Title: Changes
Author: Aerlyn-Angel-of-Death
Genre: Angst/General

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto. I wouldn't be writing this if I did. You'd think that'd be kind of obvious, you know?

Changes

Itachi was twelve, the child prodigy of the Uchiha clan. He was a genius and an ANBU; the perfect ninja. Sasuke was five, and still hadn't activated his sharingan. For an Uchiha, he was average at best. Others always said this when they thought Sasuke couldn't hear them; Itachi never said it, and when he heard people say it those people regretted it.

Itachi was Sasuke's only brother, and Sasuke loved him. He didn't know if Itachi loved him back, but Itachi called him otouto-chan and let Sasuke call him onii-chan, and he carried Sasuke on his back when he got tired. Itachi walked him to the Academy every morning, as long as he wasn't off on a mission. Itachi never insulted him when they were training together and Sasuke scraped his hands or knees and cried; he just bandaged him up and let him sit on his lap until he felt better. Itachi kissed him goodnight when okaa-san wasn't there, and he didn't mind when Sasuke wanted to sleep with him because he had nightmares.

Spring came. One day they found a nest of tiny bird-eggs, and they watched them and knew after a few days that the eggs didn't have any parents. Itachi sneaked them into the house, even letting Sasuke hold one, and kept them in his sock drawer until they hatched. He said it was Sasuke's responsibility to feed them bugs and worms and things when Itachi was gone and missions, and in June they started flying around Itachi's room. Itachi put the young birds in a little wire cage and took Sasuke out into the forest, where they let them go in a sunlit grove.

There were a lot of thunderstorms that summer. They didn't bother Itachi; he told Sasuke how beautiful the lightning was and let him curl up under the blankets with him when he sat under the slope the roof to watch it. The skies were clear sometimes, though, and then they went up on the roof to look at the stars when okaa-san and otou-san thought they were sleeping. Itachi taught him how to fly up to where he could touch the stars drifting through the sky like snowflakes, tucked safely against his brother's side so he couldn't fall back to earth. Sasuke couldn't help but notice how much bigger Itachi's hands were than his own, looking at their silhouettes against the silvery light as they both reached out to touch the stars with the very tips of their fingers.

Fall came and Itachi told the gardeners that he wanted to do the yard work for a little while. He woke Sasuke up at two in the morning one day, and they went outside because Itachi had raked up all the leaves on the estate into one place. He showed Sasuke how to properly jump in them, getting to the deepest part of the leaves while disturbing them as little as possible. After that, laughing and comfortably exhausted, they went inside and hid in one of the guest rooms so they could sleep the entire day.

In the winter the water on the harbour froze, and Itachi taught Sasuke to skate and ice-fish. They had snowball fights and built snow men, although only on the understanding that snow men could be used for targets and snow balls were good to practice attacking people with. They went around the village throwing snowballs at people and running away when they got mad; Itachi had to pick up his younger brother sometimes and run like heck, and sometimes even then they barely got away.

Itachi was thirteen, the child prodigy of the Uchiha clan. He was a genius and an ANBU captain; the perfect ninja. Sasuke was six, and still hadn't activated his sharingan. For an Uchiha, he was average at best. Others said this when they thought Sasuke couldn't hear them; Itachi never said it, but he never really said anything anymore. People who said it around Itachi never said anything ever again. They never found out why.

Itachi was Sasuke's only brother, and Sasuke loved him. He didn't know if Itachi loved him back – Itachi never called him otouto-chan anymore, although he still let Sasuke call him onii-chan. He only carried him when he sprained his ankle, and he never walked him to the Academy or kissed him goodnight because he was always gone on missions. They never trained together anymore; Itachi just poked his forehead and said "Forgive me, I'm busy right now."

That spring their cousin and Itachi's best friend Shisui died. They never checked on their birds, because there was too much to do with Shisui's funeral, and comforting his parents and being comforted by others from the village. Lots of parents brought their children over, but Sasuke couldn't play with them because he was supposed to be sad and people would worry about him if he wasn't.

Itachi sat on the roof a lot that summer, but he didn't watch stars or lightning because the sky was clouded over but it rarely rained. He never took Sasuke flying through the stars anymore, and Sasuke shivered alone in his room until he stopped being afraid of the thunderstorms. Sasuke's hands got bigger, but Itachi was always busy and never showed him how to hold a kunai like he did.

By the time fall arrived, Sasuke's family was dead and Itachi was gone. He raked up the leaves when they fell, and sat on the dying grass staring at them, but he didn't jump in them. Winter came, and he built a snowman and a snow fort, and he made snowballs but didn't throw them. He went down to the harbour and put his skates on, but he only watched others skate.

Spring came, and Sasuke found one of his birds dead. He buried it in the yard and planted wildflowers next to it. He lay awake in bed that night and hoped the sun wouldn't rise the next day, and tried not to cry when it did and he was still alone in the house. He hated being alone here. He wanted to find the rewind button, and turn it back to when everything was normal. He wanted okaa-san to be humming lullabies to herself while she made breakfast, and she wanted otou-san to scowl as he grumbled about how Sasuke should train more, and he wanted Itachi to smirk as they made faces at each other over the table and mocked otou-san where he couldn't see…

He wanted to go back to before everything changed, because change, he decided with deeply sorrowful finality as he looked at the sun rise and hit the empty estates, was a horrible thing.

A/N: I don't usually write angst, but one day I was thinking about watching the stars and I thought it sounded like something that might happen with these two. So I thought of this sentence – Onii-san doesn't watch the stars anymore – and I couldn't get it out of my head, so I wrote this. sniffle I really like this story, but now I feel all sad…