A/N, this was originally meant to be a oneshot, but I guess I got inspired. Rated M due to a graphic fishing accident in the second chapter. Commercial fishing boats are dangerous, dangerous things.
It wasn't until later, after everything was done, did Sasuke even think to discover just what his brother had been doing with his life.
Akatsuki couldn't have taken up all of the man's life, after all.
In fact, he wasn't certain just why it was so important for him to discover just what his brother had done with his life, but it was important for him, if nothing else. There was a gap in his knowledge about his brother, a missing piece between loving brother and a member of the ANBU so dutiful that he would slaughter his whole family. When he explained his feelings to Ibiki during one of his many interrogations the man had nodded. Tying up lose ends, he'd called it, and had recommended to the Hokage that Sasuke be allowed to take a leave of absence, to which she agreed, providing he had proper supervision.
And so here he was, after months of searching with a certain annoying moron whom he had somehow managed to fall in love with.
"Hey bastard, are you going in or not?" said moron said as he paused at the edge of the little village. Sasuke threw him a look, and was once again amazed by the color of Naruto's eyes. Such a clear azure blue… not that he would let that get in the way of glaring at him. Naruto, unfazed by his glare, laughed at him.
Goaded, he shook his head and walked on. During his brief stay as a member of the Akatsuki they'd given him his brother's belongings. There hadn't been much, really, some clothing, weapons, and a few books, including a small note book that had apparently contained Itachi's personal diary. There wasn't much in it, and what was there was mostly in some sort of personal code that was half short hand and half something else that still had the code breakers at Konoha confused. Not all the entries were coded, however, and he was here as a result of the ones that were weren't.
A certain house just outside of Sandhill in Wave Country had been mentioned several times, and a woman. Perhaps she knew more.
And far too soon he found himself outside the house and his heart froze inside his chest, because playing in the yard were two children, a boy and a girl, who were the spitting image of his brother. He felt himself tremble, and all of the sudden Naruto's hand were pressed against his ribs, his body a warm presence against his back.
A moment later he stepped away as the children noticed him. The girl hung back, perhaps shy, while the boy approached the fence. He was apparently about ten, and he looked so much like Itachi that Sasuke was torn between wanting to rip the boy's face off and embracing him. He was frozen, rooted in place and unable to breathe. Fortunately Naruto was with him.
"Hey kid," he said, releasing him, "your mom here?"
The boy nodded, and then yelled for his sister to fetch the woman before turning back to watch the two strangers warily. Sasuke could see something that wasn't quite yet the Sharingan begin to unfold in the boy's eyes. It wasn't developed at all, but one day…
A moment later a woman appeared, the shy little girl half-hiding behind her. The woman paused for a moment on the other side of the small gate, and paled.
"Well," she said after a moment, her dark eyes searching his face. "I suppose I should have expected this."
Naruto shattered the awkward silence that followed, pushing forward and loudly introducing himself, Konoha's Number One Hyperactive Loudmouth once again proving his title. The woman looked startled for a moment, before breaking out into an uncertain smile while her daughter hid further behind her legs and the boy scowled.
"I'm Sasuke," he said when the loudmouth was done. No need to say his surname.
"I know." She studied his face a moment more, and he found himself studying her in turn. She was a petite and pretty brunette, but he couldn't see what it was about her that had drawn his brother back, again and again. She was an ordinary woman living in a small fishing village, not a shinobi. Not anyone important.
Perhaps that was the point.
"Come in," she said, opening the gate. "I'm Hana," she said, leaving off her surname. "This is Fugaku and Mikoto." She was turned away from him so she didn't see his flinch. Naruto's hand clasped his shoulder. "Children," she said a moment later as she showed them into her cottage. "I have to talk to Sasuke-san and Naruto-san privately for a while, so why don't you go visit Azuma-san? I'm sure he'll let you help out with that new boat."
"Mother…" the boy said, a note of worry in his voice.
"I'll be fine. They're not here to do anything bad."
