1. Introduction
It was a rather hot day in the summer; he'd come home from his training drenched in sweat from his rigorous workout with his cousin and slipped out of his shoes on the porch as always, patiently eager for a glass of his mother's lemonade to cool off.
Lemonade was the last thing on Uchiha Mikoto's mind at the moment, however; she was leaning against the kitchen counter, her face strained and shoulders tense and her free hand cupping her swollen belly.
Itachi blinked once as he encountered this scene; he'd never seen his mother in such a state before.
"Itachi," she gasped, looking up at him with clear eyes despite her obvious discomfort. "Go get your father. I need to go to the hospital."
The boy stared at her for about another two second, eyes slightly wider than usual, before leaping into action. It was three o clock in the afternoon or so, which meant that his father was likely to either be in his office at the station or doing a final patrol around the village. It would take Itachi approximately three minutes to make it to the station, and another minute or so to get to the man's office and explain. If he was on patrol, it could potentially take quite a while to retrieve him. He knew he would be of little use trying to support his mother all the way to the hospital and he'd yet to work his transportation jutsu into something that could handle more than himself. Taking all this into account, he made an executive decision and darted back out of the house.
"Shisui!" he shouted as he made it out of the yard; his cousin had stopped to talk to one of the neighbors, sitting on the porch and watching the day go by, as always, and was only about fifty yards down the road.
"Huh? What, Itachi?" he frowned, turning back to his younger cousin immediately.
"The baby," he called back.
"The ba-oh!"
The young man was at his side in a flicker and they were hurrying into the house; Mikoto looked slightly confused.
"Shisui can take you to the hospital now while I find Tou-sama," Itachi said, pausing to slip on his shoes as Shisui grinned at his mother and allowed her to lean on him; he winked at Itachi and then they both disappeared. That accomplished, the boy darted off again in search of his father.
It was fairly late into the night when Itachi was called from a waiting room to meet the latest member of the family; Shisui accompanied him to the room but elected to wait outside it politely.
His mother was in the bed, his father standing at her side; both sets of dark eyes were fixed on the child in her arms until they noticed Itachi's arrival.
"Come and meet him, Itachi-kun," Mikoto invited quietly, smiling gently.
Curious, he approached the bed and his father demonstrated the proper cradling technique and then the tiny boy was passed over to him, wrapped in a blue blanket and with a messy tuft of black hair that stuck up every which way.
The child was a warm weight in his arms, seeming to practically radiate life in its most basic and pure form; his eyes opened sleepily and he blinked up at Itachi, stretching pudgy hands toward the sky and yawning cumbersomely. His soft fingers latched onto his shirt and he started mouthing his blanket.
A smile touched his lips.
"Hello, ototo…"
A/N: So I've never attempted one of these challenges before, but since I can't seem to finish a full fic, I figured maybe I could finish a whole bunch of questionably related ones under the same category. So here it is. I'm doing the 100 Themes Challenge. I got the list from a blog, but I hear it originated on DeviantArt, so whoever started this thing, kudos and credit. I dunno if there's an etiquette of some sort to this (ie, posting links somewhere or something), so if I offend anyone by not posting a link, well...pm me and we'll talk. Anyway, I have no idea when this will be updated; it most likely won't be regular, so there's that...
Ahem. Now that the admin stuff is done. This will be centered mostly around Itachi and Sasuke, because I love Itachi and you can't tell his story without telling Sasuke's. It'll probably veer more toward Sasuke as we get further into the themes list, because (somewhat unfortunately) Sasuke just gets more screen time than Itachi. There will probably be other characters with chapters because blah. I'll try to keep it chronological but I doubt it always will be.
All right. Now that I've bored you. Please enjoy and R&R.