Non beta'd short and possibly due for a revision in the near future...takes place a year or so after Nerves.


Epilogue

"Aniki…."

"Don't you have training to do today?"

Leaning almost casually against one of the doors lining the entrance hall, Sasuke sighed. "Kakashi-sensei is always late," he replied in explanation, but he took the hint anyway. Itachi wanted to be left alone. Turning to go, he glanced down at his brother who was calmly fastening his sandals as if there wasn't a jounin exam about to be held within the hour.

Not that Sasuke was worried for his ANBU captain brother. Itachi had just never had time between his mission load to seriously consider taking the jounin exam; he'd entered the ANBU soon after his chuunin examination and had stayed there for a good five years until before entering an application for the jounin one.

As if feeling his younger brother's gaze, the elder Uchiha sibling turned, and smiled.

"Don't disgrace the family," Sasuke said, his tone serious but his eyes amused.

The lines of Itachi's face, a small tell that sometimes gave away how stressed he was feeling, softened. "I would never," he replied lightly, and extended a fist to his brother with a small smile.

Sasuke knocked the offered fist with his own, and turned away. "I'll see you tomorrow," he called back as he disappeared.

Itachi chuckled to himself, the sound soft in the deserted entrance hall. "He's grown," the eighteen-year-old mused to himself as he got to his feet. "Even his "good luck"s have grown mature."

A vision of green eyes, verdant as summer maple leaves, flashed through his mind.

Over the last year they had haunted him, more so when he had discovered the identity of their owner. Haruno Sakura had been assigned to his little brother's three-man cell and trained with him and another under Kakashi's tutelage daily. Itachi had discovered that with the new schedule he was seeing his brother less and less in spite of the softening of the ANBU workload to his squad, a somewhat annoying occurrence. But then when Itachi did get to see his brother, around Konoha as well as in the Uchicha compound, it was often with Sakura and Naruto, their other teammate.

And Itachi could not complain; seeing what little of Sakura that he did had become strangely satisfying to him. The small glimpses on the days he greeted his little brother's friends in his mother's stead were like unexpected sweets, to be saved for later and savored at leisure.

And she watched him too, though her glances were few and far between. It was almost as though she didn't remember him, or that she was uncertain of what to make of their singular encounter.

He pushed the thoughts from his mind; with his brother off to train with his team, there was little chance of seeing her today. And he couldn't let his mind stray from the mission at hand; passing the jounin examination.

Held without the fanfare of the chuunin exams, it was a secretive battle held in one of Konoha's most dangerous training grounds, held within a sunken building underground. Very few would assemble there to take the exam, seen off by a few well-wishers among friends and family. Itachi would most likely enter alone. His general dislike for overly reassuring pre-exam words meant that his parents had wished him the best of luck over breakfast, and his friends among the Uchiha compound residents, including his brother, had gotten their own remarks in before he'd left.

It would have seemed a little grim to some, not to have anyone see what could have been his last moments alive in the light, but it was what Itachi preferred….

"Itachi-san!"

The voice was achingly familiar, one he enjoyed hearing when he caught snatches of conversation while idly eavesdropping on his brother, and one he hadn't expected as he waited quietly for the exam proctors to arrive.

"Hello, Sakura, don't you have training to do with my brother?"

The smile that curved her lips trembled only slightly; with mirth or something else he couldn't tell. "Not for another two hours," she told him, eyes dancing. "The newest volume of the Icha Icha series comes out today; Kakashi-sensei pushed training back a few hours."

The emerald eyes hadn't changed, still abundantly verdant with every emotion painted clear in their depths. Relief, a gentle touch of nervousness, and…happiness?

"I-I'm not going to tell you you're going to be fine, Itachi-san," she told him, stuttering only at the first word. "I think…I think you don't expect miracles b-because you've gone on too many missions…." She swallowed, the words lodging in her throat.

He didn't need his intellectual genius to know she was thinking of how sometimes jounin rank candidates entered the exam grounds and didn't walk out again; this mission, like many others he had taken before it, had easily claimed other lives.

"But Sasuke once told us, Naruto and I, about your skill as a ninja. I don't think I need to wish you well after hearing that. Instead, I trust you…to trust in yourself."

Itachi's eyes were gentle, soft as sable instead of their usual bright obsidian hue with which he watched the world. She hadn't meant to say those words perhaps; ones he had said to her similarly a year ago, but she had said them all the same. She was thirteen and so young and earnest that those quiet words almost hurt to accept. A pleasant ache.

"Of course, Sakura, and thank you," he replied, taking a step closer to the girl to close the distance between them. "I will do my best not to break your trust."

The smile she turned to him was sweeter than honey, making his chest grow tight with an emotion he refrained from naming, though it made his heart speed up ever so slightly.

From the corner of his eye, he noticed the arrival of the proctors and felt, for the first time, a reluctance. And though he wished to discard the feeling, with all its uncomfortable implications knotting in his gut, he didn't. Possibly couldn't.

"Good luck, Itachi-san."

He smiled over his shoulder as the small crowd of jounin candidates filtered towards the double doors of the examination training grounds.

"Thank you, Sakura."

END


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