live up to his father's expectations. Leaving his best friend behind was just the first step.
Sasuke shoved the last of his worldly possessions into his bag and reached his hand inside his dresser for something else. He patted the thin wood for anything left behind. To his surprise, he felt something fuzzy shoved all the way in the back corner. Grabbing a chunk of the fur that didn't feel real at all, he dragged out what looked like a dusty rag.
Holding it up in front of himself, Sasuke's eyes widened. It was his old bear, just as ragged and lovable as he'd remembered it, if not a big more dusty and wrinkle for being crammed in the back of his dresser for the past five years. Sasuke's impression softened, but he didn't smile. Instead, he held the old fabric to his face and inhaled.
The bear smelled of love and nostalgia and time when everything was wonderful. It smelled of his mother and father and an innocence that caused him to believe the man that would soon be dead was his brother. Every moment that was ever good and happy and wonderful was condense into the smell of the old cotton. It was another world altogether now.
Sasuke's head snapped back when he remembered what he was supposed to be doing. He needed to meet those Sound guys in less then twenty minutes; he didn't have time to reminisce now. Sasuke glance back down at the bear.
"Hn."
He reopened his backpack, stuffed the bear unceremoniously inside, and threw the back onto his shoulders again. He didn't know why he did it; there wasn't any reason to. But he knew that if he thought about it, he'd be late for being early, so it didn't really matter much.
"I smell blood up ahead," Kisame called to his partner as they bounced along between the trees. "It's kind of old though, maybe a few days."
"As long as it's only blood, there's no reason to go around it," Itachi answered calmly.
Kisame shrugged and slowed his pace a bit.
"Why are you slowing down?"
"You're falling behind again."
"I am not, go faster. We've already lost a week waiting for my eyes to recover."
Kisame internally scolded Itachi for using not only Tsukiyomi, twice at that, but Amaterasu as well. Luckily, Konoha's attention was elsewhere and no one came tracking after them.
The trees began to thin and Kisame expected a clearing up ahead any minute. To his surprise, no such clearing came; instead, where there should have been a fairly large one, was a wide expanse filled with the strangest trees he'd ever seen in his entire life. They were white and jagged popping out every few feet in the expanse of sand that they grew in. They didn't look much like trees at all. Itachi halted just before they reached close enough to land on them, and Kisame did the same. Holding his hand out as a signal to go no further, Itachi hopped onto the nearest branch of the white trees. He knelt down and touched his hand to the bark of one of the larger branches.
"Bone," he stated matter-of-factly.
"Bone?!" Kisame choked out once his jaw started working properly again. "What do you mean bone?"
"I mean, these are made of human bone."
Kisame took another look around at the expanse of whiteish-yellow as far as the eye could see. It felt vaguely creepy to be standing there. It sure looked like bone should, but it wasn't shaped anything like it. Itachi was never wrong about such things, however. That only left two options; Kakuzu's new partner was right about a few things, or someone had a really fucked up bloodline limit. Still, it was a little thrilling to be standing there looking at so much human bone all in the same place. It made Kisame feel like going to kill something. More than usual.
He was brought back to attention by the slight swishing sound Itachi's cloak made as he jumped further into the forest of bone. Kisame followed without a word.
A minute later the ground beneath the bone turned from sand to grass. Without any explanation, Itachi hopped down from onto this grass and ran his fingers along it.
"There was an explosion here," he commented to himself.
This place was starting to give Kisame the creeps, something he wasn't used to getting. "So?"
"It wasn't a regular explosion. Chakra based."
"You're saying that Deidara guy did this?" Kisame sneered.
"No," Itachi answered stoically, standing up. "Even his explosions use combustion. This was more of a build up of chakra pressure. It carries traces of Orochimaru."
"You mean that pedo that left a few years after hitting on you?" Kisame jumped down from his branch and landed softly next to his partner.
Itachi didn't answer but walked off in a seemingly random direction, squeezing between two of the bone trees. Kisame went to follow, but not before letting Samehade have a drink of what chakra was left at the sight of the explosion. It definitely tasted like Orochimaru's, and yet it had traces of something he'd felt back at that hotel a week ago when they were trying to get the Kyuubi kid. Whatever it was, it was highly modified from what it used to be.
A good fifty paces from the original site of explosion, Itachi put his arm out again to halt his partner before continuing on himself.
"Where are yo—"
"Sh."
Itachi knelt down in front of some sort of object lying on the ground. It was singed, and torn badly, but somehow roughly recognizable as once being a backpack. Kisame resisted the urge to tell his partner to be careful, but the feel of the atmosphere and the fact that Itachi probably knew already made him keep his mouth shut.