The boy snorted, then turned and gave Sasuke the coldest glare he had ever received from a ten year old before silently taking his sister's hand and darting out of the house. Naruto barked out a laugh and slapped Sasuke on the back. "Your nephew for sure!"
"Hn."
Hana gestured for them to take a seat at the large table that took up most of the kitchen. "I'm making tea," she said, voice and body tense. In the corner on the far side of the room there was cradle containing a sleeping infant, but Sasuke found himself reluctant to meet this third child.
"You're shaking," Naruto breathed into his ear. "I don't think I've ever seen you so scared."
"You moron. I'm not scared." What was there to be frightened of? They wouldn't bite. Sasuke forced himself to take a deep breath and looked into Naruto's eyes, which were the exact shade of summer. As always he felt something ease within him, for all the annoyance the man gave him, Sasuke always felt calmer in his presence.
"I'm scared," the woman said calmly as she set steaming mugs down in front of them. "I'm terrified. The last time he was here he told me what he did to his family. What he did to you." Her eyes were as hard as her voice.
"I'm not here for retribution."
Her eyes narrowed, and then abruptly flicked away to the crib as she sipped her tea. "I named him Itachi." Sasuke flinched again. Perhaps he wasn't here for retribution, but she seemed to determined to wreck it in her own fashion. Naruto slid his chair over and slung an arm around his shoulders, holding him as close as Sasuke ever let him in public. The intense heat of his body was reassuring.
"Why?" he asked, finally.
"Why what? Why did I name the baby that, or why did his father marry me?"
"Why did he marry you?"
She shrugged, still looking at the baby. "At the time I thought he loved me. Maybe he did, but he wasn't terribly expressive." Sasuke elbowed Naruto in the ribs before he could do more than draw breath. Now was not the time for the moron to make a smart remark. "But the last time he was here he told me it was to rebuild his clan."
"Insurance," he said. "He wasn't sure I would survive. Or…would want to have children if I did."
Naruto, mercifully, stayed silent at that. Sasuke suspected that the blond was going to explode later. The woman looked at them and raised an eyebrow when she saw how closely Naruto was holding him.
"Hmmm," she said, and looked away again.
"I killed him," he said softly after a moment.
"No you didn't. He committed suicide." Her voice was incredibly bitter. "He married me, had three children, and then had his little brother execute him just so that he could atone for the crime of slaughtering his family." She set her mug down hard enough to crack it. "If he weren't dead I'd kill him myself."
With unnecessary violence she swept the cracked mug up and threw it in the trash before getting a new one and filling it with something that was definitely not tea. She took a gulp before continuing.
"He abandoned them, and he abandoned me, and what was worse, he knew he'd be abandoning us from the start, and he still did it. Now our children will be growing up without a father."
"Che," Naruto said, leaning forward and blocking her mug before she gulped down the rest. "It's not so bad, they have an uncle."
She froze and for the first time Sasuke could see the fear in her. She was, he realized, the sort of person who lashed out when frightened, who fought back, determined to make whoever it was who'd frightened her regret it. Had she been a shinobi she would have been the sort to take chunks out of her enemy just because she could. Vicious. He could see why his brother had married her, who better to protect his children?
"You're not taking my children from me," she whispered.
He snorted. "Of course not, you're their mother."
The look she gave them told him that she wasn't reassured. "The Uchihas are a shinobi clan," she said. "You're going to take them, and you're going to make them into killers."
Sasuke didn't know what to say to that.
Fortunately Naruto was never without anything to say. "Fugaku-kun is developing the Sharingan," he said, "How does the village feel about that? Will they accept him, or will he be ostracized the moment they realize he's different? And what will you do when other shinobi come? They'll see his Sharingan and they'll want it, and if you're lucky they'll be from one of the other hidden villages. If you're not, they'll be missing-nin."
"They don't even need him," Sasuke said, quietly. "Just his eyes, and a medical-ninja crooked enough to transplant them." Hana flinched at that, as if he had struck her. "They need to learn how to protect themselves." He felt no guilt using her fear to manipulate her. "Your children deserve to know about their heritage."
Under the table Naruto kicked him. Hard. Sasuke got the unspoken message, apparently Naruto thought he was being mean.
