Birds sang brightly, sunlight filtered down through the window. He sighed contently and rolled over, snuggling deeper under the covers. The little eight year old could barely believe it was his very first day at the academy. There were only a few things that could make this get better.
And one of those things knocked gently on his bedroom door. His quiet, lilting voice came a moment later.
"Sasuke?...You awake?..."
He bounded out of bed, pj's and all, flew across the room and flung the door open. He threw his arms around Itachi's waist.
"Hai Aniki"
A little chuckle from the back of the tall, slim teenagers throat was the response. Itachi's voice had recently gotten much lower wich amused the young boy to no end.
His brother crouched down to be on eye level. Another inside joke, Sasuke insisted he was getting bigger everyday, and soon he would wake one morning and be taller. He straightened his back and stood on his tippy toes.
Itachi had to press his knuckles to his mouth for a moment to stifle a laugh.
"Sasuke" he started trying to sound serious"Itachi" he replied dropping his voice as low as it would go and matched his brother's expression.
He was thrilled to see the amused smile that broke across his aniki's face.
It was gone in a few seconds though, as Itachi countinued,"Father had to leave early this morning for a mission, he sends his apologies."
"oh" Sasuke's heart sank. His father was supposed to take him to school. He hoped and prayed that he hadn't changed his mind. His stomach twisted uncomfortably.
His brother fixed everything with one sentence.
"I'll be taking you instead", Sasuke was thrilled, Itachi was way more fun than his father any day of the week. He let him get away with more.
When his brother had time they went to the village, visited the little shops, and partook in the forbidden pleasure that was junk food. Itachi seemed to like buying him gifts, though he had to be careful that the presents never fell into the category of "pointless distraction" in their father's eyes.
As a result Sasuke owned alot of intricatley patterned kunai and shuriken, along with several carrying pouches that were garunteed never to break.
However, he did posses exactly one stuffed animal. A rather large dog, fluffy tail and all. Itachi had gotten that for him also, a few months back. He had seen one of the other children playing with a puppy and had immediatley decided he wanted one.
The little white fluff ball was yapping joyously and wagging it's tail as it's owner, another boy about his age, tossed a stick for it.
"Itachi-kun!" he said, tugging on the older boy's arm impaitiently. Itachi looked down at him,"Itachi, can I get one of those?" He pointed to the little white puppy.
Itachi's face darkened for a moment before he forced it into a smile and replied "I will discuss it with father. Shinobi dogs are valuable companions"
Sasuke's heart soared and he beamed up at Itachi.
As it turned out Uchiha Fugaku deemed Sasuke "unfit to master a dog when he himself seems incapable of mastering ninjutsu".
He hadn't caught the specifics after that, just alot of sharp toned words that passed between Itachi and his father that ended with Itachi taking of for a walk and not returning for nearly two days. During his brother's abscence Sasuke was subject to many scathing glares from his father, who obviously blamed him for his beloved first son's dissapearance.
When Itachi finally did return he wore the triumphant little smile that always told Sasuke that whatever his brother had done was going to get him in alot of trouble.
Indeed it did. The next time Itachi returned from a mission he was carying a huge stuffed dog. Even Sasuke's eight year old mind realized it must have been custom made, because it looked exactly like the Akita puppy that they had seen with the little boy.
Sasuke's mother lead her second son to his room to find a suitable place for the new dog. She cooed over the thing, fussed with the little leather collar. But Mikoto couldn't stop the sound of his father's anger from coming through the walls.
He didn't see Itachi for a week afterward.
Uchiha Sasuke was the second to wake with a start that morning. The bitter sweet child hood memory still playing behind the iridescent crimson of his Sharingan eyes.
He groaned and stretched. A simple, perfectly human thing to do but he had long since kicked the habit of doing such things in front of other people. Primarily because he had enough of a hard time not drawing attention to himself, and was eternally made a spectacle of by at least one woman in the immediate vicinity. God forbid he do something like shove his bangs out of his eyes in public.
He had at one time considered changing his name and going to some remote corner of the globe to bide his time until the world had forgotten him and his condemed bloodline. He could cast off the title last Uchiha, goodbye and good riddance.
There had been one flaw in the plan, Itachi. The wildly infamous older boy was not hiding. Quite the contrary he was highly active, walking, talking, trying to bring about the end of the civilized world. Or so Sasuke had thought.
He would meet his brother again soon, Sasuke was not stupid enough to believe he would survive his fight with Naruto. The demon container turned hero was a level all his own.
He was not afraid to die, his existence revolved around death. He was far more comfortable with the concept of dying than that abstract unatainable state of living.
He was anxious, all too ready to meet Itachi again. A thousand question to ask his brother were burned into the flawless memory the genes of the Uchiha clan had blessed him with.
Sasuke rose from the warmth of the blanket, his body gave a single tremor at the cold and he made a nearly imperceptible jerk backward. At once his years of programming bubbled to the forefront and his clear featured face twisted into a disgusted sneer.
Irked he padded out of his room and down the bamboo floored hallway. Old fashioned candles against the white washed walls cast shadows that twisted, jumped and disintegrated. He could not repress the impulse to track each individual movement, and by the time he reached the tarnished decorative shoji screens that made up the door to the outside a migraine thrummed against his temples. The Akatsuki's mountain safe house sat adjacent to a hot spring, as a result no one had deemed it necessary to install a shower. Now the younger Uchiha traipsed barefoot across the rock formation , stripping off a pair of loose, dark slacks, his sole article of clothing, as he went.
Naked for all the world to see and too absorbed in thought to care, he slid with a minute sploosh into the hot water. At 130 degrees Fahrenheit the hot spring fell just outside the so called "safe" temperature range. The stinging sensation that turned his skin red was perversely gratifying, and he sighed gently, content to be human enough to feel something so basic.
At the age of eighteen he was a dead man walking and he knew that he had very little life to reminisce. As a young child he was the unremarkable shadow of his prodigy brother. His adolescence he spent grouped nicely into the categories of "trauma victim", "orphan", and "brilliant student". Now barely squeaking into the group "adult" he was powerful, feared, hated, a liar, a traitor, a murderer,, to many a certifiable nutcase, a virgin with no aspirations for a family, and living on borrowed time.
He closed his eyes and let himself sink to the bottom of the pool, wondering if he stayed still if he could just will himself to slip away quietly.
A/N: I hate it when authors harass their audience for reviews at the end of each chapter but I really do need my readers to tell me if they like my portrayal of Sasuke before I proceed onto the next chapter, which primarily concerns Itachi, who is a far more complex character.