There was a rustling noise as the Uchiha ruffled through the pack before drawing something out. Kisame craned his neck to see what it was but his partner's body was in the way. Whatever it was, Itachi held it up to his nose and inhaled deeply. By the low way he exhaled, Kisame knew he was savoring it.
"What did you find there?" he finally asked.
"Nothing," Itachi stood up and whirled around, although the way his cloak moved Kisame knew he'd shoved whatever it was he was smelling into the inside front pocket.
"Oh come on! I saw you! What was drugs?"
"It was nothing," Itachi repeated more sternly, his Sharingan starting to swirl dangerously as he stared at his partner.
Kisame knew better than to press on, nor did he get a chance to as Itachi hopped onto the nearest branch and jumped off and away towards their next destination.
"The only one he couldn't kill," Madara continued, "was his little brother. The man who cried tears old blood as he smothered his emotions and killed his brethren," the ropes binding Sasuke were sliced. "Couldn't bring himself to kill you. Why do you think that is? For him, your life weighed more than the village."
Although he was finally unrestrained Sasuke couldn't bring himself to move. What he had just been told…if he'd only known…how could this be? Madara kept talking, but Sasuke couldn't quite make out the words as if there were a film over his ears. All he could remember were flashes of his battle. The one he'd won. Or had he really lost? He'd gotten what he'd wanted only to find how terribly wrong he'd been for wanting it. His instinct told him to think of what to do next, but his brain refused to function enough to even access the situation thoroughly.
"…and die before your eyes." Madara finished as the candle on the crate in the corner finally ran out.
Sasuke sat in the darkness for many minutes just trying to will himself to move or to at least make a light. At long last, with shaking hands he formed the hand seals needed to create the suspended ball of fire the hovered in the air with a slight hissing sound in the middle of the room. The place was just as it had been expect for Madara was no where in sight. On the ground in the middle of the floor was a small package that hadn't been there before.
Cautiously, Sasuke scrawled over to it on hands and knees, sitting down before it and scanning it with his bloodline. Seemed harmless enough; no poison gasses, booby traps, hidden seals… just brown paper tied with sting. Gingerly Sasuke pulled on the knot that held the parcel together and watched as the paper unfolded.
The last thing Sasuke expected to find was a brand new shirt. White, high collared, with the Uchiha Crest embroidered big and proud on the back. Sasuke unfolded it and held it up in the air turning it back and forth to catch any tracking seals on it; there were none.
However, it was what was underneath the shirt that puzzled Sasuke. Instead of any sort of note or explanation, include in the package was a bit of old, tattered, blood-stained, burned brown fabric with a few hairs of fake fur still clinging to it. A few red and white strings were sticking to it here and there. Sasuke dropped the shirt beside him and reached for the brown rag.
His breath hitched as he recognized what had once been his most prized possession. He hadn't seen it for almost three years now, he'd thought it'd been lost with the rest of his things on his way to Orochimaru, and yet here it was. How on earth did it find its way here? A small, unwelcome tear rolled down the Uchiha's cheek and he clung to the old fabric as if he were a year old again.
If he could have, Sasuke would have cried until he ran out of tears, but his emotions were washed away somewhere. In the space that had once been filled with hatred and a want—no, a need for revenge, was now empty. He sat very still, curled up over his beloved bear.
Once when he was very young, Sasuke remembered being told that the bear once belonged to Itachi. Maybe that was true, and maybe it wasn't, but right now, Sasuke decided he would rather have it be true. Pulling on the shirt, he stood up and walked through the only doorway out of the cave, cradling what was left of the bear in the crook of his elbow.
Sasuke smelled and heard the sea before he saw it. The mouth of the cave opened out to face a long beach of grayish sand and dark murky waters. The sky was overcast and gloomy, just they way Sasuke wanted it to be. He trekked along just out of reach of the water for more than a mile before finally finding the right place to stop. Here, a fair-sized boulder jutted out into the water. Sasuke climbed atop it still clutching the bear protectively, ignoring the cold spray hitting his face.
Once he clambered onto the slippery surface, he stood facing the onslaught of the waves. The bluer gray of the sea melted into the whiter gray of the sky, making it appear as if the whole world was as washed out of color as Sasuke felt. Holding out the bear with both hands at arm's length, Sasuke gave it a good, hard look filled with pity and regret. There were so many things he wanted to say to the bear—to Itachi—but none of them seemed fitting. With a last deep breath of the ocean air, Sasuke closed his eyes and flung his childhood toy into the waves. When looked again, the brown fabric had already disappeared in the dark foam, never to be seen again. For the first time in many years, Sasuke brought himself to use a word that he'd always wanted to forget. This time, he said it feeling no false ties or hatred or the feeling that the word itself was a lie.
"Rest in Peace, Brother."
Author's Note: My longest oneshot to date. What do you think? Tell me if the timelines and settings are confusing.