She took a sip. "I was suppose to find you or a man named Hatake Kakashi-san in a few years."
Sasuke blinked at that, and a few things fell into place, most notably Itachi's refusal to fight Kakashi. So, the man had been part of a backup plan to teach Itachi's children the proper use of the Sharingan, even if he wasn't of the clan. For some reason that made Sasuke relax.
"Kakashi-sensei? Wha--?"
"The Sharingan, moron."
There was a blur of movement, and Sasuke had just enough time to register that the attack wasn't serious--that is, potentially injurious--before the woman's hand connected with his cheek. For a non-shinobi she was fast. "Watch your language," she said as if scolding a child, "If you're going to be raising my children keep your mouth clean."
Next to him Naruto was cracking up. Sasuke sighed in resignation and rubbed his cheek (for someone with no control over her chakra and no training in taijutsu she hit hard) and apologized while beside him the maniac howled with laughter.
And oddly, it was that little exchange that seemed to calm her down. Maybe it was the assertion of authority over the two shinobi in front of her.
At the sound of Naruto's laughter the baby woke up crying. Hana picked him up and then thrust him into Sasuke's arms before taking some milk out of the fridge. He stiffened the moment the child touched his arms, the last time he's held an infant was when he was a child, before his parents died. He felt a moment of blind panic before hearing Naruto's hissed idiot, support the head and feeling his body sort of gently curve around the child. The baby was crying, so he gave it one of his fingers to suck on, and forced himself to look at the boy's face. Once again Itachi had left his stamp, visible even under the baby fat.
A moment later Hana took the boy from him and stuck the bottle in. "Goats milk," she said, "He doesn't like formula and I'm not exactly a heifer."
Sasuke thought it the best part of valor not to respond to that and kicked Naruto under the table.
"How old is he?" he asked instead.
"He'll be six months in two weeks." Sasuke sat back and did the math, the boy had been conceived a month and some weeks before he killed his father. He looked at the woman and thought why don't you hate me?
Just then the two older children returned smelling of marine paint and seasoned wood. The older boy glared at him, and Hana, who had apparently developed that eyes-behind-the-head vision all mothers had that rivaled the Hyuugas, yelled, "Fugaku-chan, that's your uncle Sasuke-san, be _polite_ if you can't be nice."
The boy gave him a startled look and the girl squeaked.
A few hours later and he was on the porch, watching while Naruto and several of his clones entertained Fugaku-kun in a game of chase the devil. Mikoto-chan sitting primly beside him on the steps. The girl looked to be about seven or eight, and she was starting to remind him more of Hinata then his brother, and while that worried him slightly--he didn't want to see her bullied the way Hinata had been--it was also a relief. He was starting to see the children not as extensions of his brother, but as individual members of his family. A sudden shout of triumph from Naruto and a shriek of laughter from the boy caught his attention as Naruto finally cornered his prey before tossing him into the air and catching him, and for a moment Sasuke saw Itachi.
Only it wasn't the Itachi who had stood over their parents' bodies, his blade wet with their blood. It wasn't the Itachi who had used his Sharingan against his own little brother to brand hatred into his heart. It wasn't even the Itachi he had fought, who was ready to die and willing to do anything to make Sasuke kill him.
No, this was the Itachi who had walked him to class, who would take his little brother out to the forest to teach him how to throw shuriken, who stood up for him to his father, and who carried him home when he was tired or hurt. The brother that he had seen in the last moments of their battle when he had imparted the ultimate power of the Sharingan to him. The brother who had arraigned to revive the clan he had slaughtered, so that Sasuke could have a family once again.
His niece sighed and he froze when she moved onto his lap before cautiously wrapping his arms around her. Everything was so new, so raw, but this felt so right that he couldn't possibly turn her away. They watched his beloved play with her older brother, while behind them his sister-in-law sang to the baby.
It's our turn to raise the younger generation, Naruto had told him once. At the time he hadn't really understood it. From the time his family died he hadn't ever really considered the possibility that he had a future.
Holding the future in his arms, Sasuke smiled.