DISCLAIMER: None of the Naruto characters are mine, they are all Kishimoto's. I'm just messing around with them. Oh, but the OC is mine.
Prologue
She was a disgrace. The shame of the clan.
And yet, it wasn't even her fault.
Or was it?
Mikoto choked a sob as she traced the face of her baby's face with trembling hands. Her daughter was beautiful, with delicate features and pale skin. Yet Fugaku had not even held her once she was born in grim disappointment and fury, and she feared it. Not for herself, nor for the clan, but for the fragile, tiny life held in her arms, oblivious to her fate.
"Mother?"
The gentle voice of her oldest son jerked her out of her thoughts, and Mikoto tried to put on a smile that felt more like a grimace.
"Itachi, you came back."
The boy - he was still a boy, but he looked old, so old - inclined his head, and walked towards her, concern evident in his eyes.
"You should eat, Mother."
Mikoto knows she should. She had just given birth a few days ago, and her body was still recovering. But food felt like sand and rocks on her tongue, and she couldn't bring herself to eat more. Still, Itachi's face held genuine concern, and she cannot afford to be weak, not now, not when her daughter is being shunned by the entire clan, so she nods and proceeds to empty the bowl of soup offered to her. Itachi's lips twinged with slight relief just to disappear into a blank face he always wears. And Mikoto hates it, hates the cold, emotionally empty face that her husband drilled into his eldest, and the years of frustration and anger bubbles under her chest as she watches Itachi's eyes turn soft as he turns to look at his youngest sister.
"She is beautiful, Mother."
Mikoto's eyes well up in tears at that tender words, because she knows, knows that Itachi always loved kids, and longed for another sibling even after Sasuke. Itachi leaned toward the baby, looking at the small face with awe and love and promises and as the brother kissed the baby's forehead with softly whispered words, Mikoto truly smiled for the first time since she gave birth.
Welcome, imouto. I will keep you safe.
Itachi returns to the compound that night, mind whirling in thoughts and concerns as he remembered his mother's worn out face. He desired to stay with his mother, his new sister, but he had obligations and he needed to talk to his father.
The house is grim as he enters, quiet and dark. He noticed the light on his father's study - with a faint smell of sake - and decids to check on Sasuke first before he confronts his father. Fugaku would have noticed his entrance anyways, and as the man didn't demand his presence right away, Itachi didn't hesitate.
Sasuke's room is dark, but as he opens the door, the young boy seats up wide awake, smiling as he always did whenever he sees him.
"Itachi-nii!"
"Sasuke."
And as he breathed in his brother's familiar scent, he lets the tension in his body bleed out a little, and Sasuke earnestly holds onto him, because when was the last time he'd seen him?
"Have you seen Mother?"
It was a innocent enough question, but by the way Sasuke's face darkens, Itachi knew that the matter might be worse than he anticipated.
"No, not since she went to the hospital. Itachi-nii, is she really-"
Sasuke glances to the door and lowers his voice to a barely audible whisper.
"Is it true? The baby? Father breaks something every time she is mentioned and..."
You're scared, Itachi thinks, and he understands, because Father breaking things is indeed terrifying, and Mother not being home doesn't help the situation. He looks at his younger brother's onyx eyes, bright with adoration for him (which he is forever grateful because he doesn't deserve it) and pokes his finger to Sasuke's forehead as he always does.
"Do not worry, otouto. The baby and Mother are both fine. As for the issue you speak, do not let those hinder your affections to your family. We are family, as is our new imouto. Do you understand?"
Sasuke nods solemnly, and Itachi knew he understood.
Fugaku looked wretched. And Itachi looks blankly as he doesn't even glance at his son as he downs bottle after bottle of sake. Itachi considers his options, and decides a direct confrontation is probably the best.
"Father."
The man didn't even acknowledge him.
"Mother should come back home. With my sister."
The sake bottle slams - breaking both the bottle and the table - but Itachi doesn't even twitch as he fixes his stare to his father. He is not trying to be disrespectful, but if there is one thing Uchiha Itachi holds truly dear, it is family, and his sister was one. So he doesn't back out, not even flinches at his father's cold fury.
"She cannot."
They both knew who the 'she' was.
"She is our sister. She is also a Uchiha."
Itachi counters in a perfectly calm voice. Fugaku's chakra is incensed, and his eyes flicker to red than to black and to red again.
"She can never be a true Uchiha."
She will be a disgrace. Itachi could hear the words from his father's lips.
"Since when were the Uchina defined by their eye color?"
Itachi watches as his father stills. He braces himself, he knows he is young, he is barely a genin, but he is not called a genius for nothing. He learned from his father since he could barely talk, and is not oblivious of clan politics, but he could not accept to just give up on his sister. He would not.
"Itachi."
And there was the warning. Itachi suddenly thinks of Shisui, his easy-going, yet astute best friend and cousin, and wonders what he thought of the whole ordeal. Probably wanting to give baby color-lenses or just to get rid of all the Elders, knowing him.
"We are Uchiha by our name, our skill, and our dignity, not only by our bloodline limit, Father. It was you who taught me that."
And Fugaku knows he did. He remembers the lecture, his young prodigy son sitting front of him in a solemn face as he spoke those exact words. And he had truly meant it, word by word. But now he was here, in a breaking point because his newborn daughter - and gods, he was so happy when Mikoto told him they were having a girl - has no chance to activate the Sharingan. None at all. He looks at his eldest, takes in his blank, yet sincere expression and loosens his grip on the broken bottle.
"Do you know the implications of her circumstances?"
"That the clan head's child will not be able to activate the Sharingan?"
"That is not wrong, but not all."
He inclined his head to his eldest son.
"Sit."
Itachi searches his father's face, sees the weariness, the grief, and gracefully settles in front of him.
"There was never a Uchiha with different eye colors. Never. Even through marriages with different clans, they never have the Uchiha features with different eyes. You either get both, or you do not. Especially in the Head house."
Itachi's eyes go wide, if just a little bit. His father's face is grave as stone.
"If the baby had different hair or face, it might have been the question of Mikoto's loyalty. But she is claimed to have all the Uchiha features, just not the eyes. For the first time in the history of the clan, there is a legitimate child who doesn't have the Uchiha eyes. And she is from the Head house who usually marries within the clan. It was impossible, it was deemed impossible, yet it happened."
"...Father."
"She is a mutation. An anomaly. She is the proof that Sharingan might not last to the future generations, the evidence that our clan might become extinct someday. She shames me, shames me by simply being born."
Fugaku reaches for another bottle of sake because he needs it, because he wants to forget, forget the genetic implications, forget the Elders' worried cries about the clan, and forget that he desperately wants to meet his daughter.
And Itachi sits there, in stunned silence, unable to argue yet unwilling to agree.
(But in second thought, maybe the marriage within clans is not the reason to deem it impossible, but rather is the cause of it? He isn't an expert in genetics, but surely generations of reproduction between close relations can cause genetic problems?
Itachi looks at his father, miserable and angry at the same time, and remembers his mother, eyes burning in protective love, but tired and hurt.
Then maybe, maybe he could research and prove that his only sister is not a shame, not a disgrace, but a proof that his clan's fixation on a pure bloodline could backfire.
Then maybe, his sister could come home.)
